Three Women in a Mirror (43 page)

I often think back on Aunt Vivi, you remember her, the unbelievable flirt with the lavender eyes. I believe I experienced the entire range of feelings with her, from wariness to trust, by way of every nuance of admiration or disavowal; she constantly stood before me as an example, and even now I am still obsessed with her. Last Sunday I was reading a saucy French novel, and I could not help but think that Aunt Vivi was just like Eve, a woman who is the eternal feminine, the most womanly of women. She invented the concept.

I cannot measure up to her. I have neither the cunning, cleverness, nor triumphant opportunism, nor the supple egotism that hides beneath the charm. A narcissus flower bends and never breaks; I am just a branch that snaps. When I compare myself to her, I find I am rustic. Compact, summary. I prefer truth to success. I need clarity, and that is to my disadvantage.

Aunt Vivi was able to blossom without renunciation. I envy her for that. For as long as she lives, she will be a beacon in my night. I envy her strength.

I tried to keep my last lover. Klaus in Charleroi asked for nothing better. I was determined to succeed, and behaved perfectly: an exemplary housekeeper, a fine chef, a good listener, a peerless mistress. He rushed into the life I offered him. Worse than that, he made himself comfortable. After three weeks I was living with a Sultan who was expecting constant slavery. I had fallen into the trap of my own perfection. And because I was forcing myself, I no longer found bliss in his arms.

Do you realize? When Klaus and Hanna knew nothing about each other, not even their age or their name, Klaus and Hanna could give each other pleasure. When Klaus knew what to expect from Hanna and vice versa, Klaus and Hanna went lazily about their tasks. Sated, the generosity that fed off mystery had dozed off.

Klaus was a giant with a violent temperament—which can be pleasing in bed, but not outside it—so one Saturday when he was away I seized the opportunity to move out, changing not only my apartment but also the town where I lived.

In Namur I began again to entrust my body to temporary lovers. However, I know I won't go on like this for much longer.

Ulla, a Swiss friend from Zurich—I think I mentioned her to you in my previous letter—believes I should continue, that my present reticence is merely part of a traditional bourgeois code, and that I am, in short, regressing.

“You are too hard on yourself, Hanna, you use the categories you learned during childhood. But in fact you are a free woman, a natural woman, a wild woman—as were the so-called witches in the past—yet you criticize yourself with the eyes of an alienated woman, a wife. Why should one man be worth more than several? Who said that love was monogamous? Well, ‘monoandrous' in your case . . . Where is it written that sexuality should be reduced to dreary repetitiveness? How can one justify that boredom should be the sole end result of coupling?”

I take heart when she tells me off like this. Lately however, I took the liberty of informing her that she does not behave according to her own principles, since she has been satisfied with her friend Octavia for twenty years. Ulla blushed—she always does when you mention Octavia to her—and she stopped haranguing me like a drill sergeant.

She does not understand the fix I am in. I have no objection to multiple infatuations; I would simply like it to be me who does the kissing and has the pleasure, not some female wolf escaping from me and leaving me behind on the shore.

I wonder if Anne de Bruges experienced pleasure. According to the rare documents I have been able to consult, she was known as “the Virgin of Bruges,” a visible indication that she refused men. But did she make love? In my case, for example, if one were to question my neighbors, they would describe me as an old maid; they have no idea of my double life, or of the perfection of my duplicity. When I read
The Mirror of the Invisible,
I sometimes have the impression that Anne is relating what I feel during orgasm, this sensation of being wrenched from oneself, of forgetting one's familiar props, while one's body expands to fill the dimensions of the world, as if partaking in a cosmic movement.

How similar we are across the centuries . . . Abandoned at birth, raised by adoptive parents, she grew up without anyone to turn to; I, too, lacked protective paragons, I, too, had to search for what was not given to me, a way to behave, a concept of life. Perhaps we were fortunate to have been so deprived?

