There was a dim flickering in Alice’s head. Geometry with Mr. Leighton. “Something with architecture?”
“You’re on the right track, Alice. The Golden Mean comes to us through Greek philosophy. It is the ideal ratio between two quantities. It suggests an organic wholeness. Even our bodies and our faces follow this mathematical ratio. But no humans’ faces adhere to this ratio as unswervingly as you members of the Rasas. But this does not mean that you are all identical, or ‘clones’ of each other. Look at yourselves, Mrs. Winfield and Alice. You are not clones. You, for example, Mrs. Winfield, have auburn hair, while Alice has . . . has . . . a rich brown.” Liar! Alice thought. Her hair was mousy brown.
The doctor continued. “Your brow, Mrs. Winfield, is a bit broader than your daughter’s, and your eyes perfectly placed in relation to your brow and your nose. Just as Alice’s are for her narrower brow. Everything balanced perfectly.
“However, if you translate these ideal relationships and shapes into a human face, the result is pleasing rather than memorable. Human faces become memorable when they deviate in some slight way from the norm, from the Golden Mean. The slightly crooked nose. The lips that have a certain unevenness between the top and bottom. The eyes that droop ever so slightly and give a dreamy effect to a gaze. And then of course there are those people who are afflicted with micronathism—in varying degrees.”
At this point her mother, Posie, blanched. “Micro what?” Alice could feel her mother’s growing discomfort as the doctor continued.
“Chinlessness—a condition in which the lower jaw recedes a bit too much and is smaller than the rest of the face. There was a de’ Medici with this condition. It might have been the old gent himself, Cosimo.” Alice could feel her mother becoming increasingly nervous. She knew her parents had known other Rasas who had undergone surgery, but maybe her mother was also thinking of this as a sort of divorce, and rejection by her own daughter. Although when Louise had first announced her intentions, Posie had said, “If this is truly what you want, dear, of course.”
But at this moment, when the doctor uttered the word “chinless,” Posie Winfield, known as the most unflappable of agents for her complete composure in the most dangerous of circumstances, now seemed to crack.
“Doctor, what have you done to my daughter?”
“Nothing she didn’t want, dear lady.” He leaned across and patted her hand. Paternalistic bastard, thought Alice. He had just laid out a virtual buffet of facial deformities, and he expected her mother to remain calm. “All I have done with Louise’s face was to create a slight, barely perceptible deviation from the Golden Mean.”
Alice watched as her mother’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her mouth seemed to move silently around the words “barely perceptible.”
Alice reached out and grasped her mother’s hand. “Let’s go see her, Mummy.”
At the sound of the word “Mummy,” Posie snapped back. Cool as the proverbial cucumber. Composed. Imperturbable Posie Winfield now seemed to grow an inch. The Rasas did have an innate ability to assume a variety of postures, to acquire, almost instantaneously, subtle qualities that were quite transformative when needed. They could be veritable human chameleons. Posie turned to her daughter. “I’m sure it will be all right.”
“All right” was such a weak expression, Alice thought.
Now, twenty minutes later, they stood before Louise as Dr. Harding snipped at the bandages to unveil her. And Louise was different, so different.
“The swelling will go down substantially over the next day or two,” the doctor said. Those words seemed to unleash within him a deluge of clichés. Louise would be “right as rain . . . good as new . . .” The bruising would recede, and she would not look tarnished, but “penny bright.”
But, thought Alice. How will I ever deal with this change in my own sister? Her older sister, who Alice had known for all of her thirteen years. For some reason, this reminded Alice of when she was four years old and had lost her Fuff—a pink bunny that she slept with every night. Louise had generously given her her own stuffed animal, Puppa the puppy, to comfort her. Ultimately, the bunny was mercifully found again, and Alice finally outgrew it when she went to summer camp in Scotland with other Rasa children.
But would she outgrow her sister, now that she looked so different and was no longer working for the Rasa network? It had taken her so long to catch up with her, or so it seemed. But no, she scolded herself. She’d be the same old Lou Lou, inside. I’m being childish, Alice told herself. She reached for Louise’s hand and gave it a light squeeze. Yes, they were six years apart, as Louise was nineteen. But suddenly those six years seemed as vast as the Atlantic Ocean.
“Lou Lou, it’s me, Alice,” she whispered.
“I know, silly. I told you, I can see!”
Two
“The True Me”
Alice remembered that day when Louise had told her that she was going to do it. They had been sitting in a café in Grantchester, a small village near Cambridge, where they had been living for just a few months. It was two days after New Year’s. Their father was still on a mission in Berlin. He had been there now for a year and a half, and they were in the fourth year of this dreaded war. Louise had called it her New Year’s present to herself—“A New face for the New Year,” she had exclaimed at midnight when the clock struck the chimes in the village and 1943 slid into 1944.
“So, you’re going to do it, Lou Lou, really and truly what you said last night?” Alice had asked.
“Yes!” Louise snapped. “Look at that waitress over there.” She nodded in the direction of a door that led into the kitchen. “Don’t be obvious. But she’s staring at us. She can’t remember our names or quite who we are. We’ve been in here . . . what, maybe fifteen times? But she just can’t place us. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the missions, sick of . . .” Her shoulders slumped. “Of . . . of being so . . . so forgettable. I’ve grown tired of it. I was always frustrated by living this lie. I’m ready to leave. Mum says it’s fine.”
“I . . . I won’t forget you. Not ever.”
“Of course you won’t, and I won’t forget you. We’re Rasas, but first of all, we’re family.”
Somehow Alice did not find this all that comforting.
Lily the waitress made her way across the room with their tea and what passed for buttered toast these days. No butter, and there was only the grayish duration bread, due to the rationing of flour. On the tray was a thimble-sized pot of honey.
Alice saw her pause briefly and then peer at them harder. Louise was right. Poor thing was trying to remember them—almost desperately. To Lily it must be as if their faces were ephemeral—like liquid reflections in a pond. It was as if the still water was suddenly ruffled by a slight breeze, and any wisp of memory was now dissolving beyond the waitress’s grasp, making Alice and Louise completely unmemorable. Alice tried her best but still couldn’t understand why this would drive Louise to have the surgery.
Lily set the tray down.
She nodded at Louise. “Sorry, dear, about the honey. They just cut our rations.” Dear was always a safe name for a girl one couldn’t quite remember.