The Looking-Glass Sisters

by Gøhril Gabrielsen

  This eagerness, this low-pitched talking: they’re busy planning now, their proposals are clear and definite. Everyone’s contributing; even the Finns in their broken language are driven by reasons I do not yet understand.

  ‘It’s got to be winter, when the going is firm. Then it’ll be easiest to get her out of here. During summer the path to the main road’s much too muddy and bumpy.’

  ‘We’ll have to lash her to the scooter.’

  ‘If she kicks up a fuss, we’ll have to sedate her.’

  ‘With what? How do we fix it?’

  ‘Ragna will have to go to the doctor in the village, complain about aches and pains.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘All of us are needed. She’s not easy to handle, she knows how to lash out, the little troll!’

  ‘We’ll take a spade.’

  ‘And then it’s party time.’

  ‘Helvetin hyvää!’

  My heart’s pounding. My forehead’s throbbing.

  ‘Ragna,’ I say. ‘Ragna!’

  My body feels numb, only my lips are moving – they open and shut independently of me. But she doesn’t hear me, my voice doesn’t reach them, doesn’t get through the music.

  ‘Ragna,’ I roar, shouting as loud as I can.

  It goes completely silent. Not a breath, not a grunt from the men.

  Someone shuffles across the floor and turns the radio off.

  ‘Yeeeaah!’

  It’s Ragna, her voice distorted, coming from somewhere deep in her throat she’s never spoken from before.

  ‘Yeeeaah!’ she roars from the depths once more.

  I’m completely at a loss. What am I to say?

  ‘Ragna,’ I shout, and then swallow. ‘Have you remembered to buy that notebook for me?’

  Occasionally, in a state of deep despair, I have called on God, but the truth is that in everyday life I dismiss him as being not all that credible.

  Even so, I can’t deny that I have often sensed a certain presence, and as a reflection of this a sense of being reconciled to the transitory nature of life. At such moments I have had a feeling of waking up, or of just suddenly knowing that everything passes. But God is. And my soul likewise.

  Have I, with this realization, any reason to fear anything?

  Why, then, am I so afraid of the catastrophe: of having to leave, be gone?

  ‘Notebook?’

  Ragna gives a snort.

  ‘She’s asking about a notebook,’ she says, turning to the men with a voice that wobbles a bit.

  ‘Notebook!’ she shouts in an affected voice out into the room.

  There is scattered laughter from the men, someone tops up glasses, they toast and laugh again, but not unrestrainedly. They are obviously engaged in more serious matters.

  ‘The door,’ one of the Finns says in his heavy accent. ‘Shut the door.’

  Shuffling steps across the floor, heavy breathing just outside the room, I recognize Ragna behind the liquor and the drunkenness. She shuts the door.

  ‘Ragna?’

  I don’t particularly like my voice – I’m whining. But she’s already back with the men, the door’s closed, the radio’s on and I’m cut off from the impressions that can tell me what they are up to out there.

  I often lie with my door shut. I often shut it myself. But to be shut in by Ragna, that’s something quite different. I’m in the process of accepting her authority to decide the position of the door. At the same time, though, I feel resistance, as always when she forces me to accept her will, short-tempered and unshiftable.

  My hands folded, I note in silence that it is impossible to overlook me, precisely because I exist. I exist.

  I sit up angrily in bed. Full of this clarity of vision, this strength, I feel a sudden urge to assert my right of self-determination. I pick up one of the crutches, hold it in the air and shout.

  ‘I’m here!’

  ‘I’m here!’ I shout again as loud as I can. ‘And I’m bloody hungry!’ I scream, bashing the crutch against the wall.

  I can’t help being startled at this outburst, this sudden expression of hunger, because I haven’t felt like food the whole evening. But the insistence of my stomach is there now and I probably haven’t eaten for four or five hours.

  Ragna’s face at the door.

  ‘You’ll have to wait!’ Her eyes are burning, there are red, flaming patches at her neck.

