The Shadow Waters

Tolstoy Attends the Autopsy of Anna Stepanova

"The whistle of the engine could be heard down the line,
and the movement of something heavy." -- Anna Karenina

It was winter.
The tracks at Yasenki station
lay like black veins in the snow.
Lev hurried, following the dark
footprints to the engine shed.
Inside, four men stood waiting,
pale and silent -- the policeman,
the doctor and his assistant,
the journalist. A bright lamp hung
above the table where she lay
covered in a white sheet
stained dark from beneath.

She was a man's lover,
unmarried, no claim to a home.
When the man -- Bibikov --
told her he no longer loved her,
that he would marry the governess,
she grabbed what was hers,
a few dresses, frail underclothes,
and wandered the frozen landscape.
For three days she was missing.
A porter was the next to see her,
standing near the stopped No. 7 train,
still clutching her bundle of clothes,
her face white. A goods train
rumbled on the other track,
its brakes squealing.
Then she was gone.

Lev opened his notebook
as the doctor withdrew the sheet.
Her head had been crushed,
brain matter frozen in her black hair.
Her right eye and cheek
were torn away. The other eye,
half open, gazing flatly at the lamp,
was an emerald green.
Lev's hand shook as he tried
to write the words, tried to describe
this carcass that was a woman.
Her midsection had been cleaved
so that only her bluish-gray
entrails connected her torso
to her full, womanly legs.

It would be more than a year
before Lev would attempt to resurrect
this woman. At first, she was ugly,
apathetic, dead in spirit. He disliked her
so much that he thought she should marry
the uncaring libertine who had ruined her.
But then he began to see her
in the women around him --
in his wife, his younger sister,
the wives of his friends --
their longing for passion
that had been dulled and dulled
to yellow teeth, luke warm tea,
and children sucking.

He noticed Anna's dark hair curled
on the slender, healthy neck
of the woman seated in front of him
at a play. He saw Anna's green eyes
in his old aunt now bound to her bed.
So he gave Anna a gift -- life.
He helped her escape. He helped her rise
from the divan to touch her flesh
against warmth. He offered her love,
cracked open her chest
to let her heart expand just once,
and God --
God took that poor woman's life away.

posted by the shadow waters @ 2:20 AM