Mirror

by Amita Basu

Table of Contents, parts: 1, 2,

part 2

I guide the Stranger from the ballroom, down the corridors, towards my private apartment in Uncle’s mansion. I keep hold of the Stranger’s hand; he follows me like a man drugged, being led to his own execution. He must feel ashamed to do this, though it’s he who makes me do it. There are things one needs to do but of which one feels ashamed.

The bile surges into my throat: scalding it, then filming it with bitterness. Some bitternesses are cleansing: pine, for instance, or lime peel. Not this bitterness; it films my throat. The film dries there. These past six months — filmed every day — my throat has narrowed, and now I can’t breathe. I keep gasping for breath and laughing, ever louder. Briefly, laughter unchokes my throat.

All this won’t just pass. I must do something. What should I do? I think of doing something. Risking everything. Now it’s my heart that surges into my throat.

No, I can’t bear to think of this. Just keep on walking. Eastwards and eastwards, chasing tomorrow’s sun, to the east end of Uncle’s mansion.

‘Uncle’s mansion,’ I call it: Uncle commissioned it, and Uncle inhabits it. But it belongs to the Nation. It’s Uncle’s successor as Chancellor — not me, not any children Uncle may have — who’ll inhabit this Chancellery after him.

Guiding the Stranger through not-Uncle’s Chancellery, I peep into its libraries, parlours, conference rooms, kitchens. The Stranger won’t mind; the house is empty. He dismisses the servants to their quarters before he seeks me out.

Uncle commissioned the Chancellery to accommodate foreign dignitaries, party meetings, and the large informal gatherings that a leader must host. The Chancellery accommodates artworks from Europe across the ages, fine china and Persian tapestries, and rooms full of books. The books include Uncle’s private collection, accumulated through decades of near-poverty: underlined and annotated, dog-eared and rebound — now donated to the Nation.

The Chancellery accommodates nothing private: Uncle has no private life. The Chancellery accommodates no low pleasures: Uncle has no lower pleasure than music: and that he calls low only because he enjoys it without understanding it. The Chancellery was not designed for the errand on which the Stranger and I...

Forget the Stranger! Shut your eyes and think of Uncle.

It was at a party here that I met Uncle.

I’d known Uncle before I could remember: when he, a vagrant, spent Corpus Christi with relatives this side of the border. Afterwards, during school vacations, when he’d become a big, busy man, I’d lined up with my schoolfellows on manicured lawns to be shaken hands with.

Two years ago, Pa escorted me here to one of Uncle’s balls. I was determined to make a good first impression. I shimmied into Ma’s best gown. Ma was dead, and Pa didn’t think of forbidding my dressing up; anyway, I was almost 18. The girls dolled me up. Then I had a moment alone with my mirror.

I surveyed myself: as if I were a stranger. Interest reserved, eyes fleeting. It was easy: I looked like a stranger.

I’ve grown taller than some men approve of: but a true man would acknowledge height as a nobility in either sex. I’ve got Ma’s face, but I’ve filled it out, so I’ve finally forgiven her well-rounded cheeks that offset a sharp nose and a high forehead. Well, offsetting is a matter of taste; some prefer concord. What I do know is that every individual feature is decent.

My hair, which troubled me at pubescence, is now disciplined to frame my face nicely with clean waves of mahogany. My figure is so good the girls tell me I needn’t fret about being so tall. Shoulders broad, bosom high and firm, waist narrow, hips... Then, blushing, I remembered who I was going to see.

That was the first time I evaluated myself as an object of desire. The first of many. Now that time is past.

I’d followed, with all my schoolmates, all through school, Uncle’s rise. His speeches are broadcast over radio now, but we attended his rallies to hear and to see him whenever our teachers would let us. They’d begun letting us: first often, then always. It was our teachers — sometimes horse-faced, but always punctual — who escorted us to his rallies.

All through school, I’d felt bursting proud that he was my Uncle. My orphaned, destitute Uncle, caned every evening, expelled from school, cast away to struggle alone with his first ambition, the black sheep whom the family had indulged but dismissed. My Uncle had educated himself, covered himself with wartime glory, remade himself. Now, Uncle was going to remake our Nation. I felt as proud as if the runt of Chintzy’s litter had grown into a werewolf.

