TWINS

1969

At precisely eleven o’clock, Arthur Swift emerged from his duplex apartment, pulled the door shut behind him, consulted his wristwatch, and confirmed that he had in fact emerged at precisely eleven o’clock.

The evening before, he’d sat down at his desk, a map of the city spread out before him, and calculated to the minute how much time he would need to reach the Parthenon.

The house was empty.

Rounding a flower bed, he caught out of the corner of his eye a glimpse of a wild-eyed, bearded figure peering at him from behind a dogwood.

Arthur knew it was Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.

As Arthur watched, three young girls emerged from behind Rasputin, clinging to his robe. They pointed at Arthur and giggled.

Arthur clenched his teeth, suppressing a violent remark, then stormed across the intersection onto the next block.

Empty, that is, except for Arthur, who sat at his little desk in the upstairs bedroom, his chemistry set spread out before him. Racks of test tubes, beakers, retorts—all filled with multicolored liquids—along with a microscope, Bunsen burner, knives, and a two-pan scale, stood arrayed like a futuristic city in miniature, a tiny world at his command.

To calm himself, Arthur imagined his father sitting at home, feet propped on the rolltop, his ancient Marconi tuned to some obscure station. Though a distinguished physician and indubitable man of science, he was inordinately fond of riddles, conundrums, puns, and silly jokes. He sometimes recited weird limericks at the dinner table, his eyes twinkling. One evening, after taking an especially refreshing sip of sweet tea, his father had set his glass down, lifted an index finger, and said:

“There once was a hack named Maloney
Who ate pickles wrapped up in baloney.
His breath it did stink,
But his newspaper ink
Was the Dixie reply to Volpone.”

Through the window he looked down into the backyard, a full acre of land sealed off from the surrounding town by pink stucco walls. There his mother tended her vegetable garden. A tiny, frail woman in a plaid cotton dress, she hacked with a hoe between rows of tomato vines. A red rag fluttered in her hair.

When he reached the next intersection, Arthur turned east. A baseball diamond lay in the distance. As he approached, he saw the chain-link shell rising behind the plate, the moderately populated bleachers and dugouts, as well as the field itself fanning out toward the horizon.

Arthur clambered up onto the bleachers.

The first thing he noticed was that he knew most of the players. His former lab partner crouched tying his shoe in left field.

He glanced over at the scoreboard—a black sheet of metal with white stenciled numerals, bolted to a post—but found it blank. He turned to the man sitting next to him.

“Hello, Don,” he said.

“Arthur!” Don said, extending his hand.

“How’s Amy?”

“Did I tell you she’s got one in the oven?”

“Congratulations.”

Don shrugged, then nudged Arthur’s elbow. “You ever pitched a game in relief, old hoss?”

“In high school, sure, but—”

Don stood up. “We’ve got our man!”

Arthur strode out to the mound at Don’s side. They stood before the opponents’ coaching staff—a pair of gangly bean-counters, both named Brad.

“But he’s not on the roster!” cried one of the Brads.

“Brad’s right,” said the other. “It’s strictly against regulations.”

“They can’t just bring in some jerk off the street.”

“No. Not ordinarily. But, Brad, listen—”

“Brad, you’re not seriously considering—”

“Hold on, Brad.”

The pair turned to Arthur. He could feel their eyes crawling over him.

“In this case,” they said in unison, “we’ll make an exception.”

Moments later, Arthur stood alone on the mound.

Staring intently at the catcher’s mitt, Arthur tipped forward, jerked his left knee up to his ear, rocked back, and lunged. His right arm catapulted forward. He stumbled, regained his balance, then held his breath and waited.

When the ball was halfway to the plate, time stopped.

The ball hovered in midair, rotating on its axis.

The day was sunny, clear, and blue.

Then everything jumped back to life.

When the catcher caught the pitch, it knocked him back so hard that he and the umpire both went somersaulting into the chain-link fence. The batter, swept up in the backdraft, sailed down the third base line.

