Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers: Magical Tales of Love and Seduction

Attachments Pat Murphy

MY BROTHER’S WIFE ADELAIDE pours me a glass of cider and smiles at me sadly. I love my brother’s wife, and that’s the problem.

The year is 1874 and I am sixty-three years old. I am playing chess with the learned Dr. Ruschenberger while my brother, at my side as always, tells dirty jokes to the doctor’s assistant. My brother’s laughter — braying, foolish laughter — rumbles against my side as I contemplate my next move. He calls to his beautiful wife for another glass of whiskey.

The doctor glances up from the chessboard and looks past me, frowning. “Your brother is drinking rather much,” he says very softly. My brother, who is laughing at another of his jokes, does not hear.

I continue studying the chessboard. “This is his house,” I say. “And he does as he chooses. He is certainly not willing to listen to advice from me.”

This is my brother’s house. His wife is pouring his whiskey. Two of his daughters are in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes. His youngest sons are sitting on the porch, whittling and smoking. Just a few miles away, my wife Sarah Ann and my youngest children are in my house. In two days, my brother and I will go there and I will be master for a time. But now I am in my brother’s house and my brother is drinking more than he should.

Dr. Ruschenberger shakes his head. Many, many years ago, my brother and I visited the doctors at the Philadelphia College of Physicians, hoping that with their advanced surgical techniques they might sever the flesh that binds my brother and me together. We are linked at the chest by a band of flesh as thick and strong as a man’s arm. It is a living connection, warm and pulsing with blood. Cutting that link might have killed us — or might have left one dead and the other alive and separate. In the end, we did not try the experiment.

At the time, Dr. Ruschenberger was a young man, just learning his trade. He’s older now, as are we all. Every now and then, while traveling on business, he comes to visit us.

“Your brother is growing drunk, but you still seem quite sober,” Dr. Ruschenberger observed.

I nod. “His drinking does not affect me.”

“Strange.” He is gazing at my brother, who is telling another joke. “I’ve warned your brother that excess drink is harmful to him,” he says in a low voice. “That paralysis of his right side — the drinking aggravates that, does it not?”

I move a bishop. “Indeed it does. But telling him not to drink is like telling a fish not to swim.” I look up from the board and meet the doctor’s concerned eyes. “There is little point in trying.”

Perhaps, I think, my brother will drink himself into a stupor. That would be for the best. But I don’t tell the doctor my thoughts.

I look up from the chessboard to see Adelaide, sitting by the fire and working on her needlepoint. The firelight shines on her face and I remember the first time I saw her, many years ago.

“Which one do you want?” my brother asked me in Thai, jerking his head toward a pair of women who stood near the fiddle player. “The tall one or the short one?”

A young farmer standing a few steps away glanced over at us, then looked away, scowling. I frowned at my brother. “We must mind our manners,” I told him softly in Thai.

With the profits from our time with P.T Barnum, we had purchased a farm in this small North Carolina town. For the past year, we had worked hard on the land — and worked equally hard to become part of the community. Initially, the local people were wary of us. Not only were we a curiosity — two men linked to make one — but we were foreign as well. It had been kind of our neighbor to invite us to this party, a celebration of his daughter’s wedding. I did not want to offend him or the other townspeople.

“Tell me — which do you want?” my brother insisted. His voice was loud. He had been drinking and he would not be put off.

I glanced across the barn. The two young women were standing near the fiddle player, tapping their feet in time to the music and watching half a dozen couples dancing a Virginia reel. The tall one was laughing. “I favor the tall one.”

“Good enough, then,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll ask them to dance.”

“We can’t …”

But it was too late. He had already started across the barn and I had to accompany him. I could plant my feet and resist, but that would only start a quarrel. I did not want to fight with my brother here, in front of all these strangers.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” my brother said in English. “You look lovely tonight.”

He introduced us and the taller woman laughed. “We know who you are,” she said. “You’re famous.”

“You have the advantage of us,” my brother said. “You know who we are but we don’t know who you are.”

