Twin Truths

by Shelan Rodger

  ‘So we’re going . . . fishing?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Right now he is grateful, I think, for the gentleness of Pippa.

  ‘Fishing for my past,’ I say slowly. The strange dream where I met Jenny again on the wing of a plane floats vaguely somewhere and I feel tired, exhausted by not knowing what this is all about. ‘But I don’t understand what we’re going to use for bait.’

  ‘You will. Be patient.’ He looks a little nervous and I admire him for having the courage to do this, for having the courage to care after our relationship fell away so suddenly.

  ‘How did Ana get over everything she went through? She said you helped her.’

  ‘Did she?’ He looks surprised. ‘Very few people know she was ever my patient. She must be fond of you. It is hard for the relatives of the disappeared, hard for them to get closure, when there is no body, no record of a death, no end of the story. And for the ones who are most optimistic, in a way it is hardest of all. It takes them longer to give up hope and move on, and there is a kind of insidious resentment against people generally for what was, after all, a kind of complicity. Nobody knew and everybody knew. I have seen it make some people bitter, but Ana worked at it. She was the one who really helped herself.’

  I feel small.

  ‘You are working at it too, you know. It is wonderful to see the change in you.’ He pauses suddenly and a note of playfulness slips out of me.

  ‘As a doctor or as a man?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  He starts the car again. The blurred compartments are a relief for both of us, I realise, enabling us to sidestep the questions we are not ready to ask, freeing us, bizarrely, to be in the present. The vegetation is thick and tropical on either side of the road that snakes its way through to the town with the name of a fish. Slowly, it gives way to fields of yerba maté, the bitter tea that has been grown here for more than a century, and then we come to the edge of a town perched on the brown waters of the Alto Parana river.

  We check into a small, comfortable hotel with a courtyard and fishing tackle on the walls. There is a moment of awkwardness as we get out and Ignacio tells me that he has booked two rooms and asks if that is OK. I say yes, of course, and I feel my neck redden and hope that he doesn’t notice, but once I am alone in my room I am relieved and grateful for the peace of my own space. I let cool water wash away the red heat and I lie on the bed and listen to the crickets, drifting. I try to block out an obvious reality, but it seeps in regardless. There has to be some connection between this town with the name of a fish and Jenny’s plane crash. Why else would we be here?

  I jolt upright mentally. What has Ignacio found out, for God’s sake? Is he taking me to the crash site? For fuck’s sake! What the hell is that going to achieve? I want to throw something at a wall. I have an image of myself throwing the glass of wine that crashed and spilt blood all over the cheese that Jenny, Johnny and I were having for supper that evening. Then I was exasperated with Jenny. Now I feel the same urge to lash out – and the person I want to make bleed is myself.

  Ignacio sees the turmoil in my face when we meet for supper, and I do nothing to try and hide it.

  ‘Is that what this is about? Are you taking me to the fucking crash site?’ I accuse him.

  He looks as if he is expecting this – brace, brace. The small furrow that has grown between his eyes since I first met him sits a little deeper in his face.

  ‘Yes, we are going to the fucking crash site.’ And the way he says it makes me feel like a spoilt child again. I breathe in and prepare to listen, but he says nothing more.

  ‘Why?’ is all I manage.

  ‘Because it will help you get closure – real closure. Because it is the kind of experience that has been proved to make a difference to people who have suffered trauma and grief.’

  ‘But why should it make a difference to see where she crashed? If retracing her steps to Iguazu didn’t make any difference, why should this?’

  ‘But going to Iguazu did make a difference. It helped you move beyond the fiction you were living.’

  ‘So why bring it back now?’ Oh this insidious need for answers. Ana has lived most of her life without an answer. Can I not do the same?

  Ignacio reaches for my hand again and holds it as if it is the key to another world. ‘You are right, it might not make any difference at all, but then again it might. Just trust me, Jenny – I mean, Pippa. Go with this just for one more day. Just come to the site with me tomorrow and then you can leave and never see me again – if that is what you want.’

