apartment next door.
Another swap took place in the United States in the state of Wisconsin,
where on the twenty-eighth (probably the twenty-eighth of October) a
spouse swapping ceremony was held. Forty-three-year-old Mr. Pierce and
twenty-nine-year-old Mrs. Pierce married thirty-two-year-old Mrs. Pemis
and thirty-two-year-old Mr. Pemis, respectively. The two weddings were
held consecutively, and each couple helped out at the other’s ceremony.
The couples were interviewed two days later, on the thirtieth.
“ALL of us, our children too—we’re all extremely pleased. ’
Each family has three children. As in Sweden, the children followed
their mothers, who were the ones to move, though here too it was hardly a
“move” at all: the couples live in facing houses, on opposite sides of the
same street.
The comedy of the (very likely) middle-class spouse-swappers affected
Takako more powerfully than the tragedy of the princess and her mound of
stones because it related directly to her own life.
Or could it be that the spouse-swappers’ story was the tragedy, and not
the story of the princess’s love? After all, the article might not have
conveyed the spouse-swappers’ true feelings, or maybe they hadn’t told the
reporters what they really felt.
Was it really possible that the children—living right next door to their
former apartments, across the street from their old houses—would find the
father-swap “a pleasure?” Was it really “better for the children?”
Takako couldn’t believe it.
Spouse-swapping wasn’t the kind of thing a person could do ordinarily,
of course—certainly anyone predisposed to tragedy would have a hard time
going through with it. To think that all four people, two married couples,
had felt the same way—it must be incredibly rare. Indeed, it was precisely
