Middlesex

Lefty was one year younger than Desdemona and she often wondered how she’d survived those first twelve months without him. For as long as she could remember he’d always been on the other side of the goat’s-hair blanket that separated their beds. Behind the kelimi he performed puppet shows, turning his hands into the clever, hunchbacked Karaghiozis who always outwitted the Turks. In the dark he made up rhymes and sang songs, and one of the reasons she hated his new American music was that he sang it exclusively to himself. Desdemona had always loved her brother as only a sister growing up on a mountain could love a brother: he was the whole entertainment, her best friend and confidant, her co-discoverer of short cuts and monks’ cells. Early on, the emotional sympathy she’d felt with Lefty had been so absolute that she’d sometimes forgotten they were separate people. As kids they’d scrabbled down the terraced mountainside like a four-legged, two-headed creature. She was accustomed to their Siamese shadow springing up against the whitewashed house at evening, and whenever she encountered her solitary outline, it seemed cut in half.

Peacetime seemed to be changing everything. Lefty had taken advantage of the new freedoms. In the last month he’d gone down to Bursa a total of seventeen times. On three occasions he’d stayed overnight in the Cocoon Inn across from the Mosque of Sultan Ouhan. He’d left one morning dressed in boots, knee socks, breeches, doulamas, and vest and come back the following evening in a striped suit, with a silk scarf tucked into his collar like an opera singer and a black derby on his head. There were other changes. He’d begun to teach himself French from a small, plum-colored phrase book. He’d picked up affected gestures, putting his hands in his pockets and rattling change, for instance, or doffing his cap. When Desdemona did the laundry, she found scraps of paper in Lefty’s pockets, covered with mathematical figures. His clothes smelled musky, smoky, and sometimes sweet.

Now, in the mirror, their joined faces couldn’t hide the fact of their growing separation. And my grandmother, whose constitutional gloom had broken out into full cardiac thunder, looked at her brother, as she once had her own shadow, and felt that something was missing.

“So where are you going all dressed up?”

“Where do you think I’m going? To the Koza Han. To sell cocoons.”

“You went yesterday.”

“It’s the season.”

With a tortoiseshell comb Lefty parted his hair on the right, adding pomade to an unruly curl that refused to stay flat.

Desdemona came closer. She picked up the pomade and sniffed it. It wasn’t the smell on his clothes. “What else do you do down there?”

“Nothing.”

“You stay all night sometimes.”

“It’s a long trip. By the time I walk there, it’s late.”

“What are you smoking in those bars?”

“Whatever’s in the hookah. It’s not polite to ask.”

“If Mother and Father knew you were smoking and drinking like this . . .” She trailed off.

“They don’t know, do they?” said Lefty. “So I’m safe.” His light tone was unconvincing. Lefty acted as though he had recovered from their parents’ deaths, but Desdemona saw through this. She smiled grimly at her brother and, without comment, held out her fist. Automatically, while still admiring himself in the mirror, Lefty made a fist, too. They counted, “One, two, three . . . shoot!”

“Rock crushes snake. I win,” said Desdemona. “So tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what’s so interesting in Bursa.”

Lefty combed his hair forward again and parted it on the left. He swiveled his head back and forth in the mirror. “Which looks better? Left or right?”

“Let me see.” Desdemona raised her hand delicately to Lefty’s hair—and mussed it.

“Hey!”

“What do you want in Bursa?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Tell me!”

“You want to know?” Lefty said, exasperated with his sister now. “What do you think I want?” He spoke with pent-up force. “I want a woman.”

Desdemona gripped her belly, patted her heart. She took two steps backward and from this vantage point examined her brother anew. The idea that Lefty, who shared her eyes and eyebrows, who slept in the bed beside hers, could be possessed by such a desire had never occurred to Desdemona before. Though physically mature, Desdemona’s body was still a stranger to its owner. At night, in their bedroom, she’d seen her sleeping brother press against his rope mattress as though angry with it. As a child she’d come upon him in the cocoonery, innocently rubbing against a wooden post. But none of this had made an impression. “What are you doing?” she’d asked Lefty, eight or nine at the time, and gripping the post, moving his knees up and down. With a steady, determined voice, he’d answered, “I’m trying to get that feeling.”

“What feeling?”

“You know”—grunting, puffing, pumping knees—“that feeling.”