“Sarah Ann Yates,” said the taller woman. “This is my sister, Adelaide.”

“I heard about you,” Adelaide said softly. “You bought the Johnson farm.”

“Indeed we did,” my brother said. “We’re neighbors.”

The song came to a close. The dancers clapped for the fiddle player. A few couples headed for the cider keg at the side of the dance floor.

“It’s fine music, isn’t it?” my brother was saying to Adelaide. “Perhaps you and your sister would care to dance?”

I smiled at Sarah Ann, feeling shy but having no choice.

Adelaide glanced at the dancers, then back at my brother. “It seems rather awkward …” she murmured

My brother answered before I could speak. “My brother and I can manage anything any other men can manage.”

“Oh, let’s give it a try,” Sarah Ann said, smiling. She placed her hand on my arm and my brother took Adelaide’s hand.

As children, living in a bamboo hut on the river, my brother and I had learned to swim, working together and coordinating our movements. When we began appearing on stage, we had learned to tumble and somersault, always aware of the connection between us. Compared to that, dancing was easy. We had to modify some of the steps and it confused the other dancers at first. They moved back to give us room when the call came to swing your partner, since we took twice as much space to swing as an ordinary couple, but we managed.

When the fiddler’s tune came to an end, we stood beside the dance floor and my brother told the sisters about our travels across America, about our tour of Europe. I was always aware, as we talked, of the warmth of Sarah Ann’s hand on my arm. When we stepped outside for a breath of air, Sarah Ann kissed me on the cheek, a sweet and fleeting touch.

That was decades ago. We were young men then. Now we are old.

It is Dr. Ruschenberger’s move. While he studies the chessboard, I listen to my brother tell the doctor’s assistant about the other prodigies in P.T. Barnum’s show: the wild woman, the fat lady, the hermaphrodite who had the breasts of a woman and the genitals of a man. He is describing their bodies to the young man in graphic detail — the hair on the wild woman’s belly was as thick and curly as the dark locks that covered her pubes; the fat lady’s breasts were immense, each as twice the size of a man’s head; the hermaphrodite had a penis as well as a vagina.

Adelaide’s eyes are on her sewing. She is ignoring my brother’s talk. She is silent and beautiful in her serenity. I study the chessboard, listening to my brother tell of the time that he convinced a New York tart to join him in bed, paying double, he said, because she would do double duty. He laughs. “And indeed she did. I had her as many times as two men. But my brother wouldn’t have her at all. Just lay there and slept, not interested at all.”

The doctor moves a rook and I turn my attention to the chessboard. “Check,” the doctor says. Then, a few moves later, “Checkmate.”

The doctor and his assistant take their leave when the clock on the mantle strikes eleven, riding away to the inn in town and leaving us alone.

My brother is tired — his body is slumping, tugging on the flesh that binds us together. I glance at his face — slack-jawed, one eye drooping half-closed. He frowns at me. People say we look alike; people call us identical. I can see some resemblance, but so many differences as well. I would never curl my lip in such an insolent and unattractive expression; I would never narrow my eyes in such a malicious gaze.

When the surgeons were preparing to cut the band of flesh that joined me to my brother, Sarah Ann was the one who stopped the operation. She and her sister had traveled by train to Philadelphia, two farm girls in the big city.

We were on the operating table when Sarah Ann stormed into the College of Physicians, dressed in her Sunday best and shouting in the voice she used to summon hogs to feeding. “You can’t do this! You’ll murder them both! You can’t.” Adelaide trailed in her wake, as always, following obediently.

The College of Physicians was no match for Sarah Ann. The distinguished head of surgery threw up his hands when she said she would accuse him of murder if he attempted the operation. She threw herself into my arms and swore that she loved me as I was, that I did not have to change for her, she would marry me as I was. While Sarah Ann shouted, Adelaide stood quietly at my brother’s side, watching her sister’s hysterics.

