“Everything comes in pairs in the chamber of the two-headed snake. There are two beds, two tables, two fire pits full of ashes. There are pots, jugs, cups, and wooden spoons, and each has a partner, though the potter made one more swiftly than the other or more decorous. There are two wreaths of wild flowers nailed to the wall. I see the faces of spring sprites in the flowers: little winking eyes, pointed hats, pollened tongues. Everything here is primitive, made of stone or poorly worked wood, a strip of bark still attached to the leg of a table. Maybe there were two men here. Lovers, perhaps, or rivals, and each had to have what the other brought into the room and in doing so became so like one another that, in the end, when they fled the room at last they had forgotten who was who. But did it ever matter?”