The Final Testimony of Raphael Ignatius Phoenix

by Paul Sussman

  ‘No,’ he said, sounding rather disappointed, as though the pristine state of his photo denied him the opportunity of sharing in his brother’s distress. ‘They haven’t touched mine. It’s most peculiar. I think we should have a word with Colonel Dishby.’

  This they did, and later that afternoon the entire barracks was subjected to a long lecture on the importance of the old camp-fire stuff (trust) and the need to respect one another’s personal felicity plum-plums (possessions). I glanced over at the albino twins, standing hand in hand in a corner. They appeared more united than ever, and I began to wonder if perhaps I’d set myself an impossible task.

  Not to be deterred, however, I next turned my attention to Clive’s daffodil.

  Each Brain had a daffodil which they kept in an old evaporated-milk tin on the window ledge opposite their bunks. Clive’s was in the tin on the left, Matthew’s on the right. They were extremely proud of their respective plants, and were forever watering, pruning, spraying and pampering them. Not surprisingly, each daffodil was exactly the same size, and flowered at exactly the same time.

  ‘Damn pretty daffodils!’ the colonel would expostulate. ‘Pukka as anything I ever saw at Chelsea.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ the twins would return, puffing with pride.

  I attacked the daffodils late one afternoon when everyone else was outside watching an inter-barracks bowls tournament. Sneaking back on the pretext of fetching my cigarettes, I swiftly removed Clive’s daffodil from its tin and severed its stem from its bulb. The stem I then put back in the tin, whilst the bulb I replanted beside Matthew’s daffodil. Outwardly the two flowers looked exactly as they had done before, and I went back outside with a sly smile on my face.

  Nothing happened for a couple of days. Then, to my immense satisfaction, and the consternation of my victims, Clive’s daffodil began to wilt whilst in Matthew’s tin a new daffodil began to grow. Each morning thereafter they would wake up and rush over to their respective plants, Matthew to gaze in joy, Clive in despair.

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ wailed the latter. ‘My beautiful daffodil!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Clive,’ consoled his brother.

  ‘I just can’t think what’s happened to it,’ said Clive, cupping the wilting stem in his hand. ‘I just can’t think what’s happened.’

  Eventually Clive’s ailing daffodil gave up the ghost altogether and subsided into a sort of mushy pulp, whereupon he removed it from its pot and discovered the absence of its bulb. His face went even whiter than its normal white – a sort of transparent white, as though he possessed no colour at all – and his crimson eyes narrowed.

  ‘The bulb’s gone,’ he said simply.

  ‘Gone?’ inquired Matthew

  ‘Yes, gone. Someone’s stolen the bulb. That’s why it died.’

  ‘Well, I can’t think why someone would steal your bulb.’

  ‘Neither can I. But I can guess where they’ve put it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In your tin, of course. That’s why you’ve got a new plant growing.’

  ‘But that’s growing from my bulb. It’s a new stem.’

  ‘I think not, Matthew. I think some unknown person has for some unknown reason taken my bulb and put it in your tin. Would you mind if I had a look?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  And so Clive had a dig around in Matthew’s tin and, of course, discovered the pilfered bulb.

  ‘I just can’t understand it,’ mumbled Matthew. ‘It’s so strange. It’s so—’

  ‘Sneaky,’ whispered Clive, looking at the floor. ‘Very, very sneaky.’

  That afternoon we had another lecture from Colonel Dishby about the rotten beastliness of persecuting a fellow prisoner when we ought to be directing such behaviour against our captors. Once again I glanced across at the albino twins. They appeared as united as ever. I noticed, however, that they were no longer holding hands. It might have been nothing. But then again . . .

  Thereafter I stepped up operations. I stole Clive’s toothbrush from beneath his pillow and slipped it beneath Matthew’s pillow.

  ‘Someone’s taken my toothbrush!’ yelled Clive the following morning.

  ‘Hello!’ said Matthew innocently. ‘Here it is, under my pillow. I wonder how it got there.’

  ‘So do I,’ mumbled Clive. ‘Gremlins, I suppose.’

  I mixed a little salt into Clive’s eczema cream, eliciting howls of agony when he applied it to the afflicted portions of his anatomy, and bribed one of the camp guards to hand over all letters addressed to him before they were delivered.

