The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  The Forest Girl picks up the bottle. The little man jumps with joy. He looks her in the eyes. He’s no longer trying to speak. He reaches out to her. The young woman removes the bottle’s lid and the little man escapes through its glass neck, growing long and thin to fit and then expanding again when he’s out. Once outside the bottle, he shakes himself and begins to grow, more and more and more. His body’s size doubles each second, he becomes so tall he can no longer stand, he bends down and doubles over as he continues to grow. His body begins to bump into the walls, taking up all the space, pushing the furniture back and knocking over anything in his way—amphorae, clocks—until he’s filled the whole room. The Forest Girl presses herself against the door through which she entered.

  The Forest Girl watches the body of the man from the bottle expand toward her, right up to the doorframe where she has taken refuge. She opens the door and passes through it. The body of the man from the bottle continues to grow, pursuing her. She wants to shut the door behind her, pushing with all her might against the mass of the giant man. “Ow!” the man from the bottle says. “You’re pinching me! You’re hurting me!” His voice resonates, echoing off the walls, but the Forest Girl pays no heed to his cries, afraid that his enormity will cross over and invade the other wing of the palace.

  “Get out of here!”

  “You’re hurting me…. You’re pinching me! Don’t do that! Owwww!”

  The Forest Girl pushes with all her might and manages to close the door. She turns the lock, and, without removing the key (she leaves her hand on it for what seems like an eternity), she tries to hear what’s happening on the other side of the door, wondering what to do.

  A loud crash. Something has broken. Silence. The growth of the man, his expansion, must have been contained, or else things would still be breaking as they were pushed out of the way, she would hear it. She puts the palm of her hand on the door. Nothing. But she doesn’t dare open the door to be sure. She takes the keys. She still holds the candle in one hand, but she’s lost the matches. She doesn’t know whether she dropped them on the other side of the door or over here. She feels around on the floor, but she can’t find them. Her eyes are adjusting to the darkness, but she still can’t see her surroundings clearly. She goes to her room, slowly and very carefully, so as not to bump into anything and cause a stir. She doesn’t want to make noise and awaken the servants. Bit by bit, she feels her way along, taking each step with care, and finally she arrives. She paces back and forth, unsure of what to do. Eventually she calms down. She goes to bed, though it takes her a long time to fall asleep.

  She dreams that a priest is sleeping. A woman approaches him to cut off his beard and his long hair. She dreams what the priest is dreaming: that a pack of hounds is attacking the giant man. That someone is watching this scene and doing nothing, despite the fact that he holds the dogs’ leashes in his hand. That in the pools of blood pouring forth from the giant, there are flocks of birds. Things keep happening to the dream giant, but the Forest Girl becomes distracted by the dreamer, examining the dress of this handsome bearded man. He awakens and says, “When I saw the giant, I saw my country, my beloved country, and its people.”

  Then she dreams she’s the one inside the bottle, a bottle on the shelf of a bookcase. No one comes to let her out. In her dream, she wonders if she would become a giant too if she were set free. And she notices her bottle doesn’t have a mouth.

  She awakens late the following morning.

  She calls Maslova. While the girl is helping her, she asks whether there’s been any commotion on the other side.

  “Commotion? On the other side? Of what?”

  “I thought I heard something during the night on the other side of the palace…. A … a commotion….”

  “Nope! No commotion! What a notion! Silence, just like always. We received madame’s correspondence, though, as usual. And sent over the cheeses that arrived early in the morning, the ones ordered for you. The only strange thing was that they asked whether some matches belonged to us, you’ve never seen such long matches, twice as long as your arm. Three long matches … we took them to the kitchen. They’re really quite a sight.”

  The Forest Girl doesn’t hear this story about the matches; she’s overwhelmed by images from her dream.

  “Some dogs …” She can still hear the barking of the hound dogs.

  “Dogs?”

  “I dreamed that someone was dreaming about them.”

