I stopped listening. Responded to john’s warm leg against mine and thought about his body. Saw its hairy entirety in my mind’s eye. Saw how it always strove to be on top. There was a tingling sensation between my legs. I stole a glance at him. His curly hair fell in waves around his head. He smiled a little and moved his hand closer to mine. We went on whispering. Did you mean what you said the last time. Yes and no. I know nothing about you. I hear a lot of talk but can’t work out what’s true and false.
Do you trust me he asked. No I said.
His hand held mine now. Do you love me he whispered even more quietly. I think so I said. Say it he urged. I want to hear you say it. But then the organ burst out into the prelude to morning-hasbroken and our voices were drowned in the singing.
The funeral service was coming to an end. Singly or in small groups we went up to the coffins to say a last farewell. We walked together john and I. I stole a glance at the congregation and noted that they were whispering about us.
I lingered with katarina. Placed a small bunch of bluebells and marguerites on her coffin. John had brought marigolds. Sleep well my dear he said and I couldn’t help wondering.
The post-funeral party or whatever one is supposed to call it was a success. The guests especially approved of the free topups of their glasses. They were eating and drinking with a gusto probably never before seen in the church hall. The noise level went up and people seemed to have forgotten the reason for meeting up.
I went to find stefan to offer him my condolences and thank him for the service. We hugged. He smelled of pacorabanne. We must meet again I said and meant it. I liked katarina’s brother. His honesty made him seem almost transparent. Sticking to the truth confers its own charm.
John was standing a bit away with a glass in his hand. I saw him empty it in one gulp and go off to get another one. He talked to a couple of older men I didn’t know. I asked myself why I had to be drawn to people like john rather than nicer people like stefan. The apostles the prophets jesus and mary answered that I have no choice. So why is that I asked and they told me that my life was already staked out and the people I encountered had particular roles to play. What even father I asked. Even your father they replied. And john. Especially john they said and winked at each other as if they had overheard what I had been fantasising about in church.
Soon afterwards we drove back to his house but the intimacy from the moment on the pew had gone. He had walked to the church so I drove us. We were stiff and out of sorts during the short drive. As if we had had a row.
Is something wrong I asked. No why should there be.
You seem irritated. Is that so he said. Whatever.
When he slid down from the passenger seat I noticed that he staggered a little.
I followed him obediently even though I knew I should have gone home. Somehow I wanted to straighten things out between us. Apologise for what I had said about how he looked.
We went inside. I sat down on the kitchen sofa. He drank water from the scoop in the bucket. Went to piss without closing the door. Took his suit off hung it up and wandered around in underpants and vest. The front of his pants had a damp patch after his pee. I started thumping my heels against the sofa until he told me to stop so I went on thumping my heels against the sofa.
For christ’s sake stop it.
Why don’t you stop.
I’m not doing anything he said.
Can’t you hack a few drinks I asked. Of course I fucking well can. Do you think I’m drunk or what.
Yes I said. You staggered earlier and so on. You and the rest of them. There’s a piss stain on your underpants. Your body language.
If that’s what you think he said. Let me show you how it goes when I get plastered for real.
He tugged a kitchen cupboard open and took out an unlabelled bottle. Unscrewed the top and drank until he had swallowed almost half the contents.
John I said in a pleading uneasy little voice. He imitated it. Oh john.
My mouth felt sticky. The flight instinct had been aroused. The only way into the hall was through the kitchen door and he stood very close to it. One wrong decision by me would trigger a wrong decision by him. He swayed. Swallowed a couple more mouthfuls and slammed the bottle down on the table.
So you think I’m ugly he said with a little laugh. Well everything is relative. Your sister now he said. She was a real woman. You’re not a real woman. You are.
He didn’t finish the sentence.
I want to go home now I said.
Off you go he said. Spat in the sink and put in a new pinch of snuff.
I set out for the kitchen door. I was frightened and had every reason to be. His eyes had the same remote glare as father’s of a fridaynight. When I reached the door he made one long pace sideways and blocked the way. Removed the grip I had used to put my hair up and spread the stringy tresses over my shoulders.
You’re playing with fire he said. His breath smelled of booze. You want but refuse to give. How do you think that will end.
I don’t know I said. Please let me pass.
You go. Nothing to stop you he said and stayed where he was.
Let’s meet another day. I want to go home now.
Let’s meet another day I want to go home now he repeated and twisted my hair back into the tie. But I want you to stay you see. We belong together he said. Whether you like it or not.
He tried to put his arms around me and I let him without hugging him back.
Sorry he gabbled. Forgive me jana I didn’t mean to.
Even so he stayed put like a piece of misplaced furniture. I could sense the energy drain from his body. When I pushed him aside he did nothing to stop me.
TWENTYFOUR
Bror had not attended the funeral service. Not that he and katarina had been close but still. She was someone we had known since childhood. He should have shown respect.
Hallo I called out once inside the front door. No reply. He must be somewhere. And probably as pissed as john. Just then I felt too tired to worry.