  ‘They’re just getting lost in the system,’ said Matthew, after yet another post hand-out at which he’d received four letters and his brother none. ‘Don’t worry, Clive. Here, you can read mine. I’ve got one from Kitty.’

  ‘I don’t want to read yours. I want my own letters. My own letters, do you hear! This whole thing’s driving me mad. Someone’s got it in for me!’

  Over the next two months I collected 22 envelopes addressed to Clive Brain. Then, just after Christmas, I slit a hole in the side of Matthew’s mattress and, removing some of the stuffing, concealed the pilfered missives therein, where they were discovered three days later during a routine barracks search.

  ‘What are these?’ asked the guard, holding up the letters.

  ‘I don’t know,’ stumbled Matthew in bewilderment. ‘They seem to be—’

  ‘Letters!’ cried Clive. ‘My letters! They’re my letters, hidden in your mattress!’

  ‘Clive,’ said Matthew, shaking his head. ‘Clive, believe me, I have no idea how they got there. You must believe me.’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe any more, Matthew,’ snapped Clive. ‘I need some fresh air. My head’s going round and round.’

  And with that he stormed out of the barracks, the first time either twin had been alone since they’d arrived at the camp. Stage One was complete, and things were looking good.

  Early in the New Year of 1945 – shortly after my 45th birthday – I initiated Stage Two. Heretofore I had concentrated my efforts solely against Clive Brain. Now I brought Matthew into the picture too. The time had come to target both twins at once.

  I began on the football pitch. The Brains loved football, and played as often as they could, always knocking in an average of two goals apiece per game.

  ‘It’s because we support each other,’ they explained when I once commented on the remarkable synchronicity of their scoring patterns. ‘We’re a sort of team within a team.’

  The twins always played on the wing, Clive to the right, Matthew to the left. I, on the other hand, always played in goal, my unusual height and agility making me ideally suited to the task, and it wasn’t long before I realized the potentialities of my position for furthering my anti-twin endeavours. With flamboyant and ostentatiously showy efforts to keep them out, I began letting in goals by Clive. Shots that in normal circumstances I would have parried with ease I now allowed to dribble under me, or bounce over me, or creep into the corner of the goal just past the ends of my outstretched fingertips. Where previously he had made an average of two scores per game, Clive now found himself making ten or more. At the same time I redoubled my efforts to keep Matthew’s shots out of the goal: leaping, jumping, diving and throwing myself about with near-suicidal abandon in order to block his every kick. Whilst his brother was basking in the glory of another double-figure tally, Matthew would cut a forlorn figure, trudging off the pitch with head bowed after yet another game in which he’d failed to put one on the back of the net.

  ‘Well played, Clive!’ he would say, slapping his brother on the back. ‘Absolutely tremendous game.’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing really.’

  ‘Nothing! You scored eleven goals. I don’t call that nothing.’

  ‘It was luck, Matthew. Pure fluke.’

  ‘It wasn’t fluke, Clive. It was skill.’

  ‘Not at all, Matthew. I’m no more skilful than you.’

&
nbsp; ‘Yes, you are. You’re a better footballer.’

  ‘I’m really not, you know.’

  ‘Yes you are, damn it. That’s why you scored eleven goals and I didn’t score any. And why yesterday you scored nine and I still didn’t score any. And why the day before you scored 17 and I scored an own goal. You’re a better footballer than me, Clive. Just accept it!’

  And with that he stalked off to his bunk, where he curled up under the blanket and cuddled his teddy.

  Whilst I was tormenting them on the football pitch, I was stepping up operations off it. I pilfered half of Matthew’s stamp collection and secreted it at the bottom of Clive’s kit bag, where it was discovered during another routine barracks search.

  ‘I don’t know how they got there,’ protested Clive. ‘I’m as bewildered as you were when they found my letters in your mattress.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Matthew pointedly, ‘although I didn’t steal your letters.’

