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Authors: David G. Hartwell
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and rose upon her tip-toes. And there resemblance to
past hours ceased. She did not proceed to an uneasy study of her face and figure. She could not. For her eyes, as though acting with a wisdom and volition of their own, had closed tightly.
Anna van Tuyl was too much the professional psychiatrist not to recognize that her subconscious mind had shrieked its warning. Eyes still shut, and breathing in great gasps, she dropped from her
toes as if to turn and leap away. Then gradually she straightened. She must force herself to go through with it. She might not be able to bring herself here, in this mood of candid receptiveness,
twice in one lifetime. It must be now.
She trembled in brief, silent premonition, then quietly raised her eyelids.
Sombre eyes looked out at her, a little darker than yesterday: pools ploughed around by furrows that today gouged a little deeper – the result of months of squinting up from the position
into which her spinal deformity had thrust her neck and shoulders. The pale lips were pressed together just a little tighter in their defence against unpredictable pain. The cheeks seemed bloodless
having been bleached finally and completely by the Unfinished Dream that haunted her sleep, wherein a nightingale fluttered about a white rose.
As if in brooding confirmation, she brought up simultaneously the pearl-translucent fingers of both hands to the upper borders of her forehead, and there pushed back the incongruous masses of
newly-grey hair from two tumorous bulges – like incipient horns. As she did this she made a quarter turn, exposing to the mirror the humped grotesquerie of her back.
Then by degrees, like some netherworld Narcissus, she began to sink under the bizarre enchantment of that misshapen image. She could retain no real awareness that this creature was she. That
profile, as if seen through witch-opened eyes, might have been that of some enormous toad, and this flickering metaphor paralyzed her first and only forlorn attempt at identification.
In a vague way, she realized that she had discovered what she had set out to discover. She was ugly. She was even very ugly.
The change must have been gradual, too slow to say of any one day: Yesterday I was not ugly. But even eyes that hungered for deception could no longer deny the cumulative evidence.
So slow – and yet so fast. It seemed only yesterday that had found her face down on Matthew Bell’s examination table, biting savagely at a little pillow as his gnarled fingertips
probed grimly at her upper thoracic vertebrae.
Well, then, she was ugly. But she’d not give in to self-pity. To hell with what she looked like! To hell with mirrors!
On sudden impulse she seized her balancing tripod with both hands, closed her eyes, and swung.
The tinkling of falling mirror glass had hardly ceased when a harsh and gravelly voice hailed her from her office. “Bravo!”
She dropped the practice tripod and whirled, aghast. “Matt!”
“Just thought it was time to come in. But if you want to bawl a little, I’ll go back out and wait. No?” Without looking directly at her face or pausing for a reply, he tossed a
packet on the table. “There it is. Honey, if I could write a ballet score like your Nightingale and the Rose , I wouldn’t care if my spine was knotted in a figure
eight.”
“You’re crazy,” she muttered stonily, unwilling to admit that she was both pleased and curious. “You don’t know what it means to have once been able to pirouette,
to balance en arabesque . And anyway” – she looked at him from the corner of her eye – “how could anyone tell whether the score’s good? There’s no Finale
as yet. It isn’t finished.”
“Neither is the Mona Lisa, Kublai Khan , or a certain symphony by Schubert.”
“But this is different. A plotted ballet requires an integrated sequence of events leading up to a climax – to a Finale. I haven’t figured out the ending. Did you notice I left
a
past hours ceased. She did not proceed to an uneasy study of her face and figure. She could not. For her eyes, as though acting with a wisdom and volition of their own, had closed tightly.
Anna van Tuyl was too much the professional psychiatrist not to recognize that her subconscious mind had shrieked its warning. Eyes still shut, and breathing in great gasps, she dropped from her
toes as if to turn and leap away. Then gradually she straightened. She must force herself to go through with it. She might not be able to bring herself here, in this mood of candid receptiveness,
twice in one lifetime. It must be now.
She trembled in brief, silent premonition, then quietly raised her eyelids.
Sombre eyes looked out at her, a little darker than yesterday: pools ploughed around by furrows that today gouged a little deeper – the result of months of squinting up from the position
into which her spinal deformity had thrust her neck and shoulders. The pale lips were pressed together just a little tighter in their defence against unpredictable pain. The cheeks seemed bloodless
having been bleached finally and completely by the Unfinished Dream that haunted her sleep, wherein a nightingale fluttered about a white rose.
As if in brooding confirmation, she brought up simultaneously the pearl-translucent fingers of both hands to the upper borders of her forehead, and there pushed back the incongruous masses of
newly-grey hair from two tumorous bulges – like incipient horns. As she did this she made a quarter turn, exposing to the mirror the humped grotesquerie of her back.
Then by degrees, like some netherworld Narcissus, she began to sink under the bizarre enchantment of that misshapen image. She could retain no real awareness that this creature was she. That
profile, as if seen through witch-opened eyes, might have been that of some enormous toad, and this flickering metaphor paralyzed her first and only forlorn attempt at identification.
In a vague way, she realized that she had discovered what she had set out to discover. She was ugly. She was even very ugly.
The change must have been gradual, too slow to say of any one day: Yesterday I was not ugly. But even eyes that hungered for deception could no longer deny the cumulative evidence.
So slow – and yet so fast. It seemed only yesterday that had found her face down on Matthew Bell’s examination table, biting savagely at a little pillow as his gnarled fingertips
probed grimly at her upper thoracic vertebrae.
Well, then, she was ugly. But she’d not give in to self-pity. To hell with what she looked like! To hell with mirrors!
On sudden impulse she seized her balancing tripod with both hands, closed her eyes, and swung.
The tinkling of falling mirror glass had hardly ceased when a harsh and gravelly voice hailed her from her office. “Bravo!”
She dropped the practice tripod and whirled, aghast. “Matt!”
“Just thought it was time to come in. But if you want to bawl a little, I’ll go back out and wait. No?” Without looking directly at her face or pausing for a reply, he tossed a
packet on the table. “There it is. Honey, if I could write a ballet score like your Nightingale and the Rose , I wouldn’t care if my spine was knotted in a figure
eight.”
“You’re crazy,” she muttered stonily, unwilling to admit that she was both pleased and curious. “You don’t know what it means to have once been able to pirouette,
to balance en arabesque . And anyway” – she looked at him from the corner of her eye – “how could anyone tell whether the score’s good? There’s no Finale
as yet. It isn’t finished.”
“Neither is the Mona Lisa, Kublai Khan , or a certain symphony by Schubert.”
“But this is different. A plotted ballet requires an integrated sequence of events leading up to a climax – to a Finale. I haven’t figured out the ending. Did you notice I left
a
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