The Book of Anna

by Carmen Boullosa

  “Don’t worry,” her mother says. “Cut it off. What will it matter if you have a limp once you’re queen. Anna!” she shouts up the service stairs.

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  “Will you stop calling me ma’am! Lower your voice. Quick, bring your father’s axe, you lazy girl, hurry!”

  The stepmother’s daughter chops off her toe. She puts the slipper on and suffers in silence.

  The prince follows her into his handsome copper-leaf carriage with its painted roof. When they pass the peach tree, the birds sing:

  You’ve got yourself a trimmed hoof,

  You saw the good but chose the bad.

  The prince looks at the pretty young lady’s foot. The dainty golden slipper is soaked in blood. He knocks on the roof of the carriage and gives an order to return to the woodsman’s house.

  “You tricked me. You offered me an unblemished foot and gave me a mutilated one. I don’t want this girl. You’ll pay the price!”

  Anna’s stepmother and the woodsman betray the girl, pretending not to know what she has done, saying, among other things, “Devil child! How could you do such a thing to the prince! Go to your room without dinner!” and begging the prince’s pardon. The stepmother orders Anna to clean the slipper. When it’s clean the stepmother gives it to her second daughter.

  “Run! Go try it on, now! And it better fit, because if it doesn’t the prince will have all our heads!”

  Again she shouts up the service stairs, “Aaaannaaa! Quick, take your father’s axe upstairs, hurry, hurry!”

  The girl, who isn’t remotely pretty, tries on the slipper, but her heel doesn’t fit. She doesn’t say a word to her mother: she chops off her heel in one swing and puts the slipper on. Swallowing the pain, she goes downstairs and smiles at the prince, as if she’s been dancing with him all night.

  The prince has a pure heart and believes her.

  It’s important to explain that his heart is pure. It is part of the reason why his father wants to marry him off. The prince is quick to trust, but not stupid, and just as quick to distrust, which doesn’t make for a good ruler. Power isn’t built on innocence or candidness, and his father is right, this prince wouldn’t amount to much of a king. His search for a good wife has as much to do with perpetuating his dynasty as with building alliances.

  The prince, excited and giddy with love, invites the woodsman’s wife’s second daughter into his princely carriage. When they are halfway to the palace, birds of all sizes from the peach tree surround them, singing:

  Of all the good things you had to choose

  You chose the worst of all.

  You’ve got yourself a trimmed hoof.

  She’s not the one, she’s not the one.

  The idea of looking at his beloved slipper and finding it soaked in blood again turns the prince’s stomach. Which is why we must digress once more. We can’t just pass by a prince’s upset stomach. Much has been written about empty bellies—not that it’s made much difference. But can the same be said for the upset stomachs of pure-hearted princes? Let’s make a few distinctions: it’s one thing to overeat, and another to have had enough of human blood, and another altogether not to be able to look at something because you’re too sensitive. The last was the case with the prince.

  He has only to look into her eyes to see that the birds are singing the truth. He doesn’t look down. He stares at her hypocritical face, her eyes like empty spoons, shining at the thought of her title, her father-in-law, the throne. Two eyes that, the prince realizes, are blind to him. They don’t look at him the way they looked at him the previous night.

  The carriage returns to the woodsman’s cottage. They ask the young lady to be so kind as to get out. She leaves dark, nearly black footprints on the stone floors. The birds from the peach tree surround the carriage, singing:

  There are unscathed feet in this house.

  Here’s the one that wears gold,

  Her foot as lovely as her soul.

  For some unexplained reason this verse is accompanied by music. Where are the guitars, harps, and lutes? But this is no time for the prince to worry about such things. He gets out of the carriage, avoiding the bloody footprints, and crosses the woodsman’s threshold again.

  The family of four looks at him in horror. Not realizing the prince is there, Anna enters the room, her hands still wet from washing the slipper once more, singing, “Here you are, I’ve washed it for you again, the gold fabric is so fine, it’s easy to clean.”

