SIGMUNT FREUD'S MIRROR

 

His dream repeated itself with cyclical regularity, obeying its own logic—every nine nights. He would probably have been bored by it by now, were it not for the fact that each time it lasted a heartbeat longer; the imitation of his consciousness immersed in it (for that, after all, is what sleep is all about, the helpless wandering of the conscious reflection of the human soul in the labyrinth of its subconscious fears and dreams) moved slowly through an endless hall of distorted mirrors. In this dream, he listened to the reflection of his footsteps, flickering in the passing panes of glass like the distant glow of flickering torches; but he saw only their echoes, circling beneath the dark, disembodied vault. Each of the mirrors left behind greeted him and bid him farewell with a distorted, transformed copy of his face. He gazed at them indifferently, though he was somewhat intrigued by the inexplicable impropriety lurking within these illusions—for they were not subject to the laws of mirroring, the laws of the transformation of left hand into right, black into white, water into wine. Instead, sometimes they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the man he was, would be, could finally be, could become, if the mechanisms of space-time were to direct him onto a different path than the one he had been following in his waking state for so many years. There were: the focused and pious faces of Christian monks, the noble, pale visages of tragic poets, the stony, impenetrable images of ruthless killers. The inspired faces of fiery lovers, the papery, gray mugs of bored officials, the proud faces of princes and doctors, grinning in sardonic smiles, the cynical features of all-knowing gods and beggars. And many, many other faces, indifferent and indifferent to him. So he observed them dispassionately, observing with polite, measured curiosity the successive phases and facets of degeneration that grew as he journeyed deeper into his dream. He realized that if he reached out to their gleaming, silver-plated, glassy illusions, he could—as if by magic—become anyone he chose to be, from among their countless host; repeatedly passing their pantheon even gave him the opportunity to avoid making a hasty choice. He could, then, for a time, become someone entirely different, then someone else still, then someone else still, and so on, perpetually undergoing endless transformation, benefiting from the curses and blessings of each life suggested by his dream subconscious. But this tempted him not in the slightest. Not because he was even satisfied with his present existence, but because of the unshakable certainty that no other would give him either more or less than the present one he was forced to exist in. Therefore, any change in this matter, even the most seemingly drastic, would be merely another miserable illusion, an absurd attempt to escape the absurd through banal self-deception, the awareness of whose artificiality would accompany him anyway,whoever he was at a given moment. For this reason, he was not even attracted to the face of a jester, closest to him in a certain metaphysical sense, framed by the lace of a cap trimmed with bells – for the suggestion of liberation from responsibility for anything was the greatest possible illusion.

He, however, wasn't seeking escape in the endless caves of mirrored galleries (filled with a neutral and utterly sexless, impersonal glow, flowing from nowhere and for nothing): from himself, responsibility, convention, anything. From lies, from the truth, from the problems that tormented him in his waking hours, and finally: from potential answers to any question that troubled him. He wasn't in this place by accident, of course; nor was the regularity of his dream visions. Yet the fate that thus filled his sleep was as indifferent and meaningless to him as he himself...

That day, he woke, as usual, at dawn. He rose, unsteady and airy, struggling to assimilate into the painfully real reality. He had the impression that some intangible change had taken place in his dream. He began to ponder, drinking an early, solitary coffee at a dingy table in a neglected kitchen. What had changed? He carefully recalled his dream, step by step, analyzing and rejecting every possibility of change in its subsequent iterations.

He pondered this further, standing motionless before the grimy bathroom mirror, feeling the dull, painful touch of the razor blade on his beard, covered with hard, difficult-to-shave stubble. He stared at his reflection (unique, for the mirror-like quality ruled him perfectly normally) directly into the faded, dark-rimmed eyes, full of unknown secrets and inscrutability, as always, like every morning, eyes enriched by the immensity of yesterday's experiences and dreams.

His reflection didn't look away. It merely narrowed its eyes, as if trying to read in his eyes the same thing he was searching for in their reflections on the other side of the matte smoothness of the wall-mounted mirror.

He finished. His hand, which had been about to set aside the worn-out razor, stilled.

He felt a small, surprising twinge of fear. He remembered – his last, dreamlike image had no form or face, only a swirling mist, a specter, devoid of features and characteristics, exuding a strange atmosphere of difference from the apparitions he had seen so far, accompanying him on his seemingly endless, yet clearly concluding, journey through the mirrored labyrinths of mirror-filled tunnels. But that fear faded before it could ignite. His hand finished the interrupted gesture. He absentmindedly ran it over his beard, surprised to find no trace of stubble, not even a single hair he had accidentally missed… That coincidence again: or rather, its absence.

Then, too, he saw the change taking place in his eyes. He raised his hand to his lips and examined it closely. It wasn't his hand.

In the growing morning light outside the bathroom window, he saw the white, well-groomed fingers of the woman who had been gazing at him from behind the silvered glass of the mirror.

To be with you or not to be—that is the measure of my time—she silently quoted a sentence that had long, long ago become embedded in his memory, drawing an inevitable conclusion:

"The measure of all existence," he said aloud what he had thought then. Borges—he wanted to add more.

But his words twisted her lips and left them unclosed, feeling the lips of the one who had spoken fill with liquid glass.

The dark-haired woman smiled mysteriously at her frozen reflection, placing a finger on her lips—the man, melted into the smoothness of the mirror, did not repeat the movement. She smiled wider, more flirtatiously, with lips cool and sensual, lips the color of ripening cherries and spilled blood. She stood there for a while, the day blossoming outside the window like a flower, awakened from its slumber by the impatient spring sun.

Finally, she turned—her own dreams awaited her. She stepped away from the mirror, where the fog was still swirling.