Twins

by Dirk Kurbjuweit

  I left after midnight, once the show was over. The light was still on in the workshop. That was nothing unusual, and I’d got into the habit of looking to see who was there as I passed. I suppose it started the night the girl was found in the pillar. It was usually Ludwig’s father, kneeling at a motorbike, tightening bolts or laying Bowden cables. He had a slow, calm way of doing these things. He too often had a radio on, a small transistor hanging from the ceiling by a wire, but it was always people talking, never music.

  Thinking back, I remember another sound I associate with the workshop—a hum coming from the fluorescent lights. It’s less the hum I remember, though, than the crackling noise and the brief sizzle when a moth came too close and scorched itself. The lights were always swarming with insects in the summer, and there was a fair amount of crackling and sizzling. The more I think about it, the clearer I can hear the sounds of the workshop—the voices from the radio, the humming, the crackling and sizzling—and a click when Ludwig’s father knocked his spanner against a cylinder. He often had his back to me, in which case I’d go silently on my way to the garden gate, where my bike was leaning against the fence. If he saw me, he gave me a brief nod and went back to tightening bolts. It was strange, but he never entirely lost a certain awkwardness towards me.

  It wasn’t Ludwig’s father in the workshop that day, though, but Vera. She was sitting on the stool with the greasy cat in her lap, stroking its head.

  ‘I think he’s sick,’ she said when she saw me.

  I took a step into the workshop.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked.

  She shrugged.

  I went over to her and crouched beside her. I stroked the cat’s back; it opened its eyes for a second. ‘Poor cat,’ I said.

  Its coat was quite hard, matted with oil. It gave a short, dry cough. I stroked its back, starting at its neck, while she stroked its head. Inevitably our hands touched, but only a few times, and only briefly.

  I’ve forgotten exactly what happened next. It’s funny what we remember and what we don’t. I remember, for instance, that Vera was wearing a navy blue dress with a pattern of little yellow flowers, but I don’t know if the cat jumped off her lap or she gently shooed it away. What I am sure of is that we ended up facing one another, standing very close—holding one another, in fact. The dress had a zip, a long zip, going all the way down her back. Don’t undo it, I kept thinking. Don’t undo it, don’t. I undid it, and it made a wonderful noise. Vera stood very still, her eyes closed. She wasn’t wearing a bra. My hand—my right hand, I think—was on her ribs, just beneath her armpit, my middle finger touching the short, thick, curly hair there, as my thumb drifted down in a slow, careful arc. When you run your thumb very slowly over someone’s skin like that, you feel all the little hairs and realise they’re everywhere, though you can’t see them. I’ve never felt anything as fine as the downy hair on Vera’s skin. My thumb found the curve of her breast, and my other fingers followed. The skin there was so soft—sometimes I can still feel it, even now. No, no, that’s enough, don’t go any further, you mustn’t, I told myself, but there was no stopping my hand as it drifted on, following the curve, until it met a nipple as hard as a small stone, and there the no shattered, splintering into a thousand pieces. Vera drew in her breath sharply. I heard the sizzle of a bug zapped by the light.

  We took one of the blankets Vera’s father laid over the motorbike tanks so he wouldn’t scratch the paintwork when he was tinkering about with the engines and walked to the end of the garden, where the wood began. It was different from with Josefine. We undressed separately, facing away from one another. When I turned around, Vera was kneeling on the blanket, her hands folded in front of her crotch. She didn’t want me to touch her. She straddled me, taking my penis and lowering herself onto it until just the tip was inside her. She moved slowly on top of me for a while, then took a little more of me inside her and again moved for a while on top of me while I lay there, waiting for her to take more. When I was right inside her, she suddenly froze, and everything went quiet. I saw her thighs quivering, but she didn’t make a sound, and then she dropped down on me and sank her teeth into my neck. I cried out, and though I’ve often tried to remember, I don’t know to this day whether a truck rumbled over the bridge at that moment, drowning my cry, or whether the sound reverberated into the night.

  Afterwards she lay beside me. It was a warm night. We looked up at the bridge, listening to the whistle and rush of the cars and watching the lights. We didn’t say much. Maybe we didn’t say anything at all.

  4

  In the middle of that summer, something beautiful happened. When I went round to Ludwig’s one day, he was in the workshop, which was unusual. There he was in a corner, kneeling in front of a scarlet Triumph T20 Tiger Cub, one of the oldest motorbikes there, a rusty 1959 model. The stuffing was bursting out of the saddle, the wires and Bowden cables were frayed, and it had a damaged piston. The owner had brought it to be fixed years ago and hadn’t been seen since. Some said he’d run away from the responsibilities of fatherhood. Others said he’d ended up under a bus.

  Ludwig was removing the front mudguard when I arrived. I went over to him and watched him struggling with the spanner. One of the bolts had rusted fast and he couldn’t get a purchase on it. I could tell from the look on his face that he’d been trying for some time. I also knew he hadn’t asked his father how you undid a rusty bolt, though he was there in the workshop too, holding a dark plastic mask with a small window to his face as he welded a frame. When he’d finished his welding, I went and asked him how you undid a rusty bolt. He fetched a yellow can with a red valve and told me it was rust remover—it would do the job in half an hour max. He didn’t look at me. I took the can, went back to Ludwig’s motorbike and sprayed all the rusty bolts. We spent the afternoon taking the Triumph to pieces. Ludwig didn’t say he’d begun to overhaul it so that we’d have a motorbike when he and I turned eighteen later in the year. He didn’t need to. It was a brilliant idea.