And, now, at 18, dolled up, about to meet Uncle, I stood blushing like a silly pubescent. Before my mirror back home; then, here in this ballroom.

I’d thought dressing grownup would give me confidence: but it only made me self-conscious. Pa was requisitioned into a game of tarock; so I stood alone by the fireplace, peering for a familiar face, pulling the slipping lace fringe of my bodice back up my shoulders, when Uncle appeared.

In this setting, I failed to recognise him — but only for a moment. His blazing blue eyes caught you across the room, looked into you, anchored themselves like fish-hooks in your soul, and never released you. They were the eyes that had compelled the Nation.

I bowed, curtsied, realised he was yards away, felt all my blood rushing up my neck, and scrambled to remember how one properly introduces oneself to a personage who’s one’s relative, though he doesn’t—

‘You’re my niece, Katharyn,’ Uncle announced, in a confidential whisper, joining me by the fire.

I was off again, bowing-curtseying-blushing. Uncle stopped me with a laugh. A laugh like a friend slapping you when you’re disintegrating into hysterics. His laugh knocked me sensible. And then I saw him. I saw how merry his eyes were, how benign his smile: his face so soft, almost senile, almost like Grammy’s.

That’s only a silly fancy, arising from contrast. I was used to Uncle glowering at me from city-square hoardings, ranting and foaming at rallies a hundred-thousand strong, poised and cold-eyed at conferences with ambassadors photographed in the newspapers. I wasn’t used to seeing him whispering and laughing. To hearing his conversational voice. A pleasant baritone: pure-bodied, with just a hint of grit in its gut.

That evening, the ballroom — and the supper rooms, card rooms, and adjacent balconies — thronged with slender-waisted actresses, dirt-sniffing journalists, long-memoried politicians, and appraising-eyed businessmen. But it was with me that Uncle stood chatting. I couldn’t feel the ground under me; I couldn’t feel time; time had become a fairyland eternity. Looking back, it must’ve been only five minutes.

‘I have a favour to ask you,” said Uncle. ‘You must think it over, and you must say No, if—’

‘Yes. You can tell me what it is, if you like, Uncle. But yes.’

‘My housekeeper has died. I have an excellent staff, but they need a firm manager... You’ve finished school?’

‘Yes, Uncle, and I’ve enrolled in the Music Academy.’

‘Splendid! Music is my third-favourite thing in the world.’ I didn’t need to ask him what the first two were: I’d spent my teens interrogating all my family for all they knew about Uncle. ‘Housekeeping, even here, is a part-time job. I have a valet, and a butler, both good men. You’d need only check the accounts, and ensure the meals are well-cooked.’

‘Me?’ I still couldn’t feel the ground, but now it was all right; for now, I knew I’d left it, was floating above it.

‘If you’d like.’

I gasped, or leaped, or gaped, or found some other way to scream, ‘Yes!’

Uncle nodded: his eyes, always blazing, now glowing. ‘I’ll ask your father.’

Back home, Pa hesitated.

I expostulated, and threatened to run away. How could Pa be so cruel to me, so unpatriotic to Uncle! Uncle lived for the Nation. He’d not married; he neither smoked nor drank; he had neither summer palaces nor winter castles; he had no ruby-encrusted regalia, serial affairs with expensive actresses, public-private business deals, or gourmet suppers — as did many of his party-mates, as have most rulers through history. Now Uncle had asked us one little favour — and he’d only phrased it as a favour to him, so as not to embarrass us with gratitude.

Pa relented but insisted I continue my studies. As if I wanted to abandon them! Old fogey.

Three days after Uncle’s ball, I arrived at the Chancellery with my violin case, hat boxes, my little trunk, and Chintzy. To live with Uncle. To serve, shoulder-to-shoulder with Uncle, our Nation.

Uncle was right. Housekeeping has been a part-time job. I’ve had leisure and facilities to study music, and Uncle’s encouragement. As for Uncle’s staff... Well! They fulfil their duties. What they do in their leisure is nobody’s business. And I’m a grownup, now.