In her poems I can see her searching for a father and a lover. Like me. Religion allowed her to take on this quest, admirably: when it was the father, she invoked God, when it was the lover, she turned to Jesus. God commands, Jesus loves. We respect God's laws and we attain bliss by adoring Jesus. It is odd how Christians knew how to create an entire range of possibilities, authorizing the Divine to take on all the colors that mankind requires, including the feminine hues of the Virgin Mary or the transparency of the Holy Ghost . . .

In my youth, I saw Franz as a combination of father and husband. Now I wonder whether psychoanalysis, with Freud as a tutelary figure and Calgari as a lover, did not also offer me that possibility.

It does not matter . . .

Anne, my sister of the labyrinth, I hope soon to finish the book that will reveal you to the entire world.

As for you, my dear Gretchen, I would like you to know that I am dedicating the book to you. Do you accept?

 

Your Hanna who loves you as always, if not more

The taxi left Charles de Gaulle airport and took Anny and Ethan to Paris.
After you've spent hours in the air, to be back on the ground, no matter where it is—Kalkuta, Tokyo, or Dubrovnik—you always feel as if there's something familiar about the place. Even in a strange country, you're not disembarking in a foreign land, you are back on land, your land, your own mother Earth.

That was just how Anny and Ethan felt. That heady feeling. They immediately made Europe their own.

The taxi drove through the northern suburbs. It didn't look at all the way they had imagined. Flat buildings, tall buildings, very basic, no architectural refinement whatsoever—like the outskirts of all major cities, industrial rough drafts of a city.

Then they saw the first 19th-century buildings. The Métro entrances sprang up like mushrooms. A tangle of traffic. The chestnut trees were in flower, oblivious of all the hustle and bustle. Ravishing young women rode by on bicycles. Businessmen in gray suits drove past on scooters. Ethan and Anny were amused to see that the automobile hierarchy here was exactly the opposite of that in Los Angeles: the most elegant people were often at the wheel of the smallest cars.

The taxi turned into narrow streets surrounded on either side by imposing buildings. On their way from the airport they had gone from wide freeways to tiny streets, which seemed to sum up the distance between the New World and the Old. And unlike in North American cities, there was no more horizon.

A cell phone rang. Anny sighed.

“Yes, Johanna?”

“You didn't answer my messages.”

“That's normal, I was on the plane. We just landed in Paris.”

“Oh . . . so you're going ahead with that story about the saint?”

“As I told you.”

“Dear God, Anny, you're not going to start making films in Europe, you haven't fallen that low! That's the sort of thing you do at the end of your career, not before. A European film and commercials for anti-aging cream—sure signs of decline. And from the point of view of the salary, darling—”

“The screenplay is fascinating.”

“Of course it is. But afterwards, you have to make a blockbuster. Otherwise you'll find yourself playing the guest of honor at festivals, not a movie star.”

“Johanna, I don't belong to anybody. Not to Hollywood, or to success.”

“You're turning your nose up at a rare thing, Anny. You've got the kind of status everyone dreams of having.”

“Yes, but do I dream of having it? Fair enough, I've reached a highly enviable position in life. But did I ask for it? I want to invent my life, not be subjected to it.”

“So if I've understood you correctly, from now on you'll only be starring in things you like?”

“Yes.”

“Your career will take a nosedive. They won't go on sending you the good projects before everyone else.”

“That all depends on what you mean by ‘good projects.'”

Anny hung up.

Ethan kissed her.

“Good shot.”

“She's right when she says it will be more complicated from here on out. But which is harder? To suffer because you're doing things you don't like, or to suffer in order to do the things you do like?”

Ethan kissed her again, for a long time, until she pulled away.

The car stopped outside the Ritz.

Men in livery rushed up, open the doors, grabbed their bags, and asked if they had had a pleasant journey. Anny and Ethan settled in their room, a suite that looked out onto the Place Vendôme. They gazed at the bijou designed by Mansart, home to luxury jewelers. The harmonious balance of the façades, the pleasing surface of the cobblestones contrasted with the bronze victory column that stood in the center of the square. Before their eyes centuries overlapped, from ancient Rome represented by the monumental statue, to the subtle lighting of the present day, by way of the 17th century buildings and the Empire style of the shop windows.

