When I first saw you, I have to admit, I mistook you for a stranger, perhaps because I had been living on my own for such a long time, a voluntary isolation that was beginning to affect my speech as well as my vision. But then I had a better look at your reflection on the water, rippled by the swan gliding across the pond, and I saw clearly the short hair, the long nose, the familiar coat: we knew each other from somewhere. After a futile year, I had begun to take daily afternoon walks in the park to lessen the torment of loneliness, which was devised to punish the weak of this world, along a route that took me past the pond, where I fed the ducks, past the Hill, past the Edwardian Pergola, stopping to sit briefly on one of the benches dedicated to the dead.
It was a brief encounter. Then I did not see you again for several months, and I was beginning to convince myself that, after all, you were one of the accidental ghosts that roam the park at any time of the day, mystifying the dogs by their ethereal presence, surprising the sleeping anglers and angering the gardeners by trampling all over the flowerbeds, until we bumped into each other again the following spring. Christmas had passed without escape from the despair, watching cartoons and merciless repeats of comedy on television that could not even make amnesiacs laugh. January had not been better either. Work had been slow, and the joy of writing had given way to a routine that was beginning to resemble the life of a pearl diver. Nothing happened in February either, a month invented only to delay the coming of spring, but then in March I had the providential idea to come into town for a matinee. After the play, being too early to return home, I mixed with the twilight crowd, walking with their umbrellas in the rain, going in and out of shops, restaurants, amusement arcades. Then, suddenly, there you were again, splendid and palpable in a shop window, among the sinister mannequins, the clouds of exhaust fumes and the stalls of the street vendors.
At the time I lived on the first floor of a red-brick house in north London, in a small flat where the bath was in the kitchen, so that I did the laundry, bathed and washed the dishes in the same water in order to save on expenses. Late every afternoon, the landlady came to inspect the property, going from floor to floor in her army general’s walk, sniffing the air because smoking was strictly forbidden, before paying a visit to her daughter and son-in-law, who stayed in the garden flat. A well-built Frenchwoman, my landlady had been stranded in England after marrying an English wine merchant who died of cirrhosis five years later, leaving her with a daughter and the freehold of the big house. She converted it into flats and since then had rented them out to young professionals. Once a month, when she came to collect the rent, she warned me, in her precise French accent that tolerated no dissent, that I am a guest, even though I always paid on time and put the rubbish out every Sunday night, as she had instructed me, the black bin bag tied with a silk ribbon and a thank-you note addressed to the dustmen, who would otherwise not collect it.
This was the world before I met you, and if I had not gone insane I owed it to my tenacity. I had come to London with the intention of becoming a writer, without a contract, without a plan, without even a plot for a book, on the strength of a good word about my stories from someone who soon proved to be more courteous than sincere. I had saved enough money to last me six months and given up a good job, an easy decision because that job meant nothing to me. Convinced I was destined for greater things, I had shaken hands with my boss, a thin man with tired eyes, a captain’s beard and a northern accent, who had sent me away with his blessing: ‘You’re fucking crazy.’ I moved into the flat in north London and shut myself off from the world, hoping that inspiration would save me from the foretold fate of aspiring writers. A year later my optimism had all but run out, and I had been left with a growing fear that I was wasting my time. I was making ends meet by working a few hours a week in an old bookshop where people seeking shelter from the rain and innocent tourists were cowed into buying first editions of the classics and rare prints made in China a few weeks earlier.
The second time I came across you, that evening in town, I tried speaking to you, but as soon as I turned round you vanished. I stood in the middle of the torrent of Saturday shoppers, listening to the honking of cars and the bloodcurdling shouts of cabbies telling me, inter alia, to get out of the way, and for the first time I experienced an oppressive loneliness that I had not felt since my coming to London. After that I looked for you from the moment I stepped out of the door until I returned home late in the evening, in the park, in the street, at the shops, and kept a diary of unconfirmed sightings, which was soon filled with details of the date, the time and place I thought I saw you. I ate little, just enough to sustain my hope but not my body, and soon I was losing weight. I slept badly, waiting all night for morning to come, when I could leave the house and roam the streets in the rain, without an umbrella, walking for miles, further and further from home each day, and coming back in the evening, tired, disappointed and wet through. I was stopped by the police, dogs barked at me and I earned the reputation of a man one should stay clear of: the Stranger.
