The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  30. About Clementine

  Let’s try to retrace Clementine’s steps back to the day when Vronskaya played her little trick, exposing Karenina’s portrait to the elements and piercing Sergei’s heart. Like a poisoned dart from far-off lands, decorated with feathers for a momentous occasion, crafted with great skill, it’s not the decoration that makes the portrait great, but its accuracy—if the dart flies well and hits its target, it’s because of the restraint with which it captures beauty; the precision of its flight is assured by the painting’s painstaking execution, the components that compose that beauty are what allow it to fly true, tracing the fine arc of perfection. The dart and the portrait are finely wrought but weightless.

  (We might ask why on earth miserable old Mikhailov, of all people—everyone knows he’s not a great man, he’s jealous and disparaging of others, a total stranger to sympathy and compassion, an egotist—had the genius to create such a masterpiece? Although he lacked any moral qualities, he had been given a gift. What kind of dart might we compare him to? Or is it the case that the artist is the opposite of the dart, and what makes it fly so well are the defects in his personality, the ugliness of his character?)

  But back to Clementine. Her history is a patchwork of scraps from various workshops. She was raised among seamstresses, sewing from the age of four or five—under duress—in the company of other seamstresses’ children. She was cut from good cloth, unlike Mikhailov; she made a first-class sail, capable of withstanding stormy winds. And unlike Mikhailov, she was never an opportunist, never put her own interests first, and was never motivated by jealousy, ill will, or contempt.

  For our purposes, what matters is that Clementine has no one to share her memories, to treasure her past, because her mother died young, and she never knew her father. When she was twelve, she got her own workbench because she was so skilled, and she had a grandmother and two little brothers who would show up asking for money; they were her responsibility, one she assumed without complaint. After all, they were her flesh and blood and the source of her strength. But they didn’t last long; age and illness quickly did away with them.

  Not long thereafter, Clementine organized the whole workshop—all the seamstresses, and without putting her needle down—to fight for their rights. She linked up with the heads of other workshops. By the time she was fourteen, the police had come to pay her a visit and taken her away. That’s when she met Vladimir.

  Vladimir’s a different story. As a child he was a watchmaker’s assistant. Later he became a footman, but the church priest wanted him to be able to make a decent living. So instead of serving a nobleman, he serves Gapon. He’s his confidante, messenger, scribe (he learned to read and write as a boy, with the aforementioned priest), deputy, a jack-of-all-trades. When Clementine, the leader of the seamstresses, was about to be eaten alive by the tsar’s people, the organization defended her; she was a great leader, and she was a woman. Vladimir was her contact; that’s how they met. Vladimir is the feather to Clementine’s dart, giving her life stability, meaning. He keeps her on the straight and narrow. He puts wind in her sails. He makes her fly true.

  But Aleksandra’s death has changed Vladimir. He’s no longer a jack-of-all-trades. He’s no longer satisfied with being the feather on a dart, a mere adornment. He wants to be a dart himself, or a sword, or a bullet. He begins plotting with Clementine.

  31. The Critics Examine the Portrait

  Three months after Bloody Sunday—things move slowly at the palace—James Schmidt, the assistant to the curator at the Hermitage, is the first to come and see the portrait of Anna Karenina. He examines the canvas in silence, but he can’t hide his enthusiasm. When Claudia reports back to Sergei (omitting his visible enthusiasm, which is not a lie because Schmidt didn’t say one word), her husband thinks, They won’t buy it, and is relieved. He still finds the idea that the painting might be exhibited repugnant.

  The Hermitage sends a second visitor, artist and curator Ernest Liphart, but not immediately—as mentioned, things at the palace are moving slowly and inefficiently, paralyzing the institutions that rely on it. Perhaps because of the climate—it’s springtime already—Sergei likes the idea of speaking with him. And because he’s familiar with Liphart’s portraits and paintings, Sergei thinks the canvas won’t be of any interest to him; courtly art is not his cup of tea.

