A week later Adoter got sick, and when she returned to her workplace she looked much more aged. The changes were striking: haggard face, streaks of gray in her hair, and deeper and more visible wrinkles between her eyebrows. But her gait had changed most of all; now she was walking heavily and tiredly, giving the impression that she had an enormous load on her shoulders. Unwillingly, she started resembling the patients in her own foster home like two hands on the same body which resemble each other.
The last month of the academic year was approaching; the atmosphere grew tenser and tenser with each day. Adoter seemed to rust through and through, and then she lost all her former dexterity at problem solving. Nervous and increasingly revengeful, she now made the most out of the most minor misconduct, imagining dissent even when there was absolutely no sign of it. The isolation cell filled up!
Meanwhile, we were finishing our studies. I had no idea what would happen to us after graduation, where fate would toss us, but, in truth, I didn’t care. Deprived of the person I loved, I had lost interest in life. I grieved all the time but was also ashamed of my own grief.
I remember how immensely supportive you were at that time, and I am still very grateful to you. At first I thought that you were simply pursuing your own goals to survive at any cost; not able to feel the entirety of another person’s loss, you were just guided by life instincts because if I suffer, you suffer too, but it was only later that I understood that performing the role of an elder sister, catering and caring for me, was a real pleasure to you. You lent me your shoulder to cry on, a crutch to a cripple, and you believed that by helping me you could find yourself. It was only after this incident with Sasha that you and I got as close as only two conjoined people can get. Since then I have always felt we are one person with two souls.
We eventually managed to solicit the new head physician to pass our clinical record on to Inga Petrovna for her approval. The day before I had a nightmare that began with a message of hope but ended horribly. We reached the capital city, found competent and decent doctors who successfully separated us. And, of course, having gained independent life at last, we rejoiced like children; it seemed that life was smiling on us. But the happiness didn’t last long. I woke up one morning to find our bodies joined again. In panic, I tried to tear myself away or at least to move, but I wasn’t able to. Then I turned my head to the right, but instead of you I unexpectedly found Adoter; now she was connected to me! Gosh, at that very moment I definitely realized the full horror of our situation, that we will never be able to leave ourselves and the home, that we are trapped forever and forever. I woke up in a cold sweat and found you peacefully sniffing beside me.
Right after breakfast we went to the principal’s office. The moment of truth had arrived. We knocked several times, went in and saw Adoter pretentiously lying back in a spacious armchair. Her usual irritable mood had been replaced by sleepiness and boredom, but once you started on the subject of our surgery, Adoter’s face twitched and livened up, distorting itself into a grimace of laughter. Only her eyes remained serious.
“Well, well, just look at you! What nonsense! And which head of this two-headed lizard came up with such a remarkable idea? So, it is not enough for you to live at the expense of the public but you also want and believe experiments should be performed on you. Would you like to be normal like everybody else?” She cleared her throat several times; her voice was piercing and penetrating. “The looking glass is not to blame if your face is plain. The world is not going to be any better off after your separation. I have seen many ugly people in my life; they have all had to live with their ugliness. Always has been like this, always will be.”
We thought we were used to her insults, but she always seemed able to invent new and ever more exquisite ways of hurting and insulting. She looked at us with indignation and abhorrence as if we were annoying insects, and relished our suffering, trampling on the remains of our frail dignity, not only ours, but hers, too.
“I am not going to send your documents to anybody. You have to accept things as they are. You will stay here as long as the stars stay above you! And that is final!”
Leisurely, almost unwillingly, she opened a drawer, took out a folder, extracted the papers from it, arranged them into three equal piles and slowly started tearing.
Pieces of paper were flying all over the office as if winter and cold were back again with a vengeance. For some fraction of a second I realized with inevitable clarity that our clinical records were in shreds and that the record of our life was soaring in the air and settling on the floor where it couldn’t exist anymore.
“That’s it,” Adoter summed up; her eyes were filled with genuine tears, her lips, slightly quivering, expressed a triumphant smile, from time to time changing to a deep sadness. “You have never existed. There is only the counting: One-Two, one, two. And now get out of here and don’t forget to close the door behind you.”
We didn’t have any strength left to resist or talk or argue. Everything ended up crumbled, dead, far away. Our strength existed merely to sustain silence and emptiness. We were leaving when suddenly you found the force to turn back. You said quietly, very distinctly:
“Actually, Inga, Adolf’s daughter, you are sitting in this cage too, together with us; and apparently it can never end.”
We had no doubt that we were going to be punished, sent to the isolation cell or maybe even worse, to the funny farm; we were waiting for her reprisal, but it never came. I believe that was the last and the most artful revenge of all. The expectation of something inevitable happening which would be painful and long-lasting. We were permanently on alert and actually already trapped inside the walls of the nut house. Day by day our humiliation, the insults, and our anguish were repeated as in an infinite depressive dream. There were two choices: to resign ourselves and continue living in fear and anxiety or to fight. Without thinking twice, we chose the latter, and kept our heads down, cunningly and scrupulously watching everyone’s movements, over long months.
Another winter came. Slabs of the fencing surrounding the foster home moved apart, forming a narrow aperture with width enough for a human body to squeeze through. A few inmates occasionally crept out, ran to the neighboring village to procure vodka or cigarettes and then ran back. We needed to find out if we would be able to squeeze through a crack in that fencing easily, but how could we do so? The doors of the building were diligently locked at night and we saw no opportunity of getting near the fencing. Guys got out of the building through a second-floor window, sliding down on sheets tied together; that was the only verified method. But it didn’t suit us at all; it’s hard to imagine conjoined twins going down a rag rope. Daytime, we carefully searched through the whole yard looking for a suitable place to hide, but without success. The entire territory was plainly visible, and night watchmen, having closed all the doors of the buildings, inspected it twice a night. We became discouraged, ready to surrender, but then a great idea dawned on you, a real brain-wave.
“We will hide in the isolation cell. We will get the keys at the reception desk and spend all day there, locked up within. At night we’ll get out, reach the fencing, and we’ll be free!”
Of course I realized that we had to commit another theft and endure another stay in the isolation cell, this time one dictated to by our own initiative, but we didn’t have a choice. Perhaps not everything bad is in fact bad.
All spring and almost all summer we waited for the isolation cell to become vacant. In early September, when Adoter took a vacation, our time came. We had to wash clothes for skinny Snot through the whole, sad summer. In return she would steal the cherished keys when the right time came. When everything was ready we locked ourselves inside the “penal institution” that had become loathsome to us, and we lay low till the night came.