Analysis of the hyperfiction

“The Glass Snail”

Please, before starting your reading take into account:

TEXT IN WHITE: written by Mar Amorós Portero

TEXT IN RED: paragraphs taken from the “Glass Snail” by Milorad Pavic

Once we are sitting in front of the computer, keeping our eyes at the screen we can appreciate two different ways of reading the introductory chapter. Of course, we can read it several times in different order, so, we might discover other ways of creating this tale.

The two options given are: to begin with Miss Hatshepsut or Mr. David Senenmut, Architect.

In my case, as a woman, destiny took me to choose Miss Hatshepsut’s chapter at first, so let’s see how it was structured and how the story was developed.

When we click to this option, a new link appears and we begin with her story. The color of the site (near salmon), an image of two glasses and two almond eyes go with this first part of the text. In this first link, the author introduces his character, who lives in the beautiful city of Belgrade.

Miss Hatshepsut is a salesgirl in a lingerie store, she lives in the beautiful Belgrade and from her window she is able to see the Danube and the Sava. The night before she had a weird dream were “the wine had tied itself in a knot and spouted in two jets, simultaneously filling two glasses.”

On her way to work, near the corner of the newspaper kiosk, she sees a gentleman. She decides to stay next to him, and with her left hand she takes the first thing she is able to steal from the gentleman’s pocket. Of course, he does not realize it, so, this man leaves the kiosk and gets into a car and disappears.

Meanwhile, our woman stands in Teraziye Boulevard.

After reading it, again we have to click on the right hand and we are taken to the next part of the story.

Once Miss Hatshepsut is saved from her little robbery, she takes a little mirror out of her bag and looks herself in it, she is proud of her image. So proud, that she even kisses the mirror, leaving a mark of her lipstick. But, as she always does, when she steals something, she has to give also something. It is something like a ritual:

“The job was successfully completed and Miss Hatshepsut breathed a sigh of relief. She entered the lingerie store where she worked as if reborn, as if she had spent hours having a massage, steaming in a sauna, or sweating away on various devices at an exercise gym. The feeling of loneliness vanished as usual when she took this line of action. Always the same pattern. Steal one thing, give away another. And to different people. Not choosing what or to whom. Sometimes, circumstances forced her to change the order—give first, steal after. But this time everything went according to plan.”

Later, when she is alone in the store, she has the chance of discovering “what-the-hell” she has stolen from the pocket of that man she saw in the kiosk. Just a simple lighter. Well, at least, it was “expensive and brand-new” “The red camelskin bore the imprint “MOSES III” and at the top of the lighter were engraved the following words: IF YOU STRIKE ME THREE TIMES, YOUR WISH WILL BE GRANTED.

Suddenly, a new costumer comes into the store. A young man, carrying a tiny box wrapped in gold paper topped with a bow. Leaving the raincoat and box down on a small table, he asks her in a shy and warm voice: “I’d like to buy a nightdress. It’s a Christmas present for my wife. She wears size 8”.

This voice creates in her a weird feeling: “The warmth of that voice suggests a summer night somewhere high between the steps of a lonely woman”, Miss Hatshepsut thinks.

She slid the ladder across in order to take that size, she immediately feels his eyes on her. When she descends from the ladder, with her leg she knocks his little gold box off the table, so, the box is separated from his raincoat, maybe he won’t notice and it will be hers!

When she brings him the nightdress, he asks her if she can put it on that nightdress, adding that his wife is more or less about the same build as her.

“I’ll just put it on in the cubicle and you’ll be able to see how it looks”

As she always used to do, she stole the box, but gave him the lighter when he didn’t notice, she left it in his pocket.

So, when she comes back wearing that sexy nightdress, he, looking at her stunned, tells her: “You know, even with the best will in the world, I can’t buy this nightdress. You look so lovely in it that, in the evening, whenever my wife puts it on, I would be forced to think of you… And that wouldn’t be right. You do understand, don’t you? Thanks, anyway, and good night…”

As he leaves the store, ignoring he is leaving there the box he was bringing, she, all excited, stared after him down the street.

