The Fahrenheit Twins

by Michel Faber

  ‘Empty!’ cried his sister.’But it was full when we set off! Did the dogs eat it when we weren’t looking? Did it fall out, maybe, as we were moving along?’

  ‘No … ’ Marco’cain was pensive, grappling with ambiguities. ‘I shouldn’t have said it was empty. It has some … ’ – he rummaged – ‘some big crumpled-up papers in it, and a heavy book called … Principia Anthropological.’

  The Fahrenheit twins stood for a while with the hamper at their feet, warming their hands inside their armpits, listening to the waves on one side of them and the crunch of bone against gnashing teeth on the other.

  ‘Do you think perhaps our father is trying to kill us?’ said Tainto’lilith.

  ‘Why would he wish to kill us?’ said Marko’cain.

  Both of them did their best to imagine, willing themselves to transcend the limitations of childish thought.

  ‘He might think we are trouble to look after, now that mother can’t do it anymore,’ suggested Tainto’lilith.

  ‘But we’ve been looking after ourselves, haven’t we?’ protested Marko’cain.’He doesn’t often notice we are there.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the problem!’ declared Tainto’lilith. ‘He doesn’t notice us very often, so perhaps in his mind we are still babies, needing milk and love.’

  ‘Well … ’ frowned Marko’cain.’We will need something to eat soon, or we will die.’

  Warily, the Fahrenheit twins sampled the tomato-red gloop in the tins. It was, unsurprisingly, tomato. They spooned it into their mouths, glob after glob, crimson juice running down their chins.

  ‘This will keep us going,’ said Tainto’lilith as cheerfully as she could.

  ‘We need a message from the universe,’ retorted Marko’cain.’And we need it quick.’

  When they had eaten as much of the chilly, snot-textured fruit as they could stand, they sat at the edge of their mother’s sledge again, facing the sea. A pearly glow was growing on the horizon. Summer was about to come up.

  In normal circumstances, this would have been a cause for ecstatic celebration, but just now the Fahrenheit twins had other things to think about. With great earnestness, striving not to be distracted by their sleepy heads, sick stomachs and the uneasy sense of their unfinished mission, Tainto’lilith and Marko’cain discussed their chances of survival – not just in the short term, but in the event that they were no longer welcome at home.

  The discussion began well enough, with an accurate inventory of their meagre supplies and a head-count of the dogs, but when they moved on to speculate about more slippery intangibles – like their father’s true desires or the reliability of supernatural aid – their tempers began to fray. Over and over, they were forced back to the same conclusion: that they had no-one to rely upon but each other.

  ‘We must each consider our strengths and weakneths,’ said Marko’cain.

  ‘But we are both the same!’

  ‘Not inside our underpants.’

  Tainto’lilith sighed in exasperation. Testaments and pee-holes were equally useless in the face of an unfriendly universe, as far as she was concerned.

  ‘We are the same,’ she said, digging the heels of her boots through the crust of snow, gouging into the hard dark earth. ‘Same, same, same.’

  Unnerved by the intensity of his sister’s conviction, Marko’cain swallowed hard, trying to keep his disagreement to himself. He gazed out across the swirling surf, as if soliciting the sea’s ideas, but really he was comforting himself, sending confidential reassurances to his slighted genitals. Tainto’lilith smelled his estrangement instantly, of course.

  ‘Why shouldn’t we be the same, anyway?’ she demanded.

  Marko’cain kept his eyes on the sea, dignified in his appreciation of the wider picture.

  ‘If there really is no difference between us, it would mean that neither of us can know anything that the other doesn’t,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Is that dangerous?’ his sister wondered.

  ‘It could be.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I can’t imagine how.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ said Marko’cain solemnly. ‘That gives danger the advantage.’

  ‘Now you’re just being silly,’ Tainto’lilith scolded him. ‘Like when you used to make me frightened in bed as we were about to fall asleep, by saying that a bear might come through the window and eat us.’

  ‘Bears came to our house all the time,’ retorted Marko’cain defensively. ‘You saw their footprints in the mornings.’

  ‘Footprints don’t kill,’ sniffed Tainto’lilith, hugging herself. ‘All those years, all those bears, and what did our mother die of?’