  We started to spend a lot of time tinkering in the workshop, and as we worked, we pondered what we’d do when we left school. We wanted work we could do together, of course, but it wasn’t easy to find anything that appealed to us.

  ‘University’s boring,’ said Ludwig, as we removed the cylinder head from the cylinder, and he was, of course, absolutely right. We didn’t want to waste any more of our lives sitting in musty rooms while outside, in the real world, time overtook us. We racked our brains for a while until Ludwig suddenly said, ‘We’ll build a tower in Asia.’

  I knew at once where he was coming from. There had been a lot of reports on how even young people could make heaps of money with real estate in Asia, and there was no reason we couldn’t give it a go.

  No sooner was the idea voiced than we began to dream up a project of our own—though ‘dream’ is probably the wrong word, because we took it all very seriously and didn’t for a second doubt that we’d actually build our tower. We gave careful thought to the location. We rejected Seoul and Manila, thought long and hard about Saigon and eventually agreed on Hanoi, because Hanoi was not yet too developed—it had potential. Our tower would be the tallest in the world, of course, and that meant at least 450 metres. It was to be a round tower that tapered towards the top, like a chimney, and we wanted it built in red brick with non-reflective windows—not big windows, but plenty of them. We envisaged a classically handsome building, with flats and offices. Ludwig drew the tower in engine oil on a newspaper, and we hung the drawing in our corner of the workshop.

  It was wonderful talking about our Asian tower as we inserted spokes into the wheel rims or adjusted cogs in the gearbox. We stayed in the workshop far into the evening, listening to bugs and gnats sizzle on the fluorescent tubes, and talking and talking. The top floor would be our office, of course—an immense loft, 450 metres above Hanoi, above the world.

  ‘We’ll have the most stunning secretaries you can imagine,’ I said.


  ‘At the top of a tower like that, anything is possible,’ said Ludwig.

  We spent a lot of time working out the best way to power our lift, because it had to be fast, of course—as fast as lightning, the fastest in the world. We wondered about jets, about rockets—it was glorious. Building in Hanoi wouldn’t cost much, so getting hold of money for the construction would be a cinch. There were shares, the internet, millions of possibilities—and the banks would cough up the balance. Other people managed, didn’t they, and there were two of us. We were twins—together, we could do anything.

  I’m afraid, though, that Ludwig’s mood grew worse over the course of that summer. Even when working on the motorbike, he was bad-tempered and unusually taciturn—it was only the imaginary building work on our tower in Asia that seemed to cheer him up a bit. Once the topic was exhausted—once we’d agreed, for instance, that we’d give preference to stockbrokers, modelling agencies and private military contractors when letting the offices—he fell to brooding.

  I have a clear recollection of sitting with him on the grass one day, removing rust from the brake and clutch levers. All of a sudden, he stopped, looked at the brake lever and said, ‘Isn’t it strange that somebody’s life can depend on a stupid bit of metal like this? I mean, you pull it at the wrong moment, or you don’t pull it at all, and wham! Funny, eh?’ He went back to his sanding. He was right, of course, and as he said it, the thought seemed as familiar to me as if I’d thought it myself at that same instant. That was normal for us—it happened all the time—and yet I began to worry about him.

  There was no overlooking the growing trouble he was having maintaining our ideal weight. He ate only two-thirds of what I ate, at most, and yet he felt permanently hungry. That, I think, was the main reason for his bad mood. Never being able to eat enough can be punishing, as I’d later discover for myself. It was probably the combination of eating so little and training such a lot that was getting him down. We’d stopped going to the taverna altogether.

  ‘Just the smell of that Greek shit is enough to make you fat,’ he said.

  It was a surprise to us both when we lost the regatta in the neighbouring town. The twins from Potsdam overtook us in the final spurt, beating us by half a length, and we stepped up our training.

  Training and tinkering—that’s how we spent our summer. It was a lot of work to get the old Triumph back in shape. We spent hours scratching rust from the paintwork with wire brushes, took parts to be painted, chrome-plated, upholstered, got hold of new pistons, new cylinders. I often went to Ludwig’s father to ask his advice, and he was always glad to give it. If anything, his answers to my questions were sometimes far too detailed. But he never gave us any practical help, never touched our bike. It was as if someone had chalked a line around our corner of the workshop, and Ludwig’s father knew not to cross it.

  Around this time Ludwig started to get funny if he thought I was spending too much time with anyone else. We spent almost every waking minute together as it was, but I did sometimes ride home at lunchtime to eat with my mother, who was very lonely. It wasn’t long after our defeat, I think, that Ludwig asked me whether this was really necessary—whether it wasn’t driving a wedge between us and making it harder for us to grow together. I’d been wondering about that too and had come to the same conclusion. Besides, it wasn’t exactly pleasant having lunch with my mother, because she was always going on about my father, though apparently without the least resentment. You’d have thought from the way she spoke that she was expecting him back for dinner at the latest—and looking forward to it. I found this hard to cope with, so I’m sure I was right to abandon that particular routine.

