RED SPECTRES 04: A SUBTLE, CENTURIES-STORED VENOM
Another update, another story about mirrors.
This one reads a bit rushed, which shouldn’t surprise anyone since it’s dated 1922 London. Emigrating to another country is liable to distract anyone. Again, I’m struck by how much Goethe, Baudelaire, and Pushkin seem to be Chayanov’s foundational trio. Or maybe I should say German Romanticism, French Decadence, and Russian Literature.
“The Venetian Mirror, or The Extraordinary Adventures of the Glass Man” by Aleksandr Chayanov (1922)
Aleksey’s our boy here, and he’s less of a moper than Chayanov’s previous character. When the story opens Aleksey’s in Venice prowling around the antique stores for that particular something that will clinch the decor of his new house in Moscow. Of course that last piece is proving allusive. Aleksey was noticeably losing his sang-froid. Then in the basement of a shop he spies the Venetian mirror that reflects the world with alien intensity. He buys it, has it boxed up, and together the two return to Moscow*.
And, of course, the mirror’s cursed.
One day, after cuddling with Kate, his mistress, he finds himself staring at the darkened glass.
“The glass reflected him as though upon a moving film of oil, breaking his outline into intersecting Cubist planes.”
As he stares he reaches forward and that’s when his reflection exchanges places with him.
The mirror world Aleksey finds himself in is similar in some ways to Bryusov’s. It’s cold, impersonal, and haunted by these entities that might once have been people. But unlike Bryusov’s mirror world, this one is more an ocean of mercury, a nightmare world of liquid metal T-1000 terminators, silvery Odos, and whatever Natalie Portman fought at the end of Annihilation.
Aleksey starts to lose himself in this sea, while forced to watch the crass and vulgar glass man** on the other side menace Kate and basically make a mess of his apartment and life. His anger grows so great that one day when the glass man seems poised to commit rapemurder on Kate, Aleksey throws himself against the glass and breaks free. Kate reacts with terror at the sight of both men, and the double flees before Aleksey can stop him.
Time passes. Aleksey no longer casts a reflection when he stands before a mirror. His friends tell him all manner of outlandish stories about all the infamous places he’s been seen. Aleksey realizes the double remains out there. On the street he thinks he catches glimpses of himself walking away in the crowd. Then a card appears from his double. The creature wants a duel. Aleksey arrives at the appointed place, but it turns out to be a ruse. While he was away, the glass man broke into his house, killed his butler, and abducted Kate. Of course, the police blame him, but he’s eventually able to establish an alibi.
Once clear of the accusation, he sets off to find Kate, going to a fortune teller’s address he found on a card behind her table. The place is empty. He explores and realizes all the magical trappings aren’t simple decorations. Whoever operates the place knows real magic. Deciding to leave, he discovers the room he first entered is now a vast hall of mirrors. And the glassman is there waiting for him in every one. They chase each other until finally the two clash in a pool of liquid mercury. There Aleksey chokes the glass man until the creature dissolves into goo.
Next thing Aleksey knows, he’s waking up on the floor in the backroom of the fortune teller’s shop amid a puddle of some hardened glassy substance. He checks his reflection in a nearby glass and is pleased to see himself once more. He returns home where he finds the lovely Kate waiting for him. The end.
I don’t know what to tell you.
This story progressed at a breakneck pace, but while writing this recap I began to see more subtlety to it. In the imagined movie version of this story that played in my head, I envisioned everything from the duel forward not taking a span of weeks but hours. Kate’s abduction, the butler’s murder, and Aleksey’s questioning for days by the police is all an illusion. The card he found was not Kate’s but his own. The duel taking in the absent fortune teller’s backrooms where the glass man can work its magic.
This is another neat story that has that Universal Monsters feel to it. If ever I get the chance I’ll likely try and find a larger collection of Chayanov’s works.
Next time, a story from that saucy bad boy of Soviet literature: Mikhail Bulgakov!
Until then, be well.
