Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

A young farmer standing a few steps away glanced over at us, then looked away, scowling. I frowned at my brother. “We must mind our manners,” I told him softly in Thai.

With the profits from our time with P.T Barnum, we had purchased a farm in this small North Carolina town. For the past year, we had worked hard on the land—and worked equally hard to become part of the community. Initially, the local people were wary of us. Not only were we a curiosity—two men linked to make one—but we were foreign as well. It had been kind of our neighbor to invite us to this party, a celebration of his daughter’s wedding. I did not want to offend him or the other townspeople.

“Tell me—which do you want?” my brother insisted. His voice was loud. He had been drinking and he would not be put off.

I glanced across the barn. The two young women were standing near the fiddle player, tapping their feet in time to the music and watching half a dozen couples dancing a Virginia reel. The tall one was laughing. “I favor the tall one.”

“Good enough, then,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll ask them to dance.”

“We can’t…”

But it was too late. He had already started across the barn and I had to accompany him. I could plant my feet and resist, but that would only start a quarrel. I did not want to fight with my brother here, in front of all these strangers.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” my brother said in English. “You look lovely tonight.”

He introduced us and the taller woman laughed. “We know who you are,” she said. “You’re famous.”

“You have the advantage of us,” my brother said. “You know who we are but we don’t know who you are.”

“Sarah Ann Yates,” said the taller woman. “This is my sister, Adelaide.”

“I heard about you,” Adelaide said softly. “You bought the Johnson farm.”

“Indeed we did,” my brother said. “We’re neighbors.”

The song came to a close. The dancers clapped for the fiddle player. A few couples headed for the cider keg at the side of the dance floor.

“It’s fine music, isn’t it?” my brother was saying to Adelaide. “Perhaps you and your sister would care to dance?”

I smiled at Sarah Ann, feeling shy but having no choice.

Adelaide glanced at the dancers, then back at my brother. “It seems rather awkward…” she murmured

My brother answered before I could speak. “My brother and I can manage anything any other men can manage.”

“Oh, let’s give it a try,” Sarah Ann said, smiling. She placed her hand on my arm and my brother took Adelaide’s hand.

As children, living in a bamboo hut on the river, my brother and I had learned to swim, working together and coordinating our movements. When we began appearing on stage, we had learned to tumble and somersault, always aware of the connection between us. Compared to that, dancing was easy. We had to modify some of the steps and it confused the other dancers at first. They moved back to give us room when the call came to swing your partner, since we took twice as much space to swing as an ordinary couple, but we managed.

When the fiddler’s tune came to an end, we stood beside the dance floor and my brother told the sisters about our travels across America, about our tour of Europe. I was always aware, as we talked, of the warmth of Sarah Ann’s hand on my arm. When we stepped outside for a breath of air, Sarah Ann kissed me on the cheek, a sweet and fleeting touch.

That was decades ago. We were young men then. Now we are old.

It is Dr. Ruschenberger’s move. While he studies the chessboard, I listen to my brother tell the doctor’s assistant about the other prodigies in P.T. Barnum’s show: the wild woman, the fat lady, the hermaphrodite who had the breasts of a woman and the genitals of a man. He is describing their bodies to the young man in graphic detail—the hair on the wild woman’s belly was as thick and curly as the dark locks that covered her pubes; the fat lady’s breasts were immense, each as twice the size of a man’s head; the hermaphrodite had a penis as well as a vagina.

Adelaide’s eyes are on her sewing. She is ignoring my brother’s talk. She is silent and beautiful in her serenity. I study the chessboard, listening to my brother tell of the time that he convinced a New York tart to join him in bed, paying double, he said, because she would do double duty. He laughs. “And indeed she did. I had her as many times as two men. But my brother wouldn’t have her at all. Just lay there and slept, not interested at all.”

The doctor moves a rook and I turn my attention to the chessboard. “Check,” the doctor says. Then, a few moves later, “Checkmate.”

The doctor and his assistant take their leave when the clock on the mantle strikes eleven, riding away to the inn in town and leaving us alone.