From
A The White-eyed Saleswoman:

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     When she turned thirty-four, her papa and mama died on the same day. Papa went first, as he was, half-sitting on the pillows inserted by his daughter. Mama looked askance at Papa, saw him sitting there with an open mouth, with his head dropping unnaturally to the side, and blindly looking past her, so she dropped her head in Papa's direction and began looking past him.

     After their death, Alexandra cried every day for two months. Then suddenly her tears had run out. Walking around the house with a dry face, she found herself in front of the mirror, looked in, habitually, for no reason at all, but instead of herself, she saw there a woman with marble-white eyes in a disappearing face.

     She got frightened, jumped back, circled her small room for a long time and approached the mirror from the side. Then, horrified, as if she were looking into the open jaws of a beast, she stretched her neck, and, completely contorted, inserted her head into the reflection.

     From the deep rectangle, as if from a hole in a white wall leading into a frightening unknown world, a vague female face stared at her with marble eyes. Alexandra forced herself to keep looking, but no matter how much she looked or turned, no matter from what angle she looked, she could not clearly see the woman's features.

     She decided that all this was due to nerves, that after some time, perhaps as soon as the next morning, everything would become clear again. As for now, why should she be upset? Now, on the contrary, she should be merry. It does not matter what the others will see; from now on, at least for a while, she will not see her hated face in any mirror. For a while, she will see in mirrors only what she wants to see. For instance, she will see beautiful women.

     She smiled, went away from the mirror, and, humming a song, sat down at her sewing machine. For some pretty girl, she was making a maxi saturated by tears. The skirt's pattern spiraled in a whirlwind of bright, contrasting flowers, flying around the waist and down, around the hips and down, around the legs and down, and finally dropping to the floor. She was sewing with a dry happy face, as if she were making this beautiful skirt for herself. Hungry, she went to the kitchen, fried a lot of potatoes with onions, ate it all, went to bed, and slept like a log.

     She woke up in the morning with a feeling of unusual anxiety. She thought that she had had a strange dream. She stayed in bed for a long time, thinking about the woman with white eyes. She got up, went to the bathroom, and on her way back to bed she saw in the mirror two white eyes on a face that kept slipping away.

     The face pretended to be a beauty, but the beauty still had the same marble-white eyes. It was, rather, a bust of a beauty, a corpse with eyes pecked out, a specter, a vampire, a zombie, or an imp. She crossed herself three times, knocked on wood three times with her knuckle and spat three times across her left shoulder.

     Yesterday's thought that she had gone mad required some proof, but how could she go to a psychiatrist with that? The psychiatrist would listen to her story, look intently into her eyes, bend over the writing table and write for a long, long time. In the end, the story of the reflection would turn into a lifelong story of mental illness that the doctor would classify as paranoia with complications. He would brilliantly support his false diagnosis describing the shock caused by the bus accident, her endlessly-sick parents and, in general, her wasted life.

     Beginning with this daybreak, she did not leave the mirror for God only knows how long-an hour, a day, perhaps even a year-nobody would ever know how long because she stood in front of the mirror without any witnesses at all. She stood there exactly as much time as was needed to come up with the usable, non-psychiatric answer to the riddle of her eyes.

     She formulated this answer as follows: Drop after drop, her tears erased, washed out, and dissolved the particles of pigment in her corneas until they turned white.

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