I COULD SEE HER IN THE MIRROR.
I could see her in the mirror. She was sitting at her desk, an open geography book to her left. Homework, I suppose.
I was writing too. Maths homework. From time to time I watched her hand running over the paper; I watched without surprise. From my viewpoint she was sitting opposite me, so I couldn't read anything except a few indistinct words traced by her pen.
I had left the door of my room open; my mother had looked in to tell me that dinner would soon be ready. I glanced at the mirror; I saw only the reflection of my face and my room empty behind me.
Had the hot sun of the fine early June morning made me doze off? I was at school, I knew; I knew, because the sky was on the other side of the window. Likewise, I knew that I was in an English lesson; I knew because from time to time the teacher would say the word 'poetry' and also the word 'dream'. But it was just a piece of knowledge, not something I was aware of.
Dream. What can you do with a dream shut up in a thought? You can tell it, you can live it; but then it becomes real. What I could see in the mirror was real; I can tell it - after all, that's what I'm doing now. But how can I live it?
I was living the real every day. At school I learnt, I answered; with my friends I spoke, I played.
The ball I played with was real, and what the ball did was real too. Why did everything disappear after the game? The poem I had just recited had stopped being after the last word, carefully tidied away in my memory. I could start the game again, start the poem again, then forget once more. And start again. And again. Like a hamster on its wheel.
I could not know her, through the mirror; I was a prisoner of the real. How could I escape?
I had gone home after school, with a classmate. I had not taken out the mirror, which I leave in my wardrobe when I'm not there. My friend is top of the class, primus inter pares, he's preparing his future.
- Don't bore me with your tales. The future is tomorrow; and tomorrow you'll have to go school.
I had answered him with a sort of bitterness:
- The future is now, I've got to breathe.
He gave a laugh:
- You don't need to learn how to breathe; what you learn at school can change your future.
- You don't need to learn how to live either. My future is the life that will lie before me; good or bad, it will always be life.
- What else can we know?
This morning I had gone to my desk in front of the window, piled high with my school books and exercise books, on which I had left the mirror the previous evening. Her house must be the same size as mine because her bedroom, like mine, was separate. All the mirror showed me was her neat and tidy desk, furniture that I could only vaguely see, and three walls on which I could make out pictures and shelves full of books. But these objects were not always in the same place, and they weren't always the same either, although nobody seemed to move them. My eye only had to shift from one to the other for the picture to change into a tapestry or for the books lining the shelves to become ornaments. Three walls, I said; so she was sitting at the window. Did she have a garden, like me?
I left for school without having seen her. She was doubtless gone too. I pondered the question for a moment. "Definitely!" I concluded, to reassure myself.
To reassure myself? What about?
Maths. Reasonings don't bother with questions; they unwind the thread from the spool you're given.
Sunday. I had gone to see Primus after lunch. He was concerned:
- You seem a bit distracted recently. Is anything the matter?
I didn't dare tell him about the mirror. I said something about maths.
- You know that...
I broke in:
- No, there's nothing the matter.
He looked at me doubtfully. I insisted:
- No, really!
I went on without waiting:
- I was thinking that... You know the rules of mathematics haven't always been the same…
He cut me short:
- Yes I know that; Euclid, Riemann. But why are you talking about…
It was my turn to cut him off:
- Do we live the same way if we follow one or other of the two theories?
He looked at me, slightly surprised:
- I guess only Riemann's is right; we know now that the other is wrong.
- That's as may be, but we live very well with the error.
- We live an illusion.
I said nothing, staring, my gaze fixed. On what? I wasn't sure. Was the mirror an illusion?
Primus was concerned again:
- Is it something worse, then?
I didn't answer the question:
- Is the mark you get for your homework an illusion too?
He made a gesture of protest:
- It's real enough, but what it relates to is only an illusion.
- It's with that mark that we live.
- That's what we think, but it's not necessarily true.
I couldn't find an answer. Primus seemed less worried, though. Doubtless for him the conversation remained in the domain of the real.
School is reassuring. People speak about what they know - not us, of course, the teachers - people speak about what they think - we too, in this case - people speak about that whereof they may speak - naturally.
May I speak about the mirror?
A white ball of vague shape floats in the blue of the sky. I would gladly take it in my hand. And why not, with a hop and a jump, find myself sitting on it? Anything can be imagined, since I do not know what it is and have no means of knowing. Gradually, as I look on, the ball disappears. It is no longer there. If Primus were to arrive now, what would I tell him?
The teacher was talking about the ball. "The humidity contained in the cloud…" Primus, sitting beside me, was calculating the temperature at which the cloud would no longer be visible. What can I tell him? "The cloud doesn't exactly seem to have caught your interest!" he whispers to me, glancing at my empty page...