Pan's Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun(31)

Luisa had to hold back her tears, as she loved her mother very much, but she took the knife and hid it in the folds of her apron.

“For you, Miguel, I have a different kind of blade,” the witch said to her son, closing his fingers around the silver handle of a razor. “This will serve you as well as the kitchen knife will serve your sister. Its blade will protect you from all harm with its sharp bite, and when you grow old enough to shave, this razor will not only remove stubble from your chin, but it’ll also rid you of painful memories. Each time you use it will make your heart feel as young as a freshly shaven face. Be careful, though. Some memories we have to keep, though they cut deep. Use my gift therefore wisely, my son, and not too often.”

The next day Rocio didn’t return from the part of the forest where she gathered fresh herbs each day. Only the following morning did her children learn that a nobleman had ordered his soldiers to drown her in the millpond where she’d often taken them to ask the water about the past and the future.

Knowing the children of a witch were rarely kept alive, Luisa and Miguel hastily packed what little they owned and left the hut they called home. They found a cave on the other side of the forest, a safe distance from the mill where their mother had died. It granted them shelter from the rain and the sharp teeth of the night, and the two blades gave them food and even protected them from the Pale Man when he one day roamed the forest close to their cave.

The air already smelled of snow when a farmer poaching rabbits in the forest found them. As he and his wife were unable to have children, he took them home without asking where they came from, and the childless couple loved and raised them as their own. When they grew up, Luisa became a kitchen maid and Miguel learned to be a barber, and the two blades their mother had given to them continued to feed and protect them.

Luisa and Miguel treasured their mother’s gifts all their lives and when, many years later, they passed these gifts on to their children, both the knife and the razor were still as sharp and shiny as when Rocio had first put them in her children’s hands. As they both had only daughters, the razor was passed to Miguel’s son-in-law, whose heart was dark and cruel. One day in a fit of anger he pressed the blade to his wife’s throat. The razor wouldn’t obey him and cut his hand instead, but from that day onward, instead of removing painful memories, the razor blade brought them back for the men who used it, and poisoned them with their own darkness.





22


The Kingdoms of Death and Love


Vidal hadn’t slept well, and while he scraped his freshly washed skin with the razor, he caught himself hoping the blade would rid him of both his dark stubble and the troubling dreams that were still nesting in the shadows the morning painted in the dusty room.

The shaving cream turned the water as white as milk as it washed off the blade. Why did that remind him of his unborn son and his bleeding wife? Next to the bowl lay the pocket watch ticking away his life. Death! the silver dials seemed to warn. Maybe death was the only love in Vidal’s heart. His greatest romance. Nothing compared to it. So grand, so absolute, a celebration of darkness, of finally giving in completely. Even in death, though, there was of course the fear of failing, of fading away unnoticed and without glory, face in the dirt—or worse, ending up like his mother, in bed, sickness eating away at her body. Women died like that. Not men.

Vidal stared at his reflection. The remaining shaving cream made it look as if his flesh was already rotting. He lifted the razor so close to the glass the blade seemed to slit his throat. Was there fear in his eyes?

No.

He abruptly dropped his hand, summoning the mask of confidence that had become his second face, merciless, determined. Death is a lover to be feared and there was only one way to overcome that fear—by being her executioner.

Maybe Vidal all alone in front of the mirror, courting her with his razor, sensed that Death had come to the mill. Maybe he heard her silent footsteps on the stairs to the room where his pregnant wife was tossing restlessly in bedding drenched with sweat.

Ofelia heard Death’s footsteps too. She was standing by her mother’s bed caressing her face. It was as hot as if life were being burned to ashes inside her. Was her unborn brother afraid too? Ofelia laid her hand on the curve his tiny body made under the blankets. Did he feel the heat of his mother’s fever on his tiny face? Ofelia was tired of being angry with him. It was this place that made her mother sick, not him—and the only one to be blamed was the Wolf. In fact, she caught herself yearning to have her brother for company, to hold him and take care of him the way the girl carved in the column in the labyrinth took care of the child in her arms. Sometimes we need to see what we feel so we can know about it.

Ofelia had come to her mother’s room to do as the Faun had told her. She’d brought a bowl of milk and the mandrake he’d given her, although the root still disgusted her. It began to stir the moment it touched the milk, stretching its pale limbs like a newborn. Its arms and legs were as chubby as a baby’s; even the noises it made resembled the muffled squeals of a newborn. And when Ofelia’s mother moaned in her bed, the mandrake turned like a child toward the sound, as though listening for its mother’s voice.

Ofelia had to smile despite her disgust. It kept squealing softly as she carried the bowl over to the bed. It wasn’t easy placing the bowl underneath without spilling the milk. Ofelia had to crawl under the bed to push the bowl out of sight and for a moment she was worried the mandrake would wake her mother as it started crying like a baby. A hungry baby. Of course! Ofelia bit into her finger and pressed it until two drops of blood spilled into the milk. Only then, as she lay under the bed, did she hear footsteps.