  What do you want? The question hovers between us. It follows, meekly, shy, as we leave the remnants of our meal behind us and part, going slowly to different rooms.

  Chapter 74

  We are walking through a yerba maté plantation about seven kilometres outside Eldorado: irregular rows of leafy bushes that look a bit like stunted olive trees in red soil. I watch my trainers print their passage in the sandy earth. Ignacio walks in front of me. I didn’t want him behind me, watching me, but actually I am barely aware of him as I walk. I feel – almost – as if I have walked through a plantation like this before. It gives me a surreal feeling of Jenny by my side. The waters of Iguazu took her away from me, finally and irrevocably – or so I thought. Is it possible that she is reaching out to me now from the wing of her plane?

  And then I see it. Shiny and irrefutable: the wing of a plane. Alone, seemingly, on the edge of the plantation, the brown waters of the Parana lapping gently close by. Is this your wing, Jenny? Is this the address you carry with you every night? The strange dream circles inside me.

  I walk towards the wing, registering somewhere, peripherally, that Ignacio has sat down and is looking away. I walk into the space that he is offering me, follow the glint of silver with my eyes and, as I get closer to the banks of the river, I see something else, something protruding near the water’s edge.

  Then it happened. The breath I was holding left my body and I found myself gasping inexplicably for air. Something seemed to be pulling me downwards. I felt myself sinking, plunging, vaguely aware that the air was above me and yet unable to control my limbs, plummeting deeper under the surface. I tried to scream. I had passed the white line. I was being sucked down into the depths of the ocean, no air, down and down into the devil’s throat.

  Oh Jenny. The carcass of the plane is rusting where it landed on the waters of the Alto Parana, a piece of it wedged against the bank. The wing must have broken off and slid into the plantation. I drop to my knees. You were plunged into the water, Jenny. My fit in the swimming pool – it coincided with yours. You drowned, Jenny, you drowned. Perhaps there is another wing, buried with you beneath the waters. Perhaps you took that one with you.

  I close my eyes and I see with sudden, eerie certainty the panic of bodies fighting with the water, clothing bloated with air, blood and bubbles and mud swirling through the confusion. I see the look on a mother’s face as she loses her child’s hand to eternity. I see the frozen fear on a man who is trapped in his seat as the water gushes in and takes him. I see a high-heeled shoe pierce someone’s eye.

  I open my eyes, alarmed. Jenny, this is too much. I don’t want your memories. Please keep them, keep them with you on your wing. But there is a momentum now. I am in the memory and Jenny is pulling me backwards through time. There is fire on the wing, smoke pouring out of the engine and a massive rumbling shaking the plane. And yet inside it everyone is still. There are no screams. No movement. Not yet. It is a surreal moment, suspended in space and time, a moment frozen in the lives and deaths of every human being inside the plane. I see the scene enacted around me with a clarity so vicious, so penetrating, it is almost as if I was there.

  Oh Jenny, what a shocking way to die. I am so sorry, my dear sweet sister, my other half, my life, but stop, please stop. Her hand is pulling me down deeper, showing me, pointing at the wreckage of bones and flesh and metal. Enough!

  I open my eyes and am surprised to fin
d Ignacio holding me. I am sobbing, and with each sob Jenny is pouring out of me, away from me, again and again and again.

  Chapter 75

  We walk back through the yerba maté field in silence. Every now and again Ignacio reaches out and takes my hand without saying anything. I feel the gentle warmth of him through cotton wool, concentrate on my feet in front of me, willing each step to take away the power of thought.

  By the time we get back to the hotel, my calf muscles ache. I tell Ignacio I want to sleep, and he nods and then shuffles with me, awkward and protective, to the door of my room.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I tell him, and he nods again and says he’ll be waiting for me later in the hotel bar, just come when I’m ready.

  Sleep rescues me, at first; I drift, grateful, as if I am swimming again in Greek waters. But then it takes me deeper than the Greek waters – uncannily deeper into Jenny’s memories, as if this were her last gift to me – into a kaleidoscope of images, images of the crash site, images inside the plane and the river, distorted and incoherent. I wake drenched in sweat.

