The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  How could she go without permission? She’s forcing Anya to dismiss her. It’s upsetting because … no, she’s not perfect, why exaggerate, but she needs her, and these days good maids are so hard to find…. With a distaste that threatens to mar her judgment, Anya looks at the papers Kapitonich handed her.

  One of the pages has a few handwritten lines that Anya reads quickly, standing there, next to the door without her coat. Aleksandra writes (in clear handwriting), “My duty is to find my brother, who left St. Petersburg on the orders of Father Gapon to go to the tsar’s palace to deliver a petition from the workers,” a document that “you will find a copy of herewith.” Since her brother hasn’t returned, she fears for his life: “I must leave to find him: he’s my only living sibling. I hope, Mademoiselle Anya, you will be able to understand. I pray that, in your boundless kindness, you’ll forgive me. I know full well that you forbade me to go out. Please, I beg of you, understand that this is not a whim. I should have explained this all to you myself, but I didn’t want to make you late, knowing that your sister-in-law wanted you to be ready on time.” Etcetera, formalities that the poor girl took a moment to scribble, distraught at the possibility of losing a good job, because they’re few and far between.

  The other page is a copy of the letter that Father Gapon wrote to the tsar and sent to Tsarskoye Selo:

  Sir: We, the workers and citizens of the city of St. Petersburg, from a variety of walks of life, our wives, our children, and our defenseless elderly parents, have come to you, sir, for justice and protection…. Don’t refuse to help our community…. Free it from the intolerable oppression of officials. Destroy the wall between you and your citizens, and allow us to govern the country beside you.

  As she reads, Anya argues with herself: Aleksandra’s departure is absolutely unacceptable, it’s understandable, she should dismiss her, she should forgive her…. What on earth? What is going on? She should have paid more attention to what they were saying in the hallway at the theater about Father Gapon. What has my dear, sweet Aleksandra gotten herself into? And why did she ask me for permission if she was going to go anyway? How did I not notice how upset she was? Why didn’t I give her a chance to tell me? I could have advised her, at least I’d have a better idea of what’s going on.

  12. Claudia and Sergei at Table

  On the table, elegantly laid out and decorated according to Claudia’s taste, oysters await them and, for the main course, venison in almond sauce. The bread had only half risen, so the cook used it in a soup that’s not bad but not fit for the masters of the household. Although Sergei feels exceptionally energetic when he sits down, the champagne they keep refilling his glass with puts him into a reverie again. He fantasizes about the future he can almost touch. Claudia tries to initiate conversation, but Sergei, absorbed as he is, elicits only monosyllabic responses, and few at that. When the servants come to clear the table, she switches to French so they don’t understand.

  “What are we going to do about the tsar’s request, Sergei? Don’t you want to discuss it?”

  “I’ve already made up my mind.”

  Claudia looks into his eyes tenderly but with something like astonishment as well.

  “And? I can’t wait to hear!”

  “I’ll make a deal with him. I’ll give him Mikhailov’s portrait of my mother because I can’t deny him, but I’ll ask him to transfer us. Far from any city. They need men they can trust to work against the propagandists who are corrupting—”

  “What are you talking about? Have you lost your mind? Absolutely not! Why would we sacrifice the life we lead? Sergei, Sergei, Sergei.” Once again Claudia’s eyes begin to search the dining room, observing every detail. She’s put so much care into building the home they enjoy. She’s not about to give it up for anything. And she’d never give up her Sergei either. “You really think you could be some kind of secret agent?”—here she lowers her voice, because in French it’s the same word—“You really see yourself as a member of the Okhrana?”—she raises her voice again—“You wouldn’t last two weeks!” She switches to Russian. “You don’t have the backbone for that.” Again she switches to French. “You, a member of the secret police! Impossible!”

