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- Herausgeber: Francis Rosenfeld
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Once you are made aware that you do not know the first thing about reality life becomes a lot harder, but also a lot brighter, more interesting and more surprising too. You suddenly start seeing the colors you couldn’t notice before, the details you used to toss aside because they didn’t make sense, you start seeing things just the way they are, without explanation or reason. Not everything has to make sense, not to our limited understanding, anyway; only our over inflated sense of self importance makes us willing to throw away half of reality just because our minds can’t make heads or tails of it.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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Francis Rosenfeld
Between Mirrors
Table of contents
PART 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
PART 2
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
PART 1
Chapter 1
“Get out of the doorway!”
The words boomed like thunder in Claire’s ears, now almost thirty years later, with the same intensity and pronouncement they carried the first time she’d heard Grandmother utter them, the first time of many. She smiled vaguely to the memory.
It was vast, this mansion of her grandparents where she had grown up, but Claire didn’t know it at the time; she never questioned what she saw because she’d never known another way of life, she’d never ventured past the end of the formal alley flanked by huge oak trees, hundreds of years old, which led straight to its front doors. For her the mansion and its garden were the world.
The most interesting feature of this large house, and the one that had prompted Claire’s memory, was its entryway. The double doors carved out of solid walnut had stained glass panes set in intricate wood tracery and were so heavy little Claire always needed both hands to pry them open. The doors were flanked by large crystal mirrors, parallel to each other, which ran floor to ceiling and reflected everything and everybody that passed between them into infinity, contours diffracted into rainbows in places by the finely polished bevels around their edges.
She must have been five years old at the time, intensely curious about this exciting new world she’d been born into, wandering around the old mansion whose windows were frequently propped open to temper the sweltering heat of the Louisiana summers and whose broad surrounding porch offered welcoming shade during those afternoons when even the wind stood still. Nature afforded itself no movements and no sounds then, other than the eerie trilling of the tree frogs. This was her first memory of the mirrors: she was standing between them trying to understand why there were so many of her and why they seemed to get farther and farther away. She could still remember the way the white ribbons of the dress Grandmother had sewn by hand just in time for her birthday moved in the doors’ draft like they were alive. Little Claire had managed to smear cake frosting on the dress, a fact she was trying very hard to hide, and she remembered feeling somewhat relieved that all the Claires in the mirrors were also looking down with guilty expressions on their faces. A razor sharp ray of sun sliced through the stained glass suddenly, with the swiftness of a blade, and hardened the contours around everything, rendering the shadows deeper and softer than black velvet. For a second Claire could almost touch the substance of that shadow, feel its palpable nature. She got scared of it and ran out of the doorway, her frilly white ribbons trailing behind her, and promised herself to listen to Grandmother and steer clear of the doorway going further. Naturally, she forgot her promise the very next day.
Claire’s fascination with this mirror world which she perceived as three dimensional due to its endless patterns of reflection had subsequently earned her many scoldings, but she simply couldn’t resist the attraction it exerted on her; she kept getting drawn to it like a compass needle to the north. Even now the fascination that weird alcove exerted on her made her feel guilty, an absurd emotion for a woman in her mid thirties, even one who was still trying to find herself.
She decided to work on her assertiveness and stand wherever she pleased, since she was a grown up, gosh darn it, but her ears instinctively tuned in to hear if her grandparents were approaching, so she could get out of there before they saw her. She was grateful for her grandparents’ company and felt relieved to be back home, but she was also kind of embarrassed to move back in with them at her age. She shrugged her shoulders. Life had unexpected ways to steer one’s journey and it had certainly taught her it was easier sometimes to accept them at face value.
The world outside these familiar walls hadn’t turned out the way she hoped, nothing like the overheated imagination of her youth had painted it to be. The real world didn’t end up being her enchanted playground, quite the contrary, it stubbornly and consistently refused to cooperate. She was too weird for it, Claire learned. She didn’t exactly know how or why, but she didn’t seem to fit in it or understand its ways, the subtle cues and unspoken agreements that function so flawlessly in society and form the basis of common understanding.
It’s not that her life had been worse than anybody else’s, it’s just that everybody else accepted it the way it was, without unnecessary commentary, while Claire, for whatever cursed reason, could not. She had questions in school which made her teachers uncomfortable, she had questions at work which made coworkers find her difficult, but worse of all, she had questions regarding social expectations that doomed any potential friendships before they even started. She often felt like a car stuck going the wrong way on a one way street with no places to turn.
She couldn’t even remember what prompted her to pack up and come back to Louisiana on this self-imposed sabbatical she took because she didn’t have an alternative to it.
