The mirror

THE MIRROR


In the reception room of a four-star hotel, just behind the visitors' chairs, hung a large mirror in a thick wooden frame.

It had been in the hotel since it opened a little over a hundred years ago, though nobody realised its true age now. It had resided in various rooms over the years, and reflected many things - more things than it could remember.

For the last thirty or so years the reception was where it dwelt, watching people go in and out. The mirror couldn’t work out exactly when it began to watch the world that passed in front of it. For as long as it could remember it had reflected images like all mirrors were meant to, but at some point – maybe eighty years ago – it had learnt to watch too. It was very proud that it could watch. None of the newer mirrors upstairs could do that, it was sure.

Every reflection it gave left just a tiny piece of itself behind.

Mirrors are not supposed to watch, thought the mirror. It didn’t always know exactly what it was watching. There were always too many things to reflect all at the same time to make watching easy. But it knew that it was watching.

Once it had been placed in the hallway on the second floor, opposite a picture of an old house. That was about fifty years ago. It was then that it recognised that it had painted that painting, over a hundred years ago, when the hotel had just opened. It had painted the painting and given it to the owner, who had hung it on the wall.