by John Norman
One supposes that fear of the dark is recognizably irrational, but there are, of course, irrationalities which have their utilities, or had them, at least at one time, and now linger in the hereditary coils, embedded for better or for worse in the fiber and sinew, the dispositions, of a species, things like the salt content of the blood, with its recollection of the fluid chemistries of ancient seas.
Dreadful surprises, of course, need not lurk only in the darkness.
The eye of the day is no stranger to horror.
It regards it with equanimity.
The experiences I have in mind do not require gloomy hours or dismal settings. Indeed the routine trappings of night might serve to mitigate the shock of such surprising occasions, facilitating and encouraging as it would interpretations in terms of fatigue, moods, and shadows. Indeed, if such experiences occurred only under conditions of poor lighting, conjoined perhaps with inattention, exhaustion or stress, it would doubtless be easier to discount them. Unfortunately, perhaps, they can occur, or intrude, under conditions which might seem to maximize the ease and acuity of observation. For example, they can occur, unexpectedly, as one glances into the mirror in a public washroom, or in the showroom of a furniture shop, in a hand mirror left lying on a dresser, and so on. Too, a polished surface may give them a habitat, or a way of appearing, or intruding, even the surface of calm, shaded water.
One is familiar, of course, with the myth of Narcissus, who, supposedly enamored of his own image in a pond, or mistaking it for a lover, one as beautiful as himself, sought to embrace it, and drowned. Doubtless the story, as commonly told, and understood, is intended to convey a warning against the advisability of too great a self-love. So it is a good story, one supposes. On the other hand it has occurred to me that at the root of this story, and rather different from its common, even contrived, interpretation, there might lie another reality, one rather different. Perhaps what Narcissus saw was quite like himself, and yet was not himself, and that, as he watched, perhaps in horror, it reached up from the water, and, its bared arms dripping, seized him, and drew him beneath the surface.
It is just a thought.
I have occasionally seen things in the mirror, which I have not understood.
There are, of course, one-way mirrors, in which one side is a mirror and the other side a window. In this way, one does not know, of course, when one is before such a mirror, if one is, unbeknownst to oneself, being viewed from the other side. But I do not have such devices in mind, at least not in the usual sense.
Commonly there is nothing behind the mirror but a wall.
It is not a window.
To be sure, a mirror might be replaced with something else, and then, in a sense, it would not be a mirror, but a window.
What one took to be mirror might be a window, through which one might be viewed.
More importantly, perhaps, through which one might view. Surely you and others have regarded one another through a window, and thought little of it.
To be sure, the mind is a large and strange place, not well understood, and it may have many corridors, leading to different rooms, not all of which are familiar. Perhaps through such rooms, as through vision, or touch, we might reach other realities, or they reach us.
Due to the contrivances of atoms and fields a soundless, colorless world may give us sunsets and symphonies.
One wonders if there is such a world, so comforting a world, one of atoms and fields. It is a bold hypothesis, a reassuring guess, a marvelously constructed defense against incomprehensibility. We salute it, and wonder if it is true. The only world we know is that of our first-person experience. Beyond that what do we know?
One wonders if all the marbles of the universe fit into our little sack.
Doubtless, but one wonders about it.
What if they don’t?
You have probably all, at one time or another, looked into a mirror, perhaps from the side, and seen something watching you, from behind, or the side. You turn about, and it is gone, of course. And you look again into the mirror, and you note that it, whatever it was, if it was anything, has left.
The following has occurred to me.
Let us suppose this has happened to you, or to someone I know, perhaps a friend.
Perhaps what you took to be your reflection took you for its reflection. And what if you were its reflection?
Is it as interested in seeing you, as you might be in seeing it?
The most interesting aspect of this matter, from my point of view, is that, recently, I can detect no one in the mirror, no one. I can, for example, see the bed, the dresser, the wall, the picture on the wall, and such, but I cannot see anyone, not anyone. For example, I cannot see me. I cannot see my reflection. It is not there. I should not have broken the mirror, I suppose. But I was trying to drive away what was on the other side.
The mirror has now been repaired, and I can press my hands against it, but I cannot penetrate its surface.
The world here seems much like the world I left.
Sometimes I see the face in the mirror.
I have clawed at it, but I can only scratch the inside of the mirror. The gouges are deep.
I suspect it will want to go home sooner or later. Perhaps we will pass one another in the corridor.
Il Jettatore
Mr. Silone loved his child, deeply. That is why he blinded it, holding a lighted candle to its eyes.
