Three Women in a Mirror (35 page)

Anny wandered along on Ethan's arm.

The nature around her was like a revelation. Could the light really be so bright? And could you stare at the sky for this long? It was just a blue screen where nothing was happening. But what a blue! Like a vibration deep in the azure light . . .

Dazzled by the horizon, she had not yet looked down to admire the flowers and bushes.

Never mind, she would do that tomorrow.

Ethan was smiling happily.

Suddenly, Anny cried out, “Oh, something is itching me!”

She put her hand under her sweater and unplugged the microphone.

“Some insect jumped on my stomach, what about you?” she said, turning to Ethan.

Imitating a leaping horsefly, she slapped her hand against Ethan's side, grabbed the transmitter, and turned the relay switch.

“There, now we can talk in peace. Tell each other what we want; they can't hear us anymore.”

“Are you sure?”

“Twelve years in this profession, Ethan, is time enough to learn. When I was starting out, the sound men killed themselves laughing whenever they heard me go to the bathroom.”

She gave him an affectionate look. Taking her time to be sure of his attention, she murmured, “Thank you.”

Ethan blushed. She laughed.

“Don't blush. Blondes should never blush: you look like you've got sunburn.”

She took a few steps forward then asked, smoothly, “Why are you doing this?”

“It's my job. I get paid.”

“Well, you weren't being paid, those weeks before, to help me and look for me everywhere.”

“I . . . I felt that . . . you needed help.”

“Is it pity?”

He stopped, thought, and mumbled, “Maybe. In any case, it's the strongest, most obsessive pity I've ever felt in my whole life.”

Anny realized that this was a declaration. She answered, tactfully, “I feel pity for you, too, Ethan. I would like to protect you.”

They fell silent. They had exchanged their secret. They had bonded.

They walked for half an hour, not saying a word, overcome by a new sense of fulfillment.

When they got back to the clinic, a squadron of technicians swarmed around them, telling them they had failed to receive their conversation; all right, it wasn't the end of the world, they could put music over the images.

“A very romantic thing,” specified the director, “too romantic in fact. It's incredible the lovey-dovey atmosphere it gave your stroll. Well, never mind . . . It was better than silence, or bird calls, or the freeway in the distance.”

Anny and Ethan went back to the room.

Anny lay down. Ethan devoured her with his eyes, intensely.

Not saying a word, he went to get some terry cloth towels from the bathroom; unexpectedly nimble, he tossed a towel onto each of the five cameras, to block the lenses.

The technicians in the control room found themselves staring at blank screens.

Anny smiled.

Ethan turned the latch in the door lock.

Then he came and lay down next to her and calmly, imperceptibly, as if the moments of anticipation were as precious as the moments of embrace, he put his lips against hers.

 

It was gentle.

Slowness and silence.

Fever and delicacy.

As they explored each other's bodies, at no time did they take their eyes off each other.

Anny felt as if she were making love for the first time. Before, she had indulged in sex; now she was offering gestures of affection to a man whom she respected and who responded, with fervor and astonishment.

They undressed each other with a religious awe, as if they were searching for the Grail. The treasure was not to be found in their unclothed bodies, but in the souls they laid bare to each other. Anny had never been so moved by a man's skin, underarms, belly. As for Ethan, he trembled each time he kissed some new part of Anny's body.

They refrained from reaching orgasm as long as possible, sensing that it would not just be a summit, but also an ending.

It happened after two hours.

But they stayed with their arms around each other, inhabited by a rare harmony.

Still saying nothing, Ethan helped Anny to get dressed, then he put on his clothes, tidied the bed and removed the towels that had been hiding the cameras.

Anny had fallen asleep.

He unlocked the door, and went out on tiptoe.

 

The moment Ethan left the room and reentered the real world, he was seized brutally by the shoulders and led to the director's office.

Pacing back and forth in the room were the director of the program and the producer, sharing professor Sinead's fury.

“You bastard, who do you think you are?”

