Heather O'Neill - Daydreams of Angels

The boy also wrote letters. He used ink from a murdered octopus and the quill of a pelican to write them. His were chastising letters, remonstrating that people had not found and rescued him and his sister. He sometimes called his readers terrible names.

The boy’s personality was coming undone very quickly. He was getting wild. He was killing more fish than he needed to eat, and he wore a necklace of shark teeth. He stung himself with jellyfish every night because he liked the paralysis and numbness. He practically glowed because he had electrocuted himself so often. He harnessed the electricity from a jellyfish in order to light up blowfish and use them as patio lanterns.

Some nights there were terrible storms out at sea that would frighten the twins with their violence. The following morning all sorts of things would have washed up on shore from the different shipwrecks.

One day a telephone washed up on the beach. The twins were ecstatic. The girl called home, but there was, of course, no answer. She called a friend from school named Antoine, and they talked for three hours. She called the police station in Montreal. The officer on the other end of the line told her that he couldn’t possibly imagine where this island might be. Therefore, he couldn’t send his men out to rescue them.

They used the phone for a month, but then the line was cut, since there was no way for them to pay the bill.

One day a queen-size bed with a golden frame washed up on shore. The twins decided to climb onto the bed and sail off on it, hoping to encounter another ship.

The bed was at sea for a number of days. One day they passed a swan with a monkey playing a banjo on its back. The twins stood on the edge of the bed with their hands clasped together in supplication and implored the monkey and the swan to help them. But the swan and the monkey did not even deign to turn their heads as they continued on their way.

The full moon was laughing at the twins as they sailed on their bed across the Atlantic Ocean.

After their sixth day at sea, the twins awoke to the sound of an ocean liner blowing its horn at them. They scrambled from underneath the covers. They changed out of their pyjamas and made the bed as quickly as possible. Then they stood up on the mattress and held their arms up in prayer, begging the mariners to take them aboard. Naturally, they were granted voyage on the Moby Dick, which was on its way to Europe.

It didn’t take long for the crew of the Moby Dick to realize who the young castaways were. The captain telegrammed ahead to say that he had rescued the famous young authors of Les messages dans les bouteilles.

The bottles filled with the twins’ letters had washed up on the shores of little resort towns outside of Brighton. Whenever a new message was found, it was printed in the leading Paris and London newspapers. A collection of the messages had been published as a book and received almost universal acclaim. The critics said that longing and loneliness had never been so heartbreakingly captured and in so pure and simple a form.

Their book had become a bestseller. It was translated into thirty-six languages and was awarded the Prix Goncourt. Lovers gave each other copies for Christmas. An old lady had her favourite of the messages carved as an epitaph on her tombstone and there was one embossed on a plaque in front of the library. Even children loved the stories and their mothers would read them the letters as bedtime tales.

Children would weep in their beds at night because they wanted so, so much to rescue the twins. There were funds collected to help the search at sea for the mysterious tiny island that the twins were stranded on.

Upon arriving in Europe, the twins discovered, much to their surprise, their widespread renown. A huge crowd of people had gathered to witness the arrival. Many people had taken their own children out of school that day. Every single person stood on their tippytoes in anticipation.

The crowd was carrying gifts for the twins: new clothes, expensive toys, piles of books, notebooks and pens. They were given, altogether, eighty-nine puppies. They were given a pretty house to stay in.

Their publishers were eager for them to go on speaking tours. But they felt like just not saying anything at all for the next few years.

Now that they were in Paris, the twins didn’t write anymore. On the island, they wrote because they thought it would rescue them. They wrote their letters to prove somehow that they existed. Their letters had a theme. They knew what was wrong with their lives and how it could be fixed. As there was nothing missing from their lives now, why should they write?

The twins settled in Paris, taking up residence in a little house on the rue de Cherbourg. The boy filled his bedroom with his eighty-nine puppies. He was rumoured to own 345 pairs of shoes, all very fancy, with ruffles and buckles. Some had bows on them that were like Kleenex half-pulled out of boxes. And yet, even with all these shoes, he found himself leaving his room less and less.

The boy would get love letters from little girls. The perfume from all the love letters was so overpowering one day that it made him faint. Wearing a hat and sunglasses, he went for walks down the street, but he would invariably be recognized. He had a different girlfriend every night. Each one sillier than the next. Each one wanting simply to say that she had dated the famous co-author of Les messages dans les bouteilles.

The boy found that he was angry with everyone and preferred drinking champagne at home by himself. He would sit on the side of the bed and try to untie his shoelaces, but finding it impossible, would fall back and pass out for days. The mattress rocked back and forth beneath him as though it were being carried along by waves.

With her impeccable breeding and manners, the girl was a hit in Paris and the city was enchanted by her. A song inspired by her was sung in all the taverns, and there was a dessert named after her. Everyone wondered what she was thinking. Once someone took a photograph of her sitting by herself on a bench and it was in the newspaper the next day with the heading, “What is she thinking?” By walking down the street and sighing, little girls tried to emulate her. Smiling went out of fashion.

She could never keep her hair up, for the wind would take it down immediately, pulling out the pins and tossing her hat in the pond. Everyone said that the wind had developed a funny sort of thing for her. She was known for only wearing white, which contrasted so beautifully with her black hair. Her nude portrait was kept in the basement of the Louvre because there had been a riot when it was displayed.

The girl was so beautiful that everyone who met her fell in love with her. She got marriage proposals all the time even though she was only twelve years old. All sorts of men courted her, but the papers hoped that she might be smitten with a lord. The men with the most terrific moustaches in all of Europe would come to see her. She rejected them all. One aristocrat showed up to tea completely naked, wearing a line called the Emperor’s New Clothes, which was the height of fashion.

She was at a zoo when a polar bear escaped. The polar bear walked right up to her and reared up, looking like the tip of an iceberg. It took her hand in its paw and kissed it. The polar bear then proceeded to saunter off and kill three guards, and all the while her heartbeat did not quicken. She would go to the park to look at swans. The swans would remind her of the swan that had rejected her out in the middle of the ocean. Nothing matched that feeling of rejection.

The matter of how to make the pretty castaways happy became a question that was asked all over Europe.

The king of Siam sent a dollhouse that had little mice dressed in tuxedos and dresses running around in it. The emperor of Russia sent some highly trained clowns from Moscow. Thirteen of them fit into a car that was the size of a shoebox. But the twins sat in the audience and did not even so much as crack a smile.