A nothing that sucks so strongly that when Ragna wakes up the following morning she has no other thought than to move her sister out.
*
‘Have we got the strength for this?’ my parents probably thought when they sat by the bed and stared at the sick child who had come to them so late in life. Until that day, they had thought of her as a guest you don’t have to pay any particular attention to, a guest who takes care of her own welfare via her quite unique dependency. The daughter was almost four years old and had perhaps been a bit pale of late, but she grew and was, generally speaking, a pleasure to have around. Later, when she could hardly move her legs, her parents whispered quietly to each other that she had complained about headaches and muscle pains, but not so much that they needed to react and they had forgotten about it immediately afterwards. Children often dramatize.
She ran a high temperature and whimpered that her body felt so queer. Her old parents looked at each other, didn’t know what to believe, and told her sister, who was five years older, to sit with her – they had such a lot to do themselves. The days passed as in a fog. Or was it a matter of hours? She doesn’t know, she’s never been given a proper answer; they always avoided the issue, went vague and speechless later when she asked them: How long? How long did I lie in bed at home before going to the hospital? She’s pretty sure it was at least twenty-four hours, for she has a vague memory of her sister sitting by the bed staring at her with gleaming eyes, while the autumn sky outside changed from light to dark.
At the hospital, tens of miles away and down by the coast, her head, back and legs were examined for several weeks – perhaps months. No one remembers how long she was away and all she can recall is the absence that tingled and stiffened in her chest. Her parents couldn’t stay with her, those were the rules, and they weren’t allowed to come and visit her either, those were the rules too. And anyway, who would take care of the sister, the house or the sheep they owned back then? That was their excuse, at any rate, when as an adult she confronted them with her own recollection that they had simply left her behind in the hospital.
The heaviness in her heart and stomach: not the pains, the examinations, the fever and the strange people, but the nights when she woke up in a bed with high bars, when in confusion she called out for her sister and parents and nobody came, apart from the exhaustion and emptiness that gradually filled the absence of those she missed.
She started to study her fingers. She saw that there were just as many on each hand, and when she stretched them up in the air, she saw that they reached just as far as each other into the room. Her legs were withered, not yet completely numb, not two dead landscapes outside herself. If she wanted to, she could move her toes. She paid attention to the houses outside the window, the various colours, the shapes. She noticed the plank missing from a veranda, the foundation wall that was peeling, the irregular row of house roofs along the horizon and, when she lifted the duvet, the contours of her toes, the lines along her feet and up her legs, the weak curve from the iliac crest to her stomach. She sucked in everything that was firm and sure, opened herself to the surfaces, forms, lines, contours, while inside her that which breathed and sensed and moved contracted and shrank.
Her little heart. Shrivelled, like the animal hearts in the larder that her sister cooks with cream.
Just how shrivelled, how hard am I? The tears that don’t come, that have to be wrung out of my eyes? The steep boundaries between what I want and don’t want? The sharpness of the words?
Lies. All the lies, and I who get so worked up, ill at the thought of being sent away from this place, I who am overwhelmed by the presence of precisely these walls, who am moved by the faint murmur of the wind through precisely this crack in the window, who am moved by observing the world from precisely this room, the vast open spaces outside from precisely this spot in the world.
*
Our parents died early, one shortly after the other, and so my sister and I were left to fend for ourselves at the ages of nineteen and twenty-four. Or from Ragna’s point of view: she was left with me. Or as I see it: she and I in this house, two stationary people in a constantly shifting world, the two of us holding on tight to each other. While the seasons change, the birch trees grow, while the scrub around the house thickens and the old cart road gets overgrown, our lives remain unchanged. The daily rhythm of cleaning and meals, the annual cycle with the quiet observance of midsummer and Christmas – everything had a sleep-inducing sameness about it for twenty-nine years, right up until that day in May when Johan came to our door.
Of course our day-to-day lives have always been full of a certain drama. Seemingly ordinary events can weaken or intensify the never-ending power struggle between us. These events resemble each other and recur at regular intervals (even after Johan’s appearance on the scene). They are actually so regular that I can easily describe the average one, or rather the average plot, the average course of events.
This is how things might take place between us any morning:
The crows are cawing, a wind sweeping past. I am gazing at the birch tree outside the window while Ragna is preparing breakfast in the kitchen.
‘If I’m not a good sister, well, I don’t know what a good sister is!’ I can imagine her long, slender neck bobbing forward as she chunters on. She hasn’t come into my room yet. I have shifted myself to the toilet and back; it took at least half an hour, and she didn’t help me either. Back in my bed at last, I wait exhausted and impatient for something to eat, but Ragna always has a thousand things to do before starting breakfast.
‘What would you like on your bread, sister dear?’ she asks, using the voice she adopts when she wants to feign a certain warmth and consideration.
‘Cheese.’
‘Cheese it is. Cheese is good for you. Isn’t it a good thing I bought the cheese you’re so fond of?’
‘Yes.’
Suddenly she’s in the room, carrying a tray.
‘Eat up, then. I’m busy. I’m going to smoke the hearts today. No point in waiting.’
