Twin Sisters

She was sixteen the first time. They had taught her how to read uniforms so she would be sure to pick an officer. He had acne scars, but she couldn’t remember much else about him. Blue eyes? He followed her out of the bar and into the alley. They told her not to look, but she turned around anyway and watched the German approach—green eyes?—, watched Paul stalk behind him, watched the hammer rise and fall. It took several hits.

To prepare, she invented a game. We sat facing one another, she smiled, and I hurt her. If I got her to change her expression, I won. If not, she did. It was easy to look at myself and cause it harm. I had a lifetime of shared doubts and fears to call on. Often, I talked about our parents. There were no limits. That would defeat the point, she said. So sometimes, I did the unexpected—slap her, push a pin into her arm, cut her favorite blouse. Eventually, it did not matter, her expression no longer matched her feeling—her face was independent of circumstance, and she could smile at a man as she led him to his death. Just as the game changed my sister, it changed me. Though perhaps in ways I did not appreciate at the time.

In my sister’s Paris, they killed Nazis in the alleys, and the Nazis killed them in the streets. In my Paris, there was rationing and a curfew from 9 in the evening to 5 in the morning. Trucks drove through the city with loudspeakers; I cannot remember what they said, only that they would say it once in German then once in French.

I have a picture of her from then: sitting at the table with two long men, cigarette smoke partly obscures her face. Straight hair and a severe look that didn’t make her any less pretty. Which is strange to say because I have never been pretty.

For a week, she hid Paul in my apartment. He slept in our parents’ bedroom. My sister and I shared a bed growing up, and even after our parents went missing and my sister began to sleep elsewhere, I continued to sleep in the same bed looking at the same patch of ceiling that I had stared up at every night of my life. I thought you would sound the same, he said to me. It is strange to hear a different voice in her mouth.

There are differences between us, little tells, but sometimes when I see her in a room, I feel like a ghost watching myself. If I watch her drink tea, I can almost taste it.

In the evening, Paul listened for messages over the radio. Athalie remained in ecstasy. We say twice. Athalie remained in ecstasy. He was a slight man with a thin blonde mustache over thin lips. He mouthed the words to himself while he wrote them down. He was comfortable taking over the apartment. I had to be careful with his laundry—I could not dry it on the line, or I would have needed to explain the presence of a man. After the war, he was arrested for doping greyhounds. He died in prison from an infection.

I asked him what it sounded like, hitting the German with a hammer. You’re a morbid little bird. He liked to talk. He told me they were lovers, but I doubted that. He told me that she saved his life once. Pushed the knife in the bastard’s eye—smooth as butter. I know the knife he was talking about; our father used to keep it on a chain next to his watch. I have seen her use it to cut the end of her cigars. Always two wedge-shaped cuts, a cat’s eye, that’s called.

The last night, I made a cake. He called me sentimental. I tried to imagine the sound that it would make, hitting a man with a hammer. Like pounding chicken? Because of the rationing, I used beets instead of sugar. They stained my hands and the cutting board, and even the blade of the knife. My hands were still pink when I pushed open the bedroom door. The hallway light reflected off of his eyes and made them look wet. I didn’t say anything when I uncovered him. He lay there docile but eager as I straddled him, nighty bunched at my waist. I rolled my hips slowly but insistently, pulling her name out of him, making him repeat it while his hands searched my face looking for hers.