‘You’re chattering away like a crow!’
‘Yes, but listen to me, Ragna – you’re the only one I can ask!’
She stands there with rolling, half-closed eyes, shaking her head in frustration.
‘You’re not mauve, you’re shit black, and that’s because you plague the shit out of me! Do you hear me? Black! Black as muck! You shithead woman, you!’
Later, after my morning care, while I’m shuffling around my room, back and forth between the window and the mirror, Ragna is tidying the kitchen in a jittery mood. She stuffs glasses and plates ruthlessly into the cupboard. They must all be crammed to breaking point.
‘The animal, so self-obsessed! Here am I, slaving away day and night, and all she does is think of colours! I’ll give her colours, I will! Black and blue, that’s what she ought to have been!’
Black or blue or mauve. It really doesn’t matter. For I am in fact white. I can see that in the mirror. Almost colourless. My eyes are pale with a faint shimmer of blue, and my hair is almost completely grey – no, white. I look sort of transparent and will soon merge with the sky out there.
The colourlessness, uncertainty, everything I don’t know about myself, make my thoughts slide towards images I don’t like to think about. In particular, I have to think of distant, unknown coasts, places where people never cast anchor, inaccessible sounds and bays beneath ancient, gaping mountains, coasts so extensive that you see the sea curving on the horizon. They are the remotest, loneliest places in the world, they exist only on the very rim of nothingness. And I think so hard of these coasts that I get a sensation of disappearing in all the deserted wilderness – the coasts become peripheral zones of my own body, every toe, every finger points out desolately towards the emptiness in the world. I am a remote landscape so completely abandoned that I have to scream in order to feel I am alive.
‘What are you whining about?’ Ragna shouts from the kitchen.
‘I’m disappearing, Ragna!’
‘Yes, bugger off completely while you’re at it, you pathetic creature!’
*
Perhaps it is the sound of the persistent tacking of the sewing-machine needle that manages to burst the bubble of the dreamy state that has kept me bedridden for a couple of days. Ragna is sewing. And it’s not a question of mending or patching old clothes. No, she’s sewing long tracks in large pieces of material. And when Ragna starts to hum an accompaniment to the sewing machine’s monotonous clatter, I can’t help feeling curious. Is she sewing new curtains in the middle of winter? Or can it be new bedlinen – the old sheets must be worn thin by all that rubbing together and physical excess?
After a while, she gets up from the table and hums even louder. I hear rustling and swishing of fabric, I hear her bustling around in the room, she is clearly in high spirits, contented. When she crosses the corridor, on her way to her bedroom, I finally catch sight of what has woken me up: from Ragna’s head and down to the floor stream Mum’s old lace curtains, and topping her high-piled hair, the material has been drawn together into a crown that dips over her face.
I give an almost silent whinny. That dried-up heap of bones looks no more like a bride than an old witch at a cauldron.
‘Oho, Ragna, so you’re getting ready for a wedding?’
‘Don’t stick your nose into my business,’ shouts Ragna from her room, while she rummages with jewellery and clothes.
‘Why haven’t you told me anything about it before?’
‘What do you need to know? You’re only interested in yourself.’
‘So, you’re getting married, are you?’
‘Yes. In that way we can defend ourselves against those in power!’
‘It didn’t exactly look like a helmet you were wearing on your head.’
‘Two heads are better than one, that’s what it’s all about. Standing together, against all of life’s threats and dangers. And that danger also includes you, don’t you forget it!’
Holy Moses. I sigh and gaze at the ceiling. Up there I can for a moment escape the hard grasp that constricts my existence. I float after the pale-white colour with the utmost ease, I glide and glide and am on the point of disappearing out the vent when I am hauled back to the miserable body in the bed and slide into my own dry mouth.
‘Ragna?’
‘Yes?’
‘Is Johan going to live here?’
‘Of course he is! Have you ever heard of a married couple who don’t share a bed?’
‘Why haven’t you said anything?’
‘The wedding’s at the weekend, here in this house. We want it over before Christmas. That’s all been decided. Your whining won’t make the slightest bit of difference.’
Despite Ragna and Johan’s relationship, all their excesses, the news hits me unexpectedly. They must have made up their minds in double-quick time, otherwise I’d have already had my suspicions. But when I think about it, I’m not surprised. Yes, it’s probably a wedding they’ve been whispering on about, imagined and planned during these last weeks at the kitchen table. I may have even provoked it by my frequent walks along the corridor, by my mere presence. They have clearly acquired a sudden need to ally themselves, yes, to have a marriage contract as a strong card to play if the situation in the house becomes critical: we decide things here!
I can’t help reproaching myself. From now on ‘We’re married!’ will ring out, scream from wall to wall and in every nook and cranny of the house. And from that day on we’re divided into two irreconcilable camps: the married couple and me, we two and you, them and me.
*
Sliced smoked salmon, served with some lettuce leaves and a dollop of cream. Elk roast with French fries. Ice cream with cloudberries and Ragna’s wafer cones. Red wine with the meal. Johan’s home-made cowberry liqueur with the dessert.