That afternoon, my brother asked Adelaide to marry him and she accepted. We married the next day. I don’t believe that I ever directly asked Sarah Ann to marry me. But after she said that she would marry me as I was, it was understood that I would marry her. There was no more discussion of that matter. So we had a double wedding.

I don’t know when it was that I fell in love with Adelaide. Perhaps it was on her wedding night. My brother and I had drawn straws to determine who would celebrate his wedding night first and my brother had won. So he would spend the night with Adelaide; the next night, I would spend with Sarah Ann.

I remember my brother’s wedding night better man my own. The lantern burned with a steady light on the bedside table. Adelaide was leaning over to blow out the flame when my brother said, “Leave that. I want to see you naked.”

He was smiling lasciviously. As he spoke, he was unbuttoning his own shirt, fumbling with the buttons on either side of the thick strip of flesh that joined us. He dropped his shirt on the floor and loosened the tie that fastened his pants.

Adelaide stood in the light, her hands clasped before her, her eyes cast downward. My brother stepped toward her, and I was pulled along. He unbuttoned her dress, exposing the lace of her chemise. He groped at her breasts drunkenly, cupping one in each hand, then leaned forward and rubbed his face upon them, nuzzling the nipples through the thin fabric.

“Husband,” she said, her voice soft. “Get into bed, and I will come to you.

My brother kicked off his pants and we sat on the edge of the bed together, then we swung our legs up and lay down.

Adelaide had her back to us. She had taken off her dress and wore only the chemise. The lantern light shone from behind her, revealing her body through the fabric — the soft curve of her waist, the gentle swell of her hips.

“Take that off and come to me,” my brother demanded.

I lay still on the bed, watching as she lifted the chemise over her head and stood naked in the lantern light. She turned and the light shone from behind her, casting her breasts into shadow. My brother was fondling himself; I could feel an echo of his touch, like a ghost hand touching me, arousing me. With his free hand, my brother reached out and grasped Adelaide’s arm, then pulled her toward him. As she came onto the bed, she glanced at me and I looked away, trying to give her what privacy I could.

I could smell her scent, delicate as night-blooming jasmine; I could hear her breath catch as he roughly pushed his hand between her thighs. I could imagine that my own hand felt the tickle of pubic hair, the slippery wetness of her.

She cried out when he penetrated her: a high note, like the alarm call of an exotic bird. He moved his hips against hers, and the note repeated, a sweet song of pain and pleasure. My brother grunted beneath her, and I closed my eyes, feeling the rush of his lust. My hand moved of its own accord and I stroked myself, echoing his thrusts. I could not help myself. But I made no sound; I kept my hips still.

My brother groaned like a boar servicing a sow, a base animal sound. And he moaned as he came with a rush, flooding her with his semen.

When it was over, my brother’s breathing grew steady. He slept, drunken and sexually sated. I watched the lantern light flicker on the ceiling of the hotel room. The straw tick mattress rustled as Adelaide stood to blow out the lantern. In the moment before darkness came, I saw that her cheeks were wet with tears.

“Adelaide,” I whispered in the darkness. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” she said softly. “Not really.”

“Why are you crying?”

She was silent for a moment.

“Tell me, Adelaide. I’m your brother now. Tell me why you are sad.”

“My mother wept at the wedding. She is sorry that I am moving away.”

“Not so far away,” I told her. “Just a few miles.”

“A few miles. So far. I’ve never been so far from my family.” A moment of silence. “You can’t understand how far that can be. You are never more than a foot away from your family.”

I could feel my brother’s heart beating, through the flesh that joins us. “That is not always a good thing,” I said.

“At home, I always knew what they were doing. I could hear my mother in the kitchen when I was falling asleep. I could hear my brother’s snoring from the next room. Sometimes it bothered me, but now I miss it. I could hear my sister, beside me in the bed.”

“I will do my best to snore for you, sweet sister-in-law,” I said, “if that will make you feel at home.”

“You are a sweet brother to me,” she said, her tone lighter.

