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This morning NPR had a piece about twin brothers who joined the Franciscans on the morning of the day that the afternoon's mail brought their draft notices for service in WW2.

The boys had been absolutely inseparable since infancy and when given the choice between serving God or the infantry they opted for God. They remained in the Franciscans, performing those menial chores required of the brothers for more than 70 years.They  remained together, one never leaving the side of the other for a life time. The elder by an hour, died yesterday morning. The younger died yesterday afternoon. They were 93 years old.

The Priest who reported the story thought that just as they had remained faithful to God, He remained faithful to them and took them up to heaven together, so that they could remain as one forever.

I am reading an interview of W.G. Sebald. The interviewer asks him to explain an episode in The Emigrants involving twins. There's a photograph of twin boys who look exactly like Kafka did at that age. Sebald explains that he had been on a trolley on his way to Kafka's birthplace when he saw the boys. He asked the parents for permission to photograph them, thinking that he wanted to document the improbable coincidence. Probably they thought him to be a pederast, and refused. The irony is that doubles, twins and triplets are often found in Kafka's stories. Sebald thought that it was nature's way of  breaking thought the surface, disclosing the fault line between nature and civilization. He says, "We  may not know what it means, but we have a sense that something beyond us is taking place."  Things, Sebald senses, are "outside our control."