The Brothers

by Asko Sahlberg

  Whatever we think of Jansson, Henrik escaped the house of correction on account of the farmer’s mercy. Perhaps Jansson felt sorry for Henrik’s sick father, and after Arvid had died of his illness, he probably did not want to stir up old trouble.

  Fool that I am, I thought that with time Henrik would also forget, but he did not. In certain matters, one ought to seek the advice of women first, for they have been given a third or fourth or even fifth sight, which sees and understands many things men fail to know. By chance, I turned to the Old Mistress when I happened to pay a quick visit to the chicken shed and found her there feeding her feathered flock.

  I cleared my throat, as required by good manners, and she turned and smiled. ‘The chickens are laying well,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s be grateful we don’t need to worry about them,’ I replied. ‘What I mean is, there are enough causes for worry in a human’s life.’

  She nodded and her smile faded. ‘True. Mankind seems to be made for worrying.’

  ‘Anything in particular?’

  ‘Henrik has been given the nature he has,’ she said. She had forgotten the chickens, although one was pecking at her shoe. ‘He not only bears a grudge, he has to be cunning, too. Can it be healthy for a young man to have too good a memory and too sharp a brain?’

  ‘Is he still after that horse?’

  ‘Yes. He’s hatched a plot to get revenge on Jansson. Since Jansson took his horse, he’ll take Jansson’s daughter.’

  I was surprised, and at once grew fearful, but I did not show it. ‘Which of them? The pretty girl?’

  ‘Yes. Anna’s her name. Although, who knows, she might turn out to be a good daughter-in-law. Revenge just doesn’t seem the right reason for taking a wife. In any case, the poor girl won’t make up for the horse. Though you can ride a wife, of course.’

  I sensed misfortune approaching, mocking and inevitable. But I did not let this intimation creep into my voice. ‘It’s gone as far as that? Has the day been fixed?’

  The Old Mistress shook her head glumly. ‘Anna doesn’t even know yet that she’s to be Henrik’s wife. Just as Henrik doesn’t yet know that I know. But I do know my son; Anna won’t have any say in the matter, once it’s been decided. Jansson will put up a fight for a time, but a daughter is every man’s weak point. And Jansson owes Henrik, in a way.’

  ‘I see. So he’ll swap the horse for the daughter? Looks as if it’s time to order wedding shoes from the shoemaker.’

  ‘Have Arvid’s old ones.’

  ‘Thanks all the same, but I won’t go to a wedding in a dead man’s shoes. Could be a bad omen for the marriage. Although maybe you can’t ruin a union with shoes if hooves have got there first.’

  We all see others in our own way. Henrik claims that I am in the habit of skulking and eavesdropping. True enough, I happen to overhear all sorts of things, but a quiet person hears a great deal that he would rather not hear. Sometimes there seems to be nowhere in the world human voices don’t reach.

  It was an autumn day. Despite the chilly weather, I was lying on my back in the grass at the edge of the forest, when I heard two voices coming nearer, one clear and girlish, the other lower, a male voice not yet broken by age. I should of course have raised my head from the tussock as a warning. They stopped painfully close to me and instantly I had already heard too much.

  ‘What if he kills you?’ Anna asked, in a childishly tremulous voice. ‘Father said you ought to take his knife away. They say he’d be best off in the King’s army.’

  Erik laughed, or at least he tried to. ‘Don’t worry. He’s not that mad. I’m his brother, after all, and he wouldn’t do such a thing to Mother.’

  ‘Still, I’m scared. Given he’s got a grudge against my family.’

  ‘Because of the horse? Yes, I expect so. But he hasn’t got a grudge against me about it.’

  ‘Father still feels so guilty he can’t sleep at nights. Now he would give away as many as three horses for free, so he says.’

  ‘Tell your father not to worry. Or I’ll tell him myself.’

  Anna’s voice became fluttery with fear. ‘What if we were to go away?’

