Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

‘Johan, you prick!’ she shouts. ‘Hurry up, will you?’

But, unlike the sharp tone of voice she uses with me, she talks to Johan with playfulness and laughter in her voice.

Johan swears and curses in there, rummages around with clothes and paper, and when he finally comes out, sweaty and all worked up, it quite often happens that he flies straight at her.

‘Bloody woman,’ he sometimes says, and drags her off to the bedroom for punishment and an encounter with his dipstick. Accompanied all the time by Ragna’s laughter — ecstatic, gleeful.

And then the sounds of them die away, plugged and shut out by the wine-bottle corks I press against my ears. Sealed off in my hermetic universe, I still sense the bitter sweetness of the wedding wine, and hear the hatred inside me that rushes back and forth incessantly, redder and bloodier than the thin liquid that squeezes through my veins.

*

Johan is seldom — practically never — inside my room. And now that I spend all my time in bed, he is virtually invisible to me. Although we do sometimes catch sight of each other when he passes down the corridor, on his way to the bedroom or the toilet. From time to time, when I’m in form, I sometimes bend forward a little and turn my head precisely when I hear him coming. For a brief instant, we let our eyes rest on each other, but I always take care to pull myself quickly back with a short, derisive clatter, well before he can pretend anything, and before he can bore through me with that murderous look of his:

Stupid cowardly Johan with his voice, forcedly good, pretends first that I am nothing, afterwards kills the crutch woman with his look .

First I the crutch woman am nothing, afterwards I kill stupid cowardly Johan, pretend nothing with my look, my voice .

The sentences just work. I’ve achieved the meaning I wanted. At last I can once more carry on my most precious occupation: lie on the pillows and twist the world exactly as I like.

*

‘Well, sister, and how do you like your life as a newlywed?’

For several days, Ragna has been attacking the house with cloth and water along the walls and skirting boards and ceiling. Now she’s standing on a stool in my room with her arms in the air, rubbing the cloth quickly back and forth over some black stains just above the bed where I am lying dozing under the duvet.

‘None of your business,’ she groans.

‘Well, you’re enjoying it, aren’t you? I can’t remember when the house has ever been so clean.’

‘You’re being cheeky and sarcastic, I refuse to answer.’

‘There’s life in the old bitch yet, it would seem. Perhaps there’ll be children, you know, from a second biblical Sarah? Small Johans and small Ragnas crawling around and peeing all over your newly washed floors?’

Ragna turns round suddenly and flings the cloth into the bucket so the water splashes everywhere. But I can’t stop myself.

‘Johan’s clearly working away at it, though, isn’t he? I mean, that’s what he’s devoting practically all his energy to at the moment, wouldn’t you say?’ I send her a questioning look.

Ragna jumps down from the stool with a crash, leans over me and shakes her fist.

‘Shut up, you whiny old cow! You’re just jealous — you’ve hardly any juices worth stirring in your carcass!’

She dries her forehead, breathes heavily. Black sweat stains have spread out under her armpits. Ragna has never liked spring-cleaning, but she always keeps going till she’s finished, room by room, with an untiring zeal. Now she takes the bucket with her and leaves the room with a taut neck and a clenched fist that she bashes into the door frame.

‘She’s on the mend, the old hag,’ she calls out from the kitchen.

Johan makes approving noises in his throat, though absent-mindedly, as he’s playing patience.

Home University , Vol. IX, ‘Health, Welfare, Economy’, on a white area near the end of the book: ‘No juices, eh? I see, I see. I’ve turned sour on old bile, vomit and repressed body fluids. What can one do about that? Well, a man’s pure medicine of course. No, thanks all the same. I’ve seen the side effects: loss of wits and control. I’d sooner turn sour and end up a foul-smelling troll.’

*

Johan and Ragna’s married life has made me wonder about the relationship between man and woman. Or rather, what such a life can do to a woman, and even more precisely, how the relationship has changed Ragna. The trance-like clashes that end with the infiltration of Johan’s sexual organ into hers, all the beast-like sounds she utters during the act, that’s one thing — she who has always hated my instinctive nature, who wants to discipline all my sudden whims. But what really surprises me is that Ragna, this obstinate, unaffected woman, more and more frequently is transforming herself into a two-headed non-independent We.

‘Ragna,’ I might call out in the afternoon, ‘what are we having for dinner?’

‘There’s blood sausage with sugar.’

‘But Ragna, that’s not the sort of food either of us likes to eat!’

‘We’ve already decided what’s for dinner. You’re going to have to eat the same as us!’

‘All that blood makes me constipated!’

‘Stuff and nonsense! We don’t notice anything!’

Or: ‘Ragna, what on earth? All that noise in the middle of the day?’

‘We’re listening to a music programme on the radio!’

‘That’s not at all like you!’

‘None of your business, you jealous bitch. We like it a lot!’

Or: ‘Ragna, will you remember to return my books to the library? And perhaps borrow some new ones?’

‘Well, no. I mean, we’ve got lots and lots of other things to think about.’

‘But can’t you split up for a bit? So you can do your own errands?’

‘No, we don’t feel like doing that at all!’

Over the years, I’ve had a great deal to find fault with regarding Ragna’s particular nature: her stubbornness, her fiery temper. But these characteristics have also represented her strength: the raw force that has enabled us to cope on our own in this home. Ragna still asserts her ideas with vehemence; she is not afraid of picking a fight with Johan and defending herself and her opinions. But in spite of that, We is the strongest party in the relationship — when anything is asserted from that perspective, they turn gentle and tractable as kittens, both of them. A crackdown is launched on the one who lets this third party down, the one who tries to break and take a different tack. For that reason, it isn’t hard to imagine what they talk about in the kitchen, all the comments and arguments aimed to stabilize the holy We alliance.

‘Why aren’t you concentrating, Ragna?’

‘I was just thinking I ought to take the chamber pot away from under my sister.’

‘We’re in the middle of a game of cards. You’re not her bloody slave, can’t it wait?’

‘That’s true, Johan, we’ll play until one of us wins.’

Or: ‘What am I to do, Johan