  ‘There’s nothing to wait for – I’m hungry!’

  I get up from the bed and, supported by my crutches, totter over to the door and tug at the handle. Ragna holds back.

  ‘Sister!’ She’s at a loss, her voice slips. ‘I know you’re hungry,’ she says, ‘but you’ll get something a bit later, straight afterwards. I’ll rustle something up when the Finns have gone.’

  Dregs of words, tangles of sentences. Her mild tone of voice jars – she could at least speak clearly and distinctly.

  ‘Wait a moment!’ I hear her shuffle back into the room and talk to the men, who answer with grunts and groans.

  I don’t wait, wrench open the door.

  What predictable play-acting. They’re all sitting there, the men and my sister, fully dressed at the kitchen table, with their liquor glasses in their hands and a vague expression of disgruntlement. I don’t believe them, what hypocrisy: they’ve obviously got dressed quickly and cleared away the papers. I, for my part, haven’t considered revealing my suspicions, everything I’ve understood, and root around in the bread bin, unconcerned and with complete naturalness.

  But although the mind is strong, the body is far weaker. Soon I’m shuddering, my arms and legs are shaking, and it’s all I can do to stay upright on one crutch, for I need the other hand to search for food. I usually don’t stand here at the worktop; for the last few years Ragna has prepared the meals. I rummage around and can’t find the butter. Or the cheese slicer.

  After fumbling back and forth for a while, I begin to see myself as they must see me. And if I turn my head slightly I can see myself too – the face in the mirror above the sink is mine. Oh, let my pride bear me up, keep me standing, my will straighten me up, for I am truly a pitiful sight. Is that what the Finns see? An emaciated creature of feminine origin, degenerated, mutated at the edge of the wilderness? A furry animal with bared canine teeth, snarling at the smell of strangers?

  I exist. So pitiable and pathetic. I have swaggered out armed with two perverted words that suddenly fall to pieces, ashamed of their own alleged strength. I regret this, change the statement to a stuttering I exist?, for that’s the state of affairs now, with me clutching my crutches and whimpering, ‘Ragna, help me.’

  ‘What the hell’s she making a song and dance about?’ Johan asks.

  Ragna tosses her head, empties the last dregs and puts the glass down hard on the table. She reels over to the worktop, starts to slice bread and immediately afterwards sticks a dish right up under my nose.

  ‘Eat!’

  The bread’s got no butter and the salami has evidently been lying around sweating on the cutting board for several hours. I don’t like salami, it’s pure bloody-mindedness to put it on the bread, what is she thinking of? The greasy piece of meat suddenly symbolizes all her inconsiderateness. She expects me, then, to go the entire evening without food, to sit quietly in my room with a raging hunger, to be thankful for anything at all. There’s no doubt that Johan is her main priority now, that she doesn’t think about anyone else but him.

  ‘That’s my chair.’

  I stand at the worktop and with my crutch hit the chair Johan’s been sitting on all evening. I’ve shoved the plate right in front of him, between the bottles and the glasses. The Finns follow the situation with raised eyebrows and expressionless eyes, look first at me, then at Ragna and Johan. I hit the chair again. I’m so close I’m almost breathing down his neck, which folds into two thick sausages, so close that I notice the hairs sticking out from his shirt, the worn material over the meaty back. He sits motionless, his arms cro
ssed on the table, doesn’t move a muscle.

  ‘I want to eat.’

  To underline that I mean business, I raise one of the crutches, lower it slowly over the table and shift a liquor bottle that’s close to the plate, slowly remove the crutch and return the tip to the floor. I do it as slowly as I can and with strength I scarcely possess. My legs are shaking, I’m breathing heavily, but now I am showing I demand my right to the chair and a seat at the table. One of the older Finns, a dark bloke with green, close-set eyes, smiles slightly. This sets a chain reaction in motion: soon the upper lips of all three of them start twitching, a twisted grin they try to restrain so as not to provoke Johan.

