When Zeus split the human being
According to the ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes (as written by Plato in his Symposium), when the Earth was still young, human beings had a very different form than they do today. Each human being, he said, was comprised of two persons stuck together, so that each one had two faces and four arms, and they moved about on four legs by doing cartwheels. Moreover, instead of coming in the two sexes people do today, these proto-humans came in three varieties, each one with two sets of reproductive organs: male-male, female-female, and male-female. Despite having to move around like Vitruvius Man, they were content with this arrangement and prospered, for as far as they knew they were perfect.
Sooner or later the gods began to fear the humans' strength in this form, and they considered their options. Destroying humanity was not a desirable solution, so Zeus devised a plan whereby they might halve the humans' power so that they may never be able to challenge the gods, and at the same time create twice as many people to worship them: He took up his lightning bolts and split each human being in half, right down the middle.
What Zeus did not predict, however, was that instead of spending their time in worship, human beings now spent every waking moment in search of their missing halves. Inside each one was a primal memory of oneness that his present body alone could not fulfill; so he cried out for that other who would complete him body and soul, and tried to join with the possible candidates when he found them. That was the birth of love, Aristophanes said, and physical desire: A desire which is, at its heart, nothing more than the need to be, literally, re-made whole.
It is a ridiculous theory the more one thinks about it, this business about two-headed, octopodal people, and once Socrates got a hold of the subject of the true nature of love, it didn't stand up to his logic. But one has only to look inside himself to understand its resonance. People don't want to see love as a dirty, ugly vagrant—no matter how much you argue the metaphor—because that isn't how they feel. But Aristophanes' freak show stays with us, because love is simply like that. It makes a person feel complete. Once he finds that "other half," he never wants to be parted from that person, because it is not the natural way of a thing to desire a state of only half-completion, only half-contentedness. And if he is unfortunate enough to never find that "other half," he is still aware that something is missing and consequently spends a lifetime of agony trying to repair his broken self.
That is the way it has always been, was what the poet was really trying to say, since time immemorial. Which then begs the question: What if your other half has always been right there beside you, since the day of your conception?
—o—
It is a bright and warm summer day, so we have decided to dress ourselves in some of the heaviest costumes we can think of. It sounds counterintuitive, but there's a logic to it as well: In anticipation of spring, it is only natural to dress in cooler clothing, so in summer—dreaming of coolness—one should don something warm. Besides, it is just such an aesthetic that air conditioning was made for.
The doors of our music room open at the appointed time and we greet our guests in full regalia around the centerpiece chosen for this week's theme. Today that happens to be a harpsichord, which our lord makes sure to be playing when our guests arrive. Its tinny sound is the perfect compliment to the shiny brocades of our eighteenth century costumes. It hits the ear like cool water falling from a golden Versailles fountain on a hot summer day.
We seven say our line in unison: "Welcome . . . to the host club's Rococo tea."
Our lord has practiced his lines almost as well as the Mozart and Haydn he recreates under his fingers. Our tea is a shadow box, he says, in which our young lady guests might find a gentle reprieve from the summer heat—a tranquil spell of the world of the porcelain figurine, where time stands still and youth and beauty reign eternal in a never-ending Age of Enlightenment . . . or something to that effect. In reality, in our shiny pastel waistcoats and knickers and luxuriously ribboned fake ponytails, perhaps our little universe is equal parts if not more sun god or Venetian carnivale decadence than a celebration of the virtue of the common man; but as in all things within the host club, it is the air that counts for everything. Like so many butterflies, our young ladies are attracted to brilliant things, and this attraction we seek to fulfill indefinitely, whether with our own selves or our glowing flattery, as our particular pursuit in these idle adolescent years.
Our lord, wrapped up in the part of a Casanova virtuoso, can barely contain his appreciation for these costumes, as he draws attention to their androgynous effect on Haruhi. It is especially acceptable for him to dote on her in front of our guests today, because the style of her clothing disguises her femininity ironically by revealing it.
Meanwhile Honey is doing his best Louis XIV impression. His table has gathered quite a crowd, and most of it is probably due to his hugely coiffed wig of ringlets that must fall halfway down his back and looks like it was ripped off some Versailles statue of Apollo—and like it is going to tip him over at any moment. As he dumps spoonful after spoonful of sugar into his tea, the girls enjoying a cup with him hang on his every spoiled sentence—which is nothing less than adorable coming from him, of course—while Mori sits beside him in a powdered wig as silent and erect as a coach driver. A girl from a nearby table tells Honey they have run out of scones: What should they do? And it is obvious the devious little scamp had the whole thing planned out when he proclaims, "Let them eat cake!"
Kyouya is the only one of our club not decked out from head to buckled shoe in color. He has assumed the air of a naturalist poet-philosopher in austere shades of brown and black and white and impresses his audience with obscure references to Voltaire and Locke. Not that his patronesses know the first thing about Voltaire or Locke—or even if they do, I doubt they come to the host club to ponder philosophy—but it is all part of the package Kyouya is selling. It is but a part of his magic. He makes his audience feel as though they have learned something precious, which is a certain form of flattery in and of itself, much subtler than our lord's tactics, that takes a truly unique skill to pull off.
As for us . . .
"May we ask why you two are dressed differently today, Hikaru, Kaoru?" one of our patronesses asks us.
We turn to one another, we grin, and we say in unison: "To unveil the Hitachiin Brothers' newest characters—"
"The Prince," Hikaru says.
"And the Pauper," I finish.
