THE ISLAND OF RABBITS

 

 

 

He built a canoe and wanted to try it on the Guadalquivir. He was not interested in sports. Nor had he made the canoe to use it often; He knew that as soon as he explored the islets, he would leave it in the storage room or sell it. He defined himself as an inventor, although the things he made could not be called inventions. However, he had begun to qualify as such everything he designed, since he did not use an instruction manual. His method was to discover for himself what was necessary to elaborate what was already done. The process took him months and he considered it his true vocation. He invented what he was invented. He got a pleasure similar to that of hikers who go to the mountains on Sundays and reach a summit, and he wondered why personal fulfillment was so strange. In the mornings, the false inventor worked as a teacher in a school of arts and crafts without feeling fulfilled, despite the fact that his teachings were useful to his students.

Since I was a child I had wanted to go to the tongues of land that penetrate the sea, or to the islands that no one inhabits. On one occasion, when he was eighteen, his parents invited him to Tabarca with the promise that it was a desert island. He thought they were going to tread mere bush, but he found seven streets of humble houses, a wall, a church, a lighthouse, two hotels and a small port. His parents probably exaggerated that there was nothing in Tabarca to convince him to go on vacation with them -they did not like him to stay alone at home-; However, they may never have understood what he meant when he spoke of uninhabited places.

It was difficult to count the melejos of the part of the Guadalquivir that bordered the city. Some were confused with small peninsulas. One morning in September he walked to the dock with his boat and jumped into the water. He spent several days taking the pulse of the ship, and after mastering it, he began to explore the river. It had not rained for weeks. The flow was low, calm, stinky. He walked around the perimeter of the islands with a mixture of uneasiness and stupor, unable to bring the canoe to the shore. He doubted his ability to maneuver quickly, feared that the ground would not be firm on the margins, that he would slip and that the canoe would escape him. Besides, he was frightened to swim back, pursing his lips so as not to swallow miasmas, and seeing so much nature together, the variegated vegetation vibrant with insects, the layer of bird droppings, the mud. What he had thought beautiful were nothing but trees crooked by the weight of birds, or perhaps by some disease, as well as colonies of bugs and shrubs eaten by filth.

On the fifth day of wandering with the canoe, he decided to travel the curve of the Guadalquivir. Paddling south allowed him not to lose sight of the gentle hills of the countryside. Over there the islands were tiny, rougher, and close together, like a rash. He laboriously surrounded them; in the last one, the body of a man was found floating among the reeds. The dead man lay face down, in his underpants; The skin on his back rose into blisters the size of a hand. He didn't know if the blisters were due to the sun, which was still scorching in September, or because the body was so full of fluid that it had become deformed. The river stank. He called civil protection and the agents arrived in a dinghy with which it was impossible to make their way through the reeds. In the dinghy they carried a canoe; As a fat policeman climbed into it, he approached the boat and asked permission to leave. I didn't want to witness how they dragged the cold cut. He was intimidated that he turned around and discovered some raw entrails, devoured by fish.

The episode of the dead man kept him away from the river for several days. Then he took his evening walk around the islands again, and one day, after having dared to set foot on the one closest to the pier, he decided to inhabit it. He told himself that he was tired of living in the city, and also that he was excited to do what no one else did. Those were nothing more than two strange ideas with which he sometimes walked the streets of his city, which seemed too obsessive, a spiral that abducted him towards the center. In truth, he could not give any reason for his decision to occupy this narrow and nauseating piece of land, which would make him feel even worse than in the city.

Although it was the island closest to the shore, the thickness prevented us from seeing its interior. He cleared the center of scrub, cut down trees whose trunks were so thin that they looked like ropes. How did that puny wood hold a glass of a plethoric greenness? He decided to set up a red tent instead of military green. The tent was well insulated, but he did not avoid the panic of waking up covered in insects. He thought that, by sleeping aloft, he would take shelter from the larvae that swarmed the ground blindly, obfuscated by the desecration of the earth, and that seemed to intuit their predators. The birds caught them easily: they stuck their beaks under the sand and rummaged. They constituted an inexhaustible source of food; however, birds did not always feed on them. Perhaps they were not food enough because they were made only of water, and more sophisticated and nutritious insects had to be sought. One afternoon he examined one. He put it in his hand, where the little animal danced on itself. When I squeezed him a little with his forefinger, it burst like a tiny balloon.

He did not sleep on the islet every night; That would have driven him crazy. It was enough for him to wake up there a couple of times a week. When he spent the night on that spot of the Guadalquivir, he heard a buzzing sound during the early morning. Unless the owls attacked, the birds remained silent, and only the flapping of those who were expelled from some poplar tree could be heard. They were very tight; when the head was hollowed under the wing and the crop widened, those who occupied the ends of the branches fell. The buzzing that tortured him was not due to these death rattles of sleep, but to the shrieking of the birds at sunset as they sought a place in the trees, so brutal that it was impossible to make an approximate calculation of how many came to that miserable land. It seemed to him that there were thousands. They chirped in such a way for an hour that the sound stayed inside, and not even plugging in their headphones with the volume at maximum mitigated it; he even came out of the tent to scare them away with shouts, but the pack did not notice his presence. It was like a piece of seaweed in the middle of the ocean; the birds perhaps mistook him for a ridiculous bird. His throat was sore from screaming, and he didn't want to confess to himself that something in him was releasing as he screamed and grimaced grotesquely. He often lost track of time and continued to howl in the middle of the night, when the birds were already silent; Then the few passers-by on the shore looked towards the island believing that the screams were from some animal.

The birds went to the countryside to sleep, to breed, to die. Everything was full of nests and, and when the fake inventor returned home, he could not get rid of the smell of excrement, not even by showering. Apparently, those white birds were a plague. An old man who was fishing on the jetty had told him so. He asked the old man for the names of the animals, but he could not tell him. He was looking for information on the internet and found nothing. He glanced at a guide to the fauna of the Guadalquivir; the birds on his island did not coincide with any of the egrets described. He did not investigate further; After all, finding out which species they belonged to did not change his decision to become, for a couple of times a week, a being who roared against creatures that ignored him, that fell asleep despite the fact that he threw furious stones at them. Nor did they deign to look at him when his anger made him shake the weak trunks of the trees. The cups moved from side to side, and sometimes this movement became violent; The swaying of branches conveyed the impression that some burly costaleros carried the island on their shoulders.

As the weeks passed, the fake inventor became convinced that his occupation was an act of justice. Why did he have to ask permission to live in an empty place? He thought it incomprehensible that the rest of the islets were still virgin, but that was not what seemed worse to him; What was intolerable was the lack of curiosity of the inhabitants of a capital where more than three hundred thousand people lived. Among so many people, only he bothered to visit what was in front of his nose?