She’s standing in front of my bed, watching me pick up the slice of bread, open my mouth and bite.
‘Well, what are you waiting for? Eat! It’s cheese. And I’m busy!’
‘You don’t have to stand there,’ I say between bites. It’s difficult to chew, as I have hardly any saliva in my mouth after drinking much too little during the night.
‘I want to wash up before I leave. The worktop has to be clean and ready for when I get back with the hearts. I need the space before I hang them up in the cupboard.’
I chew and chew – it’s impossible to move the bread inside my mouth unless there’s enough saliva to soften it and send it down to my stomach. Ragna, wearing her outdoor clothes, now fidgets by the window, staring with clenched jaws at the heather outside, but I know that her attention is fixed on my mouth, which is trying to keep shut over my teeth and the bread.
‘Can I have a glass of milk?’ I say after finally managing to swallow.
Ragna rushes out the room, rattles with a glass and the milk jug, is back in an instant and sticks the glass right under my nose.
‘Drink!’
I have already taken another bite and my mouth is full of bread. I look beseechingly at her, point with a finger at the bulge in my cheek. She sighs impatiently, presses the glass against my lips, forces my mouth open and pours in the milk. I swallow and swallow. It’s not easy, for I have to make sure that the bread doesn’t slide against my palate. I grasp her hand to remove the glass, but at the same moment some crumbs tickle the back of my throat, the milk goes down the wrong way and I cough up the contents over her arm.
‘You monster!’
She slams the glass down on the bedside table and wipes her arm dry on the bedclothes.
‘I only want to help, but look what happens! Well, you’ll just have to manage on your own!’ She storms out of the room into the kitchen. I hear her rummaging around by the worktop and pouring coffee
into a thermos flask with quick movements.
I pick up the lumps of bread from the bedspread and put them on the tray. I set about eating the rest of my breakfast. My chest is sodden, but I chew and chew and am about to drink the milk when she is back at my bedside again. She smiles and bares her teeth, then suddenly whisks the bread and milk glass out of my hands.
‘You’ve finished, that’s good,’ she says, and places the glass on the tray.
I sit there astonished, my hands as if frozen: the one hand without the glass, the other close to my mouth without the bread. I must look ridiculous, but I stay sitting like that while listening to the clinking of the glass and tray as she goes out into the kitchen, throws away the rest of the bread and washes up. Clink, clink, like faint bells.
And in an instant she is out of the door.
*
This is how any afternoon might develop:
Ragna is resting in her room, I am in mine. Maybe we sleep for half an hour before I need to pee. I lift aside the duvet as carefully as I can, almost without a sound, so as not to wake her. But there is no way I am able to avoid breathing, perhaps panting when I sit up in bed, stop my crutches from making a rattling noise when I place them on the floor, and I am unable to prevent my nightdress from swishing when I slide down from the bed and plant my legs on the floor. When I straighten up, there can be no doubt. The creaking and cracking from my limbs and my back tell anyone that I am purposefully moving across the floor in the direction of the toilet, and now only one thing counts: to get my body moving faster, to reach a speed that can guarantee me a swift meeting with the lavatory seat well before Ragna picks up my movements. But despite all my exertions, I know from the faint rush of air across the back of my neck that the same thing as always is happening: Ragna will get there just before I do and, before I have time to protest, she will be inside the toilet and have shut the door behind her.
(This is all Ragna knows about waiting for something from a hole:
Lying on a frozen lake with a line and with one eye on the ice hole, nice and warm in a scooter outfit and on a reindeer fur. Soon the char will come, prime and plump and, within half an hour, it will take the hook. She waits, preening herself from sheer pleasure, jiggles the line a bit, maybe drinks a cup of coffee; she’s waiting for the fish that’s sure to come, large and red, inching its way towards the ice hole, her ice hole, smooth and deep. The water surges and falls, a cloud drifts past, Ragna squints at the sharp winter sky and then there is a sudden jerk on the line, the fish is caught and now it is pulled up and out of its wet hiding place. Ragna smiles and seizes it by the gills, thinks of the frying pan back home as she breaks its neck – the fish, half-dead, floundering on the grainy ice; soon gutted and gleaming with fat.)
I stand outside the toilet door; heavy with a thousand lakes and ten thousand char, help me, jig, jig, there’s no time to lose, the ice hole is about to burst, run over, cascades of water and landed fish!
‘Ragna! Why have you locked the door?’
‘Because I want some peace, you simpleton!’
‘Yes, but I need to pee first!’
‘No, I’m in here right now!’
‘Ragna!’
‘That’s exactly why I lock the door, otherwise I can’t get any peace!’
The water surges and falls, surges and falls, a thousand rivers feeding the lake, which fills up, drips and gurgles and flows. I can’t walk, can hardly stand, can’t sit down, can’t lie down. I am locked, motionless, and if I move at all, the water will overflow and drown all life.
‘Ragna, open up!’
I lean cautiously against the door without moving my feet and lower body, place an ear against the wood. What is she up to?
From the sound of the cistern I can make out Ragna’s intermittent low breaths, small light grunts that tell me she is straining. It must be all the meat she’s eaten recently, mince from the innards she cooked the other day.