  The question, released as an innocent puff of rhetorical vapour, hung in the air, cloudier than expected.

  ‘We don’t know what she died of,’ said Marko’cain at last.

  ‘No,’ admitted Tainto’lilith.

  ‘It could kill us too.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why are you so sure?’

  ‘I feel very well. You not?’

  ‘I’m hungry and tired and cold.’

  ‘Me too, but those things can be fixed.’

  ‘I hope so.’ Marko’cain seemed unconvinced, even as the first ray of sunshine began to creep across the ocean towards them. Something – a suspicion – was nagging at him. ‘Perhaps father killed mother. He said she ate something that disagreed with her. Perhaps we have now eaten the same thing. A deadly poison.’

  ‘What nonsense you are talking!’ grizzled Tainto’lilith, pointing to the discarded tins at their feet.’It’s just tomato, from our own storehouse. Mother would have eaten something strange. Guhiynui food.’

  ‘Still … ‘

  Wave by wave, the sea was turning from grey to silver. The birds were going mad with joy. Elongated black shadows were unrolling like tongues from the rocks on the shore, the sleds, the empty hamper, the tins. Even the blades of grass, prickling up through the increasingly slushy snow, cast magnified javelins of shade before them.

  ‘What would father want to kill mother for?’ said Tainto’lilith.

  ‘They argued all the time,’ Marko’cain reminded her, waving his hands about to demonstrate.

  ‘Not all the time.’

  ‘More than half.’

  Tainto’lilith’s brow furrowed as she made a few calculations.

  ‘Exactly half,’ she concluded.

  Marko’cain, knowing she was right, slumped a little. Then he was pricked by another memory.

  ‘Father told us once that he wouldn’t trust her as far as he could throw her. She is as bad as the Guhiynui, he said.’

  ‘Yes, but another time mother said he couldn’t possibly manage without her. Without a woman, he’s helpless like a baby, she said.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s in the Book.’

  They sat in silence, picturing their father shambling to and fro in the Fahrenheit house, his uncut grey hair hanging in his eyes, his pullover full of holes, his heart in pieces, his coffee cold.

  ‘So what will happen to him now that mother is gone?’ murmured Marko’cain.

  ‘We’ll help him,’ said Tainto’lilith.’If it’s true that he sent us out to die, I’m sure he’s sorry by now. He’ll be glad to have us home, you’ll see. And every year we are bigger. If he can wait a little while, we can do everything mother did.’

  Having decided this, they made a fire with the Principia Anthropologica. Fed with five hundred and sixty-two dry pages one after the other, it burned hot and bright, but lapsed into substanceless ash as soon as the last page was added. The huskies, closely gathered around what had been such merry flames, raised their panting heads in disappointment.

  ‘That’s all, doggies,’ sighed Tainto’lilith.

  The storm finally having passed over, the children took shelter in the blasted shell of the helicopter, sleeping in the cabin together with the dogs. The overcrowding helped to conserve body heat: a snug inte
rleaving of fast-breathing furry haunches and gently snoring little humans.

  While they slept, the sun raised itself from the horizon. The snows glowed white, the heavens azure and pink. The temperature began to climb towards zero.

  On waking, the twins extracted themselves groggily from their dense swaddling of hot flesh. The huskies slumbered on while Marko’cain and Tainto’lilith crawled out of the cabin, blinking in the sunshine.

  The world had been utterly transformed by the advent of summer, and this in turn had its effect on the children’s spirits. The golden-white light and long, clear views encouraged in them a placid, groundless optimism. The risk of imminent death from cold and hunger seemed, all of a sudden, remote, despite the fact that they had only a few tins of tomatoes left, possibly frozen solid. They could imagine themselves catching seabirds, picking them out of the sky with a well-aimed pebble or even pouncing on them with the stealth of a superior species. They could imagine flinging a penknife straight into a polar bear’s heart.

  ‘Oh, look!’

  In the clarity of day, the twins could now see, in the far distance along the shore, thin plumes of smoke rising from a cluster of dwellings. The bulbous, vaguely pyramidal shape of these dwellings was familiar to them from their parents’ note-books. These were the whalebone-enforced domiciles of the Guhiynui.

