The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  When night falls, the queen goes to the window. Her children are sleeping. The king is attending to his duties. The queen mother is plotting; rumors are flying in the court. The Illuminata passes in front of the royal palace followed by the youth of the city, celebrating with pipes and drums. Some dance, others turn somersaults, some stamp their feet and sing. They’re drunk with joy.

  Because she’s alone, Anna, the Forest Girl, Cinderella, the queen, tries to speak. At first, all that comes out is a rasping sound, but then her throat clears, and a stream of words tumbles forth—everything you have just read.

  PART FIVE

  FINALE

  St. Petersburg, June 1905

  39. After Reading

  Claudia finishes the last line of Anna’s manuscript. “That’s it?” She’s not satisfied by the ending. She flips through the other version of the novel to see if it had a different one in its previous incarnation. “What? This other manuscript is completely different! No girl, no Illuminata, no queen, no king, no stepmother, no witches, no fairies. It’s a completely different story about Peter the Great’s African, Gannibal, an adventure. I’ll read it tomorrow.”

  The sun has yet to rise. Claudia has a long, difficult day ahead. She carefully returns the second manuscript to its box. When she’s about to set the bound manuscript on top of it, a loose page slips out.

  It’s a different kind of paper entirely, pale pink, a faint trace of scent remains: “A perfumed letter.” It’s covered from top to bottom in handwriting even smaller than the second manuscript’s, tight calligraphy traced carefully by Karenina. Like the words have been painted. At the top, it says, “Strictly private. For A.V.”

  “It’s a love letter!” Claudia’s heart skips a beat. She’s thrilled; she adores a love story. “A.V.? It’s for Vronsky! What does it say?” Claudia reads it aloud quietly, in her own sweet voice. “My love: what I have experienced with you is shameful, but I’m addicted.”

  She stops reading. Without realizing what she’s doing, she has pressed the note against her breast. She’s deeply moved. She sniffs the paper again.

  “What could she be referring to? Is she replying to the note Vronsky wrote on the folded calling card? Is she talking about opium?”

  Claudia is terribly excited—secrets thrill her even more than love stories. She’s strung-out because she hasn’t slept a wink, but she must read on to find out what she wants to know.

  “Will she mention the opium? That must be what she’s talking about!”

  She summons the energy to begin reading aloud in a low voice:

  “The first time I got to know you, in the biblical sense, I was pained and ashamed of myself. Not just because I had committed adultery; I have always found the conjugal act unpleasant. I never wanted to with my son’s father. I was simply fulfilling my duty to him; I closed my eyes, and it was over soon enough, like most other bodily functions. It was like sweating beneath a heavy coat. But with you … with you I kept my eyes open. That first time, my desire lay dormant. But in the encounters that followed, I discovered with you, and thanks to you, something I did not know existed: pleasure, the pleasure of two bodies in love. You opened a window inside me that I didn’t even know was there.

  “I want to tell you about that window. Unlike the rest of this edifice, instead of opening to the outside, it opened onto myself. Without the window your touch made me aware of—which you taught me to access myself—that window that sees with touch (not with sight) (though you say sight gives you pleasure, I have experienced my greatest ecstasy with my eyes shut, especially at night when there’s no one around, no light), I would never have known a whole continent within myself. It’s not that I’m someone different: the difference is that now I know my own borders. I understand my own body, that my borders extend beyond my own skin, far beyond myself. Getting to know myself is like crossing vast territories that …”

  The tight script ends in a broken sentence, as does Claudia’s understanding. This should never be mentioned, she thinks in silence. Is this what The Book of Anna is about too? I don’t know…. But this isn’t part of Tolstoy’s novel, she disobeyed him, just like we have. I wonder if Tolstoy knew? Is that what the book I just read was about?

  Claudia is too tired to think clearly. It’s rare that she doesn’t get a good night’s sleep. It’s still pitch-black outside, but there’s movement in the street. Her servants are sweeping the street in front of the house; there are so many pedestrians on Nevsky Prospekt that the rubbish must be cleared from the front of the house every day.