“Get out of the doorway!” the real voice of her grandmother startled her from behind, and Claire let out a resigned sigh: she had fallen for the spell of the mirrors again and had lost track of herself. She obeyed, out of habit, and stepped out of the little alcove, somewhat disappointed that her endless reflections were now confined to just one body.
“You never listen, bebelle,” Grandmother shook her head in distress. “Thirty years old and still you never listen!”
“What’s wrong with it, maman?” Claire forgot to subdue the inquisitive streak that never failed to get her in trouble. “Why do you get so upset when I hang around the front doors?”
“It’s bad luck, child! Do you need me to draw you a picture? Why would you want to invite trouble? God knows it is easy enough for it to find you anyway.”
“Please, maman,” Claire besought her in her loveliest cajoling voice, one she hoped the elder would find too endearing to deny, “just tell me!” Grandmother dismissed her with an irate hand gesture, turned her back to the granddaughter and went to the kitchen.
Claire was still standing in front of the doors, whose intricate stained glass and wood motifs, depicting angels and flowers, were close enough to get caught in the mirrors. They multiplied in ways that confused the eye and made the entire scene absolutely hypnotic.
“Aren’t you hungry, dear?” the soft voice of her grandfather startled her from her second reverie. She felt his hand on her shoulder guiding her gently towards the kitchen. She was hungry, she realized, and weary, and grateful to be cared for again, if only for a while.
***
When she was about six Claire started wondering what had happened to her parents. She tried to ask her grandparents about them, but they got so upset with her that she cried for days and decided never to bring up the subject again. Children tend to believe that everything that’s not right with the world must be their fault and adults will be mad at them for it and stop loving them, and Claire was no exception. Of course she never ceased questioning the issue, silently, and over the years constructed fantastic scenarios about what might have happened to them, stories which were heroic and extraordinary and made her hope that maybe some of their exceptional quality rubbed off on her too.
One wouldn’t call Claire’s life exceptional. One wouldn’t call it miserable either. She had worked so hard at fitting in that the results, which turned out to be the exact opposite of that, were almost hilariously bad. Unfortunately Claire couldn’t appreciate the fine irony because she had lost her sense of humor somewhere along the way and replaced it with a pleasant attitude meant to accommodate any opinion she might encounter on her journey.
That afternoon, when she asked what had happened to her parents and got scolded, Claire ran out into the garden and hid in the natural hollow created by the thick and gnarly roots of an oak tree where they broke the ground, and that spot became her secret hideaway from the world from that day on, the place where she could go to dream and find comfort in good times and in bad. That oak tree remained her best friend throughout her childhood: it didn’t judge, it had no expectations and it listened to whatever Claire’s wild imagination came up with. A weird friend for a child, but, as I said, Claire herself was weird.
She was sitting in that natural chair now, eyes closed, listening to the bird song and the tree frogs and the wind blowing through the thick foliage. The clinking of plates and silverware accompanied them - the sounds of her grandparents setting the table for breakfast outside on the patio, as it had been customary for them to do for decades. In the ever changing nature of things having this ritual felt almost like a gift, one of the fixed points which held her life well anchored in reality and kept it from being scattered by the winds. It was always at the same time, too. She kept smiling, with her eyes closed, and waited for the grandfather clock to strike nine. One…two…three…bang…bang…bang…Claire counted the guttural chimes with the clock until she reached nine, then got up to join her grandparents at the table.
“Did you sleep well, bebelle?” Grandmother asked, smiling.
Claire’s sleep had been troubled by strange dreams, most of which she couldn’t remember, but which left her uneasy and wrought. It was the heat, she thought, she’d become unaccustomed to the heat during all of these years she’d been gone, it didn’t use to bother her when she was a child. Glad as she was to be back home something felt off, odd, out of place, like reality had been bent or dented in the present moment somehow, but only very slightly, allowing everything to look almost normal. Almost.
“Yes, thank you, maman,” she smiled politely and her hard acquired social skills kicked in instinctively, eager to smother any chance that candor or, God forbid, a real connection might sneak up on her.
“Don’t lie to me, child. I’ve known you since you were in swaddling clothes,” Grandmother shook her head in a gesture so familiar to Claire it suddenly brightened her mood and made her feel safe. She smiled.
“It doesn’t matter, really.”
“Have some coffee,” Grandmother enticed her.
Claire picked up the old china pot and poured the dark liquid carefully into her cup. Her grandparents had this rule, which Claire had never questioned as a child but never encountered in her grown-up life anywhere else, that each member of the family had to use their own plate and cup, not to be mixed up with anybody else’s. There was a matching china set, of course, complete with tureens and gravy boats and large enough for twenty four people, but it was only used when the family hosted dinner parties and at no other time. Claire’s cup and saucer were made of bone porcelain, hand painted with delicate blue and gold tracery and so thin they became translucent; it seemed almost a miracle they had survived Claire’s entire childhood.