We’ve arrived at my bathroom.

I enter. I begin unbuttoning my bodice. I prefer the new zippered dresses — but Uncle is old-fashioned, and his seamstress fits my figure beautifully, and Uncle has revived old-fashioned across the Nation: so I’m reconciled to my clothes old-new, tweed-not-nylon, buttoned-not-zippered, bespoke new every season.

I unbutton myself, the bathroom door still open — but I know there’s nobody to see. Besides: I’ve lost my shame, these six months.

The Stranger follows me in.

From the corner of my eye, I watch the Stranger watching me undress. Just as I’m about to ease my shoulders out of my dress, he turns away and closes the bathroom door behind us. Still facing away from me, facing the door he’s closed, standing right up against it like a dog at the end of his tether waiting to be let out — he takes off his jacket, hangs it on the door with a mechanical, dreamlike meticulousness, and begins unbuttoning his cuffs.

Shut your eyes and think of Uncle.

* * *

Uncle worked for his tiny party behind the scenes. Inspired by the wartime pamphlets — crude and relentless, therefore effective — the enemies had dropped on him in the trenches, on us at home. Uncle designed his own peacetime posters. The party’s tiny public meetings drew more listeners.

Uncle spoke for his tiny party before the public. Up on a table, still in the flammable atmosphere of beer halls, Uncle spoke to ever larger audiences.

Drawn by Uncle’s posters stuck in alleyways. Transfixed by Uncle’s words on stage.

Every speech, Uncle started slow: taking, with deft tongue and mirror-clear blue eyes, the room’s temperature. He divined — from the slant of the factory workers’ caps, the slouch of the shop clerks’ shoulders, the cock of the wannabe-journalists’ brows — the texture of his listeners’ secret longings, secret from themselves. Uncle stooped to his audience: cold and low, weary from a week’s work; or unemployed, pocket-fisted, sullen-eyed; or, perhaps, affluent, just curious about this upstart Cleon. Strangers needy and indifferent, their interest in his words reserved.

Uncle stooped to his audience, and started every speech down there with them, cold and low with them. Uncle warmed his audiences up through a slow, relentless crescendo over twenty, forty, seventy minutes. After every speech, Uncle stood sweating and shivering with passion. So did more and more of his listeners.

The party’s posters began appearing on alleyways, and on streets, too, ever farther from the party’s headquarters, which occupied half of an attic. Up on a stage, in proper assembly halls, Uncle invited his compatriots to open their eyes.

Uncle looked back on the war. We’d been lied to, he said. Our King hadn’t surrendered. Our King — scion of Europe’s fiercest polemarchs, of Europe’s most cultured courts — couldn’t’ve surrendered. The enemies had browbeaten him, holding his Nation hostage. Just two years ago, the war had ended, and already we were forgetting the enemies. Weren’t we?

Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, intoxicated with the communal reek of beer and sweat, his listeners exchanged glances. ‘We had forgotten,’ they agreed. ‘We were trying to muddle on, somehow, through life. We’d forgotten how hard life has become through no fault of ours.’

Uncle looked backwards on the war. We’d been lied to, he said. Was it possible we’d lost the war? We, scions of the heroes, armed only with courage, who’d conquered half of Europe? We, heirs of the old gods’ honour, bound by Nature’s law to win any honourable conflict? But the conflict, Uncle proved, hadn’t been honourable. We’d been sabotaged by enemies within.

Who were these enemies within? Uncle pointed. At our big-city newspapers, espousing the Enemies’ liberal values. At our long-nosed financiers, colluding, for their private bourgeois interests, with the enemies to keep us eternally indebted. At the communists who’d instigated mass mutinies in the army, who now led the impromptu street entertainments which made citizens balk at nipping around the corner for bread.

Above all, Uncle pointed at the alien who’s infiltrated every Nation; who’s corrupted every Nation’s press, fiscal institutions, politics, and lifeblood. The West, said Uncle, self-castrated by liberalism, dares not see. We dare see. We dare act.

Uncle pointed forwards, to the Promised Land awaiting our Nation. The path thereunto, he warned, was uphill. But he would lead our Nation there: there for us all to live, on this earth, in fairy-gold eternity.