Weeks went by and the weather improved. The branches of the trees on either side of the streets spread out, and the leaves formed dense canopies lit up from above by the early-evening light. Peace reigned over the neighbourhood that was disrupted only by the purring of lawnmowers. At weekends happy crowds poured into the park, lost their way through the meadows, where the grass had grown several feet tall, and were never seen again, the place echoing with their heart-rending cries. I had stopped changing my clothes, bathing or shaving. If I could have afforded to, I would have taken a holiday in order to soothe my grief and take a break from the eternal search, but instead I stayed home, where I suffered the ordeal of a heat wave the like of which had not been seen before. In August, when my landlady knocked on my door to collect the rent, she wrinkled up her nose and gave me a look of disapproval. I decided that I had to spruce myself up. That evening I sat in the scalding water of the big bath in the kitchen, perfumed with oils of lavender, peppermint and jasmine, and fell asleep while thinking of you. When I woke up, the water had turned cold and my teeth were chattering. I dried myself off and went to shave. I have a cut-throat razor, bought on a sentimental impulse, a beautiful antique with a whalebone handle and a Sheffield-steel blade I sharpen once a week. I lathered my face and began to shave. Then, as soon as I finished, washed the razor under the tap and raised my head, lo and behold, I saw you in the mirror, looking back at me.
I do not know how you found me, an unimportant man in a city that has no time for insignificance, but however you did it, it was the happiest surprise of my life. I looked in the mirror with admiration and as much satisfaction as if I had drawn you there myself. Then I put on cologne and ironed clothes, polished my shoes, combed my hair and carried my old clothes to the bottom of the garden, where I burned them in a ceremony that felt like an immolation, the only witness my landlady’s son-in-law, watching me with his sad slave’s eyes from inside his flat.
I knew what else I had to do. The following morning I went to the bank, where I withdrew the last of my savings and spent them all on mirrors, big and small, square, round and rectangular. After I had them framed in gold, like portraits by the Old Masters, I hung them round my flat: in the kitchen, the bedroom, the living-room, the toilet, from the ceiling, everywhere, so that I could see you in any direction I turned to.
Autumn brought relief from the heat. The traffic wardens, doomed to walk eternally the streets of the borough, ploughed through the dry leaves and were still giving tickets. I rarely went to the park any more, preferring to stay at home with you instead. In the morning I had coffee, listening to the news on the radio for a while, and then I sat at my desk. Suddenly work was going well. I was writing non-stop, without having to wait for inspiration, without self-doubt, without effort, the pen flowing like a boat caught in a tail wind. At one o’clock, I stopped for a light snack and a brief afternoon nap, a Mediterranean habit that no amount of coffee could exorcise. I left the windows open, so that I could fall asleep listening to the wind carrying the melodies of songbirds and the learned discourses of parrots which had escaped their cages and lived in the park. One day, in the middle of my nap, a gust of wind blew through the flat, and a heavy mirror fell to the floor and broke into pieces. I woke with a start. The noise alarmed my landlady too, doing the rounds of the house at the time, and a moment later she banged on my door. ‘Open up!’ she demanded. ‘In the name of the Housing Act.’
I had no choice but to comply. I tiptoed to the door, dressed in my best gown, and opened the door, forcing a big smile. My landlady frowned and tried to see behind me. When she finally saw the mirrors that covered the walls from floor to ceiling, she let out a scream: ‘Mon Dieu!’ Then she recovered herself and added: ‘I want you out by Friday. This is a reputable house.’
I tried to convince her that she was wrong, that there was nothing sinister or immoral about the mirrors, but I did not dare to tell her about you in case she thought I was subletting the flat, a terrible crime punishable by death. The mirrors, I said, were a simple way to brighten up the place in a country where light was brought over from Africa to be sold by the bucket load. She did not believe me. ‘Out! Out!’ she kept repeating in her precise voice, incensed and resolute, even after I shut the door in her face. When it was quiet again, I heaved a sigh of relief. I took the dustpan and brushed the broken glass, I made coffee, I sat at my desk, and it was some time before I looked in a mirror and saw that you were not there. I tried another mirror, then another until I had looked in all of them. To my horror, all I could see was my reflection multiplied countless times: you were gone.
There was no point searching for you. I knew by then that you would only be found if you wanted to be found, and what I had to do was simply to wait. The following Friday I moved out of the red-brick house, watched over by my landlady, who withheld my deposit without an explanation, and found a basement bedsit. Then I sold my mirrors to a travelling funfair to build a house of mirrors, which some time later the police shut down because it was too terrifying for children. I kept only one mirror, out of hope as well as necessity, which I hung above the bathroom sink in order to shave. Every time I lather my face, I look deep in it, hoping one day you will again come up from the bottom of the glass.
I hope it will be soon. Do not try the patience of a man in love holding a razor to his throat.