TWINS
There were once two
brothers who were identical twins.
They were also princes, and would drink and carouse around their father’s
Dukedom.
At last the twin who was five minutes older
became Duke and married a lovely woman. But this young Duke still drank
occasionally with his brother, lying to his wife that he was going away to
inspect his lands.
One day, after one of
these bouts, he met his wife in the street. He was dishevelled and a little
drunk, and said nothing when she addressed him by his brother’s name. She said,
“The Duke your brother is inspecting his lands,” and took him home as if she
had always planned it. They made love. The Duke was angry, and was a little
brutal in their lovemaking, as his brother might have been.
The Duchess wished them to
meet again, and the Duke remained angry and was again brutal, so that they made
love angrily like strangers, which the Duke liked. This continued until he
began to wonder if his wife was seeing through his disguise. He wondered if she
wanted to hide that she knew, so that their lovemaking might remain passionate,
and so that he would not take drastic steps.
The longer this continued
the more foolish he felt. At last he explained the matter to his brother. He
asked his brother as a favour to make love to his wife. Reluctant, and only
because of the Duke’s insistence, the brother took the wife to bed and the Duke
killed them both.
There were once identical
twins. All their lives they had gone to the same barber for the same haircut, at
first because it amused their parents and now from habit. The old barber
enjoyed this, and sat them in adjacent chairs and compared them in the mirror
as he worked. But after their haircuts one of the twins always tousled his
hair. His name was John.
One day their wives were
with them, and the barber said, “Do you boys ever swap women? You know, without
saying?”
Everyone laughed, but at
home John’s wife said, “Horrible old man.” When John came home from work in
the following days she would ask him about things that his brother couldn’t
know. At first he laughed but then it seemed strange she would remember a silly
joke. So he pretended he couldn’t remember these things, or he pretended to be
someone pretending to remember.
The wife, being virtuous,
was angry. But when they made love she thought that he was more insistent, more
urgent. Afterwards she calmed herself by thinking that to sleep with her
husband’s twin was perhaps a small sin, especially if her husband knew. And it
was no sin at all if she herself didn’t know. And her brother-in-law was so . .
.
A few days later John
said, “You’ve stopped testing me.” Next morning he stared for a long time into
the bathroom mirror. Then he combed his hair carefully and shaved carefully and
dressed carefully.
His wife was angry. She
had been worried about her brother-in-law, but now she was worried about her
husband. She tousled his hair and said, “Why have you shaved? Usually you don’t
shave so much.”
The man couldn’t explain.
But as he walked to the school he thought that he perhaps liked seeing his wife
a little disturbed and that he liked resembling his brother, who was decisive.
As he was thinking these
things his brother drove past and was shocked: “Why is he so neat? And his
clothes!” At the office the brother phoned his wife saying, “I just thought I’d
call.”
Ten minutes later his wife
heard the door bell. “I forgot my key,” said the man. She was so surprised that
she didn’t speak, even when he took her hand.
Afterwards she looked at
him strangely. He stammered and left. She said nothing when her husband came
home, even when he told her about his brother looking so smart. She only
thought, “I can’t be sure.”
But when her husband went
through into the lounge she called, “It was a nice surprise this morning. When
you came home.”
She waited, but her
husband didn’t answer. He didn’t answer because he was shocked, but she
preferred to think that he already knew. Her heart began to thump. It meant
that she was free.
She was glad therefore
when her husband’s brother came again the next day. But afterwards she thought,
“If my husband agreed to this then he wants to sleep with John’s wife.” That
afternoon she drove past John’s house. She turned round and drove past again,
and this time she saw her husband.
Soon after this, the men
swapped homes. They preferred to be with the women who had accepted them, not
the ones who had betrayed them.
John was hurt by his
wife’s deceit, but after all he had been first, and his new life was surprising
and an adventure and gave him a new boldness. But it was hard for his brother,
who had always felt dominant.
They didn’t speak for
several weeks, but then John phoned. They began to meet for drinks, with their
old boyhood feeling that no one else understood them.
One day they brought the
two women without warning them. The women were annoyed by this trick, but the
men ignored them because their new lives had become routine. The twins got a
little drunk. Outside the bar, John said, “Let’s tell the barber.”
They hauled the two women
into the barber’s, but before they could explain about their new lives, the
barber laughed in his loud way and said, “So you still haven’t swapped women!
You should try it! I’m telling you. Try it!”
///ENDS