Ane Riel - Resin

It’s hard to talk to someone when you can’t say what you want. Especially when the person you’re talking to doesn’t say very much, whether they’re your mum or your dad or your invisible twin brother. I think that’s why I loved reading aloud to Mum so much.

That way I could be sure that I still could. Speak, I mean.

But I still wasn’t allowed to mention certain things. And outside the bedroom I was expected to be quiet the whole time so that no one would hear me.

So it seemed odd that Dad sent me down to the main island alone, given how scared he was that someone might see me. He said the same thing every time: For God’s sake, don’t let anyone see you. And don’t tell your mum that I’m not with you.

I didn’t understand why God, who we didn’t believe in anyway, kept getting mixed up in everything. And it made even less sense that Dad stayed at home and looked after the things rather than coming with me so he could watch out for me . I didn’t work out until later that he was even more scared than I was. Of all sorts of things, I think. A little bit like Carl.

And there was another thing I had started to wonder about. Carl had started to feel pain at night, in the darkness. When we walked home across the Neck and our feet got blisters. Or on the night we burned our hands on a wood-burning stove in someone’s living room. Or the night we bumped into an old steel sink someone had leaned against a wall.

Carl had really hurt himself. And I had bled. And perhaps I had hurt myself a bit too.

I was starting to think that the darkness probably couldn’t hold much more pain, and so the pain had to stay inside Carl and in me. The darkness was full to bursting with pain. Just like our house.

Perhaps Dad could feel it too. Perhaps he was also hurting in the dark. But perhaps he didn’t think that I was. And I didn’t know how to tell him.

The body that came out of the salt was totally different to the one I saw disappear into it. My baby sister, who was very small to start with, had grown even smaller. She was so thin, so thin. But perhaps that was what happened to you if you didn’t eat for a month? I wondered whether the same thing might happen to Mum, if she tried it.

Dad put her on the workbench again. It was still very dark from the blood that had run out of her last time – through the quilted blanket and into the wood. There was also a big dark stain on the floor. Now there wasn’t a drop left in her; exactly as he had hoped.

We needed the oils and the resin now. My job was to melt clean resin on the camping stove outside the workshop. I used the saucepan from the pub. The resin must be liquid, Dad said. Not boiling, just liquid. When I came inside with my first batch he had smeared my baby sister in oil. One of the big bottles of grapeseed oil was almost empty, and she lay glossy on the workbench.

I thought it was nice that there was no more blood and that he had closed up the hole in her stomach. He took the saucepan from me and poured liquid resin all over her, and afterwards he spread it with a brush, making sure to cover everything.

He did it very carefully, just like when he drew, and although she was very small and skinny she suddenly looked quite beautiful as she lay there. My baby sister. I so wished that she wasn’t dead.

He had put out a stool for me so I would have a better view of everything. It was strange because, in one way, I wanted to run away – to run upstairs and hide in the bedroom with Mum or outside to hide in the container with Carl.

In another way, I wanted to stay on the stool and watch everything. Be there with Dad.

It was just as well that I was there because he really needed me now. My, oh my, did we use a lot of gauze. I handed him one roll after another and he wrapped my baby sister in it. He started with her tiny feet and continued all the way up over her tiny head so her whole face disappeared under narrow strips of thin fabric. No air must get to the skin, he explained.

When she was finally swaddled from head to foot I thought that we had finished. But no. He just poured more resin over her, and then it was back to the gauze. And so we carried on until Dad finally said that he thought it was enough.

And then he did something that took me completely by surprise. He fetched a drawing. A new drawing. And this although it was a long time since I’d seen him draw anything at all. This one was different from his other drawings because it was made with black ink on a thin wooden sheet. He held it up so that I could see it. ‘Do you think it looks like her?’ he asked.

I didn’t, as it happens, seeing as she had grown so skinny and was now wrapped in all sorts of things. But it looked like her right before she drowned in salt.

I nodded.

‘We’ll place it on top of her face, so we can always remember what she looks like inside.’

Dad put the drawing in place and attached it with more gauze along the sides. Then he took a big piece of canvas and wrapped it around her. It was quite incredible how much she was wrapped up. He also cut an oval hole in the canvas over her head so that you could see the drawing.

Now my baby sister looked like one of those wooden dolls that fit one inside another. We had once found some in a living room in Vesterby. Only ours was bigger and there was only one little girl inside.

Finally she was placed in the tiny coffin Dad had made for her. I had heard him sawing and hammering and planing and sanding while I was sitting in the container.

I had started spending a lot of time in the container, even if there was no sign of strangers turning up. Come to think of it, no strangers ever called these days, except for the postman, who would pull up by the barrier and get out of his car to put our letters in the post box. I was, of course, extra careful about hiding around the time when he usually called. I could see him through the holes. Even though he was far away – so far away that he was only a small man dressed in red – I was sure that he looked up at the house and at the three small holes in the container every time. I always held my breath and sat as quiet as a mouse until he had driven off again.

But even when the postman had been and gone, Dad would still whisper for me to be careful. The postman might come back, he said. Or other people might spot me and take me away.

In time he only made a sound – a hiiiiish – which meant I had to hide quickly.

I guess I could have stayed with Mum in the bedroom. I would probably have been able to find a place to hide or made one for myself, if I moved some stuff around. But the container was better, Dad said, because no one would ever think to look there. I got the impression that he would rather I wasn’t with Mum, and I couldn’t understand why.

Perhaps he was scared that I might let something slip.

In the end it was easier just to stay in the container with Carl and look out of the holes towards the gravel road. I could tell Carl everything, but he didn’t stroke my hair like Mum, and I couldn’t really cuddle him. Luckily, I had found a big brown teddy bear in a box. It was a little scruffy, but nice to touch. I could cuddle that.

Whenever I needed to touch something that touched me back I would take one of the rabbits from the house with me into the container. The rabbit felt soft and warm when it moved under my hand, and the feeling gave me sunshine in my tummy. And yet I was terrified. Terrified that Dad might notice, because he had told me that the rabbits must stay in the house. They might make a noise in the container.

When I sat in the darkness, looking out of the holes, I would get very scared at the thought of anyone coming. And yet whenever a movement down by the gravel road turned out to be a rabbit or a fox and not another human being, I got a little bit disappointed. I couldn’t understand why.