She wasn’t used to seeing coffee in that cup, given her usual fare as a young girl which consisted of linden tea with lemon and honey or chocolate milk. It made her sad that there was a grown-up beverage in it now, especially since she hadn’t managed to figure out how to be a grown-up yet.
“Milk?” Grandmother offered, as if she’d heard her granddaughter’s thoughts.
Claire poured milk in the already full cup and made the coffee spill into the saucer in the process.
“For luck!” Grandmother dipped her forefinger in the saucer and smeared coffee on the young woman’s forehead, another one of the many customs Claire never questioned. One threw salt over one’s shoulder, ate beans on Wednesdays, wished on the first fruits of the year, wrapped up the outdoor activities at sundown. Life had different ways of marking the passing of time in their household - by the songs of the pigeons in the morning, by the height of the sun at noon, by the sounds of the old bell in the church nearby in the late afternoon. Seasons were announced by scents - the fragrance of the tree blossoms, the overheated aroma of the herbs, the sweet heavy scent of the harvest, the damp smell of the rain. The grandfather clock was the only exception in this world that marked its own time, as if it were brought there from outside just to make a point.
Claire’s grandfather went over the tasks for the day, as he always did at breakfast, taking slow sips of coffee between rare puffs of his morning cigarette, whose tip glowed amber in the rhythm of his puffs, and which stood eerily far from his hand at the end of a very long tortoise shell holder. It was Claire’s task, when she was a child, to prepare the cigarette and stuff so much cotton in the holder that almost no nicotine made it through.
Slow wisps of blue-gray smoke danced in the morning air, drawn towards the sky by the rising air currents. Grandfather finished drafting the daily schedule and turned towards Claire. He was in a good mood, a state of mind the presence of his beloved granddaughter only served to amplify.
“I’m going into town, do you want to come?”
He was referring to the daily bicycle trip to the baker from which he always returned wrapped in the irresistible aroma of warm bread. Claire immediately made a mental list of the items she hoped they still made and got up from the table without a word in order to follow him. It’d been decades since she had ridden a bicycle and she felt a little awkward trying to do it again.
“You’re not going to change?” Grandfather turned around. She’d almost forgotten the first rule of going out: one never left the house wearing anything other than street attire. Clothes had to be perfectly pressed, shoes polished to a shine, always one last check in the mirrors before going out the door. Maybe that was the mystery of the parallel mirrors, Claire thought, although one had to admit that even for a family with such high standards for personal grooming reflecting oneself into infinity was a little excessive.The
***
The rain started so suddenly Claire barely had time to get in from the porch and close the doors behind her before the downpour delivered a deafening drum solo on the roof. Claire’s grandfather was rushing through the house, as he used to do under these circumstances, closing up doors, windows and shutters and making sure everybody was inside, safe from the storm. The young woman smiled, tracking his movements through the house by the noises he made - feet shuffling on the floor, sounds of doors opening and slamming behind him, footsteps up and down the stairs, the screech of the attic ladder being dragged on the floor in the hallway upstairs.
Claire’s grandfather was a force of nature, he blew rather than walked through the doors, in a motion more akin to a rushing wind than to a living breathing person. He never closed a cabinet or a drawer, and when he moved through a room small napkins and pieces of paper which happened to be left on the table got caught in his draft like leaves in the wind, stopped from trailing behind him only by the doors which invariably slammed shut after he walked through them. Claire didn’t even realize how much she had missed those noises. She spent a few minutes listening to this symphonic racket like she would to a fine piece of music, failing to notice she was standing in the alcove between the mirrors again.
The storm intensified, heavy with lightning and thunder, blowing the rain in horizontal bands and prompting Claire to rush over and close the storm shutters which had been left open. The light in the house dimmed to almost dusky levels as bruise colored clouds crowded the sky, so thick and so pregnant with rain they almost dragged on the ground. As she moved out of the darkened alcove she caught a glimpse of her reflections in the mirrors in a flash of lightning, and they appeared to be of a much older her, staring back with a knowing gaze that was simply annoying. Claire hesitated, waiting for the next flash of lightning in order to figure out what this was all about, but the next lightning revealed nothing other than her usual expression, if only slightly puzzled at the moment.
“Good God, I’m going to lose it one day!” Claire mumbled to herself, resuming her rush through the house to close the shutters, too late to prevent the pouring rain from reaching the wood floors. “Maman and her mirror superstitions! Now I have to wipe off all of this water!”
“Gracious, bebelle, if you open a door you must remember to close it behind you, not leave it ajar so anything and anybody can let themselves in! Look at all this water on the floors!” Grandmother protested and went to the kitchen to get a mop and a bucket.
Claire mumbled under her breath that her grandfather always left the doors open and nobody ever complained about that.
