A House Without Mirrors

by Marten Sanden

  “She did?”

  I could hear how daft I sounded, and Wilma just kept on staring at me.

  “Did Signe see something, Thomasine?” she said. “Did she go inside that wardrobe?”

  For a moment I considered telling her about the dream that hadn’t been a dream. But the thought alone felt like I was betraying something. Or someone.

  “Don’t tell anyone about the mirror, okay? Not even Kajsa,” I said, wriggling free. “Come on now, I’m hungry.”

  Uncle Daniel had bought dessert. A whole ice-cream cake from the freezer at the co-op. That had never happened before.

  “Do we have something to celebrate?” Kasja said after Dad removed the pizza boxes and Uncle Daniel plonked the ice-cream cake onto the dinner table.

  “Perhaps,” he said, putting down a stack of plates in front of her. “I saw an estate agent today. A neighbour of someone in my department.”

  Kajsa leant back in her chair and crossed her arms.

  “An estate agent?” she said. “Why?”

  Uncle Daniel sat down next to her. That was another thing he’d never done before.

  “To get a proper valuation,” he said, almost whispering. “You can’t really put a price on great big houses like this without an expert opinion.”

  Kajsa didn’t reply, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Did you see an estate agent to ask how much you would get for Henrietta’s house if you sell it?” I said. “But it’s not yours, is it?”

  Uncle Daniel blushed and reached for the bread knife.

  “Where I come from a child doesn’t take part in adult conversations,” he said, hard-faced. “Especially when they run the risk of going without dessert.”

  I felt myself reddening.

  “I’m not a child,” I mumbled.

  Kajsa waved me aside.

  “So, what did they say?” she asked. “Were they able to give you a price?”

  Uncle Daniel left her waiting. First he cut a big chunk of the melting cake and let it balance on the knife above his plate. Then he cut another piece, slightly smaller, and placed it on Erland’s plate.

  “They have to see the house first, of course,” he said finally. “But Ove—the estate agent, that is—said that it’s common for a property as large as this to be sold to a property developer. For offices, or to convert it into flats.”

  “But what does that mean?” Kajsa said. “What does it mean in terms of money?”

  Uncle Daniel pushed the knife and the plate with the cake towards Signe, glanced towards the door where Dad had disappeared, and turned to Kajsa again.

  “Twenty million kronor,” he said, and now he was whispering for real. “Perhaps even twenty-five with the right buyer!”

  Kajsa’s face didn’t move, but her fingers started drumming against her arm.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Minus the mortgage, of course, and…”

  “What mortgage?” Uncle Daniel laughed hoarsely. “There is no mortgage. Not a penny!”

  He spread his hands and smiled more broadly than I had ever seen him smile before.

  And yet he did not look happy.

  Signe was having trouble cutting the cake, and had managed only to destroy it. I reached over to help her, because I felt sorry for her, but also because I wanted to busy myself with something else and hide away. Something about Uncle Daniel’s eyes almost made me cry. They were dead, in some strange way.

  Kajsa pulled the cake and the knife towards her as soon as I had served Signe. I didn’t have the chance to serve myself.

  “Have you talked to Thomas?”

  “Ah, Thomas!” Uncle Daniel rolled his eyes almost like Wilma does.

  “Thomas doesn’t understand such things,” he said, pushing a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “But I’m pretty sure he could do with the money. He hasn’t written a word for the last five years, has he?”

  The bang when Wilma thumped her hand on the table was so loud that I flinched.

  Uncle Daniel too; he almost choked on his ice cream.

  “Thomas is the only one here who’s bothered about Henrietta!” Wilma shouted, standing up so quickly that her chair fell over. “You’re only bothered about the money!”

  Uncle Daniel didn’t say anything, but Kajsa’s face grew all white and stiff.

  “Wilma, that’s enough,” she said quietly. “Go up to your room. And you can forget about going to that party tonight!”

  Wilma looked as if she had been slapped. Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but then it remained shut.

  She stomped out and I heard the stairs creaking under her heavy weight as she ran up them. The ice-cream cake had been left in front of Erland and he had started eating it straight from the serving plate with his own spoon. I realized there would be nothing left for me, so I stood up and made for the door.

  Behind me Uncle Daniel and Kajsa had started whispering again.

  Her chest hardly moved.

  Chapter Nine

  IN THE CONSERVATORY

  I left Wilma alone. At least for a short while. Even if she wasn’t angry with me, I knew she would be sort of closed off and difficult to speak to. I went to see if I could help Dad instead.

  He was sitting in Henrietta’s room, of course, on his usual chair by the bed.

  Henrietta was sleeping on her back, with her mouth half open and her thin hands folded over her stomach. She had been lying exactly like that the last twenty or thirty times I had seen her. Her chest hardly moved. Only the faint sighing of her breath showed that it was sleep, not death, that had closed her eyes.

  “Is that you,” Dad said.

  He always said that, and it was not a question.

  I pulled up the wheelchair that Henrietta no longer used and placed myself next to him.

  “How is she?”

  “All right, I think,” Dad replied, like he always did. “Under the circumstances.”

