The Twins Read Free Page A

the scenery is a forest of tall tree trunks. The theatre director is in search of a short actress; she must not be more than a metre tall. ‘Listen, Herr Bamberg,’ he says, ‘I’m looking for a girl who can take the part of a poor child who has got lost in the wood. Now I’m thinking of one of your daughters …’ ‘Which of the two did you have in mind?’ ‘Who is the eldest?’ ‘They’re the same age.’ ‘Ah, twins … curious …’ ‘Which did you have in mind?’ the father repeats. ‘Well, I had thought … the one with the darker hair. The blonde one seems to me too plump to play a starving child.’ ‘But she would never dry …’ He fingers his moustache proudly. ‘She is … remarkable, in that respect.’ Mindful of the exhortation above the library door, he usually dedicates his free evenings to classical writers and poets. In between times, as a playful experiment, he has taught her a poem. ‘Our Anna,’ he explains, ‘has the memory of a parrot. She can recite Schiller’s “The Song of the Bell” without missing a line.’ ‘Good,’ the director capitulates, ‘you’re the father, you can judge better than I.’
    ‘I don’t approve,’ demurs Aunt Käthe, ‘the child is still too young for such a performance.’ But there is no gainsaying this father’s ambition. So there the aunt sits on the day of the performance with Lotte and the father beaming in the front row, flanked by her seven sisters. In the wings, the wardrobe mistress hidesAnna’s dress under a grey, worm-eaten winter coat and ties her white hair ribbon loosely to the belt. Without suspecting that it is a dress rehearsal for reality, that she is going to interpret this role for ten years without an audience, without applause, Anna presents such a believable, pitiful child on the stage that tears prick the step-aunts’ eyes. After two men in hunting suits have carried her off between them out of the imaginary forest, she peeps inquisitively into the hall from the wings. The audience, no more than a collection of heads, does not interest her. She sees but one face in the semi-darkness, raised up towards the stage – that of the smallest person in the hall, insignificant and nondescript between the adults. Anna stares at her, overcome by an unfamiliar, terrifying sensation. Through the play and her role in it, Lotte and she for the first time exist as two individuals separate from each other. Each with a particular point of view – Lotte from the hall, herself from the stage. This awareness of separation, of unwanted duality, suddenly upsets her so she storms diagonally across the stage, through the two lovers’ reconciliation scene – the unbuttoned pauper’s coat flaps round her and the belt with her hair ribbon slips backwards and onto the floor. Aunt Käthe’s youngest sister cries excitedly in Cologne dialect, ‘Ach, look at that little one!’ A roar of laughter breaks out in the hall. There is applause as though it is the director’s stroke of genius. Unperturbed, Anna jumps down from the stage. She goes straight over to Lotte and only calms down when she has wormed herself in next to her on the same seat.
    The projector, like a moonbeam, illuminates a bed with pale blue sheets. Beneath them Anna and Lotte fall asleep at night, their limbs firmly intertwined like mating octopuses. Without their noticing, the night tactfully unties this knot so that by morning each wakes up on one side of the bed, their backs adjacent.
    The magic lantern has access everywhere – it shows us a classroom . It is as though we can hear the scratching of the dip pens. Anna’s passionate temperament does not lend itself to calligraphy.Whereas Lotte appropriates the alphabet with a steady hand, under Anna’s regime the letters will not obey. After school Anna sits next to her father in the office and scratches letters on her slate, which he keeps wiping off saying, ‘Once again, no good,’ until she comes up to his