The Fahrenheit Twins (34 page)

BOOK: The Fahrenheit Twins

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Whoops of feminine laughter and growls of paternal caution echoed through the house as the naked twins stepped into the water together.

‘This is not our home anymore,’ said Tainto’lilith, facing her brother across the soily, steamy broth shimmering between them. ‘Things have changed.’

Marko’cain nodded in agreement.

‘We have changed, too,’ he said.

They glanced at each other, surreptitiously checking whether the threatened teats and beard were sprouting yet, but their outward appearances were still comfortingly identical. It was their insides that would never be the same. Something had happened to them, out there in the wilderness.

‘I am angry at father,’ mentioned Marko’cain, saucing himself with shampoo. ‘Are you?’

‘Very angry.’

‘Do you think it would make us feel any better if we killed him?’

‘I think we should just run away,’ said Tainto’lilith. ‘But with proper food, this time.’

Marko’cain ducked his head into the water, allowing his sister to paw the suds out of his scalp. When he surfaced, he said,

‘Perhaps we should kill father,
then
run away.’

‘What about Miss Kristensen?’

‘Kill her as well,’ added Marko’cain glibly.

‘We don’t mean her any harm, do we?’

‘Perhaps she
told
father to get rid of us,’ suggested Marko’cain. ‘So she could come and live with him.’

Tainto’lilith sighed: a deep, doleful exhalation of regret.

‘I wish our eyes had not been opened to these things,’ she said. ‘The world was so much nicer before.’

Frowning, wedging her head between the taps, she made her very best effort to tell guile apart from innocence. Hot water droplets pattered onto her right shoulder, and cold onto her left.

‘She seemed honestly surprised to see us,’ she reflected. ‘To see that there was such a
thing
as us, I mean.’

‘Perhaps she was just play-acting,’ said Marko’cain.

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘All right, then, we’ll leave her be, and just kill him.’ There was a strange new tone in the boy’s voice, a cocky impatience, as if the choice between life and death was too straightforward a matter to waste much discussion on. This, too, made Tainto’lilith sad. She racked her brains for a way to save her father, that poor old baby who was, after all, helpless without a woman.

‘If we kill father,’ she said, ‘Miss Kristensen might get killed as well, without us wanting it.’

‘How?’ The threat of complication was, as Tainto’lilith had hoped, putting a wrinkle on his brow.

‘She might throw herself in front of him,’ she said. ‘Like the brave little squaw in
Sheriff Flintlock and the Rustlers
.’

‘One of us could kill father,’ suggested Marko’cain, ‘while the other engaged Miss Kristensen in conversation.’

‘That seems terribly unkind,’ sighed Tainto’lilith, glimpsing a long lifetime ahead of her of keeping her brother’s inclinations in check. ‘Especially since she is a visitor. I think we should just run away.’

‘All right,’ he said, standing up in the bath abruptly, a tutu of froth clinging to his midriff. ‘But not with the huskies.’

‘On foot?’ said Tainto’lilith.

‘In the helicopter,’ declared Marko’cain, clambering out, with such a swagger of purpose that it looked as if he might stride naked to the hangar.

‘But we’ve never flown the helicopter,’ protested Tainto’lilith, splashing out of the bath herself.

‘We’ve read the book,’ her brother said airily, meaning the pilot’s manual they’d often played with when it was too snowy to go outside.

‘It’s not the same.’

‘Of course it isn’t. But there is a connection.’

Wrapping towels around themselves, the twins walked to the laundry, where the massive front-loader washing machine was almost finished washing their jumpsuits. The house had gone all quiet, apart from the mechanised sloshing of the water. Boris Fahrenheit and Miss Kristensen had made peace with each other, it seemed.

‘Where would we go?’ said Tainto’lilith.

‘A green place,’ enthused her brother. ‘Europe. Canada. Russia. Gre-e-e-enland.’

‘The names are good,’ admitted Tainto’lilith. Then suddenly she started weeping, a stream of hot tears rolling down her face, a lost and frightened look in her eyes.

Marko’cain, catching sight of her distress, was shocked. She had never wept without him before, particularly not in a situation where he himself could imagine nothing to weep about. Awkwardly, he patted her trembling shoulders. Now he too glimpsed a lifetime ahead of him, of trying, and failing, to comfort his sister in her secret sorrows.

‘We might get to see a tree,’ he said, encouragingly. ‘And all the other things that mother used to talk about.’

Tainto’lilith nodded, unable to speak, the tears still flowing down her cheeks. She would be all right in a moment. Behind the big glass porthole in the washing machine, their clothing had begun to spin, an inextricable, mesmerising ring of embroidered pelts. Soon they would be able to put it on again, and cover their nakedness.

And yes, her brother was right, they had so much to look forward to, in the big wide world down below. The Book of Knowledge had a lot of blank pages.

ALSO BY MICHEL FABER

Some Rain Must Fall and Other Stories

Under the Skin

The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps

The Courage Consort

The Crimson Petal and the White

First published in Great Britain in 2005
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1TE

This digital edition first published in 2008
by Canongate Books Ltd

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Earlier versions of some of these stories appeared in
the following publications: ‘All Black’ in
Edinburgh Review
,
‘Andy Comes Back’ in
Prospect
, ‘Beyond Pain’ in
New Writing 11
,
‘The Eyes of the Soul’ in
Macallan Shorts
, ‘Finesse’ in
Prospect
,
‘Flesh Remains Flesh’ in
V&A Magazine
, ‘A Hole With Two Ends’ in
Damage Land
, ‘LessThan Perfect’ in
Crimewave
, ‘Serious Swimmers’ in
West Coast
,
‘The Smallness of the Action’ in
The Printer’s Devil
, ‘TabithaWarren’ in
Scottish Book Collector
,
and ‘Vanilla-Bright Like Eminem’ in
Matter
. A short excerpt from the title story
first appeared in
Black Book
magazine. The technical information in ‘Explaining Coconuts’
is drawn from
Coconut Research Institute, Manado
, by Professor Doctor T.A. Davis,
Mr H. Sudasrip and Dr S. N. Darwis