He started leaving money in the tent to see if anyone would steal it. Although the canoeists rowing along the Guadalquivir did not have to be thieves, there must have been thugs lurking, some hungry vagabond who would undoubtedly steal his generous ticket. He checked daily to see if the fifty euros were still there. And so it was. No one ever took that money. No one set foot on his island.

When he was not inventing what was already invented, the false inventor was making installations that he did not call art. For example, he had removed the cloth skin from ten barking toy dogs as they moved their front paws and lit up their eyes. Then he had placed the skin on the paws and put the dogs in a rabbit cage. He devised a mechanism to operate the dogs with a remote control. When his friends went to his house, he hit the button on the remote. Ten skinned toy dogs barked as they moved their paws backwards on their own skin, lighting up yellow eyes.

His friends suggested that he sell that facility to some campaign for the protection of animals and he shrugged his shoulders. Wouldn't others have already exploited his idea? Deep down, he thought that if it had occurred to him, it was because he had seen her somewhere, even if he didn't remember. That is why he refused to allow anyone to consider his installations art. He was terrified of exhibiting and being told aloud that his works were nothing more than a copy. He did not know why he was afraid of this criticism, if after all he did not believe in novelty and argued at length about it, even if he could not remember where his appropriations came from. In addition to the cage full of toy dogs, his included a mechanical flea circus inside a cupboard, a sandwich maker made from two irons of clothing with which he melted aged cheese on the hands of his guests when he celebrated a party, a pile of books on which dust had accumulated for more than twenty years – what covered the books were already balls of filth.  and whose importance lay in the fact that this powder contained dead cells of all his relatives, now deceased.

It was the rabbit cage where he kept the toy dogs that led him to the idea of releasing rabbits on the island to scare away the birds. He resolved not to stay overnight any longer. He had shouted enough. I would keep the tent to go watch the rabbits and take a nap. Autumn was late, they had put the hour back; It was no longer absurd to row at four in the afternoon and receive the cool water in the river, whose flow was still as stinking as in summer due to the drought. He bought twenty rabbits, ten males and ten females, which would reproduce at great speed. On the island there would soon be no food for them. The false inventor assumed that the new inhabitants would attack the nests on the ground when they had nothing to eat. If the birds could not breed on the islet, they would go to another.

The rabbits were very white and had long hair. They had red eyes, they had cost him more than if he had bought them gray or brown, but he thought it necessary that they should share the same color as the birds. It was said that populating the island with them was their way of continuing to inhabit it. He finally allowed them to enter the tent, where they preferred to be, no doubt because it kept them sheltered from the sun and because the earth was not suitable for burrowing. In the store they began to give birth to hairless kittens that looked like rats.

As soon as the rabbits devoured the bushes, the nests were emptied of eggs, a delicacy that they seemed to like especially, since on more than one occasion they witnessed fights to gnaw on the thin bluish shells. They did not fight, however, over the chicks, and it was clear to the false inventor that eating that newborn meat was something they did in spite of themselves, with a certain sadness, as if their obtuse intelligences were reacting to this cruel situation. Their attitude, it was said, was in accordance with the humanity they represented, which was none other than his, their owner. Perhaps that is why he was surprised that, despite the initial scruples, they did not even leave the bones, as anyone would have done. They attacked the creatures' crops with their incisors, and a circle of blood was blackened, the same color as their eyes, their trembling snouts, and the fine hairs of their whiskers. When they had finished with the frugal flesh, they spent long minutes gnawing on the skeletons, making a peculiar noise, of dry branches breaking. They even ate the beak, and when they finished they groomed themselves until the fur turned white again.

While the feast was taking place, the birds flew around with anguished squawks. They waited for hours at the scene of the crime, as if their offspring were going to appear behind a stone. The fake inventor was curious that it didn't occur to them to attack rabbits. It would be easy for them to gouge out their eyes with their sharp pickaxes, but those group maneuvers must have been alien to their instincts.

He did not calculate that the kittens born there would never have eaten anything but meat and eggs, and that this denaturation would have some disastrous consequences. For a while longer, the birds were foolish enough, or daring, to continue nesting on the island, but when the nests began to disappear, the fake inventor realized that so did the litters of rabbits. One morning he witnessed why they disappeared: their peers ate them. He was horrified by the spectacle and got rid of the idea that these animals were an extension of his person. What's more, he fancied them to be a plague, just like the birds, and if he continued to visit them, it was because he felt guilty for abandoning those beasts he had debased.

One day he tried with feed. The rabbits just sniffed at it, and then indulged in sexual encounters that had a morbid edge. They had learned to reproduce to eat, and that multiplied matings. The false inventor said to himself that necessity accelerated gestation. They all fed every time a female gave birth; When the silent birth took place, the rabbits stalked the parturient as if there was also the possibility of eating her. Since they no longer showed interest in the birds' nests, they returned to nesting.

The tent could be seen from the shore. He didn't care. What was on that piece of land was not too different from the camps that Romanians and beggars built under the bridges of the ring roads. As long as they did not disturb, no one forbade them to sleep there. His island was far from the monumental complex that could be seen from the other side of the river. I had in front of me the end of the city, where, in addition to new and ugly apartments, there was only a shopping center next to a stadium that was never important. He was also visible when he was in the distance, and some children greeted him from the parapet and shouted for him to take them in their canoe. The false inventor answered them by shaking his head enigmatically. The attention of the children made him conceit and worried him at the same time. I didn't want them to know what was happening with the rabbits, which could be seen from the viewpoint; They were like little white balls bumping into each other. At night, if there was enough moon, the glow of their fur would blend in with that of the birds, and it would seem that the birds were sleeping on the ground.

The rabbits never ate their young outside the store. They seemed to know that they were breaking a law. And although seeing them feeding on their descendants shrunk the soul and made them abject, when they stood still it became clear that there was something hypnotic, majestic about them, which increased with the passage of time, and which perhaps had to do with acting against nature. Maybe they had stopped being rabbits, he thought, or somehow they knew that they were starring in what had never happened in that way in their race. At times the false inventor was troubled by their disappearance, and then he forgot about the circumstances by which those beings had ended up eating his children. The event shone like a pure fact, without causes; an event called to inaugurate a new world. All this happened quietly, because there was still no language for a reality that was beginning to take its first steps. The false inventor limited himself to continuing to go to the islet and to answer with suspicion the requests of the infants to be taken in their canoe. At night, in the mansion inherited from his grandmother where he lived, he dreamed of the parents of these children, he heard their voices as if they were a mob that crushed him while the rooms were filled with water and the blue color of the pools. It was said that this was a vulgar obsession from which he would emerge when he decided to abandon those creatures, and only by some attitudes of his body, suddenly static next to his rabbits, it was possible to conclude that he began to feel like one more among them. Perhaps his hair, suddenly graying, would achieve the fabulous white of those now sacred animals, and his eyes, bloodied by small effusions that the eye doctor attributed to a persistent conjunctivitis, would eventually heal when they turned completely red.

