The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,77

as the homes of the wealthy are always quiet, with thick, grey carpets over blue tiles. It’s just as I imagined it, she thought, just precisely as I imagined it.

The walls were decorated with elaborate plaster moldings. Muscled young heroes carrying horns of plenty curled themselves around mirrors. Margaret looked into the first one. She saw herself reflected in the milky glass in a miracle of integration. She felt flattered to be included.

She could hardly move, she was so pleased. And she noticed an extraordinary effect. The mirror changed her face. She was the same in every detail, but the sum total of the details was an expression her face had never carried before, and perhaps never would. An expression of serenity. Margaret’s face staring into its own eyes from across the mirror had a gentility and an equanimity to it, like a woman in a Vermeer, both as if she had no passions and as if she could go on living, softly and in the same way, forever. Margaret tilted her head to the side, considering this new, soft person. Maybe this face was caused by the light in the foyer. It was light soft and filtered; it was light like grey velvet.

And then Margaret noticed another effect. The foyer was slightly trapezoidal, and the mirrors were not positioned directly across from one another but at a slight angle, so that not only could Margaret see herself, she could also see herself reflected in copy after copy, extending far into the wall. In each copy she became more haloed by the soft light, more filtered and obscure. As she looked back into the wall at herself, so far away, the mirror corridor curved, and the tiny Margarets eventually went lost from sight. Margaret brushed her hand against her face. The dozens of Margarets in the hothouse of the glass did likewise and the synchrony of it blasted like an orchestra.

Margaret went out the back entrance of the foyer and into the courtyard garden beyond. The sun came through from above and the place was rich with pine. There were juniper, ferns, and rhododendron. She looked up at the side-wings and thought that the Family Strauss must have lived here in the back. They could never have held on to one of the fine apartments in the front all the way through 1943.

In the foliage, she saw a little brick path that led through the bushes. She followed it to a man-made pond, where a little jet of a fountain bubbled and arced in the sunlight. But the sun didn’t reach all the way into the pool, and she looked down into the dark waters. The pond was swimming with goldfish, each about the size of a finger, some of a red-orange color, and others orange and white like bridal kimonos. Margaret stood over it, moving her lips.

She went inside again. She went back to the mirror, wishing to look again at that passionless, unpained face.

She gazed.

Something behind her head moved in the mirror. A quick, dark shadow. It passed once, twice. She whirled around. Was it the shadow of a tilting bird? Maybe a starling had flown in from the courtyard. But the room was so still. Margaret’s heart beat. In the mirror, she saw the shadow pass again. The skin of her back went tight with goose bumps. She stood very still, her heart at a gallop. “I won’t move, and then it will go.” She stared straight ahead into the mirror. Her face was framed in the oval—it had turned white, and beneath her sleepless eyes, the crescents darkened.

Then all at once, stepping in from the side, a silent figure came. A woman stood next to her in the mirror. Margaret spun around. But no, there was no one in the room. The woman was only in the mirror. The apparition had a soft, round, worried face, dark eyes, and tired blond hair. She was wearing a dark wool dress with a slightly yellowed, white lace collar.

The woman—Margaret felt sure of it—was Regina Strauss. She stood in the mirror portrait very near Margaret, close next to her, good as a mother or a friend. She opened her mouth, and although no sound came from her pale lips, Margaret could see from the way she held her mouth that she was speaking.

The woman was saying a great deal. With her head held steady, she was telling Margaret a long story, holding her face expressionless, but Margaret was no