The little Keller girl sat shivering on the examination table, and Doctor Stockstill, surveying her thin, pale body, thought of a joke which he had seen on television years ago, long before the war. A Spanish ventriloquist, speaking through a chicken … the chicken had produced an egg.
“My son,” the chicken said, meaning the egg.
“Are you sure?” the ventriloquist asked. “It’s not your daughter?”
And the chicken, with dignity, answered, “I know my business.”
This child was Bonny Keller’s daughter, but, Doctor Stockstill thought, it isn’t George Keller’s daughter; I am certain of that … I know my business. Who had Bonny been having an affair with, seven yeas ago? The child must have been conceived very close to the day the war began. But she had not been conceived before the bomb fell; that was clear. Perhaps it was on that very day, he ruminated. Just like Bonny, to rush out while the bomb was falling, while the world was coming to an end, to have a brief, frenzied spasm of love with someone, perhaps some man she did not even know, the first man she happened onto … and now this.
The child smiled at him and he smiled back. Superficially, Edie Keller appeared normal; she did not seem to be a funny child. How he wished, God damn it, that he had an x-ray machine. Because—
He said aloud, “Tell me more about your brother.”
“Well,” Edie Keller said in her frail, soft voice, “I talk to my brother all the time and sometimes he answers but more often he’s asleep. He sleeps almost all the time.”
“Is he asleep now?”
For a moment the child was silent. “No, he’s awake.”
Rising to his feet and coming over to her, Doctor Stockstill said, “I want you to show me exactly where he is.”
The child pointed to her left side, low down; near, he thought, the appendix. The pain was there. That had brought the child in; Bonny and George had become worried. They knew about the brother, but they assumed him to be imaginary, a pretend playmate which kept their little daughter company. He himself had assumed so at first; the chart did not mention a brother, and yet Edie talked about him. Bill was exactly the same age as she. Born, Edie had informed the doctor, at the same time as she, of course.
“Why of course?” he had asked, as he began examining her—he had sent the parents into the other room because the child seemed reticent in front of them.
Edie had answered in her calm, solemn way, “Because he’s my twin brother. How else could he be inside me?” And, like the Spanish ventriloquist’s chicken, she spoke with authority, with confidence; she, too, knew her business.
In the years since the war Doctor Stockstill had examined many hundreds of funny people, many strange and exotic variants on the human life form which flourished now under a much more tolerant—although smokily veiled—sky. He could not be shocked. And yet, this—a child whose brother lived inside her body, down in the inguinal region. For seven years Bill Keller had dwelt inside there, and Doctor Stockstill, listening to the girl, believed her; he knew that it was possible. It was not the first case of this kind. If he had his x-ray machine he would be. able to see the tiny, wizened shape, probably no larger than a baby rabbit. In fact, with his hands he could feel the outline … he touched her side, carefully noting the firm cyst-like sack within. The head in a normal position, the body entirely within the abdominal cavity, limbs and all. Someday the girl would die and they would open her body, perform an autopsy; they would find a little wrinkled male figure, perhaps with a snowy white beard and blind eyes … her brother, still no larger than a baby rabbit.
Meanwhile, Bill slept mostly, but now and then he and his sister talked. What did Bill have to say? What possibly could he know?
To the question, Edie had an answer. “Well, he doesn’t know very much. He doesn’t see anything but he thinks. And I tell him what’s going on so he doesn’t miss out.”
“What are his interests?” Stockstill asked. He had completed his examination; with the meager instruments and tests available to him he could do no more. He had verified the child’s account and that was something, but he could not see the embryo or consider removing it; the latter was out of the question, desirable as it was.
Edie considered and said, “Well, he uh, likes to hear about food.”
“Food!” Stockstill said, fascinated.
“Yes. He doesn’t eat, you know. He likes me to tell him over and over again what I had for dinner, because he does get it after a while … I think he does anyhow. Wouldn’t he have to, to liver
“Yes,” Stockstill agreed.
“He gets it from me,” Edie said as she put her blouse back on, buttoning it slowly. “And he wants to know what’s in it. He especially likes it if I have apples or oranges. And—he likes to hear stories. He always wants to hear about places. Far-away, especially, like New York. My mother tells me about New York so I told him; he wants to go there someday and see what it’s like.”
“But he can’t see.”
“I can, though,” Edie pointed out. “It’s almost as good.”
“You take good care of him, don’t you?” Stockstill said, deeply touched. To the girl, it was normal; she had lived like this all her life—she did not know of any other existence. There is nothing, he realized once more, which is “outside” nature; that is a logical impossibility. In a way there are no freaks, no abnormalities, except in the statistical sense. This is an unusual situation, but it’s not something to horrify us; actually it ought to make us happy. Life per se is good, and this is one form which life takes. There’s no special pain here, no cruelty of suffering. In fact there is solicitude and tenderness.
“I’m afraid,” the girl said suddenly, “that he might die someday.”
“I don’t think he will,” Stockstill said. “What’s more likely to happen is that he’ll get larger. And that might pose a problem; it might be hard for your body to accommodate him.”
“What would happen, then?” Edie regarded him with large, dark eyes. ‘Would he get born, then?”
“No,” Stockstill said. “He’s not located that way; he would have to be removed surgically. But—he wouldn’t live. The only way he can live is as he’s living now, inside you.” Parasitically, he thought, not saying the word aloud. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes,” he said, patting the child on the head. “If it ever does.”
“My mother and father don’t know,” Edie said.
“I realize that,” Stockstill said.
“I told them about him,” Edie said. “But—“ She laughed.
“Don’t worry. Just go on and do what you’d ordinarily do. It’ll all take care of itself.”
Edie said, “I’m glad I have a brother; he keeps me from being lonely. Even when he’s asleep I can feel him there, I know he’s there. It’s like having a baby inside me; I can’t wheel him around in a baby carriage or anything like that, or dress him, ‘but talking to him is a lot of fun. For instance, I get to tell him about Mildred.”
“Mildred!” He was puzzled.
“You know.” The child smiled at his ignorance. “The girl that keeps coming back to Philip. And spoils his life. We listen every night. The satellite.”
“Of course.” It was Dangerfield’s reading of the Maugham book. Eerie, Doctor Stockstill thought, this parasite swelling within her body, in unchanging moisture and darkness, fed by her blood, hearing from her in some unfathomable fashion a second-hand account of a famous novel … it makes Bill Keller part of our culture. He leads his grotesque social existence, too. God knows what he makes of the story. Does he have fantasies about it, about our life? Does he dream about us?
Bending, Doctor Stockstill kissed the girl on her forehead. “Okay,” he said, leading her toward the door. “You can go, now. I’ll talk to your mother and father for a minute; there’re some very old genuine pre-war magazines out in the waiting room that you can read, if you’re careful with them.”
“And then we can go home and have dinner,” Edie said happily, opening the door to the waiting room. George and Bonny rose to their feet, their faces taut with anxiety.
“Come in,” Stockstill said to them. He shut the door after them. “No cancer,” he said, speaking to Bonny in particular, whom he knew so well. “It’s a growth, of course; no doubt of that. How large it may get I can’t say. But I’d say, don’t worry about it. Perhaps by the time it’s large enough to cause trouble our surgery will be advanced enough to deal with It.”