  The Forest Girl cannot get the giant from the bottle or the sleeping bearded man out of her head; to master her thoughts, she says, “Last night I dreamed one dream after another.” Her craving for the cheeses is the only thing that draws her to the door to the other side.

  The first lock opens as it always has before; the key turns easily inside the keyhole of the door that leads to the other side of the palace. The bottle is in its place. It’s not empty, but in the shadows of the bookcase, it’s impossible to tell what’s inside it. Whatever it is, it’s not moving, it’s not emitting any light at all, and it certainly doesn’t look like a small person. The room is in perfect order; nothing seems to be damaged or broken.

  That day she tries the second key. The lock turns easily. Four huge frescoes cover the walls from floor to ceiling, each one filled with dozens of people, and each one with a peculiar characteristic: some of the objects in them are three-dimensional, jutting out from the wall into the room—tables, lamps, the clothes people are wearing. There’s even a faun’s tail sticking out of one painting, hard, as if it’s made of plaster, sprouting from the wall. The ceiling, which is painted like the sky—blue, luminous, with thin, wispy clouds—looks like a falling roof around the edges, with loose bricks trailing ivy.

  Her skirt grazes a skirt in one of the paintings. The person she brushes against is wearing the exact same skirt that she herself is wearing. She begins to feel uneasy. She retraces her steps, passing through the library without stopping, and the grand hall as well, locking the door behind her. She spends the rest of the day in her rooms with a sense of foreboding.

  The following morning she feels confident again. She uses the first and the second keys, passing through both doors, and without hesitation, she even turns the third key in its lock. Unlike the others, it makes a scraping sound and squeaks like rusty metal, despite the fact that it’s covered in leather. She remembers the admonition but disregards it.

  She passes through the forbidden door, which is purple on the inside as well.

  The room is not a room, it’s a forest—the cold, dark forest of her childhood. She recognizes a path. She walks, the cold burning her feet and hands. The sun rises in a gray sky, warming the earth. Birds sing. Everything is familiar. She proceeds without hesitation. She comes to her parents’ cottage. She opens the door. A woman and her two lovely daughters are sitting at a table with her father. She recognizes him instantly. He looks at her coldly, examining her.

  “It’s me, Father.” She looks him in the eyes and remembers her name, as if it’s written on the woodsman’s pupils. “I’m Anna. Where is Mother?”

  “I used to have a daughter. She didn’t look anything like you.”

  “It’s me. You gave me to the Illuminata. Who are these people?”

  “This woman is my wife. And these are her daughters, the only ones I have. Your mother died years ago.”

  “You have three daughters, Father. Where did you bury Mother?”

  Her father gives her some vague directions rather brusquely. The Forest Girl, Anna, goes alone to visit her grave. A chunk of stone surrounded by weeds marks her burial place.

  “If only this poor stone were clean….”

  Anna gets to work. She pulls up the weeds and cleans what she can, decorating the stone with what flowers she finds, washing it over and over again, making it more beautiful than anyone could have foreseen. Her stepmother and her sisters watch her working hard, covering their mouths so she can make out only their snide laughter.

  She returns home.
The woman says, “You certainly like to clean, eh? Why don’t you clean my kitchen….”

  The Forest Girl cleans the pots and mops the floor.

  When they’ve finished eating—though they don’t offer her any food—she tries to return to the Illuminata’s rooms. All she wants is to pass through them and return to her bed to sleep; she’s so tired, she’s not even hungry. But there’s no keyhole for the key. The purple door is sealed tightly shut.

  The night is cold. She returns to her father’s house and lies down to sleep in the ashes by the hearth.

  Alone with her husband, the woman asks, “Is she really your daughter?”

  “Yes, without a doubt. She’s the one I gave to the Illuminata.”

  “I always thought that was an old wives’ tale. If she’s your daughter, she’ll have to live with us. She can help me in the kitchen. I could use it.”

  The next morning, Anna cleans the chicken coop, collects apples, prepares the soup, makes the bread, and separates the lentils.