When she unpacks the little gold box she discovers a “beautiful glass snail filled with silver powder, sealed with pink wax, with a wick in the center. It looked like a festive candle”

At this point of our reading, we arrive to the end of the chapter, or in other words, now it’s the time to see things from the point of view of David Senenmut.

The story begins with the newly divorced wife of young architect David Senenmut. Every detail given at the beginning of the story seems to indicate that Senenmut’s ex wife is Miss Hatshepsut, but suddenly is easy to give away this idea and we begin to see the connection between the ex wife, David Senenmut and Miss Hatshepsut. If I have mentioned that at the very beginning of this part is easy to connect both stories is because both women feel lonely that morning and both of them also seem to be used to look through the window and cast a glance at the two rivers.

But, if we keep on going with our reading, we discover that the ex wife and Miss Hatshepsut are not the same woman. We easily find it out when we are told that Senenmut’s ex wife bought “a beautiful glass snail filled with pink powder and sealed with pink wax with a wick in the center”. We appreciate now the connection of this two parts of the same story, built from different perspectives. This is the gift for her ex husband! So, we detect that this is the little box that Miss Hatshepsut opens in the store when David leaves.

Coming back to our story, the ex wife planned writing a little dedication on the snail’s shell, but, “she had no faith in words. She knew that language is only a map of man’s thoughts, feelings, and memories… Like all maps, she thought, language is a picture of what is to be represented but reduced hundreds of thousands of times. A vastly miniaturized picture of human feelings, thoughts, and memories…”

David no longer lived in that house, because weeks ago they had divorced. He had rented an apartment, but he still kept the keys of his ex wife’s house, he was allowed to visit the old apartment always he wanted with the condition of not being there the ex wife.

So, Mr. Senenmut, as usual, went to his ex apartment when he knew she would not be there. He couldn’t resist the temptation of stealing the gold box he saw in her apartment. He picked it and left the apartment.

It’s curious, but it seems that both characters, David and Hatshepsut, like stealing and committing little thefts.

“He went down the street […] looking to see in which bar he could steal something else […] through the window of a lingerie store he noticed a pile of nightdresses on the counter […] he went into the store […] there was a young salesgirl inside who would just suit his purpose […] he cast a glance at the nightdresses […] none of them was size 8 “

When he entered he ask her for a nightdress of size 8, explaining that it was his wife’s size. So, the young lady, Miss Hatshepsut, climbed the ladder up in order to get the article requested, while he was trying to steal a size 6 of the same nightdress. As we can see, there are lots of crossroads in this story, because, as she tries to take away his box from his raincoat, he is trying to steal a nightdress. Both of them like stealing!

If she accepts his request of putting on the nightdress it’s just because she wants to be the owner of that little gold box.

When she comes out of the cubicle, in his mind this sounds: “It’s as if I’m seeing her for the first time. Whenever this happens, it’s like you have seen someone in a previous life. This one would be worth building houses for, being her guardian, anything, babysitting her children, becoming her worshipper or her friend…”

Anyway, instead of telling her what he is thinking of, he tells her that the nightdress is pretty expensive, so, he leaves the store. When he gets at home, he listens to the recorded messages. He’s got one, of course, from his ex wife. She tells him in it that she has already noticed that he went to her apartment and took, as he always uses to, something. In this case, it was just the Christmas present she bought for him.

Sadly, he cannot remember where or when he could have forgotten this box. While searching the gold box, he discovers something in his pockets that he is not able to recognize, a lighter! He reads the words written on the lighter: “If you strike me three times, your wish will be granted”.

Once we are at this point, we begin with a new chapter called The Daughter Who Might Have Been Called Neferure. As I said before, when he gets out of the store, he comes back to his apartment, but as he didn’t pay when he had been thrown out of that place, so he spends the night in the nearest hotel. The following day he rents another apartment and he tries to find out where he could have forgotten the box. That’s when Miss Hatshepsut comes to his mind, and he decides to go to the store again. With the nightdress he stole the day before, he buys a paper gift bag and places inside the nightdress.

