Mirror

by Amita Basu

Table of Contents

Table of Contents, parts:
1, 2, 3a, 3b,
4a, 4b.

part 4b

Two years ago, Uncle and I became intimate with one another’s lives. I saw that Uncle, though a vegetarian — another sacrifice that nobody had demanded, that everybody admired — relished sausage in his slaw. Uncle saw me excusing myself, every evening, an hour after dinner: he guessed where I was going, blushed chastely and looked away.

Week after week, Uncle has welcomed his guests — our guests — here, standing just five feet ahead of me. Often, as we entertained our guests, Uncle and I have exchanged a glance across the room. Amused by a graybeard boring the room with a circuitous anecdote. Uplifted by a Viennese pianist finding, after a hundred years, in Beethoven’s then-revolutionary sonatas new tides of revolution, glinting still sharp, like the warheads streaming from our factories.

All that day, this January, it had snowed. I’d spent all day in Uncle’s library, cheering him with my violin over his desk full of documents. I’d become half-decent at playing Brahms, trying to seduce Uncle away from Strauss. Through lowered eyelashes I’d watched Uncle’s face soften to Brahms’ waltzes.

Brahms does that to you. He draws you in with beauty on the surface, seducing you into beauty below the surface. He deepens his beauty and disarms you; then, when you’re sitting there, carved open by beauty, blossoming red and moist — then he darts into you and gives your soul a colonoscopy.

That day, this January, an hour after dinner, when I put away my violin and rose, Uncle rose, too. ‘Katharyn,’ said Uncle — turning his eyes away. That struck me. Cook or king, pockmarked comrade or matronly groupie — Uncle looked straight into whoever he was addressing. ‘I have a favour to ask you.’

‘Yes Uncle,’ I consented. ‘You can tell me what it is, if you like. But you should know, now, that you need never again ask me.’

‘Katharyn,’ said Uncle, studying the ground a foot to my left — ‘You’re going to... poop.’ He paused.

I blushed up to the roots of my hair. Not from embarrassment, at Uncle discussing my ablutions. From astonishment, that Uncle — Uncle the prim-mouthed, Uncle with his schoolmasterly sense of humour — said “poop.” ‘Aren’t you, Katharyn?’

‘Ye-es.’

‘I’d like to come with you. I’d like you to — poop on me... I shan’t touch you! If you like, you can blindfold me, and tie my hands. But I want you to watch me, as you — poop on me.’ He still struggled to say ‘poop.’ This fact — as I stood astonished, already sinking into a trance — was all I could comprehend. Our Guide, 49 years old, was stumbling over a word a one-year old lisps straight-faced. ‘I’ve got everything ready. I’ll clean up myself. Nobody will see. Nobody but you must ever see.’

Now, in June, as I perch on Uncle’s photographer’s black stool — clenching my sphincter to modulate my shit-stream, for he likes it slow — I wonder: why won’t Uncle touch me?

What did I do, that January evening, when Uncle first asked me this favour? I did what I’ve done today. I did what I’ve done every evening these six months. I watched Uncle vapourised. I watched this Stranger take Uncle’s place. I watched a 20-year old, looking like me, taking the Stranger by the hand, leading him through Uncle’s mansion, to grant him this favour.

For I had already said, ‘Yes, Uncle.’ For I, and my sixty million compatriots, had already said, ‘Yes, Guide.’ The details of any favour Uncle now asked of me, the details of any demand the Nation now made of us — were superfluous. Our Yes had been said; our consciences had been consecrated into our Eagle’s safekeeping. Now, Uncle could tell us — but he need never again ask us.

When a worshipper, pagan or Christian, consecrates to the temple of her god an iron fork, a gold chalice, she’s prepared for her kitchen tools to be melted and reforged into iron spears, gold-tipped. No, she expects it, for her god must lead her fellow worshippers marching forth, must win them all glory — else they all look like fools.

We don’t want war. The soldiers think they want war — but they don’t know what they want. I’ve been watching war footage, these six months.

We’re preparing for war. We’re hoarding fuel, curing meat, assembling tanks, flooding newsprint and airwaves — in translation too, for the world’s convenience — with stories of border outrage that compel us to war.

We don’t want war. But we expect war. Let one enemy soldier, shivering before the dark masses of our waiting troops, accidentally press his trigger — and sixty million of us will plunge Europe into war.

