Igor Eliseev
ONE-TWO
To my mother
1. THE TAWPIES_
My God, it’s so cold. You look happy while asleep and I can’t stop thinking about how cold I am. Why is it so chilly here? I just can’t get warm, the same as in the hospital when they plunged us into ice water. We tried our best to get out of the bathtub clinging to the edge but Ivan Borisovich told us to calm down and keep quiet. Do you remember him? His office door was furnished by a wooden sign plate designating his high position, that’s why we were forced to do everything he told us to. The water was freezing and seemed to pierce our bodies with thousands of needles; I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t get used to it. I can hardly remember how long it lasted but have always dreamt of forgetting about it. Unfortunately, a short time later, you fell severely ill, and Ivan Borisovich put us into the isolation cell. Lying there, you would often abruptly get up on our bed and breathe heavily and insatiably, swallowing the air. Sometimes your chest made gurgling sounds; you spat out sputum and lay down again. I was lying next to you threatened by the thought that you could die. In a couple of days, I got ill too.
The isolation cell represented a small room with a tiny gridded window, an old squeaky bed near the wall and a wash-stand to the left, a mirror and a toilet-bowl to the right. A tightly locked door was accompanied by a little stool. Auntie Masha, a bow-backed, broad-hipped woman always wearing her white cap, brought us food. Ivan Borisovich called her a custodian. Our meals included two large mugs of weak tea or hot water. I sipped half of my portion and soaked an edge of our sheet in the other half and applied the sheet to my chest and then to yours. Shortly before the New Year there was a thaw and the snow outside melted almost completely. Our room was lit by bright sunlight through the window grids and shiny knives of light pointed to the part where our bodies were joined.
When we felt a little better, auntie Masha brought two oranges under her white robe and handed them to us and wished us good health. You ate your orange unpeeled right under your blanket and I gave you mine hoping it would help you to get well sooner. Now I understand the absurdity of that act because we are a whole. I am you and you are me.
I can hardly tell a thing about our childhood. Too bad that you are sleeping now; I wish you could help me recall something from the past. The New Year’s thaw and oranges are my brightest memories. I also remember you playing as if you were my mom and caressing my head but you never let me do that to you, pushed my hand away and grumbled. The only time you let our mother touch you happened much later.
Another thing I remember was bedtime stories. Auntie Masha, always short of breath, whispering and glancing at the door from time to time, read us fairy-tales about faraway places, blue seas and charming princes who were supposed to appear before us and take both of us away to some beautiful land. Back then, I believed it was possible. I think that is the reason why all grown-ups reminisce about their childhood with such a melancholic look in their eyes. I knew the Ugly Duckling story almost by heart; the final part where he turns into a beautiful swan was my favorite. I used to imagine ourselves experiencing that kind of transformation, immersed in an imaginary reality. Apparently, I felt the need to change but didn’t know yet what to do. That was before we saw ourselves in the mirror.
A difficult delivery took place in one of the maternity homes in the capital city. Twins were born, one of them being larger in size and the other feeble and low weight. A lot of doctors gathered in a room number nine to take a look at this unprecedented miracle. Windows of the room overlooked an adorable orchard; I’m sure it is even more beautiful these days. A midwife fainted at the sight of two conjoined babies and another doctor had to extract us. Initially, the maternity-home staff planned to tell our mother we had died but after a while one of the nurses on duty showed us to her. Our mother had a fit, and soon after her mental health degenerated. Persuaded by the hospital management, she signed a certificate of our death. Our father was away on business at the time and received the news of our decease by an ordinary telegram.
Later on, the doctors often told us frightening stories about life-threatening pregnancy complications accompanied by bleeding which could have been fatal to our mother and the Herculean efforts she had made to bring us into the world whole and undamaged. It seemed like she was a Hero of Labor.
For several years we have been experimental subjects, first at the institute of pediatrics and then at the institute of traumatology where the above-mentioned Ivan Borisovich studied us. It is now impossible to find out who gave us names. It certainly wasn’t our parents because they haven’t been in our life since its very beginning. Our birth certificate states: Nadezhda (left), Vera (right) (The meanings of Russian names Vera and Nadezhda are “faith” and “hope” respectively. Hereinafter the names Faith and Hope will be used); somebody was probably afraid to make a mistake. I am Faith and together we are called conjoined twins. Such a thing does exist in nature and it happens to be us. We look very much alike but have different personalities, just like ordinary people.
Seemingly, when Ivan Borisovich had enough of his scientific activity we were transferred to a closed boarding school to receive our elementary education. I associate the best years of our life with that place. There were no grids on the windows and we could feel like normal children for the first time in our life. Every morning we were woken up by the birds living in handmade nesting boxes outside. From the window we could see a nearby forest and smell pine wood and moss in the windy air rushing in through the open vent pane. That’s where we met Lizzie.
Her real name was Evangeline but for some reason she preferred being called Lizzie. She looked very young, sixteen at most, but actually she turned out to be twenty-two, which came to our knowledge by chance. You could guess her age only by observing the extremely deep creases between her eyebrows, visible on her face even when she was calm. It is hard to describe her in a couple of words. For me, Lizzie was an embodiment of fireworks bursting with thousands of emotional colors and shades never seen in one person before. She granted a sense of endless festivity, combining a genuinely childish nature with the experience of a wise woman. She would sometimes play little pranks disturbing all the boarding school staff but after a minute would sit in a corner staring at the floor. Lizzie seemed to know everything about people; I wonder who taught her all those things. She used to speak only positively even of people who hurt her willingly or unwillingly. Since that time we have never met with such an open-hearted and trusting person, though she did hide certain things — her early pregnancy, for instance. We learned about it only after a few weeks. Her parents made her have an abortion when they learnt the truth (it had happened during the 1980 Olympics (1980 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XXII Olympiad, were held in Moscow, Soviet Union, in present day Russia, from July 19 to August 3, 1980)). Lizzie’s mind became disturbed and they sent her to the boarding school for rehabilitation. Truly speaking, they rather wished to hide their disgraceful daughter from society than help her. Her parents were “great guns” in the Party (Refers to the governing party of the USSR, the Communist Party, at that time one of the largest left-wing radical organizations in the world), Lizzie’s words, and they considered her accidental pregnancy by a black Cuban athlete to be an unforgivable mistake.