  Sergei shows no sign of being offended by her comments. He and the champagne foresaw it all. He begins to patiently explain, very quietly, in French, that if they remain in St. Petersburg, he can’t comply with the request from the tsar’s office, because he simply cannot. But if the tsar transfers him … he will gain favor for his unconditional offer to sacrifice himself, which is proof of his loyalty. They would leave everything behind, but in return, they would undoubtedly obtain the tsar’s good graces. Maybe he’d even grant them some land (no serfs, though, despite the fact that the dream of his class lives on, and when he dreams, he dreams of serfs). Land. He doesn’t elaborate on the detailed plan that he and the champagne have hatched. Instead he mentions something he thinks will matter to Claudia: he’ll receive another medal.

  “Moreover,” he says, very quietly in Russian, “in the countryside, I won’t just be known as Anna Karenina’s son.” He raises his voice once more and ends in French. “I’ll have my own life. I’ll be more than a character.”

  Sergei’s eyes are shining. He beats his chest with both fists, exhaling with an “Aaaaahhhh!” and smiles. He puts both hands on the table and turns to gauge his wife’s reaction. Claudia adopts a poker face. She speaks to him softly in French.

  “You’re not offering one sacrifice, Sergei, but two: yours and mine. It’s you and me we’re talking about. What will I do if I’m not living in this city, in this house? What will I do with my life, so far from our gilded life here?”

  “You’ll do something else….” Sergei replies tersely, in Russian. Arising from the table with his glass in his hand, he walks toward the living room.

  “That’s impossible! Sergei … !”

  Claudia follows him out, continuing to speak, waving her arms about wildly.

  The idea of releasing the portrait of his mother for public viewing disgusts Sergei because of the scandal, the insult of her being exposed, and the rumors it will stir. Exhibiting the portrait will make life unbearable. Her suicide, her affair, the fallen woman will be the talk of the town all over again. And, once again, Sergei will be nothing but her son, the son of that poor woman, if you can call her that….

  “All that matters is the quality of the portrait, not the gossip surrounding it. This is the Hermitage we’re talking about, Sergei! Be sensible!”

  Claudia ignores the idea of a scandal; she wants to divert Sergei’s attention and change the subject. “We must rise to the occasion as the situation requires. We’ll say that we’ll happily show the portrait to any expert they designate for valuation. That they should get a professional opinion. A specialist should come and evaluate it. We won’t say a word about our instincts—don’t think I misunderstand you—but this isn’t about us, it’s about Russia’s artistic heritage. Is it a true work of art or not? That’s what matters. And we don’t know! We’ll reply that it’s a great honor that his majesty has asked about the portrait, but that the portrait is of sentimental value to us, nothing more. And that we’re not qualified to judge whether it’s worthy of becoming part of the collection in such an important museum.”

  “You mean they should send someone to do a valuation.”

  “Precisely. If it really is an important work of art, it will be its quality that matters, not the gossip. It won’t be your mother on exhibit, but a work of art. Only works of art should hang in the Hermitage, because that museum is the pride of Russia.”

  “We’ll tell them to come and see for themselves whether the portrait we own is no better than a Constantin Guys—that French painter who was just pilloried in the papers.”

  “Exactly, Sergei. That’s what I’m saying.”

  This solution satisfies Sergei, but only for a moment. He refills his glass and his wife’s. He lets the froth settle and says, “No, I don’t th
ink so. We’ll have to leave town, that’s the only way, we’ll have to make that one of the conditions. Uncle Stiva always dreamed of Texas … of leaving Russia, crossing the ocean, living on the great prairie, where the horses are wild and the cattle roam free, the good Apache people….”

