One of them, roughly dressed, his face red from the sun and wind, stood before me and said, “What are ye, then? Some sort of freak?”
But I did not understand him, for my father had taught me only French, which was his native language and the language of Justine Moritz.
“Pardon, monsieur, je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites,” I said. “Je suis fatiguée et affamée, et je prie que vous puissiez me donner un peu de pain.” A little bread, that was what I wanted more than anything on Earth.
“She’s a furriner,” said another one of them.
“She’s a giantess!” said the boy with the ball. “Like the one at the fair, but even taller. I wonder how strong she is?” He pulled up his sleeves, clenched his fists, and made muscles, as though he were a strongman himself. “Are you strong, giantess?” he asked.
Giantess . . . la géante. They were not afraid of me. I was, to them, a figure out of a fairy tale. I pulled up my sleeve and showed the boy my muscles. They were not particularly impressive, for my arms were as slender then as they are now. He looked disappointed. I smiled and lifted a wheelbarrow that had been left by the side of the square over my head. It’s not large muscles that make you strong, I wanted to tell him.
He laughed, delighted, and the other boys applauded, and then the fishermen. They asked me to lift more things: a log that had been cut for a mast, a rather large pig. Hearing their shouts and laughter, the shopkeepers came out of their shops: the butcher and grocer, the baker with his apron still on. Soon I had a circle of villagers around me, all wanting to see me perform feats of strength. One of them threw a coin at my feet, and soon there were other coins, not many but a few. They clinked on the cobblestones. I gathered them up and put them into the pocket of my skirt. I was starting to tire, for I had walked long and slept little. I bowed to the villagers, signaling that I was done for the day. They clapped and began to disperse, but the baker’s wife ran into the bakery and brought out a loaf for me, with a smile and a shake of her head to indicate that I would not have to pay for it. I blessed her in French, but I believe she understood me.
As I left that square, most of the loaf under my arm, the rest in my mouth, I looked at myself in the bakery window. I had never seen my own reflection. My father’s cottage had no mirror, and I had not passed a lake or pond or even puddle, no water still enough that I could see myself in it. I stared at myself. I looked . . . ordinary. Taller than women are, but there was nothing hideous about me. I could pass among human beings.
It came as a relief. You have seen Adam—his hideous countenance. Any part of it would be handsome enough, but all together—my father had made him from corpses that had lain dead some days, taking what body parts were not yet corrupted. He had not been preserved carefully, as I was. And my father had been younger, less experienced. I was no longer the pretty girl who had called herself Justine Moritz, but I was not a monster.
I continued walking south along the coast. I slept in meadows and pastures, finding what shelter I could—beneath a tree, or in a barn or shepherd’s hut. Sometimes I stopped in the villages. In one, I saw a man painting a boat with pitch to make it waterproof, and I begged him, in gestures, for his brush. On a broken piece of wood I painted, in black letters, GEANTESSE STRANG WOMEN. These were the words I had heard the villagers speak. When I showed my sign in the towns, which were getting larger, I would be given coins, with which I could buy bread and cheese and onions. By this time I had a canvas bag, and a pair of men’s shoes, and an old hat to gather the coins in. But I kept on moving, always afraid that Adam would find me, afraid he would hear of the “geantesse” who performed in the towns. Perhaps I had killed him—but no, although I tried to tell myself that he must be dead, something in me did not believe it. My only safety lay in the fact that men ran from him or attacked him, instinctively.
Although I did not know it, I had made my way down to Cornwall, in the south of England. There, one night, I was showing my strength in a town square when a man staggered out of a tavern and challenged me. He was drunk and wanted to wrestle, to show that he was stronger than me. What was I, after all? A woman, and no woman was stronger than a man. I understood this, in part—I was learning English from my encounters with Englishmen, although all of them seemed to speak in different accents—and what I later realized was Welsh, I could not understand at all. I thought for a time that I had wandered into another country. . . .
This man was challenging me, it was clear, and I waved my hand to signal that no, I would not wrestle with him. “Non, non,” I said, clearly I thought. But his companions came out of the tavern and surrounded me. Then, he lunged. . . .
I had meant to step aside, to let him stumble past. But as he came, all I could see was Adam, coming toward me, hands outstretched. He was not Adam, not a monster, only a man—so I reached toward him, grasped him by the throat, and snapped his neck. He crumpled as his companions looked on, dumbfounded, not certain what had happened. There was an opening in the circle they made. I turned and ran through it, leaving my sign and hat behind on the pavement. I ran and ran, knowing what would happen now, what human justice was. Had I not been hanged once? I had no wish to be tried again for murder, although I deserved it, for I had killed a man. This time, I was guilty.
CATHERINE: Although you know perfectly well it was in self-defense.
JUSTINE: But this is my story, as I know and feel it. In my heart, I knew myself to be a murderer.
That night, I longed to die.
I was afraid to surrender myself to the justice of man, but wished that the justice of God would strike me down. I ran through the night, following roads headed I knew not where, away from the town where I had committed such a heinous crime. Overhead, clouds alternately concealed and revealed the sliver of a moon, which threw the shadows of trees across my path like bars.
DIANA: Oh please! Cut the symbolism already.
Like prison bars! At last the roads dwindled down to mere paths, and then I was stumbling across fields, with the stubble of mown hay scratching my bare legs above my shoes. It grew darker—clouds covered the moon, so I could no longer rely on it to give me a sense of direction. The fields gave way to rockier ground on which I was in danger of twisting my ankles. I scarcely noticed when the rain began, at first a few drops I brushed off my hair, and then as though the heavens had opened up, a deluge. I stood in a field and looked up at the sky, water streaming down my shoulders and over my arms, soaking my clothes. Then and there, I prayed God would strike me down with a bolt of His lightning. Surely that was in His power, and surely I deserved to die.
But He did not strike me down.