Not so long as his twin-self continues to exist.
The brothers were never in contact now, yet, on TV, by chance as sometimes Edward flicked through channels like one propelling himself through the chill of intergalactic space, he came upon images of his lost brother: giving impassioned speeches (“sanctity of life”—“pro-life”—“family values”—“patriotic Americans”) to adoring crowds, being interviewed, smiling into the camera with the fiery confidence of one ordained by God. There was the demon brother elected to the U.S. Congress from a district in a neighboring state the smaller brother hadn’t known he was living in; there, the demon brother beside an attractive young woman, gripping the young woman’s hand, a wife, a Mrs. Edgar Waldman, the smaller brother hadn’t known he had married. The demon brother had been taken up by rich, influential elders. In a political party, such elders look to youth to further their political heritage, their “tradition.” In this political party the “tradition” was identical with economic interests. This was the triumphant politics of the era. This was the era of the self. Me, me, me! There is me, me, me there is only me. Cameras panned rapturous audiences, fervently applauding audiences. For in me, there is the blind wish to perceive we. As in the most primitive, wrathful, and soulless of gods, humankind will perceive we. In the most distant galaxies, infinities of mere emptiness, the ancient yearning we.
So Edward, the left-behind brother, hunched in his wheelchair, regarded the demon brother glimpsed on TV with no bitterness nor even a sense of estrangement as one might feel for a being of another species but with the old, perverse yearning I am your brother, I am in you. Where else can there be, that I am?
HERE WAS THE INESCAPABLE fact: the brothers shared a single birthday. Even beyond their deaths, that fact would never change.
January 26. The dead of winter. Each year on that day the brothers thought of each other with such vividness, each might have imagined that the other was close beside him, or behind him, a breath on his cheek, a phantom embrace. He is alive, I can feel him Edward thought with a shiver of anticipation. He is alive, I can feel him Edgar thought with a shiver of revulsion.
3.
THERE CAME A JANUARY 26 that marked the brothers’ fortieth birthday. And a few days later there came to an exhibit of E.W.’s new exhibit Fossil-Figures in a storefront gallery in the warehouse district near the Hudson River at West and Canal streets, New York City, U.S. Congressman Edgar Waldman, who’d given a political speech that afternoon in midtown, alone now, a limousine with U.S. federal plates waiting at the curb. Noting with satisfaction that the exhibit rooms were nearly deserted. Noting with disgust how the old, cracked linoleum stuck against the bottom of his expensive shoes. The handsome congressman wore very dark glasses, he looked at no one, in dread of being recognized in this sordid place. Especially he was in dread of seeing the crippled brother—“E.W”—whom he had not seen in nearly twenty years but believed that he would recognize immediately though by this time the twins—“fraternal twins”—looked nothing alike. Edgar anticipated the stunted broken figure in a wheelchair, yearning teary eyes and wistful smile that maddened, made you want to strike with your fists, that offer of forgiveness where forgiveness was not wanted. I am your brother, I am in you. Love me! But there was no one.
Only E.W.’s work, pretentiously called by the gallery “collage paintings.” These Fossil-Figures lacked all beauty, even the canvases upon which they were painted looked soiled and battered and the walls upon which they were (unevenly) hung were streaked as if the hammered-tin ceiling leaked rust. What were these artworks covered in dream/nightmare shapes, geometrical, yet humanoid, shifting into and out of one another like translucent guts, deeply offensive to the congressman who sensed “subterfuge”—“perversion”—“subversion” in such obscure art, and what was obscure was certain to be “soulless”—even “traitorous.” Most upsetting, the Fossil-Figures seemed to be taunting the viewer, anyway this viewer, like riddles, and he had no time for Goddamned riddles, the rich man’s daughter he’d married to advance his career was awaiting him at the St. Regis, this visit to West and Canal streets was an (unmarked) stop in Congressman Waldman’s itinerary for the day. Wiping his eyes to better see an artwork depicting the night sky, distant galaxies, and constellations, almost there was beauty here, suns like bursting egg yolks swallowing up smaller suns, comets shaped like—was it male sperm?—blazing male sperm?—colliding with luminous bluish-watery planets; and, protruding from the rough surface of the canvas, a thing so unexpected, so ugly, the congressman stepped back in astonishment: was it a nestlike growth of some kind? a tumor? composed of plasticine flesh and dark crinkly hairs and—could it be baby teeth? arranged in a smile?—and a scattering of baby bones?
A fossil, it was. A thing removed from the human body. Something very ugly discovered a cavity of a surviving twin’s body. The fossil-soul of the other, which had never breathed life.
Stunned, quivering with disgust, the congressman turned away.
Walked on, in a haze of denunciations, denials. Seeing that some of the canvases were beautiful—were they?—or were they all ugly, obscene, if you knew how to decode them?—he was made to think that he was endangered, something was going to happen to him, there was a blunt statistical fact that in the last election he’d been reelected to his seat in Congress by a smaller majority than in any of the preceding elections, in such victory there is the presentiment of defeat. Through the maze of rooms circling back to the start of the exhibit and at a glass-topped counter there was a bored-looking girl with dead-white skin and a face glittering with piercings who seemed to be working for the gallery and he asked of her in a voice that quavered with indignation if these ridiculous “fossil-figures” were considered “art” and she told him politely yes of course, everything the gallery exhibited was art and he asked if the exhibit was supported by public funds and seemed but partly mollified to learn that it was not. He asked who the “so-called artist” E.W. was and the girl spoke vaguely saying nobody knew E.W. personally, only the proprietor of the gallery had ever seen him, he lived by himself outside the city and never came into the city, not even to oversee the exhibit, didn’t seem to care if his artworks sold, or what prices they were sold for.
“He’s got some ‘wasting-away’ disease, like muscular dystrophy, or Parkinson’s, but last we knew, E.W. is alive. He’s alive.”