Ragna stands by the bed rubbing her hands, looking expectantly at me. I’m invited. I’m to sit at the table. It is to be a memorable day for all of us.
Is she looking for signs of happiness? I sit there hunched up, heavy with the news, hardly able to look at her.
Later, towards evening the same day, she stands in my room once again, shakes me by the arm, wakes me from a deep, heavy sleep.
‘Dear sister. Look at what I’ve got here! I’ve altered it for you. It took hours and hours. Hasn’t it turned out fine?’
She holds up a dress of green burled material in front of herself. The acidic colour sticks to her face. My stomach gives a weak heave. Spittle gathers in my mouth. Has Ragna sewn on the collar and pockets? Sure to be the remains of some lace curtains. The dress must be old. I can’t recall ever having seen it before. I swallow and look away.
She squeezes a clothes hanger into the dress and hangs it up on the front of the wardrobe. Perhaps so that the spirals of the white lace collar will remind me of the difficult times that lie ahead.
‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she asks again, stroking the material with her hand. ‘You’ve always wanted a proper dress, haven’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Ragna comes up closer, stands by the bed and stares at me suspiciously. ‘You’ve not made up your mind to be ill, have you?’
‘No, no.’
‘I really hope not. It’s to be my special day and you’re not to ruin it!’
‘Relax.’
Ragna gives a forced smile. I smile back weakly. She stands over me gleaming with a power that only the certainty of imminent happiness generates. I smile a bit more, as best I can. She breathes a sigh of relief and goes back to her wedding preparations.
Home University, Vol. VIII, ‘Language and Communication’, at random, in the margin, somewhere in the middle of the book: ‘Marriage, damage, mad rage, bloody carnage.’
I am profoundly asleep once more when she bursts through the door with a cup in her hands.
‘And how are you, dear sister – it’s morning!’
She turns on the light, and in the flood of brightness I am rapidl
y scrutinized for all visible and future afflictions that might threaten the weekend’s wedding. She puts down the cup, leans over me and straightens my pillow, pulls me by the arm in an attempt to get me up.
‘I don’t want anything! Just let me sleep!’
‘Is that the thanks I get for coming with tea on this lovely morning?’
She presses her hand in under my arm. I have no option but to move as she wants and take up a kind of sitting position in the bed.
The teacup is placed in front of me in a hollow she makes in the duvet. She straightens up and stands there close to me. I sense that she is gazing at me with a look I do not know and turn my head in surprise to see what it is. At the same moment, my forehead bangs into her hand. There’s a sting, her nails have scratched the skin, her hand is trembling. Was she about to smooth out my hair? The gaze disappears, she pulls her hand away.
‘Dear sister,’ she says in a husky voice, ‘I only want you to have a nice day.’
‘Right.’
‘And you can be sure the food will be good.’
‘Sure.’
‘And just think, wine! For you too! It’ll be a real celebration!’
‘Yes.’
‘The dress will suit you.’
I don’t answer. She rubs her hands when I deliberately sink back into the bed. The tea slops over. A stain spreads out, I feel the heat through the duvet.
‘Just be a bit pleasant, all right?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and turn my back to her. She bends cautiously over me, breathing heavily.
‘Are you afraid?’
She’s right. I’ve every reason to be afraid. I lie in the dark and think about curses, search for sentences that can be twisted from newlywed happiness to slow destruction, sentences that convert a good marriage into an agonizing, painful divorce. I make a pathetic attempt to write something despite my exhaustion, but console myself with the fact that if they don’t work, I will make predictions, evocations, stick pins into what is about to happen:
Ragna and Johan, kind and happy, will never meet with cruel grief, be consumed by violent misfortune.
Ragna and Johan, never kind and happy, will meet with cruel grief, be consumed by violent misfortune.
I take a breath. Try to prevent a landslide of images that press against my forehead, the gaze behind the closed eyes. I don’t want to watch these images: the cruelty in them, the humiliation, yet I am drawn towards them, yes, I observe every single shot, coolly, with distance and without dignity. Me with an axe and hammer. Ragna flung to the crows outside. The freezer full of Johan turned into steaks and ribs, mince and chops.
Everything starts swirling. I’m falling.
‘Ragna! Help me!’
*
On her wedding day Ragna is up at five o’clock, stoking the stove. She hums as she puts on the coffee. Everything’s ready. The pans are sparkling, the windows and walls are gleaming. I have been washed, cleaned, scrubbed the previous evening, and the meal stands prepared in the pantry, it will only need to be heated when they return from the wedding in the village.
‘We’ll be coming back with guests – it will be a celebration the likes of which you’ve never seen before!’
I wonder if she’s saying this as a piece of information or a threat, but first and foremost I am thinking that I will be sitting eating and conversing with the rest of them – I’ve no experience of doing that, since I very rarely sit at the table and talk to Ragna.
People. The house is going to be full of people. But not more than three guests – I know that from the number of places laid out. It will be a strange experience. I’ve hardly seen Johan of late. He’s wisely kept himself out of sight so as not to provoke a quarrel with his in-laws. The war has been de-escalated. We’re to meet together on the great day in peace and harmony.
