The Brothers

by Asko Sahlberg

  Then I rush to the stairs and stumble up them. In our room, I throw myself onto the bed. The walls pant, the quilt quivers against my cheek. Henrik’s cold fingers are still all over my back. I am no longer here. I am in that other moment, when he was at liberty to explore my flesh for the only time. I do not regret it. I did not yet know about Erik then, I was innocent. Henrik’s man-smell, his stubble, his hands, like snakes rising up out of black soil at night. He was hideous, repulsive, wonderful. Fortunately, I did not allow him to throb inside me. Fortunately, I did not. And yet he remained there, throbbing even now. I squeeze the quilt. My clothes rot round me, the threads loosen, I am lying here naked. The walls crack and a hot wind whips me.

  I sit on the edge of my bed. Time turns over, early morning dawned in the middle of the day. Now I should go downstairs and put the loaves in the oven. Everything falls apart and we merely continue with our chores. At least that means we will not starve to death.

  A sharp knock makes me start. I breathe in sharply. ‘Who’s there?’

  The door opens with a dry squeal and the Old Mistress appears in the doorway. She looks at me with her eyes screwed up as if she were staring in my direction from afar. The words take a while to find their way to her mouth. ‘Have you spoken to Erik?’

  ‘About what?’

  Her gaze begins to wander. ‘General matters.’

  ‘We haven’t had time to talk.’

  ‘You should,’ she says wanly, her eyes lost. I stare at the lines etched on her face and notice that they all curve downwards. They hang down from the temples, the corners of the eyes, the sides of the nose, like the stalks of a plant that has given up. ‘He may have something to tell you.’

  I stand up and go to the window. Gusts of wind disperse the falling snow, so it forms slanting trails. Smoke curls out of the chimney of the Farmhand’s hut, to yield under the heavy snowflakes and spread around the shack like mist with long tongues. Desolate and beautiful. I say over my shoulder, ‘I don’t want to know anything about the woman.’

  The Old Mistress is silent for a while. I can hear her thoughts, gnawing. I sense she turns away from the door before asking, ‘What woman?’

  So she has decided not to face the truth yet. The whole family is like that: treacherous and deceitful. They have been given more than most but they do not know how to appreciate it. They do not respect other people, demands for honesty, life. I often ask myself whether I, too, have become a conspirator in this house; can I be trusted any more than the other travesties of humanity hanging around here? I always conclude that I am different. It is a small crime to fail to report that one occasion, an accident involving two people that has nothing to do with anyone else.

  I go down the stairs. The stove sends drowsy heat into the kitchen. I have just picked up the bread shovel from the corner when Mauri creeps out of the passage leading to the back rooms. As always, he reminds me of a whipped dog. The impression may well be enhanced by that shocking beard of his, which does not suit his round, little-boy face. It is curly, like a sheep’s fleece. He looks at me from under his ever-frightened brows and says in his clear child’s voice, ‘I thought of having some soured milk.’

  ‘Help yourself,’

  ‘I will. You’re baking bread again.’

  ‘Someone’s got to.’

  He is clattering about in the pantry. ‘It’s good you are. Will you be making some buns, too?’

  ‘I may well do.’

  I have nothing against him. I just cannot relate to him. I cannot even see him as Henrik’s and Erik’s cousin, firstly because he is so different and secondly because he is treated like a servant, not a family member. I never met his parents, the late master’s brother and sister-in-law, but they must have been another breed. All that is sinewy and tall in Erik and Henrik has shrunk to short, soft and slack in Mauri. Without his beard, he could be a sickly, undernourished ten-year-old. And yet he is a man. It must pain him that he looks like an overripe embryo. And then, after his parents’ death, to be taken into this house out of sheer pity, the lowest of the low for evermore: that must rankle. Now he is some kind of half-creature, half a servant, half an object of charity, and it does not occur to anyone to try and forget it.

  ‘Any dough left over?’ he asks.

  I sigh. ‘Look in the dough tub.’

  I push the bread shovel into the corner. Mauri is scraping the tub with his dirty fingers, shoving them into his mouth. I feel the filthy nails in the flesh of my cheeks. He notices my look, hesitates and tries to think something to say. He comes up with: ‘Good that Henrik was able to visit.’

