My back, my rear, is—if no one minds me saying so—my chest of hers. My belly is opposite my belly of hers. I have two heads, four arms, four breasts, four legs, and they have told me that my two spinal columns, down to the height of the shoulder blade, join together to continue—reinforced—toward the coccygeal region.
I-the-first am younger than I-the-second.
(Here I’ll allow myself, stressing the previously stated clarification, to beg pardon for all of the errors I am going to commit. Errors that I raise to the attention of grammarians with the aim that, in possible recurrences of the phenomenon, the personal pronoun phrasings, verb conjugations, possessive and demonstrative adjectives, etc., could be modified so that everything is in its appropriate place. Likewise, I believe it cannot hurt to extend this plea to the moralists, in the sense that they could make an effort to stretch their morals a little. They could accommodate and forgive me for the host of inconveniences naturally tied to certain procedures that the characteristic positions I occupy among the unique beings bring with them.)
I mention this because I-the-second am obviously weaker, my face and body thinner, due to certain manifestations inherent to sex, that I will not state as a matter of decorum, which are revealing of the assertion that I have just made; and because I-the-first move forward, dragging my rear, which is adept at following me, and that puts me, although inversely, in a situation similar to that of certain religious orders when they pass in two lines through the corridors of their convents after meals, always coming face to face with one another—feeling as I do, two and one.
I must explain the origin of this orientation that put me from then on at the head of I-her: it was the only divergence between my opinions which I believe here, and only here, permits me to speak of myself as of us, because it was the isolated moment in that each one, when she was able to walk, wanted to advance on her side. She—take good note: the one that is now I-the-second—wanted to go, due to atavism no doubt, like all go, looking toward where they are going; I wanted to do the same, to see where I was going, which caused a lively stamping. I had a sound foundation placed so that we were in a quadrupedal position until we helped ourselves up with our arms in a way that, almost seated as we were, with our arms to the center, we offered a whole octopod, with two wills and a few instants of equilibrium owed to the tension of contrary forces. I had just overcome her, powerfully lifting myself and dragging her, my triumph producing between us an unequivocal superiority of my first part over my second and forming the unity of which I have spoken.
But, no: it is necessary to set a modification to my concepts which, now that I think of it, have developed in such a way due to a lack of logical rigor. Undoubtedly, the explanation that I have thought to give to subsequent facts can apply itself also to the aforementioned explanation, which will clarify perfectly my stubbornness in referring to myself always in the way that I’ve come to do so: I, and this will completely ruin the classification of the teratologists, who have nominated similar cases as double monsters and, in turn, insist upon speaking as if in each case they were two distinct beings, plural, they. The teratologists have only attended to the visible part, giving rise to an organic distinction, although in truth the points of contact are infinite, and not only contact, since indivisible organs simultaneously sustain the life of the community apparently established. Perhaps the double personality hypothesis, which earlier obliged me to speak of us, could in this case have partial value as it was the initial moment in which the governing body defined itself in this visibly double and complicated life; but, ultimately, it has no value. I almost only give it an expressive interest, of words, which establishes an understandable contrast to the espíritus extraños. Instead of serving as proof that at any given moment I could have harbored a double free will, it comes directly to prove that within this double body exists only one intellectual motor that as a result provides a perfect unity to its intellectual activities.