I went upstairs to change. Then I locked myself into the yellowroom and entered the world of the clayfolk. Many hours later when I finally went to bed there were eight men in a row. The number of men there were or had been in my life who had been either violent or alcoholics or both. Maybe there had been more. I felt quite tired towards the end.
I had always assumed that something was wrong with me. The classical therapy answer was that I ended up in the same situation again and again in order to relive my childhood. I had heard telly psychologists say this kind of thing to explain the phenomenon of the divorced wife of an alcoholic often finding another alcoholic to marry next. I had heard the men themselves say it. Those who play with fire will be burned by the fire. On the other hand I had never heard the blame put on the men. Nobody said that they were alcoholsoaked violent bastards who again and again hooked up with women and children even though aware they would probably end up harming them.
Because if the woman hadn’t come into their lives whatever it was wouldn’t have happened. If bror and I had not let ourselves be born father wouldn’t have had to beat us up. Mea culpa.
The last figure I shaped was mother. I had planned to do her in a brown coat with a hood but she became a child. The child stood in the naughtycorner with her hands covering her face as if playing it in hideandseek. One sock had slipped down. The heels on her shoes had worn unevenly.
I had never thought of mother as a child. I held her between my hands with a creator’s tenderness. Used a toothpick to make her hair look right. Clean and tidy I said. A nice girl must always be clean and tidy.
I saw mother for the last time when I left home. I had packed a case with as little as possible. A few changes of clothes drawing pencils and books I had bought with my own money.
I had been accepted by a school of art in stockholm. I didn’t want my luggage to hold any physical kippo reminders.
I didn’t even take mother’s packed lunch. She he
ld it out like a peace offering.
From now on we will never meet again I said. But never mind you’ve got your parish work.
She had aged. Tears trickled from her elderlyeyes.
I hope that one day you can forgive me she said.
Scant chance I said and set out to walk to the efourbus.
TWENTYFIVE
I woke early the day after the funeral. The house was still silent. I wandered and opened the doors to all the rooms. Even checked the cellars but didn’t find bror.
Outside it was pouring with rain. I made myself a cup of coffee and listened to the news. Things had been happening. Portugal had won the European football championships.
Then I put on a raincoat and bror’s rubberboots. The rain was persistent but warm. Summer rain.
There was another outbuilding. The bakery. Stepping inside was like entering a museum. The kitchen had a baking oven a baking table baking tools and a sink with a homemade wooden surround. Underneath it a space for a wastebucket and a basin. Next to the bakery was a small room with a bed and a bedside table with a pottycupboard. It looked as it always had since it was built in the middle of the nineteenth century. Bror wasn’t there.
The byre stood at an angle to the other two buildings. I hadn’t been inside since the last cow was led to slaughter. I walked her out. My pretty vega. White with large eyes blackrimmed as if outlined with kajal. She seemed to know what was up. Had no fight left to call out or struggle. She even licked my arm when I scratched the soft hairs behind her ears one last time.
Now my boots splashed through the wet grass as I was walking along golgotha lane as we called the path between the house and the byre. One byre window was boarded up but otherwise it seemed unchanged. I put the key in the lock and opened the door. The dungbarrow and the hay waggon stood side by side with the shafts pointing outwards. Above on the rafters was the hayloft with some old hay still lying about. The door to the animal stalls stood open.
We were late. Father was already mucking out in the pigpen. Had shovelled dung into a barrow. Spread straw on the floor.
More than a year had passed since my failed attempt to kill him with a hayfork. By now it might never have happened.
After forcing the slaughter of the horse and then the gilt and the bull calves and our oldest cow he seemed to be at a loss. He was looking forward to a da capo. To see me weak. Perhaps to hold my thin weeping body against his bulky one and comfort me.
Which is why I didn’t cry anymore. I hoped that my grieving dry eyes might save the animals but at work father was vicious. Took it out on the animals. The byre air stank with tethered hatred.
Bror grabbed a dungbarrow and pushed into the calves’ pen. Like me he was still short and slight but tough like a wolverine.
He worked fast. Filled the barrow and took it to the trapdoor that opened into the dunghill below the animal stalls. Upending the barrow added its contents to the midden below. We called it the family grave and joked about how our ancestors had leaped into it and died from the fumes.
The fresh dung was steaming hot. One barrowload after another fell onto the pile.
I was milking. It was my job. Our cows had no names on signs above their stalls but I had named them. I called them after the brightest stars. Vega rigel capella pollux sirius bellatrix.
When father wasn’t watching I brushed their backs. Scratched them behind the ears and let them lick the salt off my arms with their long rough tongues. Once the last cow had been milked I washed the separator and the churns and put everything on the shelves. Even then I liked order.
Then I heard loud voices. Father and bror were arguing. Bror’s voice had broken and it cracked when he raised it. Arguing wasn’t something we went in for. We obeyed.
I hurried out from the milking parlour and at first couldn’t see them. I followed the noise. Now they were on the floor wrestling in a stall. Bror hit out at every part he could reach but father struck him hard convinced he had the upper hand. Go on he shouted. Come again you little shit. The day you beat me in a fight I’ll do your bidding he shouted and lifted bror as if he were an armful of hay. He carried the boy to the familygrave and held him dangling over the abyss. Used the same phrase.