  And Ragna? Ragna has shrunk to a small girl, wringing her dry hands while glancing across at Johan, who now lifts his backside slightly in order to find a more comfortable position on the chair.

  ‘Ragna,’ he says calmly, almost gently, turning slowly towards her, ‘can’t you get that bloody nuisance out of here?’

  Ragna looks around helplessly, unable to deal with the unexpected situation.

  ‘Johan,’ she begs, trying to appeal to something in him, perhaps to the words he has whispered into the pit of her throat in the heat of their embrace, words that have given her the sense of a bond between them, something so strong that it can cope with a certain amount of testing. She is about to say more, but Johan interrupts her.

  ‘Can’t you just ask her to stay away while there are people visiting? She embarrasses all of us.’ He pauses, looks questioningly at her. ‘Don’t you agree, Ragna?’

  Ragna replies by tipping her head to one side and rubbing her eyes. Is it my previous episode with Johan that she is thinking of, when he flew out of the door in a rage?

  ‘Just get the hell out of here, Johan,’ I say before she has time to open her mouth. ‘And take these louts with you!’

  I raise my crutch and point at the Finns, who glance irresolutely at each other. Johan lifts his backside uneasily, then settles it down into the seat of the chair once more.

  ‘Well I bloody never,’ he says, staring at Ragna. ‘Haven’t you thought of reacting in some way?’

  But I’m the one who reacts, several seconds before Ragna manages to even think the thought. I bring the crutch down on the table with all the strength I possess, sweep it from side to side so that bottles and glasses and slices of bread fly off in all directions.

  ‘Saatana!’ one of the Finns shouts.

  The table stands in the direct line of fire and the force of the explosion causes all those sitting there to fling themselves backwards. I bash the table with all the strength I possess, I strike and strike until I notice at one point in my fury that the crutch is bending. I’m injured, the crutch, my arm and foot are injured. I have to give up, step back. And at that moment I collapse on to the floor.

  Ragna is standing close to the worktop, muttering, the Finns have squeezed into a corner by the door, but Johan stands at the table, self-assured, his feet well apart, his fists clenched.

  I myself am lying in a jumble of crutches, arms and legs. I try to collect my body to orientate myself, to get up, but I’m rattling and clattering away worse than our old birch tree in a storm.

  ‘She’s frigging dangerous, Ragna. There’s more strength in the little monster than all of us put together,’ Johan says with contrived calm.

  He goes over to Ragna, places himself in front of her.

  ‘I’m not staying here a minute longer than necessary,’ he says harshly. ‘Ragna, I am…’ He pauses, takes a breath to emphasize the force behind what he is about to say: ‘…sick, yes, that’s what I am, sick and tired of your sister, who exploits you and sucks the very life out of you.’

  While he stands at the front door, waving to the Finns as a sign that it’s time to adjourn to his cabin, he concludes, ‘And the worst thing of all, Ragna, is that you let yourself be exploited, that you bloody well put up with everything.’

  In Home University, Vol. II, ‘Earth, Plants, Animals’, in an empty space on page 76, I write down some sentences that occur to me early the next morning: ‘My sister’s a scavenger that secretly eats straw in bed, the man gives her bones to gnaw on, keeps her on a lead.’

  *

  ‘Ragna! You’ve got to help me!’

  I’m out of breath immediately, even a few words take their toll. I’ll just have to face up to the reality of the situation: yesterday’s physical exertions have drained whatever strength I had. I lie huddled up in bed and my voice sounds disembodied, a braying that can only arouse Ragna’s revulsion.

  I’m in pain; I’m aching from my lower back right up to my neck. I couldn’t find a comfortable position during the night and when I pinch my leg it’s as if I’m doing so through a thick layer of material, my flesh hardly registers a thing.

