From the Author's Note at the end of The Quiet Twin, Dan Vyleta states:
My primary interest in this book belonged with the army of opportunists whose crimes at times were as grave in their consequences as those perpetrated by the true believers. Sixty-five years after the Second World War it is easy for most of us to convince ourselves that we could never have belonged amongst those who would have held wrong-headed beliefs; it is a more nagging question to wonder what one might have done in order to secure some modicum of social and material success.
This is an issue that I keep coming back to in my reading lately: whether it's the Rwandan Genocide or the Salem Witch Hunt or, yes, even with the Nazis, it's so easy to judge people's actions in retrospect; to say that I would never have been caught up in some blood lust against former neighbours. But in every one of these historical cases, the perpetrators were people exactly like me -- ordinary, peaceful -- who somehow, slowly, became something else. But as Vyleta states above, The Quiet Twin isn't about the blood lust but something perhaps more insidious; the kind of small betrayals that maybe we all are capable of, that we might not even judge ourselves harshly for. Would I hoard sausages, hoping to make a killing on the black market? Would I rat out a neighbour for a letter of introduction? Would I watch at the windows, listen at the pipes?
Set in Vienna in 1939, The Quiet Twin is situated in an apartment complex with an inner courtyard; the kind of place that makes it very easy for neighbours to spy on each other through their open windows; an occupation that goes beyond mere curiosity as the country ramps up for war and the local police assume new and absolute powers. As the story begins, there have been a series of local murders, including that of a dog owned by the building's own Zellenwart (a disgraced former professor who was able to secure a minor title from the local Nazi Party, a man who now, essentially, acts as a spy in the neighbourhood). Paranoia grips the residents, and their actions, half seen and mostly misinterpreted by each other, lead to whispered theories and accusations. A resident physician, Dr. Beer, is asked to bring his special training to bear on the police files, which he is reluctant to do since it involves his long-disavowed knowledge of forbidden teachings; those of Sigmund Freud.
Every character who is introduced has a secret to hide and meetings between them tend to be awkward and guarded -- even between would-be lovers. The only one who seems willing to seek and offer friendship is the pirouetting young hunchback, Anneliese, but even she is shielding her drunken father from the others. As an aside, Anneliese is the title character in the follow-up, The Crooked Maid, and it was heart-wrenching to see what a carefree child she was in this earlier book, before the orphanage. Also, the revelation of Beer's homosexuality in The Quiet Twin would have been a bombshell if it wasn't an open secret in the later novel .
Something about this book may have been too clever for me and I wish I had understood it on all its levels (did Freud have anything in particular to say about twins? A brief google points me to The Uncanny). When Eva, the beautiful but paralysed and mute woman is introduced, I thought, "Aha, the quiet twin." But then again, her brother, her twin, is a mime. And then later we learn that Zuzka has a dead twin -- and isn't that the quietest of all? And from accusations of rape against young fortune-tellers, which leave them mute, to attempted rape against a helpless invalid, there is a repetition of the idea of exercising power over those who can't protest. This even happens with Zuzka and Dr. Beer (two seemingly self-controlled people): In the opening scene, when the physician is asked to examine the intermittently paralysed young woman, he needs to restrain himself from touching her inappropriately. And later:
When she woke, she was surprised at first to find him there, slumped low in his seat, his chin on his chest, and a line of wet where he was leaking from the mouth. His hands had dropped to either side of the chair, hung lifeless, like the limbs of a marionette. It was easy at this moment to think of him as hers, to play with at her leisure, and she reached out at once to touch his beard, like a schoolgirl on a dare. He was handsome even in his sleep, perhaps more so: a closed man, buttoned up in his soul, the eyes like peeled almonds, half hidden under the broad brow. It was tempting to spend an hour just touching him; lie there, slide a hand upon his thigh. Then she remembered why she had asked him to stay the night and shot up in her bed; shook his shoulder in passing and ran to the window.
The Quiet Twin was a fascinating read that captured the tension and paranoia of the time, most especially in the character of the police detective, Teuben; a man who would rather beat a confession out of slow-witted youth than actually solve the murders he has on file. From his control of Speckstein's dinner party to his insistence that Dr. Beer change his autopsy findings, it's obvious that the common citizen had rapidly lost his rights -- and the book isn't even about the deportation of Jews or the concentration camps or full out war, just the period right before when the Viennese were trying to figure out what was about to happen and how they could survive it.
And back to the big question -- what would I have done to survive it? Hoard the sausages or hide the invalids? I know what I'd like to think of myself but am not anxious to be put to the test.
