Dostoevsky (197 page)

In a letter written in 1883 to Strakhov, who shared with Miller the task of putting together the first biography of her husband, Anna tells the truth. “During the day,” she wrote, “it happened that [Dostoevsky] had an angry exchange and almost a quarrel with his sister Vera Mikhailovna, who had arrived from Moscow (of course this should not be mentioned in print).” The quarrel, whose details we learn from Lyubov, concerned the Kumanina estate and took place at the dinner table. The issue of the estate arose because, despite having renounced his claims to a share in 1844, Dostoevsky had succeeded in being reinstated and now owed money to his sisters. Vera Mikhailovna, speaking for her
sister Alexandra as well, thought his reinstatement had been unfair. Tempers rose as these matters came to the fore, with Vera finally breaking into tears. “Dostoevsky lost patience,” his daughter writes, “and in order to cut short these painful recriminations, rose from the table before the meal was finished. At the same time as my mother tried to detain her sister-in-law, continuing to weep and preparing to return home as quickly as possible, my father shut himself in his room.” Sitting down at his writing table, he passed his hand over his mouth and moustaches, and then withdrew it in a fright—it was covered with blood! There are some discrepancies of detail in these two versions (“during the day”; “at dinner”), but the main facts are clear enough, and Lyubov’s account is more extensive.
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At six that evening Anna sent an imploring letter to Dr. von Bretsall, who finally arrived. After he had auscultated the patient, a strong new flow of blood began that caused Dostoevsky to lose consciousness for a brief time. Dr. von Bretsall thought it wise to send for a noted specialist, Professor Koshlakov, who did not disturb the patient with another examination. Since the flow of blood had diminished, he speculated that perhaps a “clot” had developed and that “the case was going in the direction of recovery.”
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After recommending that Dostoevsky speak and move as little as possible, the specialist left, but von Bretzell was less sanguine and advised Anna to send for a priest. One came from the nearby Vladimirsky church to administer communion to Dostoevsky and listen to his confession.

On the night of the twenty-fifth—the night his nosebleed occurred—other events were also taking place in the very building where the Dostoevskys occupied apartment 10. Apartment 11 was actually a small rooming house where individuals could rent single accommodations. Sometime before midnight on the twenty-fifth, the police entered that apartment and carried out a search of one of the rooms in the presence of witnesses. Its inhabitant, Alexander Barannikov, had been arrested elsewhere earlier that day, and, although he carried a false passport, there was a well-founded suspicion that he was a member of the executive committee of the terrorist People’s Will. Barannikov enjoyed a considerable reputation with the police as one of the most dangerous of their opponents, having been involved in all the attempts so far made to assassinate Alexander II. He was best known as the accomplice of Kravchinsky in the murder of General Mezentsev, having distracted attention from the assassination by firing a shot and then driving the carriage in which both men escaped. That Dostoevsky had
been living side-by-side, for two and a half months, with one of the most sought-after terrorists in his country was noticed by Victor Shklovsky, who made their neighborliness the subject of a short story in 1933, and he also discussed the incident in his short book on Dostoevsky years later.
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The name of Dostoevsky is not mentioned in any of the police reports, but there is a suggestive remark in the memoirs of another revolutionary, M. F. Frolenko, one of Barannikov’s comrades. He remembers Barannikov’s surprising calm in face of the possibility of capture, and attributes this both to the quietness of the neighborhood in which he resided and to the fact that he lived in “the apartment” of Dostoevsky (presumably meaning “apartment house”).
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The writer’s presence was thus far from being unknown to his neighbor; and he felt it to be an additional protection against suspicion and discovery. Whether Dostoevsky, who liked to chat with people in the street, and especially with young men, ever exchanged a word with the well-mannered Barannikov can only remain a matter for conjecture.

As we know from the unpleasant incidents at Bad Ems, Dostoevsky needed absolute silence while writing, and would not hesitate to attempt to end any disturbing commotion. Is it possible that he was upset by the disruptive noises next door and, on going out to inquire, became terribly upset when he discovered what was taking place? Or might the police, still trying to establish the identity of their prisoner, have come to his flat and questioned him about his next-door neighbor? None of these speculations is beyond the realm of possibility, and if they had occurred, they could well have contributed to Dostoevsky’s fatal illness.

On the evening of January 26, Dostoevsky had taken confession and communion from the priest of the nearby church. At two in the morning of January 27, Anna wrote a note to Miller, explaining that her husband had become “seriously ill” the night before and could not fulfill his obligation to read on the Pushkin evening. Anna also wrote to Countess Komarovskaya, explaining why Dostoevsky could not come to the Marble Palace on January 29.
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On the morning of the twenty-seventh, after sleeping soundly, Dostoevsky awoke feeling “cheerful and healthy.” The flow of blood had ceased, and hope thus revived that the worst was over. Suvorin describes him as being “jovial and calm, joking, speaking of the future, of his work, of his children, soothing those
around him. ‘Why are you reading my funeral service? I will outlive all of you.’ ”
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Miller and Elena Shtakenshneider came to call, and letters and telegrams began to pile up as friends and acquaintances passed on the word of his illness. Dostoevsky decided to dictate a “bulletin” about his health to Anna, and a draft of a similar one, addressed to Countess Elizaveta Geyden, appears as the last letter in his correspondence. Here Dostoevsky objectively describes what has occurred and the temporary betterment of his condition. “But since the burst vein has not healed, a hemorrhage may start again. And then, of course, death is likely. Now, however, he is fully conscious and vigorous, but afraid that the artery will again burst.”
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He was indeed “fully conscious,” and when the typesetter arrived with the galleys of the
Diary
for final approval, he was able to participate in a correction.

