Three Women in a Mirror (36 page)

With a smile, he gestured to Anne to stand next to him.

Braindor was astonished, then reassured, by the amiability he could detect in this normally cold man.

The archdeacon asked a few ordinary questions, to which Anne replied with simplicity. He was visibly enchanted to meet her; perhaps this stern man was even intoxicated with his own friendliness.

While Anne told him the story of her encounter with the wolf and the ferocious beast's indulgence toward her, the Grande Demoiselle delighted in the scene.
It's obvious
, she thought,
that Anne brings out the best in everyone, whether it is the wolf or the archdeacon. In her presence an individual leaves off all mediocrity, showing nothing but qualities.

The conversation turned to the subject of her poems. The archdeacon had read a dozen of them; he asked to hear some new ones.

Embarrassed, Braindor and the Grande Demoiselle apologized that they had not brought the latest ones, but Anne joyfully declared that she knew them by heart because it was in her heart that she had received them.

“Received?” asked the archdeacon. “Or conceived?”

Anne thought for a moment.

“I received the feelings. As for the words, I looked for them.”

“Are there no fitting words?”

“Never. When I reach the light that is deep within me, there are no words. Whenever I come back from that place, I hope to bring a ray of light, a flame. But the pebble I hold in my fingers is nothing like the light from which it came.”

The archdeacon seemed a bit annoyed.

“This light you speak of, is it God?”

“Yes.”

“So you are in direct communication with God? You can see God deep inside you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain that it is God?”

“God is just one word among others.”

A dismayed silence followed this assertion. The archdeacon shot the young girl a dark look. Braindor thought he was going to faint, and the Grande Demoiselle bit her lip.

Only Anne continued to shine with her innocent brilliance.

The archdeacon winced, then transformed his wince into a smile: henceforth his amiability was feigned.

“Can you explain better, my child?”

Although his reference to her as his child stemmed from a sudden rush of scorn, Anne perceived it as a proof of affection and she lit up. The Grande Demoiselle hastily interrupted, to prevent her from making yet another impertinent remark: “God is ineffable. Anne describes only the ineffable. While her feelings are always proper, sometimes the way she formulates them is wrong. Do not be angry with her, Monsignor. Unlike you, who are a doctor in theology, an eminent scholar of the texts, she knows nothing of the clever uses and resources of rhetoric.”

Anne lowered her eyes modestly.

“You are right. How foolish of me. I have no education.”

The archdeacon relaxed, flattered by the Grande Demoiselle, shaken by Anne's immediate humility.

“Of course . . . of course . . . ”

Calm returned. Braindor began to breathe normally again.

Anne added, “However, there are certain realities one can touch far better through the absence of thought than through thought itself.”

The three adults sitting around her could not believe their ears: there she went again with her provocative statements. She continued peacefully, “God is incommensurable, he goes beyond our words and notions. If someone thinks that language can suffice, it is because he has never felt or discovered very much. Such terrifying poverty, being able to express oneself perfectly . . . It means one has nothing inside, it reveals a soul that has not gone beyond its narrow limits. To delight in discourse means one is glad to repeat oneself. I hope I shall never be satisfied with my words or my ideas . . . ”

In the face of such a denial, the archdeacon resumed his attack: “Do you think it is normal that God should choose you?”

“I do not know what is normal.”

The priest became impatient: “Do you think it is legitimate for God to prefer you to me?”

“No.”

Anne frowned, thought, and tried to explain: “In truth, Monsignor, He speaks to you, but you do not hear Him.”

“What?”

The archdeacon, offended, let out such a shout that it echoed to the ceiling of the room. And yet Anne persisted: “Yes, I presume He addresses all men.”

The Grande Demoiselle and Braindor exchanged desperate looks. The archdeacon's dark eyes scorched Anne with reproach.

“It seems to me that you are forgetting I am not an ordinary mortal.”

“Vis-à-vis men?”

