Three Women in a Mirror (27 page)

“We are superior.”

“In what way? Animals feed, but they do not start wars. Animals fight but they do not torture. Animals respect the forests instead of destroying them to make way for cobblestones and cities. They do not fill the clouds with smoke, they remain discreet, in their place.”

“You are idealizing them. For example, they steal from each other.”

“That's as may be, but a burrow or an apple belong to them insofar as they make use of them. Have you ever seen a bird have more than one nest? Or a well-fed fox inspect a dead body it will not eat? Wealth does not exist among animals, none of them collect things they do not need, or amass fortunes they do not use.”

“What you mean?”

“That the only justification for property is need. Everything we have no use for we must give away. Besides it's not even giving, it's giving back.”

“Really?”

“Charity does not constitute a virtue, it reimburses usurpation.”

“Did you know that you are voicing the exact words of the angelic doctor Thomas Aquinas?”

“Indeed?” she murmured, her eyes narrowing. “He, too, must have followed the teachings of the animals.”

Braindor progressed slowly, never insisting, otherwise the gentle Anne would balk. He had undertaken this task of assign­ing a religious meaning to Anne's moments of inspiration without informing her of it, because the young woman continued to display an assiduous wariness toward the clergy; for her, the church as she knew it existed to serve a group of men, not God. She denounced the appetite for power she saw among the priests and the bishops:

“Look at how fat they are, Braindor. And how they cover their bodies with silk and their fingers with jewels; they live in palaces, driving an army of servants to exhaustion. With the exception of a few Portuguese, French, or Spanish merchants, no one else lives in such pomp in Bruges.”

“And yet I am a monk.”

“But you are a mendicant, Braindor, the opposite of what they are. And it is for that reason, too, that I like you. In any case, you made an inspired choice, they would not have accepted you anywhere else.”

Contradicting is not convincing. Braindor was not in the habit of contradicting. He relied on time.

However, with each passing week the pressure exerted by the archdeacon of Bruges became stronger. The prelate was nothing like the caricature Anne had made of his colleagues. He was a dry little man, his flesh sucked into his body by extreme asceticism, and there was nothing opulent or debonair about him. There were two rumored explanations for his appearance: some people said he was afflicted with a sickness of the intestines that made him unable to enjoy food; others asserted that he practiced mortification. Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between. The priest's health was fragile, and he added voluntary pain to that which he already suffered; all day long he wore a bloody hairshirt, which irritated his skin, and to that he added a cilice, for two hours, as well as iron chains, and on a regular basis lined his shoes with sharp stones. He was drawn to anything that would increase his discomfort: he slept directly on the floor and would not allow his residence to be heated except when it began to freeze. The Bishop of Tournai had appointed this austere man archdeacon because he was waging war on the plague of the era, the Lutheran epidemic. Ever since the Reformation had begun to spread, stigmatizing Rome and its representatives, the Protestants had been luring the common people by denouncing the corrupt clergy, the gluttonous, libertine, avaricious priests. The new archdeacon of Bruges was monastic by nature, but also due to illness and spiritual exercise, and he displayed none of those visible flaws—which, in itself, gave a sense of order to the town.

 

“My son, I shall begin to fear that you are hiding her, that miraculous virgin with a pure heart. Does she disappoint?”

The prelate stared at Braindor with a bilious eye, a glint of suffering visible here and there.

“On the contrary!” said Braindor forcefully.

“Well then you must stop hiding her.”

“Monsignor, for the moment she bears the aspect of an uncut diamond. I may as well say a pebble. I must shape and polish her before I introduce her to you.”

“Do you find me so provinicial, my son, or so poorly acquainted with the human soul?”

“Naturally, I was not thinking of you, Monsignor, but of the witnesses to this encounter, all those who will want to see her after you. They must not be disappointed. The virgin of Bruges must prove herself worthy of the expectations she has aroused. I would not like for Monsignor to spoil such an opportunity, such good fortune for Bruges, such an opportunity for the influence and authority of her archdeaconry.”

The episcopal vicar's features expressed two complementary feelings: his pride in governing and his fear of failure. The prelate cleared his throat, scratched his rough cheek, then gave a sigh that signified a consent.

On leaving him, Braindor, who was delighted each time to have managed to postpone the meeting, could not help but think that the archdeacon was right when he accused him of keeping the young woman to himself. The monk felt as if he were taking part in a rare and precious event: the emergence of a saint. Just as Anne spent hours gazing at a daffodil growing, Braindor now measured time only by watching Anne ripen, as she began at last to put words to what she was feeling, although these words were not yet appropriate, not in keeping with what the ears of the era understood.

 

That afternoon when he joined Anne under the linden tree, the young girl's face was so clear, so luminous, that one wondered which ray of sun had managed to break through the dark layers of clouds. When he saw that the horizon was hidden beneath a heavy cloud cover, Braindor supposed that the strength of her thoughts was lighting her face from within.

Anne did not move when he sat down beside her; however, the faint quiver of her cheeks told him that she was aware of his presence.

Braindor remained immobile, trying to perceive by some sort of osmosis what was happening. It was obvious that she was reaching for elements in the air and the earth, feeding off something that the monk could not detect.

By sitting so close to her, he noticed that her breathing did not follow its usual rhythm, that it was slower, deeper, more intense.

How long did they sit like that? As a mendicant monk Braindor did not have to calculate time the way so many other people did. As for Anne . . .

Suddenly she came out of her meditation and stretched.

“Tell me,” said Braindor simply.

She gave an ecstatic smile.

“In the universe there is an invisible lover to whom I owe everything, and whom I will never be able to thank enough. This lover is everywhere and nowhere. He is the strength of dawn, the tenderness of evening, the restfulness of nighttime. He is both the spring nourishing the earth and the winter that allows it to rest. It is an infinite force, greater than the greatest among us.”