  The household no longer suffers from hunger or scarcity. The woodsman has had a stroke of luck. One day when he chopped down a tree, he discovered hidden treasure—gold ingots, emeralds—and became a rich man. He built more rooms for the cottage. His wife and her two daughters began to dress well. But they didn’t allow Anna to set foot in the new rooms. “You—stay there! You belong in the kitchen.”

  One day when her father is going to the fair he asks her, “What would you like me to bring back for you? Your sisters have asked for dresses and necklaces.”

  “I’d like a branch of peach blossoms, my mother’s favorite.”

  When the woodsman returns from the fair (where it’s likely he did some naughty things; ever since he came into money he’s let himself go), the Forest Girl takes the branch of peach blossoms to her mother’s grave. The stepmother tells her daughters, “Stupid girl, she has a chance to dress like a lady, and instead she asks for a sentimental nothing!”

  After that they pay her no attention.

  Anna sits down next to the peach blossom branch and begins to sing. Then she cries. We can all agree this is sentimental behavior. But it reflects Anna’s frame of mind: she is exhausted from spending her days cleaning, bewildered to find herself the protagonist of two different stories, filled with regret for forgetting her parents and disobeying the Illuminata. All this, combined with her age (being young doesn’t help much), makes her feel like Cinderella. We can also agree that thinking of herself as Cinderella is slightly corny. But it doesn’t seem corny to her at all. Anna has become the Forest Girl, and the Forest Girl has become Cinderella.

  What happens next is, the peach blossom branch soaks up her tears. Considering the state the branch is in, and its flowers and its fruit and its environment, her tears are like mother’s milk. This is not a recommendation to the reader, and even less of a magic formula, because wine is better than tears, better than knowledge, and far better than any story, and champagne is better than wine, and opium is better than any alcohol. But this is dangerous logic, because the type of bird and birdsong each of these causes requires careful consideration.

  Every day, when she finishes working, Anna visits her mother’s grave and the branch of peach blossoms and sheds tears. And the branch begins to grow into a peach tree. And a variety of brambles and blackberries springs up around her feet. Anna weaves the brambles around the stone and the tree. When Anna cries, she dances; blame it on the birds, the nightingales, the owls.

  The birds sing and nest in the tree. The woodsman has no knack for growing things. He likes chopping things down. By the time he discovered his stash of gold and precious stones, he’d done a lot of chopping, and all around his home there was nothing but bare earth, which the rain and the snow eroded. His axe dreams it has been mistreated. There are landslides every day. That’s why the birds take refuge in the peach tree. With nothing like it for miles around, it’s like the capital of Eden. And they would do anything Anna asks, because the woodsman’s daughter has given them their only shelter.

  The birds protect her. She is hungry no longer. She is cold no longer. But she continues to sleep in the ashes in the kitchen, and the three women continue to mistreat her while her father pays her no heed. Her face is always dirty, like her clothes.

  One day, there is a proclamation from the king: all the young women in the kingdom are invited to a ball. The king is seeking a wife for his son. He’s tired of him being a bachelor, tired of him rejecting all the candidates he proposes, tired of him carousing like a madman; the king wants him to settle down. And he wants a grandson, to secure the future of his crown. If he leaves the prince to his devices, the crown will pass out of the family.

  “What, there’s not a single woman who lives up to your expectations?” he harangues his son each morning. And at lunchtime, “I offer you the hand of an emperor’s daughter, and you reject her. What’s wrong with you? Why is no one good enough for you?” In the evenings, the tone of the king’s discourse is more elevated. “Do you want something better than reality?”

  “Let’s start with your choice of words, Father. Can you call a young lady ‘something’? They’re people!”

  When Anna’s stepsisters hear the proclamation, they begin preparing their outfits, overjoyed. Anna asks permission to go. She’s not thinking of the prince, and far less of finding a husband. She just wants to dance.

  “Absolutely not. How dare you even ask? You should have asked your father to bring you a dress from the fair! But you missed that opportunity. What will you wear? We’d be ashamed to be seen with you,” her stepmother shoots back spitefully.