We don’t want war. But we must have war. Our Guide must march us to victory. Establish, by Viktors’ Diktat, our new Code over all the world. That Code alone can exonerate us, retroactively, of the crimes we’ve already committed. We must fight, and we must win: else our god’s followers will again be denounced as the world’s criminals, will again be relegated to the world’s penitentiary. This time, justifiably. We must fight, and we must win. The right to be right. The right to be looked at. This the Nation knows.

We must turn back from war. We’ll suffer if we turn back. But we’ll suffer worse if we don’t. I’ve seen our tanks. I’ve seen the Enemies’ planes. We’re evenly matched. Either side is convinced it’s right. The horizons darken with shouting men, ready to die. The streets throng with cheering children and doddering grandpas, ready to kill. We must turn back.

What is my duty to my Nation?

These six months I’ve laughed as loud as I can. I’ve thought as little as I can. Now I’m forced to ask: why is Uncle doing this? The key to what he’s doing to me will unlock for me the dilemma of what I must do for my Nation.

Like a merry-go-round going round and round at midnight, badly greased wheels squeaking, the fairgrounds long since locked up, desolate, my mind has been circling through the possibilities.

First Possibility: Uncle knows that, as he leads us to our Promised Land — we’re committing what were, in the old Code, crimes. Uncle doesn’t want his Nation cursed for our crimes. As did the Christ, so now Uncle is taking unto himself the sins of our people.

Evaluation: Uncle trampled that old Code into the mud. That wasn’t our code, he proved to us; that code wasn’t serving us. So why should Uncle regret anything we’ve done against that code?

Second Possibility: We were born into the Guidance. For us, it’s easy. Uncle was born into the old Code; Uncle remains a man; no man can truly transcend what he’s born into. Perhaps Uncle believes — misbelieves — that we are committing crimes. Perhaps having me shit on him is, after all, Uncle atoning for his people’s sins?

Evaluation: Then why has Uncle become unable to look at me? These last six months he’s not looked at me once. Not in this mirror here; not at lunch when it’s just us two in his study; not at a public feast down the length of a banquet table. If Uncle were cleansing, through his body, his people’s sins — why would Uncle shut his own eyes, and compel me to look at him, as he kneels behind me, below me, covered in my shit, his own eyes tight shut all the while?

The Christ did not do so. The Christ didn’t need anyone to cleanse him, to see him, to forgive him. The Christ didn’t believe he was doing anything wrong.

Nor does Uncle believe that. He can’t. It’s Uncle’s conviction, flaming in his eyes sublime; it’s Uncle’s inhuman willpower that converted us, out of our scepticism, into Uncle’s aims and Uncle’s means.

If Uncle’s conviction is wavering — then Christ save us all. Christ, whom Uncle replaced.

Well, if the Christ was a man. So is Uncle. A man’s conviction wavers. And Uncle, I’ve learned these two years, has remained a man. His wavering conviction he replenishes: here, with me. That Uncle wavers is no death knell to our Guide’s glory. Is it?

I remember when I was sceptical. I remember that many still are. Uncle never stoops to address the sceptics’ concerns, for they are baseless. Aren’t they?

Third Possibility: Uncle’s kinky. Lise’s cousin’s boyfriend is a coprophiliac: that’s how Lise knows about odourless poop.

Perhaps what Uncle really wants from me is sex. Perhaps he thought that would be wrong, with his niece. Perhaps that’s why he asked for this instead.

Evaluation: Two months after this began, when I half-awoke for a moment from my trance, when I half-realised that this was happening — I told Uncle I was no longer bound by the archaic Code of right and wrong and no-incest: that, from those fetters, he had liberated my generation.

‘We can just go to bed, Uncle,’ I suggested. ‘I’d like that.’

He shook his head. ‘This is what I need.’

‘But why? Why do you need this?’

He shook his head, and shrugged. Looking away all the while.

Why does Uncle need this? Is Uncle trying to quench, with coprophilia, incestuous desires? Is that why Uncle feels ashamed?

This one coprophiliac I know through Lise — Junge — feels no shame about his fetish. He’s liberal, of course: mad after Paris and modern art. So you might fancy Junge doesn’t know what ‘shame’ is. You’d be wrong.

I watched Junge, one day, at tennis. He returned a ball so quick, so wide, that his opponent, rushing at it, sprained his calf. Junge turned beet-red, apologised profusely, paid his opponent’s medical bills, and grew flustered weeks afterwards when anyone mentioned ‘tennis.’ I’ve watched Junge often, on other occasions: when you know someone’s kinky, you watch them always.

