The Book of Anna by Carmen Boullosa

Author:Carmen Boullosa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2020-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

27. Back in the Karenin Palace Kitchen

“What I heard was bullets, ma’am. Before the swords, there were bullets. We were two hundred feet from the Narva Triumphal Arch, we could see the river. The soldiers fired three times into the air. The fourth shot was the signal to charge. They kept firing until they were out of ammunition. Then the Cossacks came at us.”

An older man who’s sweating excessively is speaking. His hands are covered in blood, and he has a cut on his cheek that’s barely bleeding, as if it’s in shock too.

Whether it was bullets or steel, there’s a body in front of them wrapped in a cloak, lying on the kitchen table. Blood begins to trickle across the surface, slow and thick. The cloak is the body’s shroud. The dark, slow, lazy blood is its voice.

Young Valeria has already gone to tell lovely Anya, who comes right away, without stockings (she’s still in the process of getting dressed), her bare feet inside boots that don’t match the floor-length skirt she has to hold up with her hands because they can’t find the belt.

“What happened? What’s going on here?”

“The tsar’s men shot at us.”

“Where?” Anya asks.

“We were marching up to the Narva Arch.”

“It was swords, not bullets!”

“It was bullets.”

“They came at us with bullets and swords.”

“Hundreds of people are dead.”

“Volodin fell, I saw him dead, he’s dead.”

“Yes, hundreds died. And even more are wounded.”

“And Aleksandra?” Anya asks.

None of the unexpected guests remembers what the workers were chanting: “Eight hours, Father”—that’s what they call the tsar—“eight hours! We want an eight-hour workday!”

“Answer me! Where is Aleksandra?”

Loyal Kapitonich, the hall porter, rushes in after Mademoiselle Anya (he hates the kitchen, it’s full of things that turn his stomach, especially animal parts, but beets too)—he heard her running down the staircase (the heels on the boots she’s wearing are scandalous), and after looking in the drawing room and the dining room, he’s come to look for her here.

Anya notices the body wrapped on the table. Carefully but decisively she lifts the cloak that covers the bloody form.

Lying there on the kitchen table, they recognize her.

“My Aleksandra? Aleksandra! Aleksandra!”

It’s impossible for Aleksandra to hear Anya, because she is frozen in time, her attention focused on one never-ending moment: The gray faces of the poorly dressed, underfed workers look dead, apart from their eyes, which burn with anger in this ill-fated uprising. Suddenly the battalion of Cossacks charges at us, their swords drawn. I saw them brandishing their swords. One blade slit Volodin’s throat.

The men who carried the body (not Father Gapon’s hired guards, who turned and fled in the stampede without a thought for anyone but themselves, although some say they were martyred by the Cossacks), the ones who risked being trampled by the horses when the infantry moved out of the way, are speaking quietly, transformed by the horror.

Young Valeria is the one who says what everyone else is thinking.

“She’s dying!”

The silence is heavy, like the blood that has begun to drip onto the floor.

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