  ‘Ah, so we should run away, should we? Don’t. It’ll be all right, I’ll talk to Henrik. I don’t think he even wants to get married, really. It’s just tradition for the elder son to bring a daughter-in-law into the house. Henrik said once…’

  I could hear their rabbit hearts beat with expectation. ‘What? What did he say?’

  ‘He said that we came into this world in the wrong order. That he’s not comfortable here and doesn’t want to remain here, that he wants to see the world. I need a wife, not Henrik.’

  Their voices suddenly softened. Erik was probably already picturing himself blowing out the night candle.

  ‘And I a husband,’ said Anna. ‘We are sure to have a good life, aren’t we? Say that it is so, Erik.’

  ‘Of course we will.’

  ‘And children. Won’t we?’

  ‘A brood of such magnitude that we’ll have to extend the house.’

  But they never had children. However, you hardly feel like lamenting their fate when you compare it to Henrik’s lot. Not many men are so assaulted by a foul wind that they are first robbed of a horse and then of a wife. And if the man has been cheated of the horse by his nearest neighbour and of the wife by his own brother, he can hardly be blamed for wanting to take his sorrows and his losses elsewhere.

  First Henrik went to Vaasa. We did not hear from him for a long time. We got used to his absence. I believe each of us reminisced about him as briefly as possible. We let the memory come and then wiped it away. I thought of him as if he were a tree that had once stood in the yard, a tree that had swayed during storms, right by an outhouse, and had finally been felled. So I was surprised when one day a cart drawn by a healthy-looking mare appeared in the yard, with Henrik sitting on it. He was wearing good clothes, but was otherwise unchanged: stiff-backed, bone-faced, despising everyone and everything. The reason for his visit never became clear and he did not stay long. Early one morning, two or three days later, cart and mare were gone. He did not leave without a trace, however. For weeks afterwards, a mysterious, gloomy atmosphere drifted about the house and its surrounds, like the smell after a wake.

  Later, we learnt in a roundabout way that he had moved to Turku. When he again appeared in the village, he was wearing gentleman’s clothing and driving a two-seater gig pulled by a muscular gelding. As if that were not enough of a shock, he was sharing his conveyance with a woman whose greatest, perhaps only, talent was occasionally to burst into screeching, ear-splitting laughter. I suppose I was not alone in feeling grateful to God when Henrik took the woman and her screeching away so quickly. That week, I gave more than usual to the Sunday collection.

  I would no longer let myself be deceived by the passing of time. I was prepared when one day a splendid carriage appeared in the yard, drawn by two full-blooded stallions. A real Swedish mademoiselle stepped out. And I was not particularly surprised that this time there was a weary, vacant look in Henrik’s eyes. Time had clearly caught up with him. He had tried to stay ahead of it by rushing from one town to another, but though his simple cart had transformed into a carriage and screeching prostitutes had become bourgeois ladies from Stockholm, time had at last got the better of him and disclosed to him the permanence of his destiny, its inexorability: he was still the same man who had first been cheated of a horse and then of a woman.

  After that, more than two years went by before we heard he was living in St Petersburg.

  I should have guessed a war was coming.

  A year later, it was here.

  ANNA

  They think I do not know. But what they do not know is that I can see in the dark, like an owl. At night, when time curls up in a ball, I see people and things as they really are. Then I open my mouth and my voice roars, silent but terrible.

  Then I begin sweating and my hands are forced to console me.


  Now the Old Mistress wants me to go to Turku with her. That means she wants me as far away as possible from Vaasa. Perhaps a mother’s duty is to cover up her sons’ deceptions, to protect and look after them. I doubt I would go that far for the sake of my own children, but a woman might change once she has borne life. I cannot know and probably I will never know. I am an object of pity as a result, but the more I think about the matter, the more it feels like a release.

  I do not care what sort of woman Erik has in town. Let her be a bourgeois lady or a slum-dwelling washerwoman. Let her have ample breasts and the secret places that drive men mad. I sit here and think the woman out of existence. I take that faceless figure and crush it until the skin begins to split. Soon I will chop up that sinful flesh. I should be preparing a meal but there is still time. I stop time, it is a clock inside me, it is mine.

