Daniel Kehlmann - F

It was three months before his father appeared again. This time he picked Martin up from home in a car with two eerily similar boys in the backseat; at first Martin thought they must be an optical illusion. In turn, the pair had looked at him with great but rapidly diminishing curiosity; they were totally focused on themselves, ensnared in the riddle of their doubleness.

“We always think exactly the same thing.”

“Even when it’s complicated stuff. Exactly the same thing.”

“When someone asks us a question, we both come up with the same answer.”

“Even when it’s the wrong one.”

Then they both laughed exactly the same laugh, and a shiver ran down Martin’s spine.

From then on, his father and his brothers picked him up regularly. They went on roller coasters, they went to aquariums with fish that were half asleep, they took walks through the woods on the edge of town, they went swimming in pools smelling of chlorine and full of screaming children and sunlight. Arthur was always credited with making an effort, but he was never fully focused on what he was doing, and even the twins made little effort to disguise the fact that they were along for the ride because they had no choice. Although this was totally clear to Martin, these were the happiest afternoons of his life. On the most recent visit, Arthur had given him a brightly colored cube, with sides you could twist in all directions, a new toy that had just come onto the market. Soon Martin was spending hours with it, he could have spent entire days, he was totally in thrall.

“Martin!”

He turned around again.

“Are you asleep?”

He wondered about trying to grab him again, but then decided it was better to leave things be. What was the point — Eric was stronger than he was.

Pity, thought Eric. He would like to have given Martin a whack on the ear, although he didn’t really have anything against him. It just made him mad that his brother was so helpless, so quiet and timid. Besides which he still blamed him for the moment seven years ago when their parents had called them into the living room one evening to tell them something important.

“Are you splitting up?” Ivan had asked.

Their parents, shocked, had shaken their heads and said, “No, no, absolutely not, no,” and Arthur had told them about Martin’s existence.

Eric was so astonished that he immediately decided to behave as if this were a big joke, but even as he tried to draw breath and laugh, Ivan, who was sitting right next to him, started to snigger, which was the way things were if you were yourself and simultaneously one half of a pair, and no thought was ever yours exclusively.

“It’s not a joke,” said Arthur.

But why not until now, was what Eric wanted to ask. Except that once again Ivan had already got out ahead of him: “Why not until now?”

Things were sometimes complicated, was Arthur’s answer.

He had cast a helpless look at their mother, but she had sat there with her arms crossed and said that even grown-ups were not always that smart.

The other boy’s mother, according to Arthur, always bad-mouthed him and didn’t want him to see his son, and he went along with that all too easily, if the truth be known, because it made things easier, and it was only recently that he’d changed his mind. And now he was off to meet Martin.

Eric had never seen their father nervous before. Who needed this Martin person, he thought, and how could Arthur have done anything so stupid to them?

Eric had known quite early on that he wanted to be different from his father. He wanted to make money, he wanted to be taken seriously, he didn’t want to be the kind of person that people secretly pitied. Which was why on the first day in his new school, he had attacked the biggest boy in his class, without any warning, of course, so surprise had given him the necessary advantage. Eric had knocked him to the ground, then knelt on him, grabbed him by the ears, and banged his head into the floor three times until he felt his resistance give way. Then, just for effect, he had landed a well-aimed blow on his nose, because a nose-bleed always made a big impression. And the big boy, for whom Eric was already feeling sorry, had burst into tears. Eric had let him get up, and the boy had groped and sniffled his way away with a reddening handkerchief pressed to his face. Since then Eric had been an object of fear for the rest of his class, and nobody noticed how anxious he was himself.

For it all came down to determination, he knew that already. Whether it was the teachers, or other pupils, or even his parents, they were all divided within themselves, all torn, all halfhearted. None of them could stand up against someone who had a goal and really went after it. That was as sure as sure could be, as sure as five times two equals ten, or that we’re all surrounded by ghosts whose shapes are visible only occasionally in the twilight.

“I’ve made a wrong turn,” said Arthur.

“Not again,” said Eric.

“It’s just a trick,” said Ivan. “Because you don’t want to go.”

“Of course I don’t want to go. But it’s not a trick.”

Arthur steered to the curb and got out. Warm summer air streamed into the car, other cars raced past, and there was a smell of gasoline. On the street he asked people for directions; an old lady waved him off, a boy on roller skates didn’t even stop, a man wearing a large hat pointed left then right, up and down. For a while Arthur spoke to a young woman. She tilted her head, Arthur smiled, she pointed somewhere, Arthur nodded and said something, she laughed, then she said something while he laughed, then they said goodbye, and as she moved past him she touched his shoulder. He got back into the car, still smiling.

“Did she explain it to you?” asked Ivan.

“She wasn’t from around here. But the man before her knew the answer.”

He made a couple of turns, then they were at the entrance to a parking garage. Eric stared anxiously into the darkness. He would never be able to tell anyone how much he hated every tunnel, every cavernous opening, every closed space. But apparently Ivan knew it anyway, just as it always happened to Eric too that he found himself thinking his twin brother’s thoughts instead of his own, and words surfaced in his mind that he didn’t know. It also happened frequently that when he woke up, he remembered strangely Technicolor dreams — Ivan’s dreams were brighter than his own, somehow more all-encompassing, and the air in them seemed fresher. And yet they could still hide things from each other. Eric had never understood why Ivan was afraid of dogs when dogs really were among the most harmless of creatures; he didn’t understand why Ivan liked talking to blondes more than brunettes, and it was a mystery to him why the old paintings that just bored him in museums awakened such complicated feelings in his brother.

They got out. Long fluorescent bulbs gave off a wan light. Eric crossed his arms and stared at the ground.

“You don’t believe in hypnosis?” asked Ivan.

“I believe people can persuade each other of anything,” said Arthur.

They got into the elevator, the doors closed, and Eric fought to control his panic. What if the cable broke? Such a thing had happened before, it would happen again, so why not here? The elevator finally stopped, the doors opened, and they walked toward the theater. The Great Lindemann , it said on a banner. Master of Hypnosis. Afternoon Performance . There was a poster showing an unprepossessing man with glasses, obviously trying to look forbidding and penetrating at the same time. There were shadows across his face, the lighting was theatrical, it was a terrible photo. Lindemann , it said to one side, will teach you to fear your dreams .