  I feel like laughing. ‘Is that what you think? Has he not always bullied you?’

  He starts blinking defensively. ‘Well, who knows.’

  ‘Not that Erik couldn’t improve his treatment of you. After all, you went to war together.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d think such a thing would bring men together. Being in danger.’

  ‘Yes. But I was mainly just lagging behind.’

  ‘You shouldn’t always be so modest. You probably did something heroic out there.’

  He looks astounded and starts gulping down large mouthfuls of emptiness. That awkward, silent puzzlement often strikes him. At such times, you would like nothing more than to take a handful of words and cram them into his mouth.

  ‘I happen to know you’re quite a shot,’ I say. ‘They say you can hit a bullseye better than any other man in these parts.’

  Suddenly he changes. He appears to grow, his lips stop their twitching, his eyelids freeze into immobility and his ribcage expands, as if a creature hidden inside were trying to get out. Something happens to his pale face: he smiles. It is not a pleasant smile. Slowly, wordlessly, he turns his back on me and glides away. I stare at the empty space he has left. I feel cold.

  MAURI

  As usual, no one asked for my opinion. They deigned to inform me. Erik went to talk to the top army brass without saying a word to anyone about his intentions. He was absent for a couple of days. When he returned, he told me that we had been enlisted as scouts. I had difficulty following what he said. I would not have thought enlisting was as easy as that. We were standing by the corner of the chicken coop and Erik explained that the King’s army required men who knew these parts. I saw his enthusiasm and pride and tried to absorb some of it, but in vain. I was scared, even before I became a soldier.

  ‘When do we have to leave?’

  ‘We’re off tomorrow.’

  ‘How come so soon? The Russians haven’t got as far as here yet. You should’ve said that we haven’t done the harvest and—’

  ‘There’s nothing for it, we’ve got to go tomorrow,’ he interrupted. ‘We’d better start thinking about what to take. We won’t be given clothes but we’ll get muskets.’

  ‘We won’t look like soldiers, then.’

  ‘Good thing too. Won’t catch the Russky’s eye that way.’

  The inevitable wailing and scolding of women ensued and made me long for war, in the end. Not that anyone cared about my fate, but women’s tearful laments are, to my ears, almost as heart-rending as the squealing of a pig up for slaughter. Consequently, I felt a degree of relief when we set off early the following morning.

  You understand nothing about war until you have experienced it. And once you have seen it, you realize that there is not much else to see in this life. Maimed bodies and horse carcasses, that’s your world. The oddest thing is how you get used to war, how quickly your mind becomes indifferent. Although Erik and I were not generally on the front line, our missions were sometimes even more dangerous, but after a few weeks, I stopped being troubled by the risks. We were generally on the move at night, trying to find out what the enemy was doing. I would not have believed that a man of my years could learn not to be afraid of the forest at night, but I learnt that too. I even began to think I would not mind an eternal night. Perhaps because in the dark I did not feel like such a miserable, insignificant run
t.

  We reached areas unknown to us, where we were of no greater use than anyone else. We could have gone back home, but instead we went on with the others. Again, my opinion was not sought – Erik would probably have glanced back more frequently if he had been followed by a faithful dog. I began to suspect that the excursion had to have some higher purpose, that we were for some reason destined to it. I had to wait until September before the point of it all became clear to me.

  The battles of Ruona and Salmi had been lost and the army was retreating towards the north. We spent the night on a hill; a river ran at its foot and you could see the Vaasa road if you craned your neck. I had difficulty getting to sleep, I was not used to sleeping at nights. It was dawn when I finally began dropping off. But suddenly I heard cannon, like thunder, and muskets, banging. The noise was coming from the outposts. Erik, recumbent next to me, also woke up.

  We received an order: we were to snoop on the enemy and establish their strength. So we went in a big loop behind our own troops. The boom of the cannon and the sporadic firing of the muskets became more distant as we stalked along the forest edge, crouching, alert as hunters after a timid prey. The smell of powder trailed us in the wind, early light filtered through the tree trunks like water, everything was at a standstill and unreal and too real. Erik went ahead, as always, until we turned back and again approached the sounds of battle, stopping on a gentle slope at the edge of a long field. We had a clear view. Erik kept peering through the telescope that had been lent to him by the officers. He said, ‘They must be somewhere over there in the meadow, because I can see some of our men at the edge of the forest. And we’re bound to see better from that hillock. We should go there.’