  They invite him to dine. Sergei and his guest chat about opera, they’re both ardent enthusiasts, and Claudia discusses costume design with him.

  After their postprandial chat, Claudia takes him to see Mikhailov’s painting, and Liphart waxes lyrical about its many charms.

  The third visit occurs shortly thereafter. It’s Ivan Vsevolozhsky, director of the Hermitage, who says nothing, goes directly about his business, and leaves after examining the portrait for a long while.

  All three visitors are extremely keen. They note the painting’s unique features, its technical perfection, and its understanding of the model; they compare it (both verbally and in their written communications with the tsar) to Tolstoy’s novel, declaring the portrait to be superior. The painter’s psychological understanding of his subject and his vision are so deep that there’s nothing in the portrait that doesn’t express the woman herself…. When Ivan Vsevolozhsky gives his opinion, he says that when he first set eyes on the painting, his initial thought was, “Get up and walk!”

  One other person asks to come and see it: Vsevolozhsky’s wife, Ekaterina Dmitrievna, née Volkonsky. Because she’s not involved in the negotiations and has nothing to hide, she bursts into tears when she sees it. She doesn’t say a single word. The next day she sends a gift hamper decorated with cut flowers to the Karenins. It’s full of sweets and delicacies that Claudia sends immediately to Anya in another container, because the basket is just too lovely and the flowers that decorate it make three arrangements for the table. Claudia makes a smaller one, which she wraps in purple paper, and sends it over to Anya that same day.

  After the four visits, no one else comes. The functionaries have too many things to do, or at least they should. But the idea of acquiring the canvas isn’t lost in the shuffle. At the end of May, the Karenins receive a letter informing them that the painting will become part of the imperial collection in the second week of June; it will be taken directly to the museum and payment will follow immediately. The no-strings-attached, free money is much more than Sergei and Claudia had expected.

  “Shouldn’t we tell Anya about the sale, Sergei? Strictly speaking, it belongs to both of you.”

  “Legally speaking it’s mine.”

  “I said strictly speaking.”

  “You brought the portraits of my mother here because you knew that Anya had absolutely no interest in them. She’s more my father’s child than I am. She doesn’t even remember….”

  Sergei never mentions his mother, not even by her name, those two familiar syllables.

  “But she had no idea how valuable the painting was. It’s a very expensive piece…. We don’t need the money.”

  “That wasn’t what you said when you convinced me to sell the painting.”

  “You know Anya lives from hand to mouth.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll settle up by paying for repairs on the Karenin Palace, they’re becoming more urgent every day.”

  The Karenin Palace has fallen into disrepair without the attentions of Kapitonich, who awaits his departure for the other world in his bed in the servants’ quarters, refusing all visitors. The cook sends Valeria up with his food, but she can’t stand the old man; she pushes the plates at him like he’s a dog.

  “Sergei, if you give her—”

  “Out of the question. You know I pay the servants, including the new hall porter. And you pay for her food and her clothes.”

  “Fine, fine. I wasn’t asking about that. I thought it was a nice idea. I was going to ask about inviting her to dinner. So we can give her the news.”

  “Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.”


  The portrait’s sale has awakened Sergei’s childhood demon—jealousy—and he has no desire to rein it in. Anya, along with Vronsky, stole his mother. Nothing, not a thing for her. He hated having to pay for her needs—but he knew that, when it came down to it, she was completely dependent on him because it was his prerogative, a fact he was more keenly aware of than ever, now that he was taking his sweet time to reconcile the accounts. The truth is, it wasn’t in his interest to give Anya “her” money. If he gave her the amount designated in his father’s will, Anya would receive a monthly stipend similar to what she got from Sergei. But he wasn’t about to, and he was under no obligation, because according to the will, she had to marry to receive the stipend. And Anya will never marry.

  It both irritates and pleases Sergei to make his sister dependent on him. Anya is financially tied to the Karenins; she’s their household dependent.