I give her a little time, try to think of other things, hoping the water will recede. It has to be a mild summer’s day, yes, I’ll think of a mild summer’s day, one with the washing hanging out, white and clean, billowing in the light breeze to the humming of the mosquitoes, the rustling of the birch trees, the babbling and trickling of the stream…
‘Ragna! Get a move on!’
I hammer on the door with my crutch.
That sound inside, is she laughing? I place my ear against the door again. It’s seething and bubbling in her throat, now she’s letting go, and her laughter lets rip in the tiny room.
‘Ragna! Ragna!’ she mimics with a distorted voice. ‘Ragna! Get a move on!’
All I can do is stay calm, I say to myself. Don’t think of anything. Don’t get upset. With these words I slide into a state of patience, and I manage to wait, for some seconds, yes, even a couple of minutes perhaps. Until I hear the sound of running water. Ragna has flushed and is now turning the taps on. She whistles loudly while letting the water run. There’s no tune to it, just an echo of her hollow interior at an assumed cheerful register.
The dam gives way under the pressure and the water gushes out. It happens in a moment, but I have time to notice this dual feeling pass through my body: the pain of holding it back, the relief at finally letting go. At the same instant, I am stricken with intense sadness, the tears well up, but maybe it’s the relief and not the pain, or both, but I cry and leave off, cry and leave off – it’s lovely and it’s sad, it’s good and it’s bad – I cry at myself and Ragna’s gurgling laughter, at her hidden rage in every single gasp, and I cry at what is about to come – her vocal cords that will whip and lash when she discovers what misery I have caused out here in the corridor.
*
And this is how many of our mornings turn out:
I’m sitting on the toilet, the seat has warmed up and I have found the right position so as to be able to stay here until my mission has been successfully accomplished. At such times a rare calmness may come over me, and I don’t count the minutes or the half-hours, the time is spent studying my cuticles and palms, the strange patterns in the plaster on the walls and, not least, whispering words and sentences that come to me, rhythmically, small verses to the sighing of the vent, the drip from the tap, the creaking of the surrounding house: hush, hush, swish swash widge wudge nudge no, swim swam blip blop baah bee…
Knock, knock.
‘Get a move on!’
I stiffen. Alarm bells ring, ongoing processes are retracted. Alert, red alert!
‘You’ve bloody well been sitting there for ages. Now you really must make way for other people!’
I sigh. All functions were on their way perfectly. If Ragna doesn’t calm down soon, it will take ages to get back into the same state.
‘Ragna, I’m the one who’s here now!’
‘Yes, damn it, you’re always the one in there – or trying to get in!’
She kicks the door twice, but moves away. Judging from her steps, I work out that she has gone into her room and is lying down on her bed.
I give a sigh of relief, try to recapture that flowing calmness. It is easier than I had feared and I am in the process of drifting off on the patterns and just audible words when there’s another kick on the door.
‘Get a move on, I said!’
Ragna is standing with her mouth close to the door. I hear her breathing. From experience I know to keep quiet so as not to fuel her rising anger – in that way I’m able to postpone the disaster.
Ragna stays standing outside, but is not at a loss. She now starts switching the light off and on.
‘Out! Out! Out!’ she intones in time with the light switch.
The change between dark and light is quite intriguing, but after a while I start to get dizzy.
‘Stop that, Ragna. It makes me feel sick!’
‘You can puke for all I care if you don’t come out quickly.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘Yes, I bloody well do. You don’t seem to understand that I
need to use the loo too!’
Boundless conscience. There’s nothing else for me to do but block my urge, forget my own needs, which have died down anyway with all this rowing.
‘All right, then.’
I sigh loudly and grip my crutches, prepare myself for the laborious process of getting up and adjusting my clothes. It takes time, to be honest, even though I hurry as much as I can. And Ragna has to help me to pull up my pants, because I can’t do it on my own.
‘All clear!’ I say, and bang my fist against the door to open it.
‘You’ll have to help me,’ I continue, and aim for the corridor since there’s more room out here for Ragna to kneel down and pull up my pants. But as I pass the door with my pants round my ankles, Ragna slips past me into the toilet. I turn round and am about to say something, but she has managed to close the door hard before I get a word out.
‘You’ve got another thing coming,’ she shouts, and laughs loudly and affectedly.
I sigh and stay standing there, feeling at that moment in my tortuous existence a slight breeze pass my bottom as the door slams shut and the shaking in my knees after all that hurrying. And when I hear Ragna giggle to herself as she finds a comfortable position on the already warmed-up seat and hear her loud grunts of pleasure, I can’t help laughing a bit at it all either.
*
I must admit that Ragna and I have had a lot of good moments during our years alone in this house. But they tend to be seasonal and come with the weather – or winter, to be more precise. When the storms tug at the planks of the house, when the windows shudder and the stove wails in the fearful draughts, we get on best. In such weather the house turns ice cold and all we can do is stick to our beds. But our battle against the violent forces is a shared cause, that of keeping body and soul – and the house – together.
The Looking-Glass Sisters Page 2