  Sometimes I thought you could have made a film about all the times I’d come up to see Dad in Henrietta’s room. You could edit the different days into one long sequence. In every cut our clothes would be different, and the light outside the window would change, but the words we spoke and Henrietta’s immobile body would always stay the same. Like one never-ending, hopeless cycle.

  But this time Dad did something different. He patted my knee and smiled a bit.

  “How is Signe?” he said. “She seems more cheerful.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to reply. It was probably the first time Dad had talked to me about Signe since he told me that she and Erland were coming over here with Uncle Daniel.

  “She likes playing with you,” he continued. “You can tell from the look on her face.”

  I looked up.

  “What?” I said. “How can you tell?”

  Dad waved his hand, as if he hoped that the gesture would explain what he meant.

  “Well, she is happier now,” he said. “More like a child. Less like… like Daniel.”

  I shrugged, but he was right. You couldn’t ignore how Signe’s ways of talking and moving had changed. But it was not because she had been playing with me.

  “You know, Dad,” I said. “About Signe…”

  I said it slowly, because I didn’t know how to continue. If I were to tell him about the dream and the wardrobe and the girl Hetty it would all sound completely mad. Or worse, woozy and childish, as if I was making it up.

  “You just hope that Erland might start playing with you, too,” Dad said. “He spends too much time by himself.”

  I realized that he hadn’t heard me, and I didn’t have the energy to start all over again.

  “Erland doesn’t like playing,” I said and stood up. “He only likes destroying things.”

  Dad was still not listening.

  “If only there were some toys, you could be in the garden,” he said, raising his head. “Are you leaving?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to see
Wilma for a bit,” I said. “Good night.”

  “Night, night, sweetheart.”

  Only Henrietta’s breath sighed behind me as I left the attic room.

  “Wilma?”

  I knocked harder. When I got no answer I opened the door carefully and saw that the room was empty. Perhaps she was with Kajsa?

  The door to Kajsa’s room was closed, but I could hear her inside whispering with Daniel. The last thing I wanted was to hear more of what they were talking about.

  The whole time I was looking through the house for Wilma, Erland was somewhere nearby. You never saw him, but tiny, scratching noises revealed his whereabouts. Erland made me think of that summer when we rented rooms on a farm in Småland. It was hot and humid and there were so many flies you couldn’t get away from them. At first you got angry and tried to whisk them away, but after a week or so you gave up and just let them creep around as they wished.

  From the dining room I thought I could hear Signe’s laughter in the distance. She laughed the way you do when you’re not alone. Like when you’re sharing a secret with someone.

  I knew I would find them in the conservatory even before I stepped through the glass doors. And there they were, sitting close together on the cast-iron bench, under a roof of wilting vines. Signe was dangling her legs, talking. Wilma sat beside her, listening.

  “Ah, there you are.”

  Neither of them looked at me. It was as if I hadn’t been there.

  “But has she told you anything about herself?” Wilma said. “Who she is?”

  Her eyes never left Signe, and I knew it wasn’t me she was talking to.

  “She’s just a girl,” Signe said. “She doesn’t talk much.”

  “But her name is Hetty?”

  Signe nodded. “That’s what she said, anyway.”

  I felt like a thief sneaking up to them quietly and trying to sit down next to Wilma. It was as if I was trying to take something from them, and when I thought about it the feeling made me cross. Wilma hadn’t even been there!

  I leant a little closer to Wilma and felt her pull away.

  “Don’t meddle, Tommy,” she said. “I’ll give you hell if you snitch to Mum.”

  She didn’t look at me when she said it, and something about her voice made me go all cold inside.

  “I’m not a snitch!”

  My voice had turned weepy and soft all at once, and that made me even angrier.

  “Why should I snitch?” I said as I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my cardigan. “I don’t care what you get up to!”

  At this, Wilma turned to me. She put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed, a little too hard.

  “Sorry, Tommy,” she said in a softer voice. “But I need to try it too. Tonight, this very night.”

  I didn’t even look at her. Above all I didn’t ask her what she was talking about. I already knew. But at that moment, at least, it was completely true that I didn’t care what she was up to.

  “You will have to go on your own,” Signe said, yawning. “I’m too tired tonight.”

  Her tired little voice made both Wilma and me check our watches. It was past nine, and Signe usually went to bed at eight.

  “Come on, sweetie,” Wilma said, taking her hand. “Let’s go and brush your teeth.”

  “But this is real.”

  Chapter Ten

  WILMA’S JOURNEY

  I was sitting up in bed with one of Wilma’s books on my lap to stop me from falling asleep.

  No chance of that, though. First, I was still angry with Wilma, and second, I was worried.

  Wilma had been nicer while we were putting Signe to bed, but something was weird about her. As if she was ill, or…

  The same uneasy feeling that I had while we were brushing Signe’s teeth returned: that the person I had always thought was Wilma was just a shell. Something she was about to grow out of; something alien and soon to be abandoned. I’m not often scared, but that feeling really frightened me.

  In spite of sitting with the book open on my lap for hours, I doubt I read a single word. In any case I hadn’t even turned a page when I heard the patter of Wilma’s footsteps in the corridor just before two in the morning. In an instant I was out of bed and by the door.

