THE FOX HAS its den and the Ovenbird its nest, but the mother and the child have no place to rest their heads. Come with me, the Virgin says.
Revelers, mourners, pilgrims, and seekers were on their way to the Spiegelpalais. From the smallest of embers, the Great Wind had ignited fires that burned on the horizon and fell on the heads of the sojourners, granting them wisdom and direction, and though they did not speak the same language, when they at last arrived at the place, each miraculously was able to understand the other.
Many in the Valley stood outside the Spiegelpalais and wondered why pilgrims were arriving from all points on earth, but after the initial flurry of inquiries, such questions passed and did not return again. A mass hypnosis seemed to settle over the Valley, and soon no one remembered a time the Spiegelpalais had not been there, or could imagine a future in which it was not included. Many stood outside and waited, but few gained admittance, so when the mother and child were issued in easily, under the Virgin’s auspices, the mother felt vaguely worried, as if it were some sort of trick.
FROM THE OUTSIDE it had seemed a dream arena: ephemeral, unmoored, a ghost ship festooned with banners and flags; but inside, the Spiegelpalais felt more solid, immovable, real. An endless series of rooms and vaults seemed to open in every direction. Some rooms were linked by corridors, some by canals, some by woodland paths, and there was a central atrium where there burned a small live fire.
Soul cakes, someone sang around the fire where a mourning party huddled. Soul cakes were being roasted and a glass orchestra played.
Darkened passages, leading to rabbits and rabbit holes or woodchucks in their dens and collapsible floors were everywhere. Rooms as if in a dream, inviting, irresistible, moss-laden, called to them.
Off stage right, cordoned off, flowed the Rhine. People gathered at its banks and wept. The mother and child felt their own river, just outside the door, like a silk swathe move through them. Boxes of fog were opened.
All was in motion. There were elevators that rose and fell, trap-doors, ropes and pulleys, dumbwaiters, escape hatches. There were sliding stages. The sky became a canyon, the canyon filled with water and became an Italian lake draped in crepe de chine, the lake froze and a tundra opened before them. They walked through a snow garden, a garden of concrete deities, a children’s garden, a fox’s garden, a cinder garden where children played, and the glen. In the glen a boy played an irresistible tune on a panpipe. A deer appeared in a clearing—but before the child could reach it, it was gone, vanished in the dark wood.
AN ENORMOUS TURNTABLE filled an airplane hangar at the back of the Spiegelpalais upon which elaborate tableaux were in the process of being constructed. A maple tree was being assembled, a mute man made of straw, a Flagship, a child’s truck enlarged to life size, a seed crib. Freed from their burden of narrative, these objects seemed all the more mysterious, and everyone marveled at their inscrutable beauty. A pupa, a papyrus raft, a rose-laden boat.
Out of nothing an entire world had begun to materialize before the mother and child. An array of scene painters and seamstresses and carpenters and artisans of all sorts were busy at work constructing skyscrapers and churches and clock towers and other facades. Pastoral scenes had been rendered with great feeling, a beautiful grotto had been made one rock at a time, and cityscapes were depicted under heartbreakingly blue skies.
Look! the child said. There, and she tugged at her mother’s sleeve; on a painted ocean was Uncle Sven—whimsically portrayed.
PARADED BEFORE THEM was all of life. Enigmatic emblems streamed past as the mother and child walked, but they were not afraid. In the place called the Night Archive, inventory of some kind was being taken, and things were being summed up, accounted for, tallied. Piled to the ceilings were logbooks and ledgers and bibles: the Hair Bible, the Bird Atlas, the Red Book of Existence.
When they came to the place called the Aging Stage, the mother and child were stopped. On the Aging Stage, a voice explained, a few steps forward and you are a baby again, a few steps back—an old woman. The mother watched her siblings. What were they doing here?
Five giant steps were taken forward, and suddenly Lars, Ingmar, Anders, Sven, and baby Inga have not yet been born. It frightened the mother. Only the empty black perambulator, funereal, waited stage left for the babies to come.
Back in place and four steps in the other direction, and they were no more.
