person
Abogin's wife
also: жена Абогина, Abogin's wife
Abogin's wife, never named; her supposed collapse and possible aneurysm (her own father having died of one) is the pretext Abogin uses to summon Doctor Kirilov, but she has in fact used the ruse to run off with Papchinsky, leaving only a crumpled note.
Reading notes
- Enemies §5 an aneurysm
An aneurysm -- a weakened, ballooning section of an artery wall -- was, before modern vascular surgery, understood chiefly as a silent, hereditary threat that could rupture without warning; Abogin's claim that his wife's father died of one lends his account of her collapse a specific, frightening medical plausibility that Kirilov (and the reader) has no way to verify in the moment, which is precisely the story's point: the emergency is fabricated, and Abogin himself does not yet know it.
- Enemies §65 a crumpled note
The note -- never quoted, only flung to the floor and trodden underfoot -- is the sole piece of direct evidence for what has actually happened to Abogin's wife; everything the reader learns about her flight with Papchinsky comes filtered through Abogin's furious paraphrase, never from the note's own words or from her.