  I hear sounds from outside. I stand up and go to the window. The cart stands in front of the stable. The old gelding is hanging its head, exhausted after the long journey. They are home.

  ERIK

  I do not want to look at the house. I thought I would be able to resolve the matter, but no. I let Mauri hold the reins and direct my gaze beyond the field, where no buildings are in sight. I am irked by my visit to the Crown Bailiff. A waste of time. Old Pig-Face was more interested in cleaning his pipe than in my calamity. Or maybe he is weighed down by worry, fearing that the Emperor will discontinue his office. Never mind. Now they may come any day, perhaps as early as today. I cannot look at the house.

  We come into the yard and I look at the house. The southern wall is beginning to rot and the roof wants repairing. It is no longer my concern. In my folly I imagined that, according to some law of nature, a man cannot suffer bad luck time after time. I thought: you can set a trap in the woods and go and check it for weeks and weeks, and find nothing. Then finally one day you find in it your thrashing prey.

  Maybe I should have had a number of traps instead of relying on one. But no need to dwell. Now I have to bear the consequences.

  Although I do have the musket in the hayloft.

  I jump off the cart and see the Farmhand coming round the stable corner. I do not wish to talk to him, him of all people. He is too sympathetic. I should be whipped. Open up my veins and let me drink my own blood! But the Farmhand gives his lopsided smile, as always, and says, ‘You made it to town, then.’

  ‘I had business there.’

  ‘Who’d go there otherwise?’ He does not stop smirking. I know from his face that something is wrong. ‘Though as things stand, I might leave for town even with no business to deal with.’

  ‘That so? What’s going on here, then?’

  He spits sideways and begins eyeing the open field. ‘There’s nothing going on here, at least not yet. Or there is, but I don’t yet know what it is.’

  ‘Am I supposed to make something of that?’

  I hear the front door behind me. The Farmhand shakes his head, alert, and looks over my shoulder in that direction. I turn round. My lungs empty. Henrik. He stands on the steps, looking at me. He drops down to a lower step. Henrik. Curse this day! I should have stayed in town. He pulled off a surprise, all right. He sent that letter of his. He fought in the Emperor’s army and is proud of it. I did not take it as a warning, I thought it was arrogance. He walks towards me. Henrik.

  ‘You came to visit,’ I say.

  He takes his time replying. ‘Depends how you see it. To visit or to stay.’

  ‘St Petersburg wasn’t up to much, then?’

  ‘Some of us can’t stand being in one place for too long.’

  ‘We know. You went on a long trip, anyway.’

  Those hard, lidless eyes of his. He still thinks he can use them to drill all courage out of a person. If I were another kind of man, I would gouge them out of his head, though he is my brother. But he would probably scare folk to death with his sockets alone.

  ‘I happened to hear in the village,’ the Farmhand suddenly says, ‘that if someone has run away from the Emperor’s army and if that someone happens to be wise, he hides away in some backwater.’

  Henrik turns to stare at him and says, in a voice that tells me his grey eyes have blackened, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Just sprang to mind,’ the Farmhand replies. ‘I’ve heard of such men.’

  ‘Such men should have sought an honourable discharge,’ Henrik says. ‘I can tell them how it’s done.’

  The Farmhand nods. ‘I’m sure you can. But someone mentioned another thing: that some men have had experience of being cheated of an animal and then of another, a mare the second time round, and that such men should consider…’

  ‘What mare?’ Henrik interrupts. He stands stock still, dangerously relaxed, his hands by the side of his thighs, and scorches the Farmhand with his gaze. Only now do I discern Mauri, small, shivering and frail, near the stable wall. I had all but forgotten him. Henrik turns to me. ‘Is there not an almshouse in the village? Be a good place for old folk who have lost their wits.’

  ‘I expect there’s an almshouse,’ I say, ‘but I don’t happen to know anyone who should be carted there.’

  Instantly, Henrik smiles his rare, long-toothed smile. ‘Is that the word of the master?’

  ‘The word of the master of this house, at least.’