AN OPEN CALL for extras sounded throughout the Spiegelpalais. We need Human Pollinators, we need totem animals of every sort, we need a steady stream of beekeepers, we need pilgrims for the Concrete Rabbit. Had anyone seen Oscar the Death Cat? Had anyone heard from The Headless Horseman Fife and Drum Corps? An amplified voice spoke with urgency. Soldiers were needed, and before you knew it, they came in endless corridors walking in a continuous column toward the mother and the child, and then away, where they disappeared into the fog. Lost to the Phosphorous, the director murmured. Then more would come, and then go, and always more and more were called.
SOON ENOUGH THE pageant would commence. Various players were being fitted for costumes: Operation Rescue was being measured for bird suits, the President for his evening coat. Pierrot lugged out the Costume Bible. Junot thumbed through the Hair Bible to find where the hair for the Grandmother Wig had been purchased—ah yes—at auction in Sweden for ninety-five dollars an ounce in 1933. There were prop rooms filled with wigs, and wolf suits, and beekeeping paraphernalia.
Out tumbled a hat with antlers, a fish with a face, an ermine head, a mesh dress, a wig of matted hair.
Standing far up on a scaffold, men were assembling what appeared to be a human child, several stories high. Three schoolchildren with backpacks standing under a Scholar Tree looked on. When they saw the mother and child, they ran to them and laughed and pulled at them and asked if they might stay and play and read to them awhile, but the mother demurred and stepped away.
EVERYWHERE REHEARSALS WERE going on in the wings. Actors were running their lines: Flittermouse, Flittermouse . . . a haunting falsetto could be heard. The little pope practiced carrying his glass globe. The glass pyramid was rolled out. Now and then you could pick out a word: wind or tooth or chrysalis or flame, and the mother thought, how strange.
In the Night Archive the darkness was immense, but there was an abundance of light sources—fireflies, embers encased in jars, and from the vast, arched ceilings, shooting stars.
Velvet and rhinestones were attached to the ceiling to embellish the evening. In the dressing room, grease paint was being applied to the Night Oil Man’s fearful visage.
The darkness became such that there was a public plea for daylight. Day in the underground vault was being manufactured with incandescent light and bird effects and sweet breezes and swings.
Charming scenes of country life were being blocked: barn dances and threshings and fall celebrations. Harvest costumes were tweaked and cornstalks arranged.
Cecil Peter and Wise Jean and their Piggle passed by on a float. From his windy perch, Cecil Peter rehearsed his lines, calling through a megaphone that the Age of Funnels was upon them. Heed this warning, he said. The Age of Funnels always brings madness when it returns, and this time would be no exception. Their first Piggle had been born aloft on the whirling and carried away. Nail down your loved ones, Wise Jean could be heard saying, before it’s too late. And the blue veil of madness, gossamer, beautifully made, unfurled right on cue. Everywhere there were intimations of the Vortex. Stage crews were adjusting the wind machines to accommodate the endless directives of the script.
Farmers and their wives practiced their reels. Small children tugged at the women, and the women directed their attention to something in the middle distance, and it seemed as if something were about to happen, but then just as suddenly, the scene began to recede. Already? the mother said. It had scarcely seemed to have taken shape and it was already dissolving in the haze. The fiddle faded and moved to mirage, and the farmers and their wives and a whole way of life eerily and without music danced away—quaint, iconic, into the ever-increasing distance. A last do-si-do then. Small figures, hauling bales of hay, waved.
THE THEATER UTOPIA had arrived and had taken up residence on the outdoor stage. En plein air—the birds, the wind, the stars, all would be part of the play. Enter warbler, warbling. Tortoise. Whooping Crane. Aunt Eloise and a single bee. On deck was the Bindlestaff Family Circus. And the Arm of the Sea. And the Beloved Bread and Puppets. On the outdoor stage anything might happen.
At the Spiegelpalais the child opened her mouth. Her baby teeth were gone. New teeth were coming in.
At the edge of the meadow, the sleek wolf padding in on rose feet.
BACK INSIDE AT the Court of Miracles, all marveled at the discovery of Dark Matter, and someone lectured about Quintessence and Phantom Energy. At the summit stood the Vortex Man, and all knelt to his power and bowed their heads in reverence. Behold, he said, the planet on the table! It was a blue planet, perfectly round, very beautiful. Is that us? someone dared at last to ask. Yes, the Vortex Man said, a little sadly.
