Patrick White - The Solid Mandala

Arthur trotted a little, the white hair flopping at his neck. He was obviously giving thought to what his brother was trying to impress. But it could have been that Arthur was not impressed by reason, or that reason did not concern himself.

“Reasonably reasonable,” he said, and frowned. “If he isn’t careful the lorry will overturn and all his cauliflowers get bashed.”

In spite of his equable nature he sometimes suffered from anxiety. But would immediately cheer up.

“After they pulled the store down, if I hadn’t retired, I might have gone and worked at the petrol station. I like cars when they don’t swerve. When they’re stationary. And the money’s so good I could have kept you. If I’d started early enough I might have kept everybody. In an overall.”

So they were sitting down to dinner in one of the brick boxes. A hot dinner in the middle of the day, except that everyone is at work, has its advantages, Dad used to say, you can put your feet up at night and read.

Waldo held himself so rigid Arthur must have felt it in his spongier hand. But made no sign. In some ways you were so close you did not always notice.

Waldo freed his hand for a moment. The wind getting in behind his spectacles had stung his rather pale eyes. It was so many years, he realized, since he had looked at himself without his glasses, he could barely see his youth’s, not to say boy’s, face. Only sense it. And that, though less concrete, was more painful. In more normal circumstances there were only the scars where the acne had been on the back of his neck.

“These are our twins,” Mother touched their hair to explain. “Yes, Waldo is the smaller. He had his setback. But is better. Aren’t you, Waldo, better? You’re strong now.”

He had heard it so often he didn’t always answer.

“No, there aren’t any others.”

Mother might have been grunting it if she hadn’t been taught how to behave. She was what people called vague, or English. She didn’t Come Out of Herself, which was a Bad Thing in a new country.

“Well, two is plenty, I think,” she said and laughed. “Especially when they grow out of their clothes. And fall ill.” She turned her cheek to their questions, as she answered in her high, embarrassingly educated voice: “Who knows? I didn’t expect to have twins .”

Waldo knew, from what he knew, that there wouldn’t be any more, of any combination.

Dad was usually more specific, especially about illnesses.

“He was born with his innards twisted. We had to have the doctor sort them out. That’s why Arthur got a start on him.”

So Waldo grew delicately in the beginning. It was expected of him. When he had a cold he stayed at home and learned the names of plants from Mother. There was a certain pale-green, sickly light which made him feel sad: the light of delicate plants and waiting for Arthur to return from school. Because much as he loved to drift about the house touching the furniture and discovering books he only partly understood, he was lost without his twin. He could not have explained it, least of all to Arthur, who certainly knew.

“Arthur’s the fair one, the copper-knob,” Dad used to say, mashing Arthur’s hair with his hand as though the hair had been something else.

People said Arthur was a fine-looking kid.

Even if the word had not been used Waldo would not have admitted beauty in Arthur, but enjoyed studying his twin. Arthur’s skin, ruddy where it ought to be, dwindled where protected to a mysterious, bluish white. Almost edible. Sometimes Waldo buried his face in the crook of Arthur’s neck, just to smell, and then Arthur would punch, they would start to punch each other, to ward off any shame, as well as for the pleasure of it.

There were many such games and pretences. Sometimes on evenings of sickly light, before Arthur had returned, Waldo approached the looking glass, his face growing bigger and bigger, his mouth flattening on the throbbing glass, swallowing, or swallowed by, his mouth. Until he would hear Arthur, books falling on the kitchen floor; Arthur had not cared for books. And Waldo would drag himself out of the mirror’s embrace, and run to meet his brother. He never kissed his twin, even when they tried to make him, or at least he couldn’t remember. Instead they wrestled together, and laughed, and even their breathing was inextricably intertwined.

Dad used to say in the beginning: “Arthur’s so strong he’ll make a wrestler. Or some kind of athlete.”

As if he already saw his boy throwing a javelin or putting the weight. Like somebody in the paper. Because Dad never went to sports. If you take the trouble to invent gods, he said, you don’t turn them into sweating lumps of human beings. He read to them sometimes abort the Greeks, after he got home from the bank. He sat there ruffling Arthur’s hair, and Waldo would only half listen. Whether Arthur understood, or had listened at all, Waldo doubted. Nor did he enquire, because it was better not to be sure how much, or how little, his brother understood.

All this reading from the Greek myths was really for Arthur, whom Dad loved best in the beginning. There was a point where he seemed to go off him. Not that Arthur hadn’t continued receiving what was due to him in affection, but more like some dog you had around the place. You had your duty towards him, because you’d got him, and he couldn’t help himself.

And Waldo. There was never any question of Dad’s ignoring or not being fond of Waldo. He was just in his dealings with everyone. But Waldo was born with that small head, with what you might have called that withered-looking face, if you had been inclined to unkindness. The heads of father and son were both, in fact, carved in rather minute detail, and where they gained in similarity was in the eyelids, not the eyes, the hair-coloured hair, the thin lips which tended to disappear in bitterness or suffering. Physical suffering, certainly, was something Waldo hardly experienced after early childhood. But Dad probably suffered without telling, or giving expression only indirectly to his pain. There was his leg. His foot. Often strangers, and always children, were fascinated by George Brown’s boot, which was something members of the family hardly noticed. It fell into the same category as inherited furniture.

One evening Waldo was hanging over the gate watching their father limp down Terminus Road after his journey back from the bank. It was one of the steamy months of summer. How very yellow and horrid you are looking, Waldo thought.

As Dad walked his thin lips were slightly parted. His shoulder was moving inside his coat, fighting for greater ease. When he caught sight of Waldo it was something he obviously hadn’t been bargaining for. But had to speak, and at once, otherwise it would have seemed peculiar.

So Dad wet his lips, and said what jumped into his head.

“Where is Arthur?” he asked.

Waldo did not know. Or rather, he did. Arthur was in the kitchen with Mother, who was allowing him to knead the dough.

Dad began spluttering, reaching out with his lips for something he was being denied. Then he realized. He bent and kissed Waldo. Waldo kissed him. Or touched with his lips his father’s cheek, which, in spite of the clammy summer evening, was colder than he remembered of any other person’s skin. It was a shock to discover, through the smell of sweat and crushed weed. While Dad and Waldo stood looking at each other.

So Waldo was in the position of a stranger, but one who knew too much.

He wanted to make amends, however, both at the moment and afterwards. At the time, to correct himself partially, he said: “Arthur is in the kitchen doing things for Mother” as they walked up the brick path. And Dad, too, perhaps wanted to soothe some possible hurt. He put his hand on Waldo’s shoulder, through which the limp transferred itself. They were limping and struggling, as if in the one body, all the way to the front veranda.