IVAN DE MONBRISON

The Mirror

Arseni Tarkovski In Memoriam

We have left our shadow to dry like a linen on the door of time hanging on a string but as we were dead our linen was black and therefore invisible in the dark just like the string just like your mind just like your fear just like your hunger all these things that are invisible but which nevertheless really exist and perhaps it is even the invisible things that are the most important ones like this skin drying at the door of time black and invisible it’s your skin it completely covers you it contains your organs your muscles your brain your thought it contains the animal that is in you it’s the animal that runs it’s the animal that cries it’s the animal that knows it’s the animal that goes and it’s the animal that comes back always you opened the door once and on the other side of the door do you remember there was a field I believe an immense field you crossed this field as one crosses a river on the other side there was a woman sleeping under a tree at first you thought she was dead her body was young but her face was very old as if she had suffered a lot her face had scars and deep wrinkles that hollowed out her skin you didn’t want to wake her up so you sat by her side you didn’t know what day it was what day of the week what day of the month you no longer knew the time the very notion of time had disappeared and yet… yet the pain was there… yet you felt that with age your body was getting weaker the woman woke up this woman with this young body and this old face she looked at you but not as a woman looks at a man but as an animal looks at a stranger looks at a hunter who has come to kill it then she turned into a horse and she galloped away very quickly here you are alone on the other side of this immense field that you crossed and you don’t have the courage to go back in the middle of the wheat of the wheat which will not be picked up this year because all the farmers have died the peasants died because of the war maybe… maybe they died because they were tired of working for nothing because it was so painful and so difficult at the same time to go on through the door of time it is your skin that you have hung on the invisible thread which stays still and dries but which is loosing some blood the drops of sweat of the skin and the blood mingle and are one and the same thing they are tears also alone on the threshold you close the door you unhooked the skin you put it on you put it on despite its tears despite the blood covering you entirely you have a headache so bad you have had a headache for so long you don’t even remember when this ache started maybe with your birth you see your father go by on a bicycle he has a hole in his forehead through made by the bullet that killed him coming right after him your mother is limping leaning on a cane an old woman it’s is there a woman you don’t know anymore who doesn’t know you either you see your brother passing by but he doesn’t recognize you any more than the two others no one recognizes you you wonder why then you look at yourself in the mirror and on the other side of the mirror that is to say where the reflection should logically be and there is now nothing .