Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

The doors slam shut once more, the windows close. Something falls, heavily — well, it’s my own sudden freedom lying mangled at the top of my stomach. My eyes whirl, but I straighten up. What was I thinking of, no, I’ll never let myself be carried away like that again.

The men sit down at the table once more. Johan fetches a new bottle and fills the glasses. The conversation about this and that lags a bit. The mood is clearly somewhat strained. The choir give Ragna insecure looks and pretend not to see me.

I’m still standing in the corner, fiddling with my crutches, my back straight, head raised, but can’t help longing for my duvet and bed. The letter, Ragna’s treachery, and now the outrage in front of the choir — how much am I actually expected to be able to put up with?

Ragna shows signs of wanting to take control of the situation. The muscles in her neck tense and she tries to catch everyone’s eye. But when she finally opens her mouth she doesn’t start to talk about me, doesn’t say a thing about her resignation, all the hard work, how difficult I am. No, she explains away again. Once more we get our story, disguised as a struggle between her and the new master race.

‘We’re native population too!’ she says, thumping the table. ‘We’ve lived here for ages, yes, generations of our forefathers have!’

‘Yes, you bloody well have,’ the choir say in unison, gazing down into their glasses of Johan’s home-distilled hooch.

‘And they want to ride slipshod over us — want more rights, ownership of water and the outlying areas. They’ll want to own the sea next!’

‘It’s too bloody bad,’ say the choir, taking another swig.

‘We’ve got to stand together against the new master race. We’re just as much natives as they are!’

‘Sure, sure!’

‘You’ve got to find allies as best you can — before you know where you are, they’re outside the door, come to haul you out of your own home!’

‘Bloody liberty!’

‘They’ll simply have to conform, the whole damn lot of them!’

‘Yeah, are you crazy!’ say the choir, banging down their glasses.

‘Hey, Ragna, have you completely forgotten?’ I say, crawling out of the corner.

I’m multi-armed, many-legged, stop with my sting vibrating right in front of her. The choir and Johan start, trying to chase away a sudden foreboding.

I begin to hum quietly, possibly inspired by the choir, but I have my own quite specific reasons.

‘Forgotten this song?’ I look questioningly at her, open my mouth wide and emit a few notes in an unsteady voice. ‘You used to sing it a lot when you were young and still had a bit of flesh on you, didn’t you?’

The choir and Johan look uncertainly at each other.

‘Yes,’ I go on. ‘You knew it off by heart, and that’s not so strange, for you spent a lot of time with the natives here back then — wasn’t it their song, paying homage to their own history?’

Johan fidgets uneasily.

‘Damn it, what’s all this crap she’s talking about, Ragna? Can’t you get the hag off to bed so we can celebrate our wedding in peace?’

‘Give it a break!’ Ragna shrieks uncertainly.

‘Give? If we’re going to talk about giving, we ought rather to talk about you, dear Ragna. You’ve given one thing and another to the new master race. Do you think I didn’t see you through the window here when we were young? They ran after you through the undergrowth, their pricks in their hands, as horny as hell, every man jack of them.’

‘What’s the pike-fish trying to say?’ Johan’s got up and is standing menacingly beside the table.

‘All I’m saying is that Ragna has supported the new master race in her own very special way, under the warm skins, and ever since she was young. Not many of the natives have escaped her insatiable appetite for men!’

*

Home University , Vol. IV, ‘History of the World’, at random, somewhere in the margin: ‘The sting location swelled up quickly. Deadly poison pumped into each and every cell. The victim collapsed in vomiting fits and cramps, but the antidote was quickly injected by those at the scene.

‘Condition now stabilized. The poisonous vermin neutralized and carried back to its stinking cave.’

The bed embraces me, warm and soft, no one else in the world receives me in the same way — unconditionally loving and passing no judgement on my actions. I sink, fall down, but in the depths of its embrace I lie there tossing and turning between Ragna’s accusations and my own defence, restless, both when dreaming and awake.

As soon as I trickle into consciousness from a moment’s rest, I’m back at our trial just by registering the green dress against my skin. Was it the wine or pure malice? Or was it the actual mixing of wine and malice that produced the poison? That is how Ragna will argue and attack me. My anxiety and righteous indignation, yes, all my reasons for reacting do not exist in her repertoire of causes and explanations.

*

Johan’s wedding night hammers against my eardrums. Is he punishing both Ragna and me? The chest of drawers rattles noisily against the wall at regular intervals.

I pull out two wine-bottle corks from my dress pocket that with foresight I had taken from the kitchen worktop. I try to stick them into my ears. They’re too big and fall out; I’ve no other choice than to press them with both my hands against my head, hold them there, wait for the wedding night to be over.

Do hours pass? Days? I roll back and forth in the bed, green, poisonous, threatened with extinction.

Shame and desecration. The wedding meat is rotting on the dinner plates. In the glasses the wedding wine is coagulating. Did they cut the wedding cake and receive a small taste of their future happiness?

Ragna’s face, the men’s look, they appear before me at regular intervals in the darkened room. I flounder around in images from the dinner and the evening, feel lonelier and more abandoned than ever before. Even the words have gone; after jotting down my last note the books lie untouched under the bed. Possibly I can find something or other behind an old, dried-up thought, something I can scrape off and put in my mouth. But everything tastes dry and lifeless, nothing like the small sweets that make your saliva run.

*

It’s early morning, the mauve tinge across the sky tells me. The dearth of words, my sleepless trial, open up a couple of memories that gradually refuse to leave me. Or have they emerged as an outcome of conscience, a desire for restitution? How else can a memory of youthful innocence assume Ragna’s face and name?

I don’t write anything, I detect traces of the stories along the floor, walls and windowpanes, they stretch out of their own accord, on the headboard, the alarm clock, a small figurine, only to pale and vanish once more.

Ragna, the window states. Ragna had a lovely gleam to her hair, oh yes, it flamed and burned among the green of the bushes and trees, that was what he had said the first time they met. She told me that immediately afterwards, excitedly, about his look, his voice when he spoke. Yes, she would go on and on about it for weeks and months, but to herself, in front of the mirror, in her bed before falling asleep, but always close enough for me to be able to pick up the words.

Her breath smelt strange, and I didn’t like her clammy hand against my skin when she sat down on the side of the bed and told me how much in love she was; he was so kind, he had bought her a coffee at the café, and when they went outside to wait for Dad, who was doing the weekly shopping, he lent her his scarf. He was also funny; he had started to sing and laugh and nudge her as time passed and the biting north wind froze her hands and feet.