Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

Now she’s pushing the long-handled broom around the floor, bashing it into corners and along walls.

‘No, you really must stop all your yelping,’ she says, out of breath, ‘for there are other things to think about for a poor woman who from now on will have to steal around the moors like a common thief. I who was born here just as much as they were, Mum and Dad too for that matter, they wore themselves out in this spot for half their lives, and then the damned natives claim that I don’t belong here! No, our rubbish is clearly not as fine as their rubbish! Our forefathers have clearly not decomposed in the ground for as long as theirs! No, for we are bloody bandits from elsewhere, unwelcome, aliens!’

Ragna’s rage floods out into our small house, rises high and higher, it presses and roars in my ears so I can hardly breathe.

‘The moors that I have walked over since I was a little girl,’ she intones while she moves things, pushes things around, puts things away with great violence inside the kitchen. ‘My livelihood each and every autumn! From now on I’ll have to stand and watch them fill their pails — and they’ve the whole area to take from. The government will give them everything, yes they will, Johan says. As if it wasn’t just as much our refuse as theirs that nourishes the cloudberries! Let me tell you — they’ll just have to spit on me when I come, fetch their rifles too, I don’t care, at least I’ll die on my own moor!’

She interrupts herself with a fit of coughing, but goes on in a hoarse voice, ‘I’ve got to say it, but you keep quiet about it being said. Johan had with him a secret map of which families will take over the various areas here. And it’s not us, I can tell you that! You whine like a dog for food, but soon there won’t be any food around, for your further information! You ought to be ashamed of yourself and find out more about what’s happening instead — for we’re being ambushed!’

Suddenly she’s a lot less het up.

‘The right of disposition of the outlying areas, something like that, that’s the fine name they give to it. When our lease from the state expires, when the new master race decide things, then, then it’s all over and out with you too, you miserable worm.’

You miserable worm. She’s hardly even able to say the words. They come as a final kick from a woman already on the floor, completely exhausted and overpowered.

For one weak moment I’m capable of believing her. But I quickly realize that this is due to exhaustion and repressed fear. This sudden threat of a superior force and being shut out of the moors is nothing but a distortion of the truth: I’m the one who is going to be ousted, by a master race consisting of Johan and Ragna, and I’m the one who’s going to be subjected to a new regime — at the nursing home, to be precise.

The lie’s good. She almost believes it herself, and maybe there’s a hint of truth too. But the rage, all the force of the emotional outburst, is directed at me, and I’m quite certain that I was one of the victims of yesterday’s many conspiracies.

*

Just think if I was unfortunate enough to go on living down through the centuries in the form of a series of existences — first a sparrow, then a wasp, after that a tree, a birch, and then to become a dog, a beetle and a human being again. Instead of letting my soul remain here, which is my greatest wish, I would be diluted, spread out into all kinds of states in all kinds of places, and when I eventually return, this place and I would be strangers to each other. Nothing would be recognizable, no small stone or tree.

I bend down and fish out one of the books that is lying in the dust under the bed, to be specific one of the reference works in Home University , Vol. III, ‘Geography’. On the back cover I write, ‘Let me be spared from living several lives.’ And beneath, at the very edge of the margin, ‘Just let me fertilize the moors.’

In real life I’m a person made for permanent, eternal states. Marriage would perhaps have been the right thing for me. A connection and obligation for ever. For isn’t it the case that on the few occasions when I have left the house I immediately long to be back home? Every step, every metre I put behind me, I am distancing myself not only from home but from myself. I become roomless, hollow, without roof and walls. And as I turn round, the relief, the sight of the house, everything that step by step returns and becomes alive again. And when at some point on the way back I am reunited with myself and embrace my domestic happiness, I start to laugh. How long have I been away — five minutes?

To be quite honest, why all this talk about being composted in earth and moor? I who am never outside? Even Ragna is hardly outside the door for long periods. In the summer, the mosquitoes chase us indoors; in the winter, there is the cold and the wind.

When Ragna was young, she met a man from the south at a mountain cabin out on the plateau. Apparently he remarked that she was lucky to live in the midst of this magnificent scenery, that she certainly must have many fine outdoor experiences every single day. Ragna always grins when she tells the story, and I can well understand that: for us who are indoors most of the time, nature is simply something that takes place outside the front door — mosquitoes that come and go, and stunted birch trees that come into leaf in spring and shed their leaves in autumn. No, it’s nothing to get all spiritual about. It’s actually the house, my room, that I don’t want to leave, and I would rather rot under the floorboards than on the boggy moorland.

To be quite honest once again, why do I insist on this urgent need to stay put? On the radio I hear about people who have to leave their homes at great speed, their own country, people who disappear, vanish, fleeing across mountains, seas and dangerous borders. To escape threats and persecution. Chased away from their work, family, bed, the cup in the cupboard.

What have I got to lose? Nothing more than my own screwed-up existence. But even that is too dear, too good, to be abandoned.

Now that Ragna has become one of those who fear having to move, will she understand my wish to stay? Will we work things out, now that the threat of banishment has become part of her life? Will we become two sisters who fix each other’s hair and do each other’s nails? Will I hold out a skein of wool while she winds it into a ball?

Out with the ointment and antiseptic, bandages and plasters — we’re a little family with pus and pain in our cuts and scratches.

*

I dream that Ragna is standing by the seashore, on a beach with fine silver grains of sand, not unlike the shore of one of the lakes near here. She is standing on a large stone, warm in the sun, fishing with calm, slow movements, unaware that I am standing in deep water further out, waving to her.

‘Catch me!’ I implore her. ‘Haul me in!’

I signal as best I can, with my arms and hands. But Ragna goes on casting without getting any nearer to me, while her catch grows bigger and bigger: great heaps of cod and coley. I begin to tire of signalling to her, my feet are sinking deeper and deeper into the soft seabed, and large fish steal round my body, ready to attack at the slightest sign of weakness. Finally, though, there is a tug at my flesh, the hook has caught a firm hold of my neck, and at a furious speed I am pulled through the cold water. As I break the surface I feel a great happiness, a rush of joy. I am in familiar surroundings again, in the light, fresh air, where I can breathe and move freely. While I lie flopping on the ground, dizzy and happy, I suddenly notice Ragna’s scrutinizing eye. She picks me up in her fists, holds me tight towards the sun, evaluates, twists and turns me, bends my arms and legs and neck, stretches me out, and finally pokes a finger into my stomach. From the displeasure on her face, I am afraid that my body is too pale, too thin, too small, too odd, but before I have time to protest, she breaks my neck, twists it round and throws me down to the other fish.