Theodoros held up the mirror. In it, Cărtărescu saw not his own face but a library. Endless shelves, stretching into a perspective that curved back on itself like a closed universe. On each shelf, a book. In each book, a life. And in each life, a single sentence, identical in every volume:
Theodoros stepped out of the gramophone. mircea cartarescu theodoros
Cărtărescu reached out. His hand of paper met Theodoros’s hand of mercury. And together, they stepped into the mirror—not as creator and creature, but as twins, as synapothanontes , two beings who had never existed separately and would now die together into a more permanent fiction. Theodoros held up the mirror