Symbolic, I thought. Why do magicians point pistols at lovely assistants, unless through some secret pact with the male subconscious?
«What?» asked my wife.
«Eh?»
«You were muttering,» said my wife.
«Sorry.» I searched the program. «Oh! Next comes Miss Quick! The only female pickpocket in the world!»
«That can't be true,» said my wife quietly.
I looked to see if she was joking. In the dark, her dim mouth seemed to be smiling, but the quality of that smile was lost to me.
The orchestra hummed like a serene flight of bees.
The curtains parted.
There, with no great fanfare, no swirl of cape, no bow, only the most condescending tilt of her head, and the faintest elevation of her left eyebrow, stood Miss Quick.
I thought it was a dog act, when she snapped her fingers.
«Volunteers. All men!»
«Sit down.» My wife pulled at me.
I had risen.
There was a stir. Like so many hounds, a silently baying pack rose and walked (or did they run?) to the snapping of Miss Quick's colorless fingernails.
It was obvious instantly that Miss Quick was the same woman who had been vanishing all evening.
Budget show, I thought; everyone doubles in brass. I don't like her.
«What?» asked my wife.
«Am I talking out loud again?»
But really, Miss Quick provoked me. For she looked as if she had gone backstage, shrugged on a rumpled tweed walking suit, one size too large, gravy-spotted and grass-stained, and then purposely rumpled her hair, painted her lipstick askew, and was on the point of exiting the stage door when someone cried, «You're on!»
So here she was now, in her practical shoes, her nose shiny, her hands in motion but her face immobile, getting it over with .
Feet firmly and resolutely planted, she waited, her hands deep in her lumpy tweed pockets, her mouth cool, as the dumb volunteers dogged it to the stage.
This mixed pack she set right with a few taps, lining them up in a military row.
The audience waited.
«That's all! Act's over! Back to your seats!»
Snap! went her plain fingers.
The men, dismayed, sheepishly peering at each other, ambled off. She let them stumble half down the stairs into darkness, then yawned:
«Haven't you forgotten something?»
Eagerly, they turned.
«Here.»
With a smile like the very driest wine, she lazily unwedged a wallet from one of her pockets. She removed another wallet from within her coat. Followed by a third, a fourth, a fifth! Ten wallets in all!
She held them forth, like biscuits, to good beasts. The men blinked. No, those were not their wallets! They had been onstage for only an instant. She had mingled with them only in passing. It was all a joke. Surely she was offering them brand-new wallets, compliments of the show!
But now the men began feeling themselves, like sculptures finding unseen flaws in old, hastily flung together armatures. Their mouths gaped, their hands grew more frantic, slapping their chest-pockets, digging their pockets.
All the while Miss Quick ignored them to calmly sort their wallets like the morning mail.
It was at this precise moment I noticed the man on the far right end of the line, half on the stage. I lifted my opera glasses. I looked once. I looked twice.
«Well,» I said lightly. «There seems to be a man there who somewhat resembles me.»
«Oh?» said my wife.
I handed her the glasses, casually. «Far right.»
«It's not like you,» said my wife. «It's you!»
«Well, almost,» I said modestly.
The fellow was nice-looking. It was hardly cricket to look thus upon yourself and pronounce favorable verdicts. Simultaneously, I had grown quite cold. I took back the opera glasses and nodded, fascinated. «Crew cut. Horn-rimmed glasses. Pink complexion. Blue eyes-«
«Your absolute twin!» cried my wife.
And this was true. And it was strange, sitting there, watching myself onstage.
«No, no, no,» I kept whispering.
But yet, what my mind refused, my eye accepted. Aren't there two billion people in this world? Yes! All different snowflakes, no two the same! But now here, delivered into my gaze, endangering my ego and my complacency, here was a casting from the same absolutes, the identical mold.
Should I believe, disbelieve, feel proud, or run scared? For here I stood witness to the forgetfulness of God.
«I don't think,» said God, «I've made one like this before.»
But, I thought, entranced, delighted, alarmed: God errs.
Flashes from old psychology books lit my mind.
Heredity. Environment.
«Smith! Jones! Helstrom!»
Onstage, in bland drill-sergeant tones, Miss Quick called roll and handed back the stolen goods.
You borrow your body from all your forebears, I thought. Heredity.
But isn't the body also an environment?
«Winters!»
Environment, they say, surrounds you. Well, doesn't the body surround, with its lakes, its architectures of bone, its overabundances, or wastelands of soul? Does not what is seen in passing window-mirrors, a face either serene snowfalls or a pitted abyss, the hands like swans or sparrows, the feet anvils or hummingbirds, the body a lumpy wheat-sack or a summer fern, do these not, seen, paint the mind, set the image, shape the brain and psyche like clay? They do!
«Bidwell! Rogers!»
Well, then, trapped in the same environmental flesh, how fared this stranger onstage?
In the old fashion, I wanted to leap to my feet and call, «What o'clock is it?»
And he, like the town crier passing late with my face, might half mournfully reply, «Nine o'clock, and all's well
But was all well with him?
Question: did those horn-rims cover a myopia not only of light but of spirit?
Question: was the slight obesity pressed to his skeleton symbolic of a similar gathering of tissue in his head?
In sum, did his soul go north while mine went south, the same flesh cloaking us but our minds reacting, one winter, one summer?
«My God,» I said, half aloud. «Suppose we're absolutely identical!»
«Shh!» said a woman behind me.
I swallowed hard.
Suppose, I thought, he is a chain-smoker, light sleeper, overeater, manic-depressive, glib talker, deep/shallow thinker, flesh fancier…
No one with that body, that face, could be otherwise. Even our names must be similar.
Our names!
»…1…bl . . . er…» .
Miss Quick spoke his!
Someone coughed. I missed it.
Perhaps she'd repeat it. But no, he, my twin, moved forward. Damn! He stumbled! The audience laughed.
I focused my binoculars swiftly.
My twin stood quietly, center stage now, his wallet returned to his fumbling hands.
«Stand straight,» I whispered. «Don't slouch.»
«Shh!» said my wife.
I squared my own shoulders, secretly.
I never knew I looked that fine, I thought, cramming the glasses to my eyes. Surely my nostrils aren't that thinly made, the true aristocrat. Is my skin that fresh and handsome, my chin that firm?
I blushed, in silence.
After all, if my wife said that was me, accept it! The lamplight of pure intelligence shone softly from every pore of his face.
«The glasses.» My wife nudged me.
Reluctantly I gave them up.
She trained the glasses rigidly, not on the man, but now on Miss Quick, who was busy cajoling, flirting, and repicking the pockets of the nearest men. On occasion my wife broke into a series of little satisfied snorts and giggles.
Miss Quick was, indeed, the goddess Shiva.