“Where do you think you are?”

“You are employed in this clinic as a nurse. Not to—”

“To—”

Not one of the three men managed to find a name for the censored sequence.

Ethan replied, calmly, “Anny is my friend.”

Dr. Sinead decided that it was pointless arguing and informed him of his immediate dismissal.

“Anny won't go along with that,” stammered Ethan, pale.

“Miss Anny Lee is not in charge of this clinic, to the best of my knowledge.”

“She will refuse to stay here without me.”

“She has signed a contract.”

“She will denounce it.”

“She would have to be able to do so. With tranquilizers we can get her to see reason.”

Ethan rebelled: “Throw me out if you wish, we'll leave together.”

Dr. Sinead sat up in his chair, disgusted. Anger was revitalizing the octogenarian.

“You're fired! The security guards won't let you get near her. And if you insist, the police will step in. Give me back your keys and your badges. Goodbye.”

Ethan understood that he could not fight his way back. Full of a cold rage, he tossed his keys onto the desk and went out.

 

At the end of the day, at seven o'clock, Anny was given an extra dose of drugs.

A wise precaution: as soon as she woke up, she asked for Ethan.

Thirty seconds later, after drinking a glass of water seasoned with a sedative, she drifted off again.

 

At midnight, while the clinic was sleeping, the sirens went off, piercing the darkness with their hyena's cries.

The security guards rushed to the spot of the break-in as indicated by the computer.

When they reached the pharmacy, they found the door broken, the cupboards opened, and the shelves stripped bare.

“There!” shouted a guard.

A shadow escaped, jumping out the window.

They rushed over, but no one dared to jump from the second floor.

The man was running away, a load on his back.

The police sirens wailed. Three cars burst on the scene and blocked the escape route.

Surrounded, the man stopped, hesitating.

The policemen leapt out, guns in their hands.

“Surrender!”

And so Ethan, dropping his bag of medicine, raised his hands in the air.

The Grande Demoiselle is waiting for us. Anne, are you ready?”
Outside the door of the tiny house Braindor was tapping his foot.

Inside, Anne was tending to her cousin, whom she had brought to live with her.

Almost miraculously, Ida had survived the flames and triumphed over the fevers, helped by the doctor's unguents and Anne's constant care. However, she would never again be the young woman with regular features she had once been. The doctor had been obliged to remove her eye, and her right eyelid was closed over the gaping hole, the flesh purulent and inflamed; her face was distorted, its colors unnatural—white, yellow-red, brown—and not a single feature, in fact, was intact or where it should be. In places her cheeks had been shrunk by the burns, in others were swollen with blisters, everywhere was scarred, as if her skin were made of pieces that a clumsy child might have glued at random to her bones. Her face was constantly affected by a look of boorish nastiness, a mask rather than an expression, for her muscles did not react to either emotion or thought.

While Braindor waited impatiently, Anne finished applying vinegar to the wounds to disinfect them. Although she used it delicately, with the help of a fine piece of clean cloth, putting faint pressure on the lips of each scar, Ida cried out, rebelled, insulted her. Anne went on imperturbably carrying out her task.

“You like it, eh, seeing me like this, don't you?”

Although Ida ranted and raved from morning to night, Anne refuse to accept that this anger had become the crux of her character, and she felt sure it would be temporary.

To soothe her skin and prevent it from drying out, she then applied rosewater.

“There we are . . . ”

“There we are what, stupid dolt? Do you think you are healing me with your remedies? You should have let me die.”

With every sentence, Ida reached the summit of bad faith: on the one hand, she criticized the effectiveness of her cousin's care, on the other she reproached her for letting her live. Moreover, she overlooked the rage with which she herself had struggled against the misfortunes that should have destroyed her.

“I am glad that you are better,” murmured Anne.

“Better is not good,” sighed Ida, looking away.

