A Night in the Cemetery

CURVED MIRROR

I went into the living room, accompanied by my wife. It smelled of moss and darkness. Swarms of rats and mice jumped to each side as light penetrated a darkness that had been there for a hundred years. As I closed the door behind us, a gust of wind ruffled sheets of paper, scattered in piles across the floor. As some dim light fell on the paper we saw ancient script and medieval illuminations.

The walls were covered with green slime and were decorated with portraits of ancestors. They looked very strict and haughty, as if they would say,

“You need a good beating, brother.”

The sounds of our steps could be heard all over the house. The same echo, which answered my ancestors, resounded all over the house.

The wind was howling and blowing outside. It sounded as if someone were crying and howling in the chimney, and I felt a quiet desperation in this cry. Huge drops of rain were striking the dark, dim windows, giving additional poignancy to the scene.

“My dear ancestors,” I said, heaving a deep sigh, “if I were a writer, then after looking at your portraits I would write a long novel. Because each of these old men was young once, and probably had a love story behind him—probably, an exciting story. Just look at this old woman, my great-grandmother. She is not beautiful; perhaps she was even ugly, but she could tell an exciting story.

“Do you see that mirror hanging there in the corner?” I said to my wife, and I pointed at a large mirror in the corner, framed in black bronze, hanging next to the portrait of my great-grandmother.

“That mirror has magical powers. It destroyed that woman, my great-grandmother. She paid a lot of money for it, and she couldn’t go away from the mirror until she died.

“She looked into the mirror day and night without ceasing; she looked even when she ate and drank. When she went to bed, she took the mirror with her, and when she was dying, she asked to have the mirror put into her coffin. Her wishes weren’t followed, though, because there wasn’t enough room for the mirror in the casket.”

“Was she very much interested in men?”

“Probably. But don’t you think she could have had other mirrors? And why did she like this particular mirror? You think she had no better ones? No, dear, there is a terrible mystery hidden here; I am sure of it. Legend says that a devil was living in the mirror, and that my great-grandmother had a weakness for the devil. Of course that’s nonsense, but there’s definitely some mysterious force hidden within this bronze frame.”

I swept the dust off the mirror, looked at it, and started laughing. The sound of my laughter resounded in echoes. The mirror was curved, and my face was distorted in various directions. My nose was on my left cheek, and my chin became doubled and moved to the side.

“My great-grandmother had strange tastes,” I said.

My wife also came closer to the mirror and looked at it, and then something terrible happened. She blanched, trembled all over, and screamed. The candlestick fell from her hands and rolled onto the floor, and the candle was snuffed out. We were in total darkness. I heard some heavy object fall onto the floor. It was my wife, who had fainted.

The wind blew louder, more rats scampered about, and mice made a terrible shuffling noise amid the papers scattered on the floor. The hair on my head stood up and started tingling when a window shutter fell outward, into the street. I saw moonlight through the window.

I clutched the body of my wife, and brought her out of my ancestors’ old house. She came to her senses only the next evening.

“The mirror! Where is it? Give me the mirror!” she said, as soon as she came to her senses.

For several days she neither drank nor slept, and kept shouting that she needed the mirror. She was nightmarish and fevered in her bed, and when the doctors said that she might die of exhaustion, and that her state was perilous for her health, I went down to the basement, and brought my great-grandmother’s mirror to her. When she saw the mirror, she started laughing with happiness and pierced the mirror with her gaze.

Ten years have passed, and she has been looking at the mirror all the while, without diverting her glance for a second.

“Is it me?” she whispers, then her face flushes, and an expression of joy and happiness appears on her face.

“Yes, it’s me! Everything lies except for this mirror! People lie to me; my husband lies! If only I could have seen myself like this earlier. If only I had known how beautiful I am, I would have never married this man! The most beautiful and noble men would lie at my feet.”

One day, as I was standing behind my wife, I cast a sidelong glance into the mirror, and the terrible mystery was revealed to me. In the mirror, I saw a woman of striking beauty, a woman so beautiful that I had never seen such a fine-looking person in my life. It was a mystery, nature’s own harmony of beauty, perfection, and love.

But what had happened? What had actually happened? How did my ill-favored, vile, awkward wife seem so beautiful in the mirror? This phenomenon happened because the curved mirror changed her features, moving them to different sides.

From all these deformations her face suddenly became beautiful in the mirror. A negative times a negative equals a positive.

And now both I and my wife sit in front of the mirror, and without averting our gazes for a second, we look into it. My nose has moved to my left cheek; my chin has became doubled and moved to one side, but my wife’s face is amazing. Then, I become filled with her terrible, mad passion.

“Ha, ha, ha!” I cry wildly.

And my wife whispers, “I am so beautiful!”