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Mieke

"I hope you don't still go in for all that anima stuff," she said.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

"Because I won't allow myself to be used."

"But haven't you just used me to enjoy the thrill of betrayal?"

"That's rubbish!" she shouted, punching him on the shoulder. "Anyway, symmetry's got nothing to do with it. I can project onto you but not the other way round. This isn't just a reaction to millennia of subordination. It's a milestone on the road to truth. The anima is one of the major agents of our oppression and that's why it's got to be stamped out, along with the cosmetics industry…"

Ephraim surreptitiously blocked his ears, snuggled up against her warmth, sighed with contentment. She was talking nonsense and she was right; asymmetry was fundamental: she'd rather be outside him than inside him; he'd rather be inside her than outside her.

His left hand began to slide up between her thighs. She pushed it away.

"Don't change the subject. You've had your ration. And anyway, we haven't got time. Jan will be back soon. You better go."

Reluctantly he pulled away and rose from the bed. Or rather tried to rise, because as soon as he put any weight on his feet his legs collapsed. Not this again, he thought. Mieke quickly poured herself into her clothes while he lay there, half-whimpering, half-giggling.

"Stop arsing about. I'm serious."

They both clearly heard the scrunch of tires on gravel. She ran to the window:

"It's him. Oh great."

Only when Ephraim fell over again did she realise he really couldn't help it. She dragged him through to the bathroom, wedged him into the bottom of the shower-cubicle, threw his clothes and boots in after him, drew the doors and ran down to meet Jan.

"You're early today, darling," she gushed, kissing him avidly.

"Yeah, I tried to stick it out, but just couldn't. I've got some bloody bug. I gotta go to bed. Sorry."

She followed him up into the bedroom and of course he went straight into the bathroom. She sat down with a fatalistic sigh. Her whole life hung on the next couple of minutes. Jan was a good enough husband, but that would probably stop if he noticed the shower was occupied. She heard him peeing, groaning - nothing more. He emerged, threw off his clothes and got into bed.

"Can I get you anything? Some codeine?"

"Please."

Having medicated him she went into the bathroom, lowered the toilet-seat loudly, opened the shower-door a fraction:

"Listen," she whispered. "He's ill. He's in bed. He'll soon be asleep. I'll go and get the ladder and put it up against this window. You get dressed and be ready."

She pressed the flush, opened the window, came out, closed the door behind her. She laid her hand on her husband's burning forehead.

"You O.K.?"

"Mmmm."

"Just give me a shout if you need anything."

She went down and out. She was tempted by the sight of her car to just get in and leave, but honourably fetched the ladder; leaned it against the bathroom window-sill; ascended.

"I don't believe it," she muttered.

She could see through the clouded glass of the shower-cubicle that Ephraim hadn't moved. She climbed in.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. "Come on."

She helped him up. He managed to stay on his feet by draping himself over her.

"Can you get down the ladder?"

"I should think so. It's just I can't stand upright."

She leaned him against the wall, threw out his clothes and boots, climbed back out herself.

"Come on then."

He came out forwards. As he was turning to face in towards the ladder he lost his balance again. She grabbed him by the legs to save him, with the result that they both fell in to the rhododendron bush below.

Mieke moaned - in breaking his fall she'd hurt her ankle. Ephraim began to bleed gently from a myriad of discrete scratches. He was perfectly lucid, but his lucidity had nothing to do with their predicament. Although he saw the flames licking around her ankle he associated them with ornament rather than pain. We can still be twins, he thought, even if we aren't identical. If these branches are our cradle, then that fall must have been our birth…

There was a sudden flurry beneath him as Mieke attempted to bury herself deeper in the bush. Ephraim opened his eyes to see Jan leaning out of the window aghast. "What the hell is going on?"

Epraim grinned:

"Hi."

"What on earth are you doing?"

"Mieke asked me to have a look at the guttering… The ladder slipped."

"But where are your clothes, man?"

"I've renounced them for a while. Started today. Seeing if I could live and work without them. Might have been a bad decision."

"Oh… Are you badly hurt?"

"No, no. Just winded. I'll be alright as soon as it's worn off."

"Well, if you're sure. I'm going back to bed. I feel awful."

He closed the window behind him.

"That was brilliant," said Mieke. "I think we might have got away with it."

Ephraim wasn't so happy. Already he'd told a lie.

"Why couldn't we have said we'd just been born? He could have handled it."

"What are you on about?… Come on, this is our chance."

With the help of a hefty shove from below he succeeded in rolling out of the rhododendron and down onto the lawn. Even though new cuts had now been opened and earlier ones extended he remained in a state of anaesthesia. His body felt no more substantial than cotton wool.

When Mieke emerged she immediately hopped around picking up his clothes and boots, then helped him to dress. Her ankle had now swollen to twice its usual dimensions.

"Holy smoke," he said, when he noticed.

"It's not as bad as it looks. I'm sure there's nothing broken."

"We're a right pair, aren't we?"

She didn't respond. The rain which had just begun diluted the bloodstains on his white T-shirt and promoted their spread. He watched this phenomenon with a purely aesthetic pleasure. "So what's wrong with you?" she said.

"Nothing. I feel fantastic."

"Your legs."

"Oh, that. It's happened before a few times, usually from an excess of ecstasy. It'll wear off in a couple of hours."

She got onto her hands and knees. "Come on. This is the only way we can do it."

So he draped himself over her back and rode her like a dead man riding a horse, along the lawn, across the patio and into the extension he'd been building for them, in spasmodic bursts, for the last four years.

She dumped him on the floor and lay back herself to recover from the strain.

He began to fondle her.

"Cut it out."

She stood up:

"I'm going to get some ice for my ankle."

She hopped round to the porch, grabbed a walking-stick which had belonged to her late father, hobbled upstairs, took the codeine from her husband's bedside locker, swallowed a few.

"Where's that crazy builder?" mumbled Jan.

"He's still in the extension. He'll be going in a minute."

"I saw him lying in the rhododendron covered in blood. He said he'd just been born, just come down from heaven."

"It must have been a dream, darling."

She sat down on the edge of the bed. "Don't you see what it means?" she murmured, caressing his ear-lobe. "How it relates to all the things we've been working on recently? It wasn't about him. It was about you. He was a projection of yourself. Your true self projected onto him in order to speak to your conscious self. It's a very simple message. It's no good being born once. In order to live you've got to be born countless times. And what it was also telling you - it's no good only being born of woman, you've also got to be born of heaven to really get into this world…"

Although she hardly knew what she was saying, she meant every word.

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