The Stone Loves the World

by BRIAN HALL

  You can probably tell that Saskia has been practicing her pitch to producers. Anyway, as soon as you abandon fourth-wall realism, all sorts of possibilities open up. The title of her play is Joan, Maid, which she hopes someone will notice is homophonic with Joan, Made—i.e., Joan, constructed. Because her play isn’t just about the girl from Domrémy, it’s about images of Joan, the legend of Joan, the need for someone like Joan, the false Joans that cropped up in her wake, the other prophet-lunatics that the time demanded, who dutifully appeared, failed, and died. For example, poor Guillaume, the shepherd boy whom the Archbishop of Reims pulled out of his miter two months after he and all the other French churchmen insouciantly let the English burn Joan.

  Archbishop of Reims:

  It pains me, truly, to say the Maid

  Became inordinately proud,

  Loved too much her garments rich

  And put herself before the Church.

  But by God’s grace I have found

  Another shepherd we can send

  Against the foe, he’s good or better

  Than Joan, he’s suffered the stigmata!

  I’ve never heard anyone claim

  That jumped-up hoyden enjoyed the same.

  Maybe the boy was more pliable than Joan. Maybe he was more palatable because he had a dick. But the English snapped him up in his first battle, sewed him in a sack and drowned him in the Seine.

  Was he even a shepherd? Because Joan wasn’t a shepherdess, even though every single account has made her one, both now and back then. She actually had to deny this in court: “No, sir, to the best of my recollection I never tended no fucking sheep.” This sort of thing fascinates Saskia. What is it with shepherds and shepherdesses? Is it because of the Christmas story? In order for the angel of the Lord to come upon you, must you be abiding in the field keeping watch over your flock by night? Yes, probably that, and also because everything in the Bible is sheepy and goaty: shepherd of souls, the Lamb of God, scapegoats, the ram in the thicket, etc. And since people tend to have mystical revelations in accordance with social expectations, other Christian visionaries have been shepherds. Like Mélanie, the girl at La Salette. Can we talk about her for a moment? Saskia recently added some verses on this, and they’re a mess, half inert lumber and half notes. Mélanie Calvat was born to a poor family in the French Alps in 1831, the fourth of ten children. From the age of nine to fourteen, she was sent by her family to work for other farmers in the region, returning home only during the winter. The farmer she was working for at the time of her vision, when she was fourteen, reported that she was lazy, disobedient, and sullen, didn’t answer when spoken to, and that instead of sleeping in his house at night, she hid in the fields.

  Hello? Alarm bells, anyone? In 2016 have we at last reached the point where people whose heads are not up their own asses can look at these bare facts and conclude that Mélanie Calvat was likely being sexually abused? A feminazi can hope.

  Let’s imagine the thousands of other young shepherdesses, through the centuries, living in remote areas with non-relatives. How much below one hundred would be the percentage of raped girls? Who among Christians, historically, has tended to have visions of the divine? Powerless, under-supervised adolescent girls. Who comes to them, promising absolution and love? Virgins. And the poor, rustic, uneducated girls, the lowest of the low, become seers, elevated by the local clergy, revered by the mob. So the last shall be first.

  At least Joan, as a girl, was apparently left “intact.” She had to prove this twice, to two separate committees of women, presumably armed with specula. (There’s a scene in Saskia’s play with a nuns’ chorus, clacking specula like castanets.) But Joan, of course, did have to contend with patriarchy. Her parents wanted her to marry, and picked out the dick-equipped stranger who would be her lord and master. She refused, and was sued for breach of contract. She argued successfully in court that she had never agreed to the match. Her father was enraged. He dreamed that she would run off with soldiers—in other words, become a camp follower, a whore, give away for free what he had wanted to sell—and declared he’d take her to the village pond and drown her first. At this point Joan’s two virginal visitants, Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, wisely ordered her to get the hell out of Dodge. Oh, and while she was at it, to save France.

  At her desk, Saskia tinkers for a while with her Mélanie material, makes it worse, restores the dispiriting crap she already had. Gets up to brew more tea, stares out the window at fascinating India Street, flips through the most interesting Crate&Barrel catalog she’s seen in years. Eventually sits back at her desk and ruminates on those scenes in movies where the writer-hero clickety-clacks and ding-zzzzziiiiings through the night, while a montage shows the ashtray filling with cigarette butts, and suddenly it’s morning and our man rips the last page from the platen, squares the pile, and bounds off to the post.

  Taking time to think.

  Maybe it’s this sentence that worries Saskia the most. Mette has always had all the time in the world to think. And she’s exceptionally straightforward. This sentence sounds like bullshit, or anyway, strategically vague. Taking time to think about what? What decision is so momentous that she has to run away in order to contemplate it, when she could stay in her room for days on end, undisturbed by Saskia or anyone else?

  More tea!

  Another pee!

  Anthropologie’s winter catalog, yessirree!

  Back in chair . . .