One day the fake inventor dismantled the tent and stopped going to the island. The inhabitants of the riverside flats wondered what had become of this madman dedicated to raising rabbits that died a few weeks after their disappearance, and whose corpses formed a beautiful white blanket.

 

END

 

THE IVORY PLAYING CARDS

 

 

 

From the age of two, and until I was twelve, I saw very little of my mother. I was the posthumous son of a father who ran a modest business and who left my mother almost in misery; so that soon after she became a widow she was again employed in the great house where she had formerly worked as a maid.

Fortunately for me, the merchants of my father's branch owned a fairly well-organized Montepio, and in due course I entered an institution which provided me with bed, board, and education for ten months of the year. I went to spend the holidays with my uncle, who had a bakery in Hounslow; and I only saw my mother on her occasional brief visits to school or to her brother's house.

A year before my twelfth birthday, my mother had been promoted to the rank of housekeeper to Sir George Suttwell, at his great mansion in Hampshire, and had many servants under her command. She was one of those strong, honest, capable women, specially designed by nature to occupy modest positions of trust. My mother inspired a kind of fear in most people, and I think the only two beings she feared were Sir George and his wife. They inspired him with a respect bordering on reverence, and he adored the family as if he had been some feudal serf born and brought up in the manor house.

This attitude towards their owners contributed decisively to our long separation. My mother was afraid to ask permission to have me by her side during the holidays, thinking that I could do something that would bring the wrath of Olympus over our heads. So I grew up and looked upon my mother as both dear and strange, a great lady whose periodical visits punctuated my uncles' dull conversation with allusions to hunts, society balls, and the like, which, as far as I was concerned, might have taken place on the planet Mars.

Although I naturally loved my mother and always looked forward to seeing her, I was quite happy with my aunt and uncle when I wasn't at school. My uncle, a good man, was one of those simple natures who can seek and find companionship in a child. Not a fan of leaving home, his only hobby was football, as a spectator, of course; and when I was at Hounslow he always took me with him to the games.

He had taught me to play discard and breeze, and many afternoons we played endless games in the back room. My knowledge of the first of these games later earned me the improvement of my education, a modest fortune, and the means of establishing myself on my own. And the story of that discard game which won me a place in life far above the condition in which I was born is something I shall not reproach any man who doubts it.

He had just turned twelve when those fortunate Easter holidays arrived.

Sir George and Lady Suttwell were two people of a certain age who were seldom absent from their Hampshire home for more than a weekend. But that spring they had decided to make some necessary renovations in the house and would be away for a while. My mother mustered up the courage to ask them to allow her to have me by their side during her absence. The Suttwells did not pose any inconvenience. "To see Suttwell and die" was a phrase I had heard more than once from my mother's lips; one can imagine, then, the state of excitement into which the prospect of that journey plunged me.

Suttwell Court is located on the western edge of the New Forest, and four miles by road from Farringhurst station. I remember the train, after leaving Southampton behind, taking me through expanses of sun-drenched forest in the tender greenery of spring. But the sun was very low in the sky when I alighted on the platform at Farringhurst, and leaden clouds, advancing from the west, drew a gloomy curtain over the sunset.

At the station my mother was waiting for me, who kissed me and accompanied me to a ramshackle vehicle that for a generation had served as a means of transport for luggage and servants. For most of the journey, the rain pattered against the windows and roof of the vehicle, and that melancholy end of a bright day, added to the fact that I was tired after my journey, probably tended to depress me and inspire me with the most absurd forebodings.

I knew she had a strange, unreasoned fear of the house when I looked out the window and saw her for the first time, as the warm rain soaked my hair. I had imagined that Suttwell Court was an oriental palace like those described in fairy tales, only to find that it looked even more gloomy than that of the institution where I had spent most of my life. I entered the huge mansion with the same sense of dread that a child experiences when entering a cathedral for the first time.

A sausage soup in my mother's office helped improve my mood. A very kind gentleman, named Mr. Hewitt, shared dinner with us. My mother told me that he was the butler; and from that time on, in my assessment of social ranks, the stewards were placed at a level equivalent to that of the members of the House of Lords. It seemed to me that he had more dignity, more sense of humor, and more condescension toward a twelve-year-old boy than any of the teachers at the orphanage.

My mother sent me to bed very early, but before she did she showed me a little, very little, of those parts of the house that in normal times were sacred. Then I felt depressed and scared again. Everything was alarmingly large and massive; There was not a single painting that did not look twenty times larger than a normal painting, nor an armchair in which a giant could not have sat comfortably. The carpets themselves under my feet were a nuisance: I was afraid that at any moment I would be scolded for walking on them.

I was grateful that my bedroom was at the end of a hallway that seemed like the simplest corner of the house, with straw mats on the floor. In my room, the floor was linoleum, and the carpets, thin and worn, reminded me of Hounslow and Uncle Fred's comfortable cabinet.

My mood had improved the next day, and the house seemed less impressive in the morning light, when, accompanied by my mother, I finished touring it. My mother, extremely active, moved to the rhythm of a perpetual clash of keys, and this made me feel that she was a very important person, increasing the respect she already inspired in me. A single glance was enough for him to choose the key he was going to use, without ever making a mistake. And in each of the rooms we visited I had a brief comment ready, pointing out a rare piece of furniture or an interesting painting, or telling of some important family event that had taken place during that stay.

I guess the paintings interested me more than anything else. There were many portraits of ancestors, especially in the lobby and in the long gallery on the top floor. The family resemblance between these Suttwells was very remarkable, and if my mother had not informed me of the kinship which united these personages, I should have thought that all the portraits were of the same man in different dresses, and at different times of his life.

On our tour of the house we only missed one room, because it was the only one to which my mother did not have the key. The closed door was on the first floor, in a corridor that extended directly from the main staircase to the west wing, and my curiosity was piqued when my mother passed by it.

"What's in there?" I asked.

"I don't know," my mother replied dryly.

"But why don't you have the key?"

"Sir George has it. If he prefers to keep it, there must be a reason.

I thought that my mother was upset that she had not been entrusted with the key to that room along with the others, and that this was the reason why she answered my questions more abruptly than usual.