  I found a large dead spider in a corner of the lavatory block and put it on Clive’s pillow, causing him to faint when he saw it; and did the same to Matthew with three dead woodlice, causing him to faint too. I concealed some mint humbugs in Clive’s bed, creating the impression that he had a secret hoard of their favourite confectionery which he wasn’t prepared to share with his snow-haired sibling; whilst a momentary distraction when they were playing chess allowed me to move Matthew’s queen to a more advantageous position on the board, the implication being that he himself had surreptitiously moved it when his opponent’s attention had been diverted.

  Most insidiously of all, I played upon the twins’ respective allergies. I hid some cheese inside Clive’s mattress, causing him to suffer uncontrollable diarrhoea for a week, and scattered some broad beans – pilfered from the camp kitchen – around Matthew’s pillow whilst he was asleep one night, as a result of which he turned bright orange.

  ‘Someone’s trying to kill me,’ he groaned the following morning, fixing Clive with a hard stare. ‘Someone who knows I’m allergic to broad beans.’

  ‘Perhaps it was just an accident,’ suggested Clive.

  ‘How,’ inquired Matthew, ‘do eighteen broad beans suddenly appear by accident on my pillow? Tell me, how?’

  ‘I have no idea, Matthew. None whatsoever. But if you’re suggesting—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you’re suggesting I had anything to do with it—’

  ‘Well, you are the only one who knows I’m allergic to them.’

  ‘This is preposterous. You’re the only one who knows I’m allergic to cheese, but I don’t go accusing you of trying to murder me.’

  ‘I’m not accusing you, Clive. I’m just saying—’

  ‘What? What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m just saying that it’s damned strange. Oh, let’s just forget it. Let’s just forget the whole thing.’

  And so it went on. A poke here, a nudge there; a little bit of push, a little bit of shove; a succession of small provocations which had, by the end of March 1945, brought the twins, if not into open conflict, at least to the very brink of it. They never actually spoke a cross word to each other; they were invariably polite and seemed, outwardly at least, as close as ever. Beneath the surface, however, fires were raging. You could see it in their eyes. Previously a dull, drab red, these now flashed furious scarlet whenever they were in close proximity. I had brought them to the edge. Now all I had to do was push them over. Time for Stage Three. Time for the teddy bears.

  As I mentioned, each Brain had a teddy bear. Clive’s was called Beppo, Matthew’s Flumdy. They loved their teddy bears almost as much as they loved each other, and, again as I mentioned, always slept with them tucked snugly in the crook of their left arm.

  They had, apparently, had their teddy bears since they were children, and took them everywhere. When they’d flown bombing missions over Germany, Beppo and Flumdy had gone with them – each bear sporting a rather becoming pair of flying goggles – and when they were shot down and forced to bail out, the first thing each seized was his beloved cuddly toy.

  So close was the bond between each twin and his teddy it was hardly surprising that, when they began to lose faith in each other, they turned to their stuffed companions for solace. When, for instance, Clive scored ten goals during a game of football and Matthew none, the latter immediately returned to his bunk and sought comfort in his bear. When Clive was suffering from dreadful cheese-induced diarrhoea, he always took Beppo to the lavatory with him, hugging the bear whilst all manner of frightful liquids gushed from his pained posterior.

  The dependence of Clive and Matthew on Beppo and Flumdy increased in direct proportion to the decrease in their trust for one another, until eventually they were spending more time with their bears than with their sibling. I waited for the moment when it seemed they couldn’t possibly become more dependent on the teddies, whereupon I unleashed Stage Three of my campaign. I stole the bears.

  I stole both at the same time, during the night, when the twins were fast asleep, easing them gently from the crooks of their arms and concealing them in the barracks lavatory, beneath a loose floorboard.

  The following morning I, and just about everyone else in the camp, was woken by the most ear-splitting of double-screams.

  ‘Beppo! Flumdy! No!’

  I peered from my bunk to see the Brain brothers frantically scrabbling beneath their blankets in a forlorn search for their stolen cuddlies. They emptied their kit-bags, they tore open their pillows, they threw aside their mattresses and, finally, having convinced themselves their bears were gone, they sat down and wept. Even Colonel Dishby was at a loss as to what to do.

  ‘Looks like they’ve gone a bit ging-gang-gooly,’ he sighed, tugging at his moustache. ‘Dashed odd couple. I mean, I don’t approve of theft, but I can hardly go to Obersturmführer Pisspot and say we’re missing a couple of bears. We’d be a laughing stock.’