If a benign rationalization were possible for such an atrocity, inflicted on a helpless infant, one supposes one might have argued a zealous father’s sincere, but misguided desire to protect a child from the evils of the world, to preserve him from most of its moral contaminations, from its frequent offensiveness to a delicate purity of spirit. That was the tack taken by Mr. Silone’s attorney, hoping for understanding and sympathy on the part of the court, and a mitigated sentence. This defense, however, was belied by Mr. Silone himself, who not only refused to accept it, but took pains to deny it, categorically. In passing, it might be mentioned, as well, that a defense on the grounds of insanity, temporary or otherwise, whatever might serve, despite what would have been its obvious tactical, judicial utility, was not proposed. Mr. Silone would have none of it. He was coldly, even unpleasantly, sane. This was his view, that of the court, and that of the court psychiatrist. To be sure, he did have certain unusual beliefs. His cognitive field, so to speak, to have recourse to a technical term, was different from that of many in the court, though not from that of all. We, of course, tend to dismiss as aberrational, or as insane, cognitive fields which differ from our own, but, interestingly, we are customarily disinclined to accord this liberty to others, should our own cognitive fields be put in question.
Mr. Silone’s explanation of his deed, which had been done with forethought, and executed with all due, terrifying deliberation, was that the child was jettatore. Mr. Silone was found guilty, and was led from the courtroom. He had to be led because he himself was blind as he had, shortly after blinding the child, gone into the kitchen, taken up a butcher knife and gouged out his own eyes. You see, he believed himself, as well, to be jettatore. The curse was a lingering one, it seemed, and flowed with dark blood. Not everyone in his line, of course, was afflicted. To borrow a metaphor from biology, however inappropriate it may be in this context, one might say that the trait was recessive, or recessivelike. Mr. Silone believed himself, as we have seen, to have the trait, and he saw it, or thought he saw it, in his child. In his way, he was trying to save the child, and, I suppose, in a similar way, to save, or redeem, himself.
Mr. Silone went to prison, but did not survive his sentence. Shortly after his incarceration several cases of cholera had broken out in the prison. This sort of thing, with one disease or another, was not unprecedented in that place, a hole famed at the time for the laxity of its sanitary precautions. It was during the second week of the epidemic that Mr. Silone was f
ound dead, his neck broken, apparently by a fall from the roof of one of the prison buildings. It seems he had somehow found his way to the roof, though for what reason none knew. He had then fallen or, perhaps, it is a possibility, had thrown himself from its height to the stones below. An alternative hypothesis, whispered about, was that he had been taken to the roof by other inmates of the place and cast from it. It is known that some had ventured to explain the outbreak of the cholera within those dank, forbidding walls by the presence amongst them of a jettatore. Even if one were to credit the existence of such a thing as a jettatore, it seems that any powers which Mr. Silone, or anyone like him, might have possessed would have been rendered harmless by his self-mutilation. Whether or not this argument would have carried weight with ignorant, panic-stricken felons, of course, is not clear. In any event, however it occurred, Mr. Silone was found one afternoon in the prison yard, at the base of a wall, dead, his neck broken.
Cursed be he that smiteth his neighbour secretly.
And all the people shall say, Amen.
Deuteronomy, xxvii, 24.
Some see in the above quotation from the Bible, here given in the translation of the Authorized King James Version, a reference to the jettatore. The matter, however, is obscure. One might suppose that the curse is rather leveled at some naturalistic malefaction, for example, ambush, or, more likely, and more subtly, secret vilification, defamation of character, calumny, slander, or such. On the other hand, given the primitive nature of the times, possibly relevant data from cultural anthropology, Biblical research, the higher criticism, and such, it seems plausible to suppose that the curse is leveled against those who might perpetrate evil by arcane means, and here one thinks of incantations, spells, sorcery, diabolic confederacy, and other unsavory possibilities. And it would be somewhere within this range that one might expect to lie the powers of the jettatore, particularly if they were intentionally, malevolently exercised. Admittedly, however, as indicated, the scope of the curse is not clear. It need not, I suppose, even be interpreted as referring to preternatural phenomena, and, if it does, at least including them, which seems likely, it certainly need not be understood as referring, even implicitly, to the jettatore. It is not clear that the author of the verse was acquainted with the concept of the jettatore. He may or may not have been. In short, the devout, given the brevity, and consequent obscurity, of the verse in question, are not obliged on religious grounds to accept the existence of the jettatore. Its existence or nonexistence is an independent question. It is my surmise, however, that the author of the verse would, in fact, have been cognizant of the concept, that of the jettatore, and, if a man of his time, would have feared, or respected, or, at least, been wary of one whom he supposed possessed the powers in question. This surmise is based on the fact that the concept of the jettatore is far more ancient than the Biblical text under consideration. It is pervasive in a diversity of human cultures, these scattered throughout the world. It is almost certain that it predates the working of metals and the founding of cities in the great river valleys. It is probable that it was familiar to the tall, skin-clad, spear-bearing hunters of elk and mammoth.
There is no doubt that the power of the jettatore could be exercised with malevolent intent. On the other hand, it is equally clear that, in many cases, the power is regarded by its possessor as a curse in itself. It can cause evil, or ill luck, or misfortune, or illness, or accident, or death, inadvertently. It is something which can spring alive within the possessor, against his will, to his horror, without warning, and produce its deleterious, cruel effects. Its carrier, like the carrier of a virulent, lethal disease, may be the most innocent of all creatures. Often its possessor may be the epitome of honesty, decency and humane virtue; he may be the sweetest, kindest, most benevolently intentioned individual in the world and yet, about himself, to his own dismay and misery, create fear, havoc and injury. This appears to have been the case with Mr. Silone.
