The Solitary Twin

by Harry Mathews

  “Wait,” Andreas interrupted. “Can you spell that?” Wicheria obliged. Andreas counted the letters. “Seven consonants, two vowels. Like the name Geoffrey couldn’t remember. Is his first name Malachi?” Wicheria: “Don’t tell me you know him?” “No. But our friend Geoffrey Hyde does. You mean to say you’re the beautiful shiksa that moved in with him?” “Moved in, no. But I hung out at his place all the time.” “I thought he’d fallen for —” “He did, in a way. We really clicked. You know he’s been hung up on this Jewish revenge shtik. I started getting him to see he was looking the wrong way, timewise. He’s still got great ideas in him.” “You should inform him that the man who sat next to him on a Pan Am flight from Sydney to Zurich in 1980 (I think), the one he wanted to hire to write his book, is living in New Bentwick and is starting up an innovation —”

  The conversation could go no further. The four-piece band that had drawn out a few hesitant dancers with “La Vie en rose” now broke into the snappier “Winchester Cathedral,” at whose first chords Wicheria grabbed a startled Andreas by the hand and pulled him toward the dance floor.

  The vocalist was getting the song right — sad words juggled by happy music:

  Winchester Cathedral

  You’re bringing me down

  You stood and you watched as

  My baby left town.

  Andreas was protesting, “But I can’t dance to this stuff!” Wicheria: “You will.” She certainly could (but she kept her first turns small to let her partner get started). He was timidly shifting from foot to foot. She was moving a shoulder or a foot or her head or hips in no recognizable order. He tried repeating one of her movements — “You’re doing steps, Andreas baby, never do steps. Just listen to the music.” (Andreas reported all this to Berenice later.) “OK. Imagine your left hip is a fixed point in space and around it the rest of you can do anything, anything.” She demonstrated.

  “Fine, you can do what I do but just once! Then you make up your own moves.” Not knowing what to do, Andreas started loosening bits of his frame, wiggling for instance. Meanwhile, to calls from the sidelines of “Go for it, Witchy!” the lady put on a show — graceful slides, spins, and leaps that set her loose bright clothes and her long hair swirling about her in savvy escalation to an apex at the end of the song — “My baby left town” repeated over the electronic din of two guitars, a double bass, an agitation of drums — an apex with Wicheria’s right leg raised high behind her in a classical arabesque. Berenice watching prayed her Andreas remembered enough from his ballet evenings to do what he should; and he did, dropping to his right knee and taking her waist in his two hands to support her arabesque now penché, her raised leg perfectly vertical, sheathed to the slight parenthesis of her underbutt in glittering-green, irregularly see-through pantyhose, held straight and pointed for five full seconds until the two dancers broke into giggles, stood up and kissed each other on the cheek, the onlookers cheered away, and Wicheria led Andreas back to our table — a happy, slightly reconditioned Andreas, and still all mine!

  8

  Mine?”

  After our lunch with John, when it became certain that neither of the twins would ever publicly tell their story, I decided to preserve these pages that I began writing months ago, the day after I met Andreas. They are not meant to replace what Andreas hoped to publish. They are no more than a chronology of our life here, a kind of journal that has now unexpectedly changed into a memoir. Now Berenice can say “me,” “we,” and “mine.” And Berenice’s new name is “I.”

  We finally met John at the same spruce and pleasant bar where he’d long ago happily accosted me. Its name is the Bentwick Arms; it serves light lunches as well as drinks, including the Sardinian vermentino that Andreas had been longing to taste ever since I’d mentioned it to him.

  John was visibly pleased to see us. He looked hale and happy; his head and forearms were bronzed from his hours at sea; he smelled of salt and fresh fish. For no reason, but with childlike glee, he told us about his latest excursion early that same morning: setting out in black night by the light of whale-oil lamps, coasting through billows of fog that only thinned an hour after the first daylight had filtered through their woolly gloom, by which time the crew had pulled up their first fine-meshed nets, Captain Edwin Donnelly having known exactly where they were (“Squid Cavern thirty foot to starboard”), “we brought up many pounds of scarlet shrimp and poddernails, enough to fill the live-well.