It was Braindor's turn to smile. He murmured distinctly, “It is God.”

Anne turned to him.

“Is that the name you give him?”

“That is the name he bears.”

She shook her head, thoughtful.

“I would like to be sure of that.”

Braindor panicked: “Anne, promise me you will never repeat that to anyone other than me! Above all not to a man of the church.”

She looked down at her feet as if they were two intruders.

“It is my habit to remain silent. I am not a friend of words, I do not know them well. You see, I was looking for the name of that strength, and you call it God.”

She had no doubt that Braindor was right, for she liked him, and respected his greater knowledge; however she could neither attain his conviction nor adopt his vocabulary.

“Words do not grow on trees, Anne. If you are surprised that you cannot pick the right words, it is not because your thinking or feeling is wrong, it is out of ignorance. You lack education. Above all in theology. Words were created by men to be used in speaking to men; they do not come naturally to one's lips. The quality of your thoughts is more important than their expression, believe me.”

Anne seemed discouraged. The acquisition of the words, concepts, and formulas that might give her a rhetorical ease seemed beyond her reach.

Braindor was thinking of a solution.

“Have you ever written poetry?”

Anne turned abruptly to the monk and blushed.

“How did you know?”

Braindor was amused by so much zeal, and was glad he had guessed correctly.

“I didn't know, I was merely asking.”

Anne stretched her legs and rubbed her palms against a rough root; she relaxed, happy she could share this secret with him.

“Yes, I often write poetry. I fold and unfold the sentences in my head.”

“And then you write them down?”

“No.”

She tossed out her reply as if it were perfectly obvious, not expecting Braindor to be surprised, for he exclaimed, “So you lose them? That's a pity.”

It was her turn to be surprised: “Once they're finished, I learn them by heart.”

She added, “It's better that way, no? A sheet of paper can be lost. Memory cannot.”

“But it can!”

Alarmed by Braindor's tone, she stared at him. He said, “Memory can be lost, of course it can, less easily than a sheet of paper, but it can be lost. Some day your poem will disappear, either because your mind will be clouded by the years, or because you'll die.”

Reassured, she laughed.

“That doesn't matter: the poem will have had its day by then, too.”

He feigned approval.

“Can you recite one for me?”

Anne rolled her eyes, and blushed: Braindor was asking her to reveal something private, a sort of child she carried inside, a child patiently shaped by her thoughts, lavished with care!

Visibly moved, she decided to accept, but it took several minutes before her rich voice began to scan the verses.

 

He draws me to him and never retreats

He hungers for me and feeds my hunger.

I must live as he inspires me,

Respect his call until the end.

He makes of me who I am.

Tense, incomplete, thirsty.

This effort, it is I, it is he.

I have promised to deserve him.

 

Braindor greeted the poem with a warm silence, causing her to understand, through his smile, that he liked the text as much as her courage in reciting it.

She blushed again.

“Thank you, Anne. It rings true. Who are you talking about?”

“The lover.”

“The lover?”

“The strength that comes to me from evening to morning, the strength that makes me better and compels me to flee from evil and mediocrity. Just now, when you came to join me, I was with him.”

“Naturally.”

Braindor was silent for a moment.

“May I copy it?”

Anne agreed. They took some paper and ink from the beguines' supplies, and she dictated the words as Braindor transcribed them.

 

That evening Braindor was unsettled, and he deviated from his frugal regime: in spite of his vow of poverty and abstinence, he went into a tavern to eat some stew and drink an invigorating beverage. He needed to find himself back in a world of men, the world he had known before his religious vocation, a world full of smells, sounds, smoke, and bawdy humor.

What had unsettled him so? It wasn't what he understood, but what he didn't understand: there was something he had failed to grasp in Anne's text.

With his elbows on the sticky table, drinking the murky beer brewed from hops, which had begun to replace barley beer, he read the poem over and over. Eventually he knew it by heart.

“Well, Friar, you seem very thoughtful to me.”

The proprietress, a buxom, red-cheeked Flemish woman, called out to him, eager to talk.

“I'm memorizing a poem.”

“Read it to me!” she exclaimed. “I love poetry. We don't hear much of it around here.”

Braindor puffed out his chest, boastfully.

“I'll do better than that: I'll recite it to you.”

“Did you write it?”

“No. A woman wrote it.”

The proprietress sat down opposite him, her legs spread around the stool, and she leaned on the table, her head between her hands, already enraptured.

Braindor uttered the lines quietly, giving each word its weight. When he had finished, the proprietress winked at him.

“You're a rascal of a lad all right!”

“Pardon?”

She stood up, titillated and disappointed at the same time.

“You've just read me a poem from your sweetheart.”

“Not at all!”

“Indeed you have, you shut yourself off and murmur your words like a prayer. You could have been clearer from the start, no? It's not for me to judge you, I know perfectly well that before you were a monk you were a man. And that you still are. What's her name, that sweetheart of yours?”

“But—”

“That poem is the purring of a loving woman speaking about her lover. What do they call you?”

“Braindor.”

Resorting to memory—she did not know how to read—she put Braindor in the role that Anne had called “the lover”:

 

Braindor,

He draws me to him and never retreats

He hungers for me and feeds my hunger.

Oh! Braindor who makes of me what I am . . .

I thirst for him . . .

 

She concluded, “It's naughty, that poem of yours.”

Braindor gave the woman a kiss, called out, “Thank you,” and left in a hurry.

 

The next day, after a sleepless night, he went at dawn to call on the archdeacon. The archdeacon let him in just as he was about to dig in to a hard-boiled egg—a feast for an ascetic man like him.