It came as a shock when the storm clouds gathered and the tornado descended into the yard.

Back on the road, Arthur glanced at his watch. Its silver face flashed in the sun, blinding him for an instant.

As he neared the university, its stone buildings clustered among red and yellow trees, he thought of his twin brother, Michael. One night, when they were kids, as they lay on their backs in the matching beds, watching the headlights from traffic below sweep bright shapes across the ceiling, Arthur had whispered into the darkness.

“I can’t feel my left arm,” he said.

“Go to sleep, Arthur.”

“No, I mean it. It’s like a dead eel attached to my shoulder. Something bad’s gonna happen.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

Arthur stared up at the model bomber dangling from wires above his head. He’d glued that plane together himself, painted the white stars on the wings. “It’s coming,” he said. “Soon.”

Arthur watched, trembling, as the shadow swept over the garden. His mother looked up, eyes wide with fright, then dropped her hoe and scrambled to the nearest wall. She pressed her body flat against it.

The black funnel plunged.

“But you didn’t see it happen!” Arthur cried.

“So what?” said Michael. “I heard all about it, right? I can see what it did to everything. What’s the difference?”

Arthur shook his head. “It’s not the same. You weren’t there.”

The tornado touched down in the center of the garden. The sound was unbearable. As the storm crossed the yard, it threw off in every direction a spray of mud and grass and gravel, splattering the window Arthur gazed through. He ducked. The window exploded inward, raining glass down over his back. Suddenly the curtains whipped around the room. Bedspreads billowed, picture frames dropped, and his chemistry set crashed across the floor.

They stood in the ruined bedroom, two days after the storm. The windows had been boarded and most of the debris cleared, but large cracks remained in the walls. Plaster dust sprinkled from the ceiling.

Arthur knelt down beside his bed and rummaged underneath it. He pulled out the model bomber. One wing wiggled slightly on the fuselage but otherwise the plane remained intact.

Arthur rose to his feet, held the plane aloft, and spun himself around, droning through clenched teeth. Then, just before he might have lost his balance, he pulled out of the spin, brought the plane down level with his nose, and dashed out of the room.

He closed the door behind him. Alone in the hallway, he waited for equilibrium to return. Then he set off on a stroll through the house, the bomber resting lightly on his shoulder.

First he passed the large bedroom shared by his two sisters. The door stood open and he saw both girls gazing into the mirror above the dressing table. Before them lay an array of crystal bottles, brushes, and silver boxes. For a moment the room appeared to recede from him, elongating strangely.

Arthur turned and hurried down the wide staircase leading to the ground floor. He descended into the foyer, beyond which lay the living room, then trotted ahead to the dining room, through the single swinging door, past his father’s office, and into the kitchen. He opened the back door. He found his eldest brother, William, leaning against the house. Improbably tall, his face darkened by whiskers, William stared at the ruined garden. When he turned to glance at Arthur, his green eyes looked scorched.

He peered again over the window ledge. Inside the tower of swirling wind, a chasm opened in space. At its deepest point, where the two walls met, a slender thread of magma flowed. On either side, scattered over the sharply raked escarpments, hundreds of women struggled to climb out. He watched as, here and there, a woman would lose her strength, slip, and tumble back into the crevasse, vanishing in a smudge of gray smoke.

Arthur entered the campus. Bronze leaves scudded across the sidewalk and tumbled over the grass. He passed by the library, turned onto a path cutting diagonally across a courtyard, then entered a long alley between the maternity ward and the planetarium.

When he emerged on the other side, into a broad cobblestone square, he heard music. At the far end of the square, the glass-paneled facade of the theater building threw jagged bars of light against the ground. Its doors swung open.

By the time he stood in the atrium, the music had stopped.

Passing through a dim tunnel, he entered the auditorium. Row after row of empty seats sloped toward the stage, tapering slightly as they went. The houselights—inverted metal cones suspended from the ceiling—glowed gold and pearl and white. On the stage itself, a dozen women in bowlers and black leotards milled around an enormous hat rack. The only member of the audience—a blonde woman with a clipboard—called out directions.

