Haggopian and Other Stories

“I had never been a pretty girl—no, don’t say anything, Love. You weren’t even a twinkle in your father’s eye then, he was only a boy himself, and so you wouldn’t know. But at a time of life when most girls only have to pout to set the boys on fire, well, I was only very plain—and I’m probably giving myself the benefit of the doubt at that.

“Anyway, when George was out nights—walking his latest girl, dancing, or whatever—I was always at home on my own with my books. Quite simply, I came to be terribly jealous of my brother. Of course, you don’t know him, he had already been gone something like fifteen years when you were born, but George was a handsome lad. Not strong, mind you, but long and lean and a natural for the girls.

“Eventually he found himself a special girlfriend and came to spend all his time with her. I remember being furious because he wouldn’t tell me anything about her…”

She paused and looked at me and after a while I said “Uhhuh?” inviting her to go on.

“It was one Saturday night in the spring, I remember, not long after our nineteenth birthday, and George had spent the better part of an hour dandying himself up for this unknown girl. That night he seemed to take a sort of stupid, well, delight in spiting me; he refused to answer my questions about his girl or even mention her name. Finally, after he had set his tie straight and slicked his hair down for what seemed like the thousandth time, he dared to wink at me—maliciously, I thought, in my jealousy—as he went out into the night.

“That did it. Something snapped! I stamped my foot and rushed upstairs to my room for a good cry. And in the middle of crying I had my idea—”

“You decided to, er, swap identities with your brother, to have a look at his girl for yourself,” I broke in. “Am I right?”

She nodded in answer, staring at the fire; ashamed of herself, I thought, after all this time. “Yes, I did,” she said. “For the first time I used my power for my own ends. And mean and despicable ends they were.

“But this time it wasn’t like before. There was no instantaneous, involuntary flowing of my psyche, as it were. No immediate change of personality. I had to force it, to concentrate and concentrate and push myself. But in a short period of time, before I even knew it, well, there I was.”

“There you were? In Uncle George’s body?”

“Yes, in his body, looking out through his eyes, holding in his hand the cool, slender hand of a very pretty girl. I had expected the girl, of course, and yet…

“Confused and blustering, letting go of her hand, I jumped back and bumped into a man standing behind me. The girl was saying: “George, what’s wrong?” in a whisper, and people were staring. We were in a second-show picture-house queue. Finally I managed to mumble an answer, in a horribly hoarse, unfamiliar, frightened voice—George’s voice, obviously, and my fear—and then the girl moved closer and kissed me gently on the cheek!

“She did! But of course she would, wouldn’t she, if I were George? ‘Why, you jumped then like you’d been stung—’ she started to say; but I wasn’t listening, Peter, for I had jumped again, even more violently, shrinking away from her in a kind of horror. I must have gone crimson, standing there in that queue, with all those unfamiliar people looking at me—and I had just been kissed by a girl!

“You see, I wasn’t thinking like George, at all! I just wished with all my heart that I hadn’t interfered, and before I knew it I had George’s body in motion and was running down the road, the picture-house queue behind me and the voice of this sweet little girl echoing after me in pained and astonished disbelief.

“Altogether my spiteful adventure had taken only a few minutes, and, when at last I was able to do so; I controlled myself—or rather, George’s self—and hid in a shop doorway. It took another minute or two before I was composed sufficiently to manage a, well, a ‘return trip’, but at last I made it and there I was back in my room.

“I had been gone no more than seven or eight minutes all told, but I wasn’t back to exactly where I started out from. Oh, George hadn’t gone rushing downstairs again in a hysterical fit, like that time when I sat his exam for him—though of course the period of transition had been a much longer one on that occasion—but he had at least moved off the bed. I found myself standing beside the window…” She paused.

“And afterwards?” I prompted her, fascinated.