Beginning with the Mirror: Ten Stories about Love, Desire and Moving between Worlds
by Peter Dubé
Lethe Press. 178 pages, $15.
NOWHERE in Beginning with the Mirror is the author identified as a bilingual writer, but as a lifelong resident of Montreal, Canada’s version of Paris, Peter Dubé knows what it’s like to live in two linguistic worlds. His short stories are those of a writer who moves between worlds not only of language and culture but also of everyday reality and dream-like possibility. Indeed, the narrators of several of these stories can shape-shift or change form, sometimes without consciously intending to.
In “Blazon,” the nameless narrator describes himself as “a metaphor” and goes on to say that “the flames of passion [are]a figure of speech for most people.” He explains: “My case, however, is not so simple. These analogical flames mean more to me. … They have warmed me, frightened me, burned me and the people I loved and hungered after. That figure of speech has been actual, a part of me.” The “flames of passion” in this case grew out of frustrated adolescent desire for male friends, a feeling the narrator is unable to express clearly or harmlessly. He is terrified by the actual fires he seems to start. Attending university in a larger city away from his home, he feels doomed to celibacy because he believes that his desire could destroy the world. But then, as in a fairy tale, he is rescued by an understanding man who “reads” him accurately, and who thereby breaks the evil spell.
Most of these stories about magical transformations have more ambiguous endings. Attraction, desire, and love are all present, but the emotions of the characters in these stories are not only like fire but also like water and wind: fast-moving, ever-changing, likely to overwhelm or to disappear without warning. “Corvidae,” which also appeared in Where Thy Dark Eye Glances, an anthology of stories based on the work and the life of Edgar Allan Poe, follows three characters: the young male narrator; his mother, a brilliant stage actress who creates her own one-person show; and the man who fascinates him, a video game designer. The ominous croaking of “nevermore” by a computer-generated raven at the end of the story, as in the famous poem by Poe, suggests the impossibility of fully realizing one’s desires in the real world—but it could also refer to the impossibility of ever fully separating the “real” from the “unreal.”
The title of this collection suggests that a magic mirror will appear in at least one story, and it does. In “Echo,” the narrator claims:
The mirror is where it all began. It hung on a green wall for months—old, and tall, and narrow—before I noticed anything. It was implacable in its finish. The glass was so smooth: a rectangular pool of uncertain depth. The slick, reflective surface like a body of water unstirred by submarine motion: no great predatory fish, no snakes or grinning crocodiles, just the relentless silvery images tossed back at us with a certain insolence. The carved wooden frame glowed gilded and knotted: vines and, at each corner, a horned, grinning face, tongue lolling out as if to drink from the shimmering surface with an ornamental nonchalance. But things were disturbed, finally.
As well they would be. The baroquely demonic frame promises disturbances to come, but these are not what the reader might expect. Just when the narrator has come to assume that the mirror has no hidden depths, he notices discrepancies between what it shows and what appears to be present in the room where it hangs. As in the best horror movies, small details can be more unsettling than large, growling monsters. Luckily, this mirror does not reflect the cultural cliché that same-sex relationships are narcissistic by definition, and that lovers of the same gender are each looking for reflections of themselves. Instead, the mirror in the story shows an alternative vision of reality.
The author’s style is as fluid as the plots of the stories, and he makes it look effortless. Each story is distinct, and some are intensely moving. Lovers of adult fantasy will undoubtedly find something here to their liking.
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Jean Roberta is a writer based in Regina, Saskatchewan.
