The woman and the girl eat; they’re so happy to have food that they don’t even realize the woodsman is crying. He thinks, My wife is going to eat me, because grief will kill me before hunger does. Before they finish their servings, he wipes his eyes, closes them, and doesn’t open them again until the table has been cleared.
When Anna falls asleep, the woodsman tells his wife everything about his two encounters. She makes up her mind.
“We must not eat any more of this meat you’ve brought home. Not you, not I, not Anna. We have no way of knowing it’s not the meat of Evil. And you should take the girl to the woman of light. I have no doubt she’s the Virgin—she’s the only one who has an internal light—and that Our Lady will look after her, and once this horrible winter has ended, we’ll see her again. She’ll bring her back to us, happy and healthy.”
“That woman can’t possibly be divine. If you could only see the light when she speaks, you feel …”
The woodsman can’t express how this woman’s words shine like jewels that have been extracted from a mine with the sweat and toil of mankind, because he’s never laid eyes on such jewels; he doesn’t even know what a mine is or where to find one—if he had, he’d never forget the jewels’ glitter; he’s a woodsman. If he knew where to find a mine or knew that precious stones could be polished, he would have gone and asked for a job; digging and polishing would be preferable to dying of hunger, and blackening his lungs would be better than being stewed without salt by his own wife.
“Give her our girl. She’s the Virgin, she knows all. Give her our daughter, but don’t tell her her name. If she’s not the Virgin, she won’t be able to call her Anna, and our daughter will come back and find us, because no one can live without hearing their own name.”
“But … but …” It’s impossible for the woodsman to explain what he wants to say.
“All right?” she says, seeing him babble like a poor fool. “Take Anna before we get hungry again, because I won’t give her any more of that meat you brought us. I’ll throw it away in the hollow, where the wolves can eat it.”
Before dawn, the woodsman leaves the cottage, Anna asleep in his arms. He heads in the same direction as the previous day, but before his feet become stiff with cold, the bright light appears, the Illuminata behind it. The radiance awakens the girl; she laughs (as she always does) at the sight of the Illuminata and reaches out to her; the Illuminata embraces her, and they disappear. The light fades.
The grayness of the day falls on the woodsman, a heavy burden.
He walks home. He’s so overcome, he doesn’t hear the wolves howling, the ones who ate the stew his wife threw away in the hollow during the night. They don’t howl like normal wolves; they seem to speak, and the sound of what they say is terrifying.
The woodsman cannot sleep. He can’t even think about his daughter. His only thought is that his wife is going to eat him, that his body will end up on a plate at his own table, that his wife will sing, Finally we have some food on the fire as she stews him.
He thinks his wife will serve three portions on three plates—one for her husband, the second for her daughter, and the third for herself—and she’ll devour them all because hunger will have warped her soul.
From the day she arrives at the Illuminata’s palace, the girl dresses in velvet, and in the summer she wears satin, silk, and lace. She learns the names of these fabrics and how to judge threads and brocades. She is taught to sew, to embroider, to sing, and to write. She is called Forest Girl. She’s given a personal servant, Maslova. She’s never hungry; she even forgets what it’s like to feel hungry, and she forgets how to laugh the way she used to in her parents’ cottage.
The Illuminata lives in a wing of the enormous palace where the girl is forbidden to go. An entire year passes, and then another, and then ten more. One of these years the girl forgets the cottage and the forest. She can no longer recall her mother’s face or hear her voice. She has a vague memory of her father from dreaming about him, but she can’t see him clearly, not even in her dreams. In another year, he disappears from her memory too. And in another year, she forgets the name she was given at birth, and how to laugh. Her face, expressionless and austere, has become the face of a beautiful woman, as has her body.
In the forest that surrounds her parents’ cottage (which she never thinks of any longer), the wolves who devoured huge mouthfuls of the stew made from the unidentifiable creature laugh night and day, the same laugh as the girl, mimicking what they heard when the Illuminata first met the woodsman—sheer evil.