Holding out this gift, he tells her: “I’ve come to apologize, Miss. Yesterday, I played a trick on you and that isn’t nice. I don’t have a wife and I didn’t want to buy a nightdress. I just wanted to see you in the nightdress. You looked so lovely in it that I couldn’t sleep all night. I could hardly wait for the shops to open so I could buy you an identical one as present”.

She notices easily that the nightdress is size 6, instead size 8, which was the one she put on the day before. Anyway, they keep on talking and he asks her if she had found a little package wrapped in gold paper, of course, her answer is NO.

In this surrealistic conversation between two “thefts” , Miss Hatshepsut cuts off his breath when she ask him what is he doing for Christmas Eve, and she adds the question of: “Is there a way of disappearing unnoticed from this world?”

“From her eyes you could see that eternity is asymmetrical”.

Instead of answering her question, he replies with another question. He asks her if she had a daughter once, years and years ago. Her weird answer is that she might have one long time ago, but, nowadays, she does not have any child, and that’s why she spends her Christmasses alone. She keeps on talking and offers him to visit her place for Christmas Eve and look after her. She gives him her address, and they kiss.

He knows the name of the daughter she doesn’t have, and the child’s name was Neferure.

At this point, we arrive to the Second Crossroads. We are told that it’s up to us where to go; we are given two different endings. One of them will brind us to a tragic ending, the other one, ends happily. In this analysis we are going to read both endings.

I first chose the happy ending, maybe for being positive.

The Lighter (the happy ending)

It is Christmas Eve, and while Miss Hatshepsut is waiting for him at her apartment, he is at her ex wife’s apartment taking a bath and selecting a bottle of blue women’s champagne called “Blu”. When he arrives, she gives him a Christmas present, of course, it’s the one he had forgotten at the store days before, but instead of having a pink powder it has a blue powder. He also has something for her, it is a lighter. Well, the lighter she took from the pocket of the man she saw near the kiosk!

After having a chat, they want to light the candle, so, he does it once, but Miss Hatshepsut wants him to respect what’s written on it, because their wish only will be granted if they strike it three times. Senenmut does what she wants twice, but nothing happens. He tells her that it is not going to grant any wish and her answer is: “Oh, yes it is, believe me”, and those words are followed by a kiss that he had never experimented before.

After that long and hot kiss, in the floor were lying the discarded instructions on how to work the lighter:

“WARNING! DANGER! Keep away from fire. This is not a lighter. It is a special weapon. It is filled with dynamite and will explode after it is struck for the third consecutive time.”

This is the end of our happy story.

Christmas Candle (tragic ending)

It is Christmas Eve, and Miss Hatshepsut is carefully making up for her date, she is waiting for Senenmut. She is feeling fine and she is satisfied with the way she looks that day. The doorbell rings, Senenmut is there, bringing a bottle of wine. They sit down next to each other, and from the piece of furniture in the living room she withdraws the box with the glass snail, she gives it to him. When he opens it, he is like taken aback, but quickly he tells her that her present is lovely. He adds that he also has a gift for her, he gives her a white gift bag scattered with tiny mirrors. For her surprise, it is the lighter she stole from that man in the kiosk!

“Miss Hatshepsut was a little concerned about the way the evening was going. Now it was her turn to be disappointed”

But, as they like each other, why should they loose their chance of having a great Christmas Eve for two weird gifts? The date has just begun, so, Miss Hatshepsut, trying to smooth things over, tells him that she has always known his name.

After this, she tells him to light the candle while she prepares and brings supper. When he strikes the lighter for the first time and lights the candle, she forces him to light it two more times, or their wish won’t be granted. He obeys her and

“when the lighter was struck for the first time, a powerful explosion blew the apartment and those in it to kingdom come. Only the names remained. And they can be found in any history of Egypt.”

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