Anaïs Gentileschi.

On the day when Anaïs Gentileschi was born, her father looked into her face and saw that it was full of stars. He held her in his arms as her mother drew her last breaths, and he promised he would do anything so she would not hurt.

Although Anaïs never quite realised it, her father did the best job at this that he knew how. But no matter how well a father can act out his good intentions, there comes an age, usually around the adolescent period, that a girl begins to notice the attention of boys, and will willingly give the parts of herself away that will hurt the most when she misses them.

Anaïs was sixteen when she met her first suitor. Although she had had flings with the other boys at her school, she chose to keep this affair a secret from her father, mainly because it was exactly that: an affair. The man in question was a thirty-nine year old mathematics professor at the local university. Married to a sweet, unassuming woman, Prof. Eduardo Malchensi had become increasingly bored with his lot in life, and had taken to exploring other avenues. As a mathematician and a man, he found it reasonably easy to show a sufficient amount of affection to convince Anaïs of his interest, yet could remain clinical enough to not arouse suspicion at home.

As a sixteen year old girl is still on the cusp of girlhood, Anaïs knew no better than the truths that Eduardo Malchensi told her. She offered up the softest shapes of hers in a sickly transaction for his shallow affection, and Eduardo received them. He taught her of the shapes a man and a woman can make between themselves and the sky, and she in turn learnt of the ease in which these shapes can be forged and torn down by the power of ones mind. Eventually, Anaïs learned the power of intimacy in breaking down a man, and Prof. Eduardo Malchensi discovered the intense shapes that love can form within ones ribs.

I would like to tell you that this relationship was discovered, that Anaïs’ father found out and demanded that Prof. Eduardo Malchensi take heed of his despicable actions and leave. I would even have pleasure in telling you that Eduardo’s wife found that she was with child, and with that stroke of reality, he pushed himself back into a respectable lifestyle. However, this did not happen. Luckily for the decreasing moral standards of those involved, youth played it’s last and strongest card: boredom.

Anaïs was now seventeen. For her birthday Prof. Eduardo Malchensi had showered her with gifts that, though well-meaning, reflected very much his age. What use Anaïs had for silk stockings and perfume when the shapes of herself were still too young to fully appreciate them. Instead of reading these communicable gifts as the shape of Eduardo’s burgeoning love for her, she found them clinical, functional over sentimental, and most of all, boring. Two weeks later, she found a boy her own age. And, as the cheater becomes cheated on, Anaïs found herself in a more suitable relationship of love-notes, coy glances and other youthful tendencies that two young teenagers should experience in their first clumsy relationships.

However much blinded by his love for Anaïs, Prof. Eduardo Malchensi still had eyes enough to see that the lines between himself and Anaïs were becoming weaker. In the evenings when he managed to procure time for them both, he found her increasingly distant. As he kissed her neck, she would stare out the window, or at the clock, or begin to bite the nail on her left thumb. On evening, irritated by her faded passion, he confronted her. Obviously, he wanted to know the truth, and he demanded it of her, standing over her bare legs as she looked dreamily out the window.

‘Well, what do you want to know, Eduardo?’ Anaïs mumbled, still looking away.

‘I want to know what is wrong with you’ Eduardo spat, his face becoming redder and redder at the fact that she still hadn’t looked at him.

‘Oh, many things I suppose. Mrs. Alendra says I don’t concentrate enough. My father says I’m too unfocussed. Gabriel says my socks are always unclean.’

‘Gabriel? Who is Gabriel?’ Eduardo hissed.

‘Oh, a boy.’

‘A boy. Ho! Since when did you talk to boys?’

‘Since when did you become my father?’ Anaïs demanded, standing up and staring into his face. “If I wanted questions I’d simply go home, and you know that.’

With these words, Prof. Eduardo Malchensi realised what Anaïs had been telling him for weeks, not with words but with the muted shapes of her body language, with the distracted lines that rarely connected with his. Seized with a desperate mans panic, he began to clamour towards her.

‘What is it Anaïs? What can I do? Is it my wife? I’ll leave her in an instant if you want me to.’

With this show of desperation, Anaïs found that she was disgusted by this ageing man and his grovelling, dishevelled appearance.

‘You, leave your wife?’ she hissed. ‘How dare you. How dare you think that your child should go without a parent. You make me sick. You have always made me sick.’ and she turned to gather all her things.

Eduardo was shocked, but remained silent. What more could he do, as her trail of clothes followed her out the door. In that second, he felt the pathway before him split as abruptly as once slices a vegetable in half. On one side, he would chase Anaïs. He would bombard her with gifts, he would leave his wife, he would woo her father. He would take the dishonourable road. On the other side, he would let her be. If he meant as much to her as he assumed, she would return. He would not leave his wife, her father would remain ignorant. This too was a cowardly route, but the one he much preferred to take. All that this decision balanced on was the fact that he was sure that Anaïs would not be able to live without him.

He was wrong.

The affair lasted eight months, the longest relationship Anaïs had ever had, but enough for her to guard what shapes she knew her body could make. She had seen that men were pathetic, were weak and were not in any way interesting, and therefore were not anything that she desired to have present in her own life. She lived on.

With the desire for male affection numbed, Anaïs grew into an intelligent woman. She felt no need to focus on her appearance, her mind was what mattered most. She began to study the sort of things that enlightened her. She saw the shaped that exist between atoms, the lines brawn between matter and non-matter. She studied the stars, drawing lines between constellations as the boys in her class drew lines between her freckles. At the end of her degree, she moved out of her fathers house for an apartment at the old Hotel de Palais. He had wanted her to move in with others, a friend or a colleague or someone, but she would have none of that. She was perfectly content on her own. Life had taught her enough to not want anything to do with other people.

Every now and then, she would notice men looking at her with a sort of curious look. It was in no way the sort of look that Eduardo would give her, nor was it the coy timidity of Gabriel. As she could not place it, she disregarded it as unimportant, and focussed her mind on more important matters. And although sometimes this strange look was accompanied by a blushing man asking for a date, she always declined, with no exceptions. After years of turning the few men who asked her down, she had grown to twenty-four before she finally gave in.

When Dr. José Ganéa finally found the courage to ask Anaïs Gentileschi on the date he had been planning for two months, she gave in. She did not tell him that this was not something that she did not do, nor did she tell him anything about herself. She simply said yes, and to pick her up from the old Hotel de Palais as 7pm tomorrow evening. That, she felt, was enough of her biography for now.