Into The Room Of Truth

“Why did you do that to me.”

Not once since our names were exchanged had Gloria and I been alone together, face to face. In a few dozen minutes more I would be back in my rightful place, and Gloria, who had done so obscene a thing, would pay for her crime. Perhaps that was why. In the end I spat out the one question I had been carrying in my heart all this while.

“Why in the world. Why me.”

The words shook at the last, and not from anger alone. The moment I bit softly at my lip, all the time I had spent with Gloria came rushing in like a wave. Childhood, the two of us clasping hands as we hid from the governess in the old storehouse. The nights we pulled the blankets over our heads to read romance novels in secret, giggling. The time she slipped out of the manor alone to buy me the chocolate I loved, lost her way, and was scolded terribly by our parents, right down to the face she made afterwards, beaming for all that, as she passed me the chocolate on the sly. Those memories were the precious pieces that had let me, at last, be myself.

And you, of all people. How could you do this to me.

Perhaps that was why, even before a betrayal this vast, I had carried that question with me every moment.

“No matter how I turn it over, I don’t understand.”

I kept my eyes fixed straight on Gloria and muttered it low.

“Why you would go this far with me. I truly don’t understand the reason.”

Gloria kept her eyes closed. Whether the sleeping draught I had fed her was taking hold, or whether my question simply bored her and struck her as beneath an answer, I could not tell.

“Things have come this far already. And that’s what matters to you now?”
“Yes. To me it matters. So answer me.”

She let out a snort, as though it had merely drifted out of her.

“Hah. This is exactly what I hate about you.”

She opened her eyes slowly and threw me a look with a sneer in it.

“You’re always like this, Mari. Forever playing the lofty, rational one. Sunk in the delusion that you can solve every problem in this world.”

None of it made sense to me, and my brow drew tight.

“What is that supposed to mean. Say it so I can understand.”
“I mean there was no grand reason behind the unspeakable thing I did to you.”
“…”
“I just couldn’t stand it. The sight of you happier than me. I couldn’t have stood it if it killed me…”

Her words dragged at the end, stretching out like a centipede. Before long she would be asleep. I knew I ought to leave her be and let her sink all the way down, and still I carried the conversation on. The answer was so far from anything I had imagined that the shock left me helpless.

“You did it because I was happier than you?”

It took a moment for what she had said to sink in, and I blinked slowly.

“How can that possibly be a reason? Say it so I can understand, for pity’s sake!”

Unable to bear the tightness in my chest, I shouted. If I had been driven to this cliff’s edge over a reason as paltry as that, I felt I could not endure it a moment longer.

“See? You’ll never understand anyway.”

Gloria snapped, as though she had truly reached her limit now. Her voice had cracked rough with the pull of sleep.

“We’re one and the same, aren’t we. Born of the same womb, the same face, the same height, the same voice. Which means that at the very least, you may be unhappier than me — but happier than me you must never be.”
“…”
“And yet you were always happier than me. Father, endlessly strict with me, doted on you like an heirloom of the house, and whatever governess came to us, it was never anything but praise for you on her lips.”

Father thought me the more dependable of the two of us, and I had long known that perfectly well. But it did not mean he hated Gloria. If anything, wherever we went he would remind me to look after her. And the governesses praised me because I did my lessons without fail. Unlike Gloria.

“Then what of Mother going to your bedroom every night? What of the maids slipping you an extra sweet behind my back? How exactly do you mean to explain those, Gloria.”

What meaning could there be, at this late hour, in tallying which of us had been loved more? And yet I could not bear to let the contradiction pass without pinching at it.

“…”

She had no answer for me. A dry, brittle laugh escaped through my teeth. She had cut the past to a pattern and doctored her memories until she came out of them some tremendous victim, and it struck me as madly pathetic.

“Don’t go picking childish little quarrels over things as small as that. Count them out one by one and there’ll be no end to it.”

