Inseparable Read online

  While mentally the twins seemed to be two perfectly normal human beings, physical abnormality remained the story of their life and their daunting challenge. At birth, their connecting band had been only four inches in length, but through wear and tear, it stretched to five and a half inches, giving them a bit more flexibility. Learning to walk, a milestone for Homo sapiens, was particularly difficult for them because they had to cross the evolutionary marker together, which required extra coordination. One account described their initial efforts in pedestrianism as being like “two inebriated men, with locked arms, endeavoring to proceed in a fixed direction.”22 Swimming, a necessary skill for anyone living near water—a missed step in the gap, a sudden jerk of the boat, a leaking or capsized vessel could all lead to drowning—posed no small challenge to the conjoined twins. In addition to the difficulties of synchronizing their bodies, their parents must have warned them of the ghosts waiting underwater to pull them down—Chinese believed that drowned ghosts cannot enter the cycle of reincarnation until they have found replacements by drowning others. People living close to water were especially mindful of spirits hovering underwater, ready to wreak havoc in people’s lives. Jacob Tomlin, a Protestant missionary from London, ridiculed the Chinese folly of trying to appease the watery spirits, as he wrote in his journal upon arrival in Bangkok in August 1828:

  The people are again turned to their folly, and the old man who was so busy on Tuesday is making his prostrations to the winds and waves, and an equally liberal oblation of bacon, fowls, eggs &c is brought out. Huge bundles of gilt and printed paper were successively cast into the sea in a blaze. Considering the labour and expense of gilding and printing, the quantity thus thrown away was quite astonishing. The whole, neatly cut, gilded, and printed, would have been a sufficient burden for a stout man! Several dollars were in this way wantonly squandered on the waters.23

  After learning to swim in tandem, the twins also learned other skills, such as rowing and fishing. In fact, they were well on their way to maturing as a fisherman’s children. Then, disaster struck.

  3

  Cholera

  In the spring of 1819, just as Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, governor general of Bencoolenand and representative of the British East India Company, had finished clearing out mangrove swamps in Singapore and had turned the island into an entrepôt, a virulent strain of cholera hit Siam. An acute diarrheal disease caused by food or water contamination, cholera had long been a scourge of South and Southeast Asia due to the region’s humid climate, poor sanitation, and dense population. An epidemic had first started in India in 1817 and then reached Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the following year, before spreading in all directions via trading vessels. It arrived in Siam that April, when the twins were about to turn eight.

  The death toll was staggeringly high. Dead bodies arrived so fast and in such shocking numbers that the monasteries could not keep up with the cremations. Many corpses were just thrown in the river, further polluting the water and exacerbating the epidemic. In the dark hours, fear and rumor ran rampant. Some thought that the cholera was caused by the recent construction activities in the palace, where Rama II had been busy building his pleasure gardens. Large rocks had been taken from the sea to build a mound in the gardens, a move that might have angered the guardian spirits of the ocean. Prone to supernatural interpretation of human events, the Poet King held a special exorcism ceremony: “Sacred stanzas were chanted, all around the city large guns were fired, and a procession was held with the nation’s most sacred objects,” wrote historian B. J. Terwiel. “The king temporarily relieved all people of their duties and exhorted all to make merit, chant sacred mantras, and practice munificence. Even those on palace duty were requested to remain home and look after their families. . . . The king advised people to let the animals roam around freely in the markets, and prisoners were freed. The populace was asked not to kill any living being, thus avoiding harmful acts.”1

  And, miraculously, the epidemic subsided.