The mysterious room made a vivid impression on me, and my imagination ran wild: someone had committed murder there. The skeleton of a man still lay in the center of the room, on a large stain of dried blood... But when I suggested this horrible and delightful possibility to my mother, she was impatient and very disheartening.

The house would have been an ideal playground for me if I had been allowed to use it as such, but I was confined to my mother's room and the large kitchen, though sometimes the kind Mr. Hewitt would let me help me dust the glass in his pantry. Outside the house the situation did not improve. The gardens were even more sacred to footsteps than the large gray carpet in the main hall.

But the servants, inside and without, were very affectionate to me, and seemed to enjoy spoiling me when my mother was out of sight. None of them idolized the family like my mother, and Mr. Sturgess, who was one of the gardeners and was never too busy to talk, told me more details of the Suttwells' history than my own mother. One day he took my breath away when he told me that Sir George was a poor man. I blinked, to imply that it was not easy to believe.

"I don't mean that you and I didn't like to change with him, for example," Mr. Sturgess confessed. But he is not a rich man according to his own ideas. When a character of his category starts selling land, things go badly. If Sir George's father were alive, the family would have lost the house long ago.

And then he told me that for many generations the heads of the mansion had been alternately stingy and profligate. A Suttwell had squandered his fortune and left a lot of debt; Her son had worked hard to restore the financial balance of the house, only for the next generation to return to spending without measure.

"Sir Hugh, Sir George's father, was the most profligate man you can imagine," Mr. Sturgess informed me.

"Then Sir George is a stingy, isn't he?" I asked.

Sturgess smiled and scratched his chin.

"Well, perhaps that is not the exact name that can be given to it," he said. But he is not far from being one—he is not far from it.

My first five days at Suttwell Court passed pleasantly and with considerable placidity. I dare say that my boredom would have been complete if the servants had not been so disposed to cheer up my stay in the house. In addition, I earned Mr. Hewitt's respect by teaching him how to play discard.

"The best two-person card game ever invented," was his verdict on the discard.

The thing happened on the sixth day of my stay at Suttwell Court.

My mother, a lover of discipline as she was, would not allow me to stay up late at night. At half-past nine o'clock he would kiss me, light my candle, and send me to bed. Always, after half an hour, I heard her enter the room next to mine.

The workers used to work until sunset, but that night a group of them had decided to finish a repair on the back staircase, so when my mother sent me to bed I had to cross the hall and go up the main staircase.

It was a very dark night, without moon and without stars, and the house was in almost total darkness. I remember the amusing and horrible shadows that accompanied my passage through the hall with my little candle, and how the eyes of the portraits stared at me through the gloom, perhaps wondering indignantly what right I had to be there.

Around me, the shadows grew longer and swollen as I climbed the steps, and I was glad to reach the landing, away from the stares that stalked me in the hall.

I had taken half a dozen steps down the corridor leading to the west wing, when I stopped suddenly. I had arrived at the door of that mysterious locked room and I had to stop and contemplate it for a few moments, like a child who lacks the money necessary to enter a cinema contemplates the lobby of the premises. I was about to resume my journey when something happened which I know perfectly well to be true, and yet still seems incredible to me.

Suddenly, without the slightest sound to alarm me, the door opened. On the threshold a gentleman appeared, and behind him the room was lighted. I took a step back and looked. I was surprised, of course, but I didn't run scared to death, as might have been expected.

The gentleman was smiling. He smiled with his mouth and his eyes, eyes that had a sort of malicious gleam that I had seen on more than one occasion in some men who were fond of raising their elbows. However, the expression on his face was gentle. On the whole, his appearance was so friendly that it immediately dispelled any fears.

"Wow! he exclaimed in a soft, guttural voice. If it's a boy! Hey, kid! Come closer...

I took a step towards him, holding my candle. He was dressed as one of the portraits in the hall, which helped to add to his resemblance to one of the Suttwells. A wig, curly and very powdery, hid her natural hair.

I thank heaven that at that moment it did not occur to me to think what I know now. The gentleman seemed as solid and real as any person I had ever seen. And the portraits had put into my childish mind the idea that the Suttwells continued to circulate the world in their wigs and lace. The knight was one of those demigods who were reverently referred to as "the family." I just smiled shyly at her, wondering how she had managed to get into the house without my mother, who knew everything, noticing.

"Where were you going, boy?" He asked me.

"To go to bed, sir."

"To go to bed?" Oh! He had a smug voice and, at the same time, slightly trembling. Come on, come on... Now that you're here, you're not going to deny me some company... In recent times I have been very lonely.

His voice had become filled with sadness as he uttered those last words, and I was moved. Then he said something in French that I could not understand, but it seemed to me that it was an invitation to him to enter the room, especially when I saw that he moved slightly to one side while he spoke.

So I entered the mysterious room. It was brightly lit, but I don't remember seeing any lamp or candle burning. The apartment was a kind of living room. There was a table in the center, some solid and old armchairs, books, a desk... And the dust of centuries covering everything with a thick layer.

"Yes," said the gentleman, "I have little company now, and I cannot be too exact. Times have changed. I confess that I've been dying to play a game of cards longer than I can imagine. He looked at me, his eyebrows raised, as if he knew beforehand how idle his question was. You don't play cards, do you?

"Yes, sir," I answered. I know a few games.

His smile widened, and then he shook his head.

"Some game of villains, no doubt," he said. Well, well, a little beer is worth more than a lot of water... It will be a real pleasure to feel the cards in my hands again. Well, what's your favorite game, boy?

"I know how to play discard," I murmured.

-To be discarded? His eyes seemed to widen with the surprise and pleasure he was experiencing. Discard! The trendy game right now! Hey, who the hell instructed you like that?

I shrugged, not knowing what to answer. The gentleman, for his part, did not seem to expect my reply. He bowed to me so ironically and so amusing that I almost laughed, instead of being offended.

"Sir," he said, "I am deeply honoured by your company, and if you play at discard you are doubly welcome to my hometown." I have lost more guineas to discard than I have hairs on my head. If you want to honor me with a game...

He looked at me anxiously, as if he thought I could refuse to play with him. I said nothing, just looking at him with an intrigued and nervous smile.

He interpreted my silence as a mute nod, walked over to the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a deck of cards. Then he dropped the cards on the dusty table.

-How much is the setting? he asked, looking at me with his mocking little eyes. The normal thing at the club?

I suspected that he was making fun of me, since a gentleman like him could not accept anything from a child. In fact, I had nothing to lose, but I was sure that if I won, that kind and flamboyant gentleman would not allow me to leave empty-handed. So I smiled and said:

-Of course.

