Three Women in a Mirror (46 page)

Here too she was greeted with noisy congratulations.

“Awesome!”

“Spine-chilling.”

“The fright of my life, Anny. I thought it was me up there burning.”

“The best horror film would terrify me less than you in this scene, Anny.”

“It's a classic! I'm proud to have been here.”

Anny thanked them with a smile and sat down next to Grégoire Pitz.

“I'm not convinced,” she murmured.

“You were sensational.”

“I'm not convinced that Anne would have behaved like that. During the scene I felt as if I were someone else, an ordinary girl with ordinary reflexes. I betrayed her. I know—it felt as if it were me, the way I was six months ago.”

“What?”

“Petty. Selfish. There is a lot of narcissism in fear. I just died like someone who idolizes herself. Anne de Bruges was not like that.”

Grégoire scratched his head as he checked the script.

“We have no documentation regarding her death. No chronicles to describe her behavior during the execution. So we've been reduced to conjecture. We know nothing.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Pardon?”

“We know through imagination.”

Grégoire Pitz gazed at her thoughtfully. Over the last few weeks, a shift had occurred in their relationship: although initially he had brought Anne de Bruges to the Hollywood star, now she was the one giving Anne to him. No one had a better grasp of the character. Anny's comments had been pertinent, and had changed if not the screenplay at least the tone in a number of sequences. Whenever there was a lack of information, Anny asserted that empathy and imagination could take over from historical fact; they constituted a form of knowledge. By resorting to daydreaming in order to represent what she did not know, Anny advanced further into the exploration of a vanished reality.

Grégoire had neglected this theory the first time she spoke to him about it, but now it seemed justified to him.

“Do you want . . . ?”

He could tell she wanted nothing more than to do the scene over again. She flung her arms around him.

“Yes, please. For Anne. Not for me. For her.”

He wiped his brow, puzzled.

“It will take time.”

“I am patient.”

The associate producer interrupted, “What Grégoire really means is that it will cost money.”

In the old days, Anny would have told him exactly where he could go. Now she merely asked, in a quiet voice, “Please.”

The two men exchanged a glance.

“Fine,” said Grégoire. “We'll set up the décor again, the pyre, everything. We'll film the entire sequence with six cameras. We'll improve two or three lighting details. It'll take at least an hour.”

Anny said goodbye and headed for the humpback bridge.

The white béguinage in Bruges had been requisitioned by the production department, not only to film certain scenes but also for their infrastructure: makeup and changing room, wardrobe, cafeteria, snack bar, accounting, and so on.

As she was about to reach her trailer, Anny turned off and headed toward something that intrigued her. An immense linden tree stood in the middle of a lawn, and legend had it that the linden was older than the béguinage itself. According to some, this robust, fragrant ancient with pale green leaves was at least nine hundred years old.

Anny leaned back against the trunk.

“So, did you know Anne?” she asked the branches weaving toward the sky.

She went on sitting there, and wondered just how she should play the last scene. To help her thoughts, she took Hanna von Waldberg's book from the pocket of her dressing gown.

Oddly enough, Anny adored this writer—author of only one book—because of the spirit that animated her every sentence. To be sure, she was an aristocrat who often came out with dated, extravagant notions—due primarily to her conversion to psychoanalysis when it was still in its infancy—but she sought the truth in actual experience.

Like Anne, like Hanna, Anny often sought to leave herself behind, to remove herself from her social and family identity in order to attain a more fundamental reality. It was through her acting that Anny was able to reach this “beyond everything.” As an actress she abandoned who she was to take on another identity; however, before she could reach a given character precisely, she had to go through an indefinite place, a sort of crossroads, an antechamber of differences, the place where Anne and Hanna had been.

While Anne encountered it in nature and called it “God,” Hanna found it in sexuality and called it “the unconscious.” As for Anny, she had given up trying to define it.

Not that long ago, she would have diagnosed this ecstasy as a chemical reaction, the one that substances—drugs or medication—could produce in an organism; however, since she had been looking after Ethan, she had realized that once again this was merely the vocabulary peculiar to the era. Her era believed only in molecules.

The divine, the psychic, the chemical—these were the keys that different centuries proposed to unlock the doors of the mystery. Anne, Hanna, Anny.

And while the keys might turn in the lock, the mystery remained.

Anny no longer tried to understand. She wanted only to feel. Since she would never be enough of an initiate to evaluate the causes and missions of a life, she was condemned to ignorance; but she would shoulder her mourning for truth with joy. She had decided to inhabit ignorance with composure rather than anxiety. Although she had not increased her knowledge, she moved differently through the unknowns of the human condition. One had no choice but to live in obscurity. A lamp that might illuminate? That was not something she had found. However, she did have a charm that she held in the palm of her hand: confidence.

Her fingers reached for the old tree trunk rising from the earth, and she smiled.

“Oh, if only plants could speak . . . If they could tell us what they have seen and heard . . . Give me your memory!”

Given the impossibility of such a wish, she shrugged her shoulders and looked closely at the trees all around her.

They were of both earth and air. As wide beneath the ground as they were in the sky, they spread through humus and through heavens: roots and branches covered a similar space, each the inverted image of the other. Which was the reflection? Where was reality? The trunk drew as much strength from its far-reaching roots as from its leaves, open to the sky. A child of the air or a product of clay? Trees were superior to men, they kept their balance without the slightest effort; they did not fall when they dozed off. Was this the secret of their longevity?

Anny put her arms around the bark of the linden tree.

Now she knew how she would incarnate her heroine's final moments. Anne de Bruges was the sister of the tree. When she was standing, she used all its elements—the cooling rain, the pollinating winds, the nourishing rot and decomposition.

Like the tree, Anne would not fall on her own; she would only fall if she were stricken.

Anny went back to the set.

The moment they started the scene again, actors and extras played their parts exactly like the first time.

Only Anny had changed. As she walked toward the stake, she seemed unaware of the world's violence. Her lovely, open face turned to the light, savoring every moment.

When she was tied to the stake, she was radiant. Unexpected thoughts wafted from her peaceful self: they said that she loved life, that she loved pain as much as pleasure, that she was not afraid of fear, and that she also loved death.

Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, playwright, novelist, and author of short stories, was awarded the French Academy's Grand Prix du Théâtre in 2001. He is one of Europe's most popular authors. His many novels and story collections include
The Most Beautiful Book in the World
(Europa Editions, 2009),
The Woman with the Bouquet
(Europa Editions 2010) and
Concerto to the Memory of an Angel
(Europa Editions, 2011).