Next to the planet was a human eye, a floating miracle of design. Light enters the pupil, is focused and inverted by the cornea and lens, and is projected at the back of the eye where the retina lies—seven layers of alternating cells, which can convert a light signal into a neural sign. The mother, who had once been a nurse, sighs.
And in the atrium the great orb, which had somehow survived, presided in silence.
A great winged thing was projected now onto a large screen. Behold, the Vortex Man bellowed, the Luna Moth—from the wild silk moth family—and its enormous wings filled the screen. Many gathered, drawn to its light. Behold its diaphanous and fragile beauty, its wings pale green, its transparent eyespots, its long curving tail. Ladies and gentlemen, they love the Persimmon, the Sweet Gum, the Winged Sumac.
In the Miracle Theater a boy’s chest was being opened, and from it a flock of birds flew. It was the time of the Bird Count, and the child was handed a tally book and a pencil. But just as she began counting, a commotion arose, and the birds scattered.
Step away, step away, the Vortex Man implored as a large aquarium draped with a sheath was rolled into the Court. In one elegant gesture, he removed the velvet shroud that draped it.
Behold the creature dreaming in its amniotic sac, the place it will reside these next nine months. Elaborate memory tracks are being laid down there, my friends, from the dappled, shadowed world. Associations and sensations are flooding in and being held by the fluid. See for the first time what it sees. On the overhead projector, the close-ups shot from the fetus’s point of view resembled flora and lacy ferns and fauna.
The dreamy fetus floats remembering nothing, or so we suppose. Ladies and gentlemen, the fetus is remembering right now. And the fluid retains the memory for a thousand years. Note the beautiful greeny-blue umbilicus attached to the world—like a luminous garden hose.
COME ONE, COME all, and I will show you a species of dreamers unrivaled in the history of the world. Lost to us for millennia. The more you learn about them, the more you will love them, these beautiful dreamers, and the more you will miss them. From a distant millennium—now retrieved for the first time ever and coming soon here to the Spiegelpalais. The mystery at the heart of the cosmos remains intact—insoluble to us with our limited consciousness—but not to the Large-Headed Hominid. Come see its majestic brain—with an internal life we cannot begin to fathom. Come have life’s mysteries at last illuminated. At last—all that lies outside our grasp. Find yourself—
On a foundering ship no more.
Hostage to the Concrete Rabbit no more.
WHO ARE YOU? the child inquired of the Vortex Man.
You may be wondering, the Vortex Man bellowed, indeed who I am and why we have all gathered here. For a moment everyone stopped what they were doing and there was absolute silence. At the still point of the turning world, the Vortex Man spoke:
You have come from near and far. You have worked tirelessly, you have been faithful and true. A drama of cosmic proportions is about to be staged. Life and Death before our eyes shall vie for the Mother and Child. And a spotlight illuminates them. Both Heaven and Earth. See how they hover in a hanging liminal place, not quite here, but not quite there either. Death vies for them, but so does Life. Each side possesses its seductions, oh yes, its considerable charms, oh yes. Both sides. It is twilight. Or is it dawn? Who is to say? The body collects both sleep and song.
Who shall be victorious in the end? Even the Vortex Man does not know.
These and other enigmas shall be contemplated. Behold the Luna Moth. And the Wolf. And the Death Cat. And the mossy path. And the snow. And the lavish green dreaming of the fallen tree.
Staged will be the Eternal Questions for all to ponder:
Why is the man drawn irresistibly to the whale, only to murder it?
Why is it that when we might have gone forward, we stepped back?
If the child severs the silk tether prematurely, what does it mean for her?
Why did we hesitate? And when in our hesitations did we become part of the Too Late.
And where is Uncle Ingmar going now in winter with the grandfather clock strapped to his back? These and other existential conundrums shall be pondered . . .
And with this, the Vortex Man made his exit.
IN THE WINGS, the Cocoon Theater troupe and the wolf-escorts waited. Dapper, stage right, magnified, Mr. Min stood in blue light pulling swollen bats from a hat.
The Virgin in blue, accompanied by a little deer, and holding a lantern, moved majestically to the center. She’s looking for the child, but the child has hidden behind the mother’s skirt and for now is out of view. The Virgin says she’d like to take the child. She’s come, she says, for the child.
The Virgin assumes rightly that if she can only cajole the child to come with her, the mother will come too.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, children of all ages—and before them out of nowhere, the blue stars of the Cone Nebula, and the dazzling Horsehead Nebula.