  Everyone turns to look at her. Anna sees the prince. He recognizes her eyes. Anna puts on the slipper. The cloud of birds enters the house, draping the golden dress over her. The prince’s footman brings her the other slipper, which they have put in his hands, and the birds arrange Anna’s hair.

  That night, once again, she and the prince dance, but not like the previous night, because Anna begins to feel pressured. At midnight she remembers the Illuminata, certain that she’s going to come for her. She’s filled with regret, then fear. And her fear grows throughout the night. Although she no longer sleeps in the ashes, but in the room her mother slept in, it makes no difference. Her fear continues to grow. She thinks her mother will come too. That the birds have betrayed her. That they’ll attack her body. But she doesn’t have the body of a giant, and no dogs will spring forth from her blood to protect her. She has no choice. She must confront the Illuminata before returning for her prince.

  At the first light of day she walks into the forest to find the path to the Illuminata’s palace. There’s a tiny hole in the purple door. She pokes at the hole with a stick. Both her hands become covered in fine gold dust. The hole turns into a lock; Anna slides the key in and opens the door.

  The Forest Girl shuts the door, locking it behind her, and runs to wash her hands. No matter how she soaps, scrubs, and rinses her fingers, she can’t get rid of the gold color. Her face has changed, too: the brightness of the room and the fact that she now knows there’s something on the other side of the purple door fill her heart with deep regret. She wants to go back and dance with the prince despite the fact that if she does, everything will turn to gold, just like it did for Midas.

  That same afternoon, the Illuminata returns to the palace. She notices the girl’s face has changed.

  “Did you open the door I told you not to?”

  The Forest Girl says she didn’t. (“No, ma’am, I don’t know how to lie.”)

  “Are you certain you didn’t turn the lock I specifically told you not to?”

  The Forest Girl shakes her head again.

  The Illuminata asks a third time, and once more the Forest Girl lies to her, denying it vehemently. The Illuminata sees her golden fingers.

  “You’re lying!”

  The Forest Girl falls into a deep slumber, and when she awakens, she’s back in the forest. She would scream, but she’s lost her voice. She looks for a path, some way out, back to the Illuminata’s palace, or the prince’s, or the woodsman’s cottage, but the forest seems endless. Her feet sink into the mud. She loses her slippers.

  A few days pass; her clothes and her body are no longer what they were when she lived in luxury, wanting for nothing. Her hair is tangled. Her stockings are loose. She has given up trying to find a way out. She eats herbs, berries, mushrooms, and roots. Sitting against the trunk of a large tree, she feels the desire to sing, but no sound comes out of her mouth.

  Twelve horses pass by, carrying eleven knights and their king. The Forest Girl doesn’t get up; she thinks she’s dreaming. The king falls in love with her at first sight; he’s never seen anyone so beautiful. He asks her name but she can’t answer.

  “Who are you? Where are you from? What are you doing here?”

  The Forest Girl can’t say a single word. The fact that she’s mute makes the king like her even more. Silence is golden. The Forest Girl shows him her golden finger. It doesn’t bother the king, so he takes her with him. When he returns to his kingdom, he announces that he’s going to marry her. Th
e queen mother and his sisters try to dissuade him, but the king stands firm.

  Once again, the Forest Girl eats and dresses well; she soon forgets what she has done and that she’s been evicted from paradise. The gold on her finger doesn’t disappear. At night, when she sleeps, the golden finger does what the leather-bound key once did. It nestles between her legs and finds a way to give her pleasure.

  The wedding takes place, the Forest Girl shares her bed with the king before he retires to his rooms, and after several encounters, she is surprised to discover how pleasurable it is to be with him in this way. The king loves her. The Forest Girl loves the pleasure she gives the king, loves his velvet and his satin, loves how well the servants treat her. She loves her hairdresser, who ornaments her hair with precious stones. She loves the baker, who makes delicious pastries. She loves the kingdom’s cheeses and its bread. She also loves her memory of a ball that lasted all night in a gorgeous palace. And even more than that ball, she loves the gaze and the arms of her prince.

