The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (6 page)

In Geneva, although their means were scarce, life seemed blissful compared to the calamitous Baden-Baden. Seven months into her marriage, Anna knew how to cut back on every expense and mend her worn dresses. With no money for a decent apartment, they shared a single room, in which they slept, took their meals, read, and wrote. Anna told Dostoevsky that she was prepared to live with him on “a desert island,” and he remarked in a letter to Maikov: “Truly, Anna Grigorievna is an angel.… She says that she is happy, quite happy, and needs no entertainment … and that together with me in one room she is quite content.”
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In this room, she reread
Crime and Punishment
, read Balzac’s collected works and Dickens’
Little Dorrit
, after Dostoevsky had read it, took his dictation, and practiced translating from the French. Thinking she would need to earn a living, she had begun translating while in Baden-Baden. She had been also chronicling events of the previous year in her diary: her life before Dostoevsky, their meeting, and their collaboration on
The Gambler
.

In the fall of 1867, Dostoevsky wrote an outline for
The Idiot
, intended for the first 1868 issues
of The Russian Herald
. The idea was “an old and cherished one—to depict a positively good man.”
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Prince Myshkin is a romantic seeker, like Quixote, an “open-hearted childish soul.”
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But portraying a “perfectly beautiful” hero was overwhelmingly difficult, and Dostoevsky was afraid to fail badly, admitting he did not know how to develop such a character.
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With only months remaining until he had to deliver the first installment of the novel, he “took a risk, as at roulette, ‘Maybe it will develop under my pen.’”
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Continually disappointed with his execution, he told Anna that he was only implementing a tenth of his poetic idea.

In Geneva, Dostoevskys’ epilepsy increased: he suffered powerful attacks every ten days, as compared to once a month at better times; after each attack, he needed five days to recuperate. Depressed and anxious because of his illness and looming deadline, he also fretted
over his inability to provide for their growing family. They lived by pawning their things (Anna’s two spare dresses and her black lace mantilla fetched fifty francs) and on small loans from friends, including Maikov, while waiting for yet another advance from
The Russian Herald
where Dostoevsky was obliged to contribute his new novel in installments. As usual, their relationship was unaffected either by hardships or monotonous routine (both dreamed of going to a theater in Geneva, but because of their penury could not). In the evenings, they were composing a comic poem, “Abracadabra,” an activity that kept them amused. “We are very close now and it seems to me that he loves me terribly,” Anna wrote on the day she had to pawn her dress.
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Their livelihood depended on Dostoevskys’ new novel, but he was too nervous and frequently too ill to settle down and work steadily. A desperate remedy was needed to bring him back to writing, and so, three months before the birth of their child, painfully short of money, Anna agreed to Dostoevskys’ proposal that he try his luck at roulette again. “What a strange man,” she commented in her diary. “It seems fate punished him badly enough and proved to him many times that he will not become rich through roulette; but this man is incorrigible, he is still convinced … that he will definitely become rich, will definitely win.…”
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In October of 1867, Dostoevsky traveled to Saxon les Bains, a few hours from Geneva, returning to Geneva exhausted, without money and having again pawned his wedding ring. He told Anna a tale of his misfortunes, which she barely heard. Dostoevsky now came up with a new plan—to ask Katkov to send them a small monthly stipend, which, he was convinced, the editor would not refuse because Anna was soon to give birth. Ashamed that he had used her pregnancy as an excuse, Anna begged her mother to send money, while she would have given anything not to bother her. (Her mother in Petersburg was paying interest on Anna’s furniture while being harassed by Dostoevskys’ relatives and creditors.) Despite the loss of money, there was some benefit from Dostoevskys’ casino outing: it gave him a flash of inspiration. “When he came back to
Geneva he settled down to his interrupted work with fervor, and wrote about ninety-three pages … within twenty-three days.”
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The winter of 1867–68 passed swiftly “in unremitting mutual work on the writing of the novel.”
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With Anna taking dictation and copying, Dostoevsky barely met his deadline, sending the first installment at the last moment; it appeared in the January issue. Anticipating the birth of their child, the couple moved to a bigger apartment, with two bedrooms, but as their finances were weakened and they saved on fuel, their place remained “awfully cold.”
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In the evenings they talked about books they were reading together, about Christ and the Gospels. “I am always happy when he talks to me not just about ordinary subjects … but when he finds me capable of listening and discussing with him more important and abstract issues.”
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During their walks, Dostoevsky liked to stop at shop windows, pointing to diamond earrings, which he wanted to buy for Anna to replace those he had gambled away. Throughout his life he tried to save enough to buy her jewelry to replace his wedding gift; once he used an entire honorarium to buy her a golden bracelet, but money was always needed for bare necessities, and Anna returned it to the shop.