I remained awake after Adelaide fell asleep, listening to the steady rhythm of her breathing and my brother’s snores. I wondered what it would be like to be so far away that I could not hear my brother’s breathing, not feel his heart beating in rhythm with mine. I could not imagine it.

The next day, before my wedding night with Sarah Ann, my brother and I drank toast after toast with people who had come to wish us well. I was not accustomed to drinking and I was drunk by the time the others left. I vaguely remember joking with Sarah Ann as I pulled her dress over her head. I remember seeing my brother grinning at her naked body. She laughed as she tossed a corner of the blanket over his face to hide his staring eyes. I pulled her onto me, driving myself into her, overcome with my own animal nature.

“Let us go to bed, my husband,” Adelaide says. The children have already gone to bed and she does not speak to me. My brother and I quarreled yesterday. He wants to buy more land and I think we already have more land than we can handle.

We began by talking about land, but in the end, it went beyond that. He had been drinking again and I lost my temper. I told him he was a fool and a parasite and he told me I was a coward. I told him that he had no soul and he told me that I had come into the world with my head tucked between his legs — that was the story our mother had always told. “Your head was between my legs when we were born, and I’ve protected you ever since,” he said. I said I would not sign my permission to buy the farm that adjoins mine, and he has not spoken to me since. He would be angry with Adelaide if she spoke to me. So she does not speak, though she acknowledges me with a glance.

Adelaide walks to the bedroom ahead of us, holding the lantern to light the way, her dress pale in the yellow light. My brother is clumsy in his drunkenness, and it is all I can do to keep us upright as he stumbles down the hallway. He curses under his breath, but he does not address me.

He is watching his wife’s hips sway as she walks ahead of us. Though she is old, though she has given birth to many children, she is still slender and lovely. Her beauty is not just a beauty of the body, but a beauty of the soul. I think about the soft touch of her hand and I know my brother is thinking about that too. But he is too old and too drunk to act on his desires.

We undress and lie down in the large bed that my brother and I built many years ago. In the dim light of the lantern, I watch Adelaide unbutton her dress and hang it from a peg on the wall. In her thin cotton chemise, she sits on the stool by the dressing table and reaches up to take the pins from her hair. Such a familiar gesture, the same since she was a young girl. Her hair, still thick and brown, tumbles down around her shoulders and she begins to brush out the tangles.

My brother is already snoring, sedated by whiskey and talk.

“Adelaide,” I whisper. “How are you tonight?”

“I am well, my brother-in-law,” she says softly. She glances at her husband. His head is thrown back; his mouth is open.

“I wrote you a poem yesterday,” I tell her. “When I was watching you peel potatoes for the stew.”

“A poem about peeling potatoes?” She laughs. “How can this be?”

“You are beautiful when you peel potatoes. The sunlight was shining on your hair and your hands were so graceful that I would rather watch you peel potatoes than see the finest dancer in New York take a turn on the dance floor.”

Every evening, when my brother is asleep, we talk like this.

“You are a foolish man, my brother-in-law.”

“I am foolish only for you.” I pat the bed beside me. “Sit here on the bed,” I say. “Let me brush your hair.” She blows out the lantern. A beam of moonlight shines through a gap between the curtains. In the moonlight, I brush her hair and whisper to her, telling her of how beautiful she is. I whisper my poetry, foolish poetry, appropriate only for the flower-scented darkness. Love poetry to my sister-in-law. Her hair is warm beneath my hands.

“Lie beside me,” I say.

She glances at my brother, still snoring. “Just for a moment,” she says.

“He won’t wake,” I reassure her. “Just let me hold you.”

Sometimes, on nights like this when my brother is drunk and asleep, she will lie beside me for a while, letting me feel her body next to mine. I gently pull her close. Sometimes, she welcomes my touch, but tonight she is tense, afraid that my brother will wake up.

“I want to be alone with you,” I murmur. It is an old story; an impossible request.

“We are alone,” she whispers back.

But I know better. Though my brother sleeps, I can feel his heartbeat through the bond that joins us.

