Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

Will a memory like that save us, Ragna? Will it provide hope for a possible sisterliness?

I bang my head against the wall, confirm to myself that there can’t possibly be anything else but a hard, empty shell; I can’t think of anything apart from my relationship with Ragna. It’s always Ragna, little Ragna, big Ragna, difficult Ragna. And I know it makes me afraid, this recognition of the fact that I live through Ragna, so I have to pinch my flesh, bore my fingers into my chest, feel the thin blood vessels burst, see the juice ooze out into the skin, become blue, almost black stains.

But the physical pain seems like small scratches on a horny surface. I can’t burrow deep enough, far enough, never reach the very substance of our relationship. Our illness is too serious, the injuries too extensive, simply impossible to allow for a simple diagnosis. And admittedly I am completely inadequate to make such investigations. I lack the ability to put forward logical explanations and solutions. That’s why I move restlessly among memories, moods and impressions — and that’s why I can’t do anything other than taste, smell and feel our chronic sister inflammation.

*

Suppose that all these episodes and memories don’t exist, that there is no bitter enmity. Suppose that everything I experience is fabrication and daydreaming, and that now, tired of my notions, I am telling my story as it appears to a clear-sighted gaze — if there is such a thing as a gaze that sees clearly.

I will therefore make a tear, a hole in my life perspective, to search for a way to admit that what I experience is possibly neither correct nor true. I will be open to everything that streams out of this hole, open to thoughts that I live a quiet, simple life, a life without the dramas with which I tend to embellish every occurrence.

Can it be the radio that causes me to think in the way I have done? All these radio plays, voices that invade my room, it’s possible I can’t cope with them, their life stories, they lure me into believing concocted stories, into fabricating a problem from Ragna’s and my relationship.

But if I have an urge to rewrite, explain away, magnify everything that happens, what then? There aren’t any truths in the world anyway — well, apart from measurable facts such as length and content and mathematical formulae that no one in their right mind would question. I would argue that as long as emotions and impression and thoughts can’t be expressed in diagrams, it is natural to feel some uncertainty as to what the truth of one’s life resembles.

Even so, something inside me hacks away at these conceptions. A hacking that turns into a constant gnawing feeling of betraying myself no matter which conception I tend to favour. I think resignedly that I am adrift in a kaleidoscope of lies, while something inside me whispers that I can only obtain calm and certainty from examining the skeleton, the very marrow juice of the lies.

‘Suck the shit out of the bone,’ I say out loud to myself. ‘Spit it out. Let the final truth appear to your naked eye!’

All the truth I dig trembling out of the horrible and disgusting marrow .

I, horrible and disgusting, dig all the trembling truth out of the marrow .

Yet again. All this playing around and avoiding the subject, I shuffle insights as I shuffle words, change events by changing a comma. Everything becomes drafts and sketches, no matter how I twist and turn my life.

Finally, though, after much resistance, reluctance, disinclination, I ask the questions I have never posed before:

Can it be that I, the sick one, have given rise to impatience in Ragna because of my exaggerated gestures and unreasonable demands? Can it be that I, the helpless one, have bred the anger in her by making myself more pathetic than I am? And can it be that I, in my struggle to gain the inviolable position of victim, have forged and fashioned Ragna the violator?

Furthermore, can it be that I, after years of exaggerated care needs, have robbed her of the ability to think, to create a living, inner life? Can it be that I, the crippled one, have created a cripple — a mute, empty being?

Et cetera. Can it be that this urge towards untruths is not due to my painful experiences, my dejectedness, forsakenness, but that the lies rise up in me because of the sudden love relationship between Johan and her, that I paint as black a picture of both of them as I’m able because their love threatens my leisurely existence?

If that’s how it is. If that’s how it really is, the marrow can only be swallowed with the mouth held close round the hollow bone shaft, and only in the deepest abyss, in the black boggy soil, can I regurgitate the confession, hold it out:

I’m the one with horns, the one with goat’s eyes.

My god is oversensitive suffering. My gospels: illness and dependence. And my prayers: a constant yelping, mixed with moans and shrieks of pain.

Help me, anyone who can. I’m a woman on the periphery of all truths.

The room’s ice cold. The house completely silent. Not a puff of wind to be heard.

‘Ragna! I’m completely wizened with the cold!’

Ragna stands in front of me in the half-darkness, peering. Her eyes are heavy with sleep, her jaws clamped shut in a determined wish to be able to get back to bed.

‘What the hell are you whining on about? And in the dead of night?’

‘I’m so afraid, Ragna! I keep on thinking such weird thoughts!’

‘Then get some bloody sleep like any normal person and see if that doesn’t make all the madness disappear.’

Ragna is shivering and flaps her arms around her.

‘You must damn well pull yourself together. Waking me up for nothing at all, you deserve a good hiding!’ She hunches up even more, waves a clenched fist in my face.

I sniffle, but already feel better, almost relieved, the flickering of Ragna’s white skin in the dark room, her voice, her whole being confirm that I am alive, present in the same story that I have always concocted.

*

The days leap forward, almost colliding with winter. Suddenly we’re caught by crunching frost and all-engulfing darkness.

For me winter means sleep, I who am never out of the house. But at a certain point I’ve had enough. Through an indescribable tiredness I register the fact that I am scarcely able to distinguish myself from the bed and the dust, and as a reflex my will to live awakes and raises my body into a sitting position.

Hell’s bells, I think, shaking my head in confusion.

How could I contemplate sleeping when I should be investigating the plans being made for my own disappearance?

Johan is noticeably back. From the sounds I deduce that grabbing and grubbing are going on. The winter clearly does not reduce his enormous appetite. He greedily helps himself to whatever’s offered, whether it’s in the kitchen or in Ragna’s bedroom.

The long period of exile and the sudden awakening mean that I observe my surroundings with renewed interest. Among other things, I notice that Ragna has acquired many of Johan’s expressions and gestures. She openly picks her nose and has started to blink in the same way he does. Nor does she remove her scooter outfit when she comes indoors, just lifts off the top part and lets the arms dangle round her hips like empty pistol holsters. They both sway from room to room like this, ready to be off in a shot on the scooter. They’re clearly at the ready — in case something needs to be done in a hurry. But what?

I’ve got to admit, his company motivates me. No sooner does he cross the threshold than I start to crawl out of bed, make him aware of my presence by rattling my crutches a bit more than usual, and I totter back and forth in our corridor under the pretext of needing to train my muscles. The corridor isn’t long, no more than three metres, and I can’t manage many steps, perhaps sixteen a minute. But I can’t deny the party feeling that comes over me when I covertly observe his expression as I painfully slowly and tenaciously pass the kitchen door: he who knows that I know that I irritate him by my mere presence, that I am so cheeky and am doing this quite deliberately, and that he can’t do anything about it, except pretend that I don’t exist. He’s utterly annoyed. I’m maliciously delighted. That really pisses him off.