The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  Tolstoy takes a few steps; the reception hall is larger in their dreams, huge like the tsarina’s, and his strides are so gigantic it’s hard to take him seriously.

  Here, the dreams of husband and wife diverge. In Sergei’s dream, a fireplace is lit. In Claudia’s, it’s not. Tolstoy recovers his composure in both dreams:

  “You’re accepting money the tsar has taken from the Russian people to feed and grow his death machine. And you’re giving him something pure, unsullied, unique, priceless in exchange for that money. You can’t allow it. Not on my account. This wouldn’t matter if it were a question of arrogance or pride—if that were the case I wouldn’t be here. I urge you in the name of all that’s worthy in mankind. Consider it carefully. It’s not right. It’s steeped in evil. It’s affirming a reign of murder and violence. There’s no need to go into detail, let’s stick to the basics: commanding an army is neither honorable nor important, but they have the tyrant’s ear and tell him that it is, the flatterers. It’s shameful to organize killings. An army is always an instrument of murder, and in the case of the tsar’s army, it’s also a suicide machine—Russia is killing itself.”

  Tolstoy has yet to sit down, but in Claudia’s and Sergei’s dreams he gets out of his chair—according to that dream logic in which you can see someone go up and down stairs to the same landing (it could never happen on stairs made of brick and mortar, but in dreams those stairs can lead to the same landing, a metaphor for life).

  In both Claudia’s and Sergei’s dreams, the writer looks askance at the room that Claudia has decorated with such care. He sees it with a novelist’s eye. He thinks of what he wrote in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, “In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes—all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class.” Then he regards the room with his essayist’s eye, and he feels even more disdain, but it’s what he sees with his moralist’s eye that makes Count Leo Tolstoy feel profound disgust.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I can’t afford to waste any more time. I’m an old man, and it’s clear that my pleas are falling on deaf ears. I know all too well that people of your class—and I’m responsible for ensconcing you in it, Sergei—lead their lives with their own interests at heart. You build your lives on foundations of pride, cruelty, violence, and evil. But what I have created—and there is no trace of me in this unholy business—and what I cannot take responsibility for, is that the two of you are not acknowledging change, you don’t so much as lift a finger. You’ve become increasingly self-absorbed, ruining yourselves, and, I won’t deny it, you disgust me. Your complacency will cause you nothing but unhappiness, and me, pain. Man cannot live without knowing the truth, not even if he’s a man of fiction, not even the fiction I write, because I write only what I know, and the only world I know is that of men.”

  “If you give us an order, we’ll obey it.” The connection between an author and his character is unique, unlike any other bond. Sergei says this because he understands Tolstoy’s disgust, and he sympathizes with him.

  “Terrible, the custom of giving orders! There’s nothing more perverse, nothing that corrupts sensible and healthy social order more than such ‘orders.’ Imposing directions on people as if they were sheep! On no condition will I give you an order! I’m appealing to your better sides, and that’s it! I won’t respond by doing something that would disgust me even further! No, I don’t give orders, and I don’t keep slaves. I’m trying to appeal to your ethical sides, to your better selves.”

  In Claudia’s dream, she exchanges glances with Sergei. In Sergei’s dream, they don’t. But in both dreams, Sergei reflects:

  “But I’m not completely human. And you know that better than anyone: I’m a fictional creation, part of an imaginary drama. I’m your invention. You’re responsible for my existence. All my actions are determined by you. They’re not orders, they’re something more than that. I’m a puppet, I …”

  This statement infuriates Tolstoy, who roars at the top of his lungs:

  “You are what you are, Sergei! Just as whole as I am, as much of a person as the rest of us. Don’t try to pin something that has nothing to do with me on me!”

  “But I’m not. Let’s end this charade.”

  “The proof is in the pudding. For example: I can’t stand the opera. You and your little sister adore it.”

  The elderly writer doesn’t mask his rage. Sergei doesn’t give in. In his dream, he stammers:

  “I’m made of i-i-i-ink. A puppet made of ink!”

