A thin sliver of white light
...
I want to speak to you, to tell you everything for the first time
I want you to know that my life has always belonged to you; yet you knew nothing about it
Don't be afraid of my words. The dead no longer want anything: not love, not pity, or comforting words
There is one thing I ask of you: to believe everything I tell you. Believe my every word
I ask nothing more of you
— Stefan Zweig, Letter from an Unknown Woman
[as adapted for film by Xu Jinglei]
...
1
...
Ever since he could remember he could always see the line. The line between them, composed of countless threads of light: looped around his arm and trailing in knotted tangles until they reached the arm of his brother. They were connected, the two of them, by these luminescent strands of gold. Wrist to wrist, threads glimmering in the darkness of the orphanage when everyone else had gone to sleep. Glinting in summer sunsets at the lake house, when he went swimming and his brother sat watching on the edge of the wooden dock, toes grazing the water. Glowing despite a bleak afternoon, under umbrellas and through a steady stream of people as they trudged toward the bus stop. Lighting up with their thoughts as they moved across the line: a spark of anger, a flash of annoyance. But usually, just a steady, warm light of whatever it was that bound them to each other. He did not think of it as love. It was much more necessary than that.
It was part of him, these threads: a part of both of them. An extension of their selves, visual evidence of their successive births. The illuminated strings were attached to both but only ever between them, no matter where they were. No matter how close or how far. When Noll sneaked into university and he sat alone through History and Geography and Social Studies one after the next, he'd twist his hand languidly under the desk, watching the threads ripple toward the door and out into the hall. It was as if someone had dropped a ball of yarn on their way out of the room; or instead of one perhaps two or three, or three or four. And when they were close, this jumbled mass hung between them, draped and looped and brushing against the floor. Twining between the front and the backseat of the car, when Luella let him sit up front and Noll didn't object to sitting in the back, even if he would have liked him to object, at least once in a while. But Noll never did. He only sat quietly, remembering the book he'd been reading or thinking about something someone had told him. Or wondering about something as he gazed out the window. Noll was always wondering about something.
Every so often, every just once in a while, he could see the silver line. Sometimes it caught the light and would shine so incredibly brilliantly when it did. It was fine and thin, nearly translucent, this thread. Insubstantial but just as strong and unbreakable as the rest when he touched it. It was attached firmly to his wrist with all the others and stretched far off into the distance—to where, he had no idea. When he was younger, he felt only the slightest curiosity—only the most fleeting, passing thought—by this second, different thread, and where it led. As he grew older he too began to wonder. Noll wasn't the only one with curiosities.
Sometimes he thought the thread led to another family member: an unknown brother, or a sister. Even their parents: had one of them survived, despite what the caretakers at the orphanage said? Despite the overwhelming documentation that insisted to the contrary? Somewhere, on the other side of the world, there was a stone set among many that marked the names of their blood. Their mother's remains had been cremated and sent west, across one ocean. He and his brother had been sent east across another. And his father had stayed where he was, under the earth shaded by massive, ancient trees. He would have liked to stay there with him, climbing the knotted, twisting branches toward the sky. To look out over the rolling fields, grain turbulent in the wind the way the wind rolled water into waves. The light shining from his hand beneath darkening clouds. Either a warning or a beacon of hope above the expanse.
I am here. Here, up in the branches of this tree. Can you see me?
You are not alone. You, you lost in the waves without direction or guidance—it's this way. This way.
Sometimes he thought the silver line was a mistake. As if the God Almighty—if he could even believe in such divine providence—had accidentally tied this extra string to his hand. The threads to his brother, his mirror image, his twin: this he could understand. Not many people in the world would, or even could—but he understood, and that was enough. But the second string, the lone string: sometimes it caught the light and sometimes it didn't. In the sixteen years of his life it had never connected to anyone, never even came close. While the threads to and from his brother were like a thousand spools undone, crisscrossing and knotted and looped and tangled, a joke of a loom, somehow an infinite number of connections and at the same time only one—this other thread was only ever alone. Sometimes he thought the reason he couldn't always see it was because it got caught under the other ones, the golden light from his twin hiding the silver of the unknown.
And sometimes he wondered if the line led to something else entirely, not a person but maybe a place, or not a place but perhaps an idea, or maybe not even an idea but something bound to happen in the future. What was that, anyway? Fate? Destiny? He'd always laughed at such an idea. There was no such thing.
But if there was no such thing, what was this tangible evidence, laying gently upon his body? Stretching away from his right hand? Would it reach the right hand of another, just like the line to his brother?
It was a brisk winter's day when the silver thread alighted. And tugged. First on his wrist and then somewhere inexplicable, somewhere deep inside his being resonating to an unheard sound. It was as if a tuning fork had been struck and his entire body—the flesh and the physical and something else entirely composed of his thoughts and yet also more than that—suddenly attuned to something, something far away, vibrating and sounding in perfect pitch. He'd been walking along the shortcut between the paddocks, a muddy track frozen solid in rutted tire tracks and decorated with lines of ice and snow. He stopped mid-stride and gazed at his hand, dumbstruck, pulling off his glove and pushing back his coat sleeve. There it was, the thin sliver of white light, gleaming between the tangled mass of golden threads. Nothing about it looked any different than it ever had before, and yet it was different. Something inside him told him it was different.
"What is it?"
His brother had stopped, turned to watch him with a nonplussed expression on his face. But then again, Noll was always nonplussed, or always appeared to be. Even when he knew better Noll wore the facade of boredom. Never eager, never on the outside, his contemplation always hidden beneath this mask of composure. His thoughts were not for the world to see, only for his brother—him—to feel and understand.
And Noll had always understood everything about him in return. They shared everything, likes and dislikes. Either they both liked the same things or he liked something so Noll wouldn't have to. They shared their thoughts. They shared their dreams. Noll had always, would always understand.
But not this. Noll couldn't see the golden threads that bound them to each other, even if he knew they were there. And he didn't know about this other line. Maybe Noll had one too—another connection, another thread, stretching into the distance—but if there was anything there, he couldn't see it. He felt guilty, harboring this secret. As if he was being untrue to his own twin by seeing it, by acknowledging it was there. By wondering where it led.
"Nothing. It's nothing."
His breath steamed in the air, heavy, like his lie. It was late afternoon and the sun was low. The white lines of snow in the fields were beginning to turn to gold, glowing almost pink in the light. Almost the same color as the golden threads that hung suspended between them. Almost, but not quite.
Noll shrugged and turned.
Noll didn't care that he lied.
He was the one who would care.
He forced his feet to follow him, but the tug: this gentle pulling, the slight tingling on his hand and the light, burning behind his eyes, remained.
Note from ze writer:
um. hello? You might have been wondering if I was dead or alive or if I was still writing. (I often wonder this myself.)
Part two will be up in a day or two, or a week, depending on how terrible my last week of work is before the break \(^o^)/ hooray for the most wonderful time of the year lololol
Thanks always for your support! I'm looking forward to hearing what you think, since this is a little different from some of my other stories, so thanks in advance for your reviews!