Tale for the Mirror Read Online Free Page A

heart held no ruse other than the pretty guile of the Virginian, and I never heard her utter a dialectical word. Had she had the luck to achieve a similar success in “Lenchburg” her response would have been the same—here, within a circle somewhat larger but still closed, the julep was minted for all. She lived for her friends, who happened to be carrying cards instead of leaving them.
    She did not, however, die for her friends. Every newspaper reader, of course, knows how she died. She was blown up in that explosion in a union hall on Nineteenth Street, the one that also wrecked a delicatessen, a launderette and Mr. Kravetz’s tailoring shop next door. The union had had fierce anti-pro-Communist troubles for years, with beatings and disappearances for years, and when Ginny Doll’s remains, not much but enough, were found, it was taken for granted that she had died in the Party. The Communist press did nothing to deny this. Some maintained that she had been wiped out by the other side; others awarded her a higher martyrdom, claiming that she had gone there equipped like a matronly Kamikaze, having made of herself a living bomb. Memorial services were held, the Ginevra Leake Camp Fund was set going, and she was awarded an Order of Stalin, second class. She is a part of their hagiolatry forever.
    But I happen to know otherwise. I happen to know that she was on Nineteenth Street because it was her shopping neighbor-hood, and because I had spoken to her on the telephone not an hour before. She was just going to drop a blouse by at Mr. Kravetz’s, she said, then she’d meet me at 2:30 at McCutcheon’s, where we were going to pick out some gros-point she wanted to make for her Flint & Horner chairs.
    I remember waiting for her for over an hour, thinking that she must be sweet-talking Mr. Kravetz, who was an indifferent tailor but a real person. Then I phoned Ida, who knew nothing, and finally caught my train. We left on vacation the next day, saw no papers, and I didn’t hear of Ginny Doll’s death until my return.
    When I went down to see Ida, she was already packing for Lynchburg. She had been left all Ginny Doll’s worldly goods and an annuity; the rest of Aunt Tot’s money must have gone you-know-where.
    “Miss Charlotte, you pick yourself a momento,” said Ida. We were standing in the bedroom, and I saw Ida’s glance stray to the bureau, where two objects reposed in nature morte. “I just could’n leave ’em at the morgue, Miss Charlotte,” she said. “An’ now I can’t take ’em, I can’t throw ’em out.” It was Ginny Doll’s hat, floated clear of the blast, and her false teeth.
    I knew Ida wanted me to take them. But I’m human. I chose the music box. As I wrapped it, I felt Ida’s eye on me. She knew what noblesse oblige meant, better than her betters. So I compromised, and popped the teeth in too.
    When I got home, I hid them. I knew that the children, scavengers all, would sooner or later come upon them, but it seemed too dreadful to chuck them out. Finally, it came to me. I taped them in a bitty box, masqued with a black chiffon rose, and took them to our local florist, who sent them to a florist in Lynchburg, to be wreathed and set on Mrs. Leake’s grave.
    Nevertheless, whenever I heard the children playing the music box, I felt guilty. I had somehow failed Ginny Doll, and the children too. Then, when Mr. Khrushchev’s speech came along, I knew why. I saw that no one but me could clear Ginny Doll’s name, and give her the manifesto she deserves.
    Comrades! Fellow members of Bourgeois Society! Let there be indignation in the hall! It is my duty to tell you that Ginevra Leake, alias Virginia Darley, alias Ginny Doll, was never an enemy of Our People at all. She never deserted us, but died properly in the gracious world she was born to, inside whose charmed circle everyone, even the Juniuses, are cousins of one another! She was an arch-individualist, just as much as Stalin. She was a