A Spare Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

radio: “They’re asking me, they’re asking me, apple of my eye…” Our hearts pounded wildly in our temples. Srebra’s face seemed clouded over; I think she wanted to cry, but I was somehow elated, as if enchanted. I could hardly wait for 1984 to pass so we could enter the new year, which would surely bring us something new, a new life, perhaps new hope for our future. The children’s magazine Our World had wanted to publish a photograph of us with the caption, “The new year will also bring hope to Skopje’s twin sisters conjoined at the head.” Our teacher, however, wouldn’t allow them to photograph us. “As it is,” she said, “everybody gawks inquisitively wherever we go. If you turn up in the papers, there will be no end to the photos! Everywhere we turn, there will be journalists. My mother-in-law lives with us, and she’s a village woman. If she saw that, she would gossip with the neighbors about me and the kinds of students I have. Over my dead body will they photograph you, and that’s that!”
    So, on account of the gossipy habits of our teacher’s mother-in-law, the media did not find out about us during our childhood, and the editor of Our World was too kind a man to wish us any harm.
    That evening, right at midnight, we had planned to perform the play Alphabet Soup! on the front steps of the apartment building with Roza, but when Srebra announced it, our father snapped, “Whoever feels like watching can go ahead and watch; I’m staying inside.” Mom added, “Really, we’re not going to go out there and freeze for some stupid thing. You just do whatever you think up, and now it’s a play you want to perform?” Srebra and I slipped silently out of the house and rang the bell at Roza’s. Her sister came to the door all dressed up, about to head out for a New Year’s Eve party; we told her that the play was canceled, and she shouted to Roza while putting on her coat, “Roza, the play’s canceled.” She came out, smiling, and pinched our cheeks. Then she closed the door behind her, and the two of us, tugging at each other and jumping up the stairs two at a time in tandem, ran home in our stocking feet. We went into the bathroom. It was bitterly cold; the little bathroom window was never closed. Standing in front of the mirror, we each pulled our hair into a ponytail with a red rubber band. When we pulled our hair back into ponytails, the spot where our heads were joined was visible right above my left ear and her right. The skin passed from one to the other. There was no scar, nothing. Our temples drifted into each other’s like desert sand. There was just enough space between the fused spot and my ear to poke the temple of my glasses through. We were so similar that if I didn’t wear glasses, no one would have been able to tell which was me and which was Srebra. We looked at each other in the mirror, our gaze fixed and powerless. We stood there a long time without saying a word, Srebra with her sullen face, I with tears streaming down behind my glasses. Finally, Srebra dragged me over to the toilet. After she flushed, we unlocked the door and went out.
    New Year’s Eve smelled of roast chicken and potatoes. Srebra and I ate first, and when we got up from our big chair in the kitchen, our father sat down in it; our mother sat perpendicular to him, and they ate. Then Srebra and I went into the large room to see the New Year’s tree on its little table one more time. We stood for two or three minutes trembling with cold, nibbling a bit of the cake with the pink filling and sprinkled with ground walnuts. We waved to the tree and left the room. Later, the four of us sat around the table, each of us with a little yellow plate of roasted peanuts, and watched the New Year’s Eve program that was broadcast from Belgrade. A half hour before the start of 1985, our parents lay down, and