“Vis-à-vis God, my child. I am one of his ministers. Remember that I am an archdeacon.”

“Oh, that is of no importance.”

He swallowed painfully. Anne was smiling.

“Look at me, Monsignor, I am neither a priest nor a pope nor an archdeacon, yet God knows how to find me.”

The archdeacon leapt up out of his chair and thundered, “Enough! That's going too far!”

Then as if he had been struck by an arrow, his face twisted with pain, and he moaned, placing his hand on his stomach; he tried to breathe, and to banish the stabbing pain contracting his features.

Braindor and the Grande Demoiselle feared his heart might be failing him. More observant, Anne murmured, “You are bleeding, Monsignor.”

She pointed to three small drops of blood dripping onto the tiles beneath his feet, then to the brown spots that had begun to spread at the level of his stomach, slowly penetrating the cloth.

The archdeacon sat down.

“Why do you do this, Monsignor?”

She was referring to the cilice he was wearing, the chain studded with sharp points that he had wrapped around his waist. By getting suddenly to his feet, he had driven the metal studs into his skin and cut his stomach.

“I am carrying my cross, my child,” he replied wearily. “I am imitating our Lord who died pierced by nails.”

“Jesus did not suffer voluntarily. He was subjected to crucifixion. It would be better to imitate him in his goodness and charity than in the agony he did not choose, no?”

Anne was very proud that she had obeyed Braindor's order, and she had recently read the Gospels. As for the monk and the Grande Demoiselle, they were now trembling with fear.

Although he was absorbed by his struggle against the searing pain, the archdeacon managed to utter a few muffled words: “Be quiet, foolish girl. I am purifying my faith. There is no honest piety without mortification.”

Anne did not hear him say “foolish.”

“Why mortify yourself before dying? Why eat away at your body?”

“The spirit cannot triumph unless the flesh is humiliated.”

“How absurd! Bleeding does not make one better. The torment of having sinned suffices. Must one mutilate oneself for God? Is He so cruel? Perverse? When I meet with God, I feel just the opposite. He fills me with joy, He says to me—”

“That's enough.”

His order snapped, stinging like a whip.

The Grande Demoiselle rushed over to Anne, grabbed her hand, mumbled a request for forgiveness, and curtseyed ostentatiously to the Monsignor—as did Braindor—and they left the priest, pale and breathless, trying to keep his dignity as he writhed in pain on his seat.

From the threshold, however, Anne could not help but pause and call out to the prelate in a friendly tone: “If you want my opinion, Monsignor, the order to torment yourself does not come from God, it comes from you.”

It was all the Grande Demoiselle could do not to slap Anne, and they left the palace almost at a run.

Once they were in the street, the Grande Demoiselle turned to look at Anne, her face yellow with rage.

“Why were you so insolent?”

“Insolent? I spoke to him the way I speak to both you and Braindor. While you may understand me, he does not.”

The Grande Demoiselle and Braindor gave each other a quick look: it was true what Anne was saying, they had accustomed her to expressing herself freely. Neither one of them tended to be dogmatic, and they noticed the quality of her feelings, rather than the shocking or even heretical harshness of her statements.

“We left just in time,” concluded Braindor.

“Don't be naïve, Braindor. Our bodies left, our words have stayed behind. The archdeacon has legitimate reasons to be shocked: Anne has offended him.”

“Me?” cried Anne.

“You quarreled with him about his mortification, something he is so proud of.”

“Oh, I am glad that you agree with me: he is suffering for himself, not for God. It is pride, even vanity.”

Braindor and the Grande Demoiselle sighed: it had become impossible to make Anne listen to reason, or rather to make her obey caution. They preferred to cease their petty quarreling.

With the help of the monk, the Grande Demoiselle climbed on the ash-colored donkey, then the singular trio of an old lady, a scrawny giant, and a ravishing young woman made its way through Bruges. They went home without saying a word.

Once they reached the béguinage, each one silently slipped away.

Eager to return to caring for her cousin, Anne went back to her house.