In effect: the moment that I was able to walk, which was preceded by the cerebral spark “walk”—an idea born simultaneously in my two heads, although somewhat confused by my practical ignorance of the facts and that I was only approaching an imitation of a phenomenon perceived in others—the order “Go forward” arose in my first brain; of course “Go forward” also took shape in my second brain and the corresponding parts of my body obeyed the cerebral suggestion that was tempting a detachment, a separation of members. This intent was overridden by the physical superiority of I-the-first over I-the-second and gave rise to the analyzed aspect. Herein lies the true rationale for my unity. If the cerebral orders had been “Go forward” and “Go backward,” then yes, no doubt would exist about my duality, about the absolute difference between the formative processes in the idea of movement; but this symmetry I have noted places me at a proper vantage. As for the idiosyncrasies that have existed in my two constitutive parts which obey two independent organs, I don’t give them but the circumstantial value that they have, since I have done away with the superficial criterion that according to other cases would give me a plural constitution. I-the-first, as superior, have given the orders since that first moment, and they are completed without reply by I-the-second. At the time of a decision or thought, these orders arise at the same time in my two brains; if I decide to “go for a walk,” for example, I-the-first am the one who leads the walk and assigns priority to all the sensations presented before me, sensations I communicate immediately to I-the-second. The same happens with the sensations received by this other part of my being. So, contrary to what I suppose happens in the rest of Man, I always have one understanding and a double reception of objects. I see them on both sides—almost at once—when I am in movement. With respect to stationary things, all I have to do to perfectly realize their stillness is pick up the pace so that I-the-second can gaze at the still object at almost the same time. When confronted with a landscape I take it in on both sides, without moving, therefore obtaining a more complete reception of it in every aspect. I don’t know what it would be like to be constituted like most of Man; I think it would drive me mad, because when I close I-the-second’s or I-the-first’s eyes, I have the sensation that the part of the landscape I don’t see moves, jumps, comes toward me, and I expect that when I open my eyes I will find it totally changed. Moreover, lateral vision bewilders me: it must be like seeing life through a tiny opening.
I’ve already said that my general thoughts and volitions appear simultaneously in my two parts; when it comes to acts, the execution of orders, my second brain shuts down, stops being active, awaiting the first’s decision, so that it finds itself in an identical state to the empty bottle we fill with water or the blank paper on which we write. But in certain cases, especially when it comes to memories—and their vividness—my brains exercise independent, mostly alternating functions that are always determined with the priority of retrieving images. On occasion, I am meditating around one point or another and a moment arrives in which I am in urgent need of a memory—a dark corner in our recollections that is surely what most tortures our intellectual life. Not evoking my imbalance, only the oscillating attention I follow in the association of ideas, my posterior mouth answers out loud, illuminating the sudden darkness. When it is a question of a hazy figure, for example, someone I saw only once, my mouth of hers replies, more or less: “Ah! Sr. Miller, the German man I met at the Sanchez’s house who was enthusiastically explaining the parallelogram of forces involved in a car crash.”
*
What has made my onlookers assert that within me exists the duality that I have refuted, has been principally my ability to maintain conversation on one side or the other. This side of me has fooled them. If someone addresses my back, I always answer them with my back, by education and convenience; the same goes for the other side. Whereas, when it comes to thoughts, the apparently passive part works in tandem with the active. When addressed at the same time on my two sides, I almost never respond on both at the same time, although it is possible due to my double awareness; I must watch out for likely hesitations and could never develop two deep thoughts simultaneously. The possibility to which I refer only has to do with cases that deal with sensations and memories, in which I experience a kind of self-separation, comparable to those men who can talk about one thing while writing another. Of course, all this does not mean that I am two. The emotions, sensations, and intellectual strengths of I-the-second are those of I-the-first, and vice versa. There is between me—between me, this is the first time it has been properly written—a center to which flows and from which ebbs the entire accumulation of spiritual phenomena, unidentified matter, emotional states, or what have you.
In truth, I do not know how to explain the existence of this center, its position in my organism or, in general, all the things related to my psychology or metaphysics—although I believe this word has been completely rejected, for the time being, in philosophical language. I know this challenge, that surely no one will bother to investigate, will lead to my being characterized as unstable because, despite the distance, naïve Cartesian philosophy—which pretends that to discover the truth it is enough to pay attention to the clear ideas that each person has inside of them—still dominates more or less according to what a certain French gentleman explains: But as the mistaken opinion of others matters little to me, I must share what I do and do not understand about myself.
It’s now time to hasten my account a bit, to concentrate on the facts and leave the speculative for later.
