Sometimes writing takes on a life of its own and here I couldn’t stop André getting into a right old mess with ‘real realism’ and ‘magical realism’. He is in a tussle with reality, that’s for sure… (see page 169)
Arnfrid Beier, author of LOVE LIES: A Journal
But I was not to get very far. The road into town was blocked and the traffic moved very slowly.
I tapped the steering wheel with the palm of my right hand. Every few seconds, I checked the time on the car-clock as well as on my wristwatch.
My heart started to pound and my back began to ache. I twiddled with the knobs on the radio, but couldn’t pick up any signals. Kaputt, I thought, something else to fix.
I tried to concentrate on the car in front. Stop – start – stop – start. How long would I be stuck in this blessed traffic jam?
At least the rain had stopped. The clouds were thinning here and there, giving the promise of a blue sky and a little sunshine. My heart stopped pounding and my back stopped aching. I began to feel less nervous.
I tried humming a tune as I went cheek by jowl with every other commuter. A tune I once knew. Blue sky and white clouds. I used to sing it to the boys when they wouldn’t settle at bedtime. The boys and me, we would make up all sorts of rhymes and verses to go with it.
Birds and bees sitting on trees
With blue sky, white clouds and a rainbow.
And a rainbow.
Flies and fleas sitting on trees
With blue sky, white clouds and a rainbow.
And a rainbow.
I had to smile, and then my eyes began to fill with tears.
The driver behind me revved the engine of his car a couple of times, reminding me that the traffic was moving on again.
Putting in the first gear was more like an automatic reflex than a conscious act, as was releasing the clutch and pressing my foot down on the accelerator pedal.
Bittersweet thoughts had risen on the tide of my tears and taken me with them into an inner world, a world without boundaries of space and time. There, happy and not-so-happy moments with the boys ran into harrowing mirror episodes and dream sequences, not unlike those I went through six weeks earlier.
Playing hide-and-seek in the woods, riding on our bikes together in the park, chasing each other round a field – I could still see their faces before me, their cute, innocent faces, ablaze with excitement and adventure.
Now the boys were running after me, wielding sticks above their heads. I ran away from them, looking over my shoulder to see if they were catching up with me.
“Andrew,” I called out laughingly, “Elmer, what are you doing?”
More boys came running out from behind the trees and bushes, a whole gang of them, half-naked and encrusted with mud and dirt, all wielding sticks above their heads, as if they wanted to attack me.
I panicked.
“Andrew! Elmer!”
They came running after me, faster and faster.
Then a horn honked impatiently behind me. What was going on? Ah, yes, of course! Stop – start – stop – start. I caught sight of the car in my rear-view mirror. It’d pulled up very close behind me, almost touching my bumper.
The traffic had moved on again, flowing more freely now. There was quite a gap between my car and the one in front of me. I flapped about anxiously and nearly stalled the engine. I needed all my concentration to put it in the right gear and drive off smoothly.
I checked the time. Half an hour to go. Would I get to the university before nine o’clock? Would the students wait for me?
But somehow I wasn’t too bothered – probably because my mind hadn’t quite switched back to the present moment yet. It was still with the boys (as the gods well knew, for soon they caused the traffic to grind to a halt again, granting me a few more precious moments to look behind the veil of space and time).
The whole mirror episode flashed past my mind in seconds. First I saw the boys before me and I felt happy. Then the circumstances changed and I felt threatened. The more fear I felt, the more threatening the boys became.
My instinct urged me to defend myself, but with a most unusual weapon – a book. Immediately, the circumstances changed again, because of the book’s title.
It was so funny that I burst into laughter. The more I laughed, the less threatening the boys became. They even threw their sticks away after a while and laughed with me.
And then, the circumstances changed again. I began to care for the boys, and the more my feelings of loving care grew for them, the kinder they behaved towards me.
I could hear Delilah’s voice at the back of my mind.
“The mirror only reflects back to us what we are at any given moment. It’s a question of personal input, André, that’s all.”
The truth of her words struck me like a bolt from the blue, but so did the horn of the car behind me. I nearly shot through the roof.
Starting my car again and driving off turned out to be more of a jolt-and-jerk operation than I had wished for – and all because my thoughts were still preoccupied with one or two nagging questions.
What about the magical powers of the mirror – were its magical powers merely my own energies that I projected into the mirror and then deceived myself into thinking it was the mirror that had power over me?
What was it again Delilah had said? “You give your mirror magical powers and then collude with its reflections.” And the reason for this – what was the reason she gave? “So you don’t have to take responsibility for your own actions.”
But then, she also said I’d have to get my mirror to serve me in the right way, implying that the mirror is an independent agent with its own powers, after all.
I slowly started to shake my head, my poor head; it was weighing heavy with incomprehension and disbelief. And then – well, I don’t know how to explain what happened then – I simply had to laugh out loud. It must have been Delilah’s words that suddenly came back to me “don’t try so hard, sweetie,” and her amused chuckle, which seemed incredibly infectious.
On a wave of laughter, I surfed back to the safe shore of the here-and-now. And not a moment too soon. The traffic was flowing a great deal faster now. As I was coming closer to the city centre with its many dangerous crossroads and roundabouts and multiple lanes, my very survival every moment of the journey depended on my presence of mind.
