As he read, I got up, walked to the water's edge, and picked up some stones.
"Contrary to what you might think, I'm sick and tired. I've gotten away from my dreams and I'm not the person I imagined I'd be--not by far."
"What do you mean?" asked Astruc, surprised. "I only represent the greatest artists, and you are one of them! One simple review from someone who has nothing better to write is enough to leave you so beside yourself?"
"No, but it's the first thing I've read about myself in a long time. I'm disappearing from the theaters and the press. People see me as nothing more than a whore who strips naked in public under an artistic pretense."
Astruc got up and walked over to me. He also picked up a few stones from the beach and threw one into the water, far from the surf.
"I don't represent prostitutes--that would end my career. It's true that I've had to explain to one or two of my clients why I had a Mata Hari poster in my office. And you know what I said? That what you do is a retelling of a Sumerian myth in which the goddess Inanna goes to the forbidden world. She must pass through seven gates; at each, there waits a guardian, and, to pay her passage, she removes an article of clothing. A great English writer, who was exiled to Paris and died alone and destitute, wrote a play that will one day become a classic. It tells the story of how Herod got the head of John the Baptist."
"Salome! Where is that play?"
My spirits began to lift.
"I don't have the rights. And I can no longer meet with its author, Oscar Wilde, unless I go to the cemetery to summon his ghost. It's too late."
Again my frustration and misery returned, as did the idea that soon I would be old, ugly, and poor. I was over thirty--a pivotal age. I took a stone and threw it harder than Astruc had.
"Go far away, stone, and carry my past with you. All my shame, all my guilt, and all the mistakes I've made."
Astruc threw his stone and explained that I had made no mistakes. I had exercised my power of choice. I didn't listen to him, and threw another.
"And this one is for the abuse suffered by my body and soul since my first, terrible sexual experience. And now, when I lie with rich men, performing acts that leave me drowning in tears. All this for influence, money, gowns...things that are growing old. I am tormented by self-created nightmares."
"But aren't you happy?" asked an increasingly surprised Astruc. After all, we had decided to spend a pleasant afternoon on the beach.
With ever-increasing rage, I kept throwing stones, becoming more and more surprised at myself. Tomorrow no longer looked like tomorrow, and the present was no longer the present, just a pit I dug deeper with every step. People walked on either side of me, while children played, seagulls made odd movements in the sky, and the waves rolled in more calmly than I imagined.
"It's because I dream of being accepted and respected, though I don't owe anything to anyone. Why do I need that? I waste my time on worries, regrets, and darkness--a darkness that only enslaves me, chaining me to a rock where I'm served up as food for birds of prey, a rock that I can no longer leave."
I couldn't cry. The stones disappeared into the water, sinking alongside one another as if they could perhaps reconstruct Margaretha Zelle beneath the surface. But I did not want to be her again, that woman who looked into the eyes of Andreas's wife and understood. The one who told me that our lives are planned out down to the minutest details: You are born, go to school, and attend university in search of a husband. You get married--even if he is the worst man in the world--just so that others can't say no one wants you. You have children, grow old, and spend the end of your days watching passersby from a chair on the sidewalk, pretending to know everything about life yet unable to silence the voice in your heart that says: "You could try something else."
A gull approached us, shrieked, and walked away again. It came so close that Astruc put his arm over his eyes to protect himself. That shriek brought me back to reality; I was once again a famous woman, confident in her beauty.
"I want to stop. I cannot continue this life. How much longer can I work as an actress and dancer?"
He was honest in his reply:
"Perhaps another five years or so."
"Then let's end things here."
Astruc took my hand.
"We can't! There are still contracts to fulfill, and I will be fined if we don't fulfill them. What's more, you need to earn a living. You don't want to end your days in that filthy boardinghouse where I found you, do you?"
"We will finish the contracts. You have been good to me, and I won't make you pay for my delusions of grandeur or baseness. But don't worry; I know how I'll keep making a living."
And without giving it much thought, I began to tell him about my life--something that I had kept to myself up until then because it was all just one lie after another. As I spoke, tears began to stream down my face. Astruc asked if I was okay, but I continued to tell him everything and he said nothing, just sat there listening to me in silence.
In finally accepting that I was not at all what I'd thought, I felt I was sinking into a black pit. Suddenly, however, as I faced my wounds and scars, I began to feel stronger. My tears did not come from my eyes, but from a deeper, darker place in my heart, telling me a story that I didn't even fully understand in a voice of its own. I was on a raft, sailing through total darkness, but there, far off on the horizon, was the glow of a lighthouse that would eventually lead me to dry land if the rough seas allowed, and if it was not already too late.
I had never done that before. I thought that speaking about my wounds would only make them more real. And yet the exact opposite was taking place: My tears were healing me.
At times I punched my fists into the gravel beach and my hands bled, but I didn't even feel the pain. I was being healed. I understood why Catholics confess, even though they must know priests share the same sins, or worse. It did not matter who was listening; what mattered was leaving the wound open for the sun to purify and the rainwater to wash. That is what I was d
oing now, in front of a man with whom I had no intimacy. That was the real reason I was able to speak so freely.