Some might say that the girl in our story is not living in paradise: she has lost her loved ones, and all she has left is her Maslova—but even she disappears from the story, mentioned in passing only a few times. The girl had a deep bond with her father—poor man!—and her mother, too (after all, they had both eaten the stew made from the talking animal), whereas with the Illuminata there’s not even a trace of affection. Before, all she had was the laugh that quickly became frightening; now, she has everything, but there are no commas, no periods, no parentheses, nothing to fill her mouth, her heart, her soul but a jumble of words.
Others, however, might say that the girl has enviable good fortune, because she wants for nothing. Thanks to the art of magic, she has gone from famine to feast; from poverty to a life in a palace so huge she still hasn’t explored it all; from washing her father’s face with her own skirt to having lots of dresses and plenty of servants to wait on her.
Early one morning, the Illuminata, who still calls her Forest Girl, says, “I’m going on a journey. I’m going to give you the key chain for my wing in the palace. You may use all my rooms, read all my books, touch all my things, and eat whatever you like. There are only three locks, and I’m giving you the three keys that open them. The first is for the door that connects this part of the palace to mine, the second is the key to the room where I keep my jewels, and the third should not be opened under any circumstances. You may explore wherever you wish, but not that last room, which you’ll recognize by its purple door. This is the key. I’m leaving it in your care as well. But I repeat: do not use it, or you will risk losing everything.”
The enormous key is covered in shiny leather, and though it has teeth, it looks strange because it is curved in places. Nothing the Forest Girl has ever seen looks like the key, which hangs from the Illuminata’s chain with two others.
No sooner does she finish giving her instructions than the Illuminata leaves. Without hesitation, the Forest Girl puts a key in the first door and passes through it. Before she has a chance to take in her surroundings, the servants (none of whom she recognizes) offer her sweets and food, then take her into another room where there is a huge table replete with delicacies.
The girl sits at the head of the table. The footmen light the candles. The rooms in this wing of the palace are much darker than her own; heavy curtains cover the windows, blocking out all sunlight.
The first dish is a meat stew. She doesn’t think she recognizes the flavor of the meat, but she likes it very much, and when she finishes, she’s certain that she’s tasted it before. While she eats, they pour her wine, and she tries alcohol for the first time. They offer her vodka, but she declines. They bring more dishes, which she recognizes neither the scent nor the flavor of, and she declines these as well.
The wine animates her. She explores more rooms in the company of numerous servants. She smiles; it’s been a very long time since she has, and she looks different than when she was a girl. She laughs, but it’s not her laugh, it’s hardly audible, there’s something tinny about it, like the workings of a clock or watch. The footmen drag her around, showing her paintings and other objects in the room, telling her about each canvas, showing her how to use the objects—what they do and how to play with them. They’re both servants and teachers.
They come to the door with the second lock, but the girl isn’t the least bit curious (“Why would I want to look at jewels when I’m already surrounded by
them?”) and they pass it by. Each room leads to more rooms. They come to the third door, gigantic and purple. The servants don’t say a word. The Forest Girl remembers the Illuminata’s instructions, shrugs her shoulders, and—always accompanied by servants—retraces her steps. In the next room, they offer her more sweets and libations. She laughs once more—her clockwork laugh—and her smile is frozen on her face, as if it has been painted there permanently.
She uses the first key again to return to the other side of the palace. She retires to her room. It’s just past noon, but she lies down on her bed and falls into a deep sleep. She dreams of her parents. This dream wipes the smile from her face. She’s troubled when she awakens, though she’s unsure why, trying not to remember what she’s just seen so clearly in her dream.
She jumps out of bed. The sun is setting. Once again, she passes through the door to the other side of the palace. She’s offered sweets, candies, and wine—a rainbow of colors—but she declines them all. She snoops around. She’s fascinated by the visible workings of a grandfather clock and begins to laugh without realizing that she and the clock sound remarkably similar; she contemplates an oil painting of a naked youth lying in front of a bearded old man.