For the duration of the shoot, Ethan would be taking cooking classes. Having noted his tendency toward addiction, Anny had suggested he put his obsessive drive to the service of his passion, gastronomy. “I'd rather see you fat than drugged.” So Ethan would begin an internship with an eminent chef the following day.

A call came in from the front desk: Grégoire Pitz, the director, was waiting for Anny.

Anny rushed down to the salon.

Grégoire Pitz was very moved to meet Anny at last. A tall fellow with gentle features, he regarded Anny's presence in his film as a wonderful gift.

They made themselves comfortable, and got straight to the point.

“Why me?” asked Anny.

“Because Anne is like you: she is lost and she is full of light. She's making her way through a dark world to which she brings her radiance. She attracts everyone's attention because she vibrates, she feels things more intensely. She seems both open and withdrawn. Although she is fragile, she stands her ground and doesn't give in.”

Tears were stinging Anny's eyes. Grégoire Pitz continued, “When you look at her, you are dazzled, but you can't see through her. The mystery remains. Basically when you stand in front of her you are facing the sun: you can never see whatever it is that would allow you to see.”

They fell silent. All around them the hotel guests, their necks stiff, pretended to be indifferent, yet they stole glances at each other. Everything was a show: the harpist playing a contemporary hit on an ancient instrument; the dessert carts displaying extravagant patisserie; the faces reconstructed by surgery and repainted by cosmetics. Was this the right sort of place to discuss Anne de Bruges?

Just as Anny was wondering this herself, the musician began to play the theme from
The Girl with the Red Glasses.
People immediately turned to look at her: for several minutes guests had been wondering who this young woman was, and now they had a clue. One of them had even taken out his telephone and seemed to be informing the person on the other end that Anny was there.

“Can we go somewhere else?”

“With pleasure.”

Grégoire Pitz was delighted to go elsewhere, and he led her to the nearest bistro, where there was a smell of coffee, quiche lorraine, and Camembert, which the
patronne
was spreading on long baguettes sliced down the middle.

They sat around a marble table and that didn't look too clean. They felt better. She looked Grégoire straight in the eyes.

“How did you discover Anne?”

He smiled.

“There was a book about her life and her poetry on the shelves of the family library. My father got it from his mother. At the beginning of the last century she used to know the woman who wrote it, Hanna von Waldberg, an extravagant Viennese aristocrat, one of Freud's first disciples.”

He stroked his coffee cup, sadly.

“Unfortunately I never had the chance to talk about it with my grandmother Gretchen because I was only three when she died.”

Why sleep, when she was going to die?
Anne was found guilty of all the counts against her, and was condemned to burn at the stake. The authorities had decided not to waste their time, because Lent was nearly over. As it was out of the question to execute a prisoner at Easter time, and they would not wait until the end of that period, they had to hurry. If, in principle, they excluded Palm Sunday, they must also exclude Lazarus Saturday: to kill on a day of resurrection would open them to criticism. As the trial was held on Thursday, the only remaining day was Friday.

The punishment would follow the sentencing by a single day.

The night was over. A long instant. Time suspended rather than passed. Motionless, serene, Anne had spent the hours in meditation. Already dawn was breaking.

Two or three hours left to live.

Anne did not think about the terrible ordeal ahead. She was savoring the present moment.

This heretical murderess who would soon walk to the place of her punishment, where the crowd would jeer at her, and the flames would lick at her calves and thighs before her body was devoured—it seemed to her that this fate was reserved for a double, not her.

Otherwise, she would have trembled, she would have been afraid . . .

Instead, she felt a heavy, pervasive peace.

Never had she known such a feeling of being two people in one. So there were two Annes, herself and the other.

To the other Anne, bad things happened; she created a scandal, no matter what she did; she kindled hatred with her subversive speech. This other woman was the one that those in power sought to destroy. Anne hardly knew that distant woman; she barely felt an ounce of compassion for her.