No sooner did she open the door than she noticed a strange light clouding the room.

She looked up, puzzled.

Above her floated Ida's body: she had hanged herself.

Margaret,
Your reply took a very long time to reach me, but it would have been better still for the post office to have lost it altogether.

I was shocked.

Not only did you fail to understand anything I had explained to you, but you seem to think you are allowed to go back over my story, and fill it with errors.

You are no longer worthy of my trust—if you ever have been worthy of it. While for years I believed you were helping me out of love, now I wonder if you were not merely accentuating my difficulties.

It hardly matters. This is the last message I will ever send to you.

In any case, I am leaving Vienna, Franz and I are separating, I am breaking off with Calgari. My life will begin again elsewhere. You were the only element from my past that I would have taken with me into my new life. Your venom has driven me to give up on that idea.

Farewell, look after yourself.

 

Hanna

Black cars turned into the drive at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.
They went through a majestic gate, worthy of the noblest château.

Who could imagine there was a cemetery behind the fence? Death, in this place, looked neither serious nor moving. There was no going into a deep hole; because of the sloping ground, it was at the end of an upward climb.

To be sure, it was not merely a spiritual climb, but also a social climb, because rumor had it that the cost of admission was over one million dollars to rest in the company of such prestigious names as Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, Bette Davis, Tex Avery, Michael Jackson, and Elizabeth Taylor.

“Whatever, it's worth it,” exclaimed Johanna, sticking her face against the smoked glass window of the limousine.

The procession drove through immense lawns of astringent green, interrupted now and again by groups of tall trees. Statues and fountains were there to remind one that this was no wilderness but a well-tended park. Here and there were marble mausoleums, just as pretentious as in ordinary cemeteries; most of the graves, however, were mere slabs hidden beneath the thick grass.

“This place is a dream! Look, you can see all the major studios from here—Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers.”

“Fabulous, that way the corpses will feel like they're still at work!”

Johanna turned to Anny, who was curled up in the back of the car; she hesitated to reply, then merely shrugged her shoulders. The young woman gave her a furious glance.

“Save up, Johanna, and you can buy a plot. If you get a good deal, they might even run a phone line into the tomb.”

“You're turning nasty, Anny.”

“Because I'm in pain.”

Of all the guests who had come to pay their last respects to Vuitton Bag, Anny was surely the only one who was aware that this was a funeral and not a society event.

When the line of cars came to a stop, Anny saw a cluster of workers armed with shovels, picks, and garden shears busily tending the acres of the estate. She could still hear Vuitton Bag's nasal voice, the way she had confessed to her one day, “My duckling, I am such a snob that I bought myself a plot at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park. It took all my savings but I didn't hesitate. You see, I never had the means to pay for a gardener when I was alive; so now I'll have a full crew for eternity. Clever move, don't you think?”

Anny had replied that above all one must fulfill one's desires. Vuitton Bag had corrected her: “And throw out the cliché, my sparrow, that says, ‘You can't take it with you.' I've been hearing that depressing verdict for eighty years, and I've set out to prove the contrary: I will take my money with me to the grave because once I've paid for it, I'll have nothing left.”

They had laughed. Fully aware that she had a reputation as a miser—she thought stinginess was a virtue—Vuitton Bag had encouraged, even fed the rumor.

“The thing is, muffin, I will know my place, you can be sure of that. I'm just a supporting role, I do not want to alienate my colleagues in the cemetery. Movie stars can still be conceited. So I negotiated a decent, discreet spot. Then I stipulated in my will that I must arrive at my own funeral half an hour early.”

“Pardon?”

“Supporting role, doll, supporting role! I've always been so worried they might denounce my contract that all through life I've always shown up everywhere half an hour early.”

The guests got out of their cars and gathered around the grave where, indeed, Vuitton Bag's coffin had been holding court for the last half an hour.

The sun was at its zenith, crushing the scene. The birds were deaf to the sorrow of men and played tag among the trees.