  ‘But what if they’re there?’ I asked. ‘Not too many trees on the slope.’

  ‘Let’s go carefully. If you head straight to the top and I go round to that spot over there with the three big pines, we might see them from two directions.’

  ‘And we’re supposed to count up the heads?’

  ‘They can’t really be counted, but we can make some sort of estimate.’

  ‘Let’s go, then. Got to help the King, I suppose.’

  He looked at me coolly. ‘Don’t hurry, though. It’s hardly going to help the King if we start rushing round. And he’s not here himself, crawling along.’

  ‘He may have other business to attend to,’ I suggested. ‘A ball or suchlike. Or some noble lady.’

  He stuffed the telescope into his knapsack and some chewing tobacco into his mouth. ‘Bet he’s good at it, dancing. He’ll know a bit about the ladies, too.’

  ‘How do I know when you’ve got there?’

  ‘I’ll come to you. We’ll meet at the top.’

  And we did. But I had to crawl first, and I was not actually used to crawling. I was exhausted halfway up the slope, my knees and elbows were stinging, my face was all scratched by the brush. On reaching the hilltop, I came to a halt, panting. I closed my eyes and thought I might just as well stay there, rot away on the spot, end up as bones, forgotten. I did not stay there. I lifted my head cautiously and looked around. I did not see anybody.

  Then I did. There was a surreptitious movement between two intertwined junipers. At the same time Erik appeared further away, bent down and carrying his musket across his breast. A man wearing the green coat of the Russian army raised himself and moved from the cover of the bushes to a massive pine, all the while staring at Erik’s back. He lowered himself and then, resting on one knee, took aim. He was so close to Erik, it would be hard to miss.

  I lifted my gun. I focused on the enemy. Then I saw who it was. For a moment, my heart stopped beating.

  I often return to the scene in my mind. I could so easily have killed Henrik. He had never been a great shot and now, too, he took unnecessarily long to aim. Or perhaps he wanted to be absolutely certain that his bullet would pierce Erik’s heart. Who knows? I do not even know how my own reaction came about. When I pulled the trigger, the decision seemed to have been made somewhere outside myself, independently of me. My actions were not dictated by my own will, but determined by a power bigger than I, unknown to me. Then everything happened fast, faster, all at once. The bullet dispatched by me hit the tree trunk. Henrik shrank back as splinters hit his eyes, Erik threw himself on his stomach and Henrik was instantly on the move, twisting sideways and diving deep into the junipers. I could see from the swaying of the shrubbery that he was storming towards the southern slope of the hill. I fell first to my knees, then into a sitting position. My eyes became blurry, I felt like my limbs were falling off my body. I squeezed my eyes shut again.

  ‘Who fired that shot?’ Erik asked. ‘Was it you?’

  I opened my eyes. ‘I had to shoot when I saw the green coat tail.’

  ‘How did he fare? You hit him?’

  ‘It was all so quick I don’t think I did. He ran off, in any case.’

  ‘He may have been wounded, at least.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  And nothing more was said about the incident. So much else happened that there were plenty of other things to talk about. For me, the fighting ceased on that hill, in a way. We landed up in many more knotty situations afterwards, and finally in Tornio, in such wretched winter quarters that the misery is indescribable. But lying amidst dying soldiers seemed to me neither here nor there. Nothing can move a man once he has seen someone trying to kill his own brother.

  THE FARMHAND

  I hear footsteps coming closer from outside, along with the wind. I sit still, my elbows resting on the table, and wait. The Old Mistress treads decisively but unhurriedly, as is her wont, setting her town shoes carefully in the snow, one after the other. She stops on the steps, hesitates a moment, knocks on the door. I clear my throat and shout out, ‘Couldn’t afford a latch!’

  A flurry of cold air comes in. The wind is shut out by the door, disappointed. The floor creaks and the Old Mistress says, ‘You’re just sitting here.’