Their child was expected in March 1868. During the last month of Anna’s pregnancy, Dostoevsky walked past the midwife’s house daily so as to remember it at the critical moment: his memory, weakened by epilepsy, “has grown completely dim … I don’t recognize people anymore. I forget what I read the day before.”
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Knowing that his daily walks up the hill were difficult because of his asthma, Anna appreciated the sacrifice. But preparation proved futile: hours before Anna went into labor, Dostoevsky experienced a severe attack and, exhausted, fell asleep. When her pains began, she tried to awaken him, only to find that he was completely incapacitated. She had to wait eleven hours, praying for strength, before Dostoevsky could summon the midwife.

But what a dreadful night I spent then! The trees around the church were rustling violently; wind and rain rattled at
the windows … I have to admit that I was oppressed by the feeling of being completely alone and helpless. How bitter it was for me that during those trying hours of my life there was no close relative near me, and that my only guardian and defender, my husband, was himself in a helpless state. I began to pray with fervor, and prayer sustained my failing strength.
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The Swiss midwife told Anna that she had never met a newborn’s father in such distress. Banished from the room, Dostoevsky prayed on his knees, his palms covering his face, as the midwife reported in response to Anna’s inquiries about his condition: “Remembering my thoughts and feelings then, I have to say that it was not so much myself I pitied as my poor husband, for whom my death might prove catastrophic.”
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When the child was born, Dostoevsky pushed open the door of Anna’s bedroom and threw himself on his knees before her, kissing her hands. Later, he described the stormy emotions he experienced at the birth of their daughter Sonya in
The Devils
. He wrote a friend how the experience changed him: “I heard a baby’s cry,
my child’s
. That’s a strange sensation for a father, but of all human sensations it is one of the best.…”
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Dostoevsky proved to be “the tenderest possible father,” cradling their Sonya in his arms and singing to her. He said she had his features and even his facial expression, “including the wrinkles on the brow—she lies there and looks as though she’s writing a novel!”
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But even his love for the newborn could not stop Dostoevsky from playing roulette: in April, one month after Sonya’s birth, he was back in Saxon les Bains. This time, he lost all his money, 220 francs, within the first half hour of arriving. By now, he had accumulated a colossal debt to
The Russian Herald
of 5,060 rubles, and, more disastrously, proved to be an unreliable contributor: his recent installments were late and of insufficient length. But as he frantically wrote Anna from Saxon les Bains, their future depended on the success of his novel, which is why she should not regret the money: after his loss an “amazing, superb idea” occurred to him.
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“That’s exactly how it was in Wiesbaden, when right after a loss, too, I thought up
Crime and Punishment
….”
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In May, the couple was struck with grief when Sonya, three months old, caught a cold and developed pneumonia. One of the best children’s doctors in the city was summons and daily examined the child; only hours before Sonya died, he reassured the parents that her condition was improving. “I cannot express the desolation that took hold of us when we saw our lovely daughter lying dead.” Shaken as she was, Anna felt even more distressed for her inconsolable husband: “His grief was stormy. He sobbed and wept like a woman, standing in front of the body of his darling … and covering her tiny white face and hands with burning kisses. I never again saw such paroxysms of grief.”
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The medical expenses and funeral, following Dostoevskys’ gambling losses, left the couple completely destitute. As usual, Dostoevsky appealed to the sympathetic Katkov, and with his money the couple moved across the lake from Geneva, which had become hateful to them, to the small town of Vevey. Their summer was cheerless: Anna was “horribly sad,” her nerves frayed, and spent nights crying. Dostoevskys’ emotional state alarmed her as his grief completely absorbed him, and he complained that the passing of time only made his memory of Sonya more painful. In addition, the “rotten little town of 4,000”
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lacked a good library and Russian newspapers, on which he relied for inspiration. Unable to focus on the novel, which he wrote now with a heavy heart, he decided to move to Italy.

