The Water Mirror (8 page)

Merle wasn't convinced. “And Dario?”

“Won't say a word about it. Otherwise Arcimboldo will find out
who's swiping his wine at night.”

“Then you know about that?”

“Nothing happens in that house without my knowing about
it.”

Merle hesitated no longer and followed Eft into the gondola. The mermaid
loosed the rope, placed herself in the stern of the boat, and steered it with the long
oar to one of the two tunnel openings. It became pitch-black around them.

“Don't worry,” Eft said, “there's a torch in
front of you and there are flints next to it.”

It wasn't long before Merle had the pitch of the torch
lit. Yellow and flickering, the firelight flitted over an arching
tile ceiling.

“May I ask you something else?”

“You want to know why I have legs and no
kalimar
.”

“Kali—what?”

“Kalimar. That's what we call the fish tail in our
language.”

“Will you tell me?”

Eft let the gondola glide deeper into the darkness of the tunnel. Sheets
of moss had loosened from the ceiling and hung down like tattered curtains. It smelled
of decaying seaweed and corruption.

“It's a sad story,” Eft said finally, “so
I'll make it short.”

“I like sad stories.”

“It could be that you will be the heroine in one yourself.”
Merle turned to the mermaid and looked at her.

“Why do you say such a thing?” Merle demanded.

“You have been touched by the Flowing Queen,” Eft replied, as
if that were explanation enough. “Once, a mermaid was washed onto the shore of an
island by a storm. She was so weak that she remained lying there, helpless among the
rushes. The clouds parted, the sun burned down from the heavens, and the body of the
mermaid became dry and brittle and began to die. But then a young man appeared, the son
of a trader, whose father had given him the thankless task of trying to trade with the
handful
of fisherfolk who lived on the island. He'd passed the
entire day with the poor families, who'd shared water and fish with him, but they
bought nothing, for they had no money and nothing for which it would have paid to trade.
Late in the day the merchant's young son was on the way back to his boat, but he
didn't dare to face his father after this lack of success. He was afraid of a
tongue-lashing, for it wasn't the first time that he'd returned to Venice
without success, and even more he feared for his inheritance. His father was a stern,
hard-hearted man, who had no understanding of the poverty of the people on the outer
islands—really he had no understanding of anything in the world, except making
money.

“The young man was now sauntering along the shore of the harbor to
put off his return home. As he wandered lost in thought through the reeds and high
grass, he stumbled on the stranded mermaid. He knelt down beside her, looked into her
eyes, and fell in love with her on the spot. He didn't see the fish tail below her
hips, nor did he see the teeth that would have inspired fear in anyone else. He only
looked into her eyes, which looked back at him helplessly, and he made up his mind at
once: This was the woman he loved and would marry. He carried her back into the water,
and while she gradually regained her strength in the billows of the waves, he spoke to
her of his love.

The longer she listened to him, the more she liked him.
From liking grew affection, and from affection grew more. They swore to see each
other again, and so on the next day they met on the shore of another island, and on the
day after that on another, and so it went.

“After several weeks the young man pulled all his courage together
and asked if she would follow him to the city. But she knew how it went for mermaids in
the city, and so she said no. He promised to make her his wife so that she could live at
his side like a human. ‘Look at me,' she said, ‘I will never be like a
human.' And so they were both very sad, and the young man saw that his plan had
been nothing but a beautiful dream.

“But the following night the mermaid remembered the legend of a
powerful sea witch who lived far out in the Adriatic in an undersea cave. So she swam
out, farther than she or any of her companions had ever swum, and found the sea witch
sitting on a rock deep in the sea and watching for drowned people. For sea witches, you
must know, prize dead meat, and it tastes best to them when it's old and bloated.
On the way the mermaid had passed a sunken fishing boat, and so she could bring the
witch an especially juicy morsel as a tribute. This put the old one in a gracious mood.
She listened to the mermaid's story and decided, probably still intoxicated from
the taste of the corpse, to help her. She said a spell and ordered the mermaid to return
to the lagoon. There she should lie on a shore of the city and sleep until dawn. Then,
the witch
promised, she would have legs instead of a tail.
‘Only your mouth,' she added, ‘that I cannot take from you, for
without that you would be silent forever.'

“The mermaid attached no importance to her mouth, for after all,
that was part of her face, with which the merchant's son had fallen in love. So
she did as the sea witch instructed her.

“On the morning of the next day she was found in a landing place.
And in fact, she now had legs where once her fish tail had been. But the men who found
her crossed themselves, spoke of the Devil's work, and beat her, for they had
recognized her by her mouth for what she really was. The men were convinced that the
mermaids had found a way to become human, and they feared that soon they would take over
the city, murder all the humans, and steal their wealth.

“What foolishness! As if any mermaid ever cared anything for the
riches of humans!

“While the men were beating and kicking her, the mermaid kept
whispering the name of her beloved, and so they soon sent for him. He hurried there, in
the company of his father, of course, who suspected a conspiracy against him and his
house. The mermaid and the young man were brought face-to-face, and both looked into
each other's eyes long and deeply. The young man wept, and the mermaid also shed
tears, which mixed with the blood on her cheeks. But then her lover turned away, for he
was
weak and feared his father's anger. ‘I don't
know her,' he said. ‘I have nothing to do with this freak.'