  In the following years, every time the spasmodic cholera returned, or when it raged in neighboring countries, the king would again resort to neoromantic rituals, using potent spells to ward off the danger. John Crawfurd, who visited Bangkok during one of these epidemic episodes, duly noted in his journals:

  The re-appearance of the epidemic cholera spread great alarm amongst the people, a matter which was apparent enough from the precautions which they took against its attacks. The King, under some superstitious imagination, which I am unable to explain, directed the people to keep at home, and abstain from all work for seven days. . . . The secular superintendent of the great temple, which was the first we visited, called upon us in the course of the day, and said that he had no fear of the cholera morbus, as he made frequent prostrations before the idols, and wore a skein of cotton thread round his neck as a charm. As he spoke, he pointed at this potent amulet!2

  British condescension notwithstanding, Crawfurd might have had good reason to sneer at what he regarded as unscientific, superstitious practices, for they were ineffective; and he was informed by the Phra Khlang (principal minister) that the cholera had killed one-fifth of the Siamese population within only a few years.

  Among these victims, six were from the twins’ family. Three of their younger siblings had been the first to succumb to the epidemic, followed by their father, who fought a prolonged battle against what he regarded as the evil spirits, struggling in vomit, diarrhea, and pain till the tragic end. Soon thereafter, the Scourge of Southeastern Asia took the lives of two more siblings, leaving only an older brother named Noy, a sister, their mother, and the twins themselves.3

  Widowed in her thirties, Nok now had to pick up the pieces and raise four young children on her own. According to Judge Jesse Franklin Graves of North Carolina, who in the 1870s wrote a biographical sketch based on the twins’ recollections of their early life in Siam, Nok had at first tried to make oil from cocoa nuts, but the labor in that process was too hard for her and her children, who had to assist her in earning a living: “By very great industry and economy she finally collected a little stock of various notions with which she spread her table and again began to trade.” A smart merchant, she soon made enough money to start a small business of raising ducks and selling eggs.4

  At their tender age, the twins grew very fond of raising ducks. Harvesting eggs with bare hands, watching the eggs hatch into fuzzy ducklings, holding a fledgling whose feathers weren’t yet dry—all these activities certainly delighted two curious boys. It was even said they had a pet duck with whom they could talk.5 But this was, after all, a way of making a living, not a sidewalk sale of Girl Scout cookies. Every day, the twins got up at the crack of dawn, drove the ducks waddling out of the enclosure and onto the muddy bank, and let them paddle and feed in the river, while the two duck “fanciers” rowed their dinghy and kept close watch. To get more nutritious food for their ever-increasing brood, the boys would row down the river to the gulf to catch shellfish. Other lucky catches on those trips, such as platoo, a kind of sardine, a common dish after salting, would either bring a few more cowries to their mother or add more flavor to their bowls of rice. But it was preserved duck eggs that constituted the main source of their income, and they were quick to learn the ancient recipes.

  For centuries, the Chinese have honed their skills for making preserved duck eggs, which are of two kinds: One is called Century Egg (pidan), and the other is just plain pickled egg (xian yadan). For the former, eggs are dipped into a pasty mix of salt, ashes, lime, and rice chaff. The mixture will harden and preserve the eggs for as long as needed. When the coating is peeled off and served on a dish, the egg looks blackened like an aged mummy, giving out a pungent smell—hence the moniker Century Egg, or even Thousand-Year Egg.6 For the plain pickled eggs, one simply dips eggs into a mix of salt and wet clay. Both methods can preserve eggs for a very long time, providing two reliable, delicious items for a Chinese dinner table.

  In addition to preserved eggs,
the sale of ducks also brought in considerable profit, for duck meat was another delicacy for Chinese and Siamese alike. Even at their young age, the twins were said to be shrewd hawkers who knew how to take advantage of their customers’ curiosity about two conjoined boys plying their trade. It was not necessarily a confidence game, but it was a skill that would come in handy later, when their trade would be their own bodies.