  I have grown up with a presence that can read my mind. All our lives we could reply to each other’s unspoken sentences, but this is too much. It is unnerving me, as if Jenny’s last moments have filtered beyond her death into my mind and taken hold with a force so powerful they have almost become my memories. Jenny, I have my own memories. I now know with certainty that my fit in the water echoed your death in the river, but I cannot make your crash my own. Take it away with you now, Jenny, please. Oh Ignacio, what have you done?

  I shower to wash away the sweat, and steel myself to join Ignacio in the hotel bar. I look at the mirror – see again the lost face of someone I barely recognise – and will some of Jenny’s strength into the image in the glass. Ana, I almost wonder aloud, is this just another of life’s twists? Did you ever have your sister’s memories? Sweet God, I hope not; I remember you said they used to cut the women with scissors.

  Ignacio is in the bar, patiently waiting, and I catch him looking anxiously at me as I sit down opposite him. I feel a tiny impulse to lash out at him, and I desperately want to light a cigarette, but I do neither. I just look back at him, feeling vacant. He pours me a glass of wine and I sip it slowly.

  ‘How are you feeling? Well, that’s a stupid question.’ He is talking quickly. ‘Obviously you’re shell-shocked and maybe you’re angry with me, too, but talk, Pippa. It is really important to talk now. Say anything. It doesn’t matter what, just talk a little.’ It’s the first time he has managed to call me Pippa without having to correct himself.

  ‘I don’t know what to think or feel, to be honest. I just can’t believe how vividly I can see it all in my mind.’

  ‘That is very normal, you know. The site where something traumatic has happened is often a powerful trigger. Somewhere, your brain responds and wakes up. Sometimes it all comes flooding back in one go, sometimes it is like a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces flashing suddenly in front of you. With time, you will start to piece it all together, but it will take time.’

  Of course, I think. Time. I always need time. ‘It doesn’t feel normal,’ I say blankly.

  ‘Listen, I know this is hard, Pippa, it’s a hell of a lot to process. It really will take time.’ He is using his coaching voice, and part of me wants to shake him and ask the therapist to go away and let the man in him speak.

  Beneath the surface there is a sheet of ice waiting to crack. I am not aware of it properly at first, yet there is something odd about the way Ignacio is talking to me; the way he has accepted so readily the infiltration – the invasion – of Jenny’s last moments in my mind. He is trying so hard to make me think it is normal. Can it really be normal to remember your sister’s death as if it is your own? I look at Ignacio over the ice sheet and he speaks again.

  ‘Do you remember any of what happened afterwards?’

  ‘You mean after my fit?’ I say it almost dreamily. ‘I told you before, no. I came to in the hospital. The doctors just told me I’d had a fit in the water. They did tests, but they couldn’t work out what caused it. Of course, I knew as soon as Jenny didn’t get off the plane, but,’ I pause, forcing myself to voice the connection I now understand for the first time, ‘I never knew until now that she drowned.’

  Ignacio looks extremely nervous all of a sudden, and I want to reach out and take his hand for a change, and tell him it will all be OK. I try to soothe him with words instead.

  ‘Look, it all makes more sense now, and maybe you’re right and that will make it easier to live with. I am grateful to you, Ignacio, for bringing me here. I was always too scared to do too much research into the crash myself. I didn’t think I could cope with the details of how she died. Well, now I know exactly. The plane crashed in the river and she drowned. The only bit I find really weird is the sense of déjà vu I felt when I saw the plane.’

  I stop because Ignacio looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

  Chapter 76

  There are moments in life when time freezes. A French lorry is driving late at night on the wrong side of a road in England. A couple are driving back from a pub, they round a corner and see the lorry. Time stops while the man decides what to do, trying to calculate whether to veer to the wrong side of the road, understanding that if he swerves and the lorry swerves too, they will hit each other regardless. The woman is still; she sees her life like the cliché, unrolling before her eyes, in the elasticity of imminent death. I am like the girl in the car in this time-frozen moment. I don’t have control of the wheel; it is pointless to decide which way to veer. I look at the lorry coming towards me and nothing happens.