  “When the fog lifted and we were basking in a warm November sun boosted by a mild breeze from the sea, we spied a congress of gulls romping above a patch of whitened water a quarter mile to the north. Captain Donnelly cried out as if at market, ‘Mackerel, morwong, and fine john dory!’ We headed straight that way, and he was soon proved right. We had two nets out behind us and netted more than eight hundred pounds of those same fish, with a few dozen hake and blue moki among them. We made three long passes — the Captain complimented me on the spiral paths I took, which added greatly to my joy. The value of the catch was heightened by the abundance of terakihi among the morwong, a favorite for grilling in these parts, and by the great number of john dory, a fish prized in many lands. Our two lesser ‘mates’ joined in the excitement. (A good haul would fatten their day’s wage. We call them mates to give them a smidgeon of dignity, but in truth they are deck hands. I’m the only one the Captain trusts with the handling of our craft.)

  “Once we’d iced down our harvest it was still early morning; we chose to venture into deeper waters — perhaps a mistake, we spent two barren hours offshore where the breeze was more a cold, ruffling wind, and the two long lines we’d put out took not a single strike until, now feeling resigned and with our earlier elation souring, we turned homeward. And then our discontent was scattered: we hauled in two albacore, each close to a hundred choice pounds. Having no more ice, we secured them under water to the sides of our boat to keep them fresh. The Captain stood aft with his .30 caliber rifle in hand lest predators should appear; none did. So we came to port a happy crew again. Pale ale never tasted so good as the first stoup I drank here before you came in. And you, Andreas, what do you think of the vermentino?”

  “The best!” Andreas dreaded spoiling John’s sunny mood; but the subject he was afraid would exasperate him was the one that had prompted this meeting. He deployed prodigies of tact in retelling the same story that had so disastrously affected Paul, emphasizing his seriousness as a publisher; emphasizing the seriousness of his interest in the tale of two brothers who had organized their lives with such efficient originality; performing miracles of narrative evasion to avoid mentioning Paul by name, until at last he had to: “I asked Paul if he would write your story. He refused.”

  “I gathered as much.” John’s face was quickly shadowed with melancholy. Andreas knew better than to try and restore its cheerfulness; he made the plunge: “John, please tell the story yourself — the story of both of you. It deserves to be told. Unless you do it, some journalist, or maybe an academic, will disassemble the facts and rearrange them in a chic or respectable interpretation and call that your story. It’s bound to be a travesty of your lives. Only you can say what really happened.” (But Andreas later told me that even as he spoke these words, he thought: But there is Wicheria!)

  John: “I can’t.” I asked him, “Can’t because you don’t want to? Or maybe it frightens you?”

  “Why should it frighten me? There’s nothing shameful about it. As for wanting or not wanting, that’s irrelevant. I don’t even know what to think about that.”

  Andreas: “But it would come to matter inevitably.”

  “Perhaps. But when I said ‘I can’t,’ I meant that I’m bound not to. Paul and I have a sworn agreement not to discuss one another in public, certainly not in print. I suppose that right now I’m technically breaking my promise. But you are clearly good people, I hope we’ll become friends, the three of us. I feel that you deserve a few words
of explanation. But very few.

  “It was precisely because we knew how odd our behavior appeared to outsiders — all the more so in a community as small as this — that we came to our agreement. I think it’s worked rather well. Many people wonder; and most of them are discreet, they let us live our lives as we wish. We have friends enough, but I’d say we’re accepted with respect rather than affection. Although Captain Donnelly I think has taken me to his heart.”

  Andreas: “Do you think that it was your pact that made Paul turn me down? He did so very angrily.”

