IN THE WINGS
He looks at the mirror; he has no reflection. Not important, all that matters is the mirror. It’s very modest, not very big, and not very straight, either, on its wall. Rather like Ophelia.
His finger slides across the reflective surface without leaving a trace. It’s here that everything started, or, depending on one’s point of view, that everything ended. In any case, it’s here that things really became interesting. He remembers, as if it were yesterday, Ophelia’s first passage through a mirror, on that memorable night.
He walks a few steps in the bedroom, casts a familiar eye over the old toys as they stir on the shelves, and stops in front of the bunk bed. Ophelia had shared it first with her big sister, then with her little brother, before leaving Anima in a hurry. He should know; he’s been watching her closely from the wings for years now. She always preferred the bottom bunk. Her family has left the rumpled sheets and flattened pillow just as they found them, as though they all expected her to return home from one moment to the next.
He bends over and studies, with amusement, the maps of the twenty-one major arks that are pinned under the top bunk. Trapped here due to the Doyennes, Ophelia had long scoured the maps for her lost husband.
He goes downstairs and crosses the dining room, where plates of food are getting cold. There’s no one about. They all left in the middle of supper—because of the hole, obviously. In these empty rooms he almost feels as if he’s present, as if he’s really there. The house itself seems to sense his intrusion: the chandeliers jingle as he passes, the furniture creaks, the clock lets out a loud, questioning chime. That’s what amuses him about the Animists. One ends up no longer knowing who, between object and owner, really belongs to whom.
Once outside, he calmly strolls up the road. He’s in no hurry. Curious, yes, but never in a hurry. And yet, there’s not much time left now. For everyone, including him.
He joins the gathering of neighbors around what they have dubbed “the hole,” as they exchange anxious looks. It’s like some manhole in the middle of the pavement, except that, when they move their lanterns closer, no light penetrates it. To gauge how deep it is, someone unwinds a bobbin, which is soon out of thread. The hole wasn’t there during the day; it was a Doyenne who gave the alert after almost falling into it.
He can’t stop himself from smiling. This, madam, is just the beginning.
He notices Ophelia’s mother and father in the crowd; they, as ever, don’t notice him. Shining from their staring eyes is the same unspoken question. They don’t know where their daughter is hiding—any more than they know that it’s her fault, partly, that there’s this chasm in the pavement—but it’s obvious that, this evening, they are thinking of her more than ever. Just as they hug their other children closer than ever, even as they are unable to answer their questions. Bonny, strapping children, bursting with health. The streetlamps make their golden locks gleam as one.
He never tires of observing how different Ophelia is to them, and for good reason.
He continues with his walk. A couple of steps, and here he is at the other end of the world, at the Pole, somewhere between the upper levels and lowest depths of Citaceleste, just outside the entrance to Berenilde’s manor house. This estate, plunged in a perpetual autumn, is as familiar to him as the house in Anima. Everywhere Ophelia has been, he has been, too. When she served as a valet to Berenilde, he was there. When she became Farouk’s Vice-storyteller, he was there. When she investigated the missing of Clairdelune, he was there. He witnessed the spectacle of her misadventures with increasing curiosity, without ever leaving the wings.
He often likes to reconsider decisive moments in history, the important history, their collective history. What would have become of Ophelia if, among all the female object-readers in Anima, Berenilde hadn’t chosen her to be her nephew’s fiancée? Would she never have crossed paths with what they call “God?” Of course she would. History would simply have taken a different route. Everyone must play their role, as he will play his.
As he walks through the hall, a voice reaches him from the red sitting room. He looks through the half-open doors. Within this narrow field of vision, he sees Ophelia’s aunt pacing up and down on the exotic carpet, as much of an illusion as the hunting paintings and the porcelain vases. She crosses and uncrosses her arms, waves a telegram that has stiffened thanks to her animism, talks of a lake drained like a sink, calls Farouk a “laundry basket,” Archibald a “bar of soap,” Ophelia a “cuckoo clock,” and the entire medical profession “public latrines.” Seated in a wingback chair, Berenilde isn’t listening to her. She’s humming while brushing the long, white hair of her daughter, whose little body is gently slumped against hers. Nothing seems to reach her ears apart from this light swishing between her hands.
He immediately looks away. He looks away whenever things get too personal. He has always been curious, never a voyeur.
Only then does he notice the man beside him, sitting on the floor in the half-light of the corridor, his back to the wall, furiously polishing the barrel of a hunting gun. It seemed these ladies had found themselves a bodyguard.
He continues with his walk. In a single stride he leaves the hall, the manor, Citaceleste, the Pole, for another part of the world. And here he is now in Babel. Ah, Babel! His favorite field of study. The ark where history and time will reach their conclusion, the point at which everything converges.
It was evening on Anima, it’s morning here. Heavy rain falls on the roofs.
He paces up and down the covered walkways at the Good Family, just as Ophelia paced up and down them during her Forerunner apprenticeship. She came within a whisker of gaining her wings, and becoming a citizen of Babel, a situation that would have opened a good many doors for her next investigation. She failed, most fortunately in his opinion. It made his observation from the wings even more stimulating.
He climbs the spiral staircase of a watchtower. From up there, despite the rain, he can make out, in the distance, the neighboring minor arks. The Memorial in front, the Deviations Observatory behind. The two buildings will have an essential role to play in history.
At this time, the Good Family’s apprentice virtuosos should already be in uniform, radio-lesson headphones on their heads, Sons of Pollux on one side, Goddaughters of Helen on the other. Instead, they are all mixed together, up on the walls of the minor ark. Their pajamas are sodden from the rain. They are letting out horrified cries, pointing the city out to each other, beyond the sea of clouds. Even the principal, Helen herself, the only family spirit never to have had descendants, has joined them under an enormous umbrella, and is focusing on the anomalous scene with piercing intensity.
From his privileged observation post, he looks at all of them. Or rather, he tries to look through their terrified eyes, to see as they do this void that, today, has gained ground.
Once again, he can’t help smiling. He’s benefited enough from being in the wings, the time has come to take to the stage.
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