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 Forest Girl shuts the door, locking it behind her, and runs to wash her hands. No matter how she soaps, scrubs, and rinses her fingers, she can’t get rid of the gold color. Her face has changed, too: the brightness of the room and the fact that she now knows there’s something on the other side of the purple door fill her heart with deep regret. She wants to go back and dance with the prince despite the fact that if she does, everything will turn to gold, just like it did for Midas.
That same afternoon, the Illuminata returns to the palace. She notices the girl’s face has changed.
“Did you open the door I told you not to?”
The Forest Girl says she didn’t. (“No, ma’am, I don’t know how to lie.”)
“Are you certain you didn’t turn the lock I specifically told you not to?”
The Forest Girl shakes her head again.
The Illuminata asks a third time, and once more the Forest Girl lies to her, denying it vehemently. The Illuminata sees her golden fingers.
“You’re lying!”
The Forest Girl falls into a deep slumber, and when she awakens, she’s back in the forest. She would scream, but she’s lost her voice. She looks for a path, some way out, back to the Illuminata’s palace, or the prince’s, or the woodsman’s cottage, but the forest seems endless. Her feet sink into the mud. She loses her slippers.
A few days pass; her clothes and her body are no longer what they were when she lived in luxury, wanting for nothing. Her hair is tangled. Her stockings are loose. She has given up trying to find a way out. She eats herbs, berries, mushrooms, and roots. Sitting against the trunk of a large tree, she feels the desire to sing, but no sound comes out of her mouth.
Twelve horses pass by, carrying eleven knights and their king. The Forest Girl doesn’t get up; she thinks she’s dreaming. The king falls in love with her at first sight; he’s never seen anyone so beautiful. He asks her name but she can’t answer.
“Who are you? Where are you from? What are you doing here?”
The Forest Girl can’t say a single word. The fact that she’s mute makes the king like her even more. Silence is golden. The Forest Girl shows him her golden finger. It doesn’t bother the king, so he takes her with him. When he returns to his kingdom, he announces that he’s going to marry her. The queen mother and his sisters try to dissuade him, but the king stands firm.