To our audience's rapt attention we play the parts of the young prince and his double whom he spotted in the gutter outside his palace walls: Hikaru in his rich and impeccable trappings, a brilliant plume of feathers in his cap; myself in muted colors with a slightly awkward fit and a rumpled tricorne hat, like a downtrodden revolutionary out of Les Miserable. No one cares what liberties we take with the original plot. We marvel at one another's beauty that is so like our own, and at the fateful coincidence that brought us together. He wipes the fake dirt and soot from my cheek with a napkin wetted on his own tongue, and every now and then in the conversation pushes food my way as though I have never had anything so rich in my life; and I in turn accept each morsel from him like it was a Eucharist wafer, and bravely lament my circumstances, and wonder to his gentle reassurances whatever would have become of us if we had never met one another. "You must never let that thought cross your mind again, Kaoru," Hikaru all but whispers as he tilts my chin in his direction, looking soulfully into my eyes. "Now that you are here, I will never let us be parted again. I want you beside me always. I swear this to you, together we shall rule this kingdom as one."
"O my prince. . . ." I breathe, pretending to be enthralled. "Just hearing those words from your lips has made me so happy, I think I shall never hunger again."
"I told you: call me Hikaru," he says with a fond smile, and I fake a blush.
By the end of it, we have the girls eating out of the palms of our hands—the perfect timing for Kyouya to appear and advertise our latest piece of merchandise, an amateur comic featuring our Prince and Pauper characters.
"An amateur comic?" Haruhi says in surprise and takes it out of Kyouya's hands. "I didn't know you guys could draw."
"We can't." Hikaru and I shrug. "We conscripted the girls in the manga club for the deed."
"They will, of course, receive a piece of the proceeds, though they were more than pleased to do it for peanuts." Kyouya adjusts his glasses to hide his amusement. "The twins have fans in all sorts of dark corners, it seems."
Meanwhile Haruhi, in her flipping through the comic, stops and turns beet red, and we know she has happened upon that part in the story. "Uh, I'm pretty sure that was not what Mark Twain had in mind," she says in a small voice. "I can't believe you two actually consented to having yourselves drawn doing . . . er . . . this sort of thing. Don't you find it degrading?"
Needless to say, that is all the advertisement our comic could ever need. Thanks to that little comment by Haruhi—one couldn't buy better publicity than the expression on her face—the first run is sure to sell out before the end of the day.
Rising as one, Hikaru and I put an arm around each of her shoulders. "Poor wandering one," Hikaru starts in a conspiratorial tone of voice, "if you like what you see . . ."
"Perhaps you wouldn't mind assisting us when we reveal next week's characters," I finish.
"Next week's characters?" she echoes.
We glance at each other and clasp her tighter to us, announcing to our audience gleefully with free arms outstretched: "Europa and the Pirate Twins! Please look forward to it!"
With impeccable—and predictable—timing, our lord perks up at that. "Pirates?"
"Who the hell is Europa?" Haruhi mutters to herself.
"Who said anything about next week's theme being pirates, of all things? Just who is the president here, huh? Who?"
"But, milord," Hikaru and I say as we shrug again, "everyone loves a pirate." And our guests, by the sound of it, could not agree more.
As the rest of our club descends thusly into a very public debate over the suitability of doing a pirate-themed meeting (ending, predictably enough, in our repentent lord's fine rendition of "Oh, Better Far to Live and Die"), we two stand on the sidelines and watch. Even if for only a moment, our Prince and Pauper personae melt away and we forget the atypical discrepancy in our appearances, the dominant and submissive roles that we have found of late all too easy to fall into. We are just Hikaru and Kaoru again when his hand finds mine and gives it a quick squeeze. Though our girls find our act convincing enough, it is not as though we know what it feels like to be separated from one another for sixteen years like the characters we play.
But we can imagine it. Needless to say, we don't like to for long.
—o—
In every person's life, there comes the point at which he must learn whence he came. For us, as identical twins, the realization that we both started in the same egg within our mother's womb was like an affirmation of the truth we knew within ourselves from the beginning. It simply gave a biological explanation for what we already felt. We are closer than we could ever be with any lover, and closer too than ordinary brothers because we never knew a time when one of us did not exist. When one of us came into being, the other was created.
We came into the world, like Aristophanes's proto-humans, already complete and wanting for nothing. We did not feel the need for a third party to make us happy, because we already were.
I catch Hikaru watching Haruhi out of the corner of his eye when he thinks I don't notice. He stares a little longer than even I do, yet I—who is just as guilty in my own fascination—cannot help thinking that nothing has changed. Not really. The only difference is that someone from the outside finally entered the walls of our city before we were even aware, and we welcomed her there because she was the first. The first to not be intimidated by those walls—hell, she breezed by as though they weren't even there—and the first to actually care what lay beyond them. We perceived in her no threat because, unlike us, she was free to come and go from that city as she pleased. It was we who found ourselves craving her change of scenery; after all, we didn't have much to offer an outsider. Not really.
But for all his boldness, it is actually Hikaru who makes the most effort to bolster the walls of our city—even as it is he who, like the Prince, is always gazing at something beyond the paradise they stand for in longing. He sees us as a fragile thing and fears shattering it. But I see us as a resilient and eternal thing that can always be mended. He is constantly worrying that he will hurt me if he shows interest in the them outside of us, and consequently it always pains me to see him worrying. It only makes me more persistent in pushing him away, which only makes him more intent on coming back.
Not that either of us would have it any other way. Where the two of us are concerned, Zeus might have tried a little harder.
A/N: "Oh, Better Far to Live and Die" is the title of the Pirate King's song in Gilbert and Sullivan's musical Pirates of Penzance. I mention it only because the refrain "For I am a Pirate King! (He is! Hurrah for the Pirate King!) And it is, it is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King" is classic Tamaki. And, come on, who doesn't love a pirate king?