  In Claudia’s dream, he doesn’t stammer, and he says something else:

  “Most people live as if they’re walking backward toward a cliff. They know that behind them there’s an abyss they could fall into any moment, but they pretend to ignore it and keep looking at the scenery. But I don’t walk. You created me in the abyss of nonexistence.”

  In both dreams, Tolstoy responds, screaming:

  “That’s completely untrue.”

  And Sergei replies calmly:

  “Only subconscious action is productive, and the individual who plays a role in historical events never understands this. If he tries to understand, he’s punished with sterility.”

  “Enough, Sergei, enough! Stop quoting me! Be reasonable….”

  The old man watches them in silence for a few moments, then he says, looking first at Claudia, then at Sergei:

  “Don’t you realize? Just as the French were called to renew the world in 1790, we Russians are being called to do so in 1905.”

  “I disagree,” Sergei says. “If it were the case that human beings were governed by reason, there would be no such thing as life.”

  “So what? So what! Stop quoting me back to myself!” Tolstoy tries to contain an outburst of rage, repeating the following words as quietly as he can in his agitated state: “They’re making me despise myself. This is sinful, to get angry at my very own work. I’m destroying the bonds of love. And the wound bleeds….” Once again, Tolstoy takes a few giant strides in the room that has grown ever larger in both dreams. And he says aloud, though much more calmly, “Because you and I, Sergei, are joined only by a bond of love. That’s all. Which is why our relations are so volatile. The wound bleeds, it bleeds….”

  As he pronounces these last words, in both Sergei’s dream and Claudia’s, Tolstoy turns into something like a fox, and immediately thereafter into something like a hedgehog, changing shape and size from one animal to another.

  That’s when Claudia awakens, the final words of her dream echoing: “The wound bleeds, it bleeds….”

  Sergei continues sleeping; his dreams veer off into other characters and absurd scenarios that he won’t remember (like a fox hunt in which the horses are ridden by hedgehogs), obliterating his encounter with his author. His dream becomes more straightforward and easy to follow. Then it vanishes in smoke.

  35. Between the Dream and the Battleship Potemkin

  While Sergei’s dream begins to fragment into different images, far away in the Black Sea, on board the Battleship Potemkin, an ill-tempered, disrespectful officer whose name no one wants to recall sparks a fire. There are several versions of this story.

  According to the popular one, the officer who lit the match was walking among the hammocks where his men were sleeping, completely disregarding the crew’s precious personal space. Rudely, he disrupted their sleep.

  According to some who adhere to this version, he deliberately bumped into a handsome young sailor (Ivan); according to others who believe this story, it was involuntary, an accident.

  Some swear that the officer wasn’t high-ranking and that he went down to the crew’s quarters with the express intention of visiting a young man (Ivan) with whom he had been having his way, and young Ivan, the object of his desire, wanted to get rid of
him and raised the alarm.

  As the story goes, in the middle of the night an officer awakens a sailor, exhausted from his long workday. The gravelly voice of another crew member, Vakulenchuk, galvanizes the others to take action against the transgressor.

  “Comrades, it’s time to make a move.”

  He makes a little speech (neither as long nor as moving as Father Gapon’s, it’s improvised and has a touch of fury that the reverend’s didn’t when we heard him speak that Saturday). When he finishes, the sailors respond in unison, as if they’ve rehearsed.

  “We’re not gonna eat rotten stew anymore.”

  The instigator, Vakulenchuk, starts speaking again, invigorated by their unanimous reply.

  “The Japanese feed their Russian prisoners better!”

  Only one of the sailors on the Potemkin, Matyushenko, a deep sleeper, remains in Morpheus’s arms, though he’s not completely oblivious to what’s going on. He’s dreaming of Claudia. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize her in his dream, but he knows her well; Matyushenko is the husband of the young woman who works for Anya, Valeria, the one who wants to know how to avoid having children. Claudia is telling him, “Sailors should take a vow not to eat.”