  ‘But what about mother?’ said Tainto’lilith as her brother ran to fetch the dogs. ‘What about the message from the universe?’

  ‘This is the message from the universe,’ Marko’cain replied, his enthusiasm inspiring the huskies to leap out of the helicopter one after the other, a fluid tumble of milky fur.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Marko’cain was already busy with the harnesses.

  ‘I feel it in my testaments!’ he yelled in triumph.

  And so, the Fahrenheit twins set off for the Guhiynui village.

  In strict mathematical terms, as it might be depicted on a map, the journey was three miles at most, but in practice the children had to veer several hundred yards inland to keep their purchase on the softening snow. A long thigh of land rose to shield them from the sound of the waves, and they travelled in silence and still air. This far away from the shore, the Guhiynui’s settlement too was hidden from sight, though its plumes of smoke remained visible in the sky above.

  With perhaps a mile-and-a-half still to go, the land assumed a bizarre topography, all peaks and hollows. Grassy mounds erupted through the snow, and rocks the size of houses were scattered all about. The dogs negotiated these obstacles warily, needing flicks of encouragement from the whip. They whined softly even as they jerked to obey, pining, in their inbred doggy solidarity, for the flat environs and the well-known smells of home. Too much novelty was spooking them.

  The children sympathised, but they too were being driven. The deceptively placid face of their mother, sweating its veneer of frost off in the sunlight, was exerting a powerful stimulus behind them. They must find a place for her soon.

  Then, as yet another massive boulder was looming in front of them, and with the Guhiynui settlement still a fair way off, an unexpected sound made the twins’ ears prick up inside their furry hoods.

  ‘Ho!’ cried Marko’cain.’Do you hear that?’

  They reined the dogs to a halt. Ricocheting among the giant rocks was a faint but unmistakable music: the peal of mechanical birdsong.

  ‘A cuckoo clock!’ shouted Marko’cain in wonder.

  ‘That isn’t possible, is it?’ said Tainto’lilith, as the cooing abruptly stopped.’It must be a real cuckoo.’

  ‘No, it is a cuckoo clock,’ Marko’cain assured her.’I even know which cuckoo clock it is. Didn’t you recognise it?’

  Tainto’lilith closed her eyes tightly, chasing the echoes through her brain.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, almost at once, surprising herself.’It is the smallest one, with the two little hunters on either side, and the upside-down rabbits with the tied-up feet and the purple door.’

  ‘Yes,’ affirmed Marko’cain. ‘The one that went missing from our house a long time ago.’

  ‘Mother said it got broken.’

  ‘And we said, Can father not mend it.’

  ‘And she said, Don’t bother your father about this, or I will be angry with you.’

  ‘Then she said, One less clock makes no difference to the universe.’

  ‘We wrote that down in the Book.’

  ‘Yes. It feels like yesterday.’

  ‘It was a long time ago.’

  Cautiously, they steered the dogs in pursuit of what could no longer be heard: the invisible sonic footprints of a tiny automated thrush, which might prove to be a figment of their own delirious memories.

  Once the turn was taken, however, very little searching was required. In a small snowless clearing, hidden from the wider world by towering stones, stood a single Guhiynui dwelling. In all respects it was identical to the drawings their mother had made of such dwellings in her notebooks: the whaleskin exterior, stiffened by tanning and tarring, the whalebone framework, interwoven with rope, the absence of windows, the thong-tied entrance slit, and the thin central chimney, poking up like a smoke-blackened wick. Only, there was no smoke coming from the chimney just now, and no sounds of life within – no evidence at all, in fact, of the communal bustle and vigorous manly activity Una Fahrenheit had often praised, shortly before a big argument with her husband.

  The children dismounted from their buggy and walked straight up to the house. There was no more need for caution. The universe had them in hand, after all. The entrance flap was knotted loosely, in a shoelace-style bow. Marko’cain tugged it free, and he and his sister squeezed inside.

  ‘Ho!’

  There was no-one at home. Instinct had told them there wouldn’t be, but a quick glance confirmed it, for Guhiynui houses were simple things, undivided into separate rooms. This one didn’t even feel lived-in, in the sense that there was no mess or clutter whatsoever. It was a place meant for visiting.

