The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (4 page)

His face revealed such deep embarrassment, such inner torment, that I understood … that if I gave him an evasive answer I would deal a deathblow to his self-esteem and pride. I looked at his troubled face, which had become so dear to me, and said, “I would answer that I love you and will love you all my life.”

When Dostoevsky pressed her to tell when she had become fond of him, Anna said that she had fallen in love with the hero of
Insulted and Injured
at fifteen. She had been full of sympathy for Dostoevsky when reading his Siberian account,
Notes from the House of the Dead
, and “it was with those feelings that I came to work for you. I wanted terribly to help you, to lighten in some way the existence of the man whose work I adored.” The concept of female sacrifice had a special meaning for Anna’s generation, inspired by the example of the Decembrist women who followed their husbands to exile in Siberia after the failed uprising against autocracy in 1825. However, the women in Dostoevskys’ life had previously been unwilling to forgo their own interests to serve him. Korvin-Krukovskaya, a talented woman whom Anna would meet and befriend six years into her marriage, felt unsuited for the role. As she remarked, Dostoevskys’ wife “must devote herself to him. entirely, give all her life to him.… And I cannot do that, I want to live myself! Besides, he is so nervous, so demanding!”
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Realizing that he had solicited Anna’s consent, Dostoevsky nonetheless declared that he was proud of his improvisation and considered it superior to his novels because it “had an instant success and produced the desired effect.” When it sunk in that she would marry Dostoevsky, Anna “was stunned, almost crushed by the immensity of my happiness.”

The writer’s betrothal to a young and attractive stenographer became a news item:
Son of the Fatherland
published an article, “Marriage of a Novelist.” In it, Dostoevsky was described walking back and forth when dictating and pulling his long hair during difficult spots, a portrayal which Anna found amusing and accurate.

She had to rescue Dostoevsky yet again when Mikhail Katkov, the editor of
The Russian Herald
, demanded the continuing installments of
Crime and Punishment
for the fall and winter issues. Because of their engagement, Dostoevsky had neglected sending chapters, so he was exasperated when faced with another close deadline and having to complete his novel before Christmas. Because he was now using stenography, which shortened his work time “nearly by half,”
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he could make such a promise. Dostoevsky took the editor’s letter to Anna, who advised him to shut his doors to visitors so he could work; in the evenings, he would come to her mother’s apartment to dictate to her from his manuscript. Soon they were back to their routine: they would sit down at a desk together and, after a chat, “the dictation would begin, punctuated with talk, jokes and laughter.” Dostoevsky admitted that his writing had never come so painlessly before and attributed this to their collaboration.

Turning forty-five, Dostoevsky was her father’s contemporary, and Anna cared for his well-being as she had for her father’s. Dostoevsky became more cheerful on her watch and his health improved. “During the entire three-month period before our wedding he suffered no more than three or four epileptic attacks.” He had had weekly attacks when they met, some of them so severe that he was unable to speak or regain his memory for hours; they also left him despondent.

Their age difference bothered Dostoevsky because of Anna’s youthful appearance: he was embarrassed that she looked like a girl. But Anna reassured him that she would age quickly. “And although this promise was meant as a joke, the circumstances of my life made it come true.… The difference in age between my husband and myself soon grew almost imperceptible.” A few years into her marriage, Anna would notice from her portrait how her soft features and the expression in her eyes had turned grave.

On top of his illness, Dostoevsky was overloaded with family and debts. He accepted his dead brother’s financial obligations and also supported his stepson, his alcoholic brother, his widowed sister-in-law, and her children. His relatives expected this aid, although he often had to pawn his belongings to provide it. Anna cried upon learning Dostoevsky pawned his winter coat five or six times each winter to support his ever-demanding family. His precious Chinese vases also disappeared from his apartment while she was still taking dictation there, and Anna saw that on his dining table wooden spoons had replaced silver. She realized that his debts required Dostoevsky to accept pitiable offers from publishers: he was not in a position to negotiate.

Days before proposing to Anna, Dostoevsky appealed to
The Russian Herald
, desperately asking to advance him 500 hundred rubles: “I have absolutely exhausted all my money … and I have nothing to live on.”
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The editor gave him the loan, but it was almost immediately gone to cover some debts, leaving Dostoevsky penniless again. Since there was no money for the wedding, Dostoevsky decided to travel to Moscow and meet his editor to request a bigger loan.