  While the twins prospered as small merchants, the ancient kingdom of Siam went through transformations under the peaceful reign of Rama II, whom John Crawfurd had characterized as “one of the mildest sovereigns that had ruled Siam for at least a century and a half.” Crawfurd’s time frame, “a century and a half,” was significant because it referred to the length of time when Siam had remained in self-imposed isolation after the famous Ayudhya Revolution of 1688. Right at the center of that dramatic event was an enigmatic adventurer named Constant Phaulkon. Born Constantine Yeraki to Greek Orthodox parents in 1647, Phaulkon spent a wanderlust youth on English merchant ships and arrived in Ayudhya, the ancient capital of Siam, in 1678. His Greek name, “Yeraki,” means a bird of prey, so he changed it to “Phaulkon” (falcon). And, true to that name, Phaulkon soared high as soon as he landed in the court of King Narai. He learned to speak fluent Siamese within two years, ingratiated himself into the service of the king, and rose rapidly from a humble position as interpreter and accountant to become the king’s principal minister. A recent convert to Catholicism, Phaulkon used his influence to assist, openly as well as clandestinely, French Jesuit missionaries in their attempts to convert the king and his subjects, who were all considered Buddhist “idolaters.” With Phaulkon’s aid, the padres played such a deep game of conversion that two of them even shaved their heads, donned the robes of Siamese talapoys (monks), and infiltrated the Buddhist temples. The ruse backfired. When King Narai lay in his deathbed in 1688, the soaring falcon experienced not just a fall from grace but a final plunge—Phaulkon was arrested by his political enemies, charged with treason, and promptly executed. The French were expelled, and Siam shut its door to Europe.

  For well over a century, except for maintaining her traditional ties to China and neighboring states, Siam survived in isolation. But things began to change, especially after 1785, when the British took possession of the island of Penang, followed by more territorial acquisitions in the region. When international trade was revived after the Napoleonic Wars, European powers began to mount pressure on Siam for improved commercial relations. Portugal, its empire already in decline, was the first to crack open the long-bolted door, procuring contracts from the Siamese in 1818 and then establishing a consulate two years later. An ascending Great Britain followed suit, first sending John Crawfurd on a failed mission in 1822, followed by Captain Henry Burney, who succeeded in obtaining a treaty from Bangkok in 1826. The United States also dispatched an envoy led by Edmund Roberts, who secured favorable terms from the Siamese in 1833.7

  Siam was finally opening up—slowly at first, but steadily nonetheless.

  This time, the global tides would wash ashore not a falcon but a hunter—Robert Hunter, who would scout the coast of the Andaman Sea, searching for opportunities and profits. He would soon be dubbed the Second Constant Phaulkon. In fact, Tan Puying Sap, the Siamese woman Hunter married, was a descendant of Phaulkon and his Japanese wife. Inevitably, Sap became a great asset to her husband—unlike Phaulkon, Hunter spoke very little Siamese. Through his wife and other assistants, Hunter would exert as much influence on Siam as he would on the conjoined twins, whom he would espy on a late summer day in August 1824. The twins had just wrapped up another day’s duck business, and were dipping in the river to cool off after a monsoon storm, when the Scotsman burst into their world.

  4

  The King and Us

  When he first laid eyes on the twins, Robert Hunter instantly knew he had found a most precious curio.

  Conjoined twins were rare, and most of them would not grow to maturity. Back in Great Britain, Hunter had heard of the famous Biddenden Maids, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst. Those twins, born in the twelfth century in Kent, England, allegedly were joined at the hips and shoulders. Even though some skeptics considered them to be a mere fable, the Biddenden Maids had been commemorated for centuries in Kent with a big celebration on Easter Sunday. The festival each year drew thousands of spectators, who would gobble up the special Biddenden cakes bearing impressions of the twins. Veracity be damned, the legend grew—the cakes were reputed to be a cure for stomachache, or great souvenirs that would engender luck.1

  Or, closer to home, in Glasgow, Scotland, where the Hunter family business was based, there had been the Scottish Brothers, born in 1490, often referred to as the “Northumbrian Monster,” for “the lower half of their bodies was fused,” sharing “one set of genitals and two legs.” They had been raised and educated at the court of King James IV of Scotland, became fluent in half a dozen languages, and learned to sing duets—“one a tenor and the other a treble bass.” They “lived to the age of twenty-eight” and died a few days apart, with the survivor dragging along the corpse of his brother “before succumbing to infection from putrescence.”2

  In more recent times, there had been the Hungarian Sisters, Helen and Judith, who had visited England and created a stir. Born in Szony in 1701, they were joined back to back, with a single vulva but two vaginal tracts. After viewing them in London, Alexander Pope was so smitten that he was said to have immortalized the twins with a poem:

  Two sisters wonderful to behold, who have thus grown as one,

  That naught their bodies can divide, no power beneath the sun.

