Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

‘Eat!’

The bread’s got no butter and the salami has evidently been lying around sweating on the cutting board for several hours. I don’t like salami, it’s pure bloody-mindedness to put it on the bread, what is she thinking of? The greasy piece of meat suddenly symbolizes all her inconsiderateness. She expects me, then, to go the entire evening without food, to sit quietly in my room with a raging hunger, to be thankful for anything at all. There’s no doubt that Johan is her main priority now, that she doesn’t think about anyone else but him.

‘That’s my chair.’

I stand at the worktop and with my crutch hit the chair Johan’s been sitting on all evening. I’ve shoved the plate right in front of him, between the bottles and the glasses. The Finns follow the situation with raised eyebrows and expressionless eyes, look first at me, then at Ragna and Johan. I hit the chair again. I’m so close I’m almost breathing down his neck, which folds into two thick sausages, so close that I notice the hairs sticking out from his shirt, the worn material over the meaty back. He sits motionless, his arms crossed on the table, doesn’t move a muscle.

‘I want to eat.’

To underline that I mean business, I raise one of the crutches, lower it slowly over the table and shift a liquor bottle that’s close to the plate, slowly remove the crutch and return the tip to the floor. I do it as slowly as I can and with strength I scarcely possess. My legs are shaking, I’m breathing heavily, but now I am showing I demand my right to the chair and a seat at the table. One of the older Finns, a dark bloke with green, close-set eyes, smiles slightly. This sets a chain reaction in motion: soon the upper lips of all three of them start twitching, a twisted grin they try to restrain so as not to provoke Johan.

And Ragna? Ragna has shrunk to a small girl, wringing her dry hands while glancing across at Johan, who now lifts his backside slightly in order to find a more comfortable position on the chair.

‘Ragna,’ he says calmly, almost gently, turning slowly towards her, ‘can’t you get that bloody nuisance out of here?’

Ragna looks around helplessly, unable to deal with the unexpected situation.

‘Johan,’ she begs, trying to appeal to something in him, perhaps to the words he has whispered into the pit of her throat in the heat of their embrace, words that have given her the sense of a bond between them, something so strong that it can cope with a certain amount of testing. She is about to say more, but Johan interrupts her.

‘Can’t you just ask her to stay away while there are people visiting? She embarrasses all of us.’ He pauses, looks questioningly at her. ‘Don’t you agree, Ragna?’

Ragna replies by tipping her head to one side and rubbing her eyes. Is it my previous episode with Johan that she is thinking of, when he flew out of the door in a rage?

‘Just get the hell out of here, Johan,’ I say before she has time to open her mouth. ‘And take these louts with you!’

I raise my crutch and point at the Finns, who glance irresolutely at each other. Johan lifts his backside uneasily, then settles it down into the seat of the chair once more.

‘Well I bloody never,’ he says, staring at Ragna. ‘Haven’t you thought of reacting in some way?’

But I’m the one who reacts, several seconds before Ragna manages to even think the thought. I bring the crutch down on the table with all the strength I possess, sweep it from side to side so that bottles and glasses and slices of bread fly off in all directions.

‘ Saatana! ’ one of the Finns shouts.

The table stands in the direct line of fire and the force of the explosion causes all those sitting there to fling themselves backwards. I bash the table with all the strength I possess, I strike and strike until I notice at one point in my fury that the crutch is bending. I’m injured, the crutch, my arm and foot are injured. I have to give up, step back. And at that moment I collapse on to the floor.

Ragna is standing close to the worktop, muttering, the Finns have squeezed into a corner by the door, but Johan stands at the table, self-assured, his feet well apart, his fists clenched.

I myself am lying in a jumble of crutches, arms and legs. I try to collect my body to orientate myself, to get up, but I’m rattling and clattering away worse than our old birch tree in a storm.

‘She’s frigging dangerous, Ragna. There’s more strength in the little monster than all of us put together,’ Johan says with contrived calm.

He goes over to Ragna, places himself in front of her.

‘I’m not staying here a minute longer than necessary,’ he says harshly. ‘Ragna, I am…’ He pauses, takes a breath to emphasize the force behind what he is about to say: ‘…sick, yes, that’s what I am, sick and tired of your sister, who exploits you and sucks the very life out of you.’

While he stands at the front door, waving to the Finns as a sign that it’s time to adjourn to his cabin, he concludes, ‘And the worst thing of all, Ragna, is that you let yourself be exploited, that you bloody well put up with everything.’

In Home University , Vol. II, ‘Earth, Plants, Animals’, in an empty space on page 76, I write down some sentences that occur to me early the next morning: ‘My sister’s a scavenger that secretly eats straw in bed, the man gives her bones to gnaw on, keeps her on a lead.’

*

‘Ragna! You’ve got to help me!’

I’m out of breath immediately, even a few words take their toll. I’ll just have to face up to the reality of the situation: yesterday’s physical exertions have drained whatever strength I had. I lie huddled up in bed and my voice sounds disembodied, a braying that can only arouse Ragna’s revulsion.

I’m in pain; I’m aching from my lower back right up to my neck. I couldn’t find a comfortable position during the night and when I pinch my leg it’s as if I’m doing so through a thick layer of material, my flesh hardly registers a thing.

Ragna has already been awake for hours and is rushing about noisily doing the housework with hectic intensity. While she washes clothes in the tub that she has placed on the worktop (my panties, she usually threads them on one hand while she rubs soap into the crotch with the other — anyone can see the stains in the white material, which means me, and sometimes Johan, and we have on more than one occasion sat in silence watching) she answers my shout by repeating her own self-defence time and time again.

‘You think we were talking about you, you conceited worm, but we were talking about far more important things!’ she says, while heaving the clothes out of the tub, pouring out the water, fetching the clothes horse.

I don’t answer, haven’t asked what they were talking about either, but when she was inside my room and threw clean clothes on my bed I suggested she was pleased with the plans made during the visit the day before.

‘You little beast, you’ve frightened Johan off,’ she replied harshly. ‘If you’ve any sense, you’ll do well to keep your trap shut.’ She then gave my bed a kick before disappearing out of the door.

After a while she starts talking to herself about something completely different, and from time to time, without my having said a single word, she calls out to me to shut up. Suddenly, she bangs the mop hard against the floor and exclaims, ‘The deliberate misrepresentations in this country — I won’t put up with it!’

She puts the washtub down so hard on the floor that the water splashes out.

‘Soon we won’t even be allowed to use the roads either, we’ll be hunted like stray dogs, the whole lot of us. That was what we were talking about yesterday by the way, for your information. And then you come along, with your noise and commotion, and make trouble!’