  The grin freezes on his face. ‘Very well. But perhaps we’d better go indoors to talk. As long as you keep that ancient lunatic away from me.’

  ‘I don’t normally need to be kept away from anybody,’ the Farmhand says calmly. ‘I suffer from a malady that keeps me away without being restrained.’

  Henrik snorts and starts towards the step. I have never heard the Farmhand whistling before. The action carves deep holes into his already sunken face.

  Mauri lurks close to the stable wall, not moving. He is sucked into the wall as if he has been left there by mistake. The shadows of the forest edge creep towards the field, and yet the sky is a single smoky cloud. I thought I would resolve the matter, I really did. But I bloody well did not.

  OLD MISTRESS

  I have kept his clothes in chests; I do not know why. It is certainly not for sentimental reasons. Living with a man could be compared to sharing your home with a dog or a pig, or a creature from another country – a monkey, say. Any one of those could grow dearer to your heart than a man. Not that I hated him. I could not be bothered, I lacked the energy, and to be fair, he never came into the house in muddy boots.

  If I had stooped to hatred, I suppose I should have hated my father. Admittedly, the only cause for hatred he gave was his miserable failure. And he hardly set out to run his affairs into the ground, to the point where he had to marry his daughters off in a hurry; otherwise, he would have had to include them in his firm’s list of losses, along with the other unpaid debts. And I could not even take malicious pleasure in the fact that my older sister was more or less forced to marry her short-sighted accountant. She, at least, was able to stay in Turku. My destiny, on the other hand, turned out to be a man who surfaced from the back of beyond. He was a relative of one of Father’s business acquaintances, and prepared to make certain financial sacrifices in order to acquire a particular item to take home with him. In his far-flung native district, they called this item not ‘the lady of the house’ but ‘the housekeeper’.

  I took little notice of him at the beginning, when he began to frequent the soirées we held at our house; he was a taciturn outsider, sitting on the periphery of the company, laughing hoarsely at all the witticisms later than everyone else. One evening, however, when all the other guests had departed, I noticed to my horror that my parents had left me alone in the drawing room with this odd stranger.

  I could put up with all his quirks, apart from the way he fiddled incessantly with his waistcoat buttons. This action drew my gaze to his long, crooked fingers and aroused unclean thoughts. His dark, shining eyes, which all the time moved about uncertainly, posed further difficulties, and to me he seem
ed near-decrepit. All the same, good manners required that I listen to him. When I did so, I woke up to find myself staring deeply into a black abyss. I understood that a decision had already been made and that this conversation was nothing but a formality. I bitterly regretted having learnt to swim, in defiance of the conventions governing girls in our circle. I could not even usefully throw myself into a river.

  ‘It’s the biggest house in the area,’ Arvid said in his gruff, muted voice. He did not speak with any pride, he merely stated the fact coldly. He was peering at a space somewhere between my feet and the wall. ‘And it’s not far from Vaasa. And you can visit the capital, too.’

  ‘So it’s in the country,’ I said. My voice could have come out of the pocket of his much-abused waistcoat. ‘I suppose you have domestic animals.’

  ‘Domestic animals?’ he repeated. He looked baffled for a moment. ‘Aha, you mean cattle. Yes, we’ve got cattle and fields. As I said, it’s the biggest farm in the village.’

  I tried desperately to think of something sensible to ask. ‘Will I have to milk cows, then?’

  He appeared determined to pluck a button off his waistcoat. ‘No need. There are maids for all that.’

  ‘Do you have dances?’

  A rivulet of perspiration appeared on his forehead and set off on a journey towards one of his bushy, near-black eyebrows. ‘Of course there are dances. In summer in particular, we have fêtes. A really big fête at Midsummer, and dances at weddings, of course.’

  We were quiet for a while, I chewing my tongue secretly, he staring tenaciously at a space where I saw only the toe of my shoe, sticking out from under the hem of my dress, and floorboards, and a smattering of dust the maid must have missed. Then he sat up straight, left his buttons in peace and began looking at me with the same expression I had once seen on a shaggy male dog in the street, just before it mounted a passing bitch.