  Wilma stopped when she saw me in the doorway and her eyes gleamed in the light from my room. She was fully dressed and wearing her trainers.

  “I won’t get involved,” I said, exactly as I had rehearsed. “I just want to make sure you’ll be all right.”

  She put her finger to her lips.

  “Shush, Thomas will hear you,” she hissed, squinting nervously towards Dad’s door. “Talk quietly.”

  I tightened the belt of my dressing gown and stepped across the threshold.

  “Dad’s upstairs with Henrietta,” I said as loudly as before. “I’m coming in with you, just so you know.”

  Wilma stood still for a moment, and I could tell she was weighing different things up against each other. Plus and minus, for and against.

  “Come on, then,” she said at last.

  Signe had obviously not explained it very well, because it was me who had to show Wilma the right wardrobe, me who had to turn the key and push her inside. And when we had been standing there inside with the mirrors for a moment and she tried to get out, it was me who stopped her.

  “Not just yet,” I whispered, grabbing hold of her. “Wait.”

  I wasn’t really aware of what I was waiting for, but when the shift in the darkness came it was so obvious that I almost laughed out loud.

  “That’s it, we can step outside now,” I said. “It’s happened.”

  The reversed room was furnished almost the same as before, but the light from the window was brighter. There was a tone of sunshine in it, although it was still impossible to distinguish any colours on the carpets and the furniture.

  Wilma stepped quietly in front of me, looking down at her feet, which left imprints on the soft carpet, looking around at the walls and the window.

  “But this is real,” she whispered. “Tommy, tell me it’s real?”

  I shrugged.

  “I suppose it is in some way,” I said. “It’s just not the kind of reality we’re used to.”

  The dressing table had moved, and there was another mirror on top of it replacing the gold-painted one that I’d carried away with me. The new mirror was larger and looked more modern somehow. The bottles and jars also looked newer, I noticed, with lids in pastel colours and labels in gold and red. Wilma sat down on the stool in front of the dressing table and tilted the new mirror until she could see herself in it.

  “Like this, perhaps?” she whispered. “Perhaps I’m just supposed to sit here with my eyes closed?”

  I leant forward and looked at the two of us in the dark glass. Wilma kept her eyes closed and her face turned slightly upwards, as if she were sunning herself. After a little while she started humming quietly.

  “Mmm,” she said. “That’s nice. Brush harder.”

  I moved my gaze from our reflection in the mirror to Wilma’s face with its eyes closed beside me. She looked the same, but somebody was standing in the shadows behind the stool, caressingly brushing Wilma’s hair.

  Hetty.

  “You can read people too.”

  Chapter Eleven

  IN THE LIBRARY

  I wasn’t at all frightened, actually.

  Hetty smiled gently when she saw that I’d noticed her, and it felt quite natural to see her just standing there.

  “Hello,” I said.

  Hetty blushed—at least it looked like it in the faint light—and met my gaze.

  “Hello,” she whispered. “Again.”

  I was happy that she remembered me, but also because of something else that I couldn’t explain. Something about Hetty herself. She had the softest voice I’d ever heard, like silk against the string of a cello. It made you grow all warm inside, and I longed to hear her speak again.

  But Hetty didn’t say anything el
se while she was brushing Wilma’s hair with long, steady strokes. Wilma’s eyes were closed the whole time and for a while I almost believed she had fallen asleep.

  I stole a glance at Hetty and noticed that she had grown. The first time I saw her she had been as little as Signe, but now she was almost like me. Not quite, perhaps more like somewhere between Erland and me. She wasn’t wearing the sailor dress any longer, but a blouse and a narrow skirt that stopped just below the knees. Her clothes and her hair, which was cut in a bob, made me think of old movies.

  “Who are you?”

  Without me noticing, Wilma had opened her eyes. She was looking straight at Hetty, but she didn’t seem to be afraid.

  “You know who I am,” Hetty said. “You know me.”

  Wilma continued looking at her for a long time. Then she nodded.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “But I don’t really know how.”

  Hetty stopped brushing and took a bundle of velvet ribbon from her pocket. She held the ribbon carefully between her lips while she gathered Wilma’s curls at the nape of her neck, and then she tied the ribbon around them in a bow. It looked really lovely, actually. I had never seen Wilma wear her hair like that before.

  “Thank you,” Wilma said and reached for a powder compact on the table. “You?”

  Hetty looked up.

  “Yes?”

  “Can…”

  Wilma hesitated and grew quiet. Then she handed the compact to Hetty and started again.

  “Can you do something with me? I mean, make me prettier?”

  Hetty took the small round compact and looked at it for an instant. Then she shook her head.

  “Only you can do that,” she said, putting the compact back on the table. “But I can show you how. Come with me.”

  At first Wilma hesitated. She looked quizzically at the bottles and jars on the table, and then at Hetty. But Hetty was already halfway out of the door, so Wilma got up and followed her.

  I followed a few steps behind, through the corridor towards the hallway. The house was really just like Henrietta’s. But the things that should have been to the left were to the right, and vice versa.