John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"To contemplate it is to risk the loss of my supper," Ebenezer groaned, "yet I must own there is some sense in all you say — " His face hardened. "Save that she's still a maid! That's too much!"

His friend shrugged. "Believe't or no. We'll find her anon, I pray, and you may get a physician's word for't if you please."

"But what you bragged of in the Cambridge tavern!"

"Many shuffle the cards that do not play. I could as easily have had at you in Bill Mitchell's barn, but the truth is, as I said before, 'tis not the one nor the other I crave, but the twain as one. Haply the day will come when Anna's secret lust will get the better of her reason and your own likewise (which, deny't as you may, is plain to me!): if such a day dawn, why then perchance I'll come upon you sack a sack as did Catallus on the lovers, and like that nimble poet pin you to your work — nay, skewer you both like twin squabs on a spit!"

The poet shuddered. "This is too much to assimilate, Henry: Coode a hero; my father in Maryland searching for Anna and leagued with the villain Baltimore; Anna herself yet virginal; and you, after all that hath transpired — you wholly innocent and still my friend! And marry come up, you make matters no simpler when you declare my sister's lust to be reciprocal! Such a prurient notion hath never crossed my mind!"

Burlingame raised his eyebrows. "Then you quite deceived your servants at St. Giles. Mrs. Twigg was wont to tell me — "

"She was a foul-fancied harridan!"

"Why, they even had a rhyme, the which — "

"I know their scurrilous rhyme, whate'er it be," Ebenezer said impatiently. "I have heard a dozen such, since I was small. Nor is your wicked imputation foreign to me, if you must know, albeit I'm not a little shocked to hear you share it. Poor Anna and I since birth have breathed in an air of innuendo, the which hath oft and oft caused us to blush and lower our eyes. Since I was ten our father's household hath assumed the worst of us, for no other reason than that we were twins. 'Twas Anna's ill luck her body blossomed at an early age, and e'en her fondest girl friends — e'en that same Meg Bromly who took your letters to her from Thames Street — they all declared her ripening was my work and drove Anna to tears with their whispering! All this, mind, on no grounds whate'er save our twinship, and the fact that unlike many brothers and sisters we never quarreled, but preferred each other's company to the concupiscent world's! I cannot grasp it."

"Then for all thy Cambridge learning," Burlingame laughed, "thou'rt not by half the scholar your sister is! When first I guessed her trouble, long ere she saw't herself, we launched a long and secret enquiry into the subject of twins — their place in legend, religion, and the world. 'Twas my intent by this investigation not so much to cure Anna's itch — which I was not at all persuaded was an ailment — as 'twas to understand it, to see it in's perspective in the tawdry history of the species, and so contrive the most enlightened way to deal with it. I need not say my interest was as heartfelt as her own; her oft-sworn love for me, I could see clearly, was love for you, diverted and transmogrified by virtuous conscience. When she would run to me in the summer-house, 'twas as a jilted maiden runs to a convent and becomes the bride of Christ, and I sorely feared, if her case were not soon physicked, 'twould bereave her altogether of her reason or else drive her to some surrogate not so tender of her honor as was I."

"Dear God!"

"For this reason I led her on," Burlingame continued. "I declared my love for her — half in truth, you understand — and together we explored the misty land of legends, Christian and pagan. Four years we studied — from your fourteenth to your eighteenth year — and all in secret. On the face of't our enquiry was beyond reproach, and I yearned for you to join us, but Anna would have none of't. I'faith, Eben, what a tireless scholar is your sister!" He shook his head in reminiscent awe. "I could not find her volumes enough of voyage and travels, or heathen rites and practices: she would fall on 'em like a lioness on her prey, devour 'em in great bites, and thirst for more! I'd wager my life on't, at seventeen years she was the world's foremost authority on the subject of twins, and is today."

"And I knew naught of't!" Ebenezer shook his head and laughed uncomprehendingly. "But what is there to know of us twins, save that we were conceived in a single swiving?"

"Why, that Gemini is your sign and springtime your season," Burlingame replied.

"It wants no scholarship to hit on that. 'Tis common knowledge."

"As is the fact that springtime — and Maytime in particular — is the season of fertility and the year's first thunderstorms."

"Don't tease!" the poet said irritably. "This day and night have been my life's most miserable, and I am near dead from shock and want of sleep, to say naught of misery. If all your study ploughed up no lore save this, have done with't and let us rest. 'Tis all impertinence."

"On the contrary," Burlingame declared. "So pertinent are our findings, methinks you'd as well give o'er the search for Anna unless you hear 'em: 'tis better to be lost than saved by the wrong Messiah." His manner and tone grew serious. "You know that spring is the season of storms and fertility, but do you know, as doth your sister, that of all the things our rustic forebears feared, the three that most alarmed them were thunder, lightning, and twins? Did you know thou'rt worshipped the whole world over, whether by murther or by godhood, if not both? Through the reverence of the most benighted salvage runs this double thread of storms and fornication, and the most enlightened sages have seen in you the embodiment of dualism, polarity, and compensation. Thou'rt the Heavenly Twins, the Sons of Thunder, the Dioscuri, the Boanerges; thou'rt the twin principles of male and female, mortal and divine, good and evil, light and darkness. Your tree is the sacred oak, the thunder-tree; your flower is the twin-leaved mistletoe, seat of the oak tree's life, whose twin white berries betoken the celestial semen and are thus employed to rejuvenate the old, fructify the barren, and turn the shy maid's fancies to lusty thoughts of love. Your bird is the red cock Chanticleer, singer of light and love. Your emblems are legion: twin circles represent you, whether suggested by the sun and moon, the wheels of the solar chariot, the two eggs laid by Leda, the nipples of Solomon's bride, the spectacles of Love and Knowledge, the testicles of maleness, or the staring eyes of God. Twin acorns represent you, both because they are the thunder-tree's seed and because their two parts fit like male and female. Twin mountains represent you, the breasts of Mother Nature; the Maypole and its ring are danced round in your honor. Your sacred letters are A, C, H, I, M, O, P, S, W, X, and Z — "

"I'Christ!" Ebenezer broke in. " 'Tis half the alphabet!"

"Each hath its separate import," Burlingame explained, "yet all have common kinship with swiving, storms, and the double face of Nature. Your A, for example, is the prime and mightiest letter of the lot — a god in itself, and worshipped by heathen the great world round. It represents the forked crotch of man, the source of seed, and also, by's peak and by's cross-line, the union of twain into one, that I'll speak of anon. When you set two A's cheek by jowl you see the holy nippled paps of Mother Earth, as well as the sign of the holy Asvins, the twin charioteers of Eastern lore. Your C betokens the crescent moon, that in turn is held to resemble man's carnal sword, unsheathed and rising to the fray; two C's entwined are the union of Heaven and Earth, or Christ and his earthly church — "