“He knows which doors need closing, he never leaves a door open that has to stay shut. And get out of the doorway.”
“Why is it bad luck to stand in the doorway?” Claire returned to the unsatisfied curiosity that had plagued her entire childhood.
“You should be either on one side of the door or the other, not in between. Besides, you’re blocking traffic.”
“But there is nobody else here that might want to get in, not in this weather, that’s for sure,” Claire replied, bewildered.
“You never know, there may have been,” Grandmother replied matter of fact, defying logic. Her face darkened for a moment and then resumed its usual expression. “Empty this outside, will you?” She handed Claire the bucket which was now half full of water and continued wiping the floors until they were completely dry.
***
The next morning brought sunshine, which beamed crisp and clear through the recently unburdened skies. The leaves were still loaded with the raindrops that had pounded them through the night and the lightest touch of wind or excited little critter turned them into ad hoc waterfalls and scattered their liquid load on the ground.
Mornings like these made for the best memories of Claire’s childhood, those mornings when she woke up without a care in the world and nothing to do and rushed outside to greet the sunshine and the doves and the wind in the trees. During all of the time she’d spent here, in her grandparents’ house, Claire could not remember a single instance of bad weather. It’s not that she hadn’t had her share of soggy winters and hot summer winds, it’s just that she never perceived them as bad.
Life unfolds all its magic in front of the eyes of an enchanted child, it holds nothing back, drunk with generosity and abandon, it shows itself in the ways in which it wants to be seen, ways that become impenetrable to the sight of grown up eyes. The cold winter rain carried feelings and fragrance, the scent of the wet oak trunks and soggy moss and damp earth. The strong summer winds whirled their spirit through the branches, heavy and labored like the raspy breath of a hunted creature in search of a safe place to rest. The whole world was a miracle, every leaf, every sight, every day.
To celebrate this memory she rushed outside in her nightgown and barefoot, like she used to do when she was five, and ran her hands through the tall dill that was growing along the side of the house. She scattered the water droplets from its heavy umbels and released its scent. Her long white gown unsettled the mist that was rising from the earth in the warm light of the morning. If someone were to see her walk across the grass inside this eerie scene they might have thought they’d seen a ghost; a happy dancing ghost who couldn’t hold back her giggles.
“I see you’re in great spirits,” Grandmother laughed, pleased to see her little girl happy. “The rain must have cleared away the shadows.”
Claire returned the reply that was expected of her, as she always did when her elder mentioned the shadows. It was like a secret understanding, this exchange of phrases between the two of them, whose meaning, though obscure, had acquired almost ceremonial significance with the passing of years.
“What shadows, maman? There are no shadows other than the ones we cast.”
“And those we have not yet been granted the grace to see.”
Claire had always wondered what that last phrase meant; they were real things, the shadows, and everybody around this corner of the world took them very seriously.
“You smell like dill,” Grandmother laughed. “If you keep rustling those herbs you’re going to upset the bees, they’re always besotted in the morning.”
The table was already set for breakfast and Claire wondered if she should go back to the house to get dressed, but her grandmother gestured to her to sit down. Her grandfather wasn’t there, she noticed.
“It’s just the two of us this morning, I’m afraid. Your grandfather had some business in town.” She poured coffee in the cups, without rushing, like people who have time on their side. “You know, if you don’t have any plans today, maybe you can help me sort through some of your old things, I didn’t know what you would like to keep, so I packed everything in boxes. They’re up in the attic.”
“You’re still going up into the attic?” Claire asked, slightly alarmed.
“Of course I do, why do you ask?” Grandmother seemed surprised by the question, but then she saw the veiled concern in her granddaughter’s eyes and retorted. “You’re not fast enough to keep up with me, child! I can get up into that attic before you have time to rise from your chair!”
“What kind of things?” Claire changed the subject.
“All sorts,” Grandmother didn’t specify.
They ate their apricot preserves in silence. The confections were served in tiny glass saucers: one whole apricot, with the kernel in, soaked in a golden syrup infused with vanilla beans and boiled until it reached the thickness of molasses - their morning ritual. Claire hesitated to ask the question that was weighing on her mind, but eventually gathered the courage to speak.
“Maman, did you ever notice anything unusual about the mirrors?”
Grandmother’s demeanor betrayed no reaction to the question, but the flash in her eyes was too fast to hide.
“Unusual?” she tried to tease out more detail from her granddaughter before responding. “In what way?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” Claire almost whispered, “but I think I saw…”
“Yes,” Grandmother grew a little impatient.
“Myself,” Claire continued, without realizing how foolish her answer sounded. Grandmother didn’t laugh.
“What about it?” Grandmother insisted.
“I…looked much older,” Claire gathered up the courage to explain. “Still me, but older.”
