Chapters (53)
- Cover
- Title Page
- An Explanation of What This Book Is About
- Part One: Anna’s Sergei and Anya’s City: St. Petersburg, Saturday, January 8, 1905
- 1. On the Heels of Clementine, the Anarchist
- 2. Claudia and Sergei
- 3. Clementine Defends Herself
- 4. To the Concert
- 5. The Tsar’s Letter
- 6. In the Theater
- 7. What Giorgi, the Karenins’ Coachman, Did
- 8. Intermission at the Concert
- 9. Near the Port
- 10. More Specifics about Sergei
- 11. Kapitonich, Hall Porter at the Karenin Palace
- 12. Claudia and Sergei at Table
- 13. Aleksandra and Volodin Go to the Haven
- 14. Our Moment of Greatness
- 15. With Father Gapon
- 16. Clementine, in Pursuit of the Night
- 17. In the Karenin Palace Kitchen
- 18. We’ll Give Our Lives!
- 19. The Karenins Take Dinner
- Part Two: Bloody Sunday: Sunday, January 9, 1905
- 20. Anya Karenina without Aleksandra
- 21. The Karenins’ Reply to the Tsar
- 22. Piotr
- 23. The Three Women
- 24. Claudia’s Impatience
- 25. Unexpected Guests at the Karenin Palace
- 26. What on Earth Was the Tsar Thinking?
- 27. Back in the Karenin Palace Kitchen
- 28. The Reverend’s Beard
- Part Three: Karenina’s Portrait: Three months later
- 29. Karenina’s Portrait
- 30. About Clementine
- 31. The Critics Examine the Portrait
- 32. Vladimir
- 33. The Reason for the Proposed Purchase
- 34. The Portrait Departs
- 35. Between the Dream and the Battleship Potemkin
- 36. Claudia’s Regrets
- 37. In Claudia’s Hands
- Part Four: The Book of Anna: No date or place
- 38. An Opium-Infused Fairy Tale: The Book of Anna by Anna Karenina
- Part Five: Finale: St. Petersburg, June 1905
- 39. After Reading
- 40. The Plot
- 41. The Boxes
- 42. Anya Karenina
- 43. The Wind
- Funder Acknowledgments
- The Publisher’s Circle of Coffee House Press
The order is so emphatic in tone that Piotr thinks—now he’s thinking sensibly—Why didn’t it occur to me? I’ll deliver the letter to one of the tsar’s other offices, it’s not as though I have to go to the ends of the earth. Piotr turns around and walks off in the opposite direction, he knows exactly who to give the letter to on a day like today, this is a matter for the office of special cases, it’s Sunday, after all. I’ll get the doorman to stamp it, then I’ll go see that old bore Priteshko, and I’ll have the rest of the day off. For just a fraction of a second, Piotr thinks he might not have time to get to mass, where his friends are, but he’ll find them somehow…. It doesn’t cross his mind that Claudia is waiting for him.
23. The Three Women
23. The Three Women
There are three Alexandras in our story. One of their names is spelled slightly differently: Aleksandra, Alexandra, and Alexandra. Aleksandra is the disorganized one, with the gorgeous hair, which is unusually messy today, because she hasn’t dressed in her own room. Then there’s Alexandra, or Sasha, Aleksandra’s friend, who’s Father Gapon’s lover, her hair so tightly knotted at the nape of her neck it’s impossible to tell if it’s thick or thin, or how long it is. And there’s Alexandra Kollontai, with her short, fluffy locks. All three Alexandras are dressed with strict propriety, their high-necked dresses covering their décolletage. But the quality of their dresses varies wildly; all they have in common is their style.
Alexandra Kollontai is thirty-three years old, the same as Christ. The other Alexandra with an x, pretty Sasha (the reverend’s live-in lover), and Aleksandra (Anya Karenina’s maid) are both sixteen. But even though they’re the same age, they don’t look like it. The reverend took Sasha from the orphanage when she was twelve; she became a woman in the company of Gapon, who is a force of nature. She’s matured from her neck to her knees, but the rest of her is still twelve.
A handful of protesters calls Kollontai “the Marxist revolutionary.” Another calls Aleksandra (who works for Karenina) “the sister of Vladimir, Father Gapon’s messenger.” No one calls Sasha anything, except Gapon, who is too busy shaking his fist.