All was beauty and brightness. There was a preponderance of antlers and whiskers and shining coats.
Irrefutable is the night, but the light show is unrivaled and the mother and child stand in awe at the mouth of the nebula. And suddenly the astounding figure of the Grandmother from the North Pole in the lights of the aurora borealis appears in the heavens.
She points and directs the mother’s gaze to the room where Aunt Inga lay.
Bathed in light, the mother takes the child’s hand and climbs over the large slumbering body of Aunt Inga. The room her younger sister sleeps in is shaped, it seems, like a curving shell. There is a whirling feeling and a whooshing sound. The child asks if they might rest here awhile.
No they may not, the mother says.
The Virgin whispers, it’s nearly time. The play is about to begin. Everything is ready now.
As if the strange mix of anticipation and dread were finally too great, the mother falls into a dream, and in her dream she sees quite clearly that the small eternal flame has been left unattended, and the Spiegelpalais has caught fire. Smoke fills the atrium. It becomes so heavy that she can see nothing at all. Where has everybody gone? she wonders. She cuts a drowsy swathe through the smoke. Never has she seen so many sleepers piled one on top of the other, on top of the other, or such thickness, or experienced such peace. There is a thicket of sleep; there is a mountain of sleep.
Lined against the walls were the Seven Sleepers—the polar bear, the snow goose, the arctic fox, the wolverine, the ermine, the vole, the snow leopard—awaiting reanimation. Every stage of sleep could be seen. Before the mother, a caribou was in the process of going still—a foreleg stiffened, the eyes went glassy, and it began to list to one side. It is promised one day, the Vortex Man said, that each shall be retrieved.
She has to pull herself out of the dream now as if a figure out of marble. She knows, above all else, she must keep her eyes open. She rouses the slumbering child and puts her on her back, and in the last moment before it is too late forever, they make their way over the hordes of beautiful sleepers through flames and the irresistible pull of smoke toward home.
That was a close call, the child says.
The mother smiles. It certainly was.
THE MOTHER OPENED her eyes and recalled nothing of the dream, only that she was refreshed and free of worry and care. She had not missed a thing. She looked to the stage. Everyone had taken their seats. The glass orchestra had been joined by the children’s choir, and now a hurdy-gurdy could be heard, and a bone piano, a panpipe, and a herald horn. Never, the mother remarked, had music ever sounded so beautiful. Final announcements were being made signaling the play was about to begin. When she looked in the wings, the mother saw all the players were now lined up loosely in order of appearance.
A narrative of great mystery and beauty was about to unfold. A struggle, as they had been told, of epic proportions, if that peculiar fellow was to be believed. It was an odd position to be in, the mother thought—to be at once both part of the audience and part of the performance, and even though they would be entirely at the mercy of the script, something about that comforted her.
Minutes passed. There was some snafu, she was sure of it, and the pageant was delayed, and she felt suddenly relieved to think there might still be a little more time left. The music, however, seemed to suggest otherwise. The overture began to play, introducing many of the key scenes to come. They looked at their programs and read, The Disappearance of the Lamb, The Mothering Place, The President in Evening Coat, The Appreciation Cake, The End of Childhood . . .
Music for a while, the mother sang to herself, shall all your cares beguile . . . Another phrase came to her and through it she tried to hold on to the shrinking world before her, framed by red velvet curtains. Music . . . source of gladness . . . heals all sadness.
If she was sad, she was not cognizant of it. Still, thinking about the play before her about to begin, tears streamed down her face.
The dog Shimmer, though he wouldn’t be needed until the third act, bounded onto the stage. Let him run outside until his time has come. And the same for the Hamster Ball lovelies. Release them into the meadow and into the sky: the Dall Sheep, the Gray Goose, the Arctic Tern, until the end.
The Grandmother from the North Pole sat beside the mother for a moment and handed her a bowl of cloudberries. The mother smiled at her mother and accepted the deep blue bowl graciously and fed a few to the child who was growing restless.
Just then two children holding a banner appeared on the stage and recited:
Welcome to our play.
The banner read, Scene 1—Pastoral, Spring.
It’s a Pastoral!
Someone turned on the fog machine.
No, it’s a ghost story.
Frogs could be heard.
A dream within a dream . . .
The curtain opened.