  She’s sitting at a table that looks like it’s made of glass, laden with plates and glasses and glass bottles, too, overflowing with food and drink. She takes a spoonful (he can’t see what it is because the spoon isn’t made of glass) and puts it in her mouth, continuing to speak while she splatters him with food. “You should renounce it, sailor. All sailors who are going to sea should renounce food!”

  Claudia eats and eats, spewing food; the sailor feels an uncontrollable desire to grab the spoon from her and devour the food. When he tries to, a fence of huge knives springs up between them, their sharp points facing him. But young Matyushenko is oblivious to danger: he’s mad with hunger.

  As soon as he takes a step toward the fence of pointed knives, the fear of impaling himself awakens him; he becomes conscious of his hunger and the surrounding commotion of his shipmates, who are starving like him, and all worked up, as we’ve seen.

  36. Claudia’s Regrets

  At the same time, in Sergei and Claudia’s house, in the room next to Sergei’s, Claudia lies in bed thinking, It’s my fault, mine. I’m the one who convinced Sergei to sell the portrait of his mother. I’m the one who’s giving the painting of Tolstoy’s character to the tsar. Sergei didn’t want to. I, I … Am I reprehensible? Everything appears different now from how it did when we accepted…. Our Russia is a different country….

  She tries to calm down by telling herself, What Tolstoy said was just a dream, this wouldn’t matter a fig to him. But it doesn’t calm her; it doesn’t work. According to Lantur (the cook), dreams speak truth…. Enough! She’s the cook, what does she know? … But she’s right, she’s right.

  She tries not to think, to go to sleep. In the anxiety of this unfamiliar insomnia, her remorse is eating away at her. Claudia gets out of bed, takes her lamp, and goes downstairs to Sergei’s study.

  She enters his study and lights three bright lamps, which illuminate the portrait in all its splendor. The magnificent, lovely Anna Karenina, never more beautiful, is the sun at midnight. Claudia has her back to it because of the way the lamps are positioned. She’s still holding the base of the third lamp when she sees the box covered in blue cloth, which she found next to the portrait in the attic, on a stool next to the chair of Sergei’s desk.

  “How could I have forgotten about this,” she says to herself. “I haven’t laid eyes on it since I brought it down from the attic.”

  She picks up the box and puts it on the desk. She undoes the ribbon, tied in a bow that keeps it shut. Once white, it has yellowed over the years. When she unties it, its different shades are visible.

  “This ribbon has seen better days, it’s been marking time….”

  Inside the box is the manuscript that Anna Karenina wrote when she was at her very happiest. Beautifully bound in leather, it submits to Claudia’s touch. She takes it out, places it on the desk, and sets her lamp nearby to read. Then she sees there’s another manuscript at the bottom of the box, thinner and written in a smaller script on loose sheets. On the first page, she reads:

  Seryozha, my son: I will never deserve your forgiveness. Nothing in my life ever compared to being your mother. I will always love you, wherever I am. I wrote this novel twice. The first I wrote as a moral lesson for children, intending that you be its first reader. Two years later, I rewrote it in one sitting, without any such pretentions. I didn’t write it for you. I wrote it for myself. Nevertheless, I dedicate it to you, hoping that someday you, Seryozha, will have a daughter, and that one day, she’ll be a grown woman, and these pages will speak to her, my granddaughter, when she’s an adult. My love …

  The last sentence is unfinished. The signature is incomplete, and unnecessary.

  Claudia sits down in Sergei’s comfortable armchair. She chooses the unbound manuscript, Anna’s book, Karenina’s novel….

  37. In Claudia’s Hands

  In her hands, Claudia holds the loose leaves of Anna’s book. They’re bound together by a simple, utilitarian ribbon that’s not as nice as the one that fastened the blue box, thick and coarse material, undyed. When she unties it, a calling card printed with Count Vronsky’s name falls out, the typeface elegant and restrained, with a few handwritten lines:

  I often fell into a dreamlike state on opium; I stood at the window on summer nights, watching the sea and the city without moving, absorbed by all I saw, from the time the sun rose until night fell … T. de Q.