The deck was already ready to play discard, that is, it only contained thirty-two cards, starting with sevens. While mixing them I realized for the first time the great beauty and originality of the cards: they were ivory, hand-painted and subjected to a treatment that made the colors unalterable. I lost my hand and pulled an armchair closer to the table.

-A round of three games? asked the gentleman.

I nodded and he started to give. As I dealt the cards I observed that their ways had changed. His face had lost its jovial expression and was now terribly serious. It was not difficult to guess what was one of his most deeply-rooted vices.

We started playing. The gentleman spread out his small fan of playing cards with trembling fingers. He declared himself the king of triumphs and won two points from the hand. They took the first game by five points to two.

I was beginning to be scared, although I didn't know why. But luck favored me in the second game, and I scored five points while he was left with three. I was quite nervous, but when the gentleman picked up the cards to serve the last game it seemed to me that his nervousness overcame mine.

And what a game, my God! No hand produced more than one point, with a total of four evenly distributed. The trump was spades: I asked for four cards.

He served them to me one by one, and the first one I raised was the king of spades.

"The king is enough for me," I said, turning her on her back.

The knight swore an oath and rose to his feet, violently throwing his cards on the table. I got up, frightened, without letting go of the king of swords.

"That's the sort of luck that has always annoyed me," said the gentleman, in a calmer tone.

And he began pacing to and fro, his head bent over his chest, to the point that I wondered if he was joking and expected me to laugh. Then he stopped and stared at me.

"Boy," he said, "I am very grateful to you for the company. What would you say if I couldn't pay you?

Again I wondered if he was making fun of me.

"Please," I said, "money is of no importance.

Surprisingly, my response seemed to make him angry.

"I am very grateful to you for the company, boy, but damn your impudence. There is no man, dead or alive, who can say that Giles Suttwell has not lived up to a gambling debt. Damn your impudence! Do you hear me? Damn your impudence!

I felt so scared, I couldn't even stutter a word of apology.

The gentleman resumed his pacing of the room, his head bowed and muttering to himself. Then he stopped again and looked at me.

"Damn your damned impudence!" he exclaimed. But how am I going to pay you? Alas! This is the problem!

He thought and then, to my great relief, pointed to the door.

"Good evening," he said. I'm very grateful to you for the company, of course. And I curse your brazenness.

I headed for the door. The gentleman followed me.

"You'll pay for yourself, boy," I heard him say. What was my father's is mine, even if the accursed miser hid it from my eyes and from the eyes of those who came after. In the library..., the fifth board behind the shelves to the left of the south-facing door..., take what I owe you...

I was already in the corridor and turned to look at him as his voice muffled behind me. I saw nothing but a closed door. Then an intense terror seized me, and I ran downstairs, screaming, until I found the shelter of my mother's arms. At that moment I hardly understood anything, but my terror told me that I had been with something that was not of the earth and was not good.

My mother would not have believed a word I told her if she had not observed him grasping something convulsively in one of my hands. He forced me to open my fingers and took an ivory card.

He was the king of swords.

My mother risked prolonging my stay in the house until Sir George and his wife returned. She repeated to them word for word the story I had told her, and showed them the ivory card.

Sir George made scarcely any comment.

Much later I learned that the room where the strange events I have just narrated took place had been locked because it was rumoured to be visited by the ghost of Sir Giles Suttwell, gambler and inveterate drunkard, who had died at the end of the eighteenth century.

The room was opened and on the desk was found a deck of thirty-one cards: a complete deck to play discard... adding the king of spades. And because a child cannot enter a locked room and take a letter from the closed drawer of a desk, without having the keys to the door or drawer, special attention was paid to my story, and in a particular way to its end.

Before Sir Giles the spendthrift, the head of the family had been Sir Giles the stingy. I don't know the number of guineas that were found in a secret room behind the bookshelves of the library. All I know is that my mother and I have Sir George to thank for the part of them he gave us.

 

END

 

DREAMS {Stories}

 

 

 

It was after a dinner with friends, old friends. There were five of them: a writer, a doctor, and three rich bachelors without a profession.

Everything had been talked about, and a lassitude had been reached, that lassitude that precedes and decides the departure after a party. One of the diners, who had been looking for five minutes, without speaking, at the agitated boulevard, constellated by the gas nozzles and full of humming, suddenly said:

-When nothing is done from morning to night, the days are long.

"And the nights too," added his neighbor.

I hardly sleep, pleasures tire me, conversations do not vary; I never find a new idea, and I experience, before talking to no matter whom, a furious desire to say nothing and hear nothing. I don't know what to do with my evenings.

And the third unemployed man proclaimed:

"I would be willing to pay well for a way of spend, each day, only two pleasant hours.

Then the writer, who had just thrown his coat over his arm, approached.

"The man," he said, "who discovers a new vice, and offers it to his fellow-men, even if it reduced his life by half, would do a greater service to mankind than he who found the means of securing eternal health and youth.

The doctor laughed, and as he nibbled on a cigarette, he said:

-Yes, but things are not discovered in this way. Although the issue has been earnestly sought and worked on since the world has existed. The first men suddenly came to perfection in this. We barely match them...

One of the three unemployed people sighed.

"It's a pity!"

Then, after a minute, he added:

"If only we could sleep, sleep well without being cold or hot, sleep with that annihilation of the nights of great tiredness, sleep without dreams.

-Why without dreams? asked his neighbor.

"Because dreams are not always pleasant," replied the other, "and they are always strange, improbable, frayed, and because in sleep we cannot even taste the best dreams." It is necessary to daydream.

"Who prevents you?" asked the writer.

The doctor threw his cigarette.

"My dear friend, to daydream requires great power and great work of will, and the result is great fatigue. The true dream, that walk of our thought through enchanting visions, is surely the most delightful thing in the world; but it must come naturally, not painfully provoked, and be accompanied by absolute well-being of the body. I can offer this dream to you, provided you promise me not to abuse it.

The writer shrugged.

"Ah! Yes, I know, hashish, opium, green jam, artificial paradises. I have read Baudelaire; and I myself have tasted the famous drug, which has made me terribly ill.

But the doctor had sat down.

"No, the ether, just the ether. You men of letters should wear it from time to time.

The three rich men came over. One of them asked:

"Explain to us, then, the effects."

The doctor continued:

-Let's leave aside the big words, shall we? I am not talking about medicine or morals: I am talking about pleasure. You are free every day with excesses that devour your lives. I want to point out to you a new sensation, possible only for intelligent men, let's say even very intelligent, dangerous as everything that excites our organs, but exquisite. I add that it will require a certain preparation, that is to say, a certain habit, to grasp in all their fullness the singular effects of the ether.

"They are different from the effects of hashish, from the effects of opium and morphine; and they cease immediately after the absorption of the drug is interrupted, while the other dream-producers continue their action for hours.