  The town of Szoenii gave them birth, hard by far-famed Komorn,

  Which noble fort may all the arts of Turkish sultans scorn.

  Lucina, woman’s gentle friend, did Helen first receive;

  And Judith, when three hours had passed, her mother’s womb did leave.

  Unwilling to leave anything to the imagination, Pope continued:

  One urine passage serves for both; one anus, so they tell;

  The other parts their numbers keep, and serve their owners well.

  Their parents poor did send them forth, the world to travel through,

  That this great wonder of the age should not be hid from view.

  The inner parts concealed do lie hid from our eyes, alas!

  But all the body here you view erect in solid brass.3

  Also inspired by the Hungarian Sisters, elite members of the Scriblerus Club, including Pope, Jonathan Swift, Robert Harley, and others, coauthored a satirical tract, Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus (1741), in which interested parties carry on a heated debate over conjoined twins.

  These were all sensational tales about “freaks” that tickled curious minds. And now, standing right in front of such a specimen of what Pope had called a “great wonder of the age,” Hunter was not going to miss this opportunity. He approached the twin boys, and, with the aid of his servant Hattee—described in language typical of the period as “a fat good humored little Siamese-Chinese”4—Hunter made inquiries into their lives, asking about their birth, family, and other details. When he was done, he already had a plan. He promised to come back soon.

  And he did, repeatedly, like the suitor returning again and again to serenade the girl he had first sighted at the bend of a country road. It did not take much for Hunter to convince both the twins and their mother to agree to his scheme of taking them on an exhibition tour to Europe and America. Sweet-tongued and persistent, he managed to tickle the prepubescent imaginations of the twins about the big, wide world out there. As for their mother, he lured her with lucre, more money than she would ever see in her life as a riverine merchant. Of course, he promised to bring them back, safe and sound, soon after the tour.

  The obstacle, however, lay with the king. In Siam, the king owned everything within his dominion: land, wealth, products, people. No one was allowed to leave the country w
ithout the court’s permission. The Chinese in Siam might have enjoyed special privileges of exemption from corvée labor and avoidance of exploitation by feudal lords, but they were still the king’s subjects and his possessions. In China, ever since the Ming Dynasty of the fourteenth century, there had also been similar laws forbidding travel overseas without permission, as well as in Japan before the Meiji Reform in 1860.

  Forced to approach the king, Hunter was disappointed when Rama III did not consent to let him take the twins. The honeymoon of the king and the British trader, sweetened by Hunter’s dowry of a thousand muskets, had proved short-lived, and now he and Rama III were partners in trade. Unless Hunter could come up with an enticing offer, the king was unwilling to let go a prize possession as rare as the white elephants. Hunter would have to wait for a more opportune time.

  In fact, Hunter’s request piqued the king’s curiosity. Realizing that he had not seen these wonders of the age born in his kingdom, the king ordered that they be brought to him for a personal viewing.

  When the royal summons reached the humble boathouse in Meklong, it threw the family into a panic. The family scrambled to get the twins ready for this very special occasion: getting haircuts, mending clothes, and washing duck-yard mud off their bare feet. According to Graves, the twins soon “repaired to Bangkok accompanied by their mother and single sister, not forgetting to take along a cargo of their now famous eggs.”5 Meeting the king might be a big deal, but the twins, having acquired a keen business sense, would not want to miss the opportunity of plying their trade at the famous bazaar in the capital city.