The Dumb House by John Burnside

Author:John Burnside
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

part three

the twins

I knew from the first that it was an error to think of the twins as my children, whatever the biological reality. It’s only a flaw in the language that confuses kinship with possession, and in this case the kinship was accidental. I had no real connection with these creatures who lay in the basement room, crying and fouling themselves, clinging to a life that I could easily have ended with a basin of water or a length of twine. For a few days after she died, Lillian was a palpable absence in the house, a stain that lingered over the makeshift cot before it faded away, almost imperceptibly. After that she was gone. It was simple, uncomplicated. Nevertheless, I was aware that the twins had been responsible, not only for her death, but also for the pain she had suffered, and for that reason alone, I was free of any instinctive sense of kinship, any desire to protect or nurture them that I might otherwise have possessed. I had read about such things – how, even in the most unexpected circumstances, a kind of paternal instinct would be aroused by the sight of one’s offspring, but from the start, the twins were, quite rightly, nothing more to me than laboratory animals. I had become fond of Lillian, in my way. I had enjoyed having her around the house; I had enjoyed waking in the dark and finding her thin body beside me, warm and lithe, like an animal, and in factual terms, they were her children. Nevertheless, I had no difficulty in proceeding with the experiment. The only difficulty was in keeping them alive and well for the first few weeks, so they might be of use later. I had to spend a fair amount of time and money fitting out the basement room as their permanent home and, at the same time, a suitable laboratory for my observations. To avoid the risk of discovery, I was obliged to do all the work myself. I built them a pen in the basement, so they could be contained easily later. I placed an observation grille in the door, I set up tape machines and video recorders in the room itself, so I could keep them under observation at all times. I knew I would have to ensure they were fed and cleaned, but otherwise I wanted to stay out of the basement as much as I could. It was an essential part of the experiment that they remain isolated. With the recording equipment, I could observe them without intruding into their awareness, just as wildlife photographers observe young chimpanzees at play. The essential point was to create a suitable environment, so they would be deprived of nothing essential to their development. I wanted them healthy, to ensure that my conclusions would not be clouded by any other factors. It was hardly surprising, for instance, that Genie had initially failed to develop intellectually, given the filth and squalor in which she lived.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.