Ida suffered not only in her body, but also in her heart: she had never liked Anne. Yet her cousin continued to show her love for her. As a result, Ida acted more and more aggressively with each passing day, overstepping every limit; ranting, raving, blaspheming, defecating or urinating in front of her, pulling off her bandages, preventing her cousin from sleeping, deploying every trick she could to undermine her tenderness. Would her absurd affection withstand so much fury, ingratitude, and humiliation? Ida did not know what response she had hoped for. Indisputably, she would have preferred to accept this boundless attachment and live with it—but if she did, she would have felt guilty at not returning a single crumb. More often than not she saw it as a pose, a forced attitude, because her cousin was trying to act like a saint. If one day Ida could manage to unveil the falseness of Anne's abnegation, she would surely feel better because then she would no longer owe anything to her enemy; she would be rid of the specter of her goodness, as well, a virtue in which she did not believe, since she herself was incapable of being good.

“You must rest. Do not go out.”

“And why should I not go out?”

“You are not yet able to bear it.”

Ida shrugged her shoulders.

“You're acting the doctor now?”

“Trust me, please.”

Anne did not want to say anything more about it: the very idea that Ida might leave the walls of the béguinage made her tremble with anxiety because, for the time being, Ida knew she was disfigured but had not yet seen her transformed face other than with her fingers. To be sure, she had tried now and again to see it in a glass of water or a puddle; however, Anne was watching her, and had noticed that she did not insist, out of caution, dreading she would see an image that would devastate her. Little by little, at her own rhythm, she would get used to reality . . . Here among the beguines, these gentle women who were aware of the tragedy, she would encounter none of the horrified or excessively compassionate expressions that might reveal the terrible effect she had on people. However, if she were to venture into the streets of Bruges . . .

“Anne, we must delay no longer.”

Outside, Braindor was getting impatient.

“The archdeacon will be angry if we make him wait.”

“I'm coming!”

Anne hastily adjusted her headdress.

Ida could not keep from laughing: “Oh yes, today is the day for the pope to grant an audience to the saint.”

Anne paid no attention to her mockery, but blew her a kiss and left the house.

When they were on the humpback bridge leading away from the béguinage, Braindor turned to Anne and asked, “Do you feel ready for your interview?”

In reality, he was asking himself the question; he was anxiously questioning the quality of his instruction, as he worried about the prelate's reaction to the naïve statements Anne might make. As he suspected the archdeacon was not a particularly kindly man, he was very much afraid that he might overlook her qualities.

She replied, “Me? I am what I am, there is nothing I can change. Why should I be afraid?”

Braindor's fear immediately crystallized in his mind: perhaps it was the archdeacon who was not ready to meet Anne.

At the end of the bridge they met the Grande Demoiselle, who waited for them seated on the gray mule that was ordinarily used to deliver bundles of wool to the béguinage.

“Good morning, Anne. How is your cousin?”

Anne and Braindor ambled alongside her through the streets to the pleasant rhythm of the donkey's hooves; it relieved the Grande Demoiselle of a long walk her worn hips could no longer bear. The young woman shared her concern regarding Ida: her cousin's body, although it was partly destroyed, seemed to be more valiant than her soul.

“Does she pray very much? Does she often go to Mass?”

Anne blushed; she knew no one as indifferent to ritual as Ida.

The Grande Demoiselle insisted: “If she shows herself to be a good Christian, we might be able to intercede with an appropriate convent.”

Anne shuddered. Ida, a nun? That would be impossible, she would turn the community into a living hell, if not a brothel. For the time being she could not imagine parting from Ida; she must watch over her, like milk on the fire.

“Let us help her through the ordeal of convalescence; when she is better, we will see,” concluded the Grande Demoiselle.

They reached the archdeacon's residence.

In the reception room, dark and sober, from which his predecessor's luxurious d'Aubusson tapestries had been removed, the prelate watched affably as they drew near. On seeing Anne he exclaimed, “Well, here is this marvel I have been hearing about for months! Come closer, my child.”