"Now I will try to analyze as clearly as possible what it feels like. But things are not easy; so delicate, almost incomprehensible, are those sensations.

"I was suffering from violent neuralgia when I used this remedy, which I may have abused a little later.

"I felt sharp pains in my head and neck, and an unbearable warmth on my skin, a restlessness of fever. I took a large vial of ether and, after lying down, began to inhale it slowly.

"After a few minutes I thought I heard a vague murmur which soon became a kind of buzzing, and I had the impression that the whole interior of my body was becoming light, light as air, which was vaporizing.

"Then there was a kind of drowsiness of the soul, of sleepy well-being, although the pains persisted, although they were no longer painful now. It was one of those sufferings that can be endured, and not that horrible tearing against which our tortured body protests.

"Very soon the strange, charming feeling of emptiness in my chest spread, reached the limbs, which in turn became light, light as if flesh and bones had melted and only the skin remained, the skin necessary to make me perceive the sweetness of living, of lying in that well-being. Then I realized that I was no longer suffering. The pain was gone, melted, evaporated. And I heard voices, four voices, two dialogues, without understanding any of the words. As soon as they were but indistinct sounds, as soon as a word or two came to me. But I recognized that it was simply the accentuated ringing in my ears. He was not sleeping, he was awake; I understood, felt, reasoned with extraordinary clarity, depth, power, and joy of spirit, a strange intoxication arising from this multiplication of my mental faculties.

"It was not a dream like that of hashish, it was not the slightly sickly visions of opium; it was a prodigious acuteness of reasoning, a new way of seeing, of judging, of appreciating the things of life, and with the certainty, the absolute awareness that this way was the true one.

"And the old image of the Scriptures suddenly came to my mind. I had the impression that I had tasted the tree of knowledge, that all mysteries were revealed, and that I was under the empire of a new, strange, irrefutable logic. And the arguments, the reasoning, the proofs, came rushing towards me, immediately knocked down by a proof, a reasoning, a stronger argument. My head had become the battleground of ideas. I was a superior being, armed with an invincible intelligence, and I savored a prodigious joy at the realization of my power.

"That lasted a long, long time. I was still breathing through the hole in my ether flask. Suddenly, I realized that it was empty. And I felt a terrible sorrow."

The four men asked at the same time:

"Doctor, quick, a prescription for a quart of ether!"

But the doctor put on his hat and answered:

"As for that, no: go and be poisoned by others!"

And he left.

Ladies and gentlemen, what does your heart tell you about it?

 

END

 

@ Traducido al Ingles, por Paya Frank

THE BLACK ANGEL

 

Little Dick's mother had died. As for his father, he must have wandered in some antipodal sea; He had not been heard of for years. The family cared very little about this blond boy who was barely seven years old.

"To the orphanage!" Uncle Patridge decided.

Bridge, the nurse who had nursed Dick from the cradle, mourned the decision with almost every tear in her body.

"Tell me, Bridge," asked Dick, on the eve of the painful separation. Is everything you have told me about the Black Angel true?

Bridge bowed his head gravely. It was a very old Irish legend, in which everyone believed, in their country. And, being so, why didn't it have to be true?

"Then," said Dick, "when children are persecuted by giants, witches, and evil spirits, and call upon the Black Angel, does he really answer their call?"

"Certainly," replied Bridge. Always come to the aid of children who are in danger.

"Oh! Dick exclaimed. How happy I am! Now I'm no longer afraid to go to the orphanage.

The old nurse lifted her apron so that the child would not see her eyes.

* * *

M. Bry's orphanage seemed more like a prison for young delinquents than a charitable institution, where the little ones abandoned by their loved ones had to be made to forget their sadness.

The food was bad and scarce, the work was hard and the punishments extremely harsh.

M. Bry was a large man with bulging black eyes. His greed was surpassed only by his cruelty. The children who were entrusted to their "parental care" had to undo old ropes, glue paper, make the soles of slippers, just as if they were condemned to forced labor.

This meant to M. Bry a good deal of money, which he kept in a heavy iron casket in his room, and which he counted and recounted with morbid pleasure.

One day he entered surreptitiously, like a thief, into the workshop where the poor orphans were toiling; and his gloomy eyes fell upon young Dick, who, alas, was taking a little rest.

"Number 51, you don't do anything!" he shouted, furious.

"No, sir," replied the boy naively. He was looking at a mouse.

"A mouse, huh?" M. Bry howled. And that disgusting bug prevents you from working?

"It's a lovely little animal," said Dick, "and I like it very much.

"Well, not me!" roared the director. And I like pigeon peas even less!

He grabbed the child by the hair and pulled violently. "Ten lashes and six days in the cellar, on bread and water!" That was the sentence.

* * *

The cellars were teeming with mice, to which Dick threw breadcrumbs, which made them docile little animals.

Too bad the wounds on his back began to infest and make him suffer horrors.

The second night he spent in that horrible cellar, the fever caused all kinds of visions in his brain. He saw his mother returning from the corner store with lots of goodies. He saw Bridge...

Bridge! Ah, what a fool he had been not to call the Black Angel to his aid! But now he was going to do it. Yes, immediately!

"Dear Black Angel, my back hurts very much, and I feel very unhappy...

He didn't have to say anything else. He heard a door creak. An arrow of white light pierced through the darkness. The Black Angel stood in front of him.

* * *

It was certainly an impressive apparition. The supernatural being wore a very tight suit and a black velvet mask, whose holes filtered a terrible tiger gaze.

However, the boy did not experience the slightest fear.

He immediately began to tell her everything. He told her of his late mother, of his beloved Bridge, of the ill-treatment inflicted on him by M. Bry, and, finally, of his hope of seeing the Black Angel intervene.

"Very well, little one, I'm here to help you. Lead me to Bry's room!

The voice seemed too dry for an angel's, but Dick did not hesitate for a moment, and held out his little hand to the gloved hand of the mysterious personage.

* * *

That night, M. Bry had treated himself to a huge steak and a lobster salad, generously sprinkled with a wine of many proofs. That is why he thought he was the victim of a nightmare when a rough hand shook him to wake him up and a terrible voice ordered him to open his heavy chest.

"Hurry, you scoundrel!" roared the stranger.

M. Bry then understood that it was not a dream.

He obeyed and, choking a sob, saw his beloved treasure disappear in a large handbag.

The Black Angel was about to leave when his gaze fell on little Dick, who had observed the scene with an astonished but at the same time satisfied air.

The strange fellow leaned over Bry and growled:

"This is for the lashes, you rascal!"