  She puts Anna’s note inside the bound manuscript, which she sets in the box covered with blue cloth, saying, “I’ll read the first book another day, that’s the one that Vorkuyev, the writer and publisher, thought was really good, the one that’s a moral lesson. It can’t be anything like this one. At all.” She closes the box and ties the bow, trying to leave the knot and the creases in the ribbon the way she found them. She puts Vronsky’s calling card back where she found it. She lights the little lamp she brought down from her bedroom and blows out the ones in the study.

  She climbs the stairs to the bedrooms much more slowly than usual. Exhausted but aroused (I’m like some crazy old goat), she goes to Sergei’s room instead of her own (I’m certainly not going to sleep alone), where he’s sleeping soundly, smiling, his messy hair curly, not unlike the little boy he used to be, the one Anna adored. Claudia removes her slippers, extinguishes the little lamp, and gets in bed next to Sergei, embracing him. Sergei turns, but he doesn’t notice her and keeps on sleeping. Claudia rolls over, and before she realizes it, she’s asleep.

  The first thing Claudia encounters in her dreams is a scene with three women, identical to a carefully posed photograph of the Countess Tolstaya: Sonya (or Sophia), Tolstoy’s wife (she’s one of the three models) feigns spontaneity sitting next to her daughter, with whom she’s just had a bitter argument, and her niece, a born troublemaker, all three forcing smiles and pretending to be sweet, cozy, intimate.

  In her dream, as in the photograph, light comes through a window, a harsh light that demands attention, much like the disguised mood of the sitters, who turn away from the corrosive ray and don’t allow it to alter the sweetness Tolstaya is determined to project.

  What is this image doing in Claudia’s dream? But Claudia doesn’t ask herself that; she asks, Why am I not always here? This is where I belong, this is where I came from, I want to be with women. And without saying another word, she joins the three women. She becomes frozen like them, but as in Sonya’s photograph, she can feel movement; everything there looks dynamic, cozy, intimate, kind: like an inviting home, with its innate frenzy, its domestic energy, the sweet struggle to maintain order.

  Some might specify that now they’re four women, but Claudia doesn’t need to be counted. She just wants to be with them, to be part of their world; it feels so natural to her to join in that gentle atmosphere the three Tolstayas are affecting.

  In Claudia’s dream, the three women are reflected in a mirror, which is being held by a princess who is imprisoned in the palace of the magician Koschei the Immortal. The princess spends two days pining away for the man she loves.

  Then the women’s faces merge into one, Claudia’s. The Immortal looks into his magic mirror and sees the same thing as his prisoner, recognizing his daughter in Claudia’s face.

  “My daughter, Claudia, what’s she doing in our mirror?”

  Sergei appears in the reflection, alongside Claudia. The imprisoned princess (Claudia) looks into her mirror, too, and says, “It’s the one I love, with someone else,” and begins to cry. In the reflection, Sergei kisses Claudia (the daughter of the undying one).

  The Immortal is afraid, because his death is imprisoned in his daughter Claudia’s tears. What a man the Immortal is, keeping two prisoners: death and the princess. In this story, Claudia doesn’t recognize the echoes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, the one she saw at the theater. At the sound of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music,
her dreams fall apart, fragmenting into several others that she won’t remember come morning.

  40. The Plot

  Clementine is plotting. Together with her beloved Vladimir. The pain of his loss has altered him beyond recognition; he’s become a lapdog, and more recently a rabid wolf. He’s lost all sense of direction—a lapdog trailing after its owner, a wolf driven by rage.

  Like Vladimir’s two phases, the hunt for the dissidents is also submissive and raging, driven by desire for the tsar’s approval, attacking the dissidents nonstop. Night and day, it doesn’t cease. It’s decimated the cell of Clementine’s accomplices: most of them are dead or in prison, with the exception of Clementine, the only one who still roams the streets.

