|
I.
When the metal figure was made, there was no model for it.
 The whole thing came about in a factory in 1926 when the little
figurines were popular. They continued to be so in that hemisphere, at
roughly those coordinates, but their draw waned in places where boys
grew up a little and Mae West eventually caught attention, where jazz
rumbled into the mainstream. The toy came about as a precursor, like a
tiny mock-up preparing the world for someone similar -- you. This figure
resembles you, but you are no soldier, nothing like it. Someone sees the
figure and tells you to imagine your face on something older than
yourself, something with a deeper history than your own. Because your
face is on this soldier.
An elderly woman carved the original, first from a block of wax. Her
hands were made for the stuff. The workers were given certain
specifications to follow: height, build, type of clothing, weapon, and
stance, but the face was up to her. Many of those carving at that time
passed this opportunity by. They would simply wipe vague lines across
the brow and above the chin, but she drew features, as delicately as if
shaping the world, and it paid off for it became your face. Your nose
and eyes, and when you see it what will your reaction be? This soldier
seems to hold the exact weight of your body but expresses most
distinctly your face, the tilt of the eyebrow, the roll of the chin, the
alignment of the ears and cheekbones.
The first one to play with the thing was a six-year-old boy who tried
to tear the saber off. It could not be removed. The blade was one with
the left arm.
II.
In a place where they grow tropical houseplants like weeds in fields and
send them to America, a man noticed an interesting pattern of rust on
the bed of his pickup truck, a blue '86 Chevy originally purchased in
Austin, Texas, and no one knew how it came to a town in Central America,
but the farmer had owned it for six years. The rust grew that entire
time like the truck was melting. A neighbor encouraged him to take a
photograph of the corroded metal before it changed any further, so he
did. After a year of circulating in local Catholic papers, the likeness
of Jesus' face made its way like the tropical houseplants to North
America where it was published but quickly dismissed as simply rust, not
a face. After all, there was not even a crown of thorns.
You see the image on the cover of a paper in the checkout line, and you
do not see Jesus. What you do see is yourself, and the man behind you
squints a little and looks hard at you because he must see the
resemblance, too. That is too much for you. You buy the paper, and go
straight home and begin to review your finances.
Two months later you are in Costa Rica on a farm near an active volcano
named Mount Arénal. Birds scream at you, and it is so humid you cannot
breathe properly. You feel sick as if you have swallowed too much of the
ocean. The farmer, who says to call him Walter, invites you in for
coffee. You tell him you would rather just have a look at the truck. He
used to charge an admission fee, but does not now. He says to not be
disappointed. Coffee, he asks again. You say, no, and Walter shrugs. You
get into a newer pickup truck, one that has very little rust, and the
two of you drive down a hill to a clearing where a blue '86 Chevy truck
is parked. You look at the truck panel that has dissolved almost
entirely into brown rust since the photograph was taken. Now there is no
one's face at all.
III.
In Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, the lovesick
Florentino Ariza purchases a mirror at great expense because within it
he briefly saw the reflection of the woman with whom, it seemed, he
would never be. Florentino Ariza hangs the mirror in his home, but
García Márquez does not tell the whole story.
This is the rest of the tale. Florentino Ariza spends the next six
months staring into the mirror, certain that the silver backing has
within its memory the image of the desired woman. He is obsessed, of
course, with recalling her face clearly. He eats his meals, usually
coconut rice and black coffee, before his own reflection. He wants to
see in his balding scalp her feminine locks, so he stares at the acute
lines of his nose, seeking the image of her powdered, softer curvature.
He looks at this for six months, every night when he returns from his
office by the port. At work he does not think of the mirror, but
controls his thoughts and redirects them to the business of riverboats,
and he is more productive than he has been in years. He has many lovers
from whom he withholds his attentions during this time. Indeed, he
denies himself certain attentions and becomes more of a capitalist monk
than the amorous poet he has always been. His entire life is work,
denial, and this damn mirror.
Relief does not come until he breaks this cycle one night and returns to
the restaurant where he purchased the mirror. He sits at a small table
and hurriedly eats dinner. He feels guilty and does not finish his
second cup of coffee. At home, he sits before the mirror in the
darkness. He knows that he will see nothing in the glass and so is
afraid to light the oil lamp. Like a true romantic, his tears clear his
conscience and shield him from the inevitable disappointment, and he
lights the lamp. This time, though, he sees her. She is clear and right
before him in the glass. She is a fifty-year-old, bald man with false
teeth and the drab suit of an infatuated bachelor. This is how he sees
her. Florentino Ariza has found her momentarily, and he loves her as
much as he is repelled by her. She is his lover as much as he is his own
reflection.
He watches the image throughout the night and in the morning sees only
himself again, but the mirror has fulfilled his expectations. Over the
next few years, he looks at it occasionally, and tells himself that he
still sees her, but it is different. When he is seventy, he offers it to
an employee of the riverboat company. She thanks him and passes it on to
her brother. It travels from place to place, satisfying people along the
way. You see it at an antique store and want to purchase it but cannot
justify spending the money, even when you see what you see in the glass.
|