  She’d been tinkering and writing notes about the play for more than a year before it occurred to her that her conception of Joan owed a lot to Mette. What clued her in was something Eileen Atkins said about playing Shaw’s Joan: “I am very attracted to parts that are very direct, and say what they think. Joan is saying what she means.” And there was also something Régine Pernoud wrote about Joan: “We can sense that her prophetic character came from her belief that she transmitted the message of her voices without adding or deleting. Throughout her trial, she indicates that she feared above all to exceed what her voices had dictated, to be an insufficiently faithful instrument.”

  Once Saskia made the connection, it helped her notice patterns in Joan’s thinking, for example, the way her piety maybe came out of a need for regularity. The church warden at Domrémy said, “When I did not ring the bells punctually for Compline, Joan would catch me and scold me, saying that I had not done well.” It made Saskia wonder if Joan’s flouting of social conventions was so easy for her because she had never noticed them in the first place. And her literal-mindedness—she never wavered from an untenably simple idea, one that equated labels with logic: France is for French people. Or something she said at her trial: “I had a great will and desire that my king have his kingdom.” Yes, kings rule kingdoms, Q. E. D. A place for everything, and everything in its place.

  Must, then, the question be asked? Is Saskia writing Joan, Maid in part because she longs to better understand her daughter? She finds it easy to envision Mette alone and spotlit on a stage, wide-eyed and blank-faced, holding her right hand up to signal, “Hear me,” or adopting an unearthly pose as though to say, “This is my inner nature.” In Saskia’s imagination, the theater audience is dead quiet. Or maybe the theater is empty. Mette holds her pose. This image frightens Saskia.

  She gets up again, moves in agitation around the room. It’s 3:25 p.m. The fifth day. Maybe she should call Mark, see if he has heard anything new. There’s no point, he’s good about letting her know as soon as he knows. Still, she grabs her phone. She hesitates, staring into space. Then she realizes that what she’s really doing is looking at the closed door to Mette’s room. It is unquestionably respectful of Mette’s wishes that she has not searched her room for clues. But is it also negligent?

  The phone vibrates in her hand.

  She looks at the screen. Her agent. Shit. Usually she’d care, indulge a hope—there are such things as retroac
tive Oscars, who knew?—but not now. “Marisa, what’s up?”

  “Hi Saskia, I just heard a strange message on my voicemail left about an hour ago from a guy who said he’s your father? But why would he be calling me? He said your daughter was with him and you’d better come as soon as you can, any idea what that’s about?”

  Sunday, February 21, 2016

  He can pick Saskia out easily as he comes down the concourse toward the gate, the small head lower in the chair than all the other heads, the tangled mist of weightless hair, the large nose. When alone and unobserved, she’s always looking down, it seems, reading or writing, her mouth tensed on one side as though frozen mid-chew. She can block out the whole world. He last saw her almost a year ago, when he came to the city to take Mette to lunch for her twentieth birthday. He walks up to her, close enough that his shoes are in her line of sight, and waits a few seconds during which she continues reading, then says, “Hello.”

  She glances up. “Hey.” Takes her knapsack off the chair next to her, slips the large book inside.

  He sits down. “Thanks for letting me come along.”

  She seems to interpret that as an aggressive comment. “I’m not the gatekeeper.”

  He didn’t mean it that way, he’s grateful. That she’s willing to let this be a joint venture.

  Seven hours ago, he was working at his computer at home when she called. “She’s with my father in Denmark. I just heard.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to fly out there, I’m checking flights right now.”

  “What did she say?”

  “It wasn’t her who called. My father left a message with my agent.”

  “Can’t you call your father back?”

  “He doesn’t have a phone. Or email, either. And apparently he doesn’t know my number, he must have looked up my professional contact info. He told my agent I’d better come, so I’m going. There’s a flight at 11:00 p.m. out of JFK, nonstop to Copenhagen, Norwegian Air.”

  Mark began typing on his own computer. “Does it have two seats available?”

  “Two?”

  “I would like to come also.”

  There was a long pause. “Aren’t you teaching?”

  “My T.A.s can fill in for a couple of days.”

  “This might take longer—”

  “Or the whole week. They’ll be fine.”

  Another pause. “Okay.”

  He pressed on. “I see the flight you’re talking about. It looks like it has . . . eight free seats. Two are even together, in the last row. Why don’t I buy them?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You buy yours, I’ll buy mine.”

  “Okay. Do you want 36B or 36C?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I’ll take 36B. It’s 3:45 now, I can leave by 4:15, I’ll be at the airport by nine.”

  “See you at the gate, I guess.” She ended the call.

  Yes, it had sounded like she was hesitant to sit next to him. But perhaps he was overinterpreting. They were on good terms, weren’t they? Ten minutes later, in the middle of packing his bag, he went back online to check the seating map, saw that 36C was now taken, and noted that he felt relief. Which is why he thanked her here in the airport for letting him come along. But she thought he was being sarcastic. He wonders if he should try to explain his thinking. He hates misunderstandings. But it’s likely she’s way ahead of him. Best to drop it.

  “How have you been?” he asks.