“The mermaid grew very still and said nothing more. She remained
silent when they beat her harder, even when the merchant and his son kicked her with
their boots in her face and in the ribs. Later they threw her back in the water like a
dead fish. They all took her for that too: for dead.”

Eft fell silent and for a long moment gripped the oar tightly in her hand,
without dipping it in the water. The torchlight shone on her cheeks, and a single tear
ran down her face. She wasn't telling the story of some mermaid or other, she was
telling her own.

“A child found her, an apprentice in a mirror workshop, whose master
had taken him from an orphanage. He took her in, hid her, gave her food and drink, and
then kept giving her new spirit when she wanted to put an end to her life. The name of
that boy was Arcimboldo, and the mermaid swore in gratitude to follow him her life long.
Mermaids live much longer than you humans, and so the boy is an old man today and the
mermaid is still young. She will still be young when he dies, and then she will be
entirely alone again, a lonely person between two worlds, no longer a mermaid and also
not a human.”

When Merle looked up at her, the tears on Eft's cheeks had dried.
Now it seemed again as if she had told someone else's story, someone whose fate
was distant and unmeaning.
Merle would have liked to stand up and
throw her arms around her, but she knew that Eft didn't expect it and also
wouldn't have wanted it.

“Only a story,” whispered the mermaid. “As true and as
untrue as all the others that we would rather never have heard.”

“I'm glad you told me.”

Eft nodded slightly, then looked up and pointed forward beyond Merle.
“Look,” she said, “we're there.”

The torchlight around them paled, although the flame still burned. It took
a moment for Merle to realize that the walls of the tunnel were behind them. The gondola
had glided soundlessly into an underground hall or cave.

Ahead of them an incline rose out of the darkness. It ascended as a steep
slope out of the water and was covered with something that Merle couldn't make out
from a distance. Plants perhaps. A pale, intertwined branching. But what plant of that
size could thrive here underground?

Once, while they were crossing the dark sea that was the floor of the
hall, she thought she saw movement in the water. She told herself that they were fish.
Very large fish.

“There's no mountain around here,” she said, voicing her
thoughts. “So how can there be a cave in the middle of Venice?” She knew
enough about the behavior of reflections to be sure that they could not be
under
the sea. Whatever this hall was, it was located in the
city, among
splendid palazzi and elegant building facades—and
it had been artificially constructed.

“Who built this?” she asked.

“A friend of the mermaids.” Eft's tone indicated that
she didn't intend to speak about it.

Such a place in the middle of the city! If it actually was located above
ground it must have an outside. What was it camouflaged as? A decaying palazzo of a
long-forgotten noble family? A huge warehouse? There were no windows to give access to
the outside, and in the darkness neither the ceiling nor the side walls were
discernible, only the strange incline, which came closer and closer.

Merle realized now that her first doubts had been right. There were no
plants growing on the incline. The branching structure was something else.

Her heart suddenly missed a beat as she realized the truth.

It was bones. The bones of hundreds of mermaids. Twining over and under
and into one another, forged together by death, aslant and in a jumble. With racing
heart she saw that the upper bodies looked like human ribs, while the fish tail
resembled a supergigantic fish bone. The sight was as absurd as it was shocking.

“They all came here to die?”

“Of their own free will, yes,” said Eft as she steered the
gondola to the left so that the starboard side faced the mountain of bones.

The torchlight gave the illusion of movement in the
branched bones where none was. The thin shadows twitched and trembled, they moved like
spider legs that had been detached from their bodies and now were flitting among one
another on their own.

“The mermaids' cemetery,” Merle whispered. Everyone knew
the old legend. The cemetery had been thought to be far out on the edge of the lagoon or
on the high sea. Treasure-seekers and knights of fortune had tried to track it down, for
the bones of a mermaid were more precious than elephant tusk, harder, and in olden days
they were feared as weapons in the battles of man against man. That the cemetery lay in
the city, under the eyes of all the inhabitants, was hard to grasp—and in
addition, that a human must have helped to establish it. What had prompted him to do it?
And who had he been?

“I wanted you to see this place.” Eft bowed slightly, and only
after a moment was it clear to Merle that the gesture was meant for her. “Secret
for secret. Silence for all time. And the oath upon it of one who has been
touched.”

“I should swear?”

Eft nodded.

Merle didn't know how else to do it, so she raised a hand and said
solemnly, “I swear an oath on my life that I will never tell anyone of the
mermaids' cemetery.”

“The oath as one who has been touched,” Eft demanded.

“I, Merle, who was touched by the Flowing Queen,
swear this oath.”

Eft nodded, satisfied, and Merle gave a sigh of relief.

The hull of the gondola scraped over something that lay under the surface
of the water.

“Still more bones,” Eft explained. “Thousands.”
She turned the gondola and sculled back in the direction of the tunnel entrance.

“Eft?”

“Hmm?”

“You really think I'm something special, don't
you?”

The mermaid smiled mysteriously. “That you certainly are. Something
very special.”

Much later, in the dark, in bed, Merle slipped her arm into the water
mirror under the bedclothes, enjoyed the comfortable warmth, and felt for the hand on
the other side. It took a while, but then something touched her fingers, very gentle,
very reassuring. Merle sighed softly and fell into a restless half sleep.

Outside the window the evening star rose. Its twinkling was reflected in
Junipa's open mirror eyes, which stared, cold and glassy, across the dark
room.