CITIES & EYES 1
The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one
above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water.
Thus the traveller, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the
other reflected, upside-down. Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that
the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its
every point would be reflected in its mirror, and the Valdrada down in the water
contains not only all the flutings and juttings of the facades that rise above the
lake, but also the rooms' interiors with ceilings and floors, the perspective of
the halls, the mirrors of the wardrobes.
Valdrada's inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once, that
action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special dignity of images, and
this awareness prevents them from forgetfulness. Even when lovers twist their
naked bodies, skin against skin, seeking the position that will give one the most
pleasure in the other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the black veins
of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the more they press the blade that
slips between the tendons, it is not so much their copulating or murdering that
matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the
mirror.
At times the mirror increases a thing's value, at times denies it. Not
everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored.
The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada
is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and
gesture inverted, point by point. The two Valdradas live for each other, their
eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them.
