Mirror
by Amita Basu
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Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, |
part 3b
The Stranger folds his trousers flat and hangs them up behind the bathroom door, suspender straps doubled, to keep them tidy. He approaches me across the bathroom, feet now bare on pink granite tiles. I lean against the wall, watching him in the mirror.
He halts five feet before me. Head bowed, eyes downcast.
I take him gently by the shoulders. His skin shivers at my touch; his knees buckle.
“Can’t you look at me?” I plead.
He trembles and shakes his head. But I don’t release him. I’ve spent six months running away from myself. I’ve nowhere left to run. Today he must face either me or himself.
“I can’t look at you,” he murmurs. “You must look at me.”
Why must I? If you can’t look at yourself, why must I look at you?
“If you can’t look me in the face,” I bargain, “how about in the mirror?” I turn him around, so that he’s standing by me, shoulder-to-shoulder, against the cool wall tiles. Still, only the crown of his head faces the mirror.
He shrinks into himself like a beaten dog. ‘I can’t.’ With the weak petulance that is a beaten dog’s last trace of spirit, he whines: ‘Aren’t you ready?’
I unhook my bra. He doesn’t want me to, but it feels graceless to remove my underpants and not my bra. I let both fall to the floor.
I’ve discarded my shame, but not my grace. There is for me a way forward. There must be.
Again I retreat into the fairytale that, outside this bathroom, cradles me still. Again I retreat from this Stranger, who remains opaque to me and to my Uncle, who’s become transparent to me in these last two years.
What would Uncle say, if he knew what the Stranger in his house makes me do?
* * *
All through school, we’d imagined, we silly schoolchildren, that Uncle neither ate nor slept. At banquets and at private dinner parties, we’d seen Uncle eat: but he did so sparingly, from meatless dishes reserved for him. We’d been magnetised by his eyes: blazing with all the public life of a thwarted Nation; blazing with a private life that was no life, that was continual labour: and we’d imagined those eyes could never be shut in ordinary sleep.
Two years ago, I moved in with Uncle. I strove at the tasks Uncle entrusted to me. Between music classes and hosting with Uncle parties of from five to two thousand — I enjoyed oases of peace. Uncle’s oases were rare; so, curious though I was, consideration joined reverence in keeping me at bay.
But Uncle had taken a fancy to me, and it grew. He invited me to spend evenings with him while he worked, if I didn’t mind. I, mind?! He made me practise my violin and my piano while I sat with him, so I wouldn’t be wasting time. First blushing, then ogling, I began learning Uncle’s private tastes and habits. Then Uncle asked me to take over from his valet a simple task: awakening him in the morning.
That first morning, opening Uncle’s bedroom door by quarter-inches, terrified — idiotically — that I’d make the door squeak and awaken him — I felt like a heathen violating the Tomb of Christ.
Uncle lay flat on his back: feet together, arms outstretched. Like the Christ, crucified: I realised, as I clutched the doorknob, weathering the tremors of reverence almost as strong as nausea running through me.
Uncle’s windows were muffled by ponderous velvet curtains. As my eyes adjusted to the near-dark, I saw Uncle had mussed his bedclothes while he slept: they swirled around him as if he’d spun right, then left, then right again. Uncle’s pyjama shirt had crept up, showing a flabby tummy. Blushing, I wondered why he belted it so tight under his military uniforms: he’d find court outfits more commodious. But, then, Uncle had always remained a soldier, proud of his plebeian youth. Uncle’s forehead was moist. We’d imagined it was his passion, when he exhorted the Nation, that made him sweat; it was strange to see him dewy-browed in sleep.
At length I mustered the courage to tiptoe across the bedroom, stoop and whisper, ‘Uncle?’
Not a stir. I whispered a few more times. Then I called, ‘Uncle?’ in a normal voice. Finally I tapped his shoulder.
He stirred then and opened his eyes. Gummy. They saw me — really saw me — sleepy as they were, sending more shivers up my spine. They flickered with a smile, then closed again. Uncle turned over and went back to sleep.
‘Uncle!’ I protested, emboldened. ‘You bid me awaken you at ten: now it’s twenty past. Aren’t your press secretaries due at eleven?’
Groaning, Uncle begged five more minutes. I gave him them, standing and watching the wall clock, then I hustled him out of bed.
