Three Women in a Mirror (41 page)

“You know, Ethan, when you've got the looks of a so-called ‘pretty girl,' you're doomed to play either airheads or whores. The average-looking girls are lucky because they get the psychological roles. And the ugly ones are really spoiled: they get cast as meanies, they get extravagant clothes and the best lines.”

She noticed something troubling in Ethan's attitude. Whenever their conversation touched on the future, Ethan seemed anxious, a drop of sweat pearling on his forehead. The moment he was more than six feet from her, and the television started spouting its litany of bad news, she noticed how Ethan struggled with his emotions, trying to keep from breaking down.

He's so incredibly sensitive
, thought Anny.
He's worse than I am.

She should have followed her argument through to the end.

 

One morning as she was putting away some bottles of lotion, she knocked over Ethan's toiletry bag. Bottles of medicine rolled out onto the floor: analgesics, tranquilizers, sleeping tablets, energy boosters. This was why Ethan went to wash his hands so often.

What should she do?

She hid her discovery all morning long, then tried to bring it up that afternoon during their outing.

“Ethan, what do you think we are?”

“Animals. Our life is organic. I don't believe in the existence of a soul. We're just organized matter. That's what I mean by ‘animal.'”

“Do you know any animals that have vices? Animals that drink or take drugs? Or even neurotic ones?”

“No.”

“Then we're not animals.”

“Yes we are. We are anxious animals.”

“Why? Because we have a soul?”

“No. Because chemically we are not in balance.”

“You think it's all chemistry, do you?”

“That's what we are. When you're afraid, it's chemistry. When you stop being afraid, that's chemistry, too.”

“And when I look at you and I feel happy?”

“That's chemistry. We are two compatible chemical formulas.”

“How romantic!”

“Romanticism is the product of balanced molecules.”

Anny did not insist. She suspected that if she wanted to make Ethan's detox any easier, she would have to detox his brain to begin with. He merely shared the ideas of his century, as a pure materialist. The life of the mind was reduced to physico-chemical components. The minute an extraneous phenomenon affected him—anxiety, an unanswered question, an unexpected emotion—his reaction was to take a pill. If he had worked in a psychiatric unit, it was precisely so he could medicalize his existence.

Staying calm and patient, Anny swore she would help him. Being responsible for someone else would make her responsible for herself. Compassion was giving her such strength! And anyway, wasn't it the word ‘pity' that had founded their relation all those months ago? They thought it was funny, they would rather whisper “I pity you” than “I love you”: it seemed to express an urgent feeling, stronger, deeper.

They ended their walk as on every day with their arms around each other's waist. The seagulls flew around them, like bridesmaids in their white gowns.

Back at the house, Anny made some tea and picked up her thirtieth screenplay. If a producer wanted to send a script to Anny Lee, a top-ranking star, he had to block a considerable amount of money in an account before the agent would give her green light to a reading. This particular manuscript had not taken the usual route. The filmmaker, a European, had entrusted it to a friend, who had taken it to another friend, a technician Anny liked.

Despite its inauspicious provenance, Anny opened it.

 

An hour later she closed it again, stunned.

Without wasting any time she dialed the number that was scribbled in pen on the cover.

A sleepy voice answered, “Yes?”

“This is Anny Lee, I just read your screenplay and—”

“It's three o'clock in the morning . . . ”

“I'm sorry, I'm calling from Los Angeles.”

“Who is this?”

“Anny Lee! I absolutely love your story.”

“Is this some sort of hoax?”

“No, it's really me. I want to play Anne de Bruges.”

Anne lay in a dark cell where the walls seeped with moisture and an odor of urine reigned. White fur emerged from the stones; when she ran her hand over the walls, Anne caught her fingernails on patches of saltpeter, which went on to sting her eyes or irritate her guts until she felt like vomiting.

In three days she had been invaded by vermin; however, once she paused in her scratching, she thought about how cows managed to put up with flies, or how wild animals tolerated parasites in their fur, and she decided not to pay them any more attention. In the midst of this storm that had devastated her life, in this pigsty they called a prison, she strove to retain her serenity. If she let herself go, she would appear before the judge with a guilty demeanor.

Her trial was due to start today. The investigation had gone quickly, which did not leave Anne's partisans—Braindor and Aunt Godeliève, and the common people—very optimistic.

The evidence was damning. Because of the spectacular symptoms of poisoning—contractions, spasms, asphyxia—the Grande Demoiselle's death was attributed to murder; at matins, when it was discovered that the doctor from the Cordeliers had expired in a similar manner, a connection between the two cases was drawn. Now everything pointed to Anne: a green vial containing poison was discovered in her writing desk, and was identified as the potion the beguines who looked after the Grande Demoiselle had seen Anne administer to their patient; the apprentices of Saint-Côme testified that they had seen Anne in conversation with their master several times, and that she had taken potions away with her; and since she had been to the hospice that day only a quarter of an hour before the master's screams of pain, they put forth the theory that Anne had done away with Sébastien Meus in order to procure his silence.

These murders were not her only crimes: Ida testified that her cousin indulged in Satanic rites together with wild animals on the night of the full moon. Telling the story of her strange outing, adding numerous details to the nocturnal swim in the clearing, she claimed that Anne worshiped the moon, addressed mysterious incantations to the stars, and at the end invariably allowed the wolf to possess her. Their wild embraces had disgusted her, her cousin's cries of delight more vile even than the beast's groans. News of this indictment spread quickly throughout the town; it went from being improbable to extremely popular, given its propensity to excite people's imagination; preferring low-minded explanations to subtle arguments, both men and women found it more likely that a witch would copulate with an animal than that a young virgin could impose her will upon a dangerous predator.