  I blink and become conscious of Ignacio again. He is looking intently at me; he looks like the driver, as if he is trying to decide what to do.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask him.

  ‘Jen– Pippa, you haven’t understood.’ He is speaking so quietly I lean in towards him over our drinks.

  And then the ice sheet cracks.

  ‘It was you, Pippa. You were on that plane. Pippa, you survived the crash. There were thirty people on board and nineteen of you survived. It was your name on the passenger list. They are your memories, Pippa.’

  I feel the pieces of ice veering off in different directions inside me. The noise is deafening, and suddenly it is the noise of the plane and I close my eyes and I see it all happening again – the same expressions, the same horror gallery of images – and the impossible truth of what Ignacio has just said is thumping in my brain. Nothing makes sense now. Nothing will ever make sense again.

  I am gasping for breath, and there is a single sharp piece of ice forcing itself into my consciousness. Words find their way, at last. ‘But if that was me, where is Jenny?’

  He is silent, wrestling with something I cannot see. I look at him for answers and finally he speaks. ‘There is no Jenny, Pippa. There never was a Jenny. I believe you have something called dissociative identity disorder. It used to be called multiple personality disorder. It is characterised by different personality states, distinct identities, which recurrently take control of someone’s behaviour. It can be a childhood response to abuse or some other trauma. It is often accompanied by bouts of amnesia, but memory can be triggered, and with memory comes acceptance, and you can get support to help you through this.’

  I stare blankly at the textbook sitting opposite me and wonder what relationship all this could possibly have with me.

  Suddenly I am ten years old again, sitting at the kitchen table with Jenny, and Jenny has just told Mother about Frank and Mother is screaming at me.

  ‘Pippa! Is this true? Are you saying this is true?’ I must have given some form of response.

  ‘No!’

  I watched more of my planet spilling onto the table. She fled from the room and Jenny and I clung to each other.

  What do you mean? What do you mean, there is no Jenny? We grew up together. She has always been there. She was there when it happened with Frank. We were always there
for each other.

  ‘Is this true? Are you saying this is true?’ I reach over to Ignacio. I want to shake him. He grabs my wrists mid-air and holds them between us. ‘No!’ The word escapes me in a muffled scream that echoes my mother’s disbelief all those years ago when her mind rejected the truth we had given her about what Frank had done.

  ‘Pippa, listen. It was a reaction. It happens sometimes, especially in response to sexual or emotional abuse during childhood. Your mind created Jenny. She is part of who you are, and then the trauma of the crash caused even more havoc and your mind responded with her imaginary death.’

  ‘No. You cannot do this. You cannot be right.’ The shattered ice is flooding my system now, as the tears overflow.

  ‘It’s OK, Pippa. It will all be OK. That’s enough now.’

  Behind the tears I see the denial on my mother’s face and I am ten years old again.

  What was she talking about? ‘To be honest, I don’t know whether you just imagined this or whether you made it up, but I do know one thing. It didn’t happen. We will never speak about it again. It didn’t happen.’

  * * *

  My father is not my father. It didn’t happen. My sister is not my sister. It didn’t happen. We will never speak about it again. It didn’t happen. My world is made of water.

  Chapter 77

  Sleep dulls my mind at last, but I wake up with a jolt. Ignacio. I reach out, forgetting that he is not there, that we are sleeping in separate bedrooms. I reach instead for the bedside lamp and then clamber out of bed and into the bathroom. I feel nauseous, but I force myself to look in the mirror. My eyes are puffy with the effort of tears. I stare and I mouth aloud the narrative that has woken me up.

  ‘You were abused as a child by your mother’s lover. Years later, you aborted your baby. You left Johnny and you came to Argentina to get over it, and then you survived a plane crash. Jenny is your darkness, your comfort and your darkness. It was you who aborted the baby, Pippa. You killed the baby and walked out on its father.’