We had imagined, we silly schoolchildren, that the Nation’s demands had turned a man into an eagle that was solid-gold and crimson-lit: a man hard-muscled, lit from within by a fire as sleepless as the Vestal Virgins’. Now, living with Uncle, entrusted with more and more tasks, tiptoeing my way further into the sanctum of his private life, I saw that Uncle had a private life; that Uncle remained a man.
To boot, a man who struggled, from ordinary human laziness, to get out of bed. One who stumbled from bed sullen-eyed, pocket-fisted, his blue eyes ringed black; one who guzzled a gallon of tea for half an hour to start waking up in his now sun-drenched, still blanket-wrapped bed.
‘Thank you, Katharyn,’ said Uncle, trudging towards his bathroom. ‘I’m afraid I’m a bear in the mornings. If I should happen some morning, half-asleep, to abuse you, feel free to pour my tea over my face.’
‘I will, too! So be warned, Uncle... Nation, Awaken!’
As I quoted his motto to him, the one with which he had rallied our Nation, what d’you suppose he did? He blushed like a schoolgirl then ducked out of sight.
It was Sunday; I had nowhere to go; so I stayed till Uncle emerged from his bathroom in his shirt and trousers. I knotted Uncle’s tie. I combed Uncle’s thick, straight dark hair: apart from his eyes, it was his only beauty; its strong colour and severe parting offset his shapeless, colourless face. Uncle was as helpless in these private affairs as a man without his valet or wife. Uncle was a bachelor; and I’d become his... valet?
‘It’s inhuman,’ Uncle complained, ‘to conduct any business before lunch.’
‘You only say that because you’re lazy.’ But I darted in and kissed his nose.
Before I moved in, I’d have thought it heresy to call our Guide ‘lazy.’ I’d imagined that the summons of our Nation had ennobled our Guide into a more-than-man: into our golden Eagle.
Now, I saw that ‘lazy’ was no heresy but the highest tribute. The Christ had remained a man. So had our Guide. Our Guide alone had heard his Nation’s silent scream; he’d risen to do the task of a more-than-man. But he’d remained a man riven between his public self — founded on self-conviction and what he called ‘will-to-power’ — and this private self: a sweet tooth, a flabby tummy and morning laziness. Now, I saw a man still a man. A man riven. A man riven who was soldiering, at the age of 47, towards the destiny that would unify a Nation.
I’d loved our Guide for five years: ever since I became, at that rally, one with our Nation and our Guide. But, that June morning, facing Uncle, who was as slow to start as a car in December, I began to love Uncle.
‘I am lazy,’ Uncle affirmed, pinching my cheek, ‘but don’t tell anyone. Nobody but you must see.’
Why is it that only I must see? I didn’t think to ask: I was too delighted to cross-examine the honour of Uncle’s intimacy.
Uncle handed me his large bottle of eau de cologne, a bespoke blend. I misted him; at his signal, I kept misting him. Lime and pine: pleasant but potent. I gasped, inhaling a mouthful of mist. Astringent: cleansing my tongue and palate, but stripping them, too. Muffling my coughs, I sent Uncle on his way, doused in cleanliness.
What would Uncle say?
* * *
From my bathroom’s corner, where we’ve stowed them away, into its centre, I drag the three-legged black wooden stool, the lightweight steel tub with a steel mug chained inside and a steel bucket. I position the stool parallel to the bathtub’s length, grazing the bathtub’s edge. Beside the bathtub’s width, still within its reach but as far away as possible from the stool, I place the bucket. I fill the bucket with cool fresh water.
I climb onto the stool. It’s broad and steady: I climb it easily unaided. Still facing the mirror, I squat on it, my bum suspended seven feet above the bathtub. Naked in the chilly evening, my body shrinks into myself. But I’m not here.
“I’m ready,” I call.
The Stranger scurries over, scrambles into the bathtub and kneels on its cold, hard steel floor. It’s a small tub, no bigger than a large washbasin, not designed for a grown man. His knees and his toes are crowded up against opposing steel slopes, unyielding. He positions himself, in the bathtub, just under my bum.
I face, in the mirror before me, him behind and below me. His eyes squeezed shut; but his face now, at last, is raised, and he waits.
The Stranger told me, that first day when we met, that I must look at him, while I do this. So — hands gripping the stool-top’s circumference, face turned towards the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling mirror — I watch Uncle as my shit falls first in a viscous stream, then in congealed lumps over Uncle’s shoulders, Uncle’s chest, and down Uncle’s face past Uncle’s tight-shut, blazing blue eyes.
To be continued...
Copyright © 2023 by Amita Basu
Bewildering Stories