  (Who would ever have thought that this boy would get married, and that he’d marry well? Timid, indecisive—a pusillanimous pushover—beneficiary of a meager inheritance he had to share with his sister, whom his father adopted when Vronsky gave him custody after Anna killed herself, and whose paternal grandmother left her trinkets and kept the valuables for herself, holding on to every single penny both in revenge against the woman who was the downfall of her son and out of greed, because, as she said, “In the end, Karenin adopted her.” As a child, Anya was the spitting image of Vronsky—so much so that Anna couldn’t bear to look at her—but even this likeness to her own flesh and blood didn’t temper the Countess Vronskaya’s vengeance; so much for a grandmother’s love…. Sergei’s father’s fortune dwindled toward the end of his life as his status in the government declined, partly because of ill management by an unscrupulous lawyer who took advantage of the fact that Karenin wished to stay out of the public eye and pulled the wool over his eyes. Aggrieved and diminished, he took refuge in the company of the Countess Lydia Ivanovna [an unbearable woman], his one and only emotional and religious support. But the old countess deserves some credit; she stood by him throughout the ordeal, unwavering. His Christianity isolated him even further, because after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II—who emancipated the serfs—his son, Alexander III, didn’t look kindly on anyone who was not pure Orthodox. Old Karenin played all his cards wrong…. When his firstborn came of age, there was no one to look out for him. His uncle, Prince Stefan Oblonski, had also fallen out of favor because of an administrative error that might have been overlooked were it not for the pressure Tolstoy was putting on the new tsar to pardon Alexander II’s assassins and spare them the death penalty … which was just as impossible as salvaging Sergei’s family name: who’d want to take it? Any woman who married him would take a name besmirched by that wealthy beauty who threw herself onto the tracks in a fit of rage and jealousy, in front of all the other travelers. There was no apparent reason for her suicide. Her jealousy was unfounded; the mere mention of a woman’s name, or of some place where he might run into one, especially if it was the Princess Sorokina, made her wild. She convinced herself that Vronsky was about to abandon her, that his mother was urging him to make a more favorable match, so she took one step, and it was all over. She asked God’s pardon at the last second, but not Sergei’s—a huge mistake, because God has so very much whereas she was the only thing poor Sergei had.)

  (Despite all this, Sergei Karenin got married early, to Claudia, a woman not without her charms, who was also young and rich. They’ve been married over fifteen years. They have no children. They get along well, their marriage is stable, their little battles make them inseparable. It’s more than stable, it’s an institution like the mountains or the ravines you sometimes find next to them; they’re a perfect match.)

  (It’s easier to understand why little Anya doesn’t even cross Anna’s mind before she throws herself onto the tracks: the little girl never held a place in her heart. But her adored Sergei, whom she said she had given all the love she was capable of giving? She conceived her daughter and gave birth to her, but her second child was a stranger to her. It’s not so hard to comprehend when we remember that she didn’t want to have her; she was completely in love with Vronsky, and the pregnancy was unwanted, a biological accident. She herself said that she had already given everything she had to give her offspring to Sergei; the well had run dry. It wasn’t that she was hard-hearted—she had saved the family of the drunk English gardener who, when he died, left them destitute; she took his orphaned daughter in and gave her lessons so she could read and write proper Russian. She provided for those helpless English people, but she didn’t think about them, either, when she threw herself onto the tracks. She thought about Vronsky. Only Vronsky. She killed herself to get back at Vronsky. She followed through on the threat she had made hours earlier, but not just for revenge. She wanted to punish Vronsky, but she also wanted to run away, from herself more than anyone, as the author made perfectly clear…. Compared with Karenina’s final step, her love affair with Vronsky is a brief, comic interlude, the intermission of a frivolous dramatist. The Countess Vronskaya wanted to tear her son away from the whirlwind—the tornado—that was Anna’s suicide. She proudly accompanied him to the train station from whence he would depart for the war. She buried him with pride, and though he was no hero, she arranged for him to be decorated. “He gave his life to liberate our brothers from Ottoman oppression.” Someone at the funeral had the nerve to say that if Vronsky hadn’t died, the Russian volunteers would have taken Constantinople. For Anna, on the other hand, there was no mass, no headstone, no pardon. Vronsky was martyred for two causes: the Slavs and evil womankind. Anna had already sacrificed herself before she died—“A woman who can’t be happy and prioritize her child’s honor is heartless.” It’s quite possible Anna’s soul still wanders the earth. Her soul doesn’t deserve eternal rest, but how would we know? We’re not mediums, we don’t play Ouija, we’re not concerned with the fate of ghosts but with those who walk the face of the earth, for better or worse, in the land of the living.)