After a moment, Adelaide brushes her lips across my cheek in a ghost of a kiss and slips out of bed, moving to the other side to lie beside my brother. When he wakes in the morning, she will be by his side.

If this were my house, Sarah Ann would be sleeping by my side. Sarah Ann has grown up to become a strong-minded practical woman who has no time for poetry. She gives me warmth and comfort, and I feel affection for her, but it is nothing like the love I feel for Adelaide.

Adelaide doesn’t love my brother. I am sure of that. How could she love such a man? She is beautiful and sensitive; he is bitter and crude. I fall asleep at last, listening to Adelaide’s breathing and wishing that I could, just once, sleep with her at my side.

I wake in the night to a sudden silence and I lie in the darkness, staring at the ceiling. Something is wrong. Something has awakened me.

I can hear Adelaide’s soft breathing. Other than that, the room is quiet, so very quiet that it seems to me the silence itself has awakened me. Something is missing. For a moment, I don’t know what it is.

Then I know. A sound that had always been beside me is gone. I cannot feel my brother’s heartbeat, the rhythm that always beat a counterpoint to mine. I cannot hear him breathing.

I call his name softly, but there is no answer. I push myself up on an elbow so that I can twist my head to look down at my brother, an awkward position made even more awkward by my brother’s stillness.

The moonlight falls in a white stripe across his face. His eyes are open and staring. His mouth is agape. He is gone.

“Adelaide,” I call, my voice breaking. “Adelaide!”

She shifts, turning toward my voice. “What is it?” she murmurs, her voice thick with sleep. “What is the matter?”

I can feel the chill of his body next to mine. I don’t know how it is that she can’t hear the silence that fills the room, pressing down on us. I lie back down, so that my mouth is near my brother’s ear. Such a strange thing, to feel only one heart beating. “You are a fool,” I whisper to my brother. “You are an animal, a parasite without a soul.” He does not respond. He is gone.

“My brother is dead,” I say to Adelaide, and for a moment I can say no more.

I feel her sitting up in the bed, moving slowly. “Dead?” she murmurs, her voice fearful. She is sitting up now. “How could that be?” But she is drawing away from his lifeless body, even as she denies that he is dead.

“I’ll send one of the boys for Dr. Ruschenberger.”

I shake my head, knowing that the doctor would do no good. Already, I can feel the chill of my brother’s body sucking the warmth from mine. I can think of only one thing that can warm me.

“It is too late for doctors,” I say. “Come lie beside me.”

She hesitates.

“My brother is dead. You are a widow. Come lie beside me.”

At last, she gets out of the bed and walks around to my side. She lifts the blanket and slides into bed beside me. Her body is warm against mine. I put one arm around her neck. I cannot embrace her; my other arm is pinned in place by the weight of my brother. But her warm body presses down on me, chasing back the cold.

I want to make love to my brother’s wife, my brother’s widow, the beautiful Adelaide. “You are so beautiful,” I tell her. There are tears on her cheeks as I pull her on top of me, feeling her soft thighs part for me as they have parted for my brother. I have dreamed so many times of this moment and in my dreams I had always feared that my brother would wake up, aroused by my movement, by the surge of my love for Adelaide. But he cannot wake up. Though Adelaide is on top of me, I am alone. I close my eyes and remember that long ago wedding night when the beautiful young Adelaide came to our bed.

I feel young again. I feel that things have been set right at last. I am alone with Adelaide and she is mine. She cries out when I penetrate her — so high and sweet. She is hot and wet, squeezing me tight, taking me in. Such a warm place, so welcoming.

As I come, I feel the heat leave my body. The chill is spreading from my brother’s body. Though I press closer to Adelaide, I can feel the flesh that binds me to my brother tugging on me, pulling me down.

Adelaide is crying quietly. Why are you crying? I want to ask her. Does she cry for my brother? Does she cry for me? But I have no energy for words. I kiss her goodbye and I lie back on the bed, knowing that I will not be alone for long.