Once there was a poor peasant, Jan Skiba by name. He lived with his wife and three daughters in
a one-room hut with a straw roof, far from the village. The house had a bed, a bench, and a stove, but no mirror. A mirror was a luxury for a poor peasant. And why would a peasant need a
mirror? Peasants aren’t curious about their appearance.
But this peasant did have a dog and a cat in his hut. The dog was named Burek and the cat Kot.
They had both been born within the same week. As little food as the peasant had for himself and
his family, he still wouldn’t let his dog and cat go hungry. Since the dog had never seen another dog and the cat had never seen another cat and they saw only each other, the dog thought he was a cat and the cat thought she was a dog. True, they were far from being alike by nature. The dog barked and the cat meowed. The dog chased rabbits and the cat lurked after mice. But must all creatures be exactly like their own kind? The peasant’s children weren’t exactly alike either.Burek and Kot lived on good terms, often ate from the same dish, and tried to mimic each other.
When Burek barked, Kot tried to bark along, and when Kot meowed, Burek tried to meow too.
Kot occasionally chased rabbits and Burek made an effort to catch a mouse.
The peddlers who bought goats, chickens, eggs, honey, calves, and whatever was available from
the peasants in the village never came to Jan Skiba’s poor hut. They knew that Jan was so poor
he had nothing to sell. But one day a peddler happened to stray there. When he came inside and
began to lay out his wares, Jan Skiba’s wife and daughters were bedazzled by all the pretty
doodads. From his sack the peddler drew yellow beads, false pearls, tin earrings, rings, brooches, colored kerchiefs, garters, and other such trinkets. But what enthralled the women of the house most was a mirror set in a wooden frame. They asked the peddler its price and he said a half gulden, which as a lot of money for poor peasants. After a while, Jan Skiba’s wife, Marianna, made a proposition to the peddler. She would pay him five groshen a month for the mirror. The peddler hesitated a moment. The mirror took up too much space in his sack and there was always
the danger it might break. He, therefore, decided to go along, took the first payment of five
groshen from Marianna, and left the mirror with the family. He visited the region often and he
knew the Skibas to be honest people. He would gradually get his money back and a profit
besides.
The mirror created a commotion in the hut. Until then Marianna and the children had seldom
seen themselves. Before they had the mirror, they had only seen their reflections in the barrel of water that stood by the door. Now they could see themselves clearly and they began to find
defects in their faces, defects they had never noticed before. Marianna was pretty but she had a
tooth missing in front and she felt that this made her ugly. One daughter discovered that her nose was too snub and too broad; a second that her chin was too narrow and too long; a third that her face was sprinkled with freckles. Jan Skiba too caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and grew displeased by his thick lips and his teeth, which protruded like a buck’s. That day, the women of the house became so absorbed in the mirror they didn’t cook supper, didn’t make up the bed, and neglected all the other household tasks. Marianna had heard of a dentist in the big city who could replace a missing tooth, but such things were expensive.
The girls tried to console each other that they were pretty enough and that they would find
suitors, but they no longer felt as jolly as before. They had been afflicted with the vanity of city girls. The one with the broad nose kept trying to pinch it together with her fingers to make it narrower; the one with the too-long chin pushed it up with her fist to make it shorter; the one with the freckles wondered if there was a salve in the city that could remove freckles. But where would the money come from for the fare to the city? And what about the money to buy this salve? For the first time the Skiba family deeply felt its poverty and envied the rich.
But the human members of the household were not the only ones affected. The dog and the cat
also grew disturbed by the mirror. The hut was low and the mirror had been hung just above a
bench. The first time the cat sprang up on the bench and saw her image in the mirror, she became
terribly perplexed. She had never before seen such a creature. Kot’s whiskers bristled, she began to meow at her reflection and raised a paw to it, but the other creature meowed back and raised her paw too. Soon the dog jumped up on the bench, and when he saw the other dog he became
wild with rage and shock. He barked at the other dog and showed him his teeth, but the other
barked back and bared his fangs too. So great was the distress of Burek and Kot that for the first time in their lives they turned on each other. Burek took a bite out of Kot’s throat and Kot hissed and spat at him and clawed his muzzle. They both started to bleed and the sight of blood aroused them so that they nearly killed or crippled each other. The members of the household barely managed to separate them. Because a dog is stronger than a cat, Burek had to be tied outside, and he howled all day and all night. In their anguish, both the dog and the cat stopped eating.
When Jan Skiba saw the disruption the mirror had created in his household, he decided a mirror
wasn’t what his family needed. “Why look at yourself,” he said, “when you can see and admire
the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth, with all its forests, meadows, rivers, and
plants?” He took the mirror down from the wall and put it away in the woodshed. When the
peddler came for his monthly installment, Jan Skiba gave him back the mirror and in its stead,
bought kerchiefs and slippers for the women. After the mirror disappeared, Burek and Kot
returned to normal. Again Burek thought he was a cat and Kot was sure she was a dog. Despite
all the defects the girls had found in themselves, they made good marriages. The village priest
heard what had happened at Jan Skiba’s house and he said, “A glass mirror shows only the skin
of the body. The real image of a person is in his willingness to help himself and his family and, as far as possible, all those he comes in contact with. This kind of mirror reveals the very soul of the person.”