  PART FOUR

  THE BOOK OF ANNA

  No date or place

  38. An Opium-Infused Fairy Tale: The Book of Anna by Anna Karenina

  Once upon a time, a woodsman and his wife lived deep in the forest with their six-year-old daughter, Anna. Theirs was a hard life, and their daughter was their only joy. It had been a long winter, and there was little food for the table, yet the girl laughed, impervious to hunger, cold, the dark, and her parents’ constant ill humor.

  One day before sunrise, the woodsman (who never laughed, just like his wife) leaves the cottage and begins to walk, cutting a gaunt, disagreeable figure, his axe and some rope in his hands. He knows his search is in vain. The birds and the ducks have all flown south; the bears, the snakes, the wildcats, and even the creepy-crawlies are all hidden away, settled down for a long winter’s nap; the fish hide beneath the ice. His memory leads him to a path, and there he glimpses something in the pale light of the moon, which also looks frozen.

  The woodsman takes stiff steps; his head is heavy, as if it’s filled with cold water. A light breaks the darkness, so bright that he can no longer see the path. Could it be the reflection off the blade of my axe? How is that possible? he asks himself silently. He’s so cold inside that he can no longer think clearly. He recalls old tales of men who lost their minds because of their weapons. Instinctively he moves the axe in his hand, but the light doesn’t change. He lifts his face to the sky, eyeing the splendorous light, but can’t see a thing; the moon has been outshone, no longer visible. Then he thinks, The stars have all died.

  Light that obliterates all other light is dangerous, but this thought doesn’t occur to the woodsman. Neither does he think of the sky as black velvet; he was born poor.

  He waits a little while for his eyes to adjust. At risk of getting lost, he stumbles in the direction of the shining light. It’s coming from a woman dressed in iridescent blue satin, sparks flying from her fingernails and teeth, her hair filaments of light. She opens her mouth to speak and he sees the source of the light inside her mouth.

  “I know your daughter is hungry. Why let an innocent girl suffer when I can help you? Bring her to me, and I will look after her and protect her.”

  Sparks fly with each of her words, accompanied by a clap of thunder.

  The woodsman backs away without saying a word, without taking his eyes off the woman. She
opens her mouth wider, like she’s yawning, and even more light pours forth. She’s lit up from inside. When he reaches the path, the Illuminata fades into darkness silently. It takes some time for the woodsman to get his bearings. In the sky he sees the far-off splendor of the rising sun, which means his home must be somewhere to the right. So he goes left, brandishing his axe, declaring, “I’m going to find something to eat. I’m hungry!”

  A pair of eyes blink at him, knee-high. The woodsman lifts his axe. The eyes regard him; they belong to an animal—though he can’t see what kind—who says calmly (and without an accent), “You’ll get only one meal out of me. Feed me to your wife and daughter. I’ll be the last thing you eat this winter. You’ll die of hunger. Don’t be a fool, give your daughter to the Illuminata.”

  The animal laughs the same laugh as the woodsman’s daughter. Although the creature’s words paralyze the woodsman and its laugh terrifies him, he lets his axe fall on his prey. Hunger trumps fear. The animal’s warm blood spatters the woodsman’s face. He trusses its legs with his rope without noting what kind of animal it is and begins to return home with his quarry.

  His wife and Anna both receive him, clapping with joy (and with cold). The girl laughs, the same laugh that was the animal’s final utterance. The woodsman shuts his eyes and the girl, like her mother, thinks it’s because he’s tired and his belly is empty. The mother begins to prepare the creature for stewing. Anna wipes her father’s face, wetting the edge of her skirt with his water jug and rinsing it afterward, singing, “Finally we have some food on the fire….”

  The girl sings and, as if it’s part of her song, she laughs. And each time she laughs, the woodsman’s blood grows colder.

  The threesome sits at the table. When the hunter is served his stew, he doesn’t take a single bite. He can’t eat the creature whose eyes he looked into, who foretold a future of grief. He recalls the animal’s words: “You’ll all die of hunger.” Anna laughs. The man cries.