Saul Diskin's extraordinary memoir is rich with unique and wonderful intimacy-the intimacy of twinship. For me this made that closest of bonds come alive in a way no other book I've read has succeeded in doing. Diskin makes one feel like a twin, see the world through a twin's eyes, suffer with him in a way that is at times almost unbearably close and poignant. One becomes immersed in the life and death struggle. The medical detail is wonderfully well-done, as are all the relationships. The peculiar and overwhelming nature of twinship is brought out in a way that's both uncannily spirited and wholly down-to-earth; completely unsentimental. The reader participates at every point and on every page in an intimacy that he knows only death can end -JOHN BAYLEY, author of Elegy for Iris "you have captured the essence of the twin relationship more eloquently than anyone else I have ever read" Nancy Segal, author of Entwined Lives, Indivisible by Two and Someone Else's Twin. "What is it like to lose your mirror-image, your other half, your secret sharer? The End of the Twins is an arresting memoir that evokes the mysteries of twinship and the irrevocability of loss" -ERICA JONG, author of Fear of Flying and Becoming Light "A moving account of a unique bereavement from which we can all learn about love and loss" -HAROLD S. KUSHNER, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People
The End of the Twins
By Saul DiskinAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Saul Diskin
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4685-3014-8Contents
BROOKLYN AND BEYOND.....................1THE NEWS................................35DECISIONS...............................52SURGERY.................................100WAITING.................................146TRANSPLANT..............................169AFTER...................................229AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY........................255
Chapter One
BROOKLYN AND BEYOND
To be an identical twin is to be outside the realm of normal, ordinary human experience. It is to be more than one person and to be incomplete at the same time. It is both to live in the public gaze, especially when very young and indistinguishable from the other twin and at the same time to have an existence intensely private, foreign and unknowable to everyone else, including parents. It is to be helpless before the stares and gawks of adults, but at the same time, from the earliest age, to know, and sometimes relish, the power to draw their attention. It is to suffer the unsolicited and usually unwelcome ministrations of the curious but also the ability to unnerve them when they see two human beings who are identical. It is, in short, to be a superior freak.
A child cannot know these things. But even as little children my twin brother Martin and I knew that we were looked upon as different. Adults, trying to comprehend the phenomenon, were initially unnerved when they saw us. Hiding a certain disorientation, they were almost always friendly, even delighted. "Look at them. How cute. How sweet." Because we were two discrete human beings who looked exactly alike, a somewhat rare phenomenon, an understanding seemed to exist that permitted even strangers to take liberties. The adult eye darted from one twin to the other searching for distinguishing characteristics. That behavior has changed very little from the time of our youth. Even as adults strangers would not hesitate to address us in the third person, seeing us not as persons, but as a phenomenon. Looking directly at us, unabashedly, not even pretending to soften the intrusion, the same polite adult whose eyes would avert at the sight of an amputated limb or other physical deformity, would say in a loud voice, "Look at that. You can hardly tell them apart. It's incredible. Hold your head a little that way. I think I can tell them apart. That one doesn't have a scar on his cheek, do you? Let's see. Can your wives tell you apart?"
As children, on our teeming Brooklyn street, our mother, called us home, bawling out the window, "Marty Sauly, Sauly Marty." From the distance even she couldn't tell us apart.
We were closer than can be easily described, too close. We knew what the other was thinking, experiencing. Not in the popular way of understanding. We could not read each others thoughts specifically, but we knew how the other was feeling, precisely. We knew the meaning of every gesture, of every body attitude, of every facial expression, of every grimace. We could tell when a joke was coming and the laughter would start before the words were out. Our play was synchronous. We could enter effortlessly in the other's imaginary world. Marty and I breathed the same air and although we didn't make a deliberate effort to monitor the other's activities and whereabouts, we always knew what the other was doing and where he was. Waking from a nap one would look through the bars of his crib and see his brother a few feet away, eyes open, staring at his brother. No acknowledgment was necessary: each of us was simply seeing a permanent and unchanging part of his environment. We were two cubs in the same genetically determined cage. Our environment, at least in our early years, was virtually identical. For a time it was the two of us against the world, sharing praise in our successes, comforting each other in our failures and defending each other against outside intrusion. We were one person walking around in two little bodies.
Breathing heavily, sweating and anxious, I rest on the third floor landing of the five-story Brooklyn walkup. My burst of nervous energy spent itself racing up the stairs. I am following Marty to the roof, a dangerous and forbidden place where neither had ever ventured. Our mother, unaware of where we were, sits on a folding chair in a sliver of shade on the crowded sidewalk below, talking with other women. She would be furious if she found out. Alone and frightened, I resignedly place my sweating forehead against the cool tiled wall. It is summer and I am dressed as all five-year olds: high topped shoes, scuffed and torn beyond repair, short pants, and a polo shirt. My black hair, shorn to the scalp in June to discourage head lice, had grown thick enough to begin curling. The dim yellow glare from the bulb overhead shines malevolently through the broken fixture. The air, redolent with cabbage, chickenfat, garlic and onions, the odors of eastern European Jewish kitchens, hangs still and heavy on the landing. Muffled cries of youngsters at play filter up from the street, completing my feeling of isolation. In the summer all life is out in the street, only fear and danger lurk within the dark and humid interior.
"Where's Marty? Why did he go to the roof without me? What will he do up there? He didn't even tell me he was going. Why didn't he wait for me? How did he get there?" To give myself courage I concentrate on the pattern of little gray octagonal tiles set within the border of the smooth white granite, the same material as the stair risers. It is no use. With one hand on the worn banister, I resume trudging up the stairs. I have to find Marty. I begin to cry. I don't know exactly how to get to the roof. I have never been this high on the stairs before. I am not even sure who lives on the upper floors.
The last flight ends at the heavy metal door to the roof. There is no landing, no overhead light. The only light is the sickly remnant from the lower landing. The door has no knob. "How do you open it?" Whimpering, in desperation, I push against it. It opens slowly. The bright midday light surges in and the expanse of tarry roof opens to my sight. There is Marty! He is near the edge, smiling and waving at me. I smile, tentatively, relieved at finding him, my tears drying. My mood turns quickly, the evidence of my eyes telling me that Marty is safe, that we are together. The newly discovered terrain of the roof is appealing, exotic. It is full of adventurous possibilities for us. Together we can do anything. Abruptly, Marty lifts himself jerkily up to the top of the parapet, his body lunging forward. "What are you doing? Marty, Marty!"
Beyond Marty there is nothing but sky. He is slowly elevating, a tiny profile against the limitless, brilliant background. He is rising, so slowly. The huge drifting clouds form bizarre, changing shapes, imaginary animals and landscapes in silver and gray. They are beckoning Marty, drawing him gently off his feet, off the roof, away from me. He is happy. He looks at me briefly, his face wide with wonder and joy, and leaning over the parapet, calls, "Mommy, Mommy" toward the sidewalk five stories below.
I stand, fixed, the warm tar a sluggish river carrying me at its pace, preventing me from flying to Marty and grabbing him tightly to hold him on the parapet. I know I will watch helplessly while Marty falls from the roof and sucks me along in his wake. A current of acid is inside my stomach, hurting me, poisoning me. Marty's legs leave the floor of the roof, dangling unconcernedly, merrily. My stomach is in convulsion. My...
