Three Women in a Mirror (34 page)

During this session, the atmosphere was stifling. After I asked him to open the window, then give me something to drink—all in keeping with Aunt Vivi's instructions—I waved my handkerchief above my chest, miming an imminent fainting fit. As he paid no attention, I forgot Vivi's directives and suddenly cried out, “Why so much hypocrisy?”

Calgari gave a start.

“Yes, why can't we behave simply?”

In spite of my harsh tone, he answered peaceably, “What do you wish to imply, Hanna?”

“Imply? Nothing. What I wish to do . . . ”

“Do what?”

I moaned.

“You know very well.”

“I will only know when you tell me.”

“Ordinarily, it is the man who takes the initiative!”

Why was my tone so full of reproach? Although I was so eager to seduce him, I was merely snarling at him. Instead of enchanting, I scolded. Oh, Aunt Vivi, why didn't I listen to your judicious advice?

I took myself in hand, and continued more affably, with as much control as I could muster, although my voice trembled still with rage: “Our relationship has evolved since the beginning of the treatment. Stop looking on me as a patient. I have been cured.”

His face lit up.

“Really? Is that your impression?”

I smiled, trying to bat my eyelashes, as I had so often seen Aunt Vivi do. But when she did it, it was as if a butterfly were about to take flight, whereas my eyelids tensed up as if I were trying to banish a piece of dust from my cornea.

“I will no longer look on you as a doctor. I will see you only as a man.”

He raised an eyebrow.

Afraid I might not have been clear enough, I threw all Aunt Vivi's proscriptions to the wind and blurted, “ I love you.”

He sighed, annoyed.

I insisted: “Did you hear me? I love you. And you love me.”

He got to his feet, pale.

“Hanna, you are on the wrong track.”

I was pleased I had managed to wrench him from his Dr. Know-It-All attitude.

“So you are married?” I exclaimed. “What does it matter? So am I. We were doomed before we even met to make mistakes.”

He came briskly toward me.

“Hanna, you may think you are in love with me but you are not. This is an effect of the psychoanalytic treatment: it is called transference. You are transferring onto me an attachment that is not meant for me.”

Then he described some woolly minded theory according to which it was normal for me to idolize him; I would have reached the same stage with any other therapist.

“What? With Freud?”

“Undoubtedly. Very quickly.”

“Dear Lord, have you seen what he looks like! Well, your attitude is no longer one of modesty, it's simple blindness. You, Dr. Calgari, are handsome.”

“I am not a doctor!”

“You are handsome.”

“Nor am I handsome. You think I am handsome because at the moment you need to think I am.”

“You're wrong! I have thought you were handsome from the moment I saw you.”

“You are rewriting your memories.”

“No, I have the proof of it: I wrote as much to Gretchen. And do you think I am beautiful?”

“That is not for me to say.”

“Why not? Are you made of wood? Do you not belong to the human race?”

Once again I lost all control and began to shout abuse at him. It was as if I were angry with him for being handsome, intelligent, sensitive, and charming.

“You are very beautiful, Hanna, but I must—”

I did not let him finish, I rushed up to him and placed my lips on his.

Oh, Gretchen, the power of that kiss! It felt as if my body were opening beneath his tongue, as if I were about to absorb him totally, so that he would remain deep within me. This had never happened to me before. With Franz, a kiss is a superficial caress. But now . . .

Calgari held me in his powerful arms, I responded to his embrace, and we turned toward the couch. Now he began to show even more vigor, so much so that I pulled my mouth away to cry, “Gently . . . ”

“Let go of me, for God's sake!”

That is when I understood that he was not embracing me, but struggling against me; what I had taken for wild affection was merely resistance.

Suddenly the image appeared to me: I was in the process of violating a man.

Oh, Gretchen, I was seized with shame. I stood up, took my belongings, and left at a run without turning around. As I crossed the threshold I remembered that I had not paid for my session. I did not have the courage to go back. To pay a man whom I had attacked . . .

