William Shakespeare — Chapter 2: The hairline fracture in an antique cafe mirror — Novella Movement 1

SCENE I.
A small café in Vienna, near dusk. Marble tables, empty save one. Upon the far wall hangs an antique mirror, its glass bearing a single hairline fracture from crown to base. FILIPPO, a scholar in exile, sits alone before a glowing tablet, his coat still on though the hour grows late. He speaks, unaware he is observed.

FILIPPO.
What is a city to the man that dwells
Within it, yet holds converse but with light—
This small bright pane that carries forth my labor
To masters I shall never look upon?
I send my learning out on wires unseen
As merchants once sent ships to India's shore,
And what returns? A silence dressed as coin.
Here in this foreign capital I sit,
A scholar walking streets that know me not,
My tongue a stranger's tongue, my name unspoke
Save by the machine that pays me for my thought.

He turns, and beholds the mirror.

But soft—what fracture cleaves that ancient glass?
A hairline crack, no wider than a hair,
Yet doth it split my face in twain that gaze:
One half doth show the man I was at home,
The other, this thin ghost that haunts abroad.
Which of these two is Filippo now?
The glass will not resolve it, nor will I.

Enter NICOLO, a waiter, wiping a cup, watching him with practiced courtesy.

NICOLO.
Good evening to the gentleman what talks to glass. I've seen worse company kept in this house—there's a fellow comes Tuesdays talks only to his coffee, and it never answers neither, but he tips like it did.

FILIPPO.
You mark me, then? I thought myself alone.

NICOLO.
Alone as a man can be with a waiter watching him, sir, which is to say not alone at all, only unaccompanied—there's a difference, and I've made my trade of knowing it.

FILIPPO.
Thou speakest riddles for a man who pours.

NICOLO.
And you speak verse for a man who types. We're both of us dressed above our station tonight, sir, if you'll forgive the observation.

[Aside.] Here's a soul that pays in foreign coin and foreign loneliness both—the second spends easier than the first, and I have made myself rich on lesser stock than that.

FILIPPO.
That mirror there—how came it by its wound?

NICOLO.
Ah, that. Some say a soldier's saber, some a jealous husband's ring, some say the glass was always thus, and only waits for men enough like you to notice it. Myself, I hold no theory. A crack's a crack. It shows you twice for the price of once—some customers count that a bargain.

FILIPPO.
Thou hast a merchant's tongue for broken things.

NICOLO.
And you a poet's eye for broken men. We might do business, sir, you and I—for I have watched you three weeks running now, and always you sit facing that same glass, and always you leave sadder than you came. Now I could tell you why the mirror's cracked. I could tell you many things, for a small fee, that would ease the fracture in your own face yonder.

FILIPPO.
[Aside.] Here is the city's true face shown to me—
Not stone, not spire, but this soft-spoken snare,
This courtesy that wears the mask of care
While counting all the coin my silence bears.

NICOLO.
Well, sir? Shall we speak further of the glass?

FILIPPO.
Speak on. I'll hear thee, though I trust thee not—
For in this town where every face is strange,
Even a rogue's attention feels like home.

NICOLO.
Then home you'll have, sir—at a modest rate.

He smiles, sets down the cup, and does not move away. FILIPPO turns again toward the fractured glass, in which now two faces—his own and Nicolo's behind him—are doubled and divided by the single hairline crack.

FILIPPO.
[Aside.]
The glass shows two where nature meant but one—
So too this city splits me from myself:
The man who works, the man who wanders lost,
And now a third face crowds the silvered frame,
One that would trade upon my solitude.
What service pays in flattery for grief
Shall render, in the counting, small relief.

Exeunt severally, the mirror holding both their shapes a moment longer than the room itself allows.

SCENE II.
An hour later, the candles guttering low, NICOLO returns with a small ledger book, and sets it down between them like a chessboard.

NICOLO.
Here's my account, sir, writ in mine own hand—
the history of that glass, and what it cost
the men who owned it, and what it might yet cost
the man who stares in it. Shall I begin?