—
* By train. I don’t know why this sticks with me. Maybe it’s just that as an America the idea of riding a train between countries seems utterly fantastic like something straight out of Narnia. “Here’s a lamp post in the wood, here’s a talking badger, and here’s a train that will take you from Moscow to Madrid with stops in Berlin and Paris. MAGIC.”
** I’ll admit that on first read of this story, I did wonder how popular cocaine was in Moscow around 1920.
RED SPECTRES 02: RED PRIMROSE
Welcome back!
In this entry we’re looking at Aleksandr Chayanov’s story “The Tale of the Hairdresser’s Mannequin”. It’s an odd one.
“The Tale of the Hairdresser’s Mannequin” by Aleksandr Chayanov (1918)
We start in Moscow. Our protagonist is a popular architect noted for his romantic conquests. The scene’s less Russian and more French as our protagonist is both a dandy and flaneur. One night’s he’s out and about doing his best to defeat his ennui, when he gives up and decides to take a vacation in the provinces. Soon he’s infatuated with the red-headed wife of a local veterinarian and is all set to begin a new romance, when he comes upon a beautiful red-headed mannequin in a hairdresser’s shop window. He quickly purchases it and so begins his new obsession. Where did it come from? Who sculpted it? More importantly, who was the model? Etc. Etc.
And so a tangled tale is spun. The models were Siamese twins and the mannequin is but one of a set of two. The artist who sculpted them went mad and killed himself. No. No one knows where the twins are now. Mystery piles upon mystery. The architect is now in deep. By now he’s purchased both mannequins and is traveling with them all around Europe. Where are the twins? He becomes an expert in the side show-carnival-panopticon circuit. A chance encounter with another carnival aficionado provides him with the twins’ name, the Henrickson sisters. But there the trail goes cold. The twins have retired into seclusion for some reason. All hope is lost for our architect until he spies a billboard in Venice announcing the return of the Henrickson Sisters.
From there the downward spiral really kicks in. Yes, he goes to the show. Yes, he goes backstage. Yes, he succeeds in wooing one of the sisters (Berthe). And yes, she gets pregnant. All this we learn from the diary of the other sister (Kitty). Kitty also explains about the sculptor’s tragic death (he didn’t know it but he was the twins’ half-brother a fact he found out only after he too slept with Berthe). Of course, Berthe gets pregnant, and also of course she dies during childbirth. This allows Kitty to be separated from her sister, and she takes off with her newly-born niece while our protagonist abandons everyone (including the mannequins he’s been carrying around) and returns to Moscow.
Back home once more, the ennui returns. This time instead of the provinces he decides to go back to Venice. And he books the same room he stayed at before when he first saw the poster advertising the Henrickson sisters. Unfortunately all he can see are the mannequins he abandoned. They have been reunited in another hairdresser’s shop window. The sight of which promptly causes him to have a nervous breakdown. The end. Except there’s a bit of an epilogue as a fat rat back in his abandoned Moscow apartment gnaws the ribbon off a stack of love letters hidden in his desk.
THE END.
As I said this story is an odd one, and if you told me Chayanov meant it as a parody of the Gothic style I’d absolutely believe you. The fat rat at the end inclines me to this idea. It’s there gnawing away at the ribbon that ties it all together. When the rat succeeds, it only unleashes an avalanche of old love letters.
Good stuff.
Midway through I was struck by how science fictional this whole story was in an Albert Robida kind of way. I could imagine clones and robots alongside the stereo-cinematographs. Oddly the Europe depicted doesn’t appear to have just fought a terrible war. And the Russia depicted doesn’t appear to be undergoing a terrible war, so that date of 1918 might be when published instead of when composed. This story also made me look back at the Oskar Kokoschka/Alma Mahler affair. You’d think if two cultural icons had an affair that ended with one making a life-sized anatomically correct plush doll of the other it would earn a mention on one of theirs wikipedia pages. But no. Fortunately, the Paris Review has us covered. (Content warning for pictures and description of life-sized anatomically correct plush dolls and the men who buy and decapitate them.)
Next time… A mirror? A mannequin? Another excuse for me to share unsettling facts from the past? Who knows?
Yesterweird 