Here Claudia pauses again. “Is this appropriate? Should I include a description of the novel?” She decides not to and continues writing.
Our sole intention is to leave it in safe custody to enrich the understanding and study of Mikhailov’s accompanying portrait. If the museum sees fit to donate it to some other institution, you have our permission, the only condition is that it’s not made public for the next fifty years. With our very highest regards …
Claudia prints Sergei’s signature at the bottom of the page, forging it, and then her own, making it look timid. Then she writes another note to the curator of the museum.
Dear Ernest, we’ve decided to make a last-minute donation. We’re including it with the painting. It’s Anna Karenina’s book. The blue box actually contains two books, two different versions. We’ve asked for a fifty-year embargo. If for some reason you can’t accept this condition, we would like to have it back immediately, no negotiations.
This note also appears to be signed by them both. And it has a postscript.
I’d be most grateful if you would not mention the subject to my husband. I’m sure you can understand how difficult it is for him to speak any words at all (they are, after all, one’s soul) about his mother.
She signs it without affectation, an honest signature with her characteristic decisiveness.
Claudia rings the service bell. With the help of the efficient maid, she’s ready in no time. She speaks with her husband’s undersecretary, Priteshko, entrusting him with the job of delivering her two letters and the blue box to the representatives of the museum.
“Madame, they’ve brought a motorcar to collect the painting, Prince Orlov’s Mercedes.”
“Mercedes?”
“It’s the name of an automobile … that kerosene thing.”
“Who’s driving it?” The first thing that crosses her mind is an image of Prince Orlov; if Vlady is there, she should go out and greet him; he’s one of the wealthiest, most powerful aristocrats, and he’s always at the wheel if the tsar’s aboard, out of concern for his safety; for him, it’s a question of honor.
“A chauffeur, madame.”
42. Anya Karenina
Anya is deeply chagrined by the donation of the portrait of Anna Karenina. She doesn’t remember her mother, despite trying hard to find a picture of her in her memory. She can remember her wet nurse clearly, as well as Sergei, whom she adored throughout her childhood. The sale of the portrait shouldn’t upset her, but for Anya, it’s her brother’s worst betrayal.
“Why? Why is it doing this to me? Why do I feel this way? What does it matter? I didn’t even know the woman! But she’s my mother. Why … ? It shouldn’t matter to me!”
She’s in a terrible state of mind. She rings the bell for Valeria to distract herself. She can’t bear to go out—she knows today is the day the portrait will be collected; she has no desire whatsoever to run into the cortege.
“Valeria, come talk to me. Tell me about your husband.”
“He’s on the submarine Potemkin, under the sea.”
“I should be so lucky!”
“I wouldn’t think so. They feed them rotten meat, it’s revolting.”
“How do you know that?”
Valeria blushes when she answers.
“The telegraphist sends me messages.”
“Oh! Why are you blushing, Valeria. Is he very handsome?”
“Not like my Matyushenko!”
“And why is the telegraphist writing you?”
Valeria turns red again.
“I can’t tell you that, mademoiselle.”
“Oh, all right, let’s change the subject. Shall I teach you some more French words today?”
Anya sighs. She really would like to be under the sea. She recites three words in French, but they sound wrong, unintelligible. Anya just can’t concentrate on anything.
“Would it be all right with you, mademoiselle, if we got out the embroidery?”
Valeria sets down the sewing box, full of colored thread, buttons, pieces of lace. Anya’s eyes flit from one to another. Her gaze loses focus. Anya thinks, I want to be someone else, I want to be someone else. In her mind’s eye, she sees an underwater landscape—a forest of coral, caves, a giant pearl, a whale, a terrifying squid…. The contents of the sewing box evoke a whole Vernean world.
43. The Wind
So the wind is not blowing. Inside the palace car, Piotr holds the blue box and the letters under his left arm while he steadies a corner of the grand case that protects the portrait of Anna Karenina with his right. The Karenins’ carriage follows thirty feet behind, Giorgi at the reins, the assistant curator of the Hermitage and Sergei’s personal secretary, Priteshko, inside.
Piotr is singing. It’s the first time he’s traveled in a motorcar. He’s so excited he invents a little ditty:
With Anna, with Anna
With Anna Karenina,
Flying, flying
In a Mercedes
With Anna, with Anna.
