Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Samuel stopped. There, in the shadow of a rafter, stood Ray, his back to Samuel as he animated some hasty point to a complacent Saul Porter.

Samuel felt confused. He recalled Ray’s wheat project, but the idea had seemed no more than a joke. Samuel was annoyed, uneasy, too, but beyond all, ashamed of his own possessiveness. Ray was entitled to befriend whom he liked, despite what could be said of his tastes. Samuel now worried he would be seen, and sidled away. The overturned wheelbarrow sat abandoned in the sun; the boy had disappeared. Samuel made his way back to the house.

The birthday party was listless, dying out despite Maud’s wishes. Cake sat in untouched, glossy lumps in front of the twins. Ray entered, full of colour and high spirits, but only as the Franks were leaving did Samuel get a moment alone with him. Affectionate as ever, Ray laid Samuel’s worries to rest.

With his usual smirk, Ray said, “You made a fool of me out there, Tyne. Seems you never told Porter a thing about my questions.” He chuckled. “He wouldn’t tell me a thing about what he puts in his crops. It’s looking like a two-man venture.”

“Did he tell you anything about the will?” said Samuel.

Ray laughed. “So eager! You’re going to have to give me a little more time with that. Besides, that’s not Porter stuff, that’s town stuff. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.”

Samuel felt rather embarrassed after they’d left, and settling into his study, he glanced at the clock he’d set to Gold Coast time; it would be evening there. He recalled his sister’s last letter, a reprimand for more money. She’d told him that if he persisted in not returning, he should at least have the decency to double their monthly cheques. It was a common fallacy back home that all Westerners were wealthy; though Samuel supposed that comparatively he was. Every time Samuel received a letter from Ajoa — all of them livid and accusatory — Maud had to reassure him that they were entitled to their lifestyle, that it was long overdue and no great shucks by Western standards anyway. She explained that Ajoa wrote more because she missed him than to berate his lack of charity. And Samuel wondered at his inability to interpret people, often seeing in them the opposite of what they intended. But he wondered: When should a man anticipate others’ befuddling feelings, striving to please and meet their needs, and when should he put them aside to fulfil his own?

Samuel brooded into lunch, only abandoning his thoughts when they grew scattered with hunger. The halls were dark and silent, and for the first time in weeks he was aware of the pitiful, scissor-like complaint of the weathervane. Strangely, they had neglected to call him to lunch, and the silence was odder still. He could hear his loose hem on the hardwood and the sibilance of a radio in a distant room. No, not a radio: tinny voices coming from the twins’ room. Pinching up his pants to lighten the sound of his presence, he crept to the oak door and strained for clarity. He knew it was silly for a man to spy on his children, but they hadn’t spoken in days, and he was relieved to know they at least talked to each other. What they spoke about he could only guess at. He leaned against the jamb, astounded to hear them nattering with the high-pitched fluency of squirrels. The rapid-fire staccato words sounded like a tape run backwards, rushed and guttural. Perhaps, Samuel thought, in their cleverness they have gone and learned another language. But despite his polyglot repertoire, Samuel couldn’t discern it. Strangely inflected, whatever it was, they had both acquired enough to talk quite rigorously. Samuel placed his ear right to the cold wood, confounded. The talking seemed to halt mid-sentence, and he stood petrified, unable to leave in case they heard him step away. After a pause in which he was certain they heard him breathing, they turned on a radio and Samuel rushed away.

Later, Samuel would take a more tender approach. The next afternoon, Maud and Ama in town, Samuel shuffled into the twins’ room. Removing his hat, he fiddled with it as he waited for his daughters to recover from their surprise. Crouched behind an empty bed, comparing their books, they had thrown them down in tandem as soon as he entered.

Clearing his throat, Samuel lowered himself onto Ama’s cot and, giggling a little, made a conspicuous show of his own nervousness to put them at ease. “The Idiot, Le Père Goriot , yes, I myself read those ones in my youth. Quite delightful, quite delightful.” He giggled. “Prince Myshkin and — who is it again? — Nastasya Filippovna, yes, yes. Eugène Rastignac. Quite delightful, quite delightful!”

His daughters’ contemptuous looks silenced him. But just as he was about to speak, he realized he couldn’t tell them apart, and so didn’t know who to apologize to. He cleared his throat, hesitating. Looking from face to face, he said, “With my deepest regret, please accept my apology for having hit you.”

The twin on the left seemed delighted by his indignity. She looked at her sister, who gave Samuel a cold look. He rose to his feet, disappointed, feeling he’d debased himself. Replacing his hat, he left the room.

Ama felt drained. She’d taken to spending more time with Yvette and Chloe, only to find them sullen and evasive. Not only did they refuse to speak, but their gestures were restrained and mirrored. At first, Ama thought she had only to keep speaking to get a response. But they maintained their silence. Soon embarrassing herself, Ama would ambush them with constant talk. It wasn’t long before she got the impression they were laughing at her, and, furious, she gave them a dose of her own silence. But she began to feel isolated, as in the darkest weeks of her mother’s illness. Mrs. Ouillet had endured total paralysis, when no single word emerged from her lips. Ama remembered those lips: dry and opalescent, the muscle above them pulsing as she spooned food between them. Perhaps the twins, with their silent rigidity, were making fun of her mother. Ama began to treat the twins with spite.

No sooner had Ama given up on the twins than, lying in bed, unable to sleep in the hot, moist dark, she heard them whispering. Speaking gibberish, as if they knew she eavesdropped. But the fervour in their voices, and the occasionally clear word, told Ama it wasn’t staged. She held her breath and tried not to move.

One of the twins shifted in bed and spoke furiously. The response, also rapid, resounded with forced calm.

There was more shifting, and then Ama heard a high voice unlike either of theirs: “You’re Chloe. I’m Yvette.”

The other twin cleared her throat, said something in annoyance, and shifted in bed. A week of not speaking had ended to reveal frightened, fighting girls. Ama rolled on her side and tried to sleep.

In the morning, waiting until they’d gone outside, Ama rushed up to the bedroom and, shutting the door behind her, reached under Yvette’s cot to read the letters they’d written her. Finding the space swept bare, she groped first under the extra cot and then under Chloe’s. The letters were gone.

But from the head of Chloe’s bed to its base, arranged in a strict, tidy row, she found two dozen hairbrushes. Some brass, some wooden, some of a plastic fashioned after gold. All lay with their handles at an exacting forty-five-degree angle. Their charms had been lost long ago, most of them broken or bent. Nevertheless, care had been taken with them, their handles glowing with polish, not a single hair to be found in their naked bristles.

It surprised Ama that Chloe could be so delicate with anything. Ama picked one up, fingering its engraved handle. Had these first belonged to Jacob? That idea seemed even stranger. Ama replaced the brush at the same angle as the others and quietly left the room, nervous that Chloe would somehow notice they’d been touched.