  She gives him what he thinks might be an incredulous look. “Terrible, of course. How have you been?”

  “I didn’t mean—I mean, this part is obvious—or I mean, I understand about this part—I meant, other than this, how have you been? Your work, and so on?”

  “Fine.” She waves the word away to suggest that she doesn’t mean fine, or not fine, or anything evaluative. “I don’t have energy to talk about any of that.” She shifts in her chair, pulls her scarf higher around her neck. Mark remembers that she’s often cold in indoor public spaces. It’s clear she’s anxious, and now that he’s in her presence Mark begins to feel anxiety as well. He often has to take this sort of cue from other people. Physical proximity helps, suggesting the mechanism is pheromonal. He casts about for something to say.

  “I’m trying to remember what you’ve told me about your father.”

  “Probably not much. I try not to think about him.”

  “He’s Danish.”

  “Yep.”

  “And, um . . . I think you told me he wasn’t around much.”

  “Took off when I was four. I saw him briefly again when I was thirteen. He’s never been part of my life.”

  Normally voluble, she has always been reticent on this subject. He has never wanted to pry, and he doesn’t want to pry now. Still, this mystery man has unaccountably become important. “Does Mette know him?”

  “Thomas? No, they’ve never met. I wouldn’t have let him come within a mile of her.” Mark has no idea what she might be referring to. He wasn’t worried when Mette was off on her own, but everything Saskia is saying now, or not saying, is a little alarming. “Although of course maybe they’ve been communicating online. I’d be more worried about that except I’d be surprised if Thomas did any online stuff. On the other hand, he can be surprising. He loves to be surprising.”

  She stops. Several seconds go by. Mark has never been in the position of trying to tease out personal information from anyone. “Um . . .” he says, his mind racing, but at the same time a blank. Or maybe it’s his heart that’s racing. “Is he . . . dangerous?”

  “Physically? I doubt it.”

  “Okay, that’s good.”

  “He’s manipulative.”

  Mark ponders that for a while. Obviously, he needs details, and just as obviously, Saskia doesn’t want to give him any. “Um . . .” he realizes he’s saying again. “Do you have any idea why—”

  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” the PA system breaks in, “this is the pre-boarding announcement for Norwegian Air, Flight 187, nonstop to Copenhagen. We are inviting those passengers with small children to pre-board at this time—” Mark can’t organize his thoughts when he hears words being spoken, so he gives up for the moment. He’s also distracted by the physical impossibility of any person “pre-boarding” a plane. The main cabin is loaded by zone, and people start getting up and standing in line before their zone is called. As seems to be common now, the flight crew are loading the cabin from front to back, which is the less efficient way to do it. Mark’s theory is that airlines discovered if they load the cabin starting in the rear, as many of them rationally did ten or fifteen years ago, passengers will tend to fill the overhead compartments that they pass on the way to their seats. Mark and Saskia’s zone is called last, and Mark waves everyone else into the line in front of them. Saskia looks at him questioningly. “They’re loading the plane from front to back, and we’re in the last row,” he says.

  She doesn’t say anything. They show their boarding passes and inch down the jetway.

  Mark tries again: “Do you have any idea why Mette would be visiting him, what she’d be looking for?”

  “Not a clue.”

  They take a few more steps. The woman immediately in front of them is holding a baby. Mark wonders why she didn’t “pre-board.” He also wonders if the baby will be near them and how much it will cry during takeoff and landing, when the changing air pressure will make its ears hurt.

  “It’s kind of a nightmare that he’s involved at all,” Saskia suddenly says.

  “Your father?”

  “I mean, I’m glad we know where she is, I’m glad we’re going to go there and find her. But there, of all places.” They pass into the plane cabin. A steward smiles and individually greets Mark. “I can’t get away from the feeling that he somehow orchestrated this, th
at he lured Mette to him in order to force me to come. Which is ridiculous, but thinking of him makes me paranoid.”

  Mark doesn’t say anything. He wonders whether, if he doesn’t press, she might eventually tell him more. It feels sneaky to operate under this assumption, but he swallows his reservations. They reach the last row. All of the overheard compartments are full, but neither he nor Saskia has brought much, so they fit their carry-ons under the seats in front of them. The mother and baby are three rows away.

  “Is Copenhagen our last stop?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “Is that where Thomas and Mette are?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you? He lives on an island off of Funen. Funen’s the big central island. We’ll take a train, then a ferry.”

  “I didn’t try to reach Mette.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I was worried if she knew we were coming—”

  “Same here. I meant to tell you not to, I’m glad you figured it out on your own.”

  The plane is pushed back. Mark wishes he had a window seat. He prefers, during interminable descents, to have visual confirmation that there remains plenty of room between the plane and the ground. But he’s on the aisle. Saskia insisted on taking the middle seat so that he would have more leg room. He leans forward to glimpse what he can through the window. “Will you just look at that parking lot,” he says.

  “Hm?” Saskia says.

  “Something I saw in a movie.”

  “The Coen brothers. A Serious Man. It’s their best movie.”