The news of this birth to the fertile mother and the joyous ambassador was proclaimed throughout the city. Women from all the good families brought gifts for the ambassador’s wife and her daughter, and some even called on them at the palace, ignoring the postpartum quarantine. The first few days of Claudia’s life were one running celebration. All the city’s musicians serenaded them at the palace gates (especially Teresa, who had the voice of an angel). Men stopped by to join in this endless party with His Excellency the Russian Ambassador, who was celebrating the arrival of his “Sevillian daughter” with vodka. It was said that, twenty hours after she gave birth, the ambassadress tried to dance a Sevillana—“tried,” because she danced quite poorly, but she danced the whole thing from beginning to end. That’s how Claudia came into the world: the sunny orchard, the fountain, and the lemon tree, all bathed in the light of the Sevillian sky.

Sergei was born in the Karenin Palace, in St. Petersburg, in splendid isolation, as if there were something shameful about arriving in this world. We don’t know any of the details. It’s a fact that both Anna’s births were far from simple and painless. The second time, she developed a fever, she was on her deathbed (or so it’s written), and if there was a silver lining, it was that her impending funeral brought together people who had stopped speaking to each other.

In her first birth—Sergei’s—she didn’t develop a fever, yet pain and anxiety dominated the whole experience. It’s possible the delivery took place at midnight, that it wasn’t snowing, raining, or windy. But the air was frigid. Neither grandmother was present; Anna’s only company, apart from the doctor, was Marya Efimovna, an older woman who had just started working for Anna, hired to look after her newborn son. His mother’s brother didn’t appear in the palace for more than forty days, and there wasn’t a single visitor from his father’s side of the family.

3. Clementine Defends Herself

3. Clementine Defends Herself

Demoralized by the botched detonation of her bomb, hugging her (considerably lighter) faux babe, Clementine walks along, observing what’s happening in the streets. She notes the massive military preparations that have been undertaken without any fanfare whatsoever, with the utmost discretion.

She decides to stick with the original plan and return to Nevsky Prospekt. She calms down. “It’s doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, there will be others…. Socialism and anarchy! The government is our enemy!” Clementine stops at the seamstresses’ entrance to the sweatshop behind the clothing store on Nevsky Prospekt. The door is two steps down from street level. She reaches for the doorframe, feeling along the top ledge with her fingers for the picklock. She unlocks the door and returns the pick to its hiding place.