Chapter 7 — Mrs. Rane Tells the Whole Story

She knocked at nine PM.Mrs. Rane opened the door and looked at her and said nothing, just stepped back to let her in, which was the response of someone who had known this moment was coming.Tea was made. They sat."Tell me what's happening," Mrs. Rane said.Tanvi told her. All of it — the smile she hadn't made, the still eyes, the breath from across the room, the Tuesday she couldn't remember. Her face and what it was doing without her. She told it flatly, as a list of events, because the flat telling was the only way she could tell it without the weight of it coming through.Mrs. Rane listened. She did not look alarmed. She looked the way a doctor looked when a patient described symptoms that confirmed a diagnosis — not surprised, but confirmed."How long?" Tanvi said, when she was done. "How long has this thing — whatever it is — how long has it been in that flat?"Mrs. Rane held her cup."I moved into this building in 1979," she said. "The flat was already occupied then. By a woman named Kavita. She was fifty when I moved in. She had been there since the building was built, 1963." She paused. "Kavita died in 1987. She was in the flat for three days before anyone knew. When they opened the flat—" She stopped. "The mirror was there.""The same mirror," Tanvi said."The same mirror." Mrs. Rane was looking at the puja lamp. "After Kavita, a family moved in. Husband, wife, small child. They left after two months. In the night, without telling anyone. The wife, when she left, had scratches on her arms. She said she'd fallen. She had not fallen.""And then?" Tanvi said."Then it was empty for a year. Then a man named Ramesh. He lasted six months. When he left, he could not — he could not speak properly anymore. He spoke in the wrong rhythm. Like someone translating from a language that had different sentence structures." She paused. "He recovered eventually. I heard from a cousin of his, years later. He recovered but he always said sentences wrong. He never got the grammar back." She looked at Tanvi. "And then others. Some short stays. Some longer. Each time—""Something taken," Tanvi said."Something learned," Mrs. Rane said. "That's the better word. The thing in the mirror — it doesn't destroy. It learns. Each person it encounters, it learns more about how to be a person. The grammar. The expressions. The way a person moves through the day." She set down her cup. "Ramesh lost his sentence rhythm because the thing took it to learn it. Kavita—" She paused. "I don't know what Kavita lost. She was fifty when I arrived and she was not the kind of woman who told anyone anything. But she sat in front of that mirror for hours every day. I saw through the window once. Just sitting and looking." She looked at Tanvi. "Learning.""And Reena," Tanvi said."Reena was young and alone and new to Mumbai. She was frightened and she was learning to be unfrightened." Mrs. Rane looked at her hands. "The thing is patient. It waits for the person to lower their guard. And then it begins. Slowly, at first. A small thing — an expression here, a moment there. And then more. And then—"