A few details about my parents, who were rich and therefore noble people, will be enough to clear up the mystery of my origin: My mother had a strong inclination to harmful and mostly fantastic reading matter; it seems that after my conception her husband, my father, went away for health reasons. In the meantime, his friend, a doctor, struck up a close relationship with my mother, an honest friendship of course, and since the poor thing was so alone and bored, that friend of his had to entertain her. He did so with strange stories that seem to have made an impression on my mother’s maternity, as well as the examination of a few illustrations he brought her; those dangerous illustrations that some men draw as of late, deranged, absurd images that, although they believe give the illusion of movement, only serve to shock the simple ladies who actually believe that women like those in the drawings could exist, with all their muscle imbalances, crossed eyes, and other absurdities. Cases in which children pay for these types of inclinations among their parents are not rare: A respectable friend of mine mothered a cat. Favorably, I will make sure that my account is not read by women who could fall victim to impression and in that way be sure never to cause a human recurrence of my case. At any rate, it so happened that my mother, to a certain extent helped by that doctor, came to believe so much in the existence of strange persons that little by little she came to imagine a phenomenon of which I am the portrait, with which she entertained herself by picturing sometimes, terrifying herself all the more. In those moments, she screamed and her hair stood on end. (All of this I have heard from she herself in some lengthy interviews that were done at the behest of the doctor, commissioner, and bishop, who naturally needed to know the background of the incident to absolve her). I was born more or less within the normal term, although I am not sure the suffering my poor mother had to go through was normal, not only during labor but after, because as soon as the terrified doctor and nurse saw me, they informed my father. Enraged, he insulted and beat my mother—perhaps with the same authority, give or take, with which some husbands batter their wives for giving them a daughter instead of the son they desired.
Mother had a certain insulting pity for me; I was so much her daughter that I could have been one like any other, one of those girls born to make pouty faces, tap her feet, and flirt. Father, when he found me alone, would give me a kicking and run off; I could have killed him each time I saw that he was among the first to come to my side upon hearing my cries; taking one of my arms gently, he would ask me in his hypocritical voice: “What happened to you, my little girl.” I would keep quiet, I am not sure why; but one time I could not stand it and replied, wanting to pummel him with my rage: “Just now you kicked me and ran away, you hypocrite.” But since my father was a respectable man who pretended to love me in front of everyone, since all had seen his surprise when he came in and, lastly, since his word was worth more than mine, everyone looked at me, mouths agape, and turned to one another; a moment later, stepping out, I heard my father say in a low voice, “We have to send this poor girl to the Hospicio; I don’t trust that she is right in the head; the doctor has also expressed his doubts to me. Gosh, gosh, what a shame.” At hearing this, I was left aghast.
I did not understand what “Hospicio” could refer to; but from the connotation of the phrase I understood that it referred to a place where they locked up the insane. The idea of being separated from my parents wasn’t the least bit painful; I would have accepted it rather with pleasure—considering that I could count on my father’s hate and my mother’s pity, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. But since I had never visited the Hospicio, I did not know where was better; sometimes that place seemed threatening, when any comfort in the house or affection among the servants made me take the environment as my own; but other times, before the contracted face of my mother or the icy stare of my father, I wanted ardently to leave that house which was so hostile. This desire would have overcome me if I had not been surprised one afternoon by a conversation between the servants in which they pitied me, calling me pobrecita at each turn, and in which I also discovered some of the horrific procedures of that other place—highly exaggerated, no doubt, by the hunched and obedient imagination of those who spoke. Servants are always ready to imagine the most implausible and impossible things. They said that the guards would whip all of the lunatics, bathe them in ice-cold water, hang them from their toes for three days in the dark; it ended up frightening me. I went as fast as I could to my father, who I found arguing loudly with his wife, and I started crying in front of him, telling him that surely I had been wrong the other day and it must have been someone else that hurt me, that I loved him and respected him a lot and would he forgive me. If I had been able to do so, I would have happily kneeled to ask him, because I had come to observe that pleas, complaints, and all other nonsense acquired a more serious and touching character in that difficult position; men and women could give what was asked of them if one went on their knees, because this attitude seems to raise the grantors to an equal height as those statues of saints on altars, from where they can divvy out favors without disgracing their house or integrity. I don’t know why, upon hearing my plea, my father looked at me with an unusual expression, between furious and bitter; he stood up violently. I think I saw his eyes tear up. At last he said, clutching his head: “That little devil is going to be the death of me,” and left without looking back. I thought that that would be the end of my life in that house. A little while later, I heard an extraordinary noise, followed by a rush of servants and some crying. They grabbed me and, despite my kicking, took me to my room, where they locked me away with a key. I never saw my greatest foe again. After some time I learned that he had committed suicide, news that I received with great joy since it came to prove one of the sweet hypotheses that used to counterweigh and put at balance my peace against other bitter signs of an unfortunate change in my life.