The day you beat me in a fight I’ll do your bidding. Until you do what I say goes.
Then he let bror fall down into the steaming stench of the dunghill and left him to drown. As he turned to go he caught sight of me.
What is this he said. So we have someone else here who questions the rule of the righteous.
He came towards me and I backed. All possible flight routes had been mapped out long ago but I had lowered my inner guard after a year free of pestering.
I turned and ran. He came after me. I would have escaped if I hadn’t tripped over the hayfork. The same hayfork.
I fell and broke the fall with my hands hitting the concrete floor. A moment later he was on me. His strong farmer’s hands tore my trousers off and rooted around to get in at the same time as he opened his flies. The bag on his belly glinted through the gap in the overalls. The milkingcoat had wrapped itself around my body. I wriggled and twisted like a worm on a fishing hook but he was in already. Thrust hard and bellowed in my ear when he came.
I had given up. Had no strength left. Didn’t want to live anymore. Then I saw bror. He was sneaking along behind the cows. Covered in dripping dung like a monster from a horrorfilm swamp and with a heavy soilcutting spade in his hand.
Father was getting up on his knees. The greasy strands of his combover hung across his forehead. He stared at me and seemed about to say something.
I hadn’t registered it before. His eyes and ours had the same colour.
Bror raised the spade over his head as an executioner his sword and sliced father’s head in two.
The body rolled away from me and into the pissgutter. Capella stepped on his hand.
Bror dropped the spade.
The feed sack I said. Get it.
Bror sat down. Leaned his back against a wooden upright. It was if we had been fighting a war and suddenly realised that we had survived.
The enemy was lying dead in the pissgutter with a feed sack on his head. A pleasant peaceful calm was spreading in the stalls and pens. I pulled the milkingcoat around me and leaned against bror. He put his arm around me. He smelled of shit.
It was the last day we were together for a long time to come.
TWENTYSIX
I checked stall after stall. He wasn’t anywhere. The chains dragged emptily against the concrete floor. The dunghill had burned itself out of course. Mother had swept and scrubbed. The byre smell still hung stubbornly in the air. I kept limerick’s stall till last.
The horse had been kept a little on its own in recognition of the special status of horses. If pigs were the farm commoners the horse was the king.
Limerick was not just a horse that pulled the plough. I did my homework in his stall using a hay bale as a table. It was where bror and I went to be alone or talk. Limerick’s gentle muzzle had comforted us throughout childhood. Remembering him was still bitter. He had fixed his last gaze on me. It had been wise and warm and terrified.
Limerick’s stall had stood empty ever since he died. Our farm had not survived the shattering final years as small holdings merged into big agribusinesses. Life had drained from the farms in the village. The tools rusted in the sheds and byres. Wheels sank into the ground leaving machinery standing like memorials to a past era. They and the overgrown fields had become shackled by couch grass and birch seedlings. Willow herb was spreading. The haybarn roofs were caving in. Nature took over in the hay meadows. On kippofarm too only memories remained. If I had it my way the byre should go up in flames.
Bror was comatose when I found him with the horse. I shook him but he didn’t move. Bror I said again more loudly and shook him a bit harder. He didn’t respond at all.
I got my phone out and dialled emergency services. I breathed into his mouth.
No sign of life
.
I struck him hard on the chest above the heart.
No sign of life.
The ambulance arrived after twenty minutes. I was given a seat next to bror.
Still no sign of life.
You must save him I said. He’s my twin. If he dies I’ll die too.
I even cried out to god. Screamed that now you must help god or you can go to hell.
Bubbles rose to bror’s lips. His eyes moved.
Small signs of life.
Things are looking up for you now the paramedic said. He met my eyes and smiled. That was a close shave he went on. I didn’t think god would approve of being sworn at.
God knows when one is serious I said.
Bror was taken to a&e and people suddenly started running about all over the place. His body was lifted onto a trolley. Tubes were stuck into various places on his body. Like in a telly hospital soap. I was propelled into a waiting room. I couldn’t sit still and kept walking up and down.
My phone clicked. John texted that he was sorry. I didn’t reply. I thought about the clay folk. The pathetic battalion of drunkards.
Forgive me jana he texted. Hope you want to see me again. Love you.
Which of the claymen should get that line I asked myself. His figure or all of them.
You are not a real woman also fitted most of them. A real classic that one.
Another click. Thank you for helping with the funeral. I hope we will meet again soon. Please come and see me sometime. Hugs Stefan.
Thank you too I wrote. In a&e with bror. Alcohol poisoning. Hugs.
People were coming and going. Some of them looked really ill. Children cried in their parents’ arms. Children lay still with fevered eyes.
I got hold of a nurse and asked but she didn’t know. Would check and come back.
Hello slimming world goodhousekeeping. And swedish hunting.
I leafed through it. Looked at the pictures. Carefully read a piece about ballistics and drank hospital latte in a plastic cup.
My Brother Page 11