  32. Vladimir

  When Vladimir is confronted with Aleksandra’s death, it takes over his whole world. He can’t bear losing his sister. A part of him dies with her. But Clementine saves him, amongst the dead. She takes him on a walk through the cemetery of the Holy Transfiguration Cathedral (at Preobrazhensky on the southeastern outskirts of the city) while she tells him in detail about the demonstration on Bloody Sunday, what the Cossacks did, what happened to Volodin and the others who died that day, and what has happened since. She takes him to the corner of the cemetery, where the police dumped three-dozen cadavers in a mass grave on January 10, no coffins for them, just sacks of cloth, “like hams.”

  “If they had taken Aleksandra to the Obukhov Hospital, like most of the seriously wounded and dead, she’d be here, with my friend Volodin. You knew him too. I hear he died because he wanted to look after Aleksandra when that imbecile Father Gapon made her march. These are your brothers, Vladimir, every one of them. We must fight for them. They didn’t take just your only sister—as you told me—they took something more, from all of us. They took away our Russia. They want to devour it. We have to resist, to fight them, seize it from their hands before nothing’s left of it, not even a hint of life. Aleksandra was properly buried and mourned. But they want to take these rights—to be mourned, to have siblings, to live—away from every last one of us, they want to bury us in common graves when we’ve expended our usefulness. Enough! No more! No more!”

  The state’s crime was “beyond measure”; they had killed defenseless people, many more than those that lay there “tossed in a hole without any respect, like animals.” But “neither you nor I nor anyone capable of feeling will allow their sacrifice to be made in vain. They fell, but their deaths will be the beginning of the end for this corrupt regime. Vladimir, there are children here, women, and the elderly too. Do you see? They want to make Russia a slaughterhouse. They eat, drink, and celebrate, paying for their luxuries with the lives of our people. They’ll turn all of Russia into a common grave. Enough! No more! No more!”

  “You and I, Vladimir, what we should be doing is eating the rich. Let’s go eat the rich!”

  33. The Reason for the Proposed Purchase

  It wasn’t the caliber of the painting or the notoriety of its subject that prompted the portrait’s inclusion in the imperial collection. The painter has become wildly popular and acquired immense prestige. He’s esteemed by friends and enemies alike. It’s only natural that they’d be scouring the earth and the heavens for more of his work.

  This sudden wave of interest in the artist was started by another Mikhailov, a somewhat high-ranking functionary in the Special Corps (formerly the Okhrana, or secret police), the son and sole heir of Mikhailov the artist. He’s the one who’s been pulling strings to create interest in his father’s work, with the sole intention of elevating its price. That’s why he’s been instigating the acquisition of some of his paintings, and that’s how the portrait of Anna Karenina came to receive so much attention. When all is said and done, the son is a good policeman, but not a reader—he hasn’t read Anna Karenina, not a single one of Tolstoy’s works (this is worth mentioning in passing, though it’s not a critical point); in general, he doesn’t give a damn when it comes to art in any form. His wallet, on the other hand …

  But the things Mikhailov has done out of greed, are they the reason for the wild enthusiasm of the renowned museum director and his pair of critics? Have they been influenced by the wave of popularity the artist’s work is enjoying? Have they been swayed by the market? If that were the case, how could we explain the fact that the director’s good-hearted wife, Ekaterina Dmitrievna, melted like snow in the sun when she set eyes on the canvas?

  Let’s be very careful here. The root cause of the artist’s prestige is greed, wheeling and dealing, of that there’s no question. But the roots must belong to a tree, or at the very least a blade of grass, which was born from a seed. And the seed is Tolstoy’s novel, his description of the portrait’s grandeur: It was not a picture, but a living and charming woman with curly black hair, bare shoulders and arms, and a dreamy half-smile.