FILIPPO.
Begin, and let thy fee be named at th'end,
For I have learned this much of foreign towns:
The price comes after, never with the good.

NICOLO.
Wise man. [Aside.] Wiser than most that sit and stare—
yet still he stares, and staring is the hook.
[To him.] The glass was brought from Prague some hundred years,
a bride's dowry, cracked upon the very night
her husband learned she loved another man.
Some say the crack's her grief, made permanent.
Some say 'twas but a careless porter's thumb.
I say—it matters not which tale is true.
A wound once shown will find the shape it needs.

FILIPPO.
Thou sellest me a story, not a fact.

NICOLO.
I sell you comfort, sir, which needs no fact,
only a shape to pour the sorrow in.
That's my whole trade. I do it nightly here.

FILIPPO.
[Aside.]
What is a man but sorrow poured in shapes—
this city gives me shapes: a screen, a wage,
a room I pay for but do never fill
with any voice mine own tongue answers to.
I sought to fill the silence with this glass,
this cracked and foreign glass, and with this rogue
who profits by the filling. Am I then
no better than the glass—split down the seam,
one half still standing in my father's house,
one half stood here, alone, and paying rent
to strangers for the privilege of grief?
The scholar and the exile—which is true?
Both, says the mirror. Neither, says the glass
that shows them both and answers unto none.

NICOLO.
That's fine talk, sir, but talk don't clear the tab.
Shall we agree a figure for the tale?

FILIPPO.
Name it.

NICOLO.
Twelve euro, and I'll throw the ending in for free—
the part where the porter's thumb, or the bride's own grief,
don't signify at all, for the glass was cracked
the day it left the foundry, a flaw in the pour,
and every tale since told upon it is a lie
that men pay well to hear, for the truth's too plain
to earn a waiter's supper.

FILIPPO.
Then thou hast sold me nothing.

NICOLO.
I have sold you an evening, sir, in which a stranger
listened while you spoke to glass, and answered back
in something like a human voice. Some men
pay far more, in far colder cities, for far less.

Stichomythia.

FILIPPO. Thou call'st this kindness?
NICOLO. I call it my trade.
FILIPPO. And is there difference?
NICOLO. Ask the glass, not me.
FILIPPO. The glass says nothing.
NICOLO. Nor do I, for coin.
FILIPPO. Then take thy coin, and leave the crack unmended.
NICOLO. 'Twas never mine to mend, sir—nor was it yours.

NICOLO pockets the coin FILIPPO extends, bows with the same practiced courtesy, and withdraws behind the counter, humming.

FILIPPO.
[Alone.]
So stands the account: twelve euro paid
for silence dressed as sympathy, and I
no nearer to the man I was before
I crossed this water into wireless work.
The mirror keeps its fracture, as it must—
no rogue's soft tongue nor scholar's harder thought
shall weld the silver where it once was whole.
I'll close my tablet now; the wages wait
till morning, faceless still, and still unnamed.
Perhaps tomorrow's light will show one face
where tonight showed two—but I do not believe it,
and half-believing is the exile's prayer.

He rises, gathers coat and tablet, pauses once more before the glass.

The city keeps its strangers as it keeps
its antique mirrors—cracked, yet still for sale,
still asked to hold a face that doesn't fit,
still trusted, though we know the trust is thin.
I go now to my room, which is not home,
to sleep, which is not rest, to wake, and send
my thought again on wires to unseen hands.
The crack remains. The city keeps its guise.
And I, twice-shown, still cannot name which lies.

Exit FILIPPO. NICOLO polishes the counter before the mirror, glancing once at his own reflection, doubled by the fracture, and smiles at no one.

NICOLO.
Good custom, that. He'll come again come Thursday—
they always do, that pay for company.
The glass stays cracked, my supper stays well-earned:
some fractures mend themselves in another's coin.

Exit NICOLO. The candle gutters out; the mirror holds the empty room, and its single fracture, a moment longer in the dark.