*
When I was twenty-one, I parted with my mother, who was then still a young woman. She feigned great pain, which maybe there was some truth to, since my leaving represented a very notable reduction of the fortune she was privy to.
With what I received in inheritance I have set myself up well and, as I am not a pessimist, if the mortal disgrace that you will come to know later hadn’t occurred, I would not have been desperate to find a good catch.
Establishing myself was one of the most difficult things. I require a great deal of custom furniture. But of all the pieces I have, what I find most striking are the chairs, which contain something lifeless, yet human. They are deep, without a back because I am my own back, and they serve one side as well as the other. They are striking because I form part of the object “chair”; when the chair is empty, when I am not in it, no one who sees it could devise a perfect notion of that little piece of furniture. Deep and wide with opposite arms, it seems to lack something. I am this something that, when I sit, fills an absence that the idea “chair,” such as it is commonly formed, had produced in “my chair”: the back, that I myself make up and which it could not have had before because precisely, almost always, the essential condition for one of my pieces of furniture to constitute furniture in the mind of others is that I form part of that object which serves me and that it cannot in any moment have whole or independent life.
It’s almost the same with the desks. My desks wrap around—not actively, understand, but passively—so that their outermost bound is almost a half-circle, somewhat oblong at its opposite ends: I mean to say that it is the shape of a bullet, in profile, whose forward end is a half-circle. I think a delineation of half the Adriatic Sea, toward the Gulf of Venice, would also be extremely similar to the outer contour of the top of my desks. The center is cut out and empty, in the same shape already described, so that I can enter there with my chair and have a desk on both sides. Of course I could avoid the trouble of these innovations by just having two desks, between which I could place myself; yet there has been an impulse to magnificently situate my outer unity, since no one says: “She works at desks,” but instead, “She works at a desk.” And even the idea of working on one side throws me off balance: I could not leave my other side facing nothing. This would be as heartless as a mother giving her only piece of bread, whole, to one of her two children.
My dressing table is double: I need not say more, since its use in this form is clearly understandable.
The uniqueness of my furniture is cause for the great pain I feel at not being able to pay a visit. I have but a single friend who has sent to have one of my chairs crafted for having me over sometimes. Though, as I prefer to be alone, I am rarely seen there. I cannot continuously put up with the ridiculous location in which I must position myself, always at the center of visitors, so that the visit be with yo-entera. To understand the exact manner of my presence in a gathering, of sitting with everyone, others should attend one in profile and contemplate their fellow guests’ annoying curiosity.
And this pain is nothing compared to others. My love of children in particular always brings me to tears. I would like to hold them in my arms and make them laugh at my jokes. But, as soon as they come close, they cry out of fear and run away. Disappointed, I am left with a tragic expression. I think some novelists have described this expression in the final scenes of their books, when the main character, alone on the shore (he almost never remembers the pier), contemplates the departure of the boat that carries a friend or family member; it proves all the more pathetic when it is the lover who is leaving.
At my friend’s house—the one with the chair—I met a tall and well-built gentleman. He watched me with special attention. This man was to be cause for the most intense part of my crisis.
I will say right away that I was in love with him. And as I have already explained, this love could not have arisen in only one of my I’s in isolation. For an evident unity appeared at the same time on my two sides. All of the phenomena that precede love, here unnecessary to list, began appearing in both identically. It is easy to imagine the struggle that began inside me. The same desire to see and speak with him was felt in my two parts and, as this was not possible, without an alternative, one became jealous of the other. I did not only feel jealousy but also a strong sense of dissatisfaction in my favored part. While I-the-first spoke with him, I-the-second was tormented by desire and, as I-the-first could not put a stop to that desire, I felt pleasure mixed with regret at not having allowed him to speak with I-the-second.
