The Water Mirror (9 page)

“H
AVE YOU EVER LOOKED INTO IT
?” J
UNIPA ASKED NEXT
morning, after they'd awakened to the
sound of Eft's ringing the gong in the hallway.

Merle rubbed the sleep from her eyes with the knuckle of her index finger.
“Into what?”

“Into your water mirror.”

“Oh, sure. All the time.”

Junipa swung her legs over the edge of the bed and looked at Merle. Her
mirror fragments flared golden from the sunrise behind the roofs.

“I don't mean just looked in.”

“Behind the water surface?”

Junipa nodded. “Have you?”

“Two or three times,” Merle said. “I've pushed my
face in as far as possible. The frame is pretty narrow, but it worked. My eyes were
underwater.”

“And?”

“Nothing. Just darkness.”

“You couldn't see anything at all?”

“I just said that.”

Thoughtfully Junipa ran her fingers through her hair. “If you want,
I'll try it.”

Merle, who was just about to yawn, snapped her mouth shut again.
“You?”

“With the mirror eyes I can see in the dark.”

Merle raised her eyebrows. “You didn't tell me about that at
all.” She hastily considered whether she'd done anything at night to be
ashamed of.

“It just began three days ago. But now it's getting stronger
from night to night. I see the same as by daylight. Sometimes I can't sleep
because the brightness even penetrates my eyelids. Then everything gets red, as if you
were looking at the bright sun with your eyes closed.”

“You have to talk with Arcimboldo about that.”

Junipa looked unhappy. “And what if he takes the mirrors away from
me?”

“He would never do that.” Concerned, Merle tried to imagine
what it would be like to be surrounded by light
day and night. What
if it got worse? Could Junipa sleep at all then?

“So,” Junipa quickly changed the subject, “how about it?
Shall I try it?”

Merle pulled the hand mirror out from under the covers, weighed it in her
hand for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?”

Junipa climbed up beside her on the bed. They sat opposite each other,
cross-legged. Their nightshirts stretched across their knees and both were still
tousle-headed from sleep.

“Let me try it first,” Merle said.

Junipa watched as Merle brought the mirror right up to her eyes. Carefully
she dipped her nose in, then—as far as possible—the rest of her face. Soon
the frame was pressed against her cheekbones. She could go no deeper.

Merle opened her eyes underwater. She knew what to expect, so she
wasn't disappointed. It was the same as always. Nothing but darkness.

She removed the mirror from her face. The water remained trapped in the
frame, not the finest trace of dampness gleaming on her skin.

“And?” Junipa asked excitedly.

“Nothing at all.” Merle handed her the mirror. “As
usual.”

Junipa gripped the handle in her narrow hand. She
looked at the reflecting surface and studied her new eyes. “Do you really
think they're pretty?” she asked suddenly.

Merle hesitated. “Unusual.”

“That's no answer to my question.”

“I'm sorry.” Merle wished that Junipa had spared herself
the truth. “Sometimes I get goose bumps when I look at you. Not because your eyes
are ugly,” she added quickly. “They are just so . . .
so . . .”

“They feel cold,” said Junipa softly, as if she were deep in
thought. “Sometimes I feel cold, even when the sun is shining.”

Brightness at night, cold in the sunshine.

“Do you really want to do it?” Merle asked. She remembered how
reluctant Junipa had been to put her hand in the mirror; how the water had felt ice-cold
to her.

“Really, I don't want to, I know that already,” Junipa
said. “But if you say so, I'll try it for you.” She looked at Merle.
“Wouldn't you like to know what's back there, where the hand comes
from?”

Merle only nodded mutely.

Junipa pushed the mirror up to her face and dipped it in. Her head was
smaller than Merle's—as all of her was more petite, slender,
vulnerable—and so it vanished up to the temples in the water.

Merle waited. She observed Junipa's thin body under the
much-too-large nightshirt, the way her shoulders stuck out underneath it and her
collarbones protruded
over the edge of the neckline, outlined as
sharply as if they lay over the skin instead of under it.

The sight was strange, almost a little mad, now that for the first time
she was seeing another person working with the mirror. Mad things could be quite normal,
so long as you were doing them yourself. Watching someone else doing them, you wrinkled
your nose, turned around quickly, and walked away.

But Merle kept on watching, and she wondered what it was that Junipa was
seeing at that moment.

Finally she couldn't stand it any longer and asked, “Junipa?
Can you hear me?”

Of course she could. Her ears were above the surface of the water. But all
the same, she didn't answer.

“Junipa?”

Merle was uneasy, but she still didn't interfere. Very slowly
visions welled up in her, pictures of beasts that were gnawing on her friend's
face on the other side. Now, when she pulled her head back, it would just be a hollow
shell of bone and hair, like the helmets of the tribes that Professor Burbridge had
discovered during his expedition to Hell.

“Junipa?” she asked again, this time a bit more sharply. She
grasped her friend's free hand. Her skin was warm. Merle could feel the pulse.

Junipa returned. It was just exactly that: a return. Her face had the
expression of a person who has been very far
away, in distant,
inconceivable lands, which perhaps existed on the other side of the globe or only in her
imagination.