  My mother insisted, though, that I sleep at home during the week. ‘Until you’re eighteen,’ she said. That put Ludwig in a foul mood. He’d suggested moving a second bed into his room—a good suggestion, and a very reasonable one. It would, of course, have been wonderful to talk about our Asian tower just before we drifted off, in that sleepy state where you’re almost dreaming and it’s so much easier to give free rein to your fantasies. By then we’d decided to make the tower five hundred metres, to make it harder for anyone to outdo us. Our flag would fly from the top.

  Our work on the Triumph was going well. We’d got all the parts working again or bought new ones, and now we began to rebuild it. It was incredibly satisfying, hanging that gleaming engine in its newly painted frame and screwing it tight. Over time we’d become good mechanics and hardly needed Ludwig’s father’s advice anymore. When Vera came into the workshop, she and I only gave each other a brief nod. She stayed at the front with her father, watching him work.

  Ludwig usually went to bed at about midnight, after we’d listened to the radio for a bit. When I was sure his father had knocked off for the evening, I’d leave the house and head for the workshop, where I’d be sure to find the light on. Since our first time together, Vera often waited for me—in fact, come to think of it, she waited every night. As soon as she saw me, she’d throw her arms around my neck and start kissing me. I felt a bit uncomfortable about this—the workshop was a place I shared with Ludwig—but I let it happen.

  We never spoke until after we’d had sex. I didn’t do much talking even then, but Vera talked a great deal. I liked listening to her. Sometimes the cat came and sat on the grass just near where we were lying and looked at us. Cats look so severe when they sit up straight and still like that—so stern, almost reproachful—and there was no ignoring Otto. It was no use just looking away—his oily smell carried to us on the breeze.

  Vera seemed a little taller every time I saw her—she was still growing. She wanted to be tall, but more than anything she was waiting for her breasts to fill out. Sometimes it happened late, she said, cupping first her right breast and then her left.

  ‘Do they seem bigger to you?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Feel,’ she said.

  I put my hand on her right breast and then on her left one.

  ‘Yes, a bit,’ I said.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter if they don’t grow any more. The main thing is that they’re a nice shape.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think they’re a nice shape?’ she asked.

  ‘Very nice,’ I said, and it was true. They were almost perfectly round. They weren’t the kind of breasts you could lay your head between, but they felt nice—firm but yielding. Besides, I liked her mole.

  ‘If they grow some more, I’ll have a perfect figure,’ said Vera. ‘Not many girls have long legs and big breasts.’

  ‘You already have a perfect figure,’ I said.

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘But who cares, anyway? Do you know what? I want to come and live in your tower in Asia too.’

  It was always the same with her. After we’d done it, she only ever lay quiet for a moment, then something would pop into her head and she’d start chattering away. I couldn’t just lie on the blanket and listen to her, though, because she always had so many questions.

  ‘How high is it going to be now?’ she asked.

  ‘Five hundred metres,’ I said.

  ‘How much higher than the bridge is that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. We looked up at the bridge. I liked watching the white shimmer of the headlamps, moving like streaks of light. ‘Maybe eight times as high,’ I said.

  ‘I want the floor down from you,’ she said, ‘the second-highest. You boys have to live right at the top, of course, no question of that.’ She could be quite cheeky. ‘But do you know what? I think your tower’s going to be too gloomy—dark red bricks and such small windows. Why are you making it so gloomy?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘We like it like that.’

  ‘Oh well,’ she said, ‘maybe I’ll tie a bow around my floor—a yellow one. How long do you think the ribbon would have to be?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. I didn’t want a bow around our tower in Asia.

 
; ‘My floor’s going to be amazing,’ she said. ‘I’ve got it all planned out. No walls—not a single wall, not even around the toilet—and hardly any furniture. Just a bed, a cupboard, a table and a chair—but loads of flowers and plants. Do they have ivy in Hanoi? Ivy would be great. We could grow it up the tower—it wouldn’t look so gloomy all covered in green. And I’d like tortoises,’ she went on, ‘lots of tortoises. I’d let them go wherever they liked, in and out of the flowers and plants—what do you think?’

  ‘Why tortoises?’ I asked.

  She straddled me.

  ‘They’re so slow,’ she said.

  A little later the questions started up again: ‘Will you come and visit me on my floor?’

  I didn’t like that. The tower in Asia was something between Ludwig and me. I didn’t mind Vera daydreaming about it—I even liked the thought of her living up there with her plants and tortoises, nearly five hundred metres in the air. But I didn’t want her talking about the tower and me in the same breath. I can’t remember how I answered her question—or if I answered at all—but I don’t think she persisted, because I pulled her down to me and kissed her breasts. Maybe she even bit me. She never could resist biting me just as I was starting to revive, and I rarely managed to suppress a cry. Sometimes it was swallowed by a truck, and sometimes it wasn’t.