Anna’s mother did not dissuade her from marrying Dostoevsky, despite his penury and illness. Anna would gratefully remember this, observing that her mother undoubtedly realized that this marriage had “much torment and grief in store for me” but did not interfere. Decades later, Anna would remark, “And who indeed could have persuaded me to refuse this great imminent happiness which later, despite the many difficult aspects of our life together, proved to be a real and genuine happiness for both of us?”

Dostoevskys’ letters to his fiancée from Moscow were affectionate, anxious, and unromantic. “The sleeping cars are the vilest absurdity, hideously damp, cold, smelling of charcoal fumes. I suffered from a tooth ache … all day and night until dawn.”
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But Anna read his letters “with great joy” and shared Dostoevskys’ fervent hope for their
new happiness
together. “I believe and trust in you, as in my whole future,” he wrote her.
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When learning about Dostoevskys’ marriage, Katkov agreed to a generous loan of 2,000 rubles; it was more than the magazine could pay, so he sent it in installments. Now, they could make wedding arrangements. But as before, Dostoevskys’ relatives put forward their demands and he had no strength to refuse his late brother’s family and his stepson Paul, who was the same age as Anna but lacked desire to work. They all were exploiting Dostoevskys’ sense of guilt: he felt he was not doing enough for his family and so the new loan was melting away quickly. This time, Dostoevsky handed several hundred rubles over to Anna to cover wedding expenses, with the warning that their future depended on it.

The wedding took place on February 15, 1867, at 8
P.M.,
at the Trinity Izmailov Cathedral. “The cathedral was brilliantly lit, a splendid choir sang, many elegantly dressed guests were there.…” The reception was at her mother’s apartment, where a beaming Dostoevsky introduced Anna to his friends, telling each: “‘Look at that charming girl of mine! She’s a marvelous person, that girl of mine! She has a heart of gold!’—and similar phrases that embarrassed me terribly.”

In the aftermath of the celebrations, Dostoevsky experienced a double epileptic attack just as they were visiting Anna’s sister. This was the first of his attacks that Anna witnessed: he suddenly broke off in the middle of a sentence, giving a horrible, “inhuman” scream.

In later years there were dozens of occasions when I was to hear that “inhuman” howl, common with epileptics at the onset of the attack; and that howl always shocked and
terrified me. But on this occasion I was not the least bit frightened, to my own surprise, although it was the first time in my life I had ever seen an epileptic fit.… I pushed aside a chair with a lighted lamp on it, and let him slide on the floor. I too sat down on the floor and held his head in my lap all through his convulsions. There was no one to help me: my sister was in hysterics, and my brother-in-law and the maid were fussing over her.

A second and more severe attack soon followed, leaving Dostoevsky, when he regained consciousness, screaming in pain for hours. Anna recognized the severity of his illness when she spent the night listening to his cries, groans, and incoherent speech, and it frightened her to see his wild stare and face distorted with convulsions.

It was with “vexation and sorrow” that she would recall her honeymoon: her fervent dream of becoming Dostoevskys’ companion and helping him fulfill his destiny collided with harsh reality. Dostoevsky lived with his stepson Paul, who met Anna with hostility, evidently afraid of losing his allowance and privileged position (he called Dostoevsky “papa”). With Paul bickering and complaining about her to Dostoevsky, and with his other relatives perennially present, Anna felt estranged from her husband before their marriage even really began. They were never left alone, and the rift between them grew: Dostoevsky worked nights, and in the daytime she had to entertain his family and guests, a task she disliked immensely because she was used to independence. Raised in a traditional family, she could not refuse hospitality, but was left with no time for her own pursuits—reading, practicing stenography, and helping Dostoevsky. Without their conversations and spiritual intimacy (she was not then physically attracted to Dostoevsky), Anna felt that their relationship could soon end in divorce.