The youth extends a hand, trying to reach the old man in vain. The Forest Girl feels sad and then angry. “Why doesn’t he get up? Why is he lying there like a newborn babe? Why is it so hard for him to stand on his own two legs? Why doesn’t the youth pull himself up by the old man’s beard?”
In the room that is also the library, the books sit next to things on the shelves. There is a bottle next to a spine that reads The Genie in the Bottle. A globe rests atop A Treatise on Geography. A little wooden chest sits next to The Treasure Chest. There’s a spinning wheel next to Sleeping Beauty. The Prince and a tiny crown. Cinderella and a little gold slipper. She sits down to read a book with an absurd title: Theme without Language. The clocks mark the hours’ passage. Trays with food and sweets circulate. “They want to stupefy me with excess. But I won’t let them. I’m going to see everything, everything.”
Late that night the Forest Girl returns; in the butler’s pantry off the kitchen, she eats a slice of bread with herring; she drinks some water, continues to read, and without having laughed once, she announces to the servants that she’s going to bed.
Since she’s not used to napping during the day, she tosses and turns in her bed, formulating a plan: in the middle of the night, when the rest of the palace is sleeping, she’ll go over to the other side and explore. No one will follow her around; no one will distract her. She gets out of bed and takes the key ring from her dressing table, setting it down next to her, determined to rest just for a moment, to clear her mind for her upcoming expedition. But she falls into a deep sleep. When she begins to dream, the key covered in leather, the one for the forbidden purple door, gets up, dragging the chain behind it, and fits itself between her legs. There it nestles against her and finds its path, traveling far past her thighs.
The Forest Girl feels this in her dream, and without meaning to, she begins to sway her hips as if she’s walking. The key becomes one with her womanly body. The girl experiences an unfamiliar pleasure, one she’s never felt before. She would have been unable to understand what was happening even if she had been awake. In her dream, she no longer walks, she’s running, pumping her hips, the key does the rest of the work, giving her pleasure that’s almost painful. But she doesn’t wake up. She opens her legs. Without wanting to, without knowing what’s happening, she gives herself to the key, drunk with pleasure.
She doesn’t awaken until the following morning. She’s astonished to find the key chain wrapped around her naked legs. Disgusted, she removes it from her body and jumps out of bed. She puts the keys in a drawer. She promises herself to never enter the rooms of the Illuminata, the Lady of Light, ever again.
Promises, promises, promises. The morning has yet to end when she takes the key chain from its hiding place and turns the first key in its lock. No sooner does she cross the threshold than she is offered cheese and bread, which, without her realizing it, return her to childhood. She explores the rooms and their treasures with even greater curiosity. A woman carries a tray—identical to the ones the footmen are passing—bearing the head of a handsome man. She realizes it’s a reference to the Bible and thinks that must be the case with the naked youth in the painting, an Adam attempting to seduce God. In this context the man’s head doesn’t disgust her; it stirs her curiosity.
She recognizes more biblical allusions in some of the paintings, and in the tableaux presented by the servants—on the patio she sees Joseph at the well, surrounded by his brothers—but she can’t identify other paintings, of epic battles she doesn’t recognize and women on horseback.
In the second to last room there’s an oil painting of an Alaskan landscape, the lands that the Russians recently sold to America. This canvas disturbs her more than any other. It’s almost completely white. But every color has been captured in the various tones of its whiteness. The stretch of snow conveys something like words, perhaps something even more precise. The canvas seems to speak words in a way that changes the quality of the silence. She’s afraid when she looks at this painting, afraid of this whole wing of the palace. It all scares her. She finds it hard to breathe.
She returns to the part of the palace she knows and shuts herself in her rooms.