The horror did not end with that episode.

My face crimson, my heart beating faster than a galloping horse's, I climbed into a carriage. I realized that I could not go home in that state, so I gave Vivi's address.

Alas, when I presented myself at her residence, the butler told me she was not there; I remembered that that afternoon she had gone to see her lover from the cavalry. It was as if someone had slapped me. What, that fifty-year-old woman was lying in the arms of her admirer, whereas I, who am only twenty-three, had just been rejected by a man of forty-five!

I took another carriage and, without thinking, gave the name of the café where Vivi and I like to mix with the riffraff.

No sooner had I gone through the revolving door and begun to walk through the clouds of smoke than I saw a customer look up from his newspaper.

It was the dark-haired student who had often sent urgent messages to the table I shared with Vivi.

What was happening, was this me? Was it another woman? I stood before him and said, “This is our time, or never.”

He stood up, grabbed me away from the waiter, who wanted to lead me to my usual table, took my shoulder, and without another word, we left the café together.

Is there any point me telling you the rest, dear Gretchen? The sordid servants' stairs. The garret room. The bed covered with books. The sheets without lace. The uncomfortable cushions. Our bodies discovering each other. I did not know his name, nor did he know mine. Perhaps he was a simpleton? Perhaps he found me unbearable? We were animals.

Do you accuse me, dear Gretchen?

You probably ought to . . . my act was revenge. Revenge against Calgari. Revenge against Franz. In that respect, my escapade was fairly predictable.

But what was unexpected, was what I felt . . .

I have known ecstasy, Gretchen. In his arms, I finally attained what caresses sometimes promise. There is an ugly name for it, orgasm; and yes, the thing itself is so beautiful. Oh, it is far more than a “dazzling moment”; three dazzling hours. My body was cut up in pieces, multiplying the pleasure. What a lover! I dissolved with pleasure from his caresses, his sex; I felt as if I were no longer myself but several women, nature itself, the cosmos. I was visited by the strength of the world.

When night fell, the stars came out through the dusty blinds. I felt as scattered as those stars.

And calm.

And happy.

 

Your Hanna

 

P.S. Rest assured, after that I went home. I made up some lie for Franz, which he swallowed whole. Ever since this episode I have been displaying great kindness toward him. ‘It's remorse,' as Aunt Vivi would say. Pity, more like it.

Anny, do you think you can lie to protect your vice?”
“Of course.”
“Do you choose your friends on the basis of the support they can lend to your bad habits?”

“Naturally.”

“Would you steal to meet your needs?”

“I already have, on more than one occasion.”

“And were you ashamed?”

“Always.”

“And your shame didn't stop you?”

Anny thought.

“There's something pretty about shame, like the frame of a painting: it enhances the vice.”

“You're that cynical, really?”

“Cynicism is the railing you cling to in the event of global disaster.”

“You have an answer for everything!”

“No, just to questions of no interest.”

Dr. Sinead paused. Anny was resisting him more than he had anticipated. He wondered what the Web surfers who were following her treatment live (in fact there was a two-minute lapse) would think of this interrogation: wouldn't they side with Anny yet again? To be sure, the producers were already delighted that the irreverent Anny was spicing up the program with her cut-and-dried replies—excellent for the show—but Dr. Sinead, who was interested in selling the Linden Clinic and its rehabilitation programs, sensed he might be making the wrong impression.

He looked at her and thought he could see a gleam of amusement in her eyes. How could she be in such a situation and still laugh?

“Don't you take anything seriously, Anny?”

“I do. My acting.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When I'm acting, I am serious.”

“But otherwise you don't take yourself seriously?”

“That's what I just said: I only take myself seriously when I forget about myself.”

What an odd girl
, thought Sinead,
her words are those of an old woman and her feelings those of a child. If you listen to her, you hear a blasé, ironical spiel, which seems to betray a sort of vital weariness; if you observe her, you notice a vibrant receptivity, an intense heart, an emotional versatility where laughter, in the space of a second, can follow tears.