Let us suppose, for the simple purposes of speculation, that there might exist a jettatore. Let us suppose such a thing were possible. Since its powers seem often exercised despite the best will of, and against the best will of, the subject in question, that suggests that personal malevolence, recourse to magic, alliances with demonic forces, and such, are not likely to be involved. This might seem to open the possibility of some sort of demonic possession, or such, but neither those who find themselves afflicted by, or cursed with, the powers of the jettatore, nor those who might accept, acclaim and zealously exercise such powers with malevolent intent, seem to manifest the customary syndrome commonly associated with demonic possession, by clergy, or alleged demonic possession, by secular physicians. This would seem, for most practical purposes, to rule out a preternatural cause, at least as commonly understood. This is not to deny the possibility of something ill understood, and possibly subconscious. In passing, one might note that the jettatore is not localized to any particular ethnic, cultural or religious orientation. The devils of the Mediterranean are not those of Tibet. The devils of the Zulu are not those of the Eskimo.
My own hypothesis, were I to give credence to the myths of the jettatore, would be that there is a life form, or, perhaps better, a life force, which can infect, or inhabit certain forms of mammalian life, utilizing them, in effect, as a host, customarily humans, but, in some cases, it seems, other mammalian forms, most commonly, dogs. This is surprising, incidentally, from a sociological or anthropological point of view, for one would expect society to impose its prepossessions and terrors on, of all possible animals, the common cat, regarding it as the most likely host of the jettatore. Historically, our relationship to the domestic cat has been one of ambivalence. It was said, in the Middle Ages, that in the eyes of cats one could see the fires of hell. The cat is the usual familiar of the witch, and so on. Millions were destroyed, ceremoniously burned and hung. This is ironic, as well as tragic, for cats would have been useful in reducing the population of black rats, who carried fleas in their fur, which carried in their blood, and transmitted in their bite, the virus of the Black Death. In any event, the animal host of the jettatore, when the host is an animal, is commonly a dog. It is almost as though the form, or force, knew the favored position of dogs in society, how they were cared for, prized, and loved. Too, of course, dogs need have little fear of larger, dangerous animals, as cats, for example, must fear dogs, compared to them larger, more dangerous, animals. The dog, then, would be a safer, more secure host. Also, of course, statistically, dogs tend to live in a more intimate relationship with humans than do cats, who prefer, it seems, to care for their own affairs and live their own lives. In such a way, one supposes a form, or force, might with greater ease change its tenancies, should it be so inclined, from one host to another.
But there is, of course, no such thing as the jettatore.
There is the argument of consensus gentium for its existence, but the argument, interesting as it may be, is inconclusive. Briefly, the argument is from a supposed universal, or nigh universal, consensus, to the conclusion that the object of the consensus, say, the relevant proposition or belief, must be true, given that it is so widely believed. A simple form of the argument might be: Everybody believes it, so it must be so. Construed mistakenly as a deductive argument, it is obviously possible, at least logically possible, which is what matters here, for the premise-set to be true and the conclusion false; and this, of course, shows that the argument is invalid. Construed however as an inductive argument, which it surely is, though this seems to have has been little noticed by logicians, it becomes a much more interesting argument. Inductive arguments are not divided into those which are valid and those which are invalid. All inductive arguments are invalid; if one could be valid, it would discover itself, perhaps to its own embarrassment, not an inductive argument at all, but a deductive one, having met the criterion for deductive validity, namely, that it would be logically impossible for its premise-set to be true and its conclusion false. Inductive a
rguments may be divided into those which are good and those which are not, or, perhaps better, into those which are legitimately convincing, or persuasive, and those which are not. For example, one might regard an argument to the effect that everyone, or almost everyone, believes that food is necessary to sustain life is a good reason for supposing that that is true. To be sure, the belief does not make it true, but presumably the universality, or near universality, of the belief is best explained by the fact that it is true, that there do not seem to be counterinstances, and so on. Similarly universal, or near universal, beliefs that crocodiles and tigers are dangerous does not logically imply that these forms of life are dangerous, but the universality, or near universality, of the belief gives us good inductive reason to be circumspect in our relationships, should we choose to have them, with such creatures. If everyone believes something, or if a belief is sufficiently widely spread, it seems likely that it will be true. It may not be true, of course, but the fact that it is so generally believed is, all things being equal, a point in its favor. To be sure, generality of belief is no substitute for reason, logic, evidence, research, observation, experimentation, investigation, and such. Belief, per se, seldom makes things true, but, on the whole, things which are true are more likely to be believed than things which are false. We tend to learn from others; the human race tends get on as a whole. On the other hand, of course, there have been instances where the consensus-gentium argument, good as it often is, has misled its practitioners. For example, the fact that all people, or most people, once believed that the earth was flat, and stationary and the center of the universe was ignored by the universe. The argument in question, despite its impressive track record, did not win that one.