Mirror
by Amita Basu
|
Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4a, 4b. 5a, 5b |
conclusion
No. The Nation I cannot tell. The Nation will disbelieve me, then believe me; turn away their heads, cast down their eyes, and curse me, then kill me; trample my corpse into the mud, then march onwards, behind Uncle, towards our Promised Land.
Eastward and eastward, chasing tomorrow’s sun.
Then is it to Uncle I should speak? Can I make him open his eyes, and look into himself, and be within himself whole again? The rift, which in the Nation’s service he made in himself, healed.
A man who can’t face himself makes you his mirror. A man whom a Nation believes to be its eagle proves himself to be a puppy. Snatch away your eyes from such a man, and what happens?
First eventuality: The rift in him will heal.
The rift between the eagle soaring gold, kindling crimson in the twilight and the puppy screaming under the fountain flattened, begrimed. The rift between the more-than-man and the less-than-man.
Why wasn’t a man enough to lead our Nation? A man is allowed to lick, first, his own wounds. To sin and to atone in the public eye. A man is allowed to save himself first.
Snatch away your eyes. Force the man to see himself. Then, perhaps, the rift in him will heal.
Final Eventuality: The puppy, eyes tight shut, will feel himself kicked again. This time, he’ll put his eyes out altogether. He’ll order another mass cleansing. His screams will rend, limb from limb, the enemies within.
On the streets that he cleansed of fistfights seven years ago, blood will be shed. Now by daylight, now in public, now in all our names. He’ll renounce those last bits of sausage in his cabbage. He’ll forbid wine and cigars to his guests, too. He’ll declare war on all the world at once. Only by imposing, with war, our new Code on all the world — only by dirtying all the world — will he then feel able to cleanse himself.
That blood will be on my hands.
But the blood is already on my hands. Now, I just don’t see it. La-la-la.
No more la-la-la. Tonight I have to speak. To speak, perhaps to die.
Perhaps not. For I remember Uncle.
I remember Uncle, when I was twelve, walking down the rows of schoolchildren, effusing lime and pine, immaculately uniformed, shaking my hand in turn. I remember Uncle, when I was thirteen, uplifting, under the black skies, amidst the temple of white light, 100,000 of us; then letting us fall back, now dissolved into the body of the Nation. I remember Uncle, two years ago, his eyes, always blazing, now glowing, as he invited me to live with him: to serve, shoulder-to-shoulder with him, our Nation.
I remember Uncle, these last two years, standing just five feet ahead of me, welcoming our guests into his Chancellery; I remember Uncle smiling up at me, gummy-eyed, slow and grumpy in the mornings. I remember Uncle, these last six months, on manicured lawns, inundated with frangipani, stooping over the hands of diademed princesses, his guests, our guests. I remember his face softening, alone with me of an evening, to my half-decent Brahms waltzes.
I remember my Uncle. I remember our Guide: embodiment of the thousand-year empire before us.
Alone with me, Uncle doesn’t insist on Strauss. Alone with me, Uncle can face a colonoscopy by Brahms. Alone with me, if I fall at his feet, and beg him, can Uncle face himself? Can’t he?
I don’t know.
Two years ago, Uncle became transparent to me. Six months ago, Uncle became opaque to me. Who is this man, in whose unwavering hands sixty million weary, hungry, wavering souls have placed their destiny? Is it ordinary human laziness that makes him struggle to get out of bed? Or is it depression that he fights nobly? Or is it guilt that he represses ignobly? Is it with love that his face grows soft, or is it with senility? Is it with clarity that his blue eyes blaze, or is it madness?
I don’t know who he is. I don’t know where my duty lies. Our Nation has riven me in two as well.
I must be wrong. He can’t be a puppy. He is our eagle! Whatever he’s doing, there must be a reason, for all this, that I’m too stupid to see. A sixth possibility — if I could only see it — would restore my certainty.
How can I see? Christ, too, with his eyes blazing black, they called mad. When an extraordinary man rises, it takes ordinary men years, centuries, decades to see whether he was more-than-man or less-than-man.
See, where Uncle kneels: knees and toes scrunched up against unyielding steel, blood-drained, white. See, where my shit begins to dry, in the twilight powder-blue, darkening into dusk midnight-blue, on Uncle’s colourless face and shapeless shoulders.
See, where our Guide points: at the Promised Land. There he will lead us. There I still want to go. In the purity of my Guide’s aims, I still have faith. In the necessity of my Guide’s means, I still have faith.
Still he points, still unwavering, forward. Is it not forward that he’s been leading us?
If I’m not wrong — if he is a puppy, if I can make him open his eyes — what then? Then, either the scared puppy will whimper a bit in my arms, weep with remorse, call off his armies, and resign — yes, they’ll let him resign; they must let him — and all will be well. Or there’ll be no whimpering, no remorse for me, no mercy for the Nation. What remains of the puppy’s teeth, broken by the deft hammer strokes of humiliation, will sink into my throat. If he’s a puppy, then I won’t deserve to die but, perhaps, I will die.
And if I’m wrong? If he is, after all, an eagle? Atoning for his people’s sins, guiding us in fact forwards? Then I will deserve the worst my Nation can do to me. And what’s the worst you do to the girl who flings shit at your god?
I’m done. It’s time to dismount the three-legged black stool, and clean myself, and dress myself. It’s time for Uncle to wash out the bathtub, to scrub himself in his steel bathtub until he glows, to dress himself. It’s time for us to go back downstairs: for Uncle to pore over his war plans, for me to play to him Brahms on my violin. I’m half-decent, now.
He raises the steel mug chained inside the steel bathtub. Eyes still tight shut, he reaches for the steel bucket filled with cool, fresh water I’ve placed to his right.
The trance I’ve sustained these six months falls from my eyes. For good. I can’t resurrect it. There is for me a way forward. Perhaps. But there is for me now no turning back.
Or, perhaps, they’ve already killed me. Perhaps this is the long moment after death: when the spirits looks down on the body.
Perhaps not. Either way, I know what I must do: I must speak.
I mustn’t fall at his feet. I mustn’t beg him.
On my three-legged black stool, I stand up to my full height. Perched thirteen feet above the bathroom floor; the sick-sweet stench of rotten-pumpkin shit, thick in the air, agitated as I move, waiting to be thick in my mouth, as I prepare to open my mouth. I face our Guide down below. Poised.
“Uncle! We’ve been watching you, this mirror and I. Open your eyes, Uncle. Tonight, you must face yourself.”
These are the words I must say.
Copyright © 2023 by Amita Basu