  ‘Don’t I usually sit here?’

  ‘Where else? I suppose each of us has his place.’

  She sits down on the bench. My nose twitches with the familiar waft of powder. I stand up and feed the fire with a couple of logs. I get the spirits jug out of the cupboard and two cups. I pour. She watches my actions benignly, her face tired. Even in dim light she looks careworn, her former bearing gone. The years have not been merciful to either of us, but there is no point in lamentations.

  ‘I was just thinking about the war,’ I say.

  She lets out a melancholy laugh. ‘Is it worth thinking about?’

  ‘No, probably not. But I was thinking how you count one as your own and another as your enemy. Your allegiance is arbitrary. You happen to be in a certain place and so you’re in the army of that place.’

  ‘Henrik didn’t have to enlist.’

  ‘You can never know what makes people do what they do. And I don’t know whether we came out of it well or badly. I mean, whether we lost out when we became part of the Russian Empire instead of the Kingdom of Sweden. For it may be that we would have lost anyway.’

  ‘I hear there are some, in towns in particular, who dream of an independent Finland,’ she says. She coughs after a sip of liquor. ‘I receive letters from Turku. But I don’t expect anyone dares say it aloud.’

  Turku. She has never stopped yearning for it. It is where she came from, in a new carriage purchased by the master. She was young, voluptuous, proud, shy. Her dress was dusty from the journey. I recall her fine wrists. Next to the big-boned master she barely looked like a grown woman, but you only had to glimpse her eyes to understand that she had brought with her an unbending will. She had the patience to wait, with that will, until the man she wedded soon proved sickly and, as a consequence, unwilling or unable to manage the affairs of the house. So the town miss became mistress of a farm. At a cost. She has paid with her loneliness and with the broken veins on her cheeks. She pawned her youth such a long time ago that there is nothing left now t
o redeem.

  ‘Hmm, so we could be a sovereign state,’ I say. ‘I’ve thought of sovereignty myself at times, when I’ve got fed up with carving sticks out of wood.’ I try to catch her eyes but her eyelids droop heavily. ‘Is that what makes people blessed? Haven’t we been sovereign for hundreds of years, part of the sovereign Swedish realm? And now we are sovereign subjects of the Russian Emperor.’

  ‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ she mutters.

  ‘Who knows. Some of this talk is beyond me. I suppose I’m stupid, not understanding.’

  She lifts her face. Her eyes let out light. ‘Don’t worry your head about it, it’s a waste of time. You should worry about those two instead.’

  ‘Not much I can do about them.’

  A palm, still soft, descends on the back of my hand. ‘What if you were to talk to them?’

  ‘I’m the last person they’ll listen to. Especially Henrik.’

  ‘But I’m scared. I feel that anything could happen.’

  ‘Yes. Damned horse!’

  ‘You can’t blame everything on the horse.’

  ‘It started the whole thing. Had I but known, I’d have gone and stolen it myself. Or perhaps killed it, if I’d been able to.’

  I detect a melancholy smile in her voice. ‘It’s still not too late.’

  ‘Maybe not, but killing alone wouldn’t do any good now. I should…’

  ‘Kill them both?’

  ‘Yes. But Anna doesn’t deserve it.’

  ‘Of course not. And you’d never do it.’

  We sit as we often do, in silence. Perhaps we are even breathing in unison. People are welcome to their lewd fantasies about what we get up to in my cabin. In reality, we are content with the taciturnity of two people who have experienced three decades together. There is no one else round here either of us would seek out to talk to, or fail to talk to. The others all belong to a younger generation and are consequently still unaware of their sins and those of others, or else unwilling to think about them. They have not yet disrobed and said, ‘Well, if You really are hanging around up there, feel free to gawp, for this is what You made me.’ It will take them time to learn that a man does not choose his lies; rather, the lies choose him, and in him they collide with the lies of others, like shadows meeting in the yard that approach one another and all of a sudden melt together to form for a moment – or worse, for a long time – a single shadow, misshapen and fearsome. I get up, grab the Old Mistress’s cup and pour out more liquor from the jug. The shadow of my body, cast by the fire, embraces her. She smiles.