She walks up and down a long hallway until she’s calm. She’s determined that this time she will not fall asleep and will return when there’s no one supervising her. But the night is cold, and her bones begin to ache. She’s alone; she’s said goodnight to Maslova. The cold that comes on when the sun sets is harder to bear, it doesn’t just seep through keyholes into your body, it’s like a claw.
She loosens her clothing. She gets into bed, wrapping herself in the covers. She doesn’t lie down; although her bones are begging her to, she remains seated. Forgetting what happened the previous night, she puts the key chain at her side, thinking that she’ll get up without lighting the candle, so the light through her window doesn’t alert people that she’s leaving this part of the palace. She plans to leave her room under the cover of darkness.
The keys don’t trouble her tonight. Is it because, after many years (decades) without turning the complicated mechanism of those locks, doing so has exhausted them? The previous day they had turned a lock twice. For the metal pins and tumblers of the second lock, the penetration of the key was a major event. When it felt the key’s metal teeth, the lock’s interior went wild, accustomed as it was to nothing more than a mild, gentle breath of air. For a fraction of a second, it wasn’t sure whether to seize up at the intrusion, forsaking the purpose for which it had been created.
The first pin in the lock tried to resist the key. Groaning, it attempted to halt the invasion. But the second piece of the mechanism gave the command that awoke the others, reminding them why they were created, moving them not out of duty but out of pleasure: the key had made contact. Air is just air; it’s not solid, but you can feel it, though the sensation is delicate. And words are to groans as the key is to the air that passes through the lock!
When the lock felt the teeth of the key, an overwhelming, carnal pleasure made the second pin of the mechanism give way, and the first could no longer resist when the third and the fourth—every pin in the cylinder—turned obediently, letting themselves go. The lock, which was still young, despite years of being untouched, extended its hands in joy, with promises and lively conversation for all three keys, because the other two felt the caress of the third through the key chain, and when the lock groaned with pleasure, they responded as if three were one, electrified. The effort, despite exhausting them, was extremely pleasurable—a vertiginous delight.
Lying in bed next to the Forest Girl, as they prepare to sleep, the keys admit to one another how satisfying it is to perform their function.
“How fortunate we are!”
“We can’t complain!”
> And this confession leaves them in peace, satisfied, sleeping the sleep of the blessed.
The Forest Girl awakens after midnight. The rest of the palace’s inhabitants are still fast asleep, dreaming their first dreams of the night. She gets out of bed, holding the key chain in her right hand. She puts on her slippers, throws a shawl over her shoulders, and, with her left hand, grabs the little candle and matches she uses to read at night. When she leaves her room, she shuts the door and hides the candle as planned, to prevent anyone from seeing a light in her window. She heads toward the rooms of the Lady of Light.
The girl has never left her room at night. The palace looks completely different in the dark. The shadows, the sound of her footsteps, the arrangement of the objects as she passes them, everything terrifies her, but she masters her fear and forges ahead.
The first key easily opens the door to the other side of the palace, where night seems like day. The room is blazing with various points of white light, intense but not harsh or severe, a warm, steady light. The room seems larger. The light is coming from the objects inside it—the paintings, the chairs, the carpet—not from candles or lamps. The brightest light comes from the bottle next to the book with Genie in its title. Every spine, every title is legible: The Broken Skull, The Animal Who Slept Like a Log, Onionskins, Heartless Poems, The Unfeeling Heart. The books are arranged by color and size; there is neither rhyme nor reason to the jumble of titles. Each object is next to its corresponding book, so that the size of the globe determines where the book (Treatise on Geography) sits on the shelf.
She extinguishes the candle in one breath but keeps it in her hand. She approaches the bottle and, blinking in the intense light, which hurts her eyes, sees a tiny man gesticulating inside. It seems like he wants to speak to her; he’s moving his lips and his body expressively. The little man in the bottle kneels, his hands pressed together, looking at her. He appears to be asking her to free him from the bottle; he’s begging her.
The Book of Anna Page 12