  Mikhailov’s apologists might say that the earth in which this seed was planted is even more important than its Tolstoyan origins, and they’d argue that the painting itself is of great worth, that the canvas has its own intrinsic value. And yet …

  34. The Portrait Departs

  It’s the night of June 14, 1905. In the morning, they’ll come for the portrait by Mikhailov, to take it for installation at the museum, for the exhibit dedicated to the aforementioned artist. Anya now knows; Claudia told her. She reacted violently—furious, obsessive, confused, so irritating that even Claudia lost her patience. Anya refuses to see her brother or her sister-in-law, yet she inundates them with letters full of contradictory messages. Which is why husband and wife, asleep in their separate bedrooms, both have the same dream:

  Someone arrives at the door of the house; they assume it’s another letter from Anya. “I’ll have to go and see her,” Claudia says to herself, “to convince her not to make such a mountain out of a molehill.” Sergei says to himself, “I should have prevented things from coming to this.” They’re both thinking of Anya—Claudia’s worrying about what to say and what gift to bring on her visit; Sergei is filled with a brotherly love he never feels in real life—when Leo Tolstoy enters the parlor. He barges in, roaring at the top of his lungs, “I want a world without violence, power, or government…. Government is always corrupt; it uses violence, both real and imaginary, to retain power.” Tolstoy realizes he’s standing in front of Sergei and Claudia, greeting them curtly—“Madame Claudia Karenina”—and continues:

  “There’s no time to delay the reason for my visit with pleasantries. Where is Sergei? I need to talk to him.”

  Sergei:

  “That’s me.” He notices Tolstoy’s confusion and elaborates. “I’m Sergei Karenin.”

  “You … ? You? Yes, of course; I didn’t recognize you, what was I thinking … ? You weren’t a child forever…. I always think of you as a boy, Sergei, occasionally as a young man who has just begun to sprout a beard. Let me get straight to the point: the gravity of the situation obliges me to make this visit. You can’t let Anna Karenina’s portrait end up in the tsar’s hands, he’s a foolish man who’s his own worst enemy, and he’s an enemy of the common good, to boot. You just can’t give it to him. That fellow Mikhailov painted her at my behest. I’m the author. I don’t like saying so—I have no interest whatsoever in staking my claim, I abhor all forms of private property—but you have no right to hand over something that I—”

  Claudia has been listening serenely. Wisely, she interrupts him when she knows that doing so will ease his anxiety:

  “We understand, we have no doubts that the marvelous canvas is your creation and that Sergei is your character….”

  “That’s quite enough, Claudia,” Tolstoy says. “You have less right than anyone to speak…. Only a woman or a doctor could utter such drivel! What an insult, his own wife … !”

  Sergei intervenes, mastering
his nature, in a calm, clear voice:

  “It’s absolutely true. Hard to swallow and even harder to for me, even for us, to comprehend, but it’s the truth.”

  His words make the author explode:

  “Enough, enough! Not another word. I found you, Sergei, don’t you see? You were there, I saw you, and I made you visible to others. Our relationship is the same as Mikhailov’s to the creature in the portrait, no more and no less. I’m no God, no creator. I’m just a man, and I don’t even know if I’m a good one. I want to be a good man. Family, friends, and love are far more valuable and more important than writing millions of words. When you take action, you know if you succeed, and if you fail, you can change your course. But if you write, then what? How do you know whether your audience understands you, whether you move them, whether they care? But it doesn’t matter! What matters is the common good. What matters is that we can’t allow the portrait of Anna Karenina to fall into the tsar’s hands. It’s unacceptable! But I’m not the one to stand and fight this battle, I would look like a megalomaniac, and I’m not! I’m not the one at stake! Listen to me! Try to understand! The fate of the canvas lies in your hands, both of yours. Sergei, do you understand what you’re giving away? Do you realize how the tsar will profit from it? How do you think that makes me feel? Just try and imagine. If paying taxes is tantamount to financing murders, this is much more serious than paying taxes. You’ll get money from the tsar, and in exchange you’ll give him your past, your own past, your roots, you’re giving away your own mother!” Tolstoy erupts, screaming and brandishing his fist in Sergei’s face. “You self-absorbed, self-serving fool!”