The Two-faced Man

The Two-faced Man picked his way across the beach carefully, pausing every so often to poke around in the sand with a stick. From my perch on top of the lighthouse, I watched him steadily approach in his usual, unhurried way. When he stopped to root around in the sand, I could see him examining whatever he uncovered. Sometimes he would uncover something, probably a shell, or a clam, but mostly there was nothing. Eventually his wandering path took him off the sand and over the rocks around my lighthouse. 

He waved to me and shouted, “See you tonight?”

I shouted down to him, “Bring wine!”

The Two-faced man nodded and wandered off toward town.

This lighthouse was built, at least partially, by my grandfather’s grandfather. He and his wife and daughter moved in after it was completed and took turns keeping the light going on dark nights. Over the years, the job has been passed down, with at least one person staying up and keeping the lamp lit all night. Until me. My father passed away fifty years ago when I was only 20. I’m an old man now, and I have no children. When I die some other family will be appointed to tend the light. And since it’s the 1960s, they’ll probably renovate the whole lighthouse and put in electric lights and backup generators and all the new technology that so-called progress has brought us. I want none of it. Just my simple little lighthouse, and my simple little life.

My father told me the Two-faced Man has lived in a house along the beach since before my grandfather’s grandfather built the lighthouse. He has always looked as he does now, as a man in his late thirties, handsome and well formed. He has always been congenial, helpful, and polite, but still very private. No one in town knows anything about him. It was as if you were always only seeing one side of him, the face he wanted you to see. The face he presented to the public.

I asked him once how he has lived so long, and not only does he not know, but he doesn’t realize how long it’s been. He talks about Emperor Augustus dying as if it happened a few years ago. He gets confused and thinks I am the first to live in this lighthouse, and it was just built recently. My secret theory is that he is some immortal god of the ancient world, cursed to wander the Earth forever.

We were deep in our wine that night when his public face abruptly slipped and I glimpsed the real face beneath. I lived for these moments. These brief, infrequent snips of time when I could see the ancient man of depth and genuine emotion. The Two-faced Man told me, with many pauses and sips of wine, about his wife. I’d heard every story over the years, and especially this one, but I didn’t stop him. I said nothing except the encouraging little noises he needed to keep talking.

“I had her wedding gift commissioned by an artist in Rome. It was a ring with a hollow gold band, and the face of Minerva rendered in dark green stone. I think it is now called chalcedony.  Aemilia was my goddess, and I worshiped her. She got sick soon after we were married and nothing could heal her. She coughed constantly, and every day she weakened more. We prayed to every god and goddess, spending almost everything we had on offerings at the temples. Finally we couldn’t afford our house in Rome and we moved down the coast to here to be nearer the ports my shipping business used. From the first day,  Aemilia’s health improved. Apparently the sea air agreed with her. Soon we were taking long walks on the beach and making plans to have many children. But then, and I can remember it like yesterday, we were walking along the beach one day.  Aemilia paused and looked out at the ocean. The waves were rolling in. And then she was gone. The light went out of her eyes and she fell on the sand. Nothing I did could bring her back. And later, when I had taken her up to our house, and the doctor had come and gone, I realized her ring had fallen from her finger. I searched the house, and every inch of the beach, but I couldn’t find it. If I could just find that ring, I could feel like my time here was complete, and I would go back to Rome.”

I tried to engage him in conversation, starting to tell him about my mother and how devastated I was to lose her when I was only 11 years old. But the old god couldn’t see past his old, old grief, and lost interest in what I was saying after just a few minutes. In the middle of a sentence, he interrupted with a description of his wife as she tended to the birds they kept in reed cages in the garden.

I tried again, saying “I’ve seen a ring similar to what you describe. My great-great grandfather gave it to my great-great grandmother when they were married. Later, it was passed down the generations, and my mother wore it last. When she died, my father gave it to me, hoping I would give it to a sweet young girl when I got married someday. But as you know, that was never to be.”

The Two-faced Man just nodded, looking into the fire.

“I have it around here somewhere, if you’d like to see it.”

“Not today,” he said, after a long pause.

After he left, I went up and checked the signal light, making sure to refill the oil reservoir and tighten the glass windscreen around the flame. Then I sat in my tiny living room, watching the fire for a long time. Idly I took my mother’s wedding ring out of my shirt, where it hung on a thin chain. It was a hollow gold ring, with the face of Minerva rendered in exquisite detail in dark green chalcedony. My grandfather’s grandfather’s daughter had found it in the sand while she was making sand castles one summer day. 

I’d thought of giving it back to the broken god many, many times, but only if he could summon one shred of interest in someone other than himself. Even when we were lovers and he lived in the lighthouse with me, back when I was young and vital, I never felt like he had any real interest. I was convenient. I was just companionship. Doubly so now that I was old and used up.

But I couldn’t blame him. How could an immortal love someone like me, so bound to time. I must be like one of his captured birds that he kept back in Rome. Something so simple, with a life so fleeting. And yet, I couldn’t help loving him. All my life he’d been the only man I’d ever loved. I’d grown up seeing him pick his careful way across the beach, not knowing what he was searching for. I’d become lovers with him in my twenties, and it was soon after that he’d told me the story of his wife and the ring. It wasn’t for years after that I’d put together that his wife’s ring and my mother’s were the same. And my selfish love couldn’t let him go. If he got the ring back, he might leave. He’d certainly said he would. And what was my brief lifespan for him to wait? I had no children to leave the ring to, so I would give it back when I died. Yes, that was the best way. I put the ring back under my shirt and set about tidying up the small house, still thinking about my immortal, broken god.