After the set formulas, he took his leave. He now knew how to exit the stage properly: since he knew that a camera was waiting in the corridor, he retained his mask until he was off camera.

Ethan took his place.

Anny gave a sigh of relief. Not just because of Ethan. At the stroke of noon, the cameras interrupted their spying for two minutes, when it was time for her to take a whole slew of medicines.

The pills gave rhythm to her life. Pills to fight addiction. Pills to attenuate the side effects of the first set of pills. Pills to fall asleep. Pills to wake up. Pills for concentration. Pills to relax. Pills to complement her food. Pills to cut her appetite.

Ethan juggled like a virtuoso with the rainbow of tablets and gelcaps, to which he added injections.

Anny had noticed that Ethan, when he was administering her treatment, did not let his work turn into a routine, but raised the ritual to the level of a sacred gesture. When he gave her a tablet, he knew he was dispensing a cure, and he behaved like a consoling angel, a purveyor of happiness. Jesus placing his hand on the brow of the sick in order to produce a miracle must have looked very much like Ethan at this moment.

During these short breaks where no one could hear them, Anny and Ethan told each other their life stories. Anny learned that Ethan was a reformed addict; he had had many relapses before giving up alcohol and various substances. Now that he felt clean he wanted to help others who were adrift, and that is why he had gone for a nurse's diploma and obtained a position in this advanced unit.

Now she was better able to understand the emotion that came over her whenever she saw him: Ethan was both solid and fragile, and his strength was the result of a conquest; the calm manner he was displaying today was a victory over yesterday's distress.

Unlike Sinead, Johanna, and most of the people in Anny's entourage, Ethan had known the abyss. He was not calling forth from some shore where he lived with tranquil assurance, but from the very riverbank he had fallen from, and which, only after a terrible ordeal, he had managed to scale once again.

The red camera eyes winked back on.

“Off we go! Time for gymnastics!”

Anny grumbled.

She hated this time of day. As much as she liked to dance, run, and drive fast, having to move and count her movements was a complete bore.

The exercise class was led by Debbie, a former synchronized swimming champion, and it seemed more medical than enjoyable. At every moment, with an intolerable display of energy, Debbie explained to her students the purpose of the exercise: to mobilize your muscles, and call on your tendons. This session often went into a practical study of anatomy, and Anny felt she'd been skinned alive under her tracksuit. When Debbie came up to her to correct her posture, it was as if she were being dissected. Moreover, there was no pleasure to be found in this temple of fitness: effort was the only way you could address your body.

Once the class was over, she took a long shower. The management of the clinic had agreed to remove the cameras from the collective changing room.

She went back to her room with Ethan by her side. The nurse had become indispensable. Because he believed in the treatment he was giving her, she no longer felt wary. However, she had noticed a few disturbing details.

One day, during their two minutes off camera, she discovered some marks in the hollow of his arm.

“Are you injecting yourself, Ethan?”

“Yes, but it's medication.”

“Hmm . . . ”

“Against drugs.”

“Basically, you're shooting up so you won't shoot up.”

“Anny . . . ”

“Or you're taking drugs so you won't take drugs.”

Ethan was about to give her an explanation when the cameras came back on.

The next day she found him strangely calm, almost absent.

“Ethan, don't you feel well?”

“Yes. The problem is that I feel too well. I must have overdone it.”

“Overdone what?”

“A psychoactive drug I'm taking.”

His confession left Anny feeling puzzled: on the one hand, it worried her because it implied they would never be able to do without chemical substances; on the other hand, it showed her that getting better didn't necessarily mean becoming perfect, but that there were things to look forward to.

That afternoon, after a nap, Anny was allowed out for her first walk through the grounds. Naturally she demanded that Ethan escort her.

The sound engineers equipped them with clip-on microphones and attached transmitters to their belts. Cameras were set up all over the estate, since they had decided to do a majority of long shots, which would make the most of the landscape.