  • • •

  One night when she’s falling asleep, she sees her whole life, from when she had a father, a mother, hunger, and a name (Anna) to when she became the Forest Girl. Then she went back to being Anna, but her name was Cinderella, and then she became a queen. How does one girl become another, and then another? Her story is one of hunger and laughter, then one of adoption by a cold, luminous woman who gives her the keys to know herself and tests her. And before she even learns what she likes, the keys take advantage of her, making her feel a pleasure she neither understands nor wants, playing—without her realizing it—with what she ought to have been seeking. Sleep takes its hold, and she has a dream in which she becomes the Girl Who Walked on Bread:

  Once upon a time there was a woodsman who lived with his wife at the edge of a poor village. They lived in misery; in front of their hut, there was a muddy stream swarming with flies. Because the woodsman and his wife were devout, peaceful people who were more virtuous than any of their neighbors, the saints blessed them with a strikingly beautiful daughter. Though she was lovely to behold, she was arrogant and mean-hearted. She looked down on her parents for their poverty and gentleness. She called them shameful names. She liked to step on her mother’s apron for fun.

  “What are we going to do with her?” her mother would say. “She has every reason to look down on us: we’re poor, we’re humble, but she’s all we have! Today she steps on my apron, tomorrow she’ll step on my face.”

  The girl played with the flies by the muddy stream, plucking off their wings and delighting in their suffering. She speared the largest ones with her mother’s sewing needle, pinning them to the pages of a book, saying, “This one knows how to read.” When her mother tried to teach her the alphabet, she refused. “Reading is for flies.”

  The girl grew quickly, as did her wickedness and the poverty that surrounded her. She tortured the two chickens in the coop to death and hid their bodies to keep anyone from eating them. Famine and plague descended on the village. The girl was hungry every day; her stomach seemed to be eating itself. The girl’s parents sent her away with an acquaintance who worked in the count’s castle. No sooner had the count and countess set eyes on her—so proud and good-looking—than they took her into their service. They dressed her in satin and silk, in beautiful dresses and shoes. They had her hair done. She looked like a young lady; she ran errands for the women of the court and charmed arriving guests. The count was especially fond of her. He was a man of the flesh, and he could hardly wait for her to come of age so he could take her as a lover. He flattered her and lavished her with gifts, laying the groundwork for his plan. “There’s no one more beautiful than you,” he would say, complimenting her at every opportunity, because he had yet to possess her. He said this over and over and was quite compelling. The count wasn’t interested in girls, but her body was becoming more and more like a woman’s.

  The countess, who wanted nothing more than to please her husband—particularly when there was some benefit to her—pretended to think highly of the girl too. She took particular care in dressing the girl, spoiling her. What will happen one day when my husband doesn’t want her anymore, where will we send her? And what if she bears him a child? I don’t want to have it here, we’ll send it to her parents, who’ll look after it as if it were their own. And thinking such thoughts, she sent the girl to visit her parents.

  The young woman put on her finest clothes. She wanted everyone in her “dumpy village” to envy her, wanted to humiliate them with her elegance. When the count’s carriage left her at the entrance to her village, which was so small and poor that its streets were too narrow for the carriage, she saw some children playing beside the well, and her mother, who was carrying a bundle of firewood on her back and some root vegetables for dinner in her hands. The girl felt so ashamed to have such a “dirty” “nothing” of a mother that she turned around and walked off with all her gifts, getting back into the carriage.

  “Miss?” the driver asked, so taken aback he was unable to speak further.

  “You keep these gifts, sir, and don’t tell anyone, just take me back to the palace … but let’s take our time so no one becomes suspicious….”

  They stopped at a roadside inn and had a few drinks, speaking of unladylike things. Such a precocious girl! The driver began to sing, and the girl teased him.