  The twins cried for an entire day, before subsiding into a dejected silence. They spoke neither to each other nor to anyone else. Occasionally one of them would leap to his feet and rush around the barracks, peering under beds and behind lockers, but otherwise they remained as inert and deflated as a pair of punctured inner tubes.

  I let them stew for about a week, and then began sending them bits of their teddies. One afternoon they returned from a stint of tunnel digging only for Matthew to find one of Flumdy’s eyes sitting on his pillow. He said nothing, just picked up the eye, clenched it in his fist and stared very hard at his brother. Two days later Clive woke to discover some of Beppo’s stuffing sticking out of his shoe. Again, he made no comment. Just turned the stuffing over in his fingers and gazed at his brother, eyes blazing. Clive opened his Red Cross parcel to find Beppo’s paw therein. Matthew found Flumdy’s foot hanging from the girder of one of Major Burrows’s escape shafts. Clive was sitting on the lavatory when Beppo’s ear came flying over the door. Matthew was drying himself after a shower when Flumdy’s other foot fell from his towel. On each occasion they uttered not a sound. They merely picked up whatever part of their teddy they happened to have found, grimaced, and stared at their sibling with ever more murderous intensity.

  Of course, had they thought about it, the twins would have realized the kidnapper could not possibly be one of them. Had Clive stolen Matthew’s bear, for instance, or vice versa, he would have noticed in so doing that his own bear had gone. Logic alone dictated that there had to be a third party at work.

  Fortunately, however, the Brains were, by that point, quite beyond rational thought. They had, over the months, developed such a degree of mutual distrust, and worked themselves up to such a level of uncontrolled paranoia, that had I walked over and hit one in the face he would most likely have persuaded himself that his brother was somehow responsible for the action.

  ‘As dry as tinder,’ I sniggered to myself, enjoying the whole experiment more and more with each passing day. ‘All it needs now is a small spark. Just a small spark, and they’ll be ar
guing like there’s no tomorrow.

  The spark came one evening in mid-April when each twin found a note beneath his pillow.

  Clive’s note read as follows: ‘Go to the camp greenhouse at 2 a.m. tonight and look under the upturned flowerpot. You might find something of interest. Tell no one, or Beppo dies.’

  Matthew’s note, on the other hand, said: ‘Go to the camp washroom at two o’clock tonight and look beneath the second basin to the left. You might find something of interest. Tell no one, or Flumdy dies.’

  Each twin read his note, reread it, bit his fingernails and then, very slowly, very carefully, leaned out from his bunk and looked – in Clive’s case up, in Matthew’s down – at his brother. Their eyes met and locked. Not a word was spoken, not a flicker of recognition passed across their faces. They stared at each other for upwards of a minute before nodding gravely, as if to acknowledge that they knew exactly what the other was up to, and then withdrawing into their bunks.

  At around five minutes to two the next morning Clive Brain sneaked silently out of the barracks. At around four minutes to two Matthew Brain did exactly the same. The entire camp was, by that point, fast asleep. Only the guards manning the searchlights and patrolling the electrified perimeter fence were still awake. Otherwise, the compound was still as a graveyard.

  In order to appreciate fully what happened next I would refer you to the map of the camp as shown two walls back. As you will see, to reach the destination specified on his note, Clive had to turn left outside our hut and, keeping low to the ground and dodging the sweeping arcs of the camp searchlights, scuttle past Barracks D and E and so to the greenhouse beyond. To reach his destination, on the other hand, Matthew had to turn right outside our hut and, also keeping low to the ground and dodging the sweeping arcs of the camp searchlights, scuttle past Barracks A and B and so to the washblock situated at the end of the latter.

  Once inside the greenhouse, Clive, as instructed, looked beneath the large upturned flowerpot, where, rather to his surprise, he discovered not Beppo, as he had supposed, but his brother’s bear Flumdy, the latter looking distinctly out of sorts following the removal of his ear, feet and one eye. Matthew, meanwhile, foraging beneath the second basin on the left of the camp washblock, was equally surprised to discover not Flumdy, as anticipated, but his brother’s bear, Beppo, the latter looking equally forlorn minus one paw, one eye, one ear, and most of his stuffing.