Chapter 26

DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE

Lewis plucks from the shelves a replica of the first edition – Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1886 – and is surprised by how slender it feels. In his mind it had grown huge, as weighty as War and Peace, not this slender volume with so tiny a spine.

He remembers reading the book as a boy, and feeling chafed and abraded by the twin strands of the story, the way they refused to blend into a reassuring shape of wholeness. Perhaps he was irritated by a nagging sense of familiarity, recognising deep down that he and his brother could never be one.

It would come later: in his early twenties, the book sat more comfortably within him. Once he was alert to his own terrible gift of shapeshifting, it seemed natural that a soul could be so threaded and twisted, sometimes violently, and he felt at peace with the knowledge.

He wonders if this was a state Tusitala finally arrived at, a pacific strangeness that the Italian painter limned so eloquently with his brush.