They set off into the darkness – through the window I see that Johan has fixed a flag to either side of the handlebars on the snow scooter. Beneath her capacious scooter outfit Ragna is dressed in her newly sewn dress, and her veil has been laboriously crammed in under her hood. A corner of it has escaped and is fluttering in the wind, waving to the heavens, which bless the bridal journey with a clear sky and stars.
The sound of the scooter dies away. I am left behind in a green dress.
The crows settle on the window ledge and stare into the room. The dwarf birch presses its branches against the outer wall, listening.
I collapse into a chair. Sigh wearily. Life has received me with hands that were far too polished. I glided away, slid, slipped from the good things in life as soon as I had been born. That is why I find myself in this remote corner of limited possibilities. I get up, shake my fist at this life on crutches.
Home University, Vol. VI, ‘Man and Society’, in the margin, at the back of the book: ‘The crutches woman howls in the wilderness, screams to the sky, “This is bloody well more than enough!” The wild animals stop, prick up their ears, was that the sound of a human? But they slink on once more, it was nothing, only a murmuring of silence.’
*
From force of habit I totter into Ragna’s room, sit on her chair, on her bed, open boxes and cartons, look at clothes and jewellery, all the things she collects. The red underwear is still there – a nauseating smell comes up from the box, I don’t dare touch anything and quickly replace the lid. In a heap of magazines I spend a bit too long on a brochure with ladies’ clothes bargains, for when I go to put it back I notice Johan’s bag behind the door, the one he uses every Monday when he goes off to the village to do the shopping, to fetch and leave the post. I let out a small gasp of anxiety and enthusiasm – I must get a move on, the bag’s the only thing worth spending time on. I pull it towards me: its weight doesn’t surprise me, he’s going to spend the next few days here – the morning after the wedding too. The bag contains both his toothbrush and a change of clothing. I open all the fasteners and pockets, examine and scrutinize everything. There’s a knife and shaving things, a pack of cards and a calendar. And in a brown, worn envelope, along with some unpaid bills, there lies a letter addressed to the head nurse at the nursing home. The letter has been sealed and a stamp stuck on. Ready to be sent on Monday, the second day of Ragna and Johan’s honeymoon.
There’s not much to be said about what I do now, except that it takes every ounce of my strength to fetch the implements I need to open the letter and carry out my criminal act without leaving the slightest trace: a damp cloth to moisten the glue, a sharp knife to unseal the letter, a sheet of blank paper to replace Ragna’s elegantly handwritten and painstakingly formulated application, an iron to flatten out all the creases and finally a little glue to seal the envelope again.
My whole body is shaking when I replace the letter in the bag. The physical overload is one thing. But the anxiety is worse. Can a blank sheet of paper, a thwarted application, prevent me from finally being sent away?
Left on the kitchen table lies Ragna’s treacherous composition, the sheet with her personal request to the head of the nursing home. I quickly read a few lines, I don’t need to read more, that’s enough. I tear the letter to pieces and toss them on the stove; a sudden flare and the pieces turn to ash in the embers that have been smouldering there since the morning.
‘…I simply can’t cope any longer… Now you will have to take my sister. I’m completely worn out. She has many aches and pains and there are more of them all the time… She’s not good-natured or grateful either… She belongs in a nursing home, I’m sure of that. Please fetch her, and as soon as possible. If not, you will end up having to take us both…’
Right, then, here’s the final confirmation of her treachery. In a way I feel relieved. The doubt and nagging suspicion and the never-ending search for evidence have now given way to certainty. The plan has been identified, and with a clear conscience I can direct my hidden artillery against the newly married couple.
I hear the procession at a great distance, the hot-tempered snow scooters plough a path through
the wood – there must be three or four vehicles. I would guess at a party of five. From my seat at the window I see that I’m right. In addition to Ragna and Johan three men are standing outside the house. They seem to be calm and self-assured, so it’s probably not the Finns.
The guests move towards the entrance; the newlyweds stay standing by the scooters. They have their arms round each other. Ragna is leaning against Johan, who is clearly waiting for something to happen. I turn my gaze to the front steps, where I observe the three man take down the hoods of their scooter outfits and fish out hats from their inner pockets. They hold them between their hands while raising their chests towards the sky, inhale deeply and let out a roar of sound. It takes a few seconds before I realize they have started singing.
‘May God bless our precious fatherland…’ streams out from the steps, and Johan joins in with a loud voice.
‘…Let folk as brothers live as one, as does befit true Christians!’
Johan’s voice is surprisingly strong. I can’t help but be impressed by it – it is so melodious, resonating deep within. I have to turn away. The voice tells of a power that appeals to me, one that is greater than the power that I know Johan possesses.
The front door opens: Johan and Ragna enter the house arm in arm, followed by the three men.
‘Dear sister, come and congratulate us! Now we are husband and wife!’
‘Like hell I will,’ I say from my post at the kitchen window.
I ought to have said something ingenious, barbed and double-barrelled, but I feel confused and insulted by the letter, the wedding and all the fuss with the singing, and that voice of Johan’s – why hasn’t she mentioned it before?
The Looking-Glass Sisters Page 8