“After receiving this warning she went to the bathroom to be alone because she was all shaken. She mechanically looked at herself in the mirror atop the filthy and cracked sink, full of hairs, which matched her own life so well. It seemed to her that the dark and tarnished mirror didn’t reflect any image. Could her physical existence have vanished? This illusion immediately passed and she made out her face entirely distorted by cheap little mirror, her nose as huge as a clown’s papier-mâché nose. She looked at herself and lightly thought: so young and already so rusted.”
Note used in the 58th paragraph of The Hour of the Star. The handwriting is by Clarice and by Olga Borelli (observation between parentheses).