  “Please, ma’am….”

  “Out of the question. And call me mother! How impertinent, calling me ma’am!”

  On the day of the ball, Anna asks permission to go once more, when the foursome—father, stepmother, and her two daughters—are dressed to the nines, ready to go. The women regard her with cold, mocking eyes. Her stepmother picks up the pot with the lentils Anna has cleaned and dumps it in the ashes of the fireplace. She says, “If you can clean the lentils in half an hour, you can go. But don’t come anywhere near us if you do….”

  The foursome depart without looking back; they don’t give her a second thought. Anna watches them out of the corner of her eye. They look hideous. Her father’s suit is shiny. “How embarrassing, he looks like some low-class government functionary!” The young ladies are dressed in painfully bad taste.

  Anna calls to the birds in the peach tree, singing:

  Live blossoms of the peach tree in bloom,

  Sort the good from the bad.

  I want to dance and be loved.

  A dozen different birds fly into the kitchen, fishing the lentils out of the fireplace, leaving them clean in the bowl. Anna goes to the peach tree and asks:

  Father of live flowers,

  Help me to dress beautifully.

  I want to dance and be loved.

  A dozen new birds bring her a gold dress and a pair of golden slippers, laying them on the clean kitchen table.

  Anna bathes (in cold water—all birds hate hot water), does her hair, and dresses. The slippers make her feel lighter; she usually wears a pair of rough wooden clogs. In these slippers she runs—practically flies—to the king’s castle, and she doesn’t slow down when she arrives. She’s lighter and more agile than all the matrons and spoiled girls in the room—overfed and pudgy—who are trying to catch the prince’s eye. In comparison, Anna looks like a pixie.

  The prince sees her and tells the king:

  Father of mine, amongst these live blossoms

  I can sort the good from the bad.

  She’s the one.

  I want to dance and be loved.

  The king doesn’t think much of her. She doesn’t move with “dignity,” but neither does she move like a peasant. What is she? Beautiful, yes, and she seems to have good manners. He holds his son’s arm until she begins to move her arms and feet more gracefully than he has ever behel
d. Then he releases the prince, who shoots off like a bullet—a clumsy expression, but there’s no better way to describe it.

  The prince dances with Anna all night. They’re like two figures in a music box. Magnetic, almost mechanical. When some aristocrat or other approaches him between songs to introduce his daughter, the prince, instead of replying, “With pleasure,” repeats:

  I have chosen amongst these living blossoms

  To love and be loved.

  And the aristocrats think to themselves, What a foolish young man, how can he not see how lovely my daughter is! But their daughters aren’t lovely. They look like pom-poms, or perhaps muffs made from fine furs.

  When the clock strikes midnight, two dozen colorful little birds enter the palace; “tweet tweet tweet,” they say sharply. No one has ever seen such a cloud of birds at this hour in these parts. The birds take Anna’s dress by the waist and lift her. It’s quite a sight to see: Anna rising, her golden dress floating around her. Far away some little bird sings (and fortunately almost no one hears it, but the prince does, though he doesn’t understand):

  Oh, your perfume!

  Pretty Anna-bella!

  Oh, your perfume, your perfume!

  The scent of your lovely legs!

  No one delights in this scene more than the prince. Unsurprised, unafraid, he thinks it’s a new dance step and is filled with a rare joy. Which is why, when Anna disappears from sight (a speedy ascension), he is the first to notice that one of her golden slippers remains on the floor. It is small and smells like peaches. The rest of the crowd stands staring at the sky, wondering what has just happened; the prince picks up the dainty slipper and puts it in his pocket.

  The prince’s suit has large, well-made pockets; they aren’t just for decoration. He uses them to carry small bottles of ointment that keeps babies away.

  The next morning, the prince, full of vigor for lack of having spent the night in his usual amorous pursuits, goes from house to house with the slipper in his hands, searching for the young woman who has bewitched him. When he arrives at the home of the rich man who was once a woodsman, the eldest daughter tries the slipper on in her room. Her big toe is too long.