The Black Obelisk (11 page)

"Why?"

"I don't know, Isabelle. People do so many things without knowing why—"

"I was looking for you last night. There was a moon—not that one up there, the red, restless, lying one—no, the other moon, the cool, clear one that you can drink."

"It would certainly have been better for me to be here," I say, leaning back and feeling peace flood into me from her. "How can you drink the moon, Isabelle?"

"In water. It's perfectly easy. It tastes like opal. You don't really feel it in your mouth; that comes later on—then you feel it beginning to shimmer inside you. It shines out of your eyes. But you mustn't turn on a light. It wilts in the light."

I take her hand and lay it against my temple. It is dry and cool. "How do you drink it in water?" I ask.

Isabelle withdraws her hand. "You hold a glass of water out the window—like this." She stretches out her arm. "Then the moon is in it. You can see it, the glass lights up."

"You mean it's reflected in it?"

"It is not reflected. It is in it." She looks at me. "Reflected —what do you mean by reflected?"

"A reflection is an image in a mirror. You can see your reflection in all sorts of things that are smooth. In water too. But you are not in it."

"Things that are smooth!" Isabelle smiles, politely incredulous. "Really? Just imagine!"

"But of course. If you stand in front of a mirror you see yourself in it too."

Isabelle takes off one of her shoes and looks at her foot. It is narrow and long and unmarred by calluses. "Well, perhaps," she says, still politely uninterested.

"Not perhaps. Certainly. But what you see isn't you. It is only a mirror image. Not you."

"No, not me. But where am I when it is there?"

"You're standing in front of it. Otherwise you couldn't see your reflection."

Isabelle puts her shoe on again and glances up. "Are you sure of that, Rudolf?"

"Perfectly sure."

"I'm not. What do the mirrors do when they're alone?"

"They reflect whatever is there."

"And if nothing is there?"

"That's impossible. Something is always there."

"And at night? In the dark of the moon—when it's perfectly black, what do they reflect then?"

"The darkness," I say, no longer completely sure of my ground, for how can there be a reflection in complete darkness? It always requires some light.

"Then they are dead when it is completely dark?"

"Perhaps they are asleep—and when the light comes again they wake up."

She nods thoughtfully and draws her dress closer about her legs. "And when they dream?" she asks suddenly. "What do they dream about?"

"Who?"

"The mirrors."

"I think they dream all the time," I say. "That is what they do all day long. They dream us. They dream us the other way around. What is our right is their left, and what is left is right."

Isabelle turns around to me. "Then they are our other side?"

I reflect. Who really knows what a mirror is? "There, you see," she says. "Just before, you said there was nothing in them. But now you admit they have our other side."

"Only as long as we are standing in front of them. Not when we go away."

"How do you know that?"

"You can see it. When you go away and look back your image is no longer there."

"What if they just hide it?"

"How can they hide it? You know they reflect everything! That's the very reason they are mirrors. A mirror can't hide anything."

A crease appears between Isabelle's brows. "What becomes of it then?"

"Of what?"

"The image! Our other side! Does it jump back into us?"

"That I don't know."

"It can't just get lost!"

"It doesn't get lost."

"What becomes of it then?" she asked more insistently. "Is it in the mirror?"

"No. There's nothing left in the mirror."

"It might be there just the same! What makes you so sure? After all, you can't see it when you are away."

"Other people can see that it's no longer there. They only

see their own image when they stand in front of a mirror. Not someone else's."

"They cover it with their own. But where is mine? It must be there after all!"

"It is there, of course," I say, regretting that we have got on this subject. "When you step in front of the mirror again it appears there too."

Isabelle is suddenly very excited. She kneels on the bench and bends forward. Her silhouette is black and slender against the narcissus, whose color looks sulphurous in the sultry night. "So it is there after all! lust now you said it wasn't."

She clings to my hand trembling. I don't know what to say to calm her. I can't get anywhere with the laws of physics; she would reject them contemptuously. And at the moment I am no longer so sure about them myself. All at once mirrors really seem to hold a mystery.

"Where is it, Rudolf?" she whispers, pressing herself against me. "Tell me where it is! Has a piece of me been left behind everywhere? In all the mirrors I have looked into? I have seen lots of them, countless ones! Am I scattered everywhere in them? Has each of them taken some part of me? A thin impression, a thin slice of me? Have I been shaved down by mirrors like a piece of wood by a carpenter's plane? What is still left of me?"

I take her by the shoulders. "All of you is still here," I say. "On-the contrary, mirrors add something. They make it visible and give it to you—a bit of space, a lighted bit of our-self."

"Myself?" She continues to cling to my hand. "But suppose it is not that way? Suppose myself is buried all over in thousands and thousands of mirrors? How can I get it back? Oh, I can never get it back! It is lost! Lost! It has been rubbed away like a statue that no longer has a face. Where is my face? Where is my first face? The one before all the mirrors? The one before they began to steal me!"

"No one has stolen you," I say in desperation. "Mirrors don't steal. They only reflect."

Isabelle is breathing heavily. Her face is pale. The red glow of the moon shimmers in her transparent eyes. "What has become of it?" she whispers. "What has become of everything? How can we tell where we are, Rudolf? Everything is running, rushing, sinking, sinking out of sight! Hold me tight! Don't let me go! Can't you see them?" She is staring toward the misty horizon. "There they come flying! All the dead mirror images! They come seeking blood! Can't you hear them? The gray wings! They dart like bats! Don't let them touch me!"