  (More about them later, but what about Vronsky, isn’t there anything more to be said about him? He enlisted in the Serbian conflict, commanding an unattached platoon that he organized and financed himself—he was one of many Russians who sympathized with the Slavic cause and wanted to help their “Slavic [Orthodox] brothers” by freeing them from the “tyrannical oppression of the Turks.” When Koznyshev [a faddish writer, the kind that come and go like most do, and a recent convert to the Serbian cause] went to the train station to find Vronsky before he set off on his trip to Serbia, he noticed that Vronsky’s face had changed from a blank expression to one of pain [and not just because of the toothache that was tormenting him]. Vronsky hadn’t spoken a word in the six weeks since Anna’s death, had shut himself away and refused to see anyone, pondering his life—something he had never done—and flirting with death. “It’s a sign you’re starting a new life,” Koznyshev said to Vronsky, more just to fill the silence than to cheer him up. It wasn’t sincere; it was just a verbal pat on his shoulder, a gesture. Vronsky understood clearly that what he really wanted was to die, with dignity. That’s why he was going to war. He was going to fight because he wanted to restore his honor out of vanity, and because he didn’t want to live with the guilt. He wanted to prove he was a brave man, not the protagonist of some famous affair. He was killed by a bullet from a Krnk which was accidentally fired by a man from his own platoon just as Vronsky was bending over to pick up his hat, which had fallen off. A stupid, good-for-nothing bullet, which required the cooperation of its victim…. [The last thing Vronsky saw, clear as day, before he lost consciousness was the look of hate Anna had cast him years earlier, through her gauzy purple veil, in Countess Vrede’s garden. That look of Anna’s had been born for Vronsky; she never looked that way at anyone else, not before or after….] But no one talks about that stray bullet. The version that became history was penned by a Russian journalist in the trenches, in lively language that disguised the inaccuracy of his facts: Vronsky, dressed in white astride his white horse, shaking his long hair and shouting, “Long live Serbia and Montenegro! Death to the Turks! Down with Mehemet and Osman Nuri!” [the names of the Ottoman generals who were stationed on the frontier] as he charged toward the enemy army [composed of Arabs, Dervishes, Egyptians, and the well-trained Ottoman troops] and broke their ranks…. Approaching General Mehemet, he aimed his Krnk rifle and prepared to fire when one of the soldiers protecting the Turkish leader hit him with a shot between the eyes. And so, according to the story, Vronsky died, his thick hair [in fact he was going bald] uncovered, dressed in white [des
pite the fact that he was wearing an officer’s uniform, which was a different color], a courageous man of action [although his toothache had weakened him significantly, and he was still suffering from Anna’s death], aiming his Krnk [though in truth he was killed by his own men while reaching for his hat]. If the journalist’s version had been true, Vronsky’s expression would have changed the second the bullet hit him between the eyes, from pained to twisted, like a howl of laughter or a fit of delirium. But no such thing ever happened…. Every era has its own Vronskys, revising their own histories to be courageous and heroic, mediocre actors in their own destinies, obscuring the truth with smoke and mirrors, gilding their own stories, and making little difference.)

  13. Aleksandra and Volodin Go to the Haven

  Aleksandra and (her Ariadne) Volodin are walking down a narrow alley parallel to the wall of the warehouse, in front of which the strikers sit around their fire, facing a row of tumbledown shacks. The alley is unlit, but shafts of light escape from the dwellings at strange angles, which makes it even more difficult for Aleksandra to walk.

  Passing through one of these shafts of light, Aleksandra realizes she has lost her scarf.

  “Wait!”

  “What?”

  Aleksandra turns around and Volodin follows her. She hasn’t gone more than five steps when, in a completely dark patch, she bumps into someone. Frightened, she utters an “eek!”

  “What’s wrong? Are you all right?” Volodin asks.

  Out of the darkness, a woman’s voice, one he didn’t expect to hear, answers, “Volodin? It’s Volodin!”

  “And who are you?”