To rescue the marriage, the couple decided to go abroad for a few months, but as soon as they raised the needed money and
announced their intentions, Dostoevskys’ relatives insisted on receiving cash for several months in advance. His creditors also pressed for payment and threatened Dostoevsky with court action. Crushed by his troubles, he was ready to give up the idea of going away. Anna, however, was determined to free them from their domestic nightmare at any cost and begin a true married life, “to become knit together,”
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using Dostoevskys’ expression. She was prepared to pawn her dowry, although “I was extremely fond of my piano, my charming little tables and whatnots, all my lovely things so newly acquired.”

Her mother was in favor of her European trip, upset as she was that her industrious daughter had to amuse visitors instead of working. “She was a Swede, her view of life was Western, more cultured; and she feared that the good habits inculcated by my upbringing would vanish thanks to our Russian style of living with its disorderly hospitality.” When her mother helped pawn her piano, furniture, fine clothes, and jewelry, Anna had a premonition she might not see these things again, which indeed happened. Aside from the dowry, there was her inheritance: one of her mother’s rental properties would go to Anna within months, when she turned twenty-one. But because they wanted to leave abroad urgently, before new complications arose, Anna would never benefit from this house, which was auctioned off in her absence.

On April 14, 1867, on Good Friday, the couple left Petersburg for a three-month vacation, not to return until four years later. Anna started a shorthand diary of her impressions and conversations with Dostoevsky. These notes interested Dostoevsky “very much, and he would often say to me, ‘I’d give a lot, Anechka, to find out what it is you’re writing in those little squiggles of yours—you’re saying bad things about me, no doubt?’”
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Recording her thoughts in shorthand allowed her to express them without reservation, vital to her during their foreign travel when she had no one else but her diary to confide in. Besides, she wanted to make a faithful record of their daily life and conversations.

My husband was to me such an interesting and wholly enigmatic being, that it seemed to me as though I should find it easier to understand him if I noted down his every thought and expression. Added to which, there was no single soul abroad to whom I could confide either my doubts or my observations, and I came to regard my diary as the friend to whom I could entrust my hopes, my thoughts, and all my fears.
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Their travel began in Vilna,
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where the couple stayed briefly after crossing the Russian border. It was Easter Sunday and the hotel staff left for morning service. Dostoevsky, mistrustful of Western Europeans, despite having traveled abroad before, feared that they might be robbed, so he not only locked their doors, but barricaded them with tables and trunks. Anna had no time to ponder his eccentricity, having to spend that night caring for him after he suffered a powerful attack lasting fifteen minutes.

She soon discovered this was not the European trip she had been imagining. Dostoevsky may have seemed an “enigmatic being” to her, but in daily life he was irritable and tactless and, upon their arrival in Berlin, “began to curse everything, the Germans, the hotel, and the weather.”
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This bored her, so Anna suggested a walk on Unter den Linden. Having pawned her fine clothes, she was in a winter hat and coat, making her look preposterous on a warm rainy day. In addition, Dostoevsky scolded her for being badly dressed and for her shabby gloves. “I was very hurt, and told him, if he thought me so badly dressed we had better not go about together; after which I turned round, quick sharp, and went off in the opposite direction.”
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(When preparing her diaries for publication she added a sentence to assuage the impression of a quarrel and to assume blame for it: “At last I calmed down and realized that Fyodor never really meant to hurt me by what he said, and that I had had no reason to get so excited.”
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)

The abuse continued in Dresden, where Dostoevsky reprimanded aide his bride for dressing “like a kitchen aide.” Because he then
managed all their funds, she commented, “He could at least give me 20 francs per month … since our arrival abroad he hasn’t bought me a single dress, so how can he possibly complain.…”
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In her memoir, written forty-five years later, Anna changed her account dramatically to present Dostoevsky the opposite from what he was in life: “Then … the two of us went to buy me some summer outwear, and I marveled at the fact that Fyodor Mikhailovich did not grow bored with choosing and examining fabrics … pattern and cut of the article we were buying. Everything he chose for me was of good quality, simple and elegant, and after that I had complete confidence in his taste.”
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In fact, Dostoevsky bought summer clothes for himself alone, while Anna continued to walk around in her tatty black dress among the elegantly clad European ladies. But complaining was not in her nature and she merely wrote in her shorthand diary, “I keep thinking, perhaps he might himself figure out, himself will offer, why, you also need summer dresses, especially that they are so inexpensive here.”
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