Gloria rambled on.

“It’s making me angry all of a sudden. The more I think of it, the more unfair it is. Take the proposal that came to you from House Ernst. All I ever got was a proposal from a count’s house, and you had one come from a ducal house, no less.”
“…Is that why you wept so bitterly? On the day the Ernst proposal letter arrived for me?”

No answer came back, which was as good as saying I had it right.

“And here I thought you truly, genuinely loved Herman Ernst.”
“What’s love, anyway? Good family, good ability, splendid and handsome. That’s love. It’s no crime to have worked to win the finest husband on offer.”
“…”
“Then again, what use was any of it. My marriage ended in tragedy regardless. Not even God would sit by and watch me be happy. When word came that Herman Ernst had died in the war, I understood I could never be happier than you.”

Her arm dropped limply off the side of the sofa.

“So there was nothing else for it. Nothing but to become you…”

Why, in all her reckoning, had there been no path with the two of us both happy on it? Why, truly, could only one of us be allowed it? Nothing she said, from first to last, made the least sense to me. The one thing that had become certain was that the workings of this girl’s mind bore no relation whatsoever to common sense.

“If only there had been one of us instead of two. Father’s affection, the Ernst proposal, and your happiness besides. All of it would have been mine…”

In that mumbling voice, Gloria spat out nothing but words that beggared belief.

“You. Don’t tell me you’re crying?”

I was dumbfounded. I drew closer with disbelief written on my face. A tear beaded on her lashes and rolled down her cheek.

“I asked you for a reason, and all you’ve recited is excuses.”

“…”

My face twisted hard. To be swallowed whole like that by so contemptible a self-pity. Standing over her, watching it, made my blood boil.

“Don’t rationalize it.”

Rage had risen in me to the roots of my hair, and my teeth chattered with it. Again and again came the sound of them knocking together.

“You betrayed me out of your greed, out of your jealousy, and you will not dress that up in some plausible excuse…!”

What in the world had I wanted to hear? That she was sorry? Or that she begged my forgiveness? I don’t know. I only know that in a rage I could not contain, I forgot the plan entirely and shook her.

“So did it make you happy? Stealing my name, wearing my clothes, speaking like me, behaving like me. Did that make you happy?”

“…”

“Answer me! I’m asking you!”

Had I ever in my life been this angry? I shook her by the shoulders with all the strength I had. Her head lolled over, limp, and everything drained out of me.

“…”

Her face was as calm as a lake, nothing like my hammering heart. I gazed blankly down into it, and soon a memory from our childhood came back to me.

We would talk until the night grew deep, and when Gloria fell asleep first, I always used to draw the blanket right up to her chin.

Truly, not one thing about that face had changed since.

“…I.”

The strength went out of both my legs. With nothing left in me to hold my body up, I sank to the floor where I stood.

“Hh. I truly, wholly wished for your happiness. I did.”

I hated her enough to die of it. And more than that, there were times I sharpened my knife and swore I would never forgive her. And yet the love left in one corner of my heart for my one and only twin, buried though it was beneath the hatred, could not be erased.

I bit down hard on my lip, and the sobs came out of me all the same. I swallowed my tears as though groaning through a sickness, and the last of my affection for Gloria, the last of my lingering attachment, I ground down to nothing and swallowed down with them.

How long did I weep like that?

“Haah.”

I had wept so hard that the world spun round before my eyes. Wiping at my soaked cheeks, I groped after my reason again.

Pull yourself together. This is no time for it. Crying will keep until after you have your name back.

Bracing myself on the sofa, I got to my feet and went to the mirror. My paint had run and my hair had come loose, and I hurried to set my dress to rights.

No.

And then a thought went flickering through me.

Better this way, in fact. When I cry out that my husband and my twin have been bedding each other, this will serve far better than a face without a single tear-track on it.

I was gathering myself back together, thinking just that.

And from the corridor came the sound of someone approaching.