  Vladimir has been busy, and not because Gapon has been sending him on missions. The reverend has gone from living in secret to living in exile—with Gorky, then Lenin, then Kropotkin. He no longer uses his talent for picking locks either.

  Clementine and Vladimir want to do something extreme that will cause the downfall of the state “in all its forms.” A contact gives them a valuable tip: Prince Orlov’s automobile, which the tsar likes to use, will be driving down the Nevsky Prospekt on a certain date before noon. Why won’t it be escorted by security forces? Because it will be a special trip to collect something very precious. “Could it possibly be a woman?” The tsar’s not the type to risk his hide for a pair of legs. Fearful of assassination—he has been for years—he’s sharp enough to realize this is a critical moment. Everything hangs in the balance—the present, the future, and the legacy of the past.

  Because it’s the automobile the tsar frequently uses, Clementine and Vladimir want to believe the tsar will be traveling inside. It’s well worth their while to concoct a plan, the perfect opportunity for them to plant a bomb. Vladimir is inspired first: Clementine will cross Nevsky Prospekt precisely at the moment the automobile carrying the tsar is passing, forcing it to halt.

  “If it doesn’t slow down, run for your life, the plan won’t work.”

  “I don’t understand how those creatures work, the ones that consume kerosene and fascinate the enemies of the people.”

  “They’re just like a horse and carriage, just faster and quite a bit noisier.”

  “I know how a horse moves, not these things.”

  “Watch them. Starting today, pay attention to their speed and how they run. That’s the first thing, then …”

  The two of them get more and more excited as they formulate their plan: “When you see the automobile coming, cross Nevsky with your back to the car. They’ll slow down, and I’ll cross the street behind them and put our bomb on the rear bumper.”

  “At least the wonderful invention of the bumper is good for something!”

  “But how will we fasten it there?”

  “It’ll fall off!”

  “Let’s put it inside a cushion!”

  “A cushion?”

  “Yes, a nice plump cushion, that way it will fit wherever we put it, and we’ll stuff it with explosives.” The idea of putting a bomb inside a cushion would occur only to a seamstress. “A well-made, pretty pillow that looks like a gift for the tsar.”

  “Embroidered with the words ‘Our Father.’”

  “We’ll light the fuse, which we’ll run through a buttonhole, before we plant it.”

  “How will you keep the fuse from blowing out when it reaches the cushion?”

  “It won’t blow out, the cushion will catch fire, it will feed the flames.”

  “The automobile will start moving again, the bomb will explode a few seconds later, and farewell tyrant!”

  “We’ll set Russia free!”

  Anyone with a little common sense would realize it’s an absurd idea, but with the cushion hiding a bomb in their minds, and their plan to attach it to the automobile the tsar will be traveling in, Clementine and Vladimir set to work.

  41. The Boxes

  The wind blows constantly in St. Petersburg; it rests only six days each year. Today is one of those days: there is no wind when the portrait of Anna Karenina wends its way to the museum.

  The Winter Palace has sent the prince’s dark-green Mercedes limousine to collect the latest addition to the imperial collection. Mikhailov, the painter’s heir (the one who’s in the ranks of the secret police), doesn’t want the painting to travel unnoticed, and he’s pulled some strings; he knows “that kerosene contraption,” as the tsar calls it, is his majesty’s favorite, and people will notice. The portrait of Anna Karenina will travel by car.

  Mikhailov has circulated the rumor about the automobile’s journey through St. Petersburg, altering it, or, if you prefer, taking some poetic license. “A treasure for the tsar will be transported by Prince Orlov’s automobile today….” To spread the news, he plants it in a variety of circles and feeds it to a journalist who always has time for him; he knows he’ll be intrigued—though Mikhailov suspects he won’t be interested in the portrait itself. He always provides some facts, practically writing the articles for him, but this one he’s embellished to ensure his interest.

  So the journalist heads out in hot pursuit but is disappointed when he sees Prince Orlov is not at the wheel, and there’s no sign of the tsar either. He follows the vehicle anyway; since its cargo is precious to the tsar, perhaps there is something there for his piece.