  “I don’t know. And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you! You see, our arrangement is an outcome of events long past. It’s a way of being able to live near one another without having our earlier history lead to discord or even disagreement of any kind. I can’t speak for Paul’s respect for our bargain, but as for myself, I shall never break faith with it. As I hope you can tell, I say this without a jot of anger.”

  I gave his nearby hand a reassuring squeeze; Andreas said, “None that my tetchy nerves can detect. I’m not surprised by your saying no. I suppose I shouldn’t have asked you at all. I usually feel very strongly about putting questions. It reminds me too much of the day of judgment. You start a question and it’s like starting a stone — the stone starts another stone, and soon there’s an avalanche. If you’d said yes, you’d have condemned yourself to a firestorm of inner violence — I think! But I am disappointed. Among all my ventures in implausible lives, yours would have been the crown jewel. If you had told it.

  “Now no more about that, not ever. I’d like to raise another question, one that can’t possibly threaten your peace of mind and that’s often mystified me: What brought you and your brother to New Bentwick?”

  “That is easy to answer.

  “The first item was an article in the National Geographic — you probably know it, the American travel magazine, Berenice certainly does. The article listed the town as a place worth a visit by curious travelers; it provided a short history partly to explain why it was interesting. It was discovered (so we learned) around 1875 by the writer Samuel Butler, who spoke or wrote about it to a number of very rich capitalists, of the enlightened variety, I guess one would say. It was just a village then, called something like Onipouri, mainly fishermen and a few artisans.

  “It was already a special sort of place, in its small way — for instance, the fishermen practiced what we’d call sustainable fishing, not only inshore but over a rather vast tract of ocean surrounding their bay. They’d somehow figured out that if they caught too many desirable fish, there wouldn’t be enough around for the next generation, so they laid down limits to the seasonal catch of john dory, albacore, and hake, as well as shellfish such as crayfish, pāua, scallops, and crabs. The village already exported much of its production to the south island, at first smoked or dried, and later, once they’d installed the necessary equipment, frozen, at that point extending their market to virtually the entire Commonwealth.

  “The village fishermen didn’t impose their limits only on locals but on any outsiders who visited the waters the New Bentwickers laid claim to. They even had a fleet of little gunboats to make sure no intruders left with more than their paid-up allotment of fish. Remember that at that time laissez faire capitalism was encouraged in many lands and initiatives tolerated that would be prohibited today.

  “The enlightened capitalists in any case were impressed by these practices as well as by a kind of pragmatic optimism in the village’s approach to public affairs. They formed a consortium and made a deal with its residents. The capitalists would build the first indispensable additions to the village; they would control the distribution of land and the design of the new town, and this right would pass to the successors that they designated. In exchange they would endow in perpetuity the possessions and activities of the present population, with the right to sell, rent, and bequeath them to whomever they chose, on condition that the said sales, rents, and bequests never alter the uses, nature, or functions of their possessions and livelihoods. Fishermen could continue to fish and cobblers to cobble, but they could not dispose of their properties or rights to the benefit of new enterprises. That didn’t mean much in the 1870s, but now it means no casinos, no grand hotels, no high rises.

  “And nobody’s complaining. You see the first capitalists were far wealthier than what was required for their first commitments to New Bentwick, the point being that they had a good chance of maintaining and increasing their policy of endowment and support either through their children, if any were interested, or through legacies to eligible young outsiders. Until well into the twentieth century, remember, there was no inheritance tax and virtually no income tax to limit their investments.

