Saving Anna Karenina
Part 14
Start with Part 1, and read a short synopsis of the the original book.
THERE WAS ONE THING Anna was willing to brave alone: an exhibit on Russian history. She had been wondering what happened since she went traveling. She didn’t read the newspapers, as New Yorkers all seemed to do. For that she felt silly, like Kitty Shcherbatsky or another one of those empty princesses. But she simply couldn’t concentrate. Too many worries about the future vied for attention against too many dreams of the way things were.
Her preoccupation caused her to apologize to people all the time. And they looked puzzled.
“Why are you sorry?” her driver asked each time.
She was sorry that she wasn’t paying attention to him, to any of them, that she felt afraid, and wanted to go back to her room and take a pill.
Now Seryozha was at school, and Anna was not feeling so well. But she forced herself to call Diallo. They would travel to 76th street and Central Park West so Anna could find out about her country’s future, or past, as it could more aptly be described.
“Going out?” said Elena as Anna passed by the kitchen. Smells of onions, garlic, and aubergine wafted through the three-story house, creeping into Anna’s nostrils and filling her with scorn that the woman wouldn’t feed her boarders. Elena was — a bitch! That’s what they said in the new world, and it wasn’t a nice word, but it couldn’t be more perfect for Anna’s landlady.
Diallo smiled as usual. His warm car smelled too strongly of cheap perfume. She sat on sheepskin seats in the back. Often, when Diallo was talking about something totally ordinary, or even tragic, he laughed.
“Madame, I think today you want something special,” he said in French.
“Something special? What could that be?” Anna let herself smile a little bit.
“Some bon bon Francais,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” Anna sighed, closing her eyes and leaning her head against the fur. “I want bon bon.”
Diallo laughed. “I take you to the place where all the whites like to go. All the whites!”
They shuttled gently, the bottom of the car scraped as it went over bumps in the road. Moments later, they stopped. Anna opened her eyes and saw that they were still in her neighborhood. Diallo pointed to a store across the street with white lights in the window, a brown and white striped awning.
“Just go inside, madame, and don’t be afraid. You will see they have many delicious things inside. I wait here.”
On the sidewalk stood a mother in farmer’s clothing with a little boy on a red bicycle and a small, white barking dog.
Anna went inside to find hoards of people lined up around a selection of pastries that included her favorite cake, a white almond seashell. She spotted apple and apricot tarts, croissants with almonds, something with walnuts. People spoke French all around her. Hope rose in her stomach like the sun, casting a warm glow on the dark, fetid zone of her soul. Anna wanted her favorite cake, and a croissant with almonds. But she wouldn’t take tea or coffee in a paper cup, as the others all did.
She waited at the end of a line that snaked around a rustic wood table made of what appeared to be railroad ties. Many children waited in the line with their scruffy mothers or fathers. Their hair was uncombed, they had paint on their clothes, and the women wore men’s corduroys. The men looked like laborers. The children looked like they had just woken up. They spoke of common things. Go and join your brother outside; we will ride bicycles in the afternoon; the dog is hungry, do you want him to starve? I don’t know if they will stay together, he is always traveling for work and she has been spending a lot of time with Paul; no, her sister lives in Florida.
“Next?”
Anna had arrived at the front of the line. A feeble blond boy in a knit cap was asking her something.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” Anna couldn’t remember what she was supposed to say.
“What can I get for you?” he said.
“Oh!” said Anna, remembering — the cake, the croissant. “May I order one of the seashell cakes and a croissant with almonds?” She pointed to her items in the glass.
“You see?” said Diallo, making an effort to turn and face her when she got into the car with her treasures.
“Oh, it was just like you said, Diallo!” she said, smiling widely. “Wonderful. Just wonderful.”
“All the whites like it!” he broke into a deep laugh.
Snowflakes were beginning to fall on the windshield. Anna had no trouble seeing the beauty, the majesty of this city when she was eating her favorite cake, which the server had called a madeleine. For the first time, as they crossed the bridge, she felt startled with awe, not dread, when gazing upon the skyline ahead. She particularly liked the tall white stone buildings. The black ones looked like vessels for evildoings. Skyscrapers, they called them. The icy front window of the car slightly obscured this vision, broken sunrays permitted glimpses of the approaching rows of tall worker housing that ran alongside the gray river. Anna closed her eyes, lulled by the sound of the wipers cleaning the front window.
She was in the countryside, at Vronsky’s house. There were flowers on the tables because they were preparing a party for Seryozha. And there he was, small again, with the long curls and red cheeks, his gray-blue eyes laughing. It was deep summer.
“Madame,” said a man’s voice again. Which servant was it? Anna opened her eyes and saw an African man. She looked around her and saw that she was in a large contraption, like a train car.
“We are here,” said Diallo. Anna sighed deeply, nodding at him. Her shoulders felt loose. All tension was gone.
“Thank you for taking me to that bakery,” she said, rising to leave the car. Diallo knew to wait for her. Anna knew he would use the time to phone his wife in a distant land, or his brother, or his cousin, and talk forever through that little piece of plastic that hung from his ear. She was envious that Diallo could talk to them, however far away they may be.
She was reluctant to leave the car, afraid to be alone, but she gathered herself and approached the pleasing white stone building with weathered copper framing a flat roof. She stepped daintily on the ice with the slick soles of her black leather lace up boots. A remnant of her Russian wardrobe, these high heel boots didn’t look the least out of place in New York.
Large banners decorated the walls of the museum, featuring photos of Abraham Lincoln and Czar Alexander II with spidery script behind their faces. Anna climbed the steps carefully to avoid falling. On the landing was an enormous glass door framed in black iron. There were no servants standing by to open it for Anna, and she thought she might have come on the wrong day. Perhaps the exhibit wasn’t open. She pulled on the long Iron handles to open the door but it didn’t budge. She saw only dim white lights in the back of the hall inside, and no people milling about. An arrow of regret passed through her mind. The pain smarted like a paper cut and was gone. Relief flooded her body, followed by a wave of fatigue, like a river of mud that flooded her mind as she climbed back to the sidewalk, hardly able to hold herself up long enough to reach the car. She collapsed inside, interrupting Diallo’s conversation in an African language.
“It’s closed,” she said, resting her head against the fur again.
“Closed? What a shame,” said Diallo.
“No, it’s not a shame. Let’s go home.”
Diallo started the car and she closed her eyes, hoping to return to Seryozha’s birthday party.