  Ragna has already been awake for hours and is rushing about noisily doing the housework with hectic intensity. While she washes clothes in the tub that she has placed on the worktop (my panties, she usually threads them on one hand while she rubs soap into the crotch with the other – anyone can see the stains in the white material, which means me, and sometimes Johan, and we have on more than one occasion sat in silence watching) she answers my shout by repeating her own self-defence time and time again.

  ‘You think we were talking about you, you conceited worm, but we were talking about far more important things!’ she says, while heaving the clothes out of the tub, pouring out the water, fetching the clothes horse.

  I don’t answer, haven’t asked what they were talking about either, but when she was inside my room and threw clean clothes on my bed I suggested she was pleased with the plans made during the visit the day before.

  ‘You little beast, you’ve frightened Johan off,’ she replied harshly. ‘If you’ve any sense, you’ll do well to keep your trap shut.’ She then gave my bed a kick before disappearing out of the door.

  After a while she starts talking to herself about something completely different, and from time to time, without my having said a single word, she calls out to me to shut up. Suddenly, she bangs the mop hard against the floor and exclaims, ‘The deliberate misrepresentations in this country – I won’t put up with it!’

  She puts the washtub down so hard on the floor that the water splashes out.

  ‘Soon we won’t even be allowed to use the roads either, we’ll be hunted like stray dogs, the whole lot of us. That was what we were talking about yesterday by the way, for your information. And then you come along, with your noise and commotion, and make trouble!’

  Now she’s pushing the long-handled broom around the floor, bashing it into corners and along walls.

  ‘No, you really must stop all your yelping,’ she says, out of breath, ‘for there are other things to think about for a poor woman who from now on will have to steal around the moors like a common thief. I who was born here just as much as they were, Mum and Dad too for that matter, they wore themselves out in this spot for half their lives, and then the damned natives claim that I don’t belong here! No, our rubbish is clearly not as fine as their rubbish! Our forefathers have clearly not decomposed in the ground for as long as theirs! No, for we are bloody bandits from elsewhere, unwelcome, aliens!’

  Ragna’s rage floods out into our small house, rises high and higher, it presses and roars in my ears so I can hardly breathe.

  ‘The moors that I have walked over since I was a little girl,’ she intones while she moves things, pushes things around, puts things away with great violence inside the kitchen. ‘My livelihood each and every autumn! From now on I’ll have to stand and watch them fill their pails – and they’ve the whole area to take from. The government will give them everything, yes they will, Johan says. As if it wasn’t just as much our refuse as theirs that nourishes the cloudberries! Let me tell you – they’ll just have to spit on me when I come, fetch their rifles too, I don’t care, at least I’ll die on my own moor!’

  She interrupts herself with a fit of coughing, but goes on i
n a hoarse voice, ‘I’ve got to say it, but you keep quiet about it being said. Johan had with him a secret map of which families will take over the various areas here. And it’s not us, I can tell you that! You whine like a dog for food, but soon there won’t be any food around, for your further information! You ought to be ashamed of yourself and find out more about what’s happening instead – for we’re being ambushed!’

  Suddenly she’s a lot less het up.

  ‘The right of disposition of the outlying areas, something like that, that’s the fine name they give to it. When our lease from the state expires, when the new master race decide things, then, then it’s all over and out with you too, you miserable worm.’

  You miserable worm. She’s hardly even able to say the words. They come as a final kick from a woman already on the floor, completely exhausted and overpowered.

  For one weak moment I’m capable of believing her. But I quickly realize that this is due to exhaustion and repressed fear. This sudden threat of a superior force and being shut out of the moors is nothing but a distortion of the truth: I’m the one who is going to be ousted, by a master race consisting of Johan and Ragna, and I’m the one who’s going to be subjected to a new regime – at the nursing home, to be precise.

  The lie’s good. She almost believes it herself, and maybe there’s a hint of truth too. But the rage, all the force of the emotional outburst, is directed at me, and I’m quite certain that I was one of the victims of yesterday’s many conspiracies.