His listeners, watching him point, sniggered. ‘Keep your fairyland,’ they hooted; ‘Give us a loaf of bread today, and we’ll kiss the ground at your feet.’

Uncle kept speaking. His voice rasping with a rage too big for one man’s body. His eyes aflame with a conviction sublime. A conviction big enough to animate a Nation, washing from wavering hearts all doubt. His face baby-soft with love for his Nation, convulsed with the sobs of a baby watching his mother in distress.

His listeners stopped sniggering. Now they turned to follow his pointing finger. Now they glimpsed, dim and distant, Uncle’s fairyland. They remembered that great deeds had indeed been done, and great realms won, by men of their own complexion. They swayed, on their heels, in the assembly hall, uncertain. They felt, through their worn-out shoe heels, the dank, dusty floor.

They remembered their youngest daughter at home, growing every day quieter and thinner. They remembered who it was that’d told them to keep their heads down, to trust in God and plod on: business-suited, big-city men. Men who spoke over the heads of those who had nothing. Men who felt ashamed to belong to this Nation.

They listened, and their hearts swayed. They looked, and saw, dim and distant, Uncle’s Promised Land. And their eyes longed. And doubt was washed from their hearts.

Every speech, Uncle started by reasoning coolly, opening his sullen listeners’ eyes. At the end of every speech Uncle stood raving, voice crackling, hands punching air, feet no longer touching ground, eyes blazing blind, his now-screaming listeners levitating with him into ecstasies of rage and yearning.

They began calling Uncle ‘the Guide.’

Outsiders, in tail coats and silk top hats, dropping by languidly curious, laughed at Uncle’s speeches. At his foaming mouth, short words, rustic accent, and impolitic invective. ‘He’s just a puppy,’ they said. ‘Scratched by a big dog, screaming for someone to come shoot all the world’s dogs — so that he can feel big.’

Uncle didn’t care. It wasn’t to outsiders that Uncle spoke. It wasn’t to the liberalised, Westernised elite who’d become outsiders in their own Nation, who’d stayed insulated from their own Nation’s sufferings that Uncle spoke. Not to cloistered clerics or mansioned magnates did Uncle speak. Not in his speeches. Privately, he did speak to them. Soon, they were funding him.

So many listeners now crowded Uncle’s speeches, that even from the city’s largest assembly hall, latecomers were turned away. So many followers now subscribed to the party, that it expanded its headquarters from a half-attic to a full. The subscription fee was tiny: for the followers were mostly working-class men and unemployed graduates. The subscription fee stayed low. The party kept growing.

It grew unwieldy, bristling with big men. But, after seven years, the party remained regional. The big men insisted that it was time for a coup.

Against his own judgment, Uncle marched with a score of his comrades to usurp the National government.

The coup failed. Uncle was jailed.

The liberal newspapers Uncle had reviled avenged themselves. ‘Another extremist, violence-minded little party has collapsed,’ they declared. ‘Even in times of distress, our civic institutions stand strong. Our Nation reaffirms her faith in law and order and peaceful recovery.’

Uncle didn’t care. These newspapers addressed foreigners: our enemies, still wary of us, and those of our own people who were riven from us, self-made outsiders.

Uncle knew this wasn’t the end.

In prison, Uncle wrote a book. Opening his reader’s eyes with reason to our Nation’s rapine from without, her poisoning from within. Lifting his reader into ecstasies of rage and yearning. The book became a bestseller. Not just with the working class and unemployed. Beyond and abroad, the book found sympathy for our Nation’s plight and potential.

The sympathy already existed at home and abroad, else Uncle would’ve got nowhere. Uncle didn’t sow the seeds. Uncle watered various seeds that had waited, below ground, for years and decades and centuries.

Now that we stand on the threshold of war, they deny that they ever sympathised. They deny that they praised us for daring to see and to act against the enemies within. They deny that they stood by and watched and cheered our words and our deeds these twenty years.

Cowards. Astonished that our deeds have matched our words.

After his short prison term, Uncle resumed his work to save his Nation.

To be continued...

Copyright © 2023 by Amita Basu

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