What am I to do?
The woman in the mirror had no answer. She was as white as a ghost.
Morning came quickly. The patients were woken shortly after six, and when Marianne had dressed, she was led into an office on the first floor of the hospital. It looked as if it belonged to a doctor with two kids; it contained children’s drawings, family photos and a map of France with little pins stuck in it.
Marianne got up from her chair and ran her finger along the coastline in search of Kerdruc. She could find no place by that name, but her finger stopped at an abbreviation: Fin. It stood for Finistère, an area of western France that bulged out into the Atlantic—Brittany.
She sat down again and stared at the tips of her shoes. After an hour, the psychologist turned up, a tall, slender Frenchman with wavy black hair who reeked of aftershave. Marianne thought he looked terribly nervous; he chewed his lower lip as he darted glances at her, avoiding her gaze. He flicked through the few sheets of paper on his clipboard, then removed his glasses and, perching on the edge of the desk, looked intently at Marianne for the first time.
“Suicide isn’t an illness,” he began in German.
“It isn’t?” replied Marianne.
“No. It’s simply the culmination of a pathological tendency. It’s a sign of desperation. Deep desperation.” His voice was soft, and he looked at her with his gray eyes as if his only purpose in life was to understand her.
Marianne felt a tingle in the back of her neck. This was strange. She was sitting here with a man who harbored the extravagant illusion that he might understand and help her merely by looking at her and talking to her as if he were the anointed one.
“And suicide is acceptable too. It has meaning for those who seek it. It isn’t wrong to want to kill oneself.”
“And that’s scientifically proven?” she couldn’t help herself asking.
The psychologist stared at her.
“Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” he asked.
“I…don’t know.”
“Did you know that seriously depressed people are easily hurt, yet they continually apologize, directing their aggression inward at themselves rather than at the person who provoked it?”
Marianne peered at the man. He must have been in his mid-forties, and she spotted a wedding ring on his finger. How she would have loved to believe that she could simply let herself go, pour it all out and allow him to console her, then read her life in his facial expressions. He would give her courage and medication, and she would be cured of her silly desire.
Suicide isn’t an illness. Nice.
“Did you know that most church bells have clappers that are too big?” she answered. “Most bell ringers pull too hard, and within a few years the bells sound like empty salad bowls clanging together. They’re worn out.”
“Do you feel like one of those bells?”
“A bell?”
I feel as though I was never here.
“You no longer wanted to live as you’d been living. Why did you choose Paris of all places to kill yourself?”
The way he says that. Like a reprimand. No one comes to Paris to die. Everyone wants to live and love here; I’m the only one who’s dumb enough to think you might be able to die here.
“It seemed appropriate,” she eventually answered. She’d done it: she had finally faced up to her urgent desire to speak the truth.
“Fine.” He got to his feet. “I’d like to do a few tests with you before you go home. Come with me.” He held the door open for her.
Marianne stared at her gray shoes as one foot came down in front of the other. Out of the room, across the corridor, through a swing door, into the next corridor, and so on.
Her father had been a bell tuner before he fell from the roof timbers of a church and broke almost every bone in his body. Marianne’s mother had resented him for that accident for the rest of his life. It wasn’t manly to land a woman in such trouble in those days.
Her father had explained the nature of church bells thus: “The clapper has to kiss the bell, very softly, and entice it to ring, never force it.” His character had been like such a bell. If someone tried to force her father to react, he would grin and grit it out in silence until they left him alone.
After her grandmother’s death, he had moved out of their shared house and from then on had slept in the work shed. Until Marianne married Lothar, she had been her parents’ go-between, carrying her father’s food out to the workshop, where he spent his time building miniature glockenspiels. Marianne often felt his affection for her as she sat beside him at his workbench. His daughter’s affection touched him, as did her whispered confessions about the life of her dreams. One moment she wanted to be an archaeologist, the next a music teacher. She also wanted to build children’s bicycles and live in a house by the sea. Both father and daughter were dreamers.
“You take too much after your father,” Marianne’s mother had said.
For decades Marianne had been unable to think of her father. She missed him. That was perhaps one of her secrets.
“Please excuse me for a moment,” said the psychologist and waved to another doctor—Marianne recognized him from the previous night at the hospital. They spoke to each other in French and kept glancing over at their patient. Marianne walked to the window, turning away from them both so that she could slip the small tile from her handbag and admire it.
Kerdruc. Touching the picture, she felt such a tug in her breast that she could barely breathe.
Suicide is meaningful. She looked at the floor again. I really don’t like these shoes.
Then she just upped and left. She pushed open the nearest swing door, found a flight of stairs, scampered down it and turned right at the bottom. She hurried along a corridor where patients were lounging on benches, and at the end of the corridor she saw a wide-open door that led outside. Fresh air at last! The thunderstorm had rinsed the dirt out of the day, and the air was mild and balmy. Marianne ignored the arthritic pains in her knee and began to run.
Her heart was in her mouth as she raced across the cobbled street into an alleyway, dived through a gateway and dashed across a courtyard and out the other side. She ran without thinking, veering from one side of the street to the other. She didn’t know how long she would need to keep this up, but when the stitch in her side became unbearable, she slumped down by a small fountain. She let the water run over her wrists and stared at her reflection in the pool.
Didn’t they say that beauty was a state of soul? And if her soul was loved, a woman would be transformed into a wondrous creature, however ordinary her looks. Love changed a woman’s soul, and she became beautiful, for a few minutes or forever.