Arthur made his way down the center aisle and sat behind the blonde woman. He leaned forward over the seats.

“Hi, Amy,” he said.

Amy flinched, then turned to face him. “Gracious, Arthur!” she cried, touching her throat. “Where on earth did you come from?”

“I didn’t know you were a dance teacher,” Arthur said. “Was the hat rack your idea?”

“Oh, that. It’s supposed to be Fred Astaire.”

Arthur rose abruptly to his feet.

Amy’s eyes lit up. “Say, would you—”

“No.”

“Not even—”

“Forget it. I’m already late—”

“Please, Arthur?”

He trudged across the stage, lugged the rack off into the wings. He returned with a top hat in one hand and a shiny black cane in the other. He stood center stage, gazing into the cavernous auditorium. The whispers of the dancing girls twittered in his ears.

Suddenly the room went dark. A spotlight switched on from the balcony.

As soon as the song began, broadcast through speakers mounted on the walls, dozens of lights blazed to life in the rafters. The dancing girls swirled about in a frenzy—circling Arthur, running fingers along his sleeves, dashing away, leaping.

Arthur doffed his hat, winked at the girls. Twirling his cane, he tapped across the stage. The girls fanned out behind him, fluttering their hands. Finally they closed in again, forming a ring around Arthur. Just as the music reached its climax, each dropped to one knee, arms extended in his direction, heads tilted back. Arthur brandished his cane.

The music stopped. The lights went out. Amy, somewhere in the darkness, clapped and laughed uproariously.

Then the tornado lifted, just as it reached the far wall. Like a retractable telescope, it collapsed into itself, shrank back into the sky. The black clouds boiled above.

Back on the cobblestone square, Arthur crossed hastily into the medical district. As he turned onto the sidewalk that would lead him to the Parthenon, he spotted—leaning against a lamppost, raking yellow fingers through his long, greasy beard—Grigory Efimovich Rasputin.

Arthur recalled the legend of Rasputin’s demise. First, his enemies lured him into the palace cellar, using the promise of a meeting with the Princess; they fed him cakes and wine laced with cyanide; when the poison failed to take effect, they fired a bullet into his heart; later, after having lain for several hours as if dead, Rasputin inexplicably revived and attacked; they tried to strangle him but he fled into the night; they shot him twice more, once in the head; they kicked him repeatedly and beat him with a club as he rolled about in the snow; finally they wrapped him in a rug, drove him out to a bridge, and heaved him over a parapet, down into the icy river.

Arthur glared at Rasputin, then marched decisively toward the lamppost.

Rasputin made no move as he approached, only grinned with palpable self-satisfaction.

Then, without breaking stride, Arthur swung his right fist.

Rasputin’s head snapped back. He toppled.

Arthur stepped calmly over the body, reached down, and seized the collar of Rasputin’s smock. The monk's face had caved in like a watermelon hit by a battering ram. All that remained was a pink, pulpy crater surrounded by stringy hair.

Arthur looked again into the yard. He saw a trench of churned earth, littered with stones, along which his mother ran screaming. When she reached the place where the storm had left off, she stumbled to the ground. Her lithe body heaved with sobs.

Arthur strolled through the park along a pebbled path crossing vast carpets of grass. In the distance he saw an elaborate flower garden, complete with arched iron bridge; a gleaming fighter jet parked in a grove of trees; a statue, gone green with age and perched on a pedestal, of a man in a knee-length overcoat.

The clouds parted. The sun broke through. Arthur turned away, his tender face streaming with tears.

Then he was inside, standing in the Parthenon’s vast inner chamber. Surrounded on all sides by two-tiered colonnades supporting a high coffered ceiling, the room echoed like a deserted warehouse.

A slim young woman stood at the far end, her white hands folded before her.