She presses her head against my shoulder and ber quivering body against mine. I hold her and look into the twilight which is growing deeper and deeper. The air is still, but now the darkness is slowly advancing from the trees of the
allée
like a noiseless company of shadows. It seems to be trying to outflank us and cut off our retreat. "Come along," I say. "Let's go over there. It's brighter beyond the drive. There's still light there."

She resists, shaking her head. I feel her hair on my face; it is soft and smells of hay. Her face, too, is soft, and I feel the delicate bones, her chin and the curve of her brow, and suddenly I am once more deeply astonished that behind this narrow hemisphere there lives another world with wholly different laws and that this head, which I can so easily hold in my hand, sees everything differently, every tree, every star, every relationship, and itself too. A different universe is shut up inside it, and for a moment everything seems confused and I no longer know what is real—what I see or what she sees or what is there when we are not and is unknowable because it is like the mirrors: they are there when we are and yet they never give anything back to us but our own image. Never, never shall we know what they are when they are alone or what is behind them; they are nothing and yet they hold reflections and must be something; but they will never reveal their mystery.

"Come along," I say. "Come, Isabelle. No one knows what he is or whence he comes and where he goes—but we are together, that is all we can know."

I draw her with me. Perhaps there is really nothing else when everything is falling to pieces, I think, except this bit of togetherness and even that is a sweet deception, for when someone else really needs you you cannot follow him or stand by him. I have noticed that often enough in the war when I looked into the face of a dead comrade. Each of us has his own death and must suffer it alone; no one can help him then.

"You won't leave me alone?" she whispers.

"I won't leave you alone."

"Swear it," she says, stopping.

"I swear," I reply.

"All right, Rudolf." She sighs as though many of her problems were now lessened. "But don't forget. You forget so often."

"I won't forget"

"Kiss me."

I draw her to me. I have a very slight feeling of horror and am uncertain what to do. I kiss her with dry, closed lips.

She raises her hand to my head and holds it. Suddenly I feel a sharp bite and push her back. My lower lip is bleeding. She has bitten into it. I stare at her. She is smiling. Her face has changed. It is mean and sly. "Blood!" she says softly and triumphantly. "You were going to betray me again. I know you! But now you can't do it. It is sealed. You cannot go away again!"

"I cannot go away," I say soberly. "AH right! But that's no reason to attack me like a cat. How it bleeds! What am I to say to the Mother Superior if she sees me like this?"

Isabelle laughs. "Nothing," she replies. "Why do you always have to say something? Don't be such a coward!"

I taste the warm blood in my mouth. My handkerchief is no good—the wound will have to close itself. Isabelle is standing in front of me. Now she is Jennie. Her mouth is small and ugly and she wears a sly, malicious smile. Then the bells begin to ring for the May devotion. An attendant comes along the path. Her white coat shimmers dimly in the twilight.

During the devotion my wound stopped bleeding, I have received my thousand marks, and I am now sitting at table with Vicar Bodendiek. Bodendiek has taken off his silk vestments in the little sacristy. Fifteen minutes ago he was still a mythical figure—shrouded in the smoke of incense he stood there in the candlelight clothed in brocade, raising the golden monstrance with the body of Christ in the Host above the heads of the pious sisters and the skulls of those of the insane who had received permission to attend devotion—but now in his shabby black coat and slightly sweat-stained while collar, which fastens behind instead of in front, he is just a simple agent of God, good-natured, powerful, with red cheeks and a red nose whose burst veins reveal the wine lover. He does not know it but for many years before the war he was my confessor, in the days when the school made us confess and take communion every month. Those of us who were smart went to Bodendiek. He was hard of hearing, and since one whispers at confession, he could not understand what sins we were admitting to. Therefore, he gave the lightest penances. A couple of Our Fathers and you were free of all sin and could go and play football or try to get forbidden books out of the public library. It was a different story with the cathedral pastor to whom I went once because I was in a hurry and there was a line standing in front of Bodendiek's booth. The cathedral pastor gave me a crafty penance; I was to come to him for confession in one week, and when I did so he asked me why I was there. Since you can't lie in the confessional, I told him and he gave me a dozen rosaries as penance and the command to appear at the same time next week. That went on until I was almost in despair—I saw myself chained for life to the cathedral pastor by these weekly confessions. Fortunately in the fourth week the holy man came down with measles and had to stay in bed. When my day for confession came, I went to Bodendiek and explained the situation to him—the cathedral pastor had instructed me to confess that day but he was sick. What was I to do? I could not go to his house since measles are contagious. Bodendiek decided that I might just as well confess to him; a confession is a confession and a priest a priest. I did it and was free. From then on, however, I avoided the cathedral pastor like the plague.

We are sitting in a little room near the big assembly hall used by the inmates who are not under restraint. It is not really a dining room; there are bookcases in it, a pot with white geraniums, a few straight and easy chairs, and a round table. The Mother Superior has sent us a bottle of wine and we are waiting for the meal. Ten years ago I would never have dreamed that someday I would be drinking a bottle of wine with my father confessor—but then, neither would I have dreamed that I would someday kill men and be decorated for it instead of being hanged—nevertheless, that is what happened.