if we were forced into the playground by Miss Aynk or some other unsympathetic teacher, we would shuffle out and quickly find a corner and, pretending to be invisible, long for the class bell to sound. But our fascinated classmates would see us there and would often, at least at first, come over to us. Most of all what fascinated them about us, and what they could never understand, was why we never did things differently, why we always had identical marks in class, why we walked in step, why we scratched our noses, or curled our index fingers around our hair in exactly the same way. They couldn’t understand why we were always joined together at the hands, walking in step, as if we were a thing that had four legs, like a horse or a table. Our schoolmates longed for us to do things differently. But we couldn’t, not then. It was too early for all that.
And then of course there was Kersty Plint in our class, the daughter of the butcher of Veber Street. Stunning and sexy Kersty Plint, as she would become, was not one of those fey girls who giggle and play with dolls, nor was she the sort of girl whose beauty would in time dictate a certain superior aloofness; rather she was tough and lively and healthy and vindictive. With ease and with relish she would bloody the noses of her classmates, male and female alike, and it was with particular enjoyment that she persecuted us. Most of all Kersty despised our shyness, and the word ‘shy’ could be attached to almost everything we did. Sticky, sticky adjective. It is with particular distaste that I remember Kersty and her followers,of which there were many, approaching us in the school breaks and pulling us apart and holding us as we wailed at each other across the vast tarmac distance of the playground, begging to be reunited. But Kersty wouldn’t leave it at that. She began to see that much fun could be gleaned from torturing us, and she began, with her followers, to enact her Togetherness Exercises, which is the name I gave to Kersty’s isolation experiments. She, or one of her followers, would take one of us, Irva or me (she could never tell us one from the other), and hide us somewhere in the school, and then she would have great pleasure in watching the other twin immediately find that location without ever once turning a wrong corner. Or else she would separate us by only a few rooms—keeping one in the classroom, for example, and the other in the lavatory, and she would whisper, out of our hearing, to her followers, that at precisely five minutes past eleven she was going to hit one of us, and it was with profound joy that at five minutes past eleven she would note that both twins started crying simultaneously, even though only one of us had been hit. Sometimes she’d have her followers dip one of our heads down a lavatory bowl and pull the chain, and stamp in joy when she heard the report that at the precise time of lavatory dipping the other twin, out of sight and hearing of the lavatory, suddenly took a deep breath and then a moment or so later shook her head as if it were soaking wet. Sometimes she’d simply gawp at the fact that one of us had grown a bruise on a particular place where the other twin had been hit (she never realised that we would often thump each other so that we had identical bruises). But in the end, even Kersty became bored of her Togetherness Exercises and she left us alone.
A ND OF COURSE there was also the business of being tall, which I’ve avoided up till now, perhaps because it was only at this time that we began to realise it. Father, lest we forget him and his stool perched on top of the table in the kitchen, had given us his tallness genes. We were taller than most of the other children our age, and in time we would grow to the exact loftiness of one hundred andeighty-six centimetres, 7 totally dwarfing our mother, who stood at a mere one hundred and fifty-nine centimetres, or even Grandfather, who we measured one afternoon and found
And then of course there was Kersty Plint in our class, the daughter of the butcher of Veber Street. Stunning and sexy Kersty Plint, as she would become, was not one of those fey girls who giggle and play with dolls, nor was she the sort of girl whose beauty would in time dictate a certain superior aloofness; rather she was tough and lively and healthy and vindictive. With ease and with relish she would bloody the noses of her classmates, male and female alike, and it was with particular enjoyment that she persecuted us. Most of all Kersty despised our shyness, and the word ‘shy’ could be attached to almost everything we did. Sticky, sticky adjective. It is with particular distaste that I remember Kersty and her followers,of which there were many, approaching us in the school breaks and pulling us apart and holding us as we wailed at each other across the vast tarmac distance of the playground, begging to be reunited. But Kersty wouldn’t leave it at that. She began to see that much fun could be gleaned from torturing us, and she began, with her followers, to enact her Togetherness Exercises, which is the name I gave to Kersty’s isolation experiments. She, or one of her followers, would take one of us, Irva or me (she could never tell us one from the other), and hide us somewhere in the school, and then she would have great pleasure in watching the other twin immediately find that location without ever once turning a wrong corner. Or else she would separate us by only a few rooms—keeping one in the classroom, for example, and the other in the lavatory, and she would whisper, out of our hearing, to her followers, that at precisely five minutes past eleven she was going to hit one of us, and it was with profound joy that at five minutes past eleven she would note that both twins started crying simultaneously, even though only one of us had been hit. Sometimes she’d have her followers dip one of our heads down a lavatory bowl and pull the chain, and stamp in joy when she heard the report that at the precise time of lavatory dipping the other twin, out of sight and hearing of the lavatory, suddenly took a deep breath and then a moment or so later shook her head as if it were soaking wet. Sometimes she’d simply gawp at the fact that one of us had grown a bruise on a particular place where the other twin had been hit (she never realised that we would often thump each other so that we had identical bruises). But in the end, even Kersty became bored of her Togetherness Exercises and she left us alone.
A ND OF COURSE there was also the business of being tall, which I’ve avoided up till now, perhaps because it was only at this time that we began to realise it. Father, lest we forget him and his stool perched on top of the table in the kitchen, had given us his tallness genes. We were taller than most of the other children our age, and in time we would grow to the exact loftiness of one hundred andeighty-six centimetres, 7 totally dwarfing our mother, who stood at a mere one hundred and fifty-nine centimetres, or even Grandfather, who we measured one afternoon and found
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