  “It’s astonishing how continuously the original policy has exerted its effect — look at John Bentwick, Wicheria’s guardian, he’s the great-grandson of one of the town’s founders and still promoting the place. That first generation bought all the village land for a generous price, and it also bought and incorporated thirty-three thousand acres of hinterland so that the town could become as self-sufficient in meat, bread, and produce as it already was in fish. They and their successors created little businesses — a ship chandlery, a clothing store, an outlet for farm equipment, a pharmacy-cum-infirmary, the little lodging houses and eateries; they recruited qualified craftsmen to satisfy the town’s growing needs; they helped fund the first newspaper; they invited three Christian denominations to build churches (chapels, really) and even Persians to open a mosque and a Bahai temple, and Jews to provide a synagogue; they helped these sects establish schools, and they saw to the building of secular primary and secondary schools, topping up salaries sufficiently to lure good teachers from their customary paths.

  “As the project gained in renown, it added to New Bentwick’s attractiveness, not only to teachers but to writers and artists, even to business people unconventionally inclined. The undeclared rule that the community would be English-speaking didn’t make for provinciality. From the start its directors used it to seek out immigrants not only from Britain and the United States but Australia, Canada, the Raj, Britains’s African colonies, and of course New Zealand — a vast international reservoir of human material.

  “Word kept spreading that this little community was developing according to unspoken principles that might be encapsulated in two words: what works. (However, any applicant for residency or employment who as much as whispered the word ‘Utopian’ was rejected out of hand.)

  “After we had read the National Geographic article, Paul and I did a little more research, all of it encouraging. We ended having a meeting at the New Zealand consulate in London with someone from New Bentwick itself. She told us that our presence would be most welcome; and here we are. Someone with influence must have learned about our plans, because when we arrived, I had a plethora of jobs to choose from, and the planning for Paul’s little business was waiting for his signature.”

  Andreas: “I’m not surprised by Paul’s reception, but why were you so well treated?”

  “You know, or maybe you don’t, that I was a boarder at Newell Academy, just like Paul. My record there, and the school’s recommendations, were every bit as good as his.”

  “I didn’t know that. Thanks for the pocket history of New Bentwick. We love the place, too. We’re even thinking of moving here.”

  “That’s brilliant!”

  The idea may have been brilliant, but this was the first I’d heard of it. What about my professional career?

  Yet, after all, the people of New Bentwick might make fine grist for a behaviorist’s mill. I began to feel what it truly was that I held.

  9

  The following Sunday it was Geoffrey’s and Margot’s turn to dine chez nous. Margot had already let me know that she would tell her story that evening, having first asked permission of Andreas, the other unblooded member of our group. I was surprised when she pho
ned me Saturday morning and asked if she could see me either that afternoon or the next: she had another story to tell me, one “for your ears only” that she urgently needed to confide to someone she trusted. I told her that we would be quite alone this afternoon — Andreas had a date to go fishing. Margot said she would walk over to our place around three-thirty.

  There was only one possible path she could follow, so a little after three I set out in her direction. We met on the bridge over the little brook, we smiled and exchanged hugs, and began strolling arm in arm toward our house. Until now we’d signaled our sympathy for one another in ways limited by the circumstances of our weekly gatherings; this was the first time we were together just the two of us, and I’m certain Margot was as pleased by this as I was. We didn’t talk much, perhaps no more than to name an end-of-season bird or flower; after which we’d walk on again in silence. This established between us a mode of judicious connivance; once we were settled on our west terrace over a pot of tea, Margot had no trouble in broaching her confidential subject.

  “I feel I have to start by saying this: I’m a respectable person. The people who raised me — my father was a federal judge, my mother an exemplary nurse practitioner who tended her patients at all hours of the day and night — my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all likewise thoroughly respectable. And there wasn’t a prude among them, and I’m no prude. What is it we all respect? Something like our vocations, or the ideas we have of ourselves. Respectful may be a better word for us. I worked diligently as a defender of women’s rights, and you can’t be a prude in that field and expect results — you wrangle daily about rape, abortion, intrauterine coils, bodily fluids, all the crass details of sexual life. As regards infidelity, I didn’t have much of an opinion, it seemed more like a misdemeanor than a felony in the catalogue of sexual crime — I know it does a lot of damage, but I never saw why it had to. Myself, I’d never been tempted by it.