On Nevsky Prospekt, a woman dressed in a pretty, heavy pink dress made of velvet and lace crosses the avenue, causing the grumpy chauffeur to brake suddenly. He shouts at the top of his lungs:
“Stupid cow! Are you drunk? Why are you crossing without looking? I nearly hit you! That’s why you’re poor—you’re idiots!”
The woman is unperturbed. She wears a shawl of colorful flowers over her head; her long, shiny hair is loose. She moves slowly, crossing the street at an angle.
“Get a move on, you cretin!” the impatient, ill-humored chauffeur urges her. The motor rumbles, but the car can’t advance. “Go ahead, take your time!”
Piotr keeps singing:
I’m in a Mercedes, I’m flying,
at Anna Karenina’s side….
Giorgi also comes to a sudden halt, keeping his distance. Up ahead, a young man with his back to him crosses the avenue at an angle, just like the woman who is shuffling in front of the Mercedes, but more decisively. When he’s next to Orlov’s car, he reverently places something on its rear bumper. He stops beside the car, takes two steps back, and bows respectfully.
Giorgi moves the carriage forward a few yards to see what the young man has left there—what’s this about? It’s a large cushion, embroidered with the words “Our Father.”
“Hopeless,” he thinks. “They still believe in ‘their father.’ The tsar condemns them to lives of misery, slaughters them in cold blood, and in return they honor him with gifts. Fools! They adore their oppressor!”
He holds the reins tightly. The car’s motor will roar when it begins to move forward again at any moment now, and he doesn’t want the horses to rear. He keeps his eye on them.
He can hear Piotr singing:
I’m flying along in an automobile,
dancing with Anna Karenina….
At last the woman allows the Mercedes to proceed.
The chauffeur insults her once more as he passes.
“Laggard! That’s why you’re so poor!”
The fact that the wind’s not blowing makes no difference to Giorgi or any of the pedestrians up and down the Nevsky, and despite the lack of wind, the odds are that Clementine and Vladimir’s latest plot has failed. But thanks to that fact, the fuse the two anarchists have lit doesn’t blow out, burning the trail to the bomb they have planted on the bumper.
Prince Orlov’s green Mercedes, adorned with the handsome cushion at is rear, begins to move again. The sound of the motor startles the horses; Giorgi tightens the reins to control them. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the young man who left the cushion begin to run away from the moving car. Strange, he thinks, he’s dressed like … could it be Vladimir? Ahead of him—“Clementine!” Giorgi says. The woman dressed in pink is also running away from the automobile.
That’s when the bomb explodes. The horses pulling the Karenins’ carriage rear, frightened by the noise. Giorgi struggles to control them.
The attack that destroyed the Mercedes claimed s
ix victims: the grumpy limousine chauffeur, Piotr (the singing footman), the woman who crossed the street to delay the car (Clementine), the young man who attached the cushion to the bumper (Vladimir), and two boxes inside the limousine—the newly built wooden one with the portrait of Anna Karenina inside, and the blue one with its silk ribbon, containing Anna’s book and her other manuscript. The attack injured eleven people. One of the Karenins’ carriage horses had to be put down. Giorgi can’t understand how he came away unscathed.
The dress made in Paris, the one that Anna wore to the theater, dazzling everyone, was turned to bloodied rags by the explosion, but it was washed and mended by some of Clementine’s erstwhile comrades. She was buried in it, in a mass grave, next to her beloved Vladimir, whose suit was also washed and mended, though we never had time to tell its story.
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Carmen Boullosa—a Cullman Center, a Guggenheim, a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, and a Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes Fellow—was born in Mexico City in 1954. She’s a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, and artist, and has been a professor at New York University; Columbia University; City College, City University of New York; Georgetown; and other institutions. She’s now at Macaulay Honors College, City University of New York. The New York Public Library acquired her papers and artist books. More than a dozen books and over ninety dissertations have been written about her work.
Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders, dedicated to publishing the world’s best literature translated into English. Her translation of Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft was longlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize. She won the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for her work on Boullosa’s El complot de los Románticos.
The Book of Anna was designed by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services. Text is set in Marco Regular.
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