They were born, this one and this one, identical twins. So similar were they that the differences were very subtle, far smaller than the differences between them and the other children. So they drew together, satisfied in a private world of their own. Even when toddlers, with one in the arms of his nurse having fallen in the garden, the mother, mixing a cake with the other in the kitchen, had already been warned by an urgent, “Boy hurt!” As they grew older, a glance, a nod, a tiny indication, transmitted between them a complete understanding, a world of feeling, all in an instant.

Each one felt himself a clear-cut individual, but deep down inside, they each felt they shared an immutable common basis, a silent central soul. So each began to see the other as another example of himself, as you might remember yourself yesterday, walking or swimming, as a separate person. And after they had been apart, they would meet to share their experiences, as if fitting jig-saw pieces together to make a complete pattern that belonged equally to both of them.

And so they grew. They interacted with the other children and their adults in a proper way, but with a little polite distance of shared dignity. The life of one added to the life of the other, as if each had a larger life than what was individually his own, a collateral enrichment. Then they reached early manhood and fell in love with the same girl, at the same time.

She was beautiful and vividly alive, with a free spirited carelessness with regard to which was which. She called them both by the same pet name: Timmitty. After the initial friendly threesomes, the twins tacitly agreed, that as what they would do with her were best done in private, they would visit her alternately. She would always greet them with a carefree kiss, lightly brushing lip to lip and breathing their pet name, while her quick, small tongue darted in and out like a little fish. This was deeply exciting to all three.

And so began a long and happy period. In the girl they achieved a complete satisfaction and unity. In their interleaved visits they created a single lover, and the girl was completely satisfied also. The little inconsistencies of continuity and detail, when events unique to one twin were occasionally unknown to the other, were passed off as lapses of memory, and a seamless life was lived with joy in all three hearts.

And then a tragic day came. The twins were returning from a match on their shared motorbike and hit a patch of oil. The bike slewed at speed and turned over, crashing into a stone wall rear wheel first. The twin on pillion hit the wall and the driving twin hit him. Only one survived.

The survivor kept his sadness to himself and immersed himself in his love for the girl. The girl, who had heard the news from friends, did not know how to formulate sadness, as her love and lover were still intact. And so they continued their life together. Only now, for the survivor, the sense of turn and turn about, the sense of the other in abeyance, waiting at a distance, ended. A dimension seemed to collapse, leaving him in single relation to the girl. But slowly his joy returned and they continued in a unity unbroken, without even the previous small inconsistencies.

However, after a long and happy period, the girl began to sense the lost dimension. She who had carelessly accepted the twins as one, began to miss that subtle difference caused by two. And a tenuous atmosphere of expectation grew up between them. Now and again the old feeling of turn and turn about would return to the survivor, and small inconsistencies would arise, which the girl would laughingly brush aside. He began to feel as if his twin were once again sharing in this love.

Then one day he returned to her bearing a large bunch of red tulips. She greeted him with her brushing kiss and darting tongue, whispering, “Oh Timmitty, silly, I asked for wine!” And over her shoulder he saw, on the hall table, the large vase, empty this morning, brimming with red tulips.