Three Women in a Mirror by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Alison Anderson Read Free Book Online

she felt she was being watched. While thousands of creatures constantly observed her—from their burrows, behind the thickets, deep in the brush—this was another form of attention altogether. A different awareness was spying on her. She detested the sensation. The third time she felt this unpleasant apprehension beneath her skin, she caught a glimpse of an animal in the distance. A noble stag was staring at her, deep-chested, with a gleaming gaze and pale throat, his hide steaming from exertion. There was something sylvan about his splendid antlers, as if he were the moving brother of the oak.
    He galloped away.
    Troubled, Anne hurried to her refuge and lay beneath the muscular branches.
    A squirrel was peering at her from the top of the tree, clinging to the bark. She envied his ability to cling to the centuries-old trunk.
    A fluid green light dripped from the boughs.
    High above, its wings immobile, a sparrow hawk floated in the sky, coveting the fledglings in their broods.
    Her eyelids grew heavy.
    Â 
    â€œThere she is!”
    That afternoon Anne had drifted off with her ear against the moss, and she had not heard a thing.
    â€œShe’s here!” said the voice again.
    Ida, wrapped in her shawls, stared at her cousin, who lay on the ground, covered in her dirty, worn dress. Ida’s eyes sparkled with hostile glee.
    â€œLook!”
    She turned to her escort. Philippe appeared, thrashing the branches out of his way with a stick.
    Anne, as embarrassed as if she had been disturbed naked at her bath, instinctively drew her legs to her torso and encircled them with her arms, resisting the young man’s presence by keeping her body closed and compact.
    â€œI knew she hadn’t run away,” said Ida triumphantly. “I knew she was hiding.”
    Inwardly Anne corrected her:
No, I’m not hiding, I did run away
, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
    Ida and her fiancé gazed at her.
    The prospect of being able to explain herself to him came as a relief to Anne.
    â€œI am happy to see you,” she said.
    â€œWhy did you run away?”
    â€œI mean you no harm.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI must have made you sad, or upset you . . . ”
    â€œWhy?”
    She looked at the squirrel: with his round black eyes he was watching the scene unfold, his little paws gripping a fork in the tree.
    â€œI cannot marry you.”
    â€œYou don’t want to?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œWell?”
    â€œNot enough.”
    Philippe received her reticence like a fist in his belly. Ida spoke on his behalf, indignantly: “What a nightmare! ‘Not enough.’ Who does she think she is? Turning your nose up at Philippe, you ought to die of shame.”
    â€œYes, I am ashamed.”
    Anne had answered so sincerely that Ida was confounded in the expression of her own bitterness.
    Philippe approached her and asked, pale and tense, “Why?”
    She lowered her head.
    He screamed, “
Why?
”
    Anne’s eyes filled with tears. It was painful to her to inflict this torment on the boy.
    â€œI don’t know. But it’s nothing to do with you, Philippe, it’s not your fault.”
    A meager consolation, her declaration: he discovered that Anne thought him unimportant. He stepped forward, fell to his knees, and took her hands. Humiliated, he became insistent. He wanted Anne to give in. Was it because he adored her? Or because he was frustrated by failure? It was impossible to tell whether his stubbornness was guided by love or conceit.
    â€œThen if you don’t know, marry me! You will see . . . ”
    Behind him Ida was biting her lips with rage when she saw how stubborn he was, although he had sworn loud and clear not to go back on his decision!
    â€œOh, men,” she grumbled to herself. “To think people say that girls are always changing their minds . . . ”
    Anne was explaining something, incomprehensible to Philippe: “I will not get