After that, Ida had no difficulty describing Anne's meditations as trances where she opened the doors of her body to the devil. Moreover, she claimed to be the victim of an evil spell her cousin had cast upon her: how else was she to interpret her staggering decline? Displaying her ghastly face, her scars and her burns, she blamed Anne for her misfortune.

The crippled woman's imagination knew no bounds; every day she added new slanderous turpitudes. Fortunately the lieutenant wrapped up the investigation very quickly, otherwise Ida would have ended up accusing Anne of starting the fire that she herself had lit.

As she understood nothing about Anne's poems—“pretentious rubbish”—Ida had not known how to make use of them. The archdeacon, however, on learning that same day of the madwoman's arrest and the death of her protector, had sent his own copies to the clerk of court, adding a note according to which he had identified the expression of atheism or of a faith that opposed the teachings of the Church. Impiety, with suspected heresy was now added to the counts of the prosecution that fell within the competence of common law. To reassure the prosecutor, who feared the hearing might go on too long, the archdeacon paid him a visit, and explained that there was no need to call upon an Inquisitor, as he himself agreed to act as theological advisor.

When Braindor got wind of all this, he tried to mobilize his connections. But everyone was afraid; because of the Anabaptists and supporters of Müntzer, and the numerous dissidents who were in open defiance of Rome and setting Flanders and Germany ablaze, Braindor obtained only polite attention regarding the theological issues, along with vague indignation and weak promises. Neither clergy nor scholars were prepared to take a stand against the fierce testimony of the archdeacon, who had invited himself to the trial.

There was a clicking noise.

The rusty hinges groaned.

The guard opened the door to the cell and told Anne to follow him. With the enormous keys from his key ring he locked and unlocked a series of doors, and led her to the clerk. From there she was taken into the courtroom.

When the young woman appeared, there was a gasp of astonishment. She was miraculously clean, and beautiful, her features were pure and tranquil, and she did not look anything like the witch they had been chattering about for three days.

Hidden behind a pillar, Braindor smiled: was Anne not her own best advocate, with her grace and light and gentle wisdom? He was surprised to find he had regained hope.

As for Anne, during the previous interrogations, she had understood where these blows were coming from: the archdeacon and her cousin. She had, therefore, two solutions before her—either to accept them, or to refute them.

How could she accuse Ida? She had no idea that her cousin was capable of killing two people in cold blood and then accusing her own healer. One can only believe others capable of plans one might oneself carry out. When it comes to unraveling people's motives, imagination lacks imagination: it ventures into a foreign country and goes through it, intact. Anne was incapable of suspecting perversity on Ida's part, and she intended only to correct her story about the wolf. As for the archdeacon, she would prove his errors so clearly that she would win over the minds of the judges.

What she did not have was an explanation for how the poison got into the vial . . . She hoped, nevertheless, that after three days of investigations, the lieutenant investigator would have come up with some leads, or even explanations.

They read out the charges against her.

The more she was described as a witch, madwoman, and murderer, the more she found herself leaving the room, and thinking about the swans on the canals, and the flowers behind her house, and the majestic weeping willow mourning peacefully by the river; in short, it seemed to her they were talking about someone else, and she no longer listened.

The prosecutor had to repeat the first question several times.

“Do you acknowledge the justice of these accusations?”

“There is certainly a foundation to each accusation, however none of them are correct.”

“Explain.”

“I did go into a clearing to bathe among the fish and the frogs, but I was not carrying out any Satanic rite. I have written poems, but they celebrate God and his solicitude. I did pour the contents of the green vial into the Grande Demoi­selle's glass, but it contained a remedy that for two weeks had been making her better, everyone can testify to that. As for Sébastien Meus, he had given me this medication, which was his own invention. I admired him; twice over he saved my cousin Ida's life. And I venerated the Grande Demoiselle. The interpretation put forward here is evidence of misconstrued imaginings.”

“Therefore you deny the accusations?”

“I deny both the acts and their intentions. In my heart, I wanted nothing but good for other people.”

“Only a witch speaks with animals.”

“No, all those who spend time with them can understand their language and learn to communicate with them.”

“Even with a wolf?”

“The wolf is one of God's creatures, like us.”

“Therefore one can have intercourse with a wolf?”

She bit her lip. Why were her words not reaching her accusers? They slipped past their ears and were not grasped, the way a trout slips through one's hands.

“I did not have intercourse with a wolf. Or with anyone.”

There was a murmur among the public: some approved, others doubted.

Then the archdeacon drew attention to himself by tapping on his chair.

“And yet,” he proclaimed calmly, “when one reads your poems, one does not have the impression one is listening to an innocent woman. Allow me to quote from them:

 

You my lover, knight without armor,

You knead me with your luminous hands.

Why can our kiss never endure?

We were one; and now we are two.

 

He smiled, certain that the matter was settled.

“You speak of embraces, of bodies being united, you invoke multiple lovers. Is this the vocabulary of a virgin?”

“I have already explained to Monsignor that my words rarely translate what I express. I was speaking to God in this poem.”

“To be sure, words do not serve a mediocre poetess like yourself, I will grant you that. Nevertheless, might I point out that the register in which you search for your words when you do not find them is the register of lust.”

“These are only images.”

“But what images! Bodies, caresses, penetration, sweat, ecstasy. It is all lust! It's as if we were with Satan.”

“Has Monsignor not read the Song of Songs?”

The blow struck home; the archdeacon was unsettled. Behind his pillar, Braindor was exultant: he may not have been responsible for her biting reply, but he was at its source, since he was the one who had persuaded Anne to explore the Bible.

The magistrates went on with their task.

“What were you looking for in the clearing?”

“Peace for meditation.”

“What do you mean by meditation?”