That fall, they journeyed across the Alps, part of the time walking in front of “an enormous mail coach, which was climbing the mountain.” They gathered Alpine wildflowers and admired the picturesque mountain route, blue sky, and waterfalls. In Milan, where they stayed for two months, they lived on a narrow street, near the main corso, where neighbors talked back and forth between opposite windows. Strangers in this milieu, the couple felt more isolated, and Anna quickly became homesick. The fall was cold and rainy, confining them to their apartment. They lived peacefully but
in complete isolation, “in monastery fashion,”
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in Dostoevskys’ words, with occasional excursions to the Milan Cathedral as their main attraction. Dostoevsky, lacking Russian news and realities for his novel, began to urge Anna to move to Florence, then the capital of Italy, which they hoped would have a superior library. The move would cost them 100 francs, but, as Dostoevsky wrote his niece, Anna was “tolerant, and my interests are dearer to her than anything else.…”
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In Florence they settled near the Palazzo Pitti, a vast Renaissance palace on the River Arno, which in the sixteenth century belonged to the Medici family and later became a treasure house: future owners amassed paintings, porcelain, and jewelry. The couple frequented its art gallery and afterwards would invariably go to the statue of the Medici Venus, which Dostoevsky considered a work of genius. “To our great joy, the city of Florence had an excellent library and reading room which subscribed to two Russian newspapers, and my husband went there every day.…”
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In Florence, Dostoevsky feverishly worked on the novel, which had to be finished by the year’s end. Dictations were rushed: Dostoevsky did not reread the clean copy, which Anna made, but even with this haste he feared he would not meet his deadline. (Despite flaws,
The Idiot
remains one of Dostoevskys’ most original novels.) When the novel was near its end, the couple began to fear that its completion would terminate their monthly stipend from
The Russian Herald
.

Having learned some Italian to speak and read newspapers, Anna became Dostoevskys’ translator during their excursions in the city and to the shops where, despite lacking funds, he stubbornly looked for jewelry for her. The New Year, 1869, brought welcome news—in January, Anna discovered she was expecting another child. “Our joy was boundless, and my dear husband began showing as much concern for me as he had during my first pregnancy.”
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That year,
War and Peace
appeared in Russia, a major literary event, and the couple was absorbed in it. (Nikolai Strakhov, Dostoevskys’ friend and later Tolstoy’s editor, sent them the novel, comprising six volumes.) Discovering that the third volume was missing, Anna
reproached Dostoevsky for losing this fascinating book, but he told her that it was likely lost in the mail. Later she learned that Dostoevsky had hidden it from her because the volume contained the part describing the death of Andrei Bolkonsky’s wife in labor.

Their final three months in Florence were spent in anguish. In May, waiting for a small advance to arrive from
Dawn
, a recently started magazine to which Dostoevsky was contributing his minor fiction, they moved to a tiny apartment, to save rent. The apartment overlooked the marketplace, located in the midst of stone buildings, with arcades and columns. In the summer heat, the area turned into a furnace, heating up their tarantula-ridden apartment to the temperature of a Russian steam bath. To make matters worse, Anna was in the last months of pregnancy, and they shared the little space they had with her mother, who arrived to help with the baby. The advance took several weeks to come and when it did, the money went to rent and to cover some debts, requiring Dostoevsky to plead for further salvation from Katkov. (After submitting the completed novel, Dostoevsky still owed 1,000 rubles to
The Russian Herald. The Idiot
was not a success and although Katkov failed to make money from it, he continued to support him. The editor realized the magazine would be remembered in history for publishing Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.)