  A few months later, the countess, still worried, decided to send the girl to visit her parents again. She said, “Poor thing! So far from your family, don’t you miss them? I’ve got a magnificent Italian-style loaf of bread for you to take them. And a basket of cheeses, too—but I didn’t include oysters, I thought they wouldn’t survive the trip, and we don’t want to poison your parents, we want to honor them, don’t we?”

  The girl just wanted to poison them. But to stay in the good graces of the countess, whom she was eager to please, she dressed in her finest clothes, took the gifts, and got into the carriage.

  On the way there, the skies opened up, but the driver kept going, then the rain stopped, and the sun came out. The sky was shining brightly when he left the girl at the entrance to her village.

  Cursing her luck, she got out of the carriage with her gifts. She lifted her skirts to keep them out of the mud. The narrow streets were empty; everyone had gone inside for shelter from the rain. The muddy stream in front of her parents’ house had swollen with the rains, the stones for crossing it submerged deep underwater. To keep her shoes clean, she put the bread on the ground and stepped on it. The bread sank into the mud under her weight, and an eddy pulled her into the stream. She was caught in a whirlpool and was soon submerged and pulled to the bottom.

  On the muddy riverbed, a witch was brewing beer. The smell coming from the kegs was revolting. Clouds of flies danced next to spiders. The young woman hugged her loaf of bread, wondering, Did I do something wrong, trying to keep my shoes clean?

  Time passed. Beneath the water, the young woman could hear what her mother and father were saying about her, and the other people in the village too. They despised her arrogance, they thought she was stupid, and no one mentioned her beauty. “How stupid can you be, thinking that a loaf of bread will keep you afloat?!”

  The girl who stepped on the loaf of bread was the laughing stock of the village. In his castle, the count found another lover whose downfall the countess is already plotting.

  The queen awakens from her dream about the girl with the bread, certain that no one remembers who she is. A few days later, she gives birth to a boy. The Illuminata attends the baptism. When the Forest Girl is getting ready for bed, before her golden finger traces its usual path between the sheets and her thighs, the Illuminata appears.

  “Did you open the door I forbade you to open?”

  The Illuminata shines just as brightly as the forbidden room. The queen shakes her head.

  “Think carefully about how you answer me. What will it cost you to tell the truth? If you lie, you’ll lose your son. Don’t you love your s
on? Answer me truthfully: did you open the door I forbade you to?”

  The queen shakes her head.

  The Illuminata disappears, taking the boy with her.

  The queen mother and the other ladies of the court think the queen has eaten her own child. They tell the king he should punish his wife by exiling her from his kingdom. But the king loves her and refuses to believe she’s a cannibal. The queen writes him a long letter telling him everything. The Illuminata makes the ink disappear and all the king sees is a blank sheet of paper. The queen writes to him again, but to the king her words appear to be written in water.

  The couple is blessed with another child, a girl. The queen postpones the baptism, afraid the same thing will happen again. But the baptism is celebrated before the end of the year, according to the custom of the country. The Illuminata is in the crowd. Before the queen comes out onto the balcony, the Illuminata appears to her in the royal chambers and asks, “Do you love your daughter?”

  The queen nods silently.

  “Tell me the truth. Did you open that room in the palace?”

  Once again, the Forest Girl denies it. The Illuminata picks up the little girl and vanishes.

  This time even the king cannot protect his wife. The queen is taken to the gallows. She climbs the steps with bare feet. She’s been stripped of her finery.

  The Illuminata appears like a shadow at the top of the steps leading to her death.

  “Did you open the lock?” she asks. “Save your life, confess!”

  The queen raises her golden index finger and nods yes. Before the crowd, the Illuminata makes the king’s children appear, one in each of the queen’s arms. They don’t put the noose around her neck. They put the royal cloak around her shoulders as she holds her children.

  All three executioners spend the afternoon trying to put the noose around the Illuminata’s neck. But each time they think they’ve succeeded, her head is somewhere else. Two of them end up hanging each other. Only one remains. Obeying the light emitted by this frozen woman, the last executioner puts the noose around his own neck and hangs himself.