Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

I know it, my fate’s already sealed, I’ll end up as food for mice, rats, birds and carrion. Soon I’ll be fertilizer for cloudberry moors — and what cloudberries! Pink heads, the German will think, the illicit picker, and pop the berry into his mouth. The mosquitoes will dance. The juice, the small pearls of moisture that make the German’s nose quiver, is nothing but molecules of my acidic corpse fluids that will soon mingle with his sweet blood.

In the midst of this whirl of thoughts, this picture of my future life, I get a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach: the rustling paper I’ve just heard — of course, it’s obvious, how could it be anything else? They’re planning to have me sent away, that’s what they’re doing, the cunning bastards. They must be writing the plan down, word by word, step by step, how it’s to be done. That’s why the Finns are here. Johan’s accomplices, his companions!

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.