M. Bry received a single punch to the head, but the blow was enough to unravel his brains.

"My son," said the mysterious being, "you have absolutely nothing to say about what you have seen, do you understand?"

"Of course, I won't say anything," Dick promised. But, dear Black Angel, will you kiss my mother with all your heart when she returns to heaven?

There was a long silence. Then, suddenly, Dick felt himself lifted by a powerful arm. He received a kiss on each cheek and felt something warm fall on his forehead.

"Why are you crying, dear Black Angel?" he asked.

But the Black Angel was gone, and the little boy found himself again in the cellar, where several mice were playing in the moonlight, which amused him greatly.

* * *

A new headmaster arrived, who was very affectionate with the children, but stern-looking men also appeared, who asked the orphans all sorts of questions about the late M. Bry.

But little Dick kept his promise and did not betray his beloved Black Angel.

 

END

 

Traducido por Paya Frank 

THE WAX DEVIL

 

 

The cackling crowd had circled around a dreadful thing, covered with a greasy piece of linen.

Eyes were fixed for a moment on the human form beneath the filthy shroud, and then they rose to the upper floor of a dreary building, whose ramshackle façade bore a decaying "For Rent" sign.

"Look, the window is open!" It has fallen from there!

"He has fallen... or has jumped!

The dawn was unpleasant, and a few lanterns were still burning here and there. The crowd consisted mainly of people who had to get up very early to go to the factory or office. Although it led to Cornhill, the street was not very lively; It was a long time before the bobbies discovered the corpse, which would remain there, in its ridiculous posture of a disjointed doll, until the commissioner arrived. He soon appeared on the opposite sidewalk, accompanied by a young man with an intelligent face.

The commissioner was short and short-handed, and did not seem to have fully awakened yet.

-Accident, murder, suicide? What's your opinion, Inspector White?

"It is possible that it is a murder. Of a suicide, perhaps, although the motive is not too clear.

"To me it is a minor case," said the commissioner laconically. Did you know the dead man?

-Yes, his name was Bascrop. "Bachelor and quite wealthy, he lived like a hermit," replied White, who was trying to adopt the dry tone of his implacable superior.

"Did he live in this house?"

-Of course not, since it is about to be rented.

"If so, what was he doing in it?"

"This property belonged to him.

"Ah! Well, it will be a minor survey, Inspector White. I don't think it will take up much of his time.

When the jury had ruled out the possibility of murder, White resumed the investigation on his own. In fact, nothing allowed us to exclude the possibility that it was a crime.

The young police officer had been particularly impressed by the expression of indescribable anguish that had been preserved, in death, on the face of the unsociable Bascrop.

He had entered the empty house, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and finally entered the mysterious room, the window of which had been left open. As he passed, he had observed that all the rooms were completely devoid of furniture. In it, however, there were several miserable-looking objects: a rickety chair and a white wooden table. On the latter stood a candle, which a draught of air must have extinguished, shortly after the drama.

A layer of dust covered the table, which was only clean in three places. In fact, the powder bore the marks of two small circles and a completely regular rectangle. White didn't have to think long to figure out the cause.

"Bascrop," he said to himself, "sat down to read by candlelight. In the place of that rectangle the book was to be found; As for the two circles, they were undoubtedly formed by the elbows of the deceased. But where is the book in question? No one but myself has entered this house, after the death of the owner. Therefore, the unfortunate man surely had it in his hand at the moment of his fall.

White continued his reasoning. On the one hand, the street ended in Cornhill, indeed; but, at the other extreme, he ended up in a labyrinth of alleys of very bad reputation. On most of the doors could be read this inscription traced in chalk: "Call at four."

A night watchman had to live in the vicinity, and it was possible that this man knew something.

The night watchman was a dirty, loathsome old man who smelled of alcohol a mile away, and who greeted White with obvious displeasure.

-I know nothing, absolutely nothing. I was told that a man tired of life jumped from the third floor. These are things that happen.

-Let's go! White said dryly. Give me the book you found near the corpse, if you don't want to get involved in a murder.

"Finding is not stealing," the old man sneered. And, on the other hand, I was not there.

"Be careful! White threatened. That book may be the beginning of a rope that ends around his neck...

The old man hesitated for a few moments, and at last murmured, reluctantly:

"Well, that book might be worth a shilling.

"Here is your shilling!"

That was how White got into possession of the book he was looking for.

* * *

"A book of magic, and dating from the sixteenth century!" The inspector growled. At that time, the executioners did not stop burning this kind of work, and they did it perfectly.

He began to leaf through it slowly. A page folded at one end caught his attention. He began to read with growing interest. When he had finished, his face had a grave expression.

"Why shouldn't I try it too?" he murmured.

A little before midnight he went to the deserted street, pushed open the door of the sinister mansion, and climbed the stairs in the darkness.

The darkness was not absolute: a full moon swept across the sky with its cold rays and sent enough light through the dusty panes of the windows.

Arriving at the drama room, White lit the candle, took Bascrop's place, and opened the book to the page previously indicated. It read:

"Light the candle at a quarter to twelve at night and read the formula aloud."

It was a prose text, very obscure, of which the inspector understood nothing. But when he had finished reading and coughed lightly to clear his throat, he heard the clock of a steeple strike the twelve fateful strokes.

White raised his head and uttered a frightful cry of horror.

* * *

White has never been able to describe precisely what he saw at that moment. Today, he still doubts that he has really seen anything. However, he had experienced the sensation of seeing a gloomy and threatening being advancing towards him, which forced him to retreat towards the window.

Unspeakable fear flooded his heart. He thought that he had to open that window, that he had to continue to retreat, and that finally he would throw himself into the street to crash against the pavement, three stories below. An invisible force impelled him to do so.

His will left him, he was perfectly aware of it. But a kind of instinct – that of the policeman who has to fight for his life – remained awake in him. A superhuman effort allowed him to seize his revolver. Drawing on all the strength he still had at his disposal, he managed to point the gun at the mysterious shadow and pull the trigger.

A dry detonation tore through the silence of the night, and the candle was blown to pieces.

White lost consciousness.

* * *

The doctor who was at the bedside when he woke up, shook his head, smiling:

"Well, my friend! he exclaimed. I had never heard that the devil could be struck down by means of a single revolver. And yet, that's what you did.

"The devil! The inspector stammered.

"My young friend, if you had not reached the sail with that shot, there is no doubt that your end would have been the same as that of the unfortunate Bascrop. Since the knot of the mystery was the candle, precisely. Its antiquity dates back at least four centuries, and it was made with a wax soaked in some terrible volatile matter, the formula of which was possessed by the sorcerers of the time. The length of the magical text to be read was calculated in such a way that the candle would have to burn for a quarter of an hour, which is more than enough for an entire room to be filled with a dangerous gas, destined to poison the human brain and awaken in the victim the haunting idea of suicide. I confess that this is nothing more than a guess, although I don't think it is very far from reality.