  • • •

  The museum carpenters have made a bespoke wooden box to the exact measurements of the painting. It has guide rails inside where the edges of the frame will slide in, so the canvas won’t so much as graze the polished sides of the box, which are lined with thick felt.

  The limousine stops in front of Sergei and Claudia’s home. The sky is blue. The employees of the Hermitage Museum and the palace who were awaiting its arrival quickly gather around. The neighbors’ servant comes out to see what’s going on, and a few passersby pause to look; the curtains of adjacent windows flutter, hiding more discreet observers. The journalist watches all this from a distance.

  The box is unloaded. The chauffeur will wait by the front door until the box is brought back out, portrait ensconced inside. The journalist thinks, A gift for the Karenins from the tsar? There’s no story here, not for me, and departs in search of a better one; this time, his friend Mikhailov has failed him.

  Giorgi jokes with one of the footmen from the Winter Palace. The footman’s sister is a knockout. Giorgi wants to get on his good side because he has his eye on the girl and thinks he can approach her through him. But the chauffeur (whose stomach problems have put him in a foul mood) rains on his parade:

  “Giorgi, you knew Aleksandra, didn’t you?”

  Although there’s not a single cloud in the sky, a shadow descends on them.

  “Answer me. Did you know her or not? If you did, tell me what the deuce she was doing with those troublemakers.”

  The nonexistent cloud hanging over their heads becomes denser, grayer, darker, a storm cloud. To Giorgi and the footman, the demonstrators aren’t troublemakers. The footman believes that it was a religious procession—innocent, working-class fervor. Giorgi knows more, and he sympathizes with the demonstrators-turned-rebels—but not enough to have joined one of the cells. The grumpy Mercedes chauffeur is insistent.

  “The tsar said someone with bad intentions stirred up the workers, there’s no doubt about it. But tell me what Aleksandra was doing there? Why’d she go and get mixed up with—”

  The footman interrupts. “Shut up. You know why, it was her brother…. You’ve heard the story a thousand times.”

  Silence. The limousine chauffeur wracks his small brain for something to say. There’s no wind; he’s at a loss for words. The horses on Nevsky break the silence; their hooves sound like ice cracking.

  It’s these hooves, all the more noticeable for the sudden lull in conversation, that awaken Claudia. Up in Sergei’s room, she doesn’t hear the box being brought inside or the footsteps of the servants carrying it so carefully or the difficulty they have turning th
e corner in the hall to the study. Giorgi’s small talk (he hasn’t stopped chattering since he returned from taking Sergei to the train station) was like a lullaby, so soothing that not even the sound of the Mercedes’s motor awoke her.

  Sergei didn’t wake her up; he left early for Moscow to attend to a personal matter that enrages him, one of the many loose ends left by his uncle Stiva (Prince Oblonski) that concern him because they affect his inheritance. He’s attending to this specific (and tedious) one today because it’s an excuse not to be at home; he hasn’t set eyes on the portrait of Anna Karenina since that time he saw it in front of his house, and he has no intention to either.

  Unusually, Claudia has slept late. And she’s surprised to find herself in Sergei’s bed. Suddenly she remembers she brought Anna’s manuscript upstairs. She makes a decision before jumping out of bed, and unusually, without dressing, she sits down at the desk and writes. Carefully, she composes a letter to the director of the Hermitage.

  Dear Ivan Vsevolozhsky, we have decided to include, along with the portrait, two books….

  Here Claudia hesitates. “If I say two books, is that more confusing?” She decides to and starts over.

  Dear Ivan Vsevolozhsky, we have decided to include, along with the portrait, the book Anna Karenina wrote. It will be of great interest to you because it is, in a way, another portrait of her. We don’t expect any financial compensation for it. We ask only that you keep the manuscript confidential for fifty years, at which time the heads of the tsar’s collection will decide whether or not to make it known and publish it, if they think it wise.

  You will recall that, in its time, authorities judged it to be of excellent quality. We believe that the enclosed novel proves them correct.