Junge is capable of feeling shame on appropriate occasions; yet, according to Junge’s girlfriend, his sexual fetish causes him none. Besides: it’s only occasionally that Junge asks to be pooped on; apart from that, Junge has fun with his girlfriend in a full, free sex life.

Based on this one coprophiliac I know, this of Uncle is no kink. Uncle doesn’t know why he needs this. Nor do I. But I know this is not just a kink.

Fourth Possibility: Uncle’s a degenerate, and he’d rather be shat on than have a man. Being shat on somehow quenches his degenerate desires — or punishes them.

Evaluation: Uncle’s no degenerate. I’ve watched him, in public and in private, with men and with women. Here there’s no rift. Uncle’s always finding the prettiest women in the room: I’ve learned his tastes to a T. I’ve watched Uncle with men: working, laughing, chastising, or planning. Wary, affectionate, authoritative, or friendly.

This has nothing to do with sex. Uncle isn’t aroused before or after or during. And I’ve seen Uncle aroused: flirting, with those pretty women, within the bounds of his more-than-man’s dignity.

Fifth Possibility: This is how our Guide sees himself. In his soul: shit-covered.

Our Guide, a vegetarian, a tetotaller, a non-smoker, who even in the ecstasies of exhortation mouths no profanity, who flirts gallantly with pretty women but keeps celibate, whose heart bleeds for a shaggy-furred street dog, who denounces unclean art, a man who dreamed of being an artist, who still paints placid hamlets and pastel mountainscapes; a man who struggles to say ‘poop’ — this, in his soul, is how our Guide sees himself: kneeling, blazing blue eyes tight shut, shit-covered.

My Uncle, caned by his father, spoiled by his mother, orphaned at 17, wounded in the war, starved for a decade.

The puppy screams. Nobody hears him. Alone, he licks his wounds. He looks at the world with great blue eyes. Bright with hope. Then glinting with fear. Then blazing with fury.

Now they’ve heard him. Now he looks into their souls. Now they rally around him. Now they lay their souls at his feet. Now they raise their fists in his name. Now they see themselves in him.

What call was it that compelled us? Puppy screaming, or eagle screeching? Either sound is eardrum-splitting. It found us in the dark, passed its fish-hook through our souls. And we awoke, already compelled, already deafened we knew not what call it was that compelled us.

We look at our Guide, and what is it that we see? Puppy or eagle? We have forgotten how to see. Only he remembers. And he dare not. He needs me to see him as he sees himself. He needs me to see all and to say nothing.

Why me? Perhaps anyone would’ve done. One soul in all the world. I happened to be at hand.

Perhaps, as he looks forward, following his own pointing finger, Uncle sees — after this protracted blood wedding — no golden honeymoon, no arrival at the Promised Land. Perhaps he sees an eternity of this. This blood wedding, this procession of crimes with which we’ll earn, retroactively, the epithets the world flung at us during the last war, over the radios, and in the leaflets red and black, which they dropped on Uncle in the trenches, which they dropped on us at home.

Already, under the Guidance, old Code trampled into mud, we’ve marched too far to turn back now at the threshold of war. Only when our flag flies, red and black and white, over all Europe, can we consummate this blood wedding in our fairy-gold honeymoon. Only when our new god has led his worshippers marching forth, won them the victory, won them with victory, the new right will be exonerated of the wrongs we’ve already committed. But, perhaps, Uncle sees that this blood wedding is all there will be.

So, perhaps, in his soul, this is how our Guide sees himself: kneeling, blind, shit-covered as we prostrate ourselves around him, noses in shit.

Evaluation: My blood runs cold. Is this how Uncle sees himself? What has he done, that he sees himself like this?

Uncle doesn’t see himself. Uncle can’t bear to. The day after we began to do this — that snow-muffled day in January — Uncle had the mirrors removed from his dressing room, bedroom, and bathroom. His valet shaves him now; I dress him while he stares blindly through me. Since this began, Uncle’s looked neither at himself, nor at me. Not in the eye. Not in any mirror. But he makes me look at him.

What has Uncle done, that drives him to do this?

Uncle has no private life. If he had, it would be public knowledge by now. Whatever he’s done, it must be in his public life. In the public life into which we sixty million, cheering and marching, we the chosen people, have dissolved ourselves.

Why has Uncle made me his mirror?

Five possibilities: evaluated. Conclusion: ?

To be continued...