That is as far as things went because it was not possible for them to go any further. My love for a man presented itself in a special way. I thought about the possibility of something more advanced: a hug, a kiss. In the former case, I immediately imagined how I would embrace him with the arms of I-the-first, while I-the-second’s arms trembled and fell in an ineffable gesture. If I anticipated a kiss, I tasted bitterness in my mouth of hers.
All these thoughts, which were in solidarity, were accompanied by an unconquerable hate toward my second part; but the same hate was felt against my first. It was a confusion, a ridiculous jumble that circled through my mind and robbed me of my wits.
But the end point of my thoughts on this matter was the most bitter . . . Why not say it? It occurred to me that one day I might come to satisfy my desire. This lone declaration gives a clear idea of the thoughts I had. Which I must satisfy my desire, or rather her part of my desire? In what form could her satisfaction occur to me? In what state would this leave my burning other part? What would this part do, forgotten, inflamed by the same fit of passion, felt with the same intensity, and with the vague shudder of satisfaction in the middle of enormous dissatisfaction. Maybe it would initiate a struggle, as in the beginning of my struggle, the beginning of my life. I-the-first would triumph as the strongest, but at the same time I would defeat myself. It would only be a victory of primacy, accompanied by that other torture.
And I must not only ponder that, but also his probable reaction to me, to my struggle. First, was it possible for him to feel the desire to satisfy my desire? Second, would he wait for one of my parts to offer herself, or would he have a particular inclination that would make the battle between my I’s pointless?
I-the-second have blue eyes and a thin, pale face. There are the tender shadows of eyelashes.
I-the-first am perhaps less beautiful. The same features are hardened by the brow and prominent mouth.
But from this I cannot deduce which I would be the favorite.
My love was impossible, much more impossible than those fictional romances between a poor and common young man and a rich and noble young woman.
Maybe there was a small chance, but it was so unromantic! If only he could love us both!
In short, I did not see him again. I made an effort to control myself. As he has not tried to see me either, I’ve realized that all of my worries were nothing but fantasies. I took for granted that he loved me, and this seems a little absurd in my circumstances. No one can love me, because I have been forced to carry this burden, this shadow; I have been forced to carry my double.
I am not sure if I should be furious with her or praise her. Being different; seeing things that men no doubt cannot see; suffering the influence and operation of a complicated mechanism that is impossible for anyone but me to know, I think that all this is admirable and that to the average person I am like a minor god. But certain demands of the life en común that I inevitably have to lead and certain very human passions that nature, at organizing me so, must logically suppress or change, have more often made me think the opposite.
Naturally, this distinct organization, bringing with it distinct propensities, has forced me to isolate myself almost completely. As a result of habit and of bearing this contrariety, I do not feel the least bit social. Forgetting all my worries has made me a solitary soul.
A month or so ago, I started to feel a persistent itch on my lips of hers. Then a small whitish spot appeared in the same area, and later turned violet; it grew larger, becoming irritated and bleeding.
The doctor came and spoke to me about cell proliferation, neoplasms. In short, something vague, but which I understood. The poor man did not want to frighten me. What would this matter to me, with the life I lead?
If not for the persistent pain that I feel on my lips . . . my lips . . . well, but they are not my lips! My lips are here, in front; I can speak freely with them . . . And how is it that I feel the pain of these other lips? This duality and unity is going to kill me in the end. One of my parts poisons the whole. This sore that opens like a rose and whose blood is absorbed by my other belly will go on eating my entire organism. Ever since I was born there has been something special about me; I have carried in my blood harmful germs.
. . . Surely I must have a single soul . . . But after my death, will my soul be just like my body . . . ? How I don’t want to die!
And what of this unlikely body, these two heads, these four legs, this burst-open proliferation on the lips?
Ugh!