“What was there?” Merle asked uneasily. “What did you
see?”

She would have given a lot if Junipa at this moment had had the eyes of a
human. Eyes in which a person could read something—sometimes things you might
rather not have known, but always the truth.

But Junipa's eyes remained blank and hard and without any
feeling.

Can she still cry?
ran through Merle's
mind, and at the moment the question seemed more important than any other.

However, Junipa was not crying. Only the corners of her mouth twitched.
But it didn't look as though she wanted to smile.

Merle bent toward her, took the mirror out of her hand, laid it on the
covers, and gently grasped her by the shoulders. “What
is
in the mirror?”

Junipa was silent for a moment, then silvery glass turned in Merle's
direction. “It's dark over there.”

I know that,
Merle wanted to say, before it
became clear to her that Junipa meant a different darkness from the one Merle had
seen.

“Tell me about it,” she demanded.

Junipa shook her head. “No. You can't ask me about
it.”

“What?” Merle cried.

Junipa shrugged Merle off and stood up. “Never ask me what I saw
there,” she said tonelessly. “Never.”

“But Junipa—”

“Please.”

“It can't be anything bad!” cried Merle. Defiance and
despair welled up in her. “I've felt the hand. The hand, Junipa!”

Outside the window a cloud moved in front of the morning sun, and
Junipa's mirror eyes also darkened. “Let it be, Merle. Forget the hand. Best
forget the mirror altogether.” With these words she turned, opened the door, and
walked out into the hall.

Merle sat transfixed on the bed, incapable of thinking clearly. She heard
the door slam, and then she felt herself very alone.

That same day, Arcimboldo sent his two girl students on the hunt for
mirror phantoms.

“I want to show you something quite unusual today,” he said in
the afternoon. Out of the corner of her eye Merle saw Dario and the other two boys
exchange looks and grin.

The master mirror maker pointed to the door that led to the storeroom
behind the workshop. “You haven't been in there yet,” he said.
“And for good reason.”

Merle had assumed he was afraid for his finished magic mirrors, which were
stored there.

“The handling of the mirrors as I produce them
is not entirely without danger.” Arcimboldo leaned with both hands on the
workbench behind him. “Now and again one must clear them of
certain”—he hesitated—“of certain elements.”

Again the three boys grinned, and Merle slowly became angry. She hated it
when Dario knew more than she did.

“Dario and the others stay here in the workshop,” said
Arcimboldo. “Junipa and Merle, you come with me.”

Then he turned and went to the door of the storeroom. Merle and Junipa
exchanged looks, then followed him.

“Good luck,” said Boro. It sounded sincere.

“Good luck,” mimicked Dario and murmured something after it
that Merle didn't catch.

Arcimboldo let the girls in and then closed the door after them.
“Welcome into the heart of my house,” he said.

The sight he presented to them warranted the ceremony of his words.

It was hard to say how big the room was. Its walls were covered over and
over with mirrors, and rows of mirrors also stretched down its center, placed behind one
another like dominoes just before they are knocked down. Sunlight shone in through a
glass ceiling—the workshop was in an addition that wasn't nearly so high as
the rest of the house.

The mirrors were secured with braces and chains that
anchored them to the walls. Nothing would topple here, if Venice were to be struck
by an earthquake or if Hell itself were to open under the city—as it was said to
have done under Marrakesh, a city in North Africa. But that had been more than thirty
years before, right after the outbreak of the war. Today no one talked about Marrakesh.
It had vanished from the maps and the language of men.

“How many mirrors are there?” asked Junipa.

It was impossible to estimate their number, to say nothing of counting
them. They reflected each other again and again in their glassy surfaces, mutually
adding and multiplying themselves. Merle had a thought: Was a mirror that existed only
in a mirror not just as real as its original? It fulfilled its role just as well as its
counterpart—it reflected.

Merle couldn't think of anything else that was able to do this: to
do something without itself being. For the first time, she asked herself whether all
mirrors were not always magic mirrors.
Mirrors can see,
Arcimboldo had said. Now she believed him.

“You are now going to make the acquaintance of a very singular kind
of nuisance,” he explained. “My special friends—the mirror
phantoms.”

“Mirror phantoms? What are they?” Junipa spoke softly, almost
fearfully, as though the images of what she had seen behind Merle's water mirror
still danced before her eyes and made her afraid.

Arcimboldo stepped in front of the first mirror in the
center row. It reached almost to his chin. Its frame was of plain wood, like the
frames of all the mirrors from Arcimboldo's workshop. They not only served as
ornament but also prevented cut fingers during transport.

“Just look in,” he demanded.

The girls walked to his side and stared at the mirror. Junipa noticed it
first. “There's something in the glass.”

It looked like shreds of mist that moved fleetingly over the mirror
surface, amorphous, like ghosts. And there was no doubt that the pale outline was
under
the glass, inside the mirror.

“Mirror phantoms,” said Arcimboldo matter-of-factly.
“Annoying parasites who settle into my mirrors from time to time. It's the
apprentices' job to catch them.”