Stories: All-New Tales

In time, within a decade, the mother would die. In the now derelict house (visited, infrequently, by a few concerned relatives) Edward would live as a recluse in two or three downstairs rooms, one of which he’d converted into a makeshift studio. The embittered mother had left him enough money to enable him to continue to live alone and to devote himself to his work; he hired help to come to the house from time to time to clean it, or to attempt to clean it; to shop for him, and to prepare meals. Freedom! Misery and wonder! On large canvases Edward transcribed his bizarre dream-images, among galaxies of hieroglyphic shapes in a sequence titled Fossil-Figures. For it was Edward’s belief, which had come to him in a paroxysm of spinal pain, that misery and wonder are interchangeable and that one must not predominate. In this way time passed in a fever heat for the afflicted brother, who was not afflicted but blessed. Time was a Möbius strip that looped back upon itself, weeks, months and years passed and yet the artist grew no older in his art. (In his physical being, perhaps. But Edward had turned all mirrors to the wall and had not the slightest curiosity about what Edward now “looked like.”)

The father, too, died. Or disappeared, which is the same thing.

Relatives ceased to visit, and may have died.

Into infinity, which is oblivion. But it is out of that infinity we have spring: why?

It began to be, as if overnight, the era of the Internet. No man need be a recluse now. However alone and cast off by the world.

Via the Internet E.W. communicated with companions—soul mates—scattered in cyberspace, of whom, at any given time, there were invariably a few—but E.W.’s needs were so minimal, his ambition for his art so modest, he required only a few—fascinated by the Fossil-Figures he displayed on the Web, who negotiated to buy them. (Sometimes, bidding against one another, for unexpectedly high sums.) And there were galleries interested in exhibiting the works of E.W. —as the artist called himself—and small presses interested in publishing them. In this way, in the waning years of the twentieth century, E.W. became something of an underground cult figure, rumored to be impoverished, or very wealthy; a crippled recluse living alone in a deteriorating old house, in a deteriorating body, or, perversely, a renowned public figure who guarded his privacy as an artist.

Alone yet never lonely. For is a twin lonely?

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.