White had no desire to engage in a discussion on the subject. On the other hand, what other hypothesis could he have made? Unless... No, it was preferable not to think about that matter any more.

 

END

 

THE VENETIAN MIRROR

 

 

In the luxuriously furnished room there was absolute calm.

In addition to the lit chandelier and the chandeliers stuck to the wall and carrying numerous bulbs, the lamps glowed a soft red under their shades.

Sitting near the fire burning in the hearth, Wla Jordonoff smoked cigarette after cigarette. The large silver ashtray was filled with cigarette butts, and an aromatic cloud of tobacco smoke slowly floated under the cream-colored roof.

The phone rang, but Jordonoff remained motionless. Only his jade eyes turned, full of uneasiness, towards the noisy apparatus.

After a few stubborn signals—Jordonoff mechanically counted eleven—the doorbell fell silent, and the man began to breathe more deeply, as if the restored silence were lightening his heart.

From the windows hung thick velvet curtains that did not let the slightest ray of the abundant light outside filter, and which, no doubt, drowned out the murmur of the street at the same time.

Supposing, of course, that some noise might rise from that deserted alley, for Jordonoff lived in a very remote part of Stoke-Newington, in which only a few newly built houses stood, and which for the most part were still waiting for hypothetical tenants.

His own abode was new, too. Only the rooms in which he lived were furnished; the rest of the property was completely devoid of any furniture.

The small copper plate affixed to the door bore a very common name: Ph. Jones. And no one, in Stoke-Newington or in London, could guess that under this vulgar patronymic was concealed the famous Wla Jordonoff.

Jorry – as his friends called him – had been a real celebrity in the biggest cities of the United States. At the head of a major gang of gangsters, he had established a veritable regime of terror there.

Robbery, armed robbery, blackmail, kidnapping, voluntary arson, murder... There was not a crime that he had not tasted.

He deserved the electric chair a hundred times over. Yet the avenging arm of justice had never been stretched out to him, so much so was his power feared. Jorry was, above all, very well protected.

Then he had abruptly disappeared from that equivocal world. They had not found him again anywhere in America. They believed him dead, the victim of some settling of scores.

In reality, he had expatriated to Europe and was now living as a peaceful bourgeois in a remote corner of the English capital.

He could be calm. None of his former friends or accomplices would have been able to identify him. Thanks to a painful but perfectly successful surgery, the features of his face had been completely transformed.

However, he had not found the peace he had hoped for; he felt a mysterious and alarming threat weighing over him.

Where could the danger come from?

He did not know it, but nevertheless he perceived it clearly and that was enough for him.

He had the telephone installed, but since no one knew him in the country, they never called him. But that afternoon it had sounded three times in a row.

"I've been located," he growled, when for the third time the doorbell fell silent.

The anguish he experienced caused all kinds of disturbing and phantasmagorical images to arise around him: huge hands wielding daggers or revolvers, electric chairs, gigantic scaffolds and sinister guillotines.

Wasn't it footsteps that echoed in the deserted house? Didn't the stairs creak? And what invisible hand was manipulating, at that moment, in the lock of the front door?

No, it was just the insidious wind brushing the walls outside. The staircase groaned because it was new and still wet. As for the door, he could not help complaining under the brutal slaps of the air current that made the newly built house shudder.

He went back to smoking cigarette after cigarette, emptying the bottle of whiskey.

Suddenly, a light shadow crossed the room. Jordonoff trembled.

But there was no reason. It was simply a light bulb that, when burned, had caused a small dark spot to grow on the wall.

"Nonsense! he murmured. No more, no less!

Anyway, he couldn't help but slide his hand under the silk cushion of his armchair to check if the loaded pistol was still there.

"Why have I retired to this accursed place?" he asked himself bitterly. Loneliness is useless. It would be better for me to get lost in the crowd. In cinemas, theaters, dances and nightclubs there is no danger of encountering ghosts. While here... He must leave this disastrous refuge.

For the fourth time, the phone started calling. The doorbell rang stubbornly. Now, nothing seemed to be able to stop him.

As if pushed by a mysterious force, Jordonoff put his hand on the apparatus, picked up and stretched out his ear.

The line was undoubtedly broken, as he heard only a series of frantic creaks. Finally he heard an unfamiliar voice.

Although at the other end of the thread someone spoke with great volubility, he could only catch two or three words that were frequently repeated:

-The mirror...

Then the communication was abruptly interrupted.

"The mirror?" What about the mirror? Jordanoff growled.

There was only one mirror in the house, a magnificent piece that he had bought at the time of settling in this new house.

It was solidly fixed to a splendid frame, and the glass, slightly greenish, must have been of Venetian origin.

Jordanoff turned his eyes to his acquisition.

It was a superb mirror, of course, in which the light was reflected perfectly, without a single shadow coming to stain it.

But why was he suddenly attracted to him?

Trembling with an anxiety that could not have been explained, he left his seat and approached the mirror, which immediately returned his image to him.

He leaned over in horror: in the glaucous depths of the glass a shadowy, menacing figure had just appeared.

Eyes of fire shone in their sockets and rictus of ferocity disfigured their features.

Jordonoff screamed and wanted to jump back, but his limbs refused to obey his will. He stood there, petrified, staring at himself in the mirror, where his image grew more and more frightening.

The eyes dimmed, the nose was erased. There was nothing left but an open mouth, with white and pointed teeth. An indescribable horror seized Jordonoff, who recognized the face of Death.

"Help!" he shouted.

The abominable head made a savage gesture that soon turned into a Homeric laugh, although inaudible.

"No, I don't want to!" Jordonoff howled. I don't want to! Justice has never managed to catch me, and neither will you! No!

In desperation, he rushed into the mirror with clenched fists.

The mirror flew into a thousand pieces. Stunned, with his arms raised, Jordonoff stared in disbelief at the work of art he had just destroyed.

He smiled stupidly, as he stared at the blood gushing out of the open veins of his torn wrists.

A few moments later he collapsed on the carpet, dead...

"It was a rare piece," lamented the antiquarian Boles, "what was once called a magic mirror, one of those curious objects of purely Venetian origin, a marvellous glass which, when intensely illuminated, deforms the face in a strange way. I have called him three times on the phone to tell him that it was not an ordinary mirror, since it was my employee who sold it to him and gave it to him.

But I haven't received a response to my calls. The fourth time he picked up the receiver, but apparently the line was broken, because it was almost impossible to understand each other.

 

END