Professor Koshlakov, returning about seven in the evening, found the patient much improved, predicting that he would be up and about in a week. Vera Mikhailovna and Dostoevsky’s stepson, Pavel Isaev, also showed up, though Anna hardly welcomed his presence. Dostoevsky slept soundly through most of the night, but when Anna awoke at seven and looked over at him, she found him staring at her fixedly. Speaking in a half-whisper, he said: “You know, Anna, I have not been sleeping for three hours now, and have been thinking all that time; and only now have I clearly realized that I shall die today.”
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Sweeping aside whatever she may have hastily uttered in reply, he continued: “Light a candle, Anna, and hand me the New Testament.” This was the volume given to him by the Decembrist wives in Siberia, and throughout his life it had never left his possession. Opening its pages at random, as he had often done in the past to divine what the future might hold, he asked Anna to read the first passage he had come across. This was from Saint Matthew,
chapter 13
, verses 14–15, in which Jesus asks John the Baptist to baptize him, and John replies: “I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?” The Russian text, translated literally, then reads: “And Jesus said to him: ‘Delay not, for thus it becomes us to fulfill the great truth.’ ” As Anna was reciting this passage in a trembling voice, and with tears in her eyes, he said: “you hear—delay not—that means I will die.”
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Anna never forgot the next few hours during which her husband tried to console her, “uttering tender and affectionate words, thanking me for the happy life that he had spent with me. He entrusted the children to my care, said that he believed in me, and hoped I would always love and protect them.” One utterance above all was cherished, which, as she writes, not many other husbands
could proffer to their wives after fourteen years of marriage: “Remember, Anya, I have always loved you passionately, and never betrayed you once, not even in thought.”
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Clutching her hand, he fell asleep about ten o’clock, but woke suddenly at eleven, sank back on the pillow, and blood began to flow again. He recovered somewhat from this attack, but when Anna tried to console him, “he only sadly shook his head, as if fully convinced that the prediction of his death today would not be gainsaid.”
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New Time
published the first announcement of Dostoevsky’s illness on January 28, and a flood of visitors immediately began to besiege the grief-stricken Anna. Only Maikov, at Dostoevsky’s request, was allowed to come to his bedside. The newspaper story pronounced, in a mixture of sarcasm and eulogy, “Those people who, not long since, reproached him for too often seeking ovations at public readings, may now quiet down: the public will not listen to him again very soon. If only the precious life be preserved for the Russian people of the most profound of our contemporary writers, the direct inheritor of our literary geniuses!”
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When this passage was read to Dostoevsky, who was curious (“What are they saying about me?”), he asked Anna to read it again. In his very last hours he thus had the satisfaction of hearing his enemies mocked, and his own genius celebrated as the continuator of the Russian literary tradition. It is possible that he took communion and confession again, and at five o’clock he dictated the bulletin to Countess Geyden already mentioned.

Dostoevsky then asked that the children be summoned, and they kissed him while he gave them his final blessing, enjoining them always to love and obey their mother. He requested that his copy of the New Testament be given to his son Fedya and that the parable of the Prodigal Son be read to the children. Lyubov later recalled him telling them that, if they should ever commit a crime (
prestuplenie
, which has a wider meaning than merely a legal offense) to trust God as their Father, plead with him for forgiveness, and be certain that he would rejoice in their repentance, just as the father had done on the return of the Prodigal Son. It was this parable of transgression, repentance, and forgiveness that he wished to leave as a last heritage to his children, and it may well be seen as his own ultimate understanding of the meaning of his life and the message of his work.

There was again a copious flow of blood at about 6:30, and he fell into a coma from which he never awoke. During the final death throes, which lasted for approximately two hours, he was mercifully unconscious. Anna and the children were “kneeling and crying” all the while, but trying to choke back their sobs because they had been told that the auditory sense was the last to go and that any
sound might prolong the suffering of the dying. “I held the hand of my husband in my own,” Anna writes, “and felt the pulse becoming feebler and feebler.”
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Maikov had sent for another doctor, and when the writer Boleslav Markevich came to the door (he had been dispatched by Countess Tolstaya to inquire after Dostoevsky’s condition), he was mistaken for this personage. With a “heartrending shriek,” the eleven-year-old Lyubov rushed to meet him, shouting: “Doctor, Doctor, for God’s sake, save my father [
papashy
], he is wheezing.” This was the last death rattle, and when the doctor arrived a few moments later, he could do nothing but certify the decease. Markevich, whose writing was known for its melodramatic effects, pictures Anna and Lyubov in hysterics, with Anna exclaiming, “Oh, whom have I lost! Whom have I lost!” as she sank into a chair. “ ‘Whom has Russia lost’ involuntarily, and at the same time, broke out of Maikov and myself.”
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This final sentence could not have more feelingly expressed the sentiment of all of literate Russia.