  There was no furniture to speak of, only a bed and, in the centre of the room, a potbelly stove of burnished green iron. The rest of the floor space was bare, but because the walls tapered inwards rather sharply, the whole house was still scarcely big enough for a grown-up to walk around in, and far too cold to be cosy.

  And yet, from the moment the Fahrenheit twins stepped inside, they were intoxicated by the mysterious potency of the place. This was unquestionably where the universe wanted them to be. This was the message, delivered not in a voice of thunder but in the barely audible fluting of a familiar automaton.

  It wasn’t just the presence of the missing cuckoo clock, defiantly keeping its exotic brand of time with its delicate pendulum. No, the mystique of this place went beyond that. The whole interior seemed to glow much brighter than the single ray of sunlight through the entrance slit could explain, and the air, for all its chill, seemed aromatic with intimacy.

  Perhaps, more than anything else, it was the paintings. Everywhere on the curvaceous walls, warmly-hued cloth paintings were mounted, sewn close against the whaleskin with twine. There were images of adventure: top-heavy Guhiynui warriors sailing the seas on toy boats, or slicing each other up like sausages. There were images of hunting: seals and beluga whales spreading attenuated flippers in surrender to a hail of spears. There were images of birds, carrying tiny sleeping humans towards the sun. And, directly above the bed, there was the largest painting of all, a dynamic full-length portrait of a dark-skinned male and a slender, creamy-white female. From her stylised hairdo and the blush of rose on her cheek, it was quite obvious that this woman was meant to be Una Fahrenheit.

  Admittedly the Guhiynui’s style of illustration was very different from what the twins had grown up with in their mother’s antique storybooks. Both bodies seemed to be floating in space, surrounded by an intricate pattern of stars or snowflakes. The feet were impossibly tiny, the legs bonelessly contorted and intertwined. No clothes had been attempted, not even
underpants, leaving the figures naked but apparently impervious to the elements. The man had some kind of extra limb growing from between his legs, and Una had two mouths, one on her face and another, much larger one, on her belly. And yet, for all the primitive eccentricity of the image, its colours were lush and vibrant, and something of their mother’s nature had been captured – the best side of her nature, the way she’d tended to look when she was in her happiest mood. On her face, here in this Guhiynui tribute to her, the twins recognised the expression that always came over her when she was about to wash them and pamper their skins with whale oil.

  The bed was a big nest of seal skins, all different kinds: hooded seal, ringed seal, bearded seal. It looked supremely comfortable, especially with two fluffy pillows at the far end, each covered in a pastel-coloured pillowcase embroidered with tiny edelweiss. Tainto’lilith removed one glove, and stroked the satiny braille of the coloured cotton. Then she gathered up some stray hairs, fine black ones with grey roots where the dye had failed to penetrate. Pressing her nose into the pillow, she inhaled the scent of Idyl-Geruch and Hyacinthe-Gesang, the heady perfumes of a long-lost Bavaria. Meanwhile, further down on the bed, Marko’cain allowed himself to test the softness of the seal skins under his sprawling body.

  Both twins felt sick with desire to sleep in that bed, knowing very well that it was not intended for them. The perfect equation of two pillows and two children was almost impossible to resist, but resist they did. Troubled and enchanted, they struggled to their feet and looked away.

  Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik, the little cuckoo clock was saying, securely mounted on the whalebone wall. Kik-kik-kik-kik-kik …

  Venturing up close, the twins examined the clock’s condition. Its fragile brass chain was unbroken; indeed, it had been pulled up quite recently, giving the mechanism plenty of time before needing another tug. Care had been taken, in bracketing the clock to its cetacean rib, to keep the little birdhouse straight, despite the curve of the wall. The wrought-iron pine-cone hung like a plumb – ine on the end of the chain, confirming the correct orientation of the whole machine. For the clock to be working as well as this, it must, during the long intervals between Una’s visits, have been treated with the utmost respect and gentleness by the Guhiynui. Only the minuscule wooden barrel of one of the hunters’ guns was broken off, but that might well have happened en route between the Fahrenheit house and this, Una’s secret home away from home.