My Brother

by Karin Smirnoff

  They are not stupid he said. But they will believe what they want to believe.

  So do you.

  I felt his body against mine. It felt almost as it always did. There was so much between us and not enough space left for all of it. Tiredness was grinding my thoughts into sand. I wanted to sleep not think.

  We heard noises from the yard. They’re here I said.

  A woman was lying in the grass. Sometimes she was smiling. Turned playfully. Looked deep into the painter’s eyes. Her gaze and the position of her body changed in each image. The pain grew almost unbearable. Pain that was breathing behind me.

  Then something entered the image at first as a diffuse shadow. A person. The person carried something. At first I couldn’t make out what it was. It came closer. The thing was an infant.

  Whose baby is it I asked but he didn’t answer.

  In the next painting the baby had vanished. The woman seemed asleep.

  Petra wasn’t my child. At the time I was working in sundsvall. When I came back home maria was pregnant already.

  He pulled his hand along my arms so hard my skin burned.

  There was a knock on the front door. A bell rang somewhere. He moved quickly from image to image. What had looked like a woman lying in the grass now became an axis for measuring time. Details emerged and disappeared. We were coming close to the end.

  What happens when they come into the house I asked.

  He turned me round to face him. I memorised the look in his eyes. Knew that I would recall it. Again and again. His eyelids didn’t even twitch. Wavy hair was tumbling over his forehead. His mouth when he bent down to me. His voice close to my ear.

  Don’t go he said. Remember what I said once. That you and I make a binary weapon. Jana you must trust me.

  You must trust me was an unreasonable thing to say. His eyes said something quite different. He was ready for battle and I was his prisoner. To control the dread rising inside me I tried to focus on his paintings. We had reached the last one. The grass was still grassgreen. The clouds were drifting by. Maria was dead lying with her hands clasped in prayer. A man was kneeling close to her.

  He isn’t me he said.

  And then all hell broke loose as they say in crime novels.

  Villagers came thundering up the stairs. They were talking in loud voices. Urging john to think again.

  How typical that petra didn’t call the police after all. Getting the authorities involved was something to be avoided unless it was an absolute crisis. This case was not critical enough. She protected her father.

  Get out john said. We haven’t finished talking yet.

  Jana are you allright petra shouted.

  I’m allright I shouted back so everyone could hear. You can go home. We just want to talk for a little longer.

  You’ve got an hour göranbäckström said. Then we’ll come for you.

  They went back downstairs. It creaked just as it does in our house. We heard the door shut.

  I’m tired I said. Exterminate me if that’s what you want. I can’t carry on. It was not an unfamiliar feeling. It meant that I had nothing left to lose.

  Come with me he said. Lie down in the backkitchen.

  Just wanted a little rest. It had been a long day. A codependent day.

  I woke only a few minutes later when he came to lie next to me.

  How does the stockholm syndrome work I thought. Does one get like that to keep in with the perpetrator or is it something that just grows on you.

  You have always had me he said. Don’t ever forget that.

  Can it really be true I said. That everybody except me remembers the first time they had sex.

  This is how we began he said and pulled my sweater up. I caressed you with my clumsy hands. Your skin was so smooth he said.

  I pushed his hand away. Out there in the yard some of our neighbours were standing around and petra and perhaps even nicenora in her flowery housecoat.

  We stayed still in the pullout bed. Listened for sounds but everything was silent.

  Nobody could step on that staircase without making a noise.

  I was leaning on my elbow. Watched his profile. With his cleft lip he reminded me of a lion.

  The male lion was a weird creature. If he took on a new female he first killed her children.

  What happened afterwards I said. After your divorce. Göranbäckström said that you dragged everything you owned into the yard and set fire to it.

  He didn’t answer.

  We were wasting time on pointless matters. The truth cannot be found in other people’s stories. The question is if it’s to be found anywhere.

  I would like to show you something you didn’t know existed he said and the tapeworm stirred at once. But if I’m to take you there we’ll have to walk. And it mightn’t be possible because of that rescue crew of yours waiting in the yard.

  John could not be trusted. Any moment he could flip again. I simply had to trust myself.

  Where are we meant to go I asked. Beyond the sawmill he said.

  We can’t I said. They’ll come after us you must realise that. You could leave first and then I’d come after you.

  No way he said and his hands clenched into fists.

  Don’t you trust me I said following his example.

  No he said just as I had.

  If you tell me where I will go there.

  It’s impossible to explain you have to come with me now. Where is your mobile I asked.

  He patted his pocket.

  Go to googlemaps and enter the coordinates. I know how to read a map.

  Ten minutes later I was out in the yard talking to petra göranbäckström gunnargran and other neighbours who were shivering in the chilly september night.

  There’s nothing to worry about with john now I said. Thank you for staying. I’m fine. He’s asleep. Let’s all go home and go to bed.

  It was tempting. I could dump the whole thing. Was an idiot not to dump the whole thing. But instead I climbed into the jeep and keyed in the coordinates that john had texted to me.

  He had sent another message as well.

  We’ll meet soon he wrote. Drive to the sawmill and walk from there.

  THIRTYNINE

  I parked the jeep once I had driven for a short stretch along the newplantationcartrack. Keyed the coordinates into my mobile.

  I was on my way into nowhere land. As far as I knew there was no road or house or even forest hut. I tried to recall any hunt I might have been on in these forests. Perhaps somewhere in the general area but never this far north. Here the burn formed the boundary of the next crew’s territory. Now I had to cross it.

  Grass leaves all the plants were on their way towards frosty deaths. I searched in the boot for more things to wear. All I found was a thick flannel shirt but it was better than nothing. I pulled it on. And set out at a quick pace.

  The moon was like a headtorch and followed me through the rough terrain. I stopped now and then to make sure I wasn’t getting lost. At this point I still knew where I was. I had to walk through a mature contorta pine planting. Once through it the burn should be there. I tried to remember where one could cross it. Sense of place has a usebydate. I realised that my internal map laid down in childhood was different from the google images. The trees had grown taller. Now and then exposed rock surfaces turned up unexpectedly. Inside the contorta stand the moonlight was obscured by the ample branches.

  It hadn’t looked far away on the map. Two kilometres at most but in the dark among fallen trees and concealed rock cracks two kilometres becomes a long way. I stumbled on a half buried branch and fell. My hands broke the fall but my arms sunk into icecold moorland water and my shirt got wet up to the elbows. The subzero chill made my arms ache. Then I fell again and crawled for a few metres to get past the densest shrubs.

  Moonlight began to reach me through the branches as the pines thinned out. The burn should be nearby but in the dark I wouldn’t be able to pick the best crossing points. I’d h
ave to try my luck. And swim if the worst came to the worst.

  I sat down on the bank of the burn to rest and check out what I could see in the light from the torch in my mobile. The battery was low. Without the map I had no goal.

  I had two options. One was to walk along the burn to find a crossing. The other was to follow the course I was on but it meant I might not find foothold in the water.

  The nighttime forest was soundless. It had no voice. Not a murmur even from the trees. I used a few seconds of torchlight to find a stout branch. When I prodded with it the bottom of the burn seemed just about a metre deep. With luck there wouldn’t be a deeper channel in the middle.

  God you must help me now I said. I can’t walk on water or see in the dark.

  Step by step I crossed. The water reached my waist but no higher. I lost sensation in the lower part of my body. I mustered all my strength and climbed up on the other side. Rested briefly and then continued the trek.

  A woodpigeon rose from a tree. The peat moor was bouncy underfoot. The last feathery tufts on the cotton grass glowed like pingpong balls on the drooping stalks.

  I was thinking of mother. I could visualise her out picking and how the berrybucket would slowly fill. She had taught us about the plants of the moor. Strings of names almost like a nursery rhyme. Wild rosemary bog rosemary bogbean cottongrass bottlesedge sundew. Purple marshlock marshgrass marshviolet.

  Where did she come from this mother of mine. I didn’t even know where she had played as a child. Whom she had called mother. Perhaps she had hatched from an egg out on the longmoor.

  The wet corroded my legs. By now I felt so bitterly cold it was hard to keep walking.

  I stepped more slowly with greater care. Only thought of how to put one foot in front of the other.

  The blade of the saw had glinted in the moonlight. That blade had sawn through its last tree trunk but it had gleamed for me. By now the moon had gone. Stars had escorted it away. Instead sirius shed its white light over moor and marsh. There was nothing to fear. I might well freeze to death out here but it was a gentle death unlike drowning.

  Thinking seemed set on a delay function. I looked at the map without seeing it. Walking was all I could do.

  I can’t keep going anymore I said to the dwarf pines. I’m freezing to death you see.

  No way they told me. Just carry on. Soon you will be in the old forest. The trees there have lived for hundreds of years. They know things. More than enough to help a wee lass to get home.

  Home. Was I going homewards. Then this was the wrong direction. The arms of the trees were at my back pushing me forward but they did allow me a little rest against a trunk.

  I used up the last seconds of battery power to phone john.

  I’m getting lost I said. Find me.

  A little later or if it was a long time later I glimpsed him between the trees. I had sat down under a fir as children do when they get lost in the forest. He made me stand and I tried to walk but my legs wouldn’t obey.

  You have to he said. He took off his hellyhansen and pulled it on me. It was like a dress and helped a little. He walked behind me and supported me until we reached a hill. All we must do now is get up here and then we will be there.

  Now I understood why we had never hunted here. The shallowest part of this one was as steep as the steepest rockface of afta hill.

  Let’s wait here for a bit I said. I must rest.

  You’ll just get cold again he said. Not far now. Focus on the fir seedlings they’ll give you handholds. I’ll be right behind you.

  Step by step. Heaving with my last strength I tipped myself over the rock edge and lay there in the moist scented greymoss. Before john got up I had a few seconds to catch my breath.

  Can you walk a little he asked and I said yes. When I tried to stand my legs went on strike again. They were trembling and folding under me. He crouched and told me to cling to his back. That way we crossed the last stretch and reached a cottage. Timberclad as it was it was hard to spot between the fir trees. Only thin trails of smoke from its chimney revealed that it was there.

  A pair of bunks one above the other. A table and a couple of chairs. A chest of drawers. A few shelves and a stove.

  I was lying in front of the stove. John was pulling bits of clothing over my head. I tried to help with numb clumsy fingers.

  My trousers stuck with suction to my legs as did my shoes to my feet. The cramp and the ache in my legs brought tears to my eyes.

  Moan if you must he said. These things have to come off somehow.

  The grip of the shoes loosened in the end. My stockings twisted like wet grass snakes. John rolled my trousers down and then my panties. I smelled of the burn.

  He rooted in the chest of drawers and found a pair of long woollen stockings and a military style vest. The cottage was warming up quickly. My clothes had been wrung out and hung up on backs of chairs. Now they were steaming. I wondered where we were.

  Whose cottage is it I asked but he didn’t answer. Kept carving chunks of meat of a dried reindeer leg and handed me every second one.

  I’ll fetch water he said. We’ll talk afterwards.

  It was thanks to the coldwell that people could live here he said later when we were sitting by the fire drinking very hot coffee.

  Who lived here I asked.

  Tinkers like me he said. I was born here.

  You I said. I was surprised. But surely you lived in eskilbrännström’s house when you were little.

  They took me in when I was four. My mother died when I was three. She died in that bed there he said. Dad lifted her into a cart and pulled it down to the chapel along another route that isn’t so steep. A couple of days later dad brought me down to the village. Before that day I had never seen people except for my parents.

  He walked to different houses to ask if anyone would want me.

  The people in the first house didn’t. Said they had too many already.

  The second house was yours. Your grandfather was having a meal in the kitchen. Your grandmother was cooking something. They would be paid my father said. He gave them what he could afford. So he sold me for a handful of coins and wandered off.

  I had a vision of the threeyearold. A little boy confronted with other people for the first time and left alone with father’s parents who had no decency to spare for their own children. It could only end one way.

  I didn’t want to hear anymore.

  You have no choice he said. But let’s sleep first.

  It was almost dawn.

  We were going to sleep in the bunk where john’s mother had died.

  Before falling asleep we spoke with each other. Nothing of what we said could ever be taken back.

  FORTY

  Rays of light were filtering in through the window.

  You said you were working in sundsvall I said. What was your job.

  I was an officer. At that time I was training recruits for the air force.

  Really. In the military. I’d never have guessed.

  What would you have guessed he asked. I didn’t know. Something to do with manual skills perhaps like being a joiner or chimneysweep. In any case if you were deaf in one ear so how were you even allowed to join up.

  How can you be so sure that petra isn’t your child. Children can be born early. Or late.

  I arranged for a paternity test. Petra is somebody else’s child but I decided to take care of her all the same. She doesn’t know he said.

  Christ I’m so fed up with all these stories I said. Why can’t anyone be normal just for once. And look normal. Say normal things.

  Like göranbäckström he said. For example I said.

  He got out of bed. Stirred the embers in the stove and got a fire going. His back was angry. His movements abrupt.

  Mentioning göranbäckström was trouble. I hadn’t thought about how I felt about him until now. But he actually was the perfectly normal guy without being altogether dull. A little too predictable and cocky but attrac
tive. Maria had thought so too.

  Wasn’t he in the crew when you went hunting he asked. Yes why do you ask.

  And you slept over as well. Why do you ask.

  He turned towards me.

  That’s how it started he said. In the hunt shed on a bunk. And in the byre in the hay. In the house on a bed. Even in church.

  With the minister I asked. Yes with that fucking man of god.

  There were eight of us who slept in the shed on the first day of the hunt I said. What are you saying.

  He backed down a little. Excessive anger drained from his eyes. I wasn’t maria even though I have done what she did. Hooked men and thrown them back to where they came from once the fun was over. Though there was no point in telling john now. He seemed calm but yesterday’s insanity still lurked beneath a fragile quiet surface. Like taking a shortcut across the ice in spring.

  Who were your parents I asked. Where did they come from.

  They were travellers as people say nowadays. Tinkers who moved from place to place and took on whatever odd jobs were going. Sold things. Where they really came from I never knew.

  But then how come they settled here and built the cottage.

  My father was allowed to buy the forest site from johanssons. They must have taken pity on us.

  So no one knows where this place is I asked. Except johanssons perhaps.

  It’s possible but I don’t think so. The oldfolk johansson died in the seventies. It was a long time before I found the way back. Nobody has ever come with me. Not even maria.

  Anyway you ended up in father’s family.

  That is so he said slurping coffee from a saucer.

  We were sharing a tin of baked beans to have something to eat with the dried meat.

  And you were just little.

  But I remember he said. My problem is that I never forget. When I arrived I was a child who had never been in a real house. Never seen other children. I stood in the kitchen looking. Surely with wide open eyes.

  Didn’t you have any brothers or sisters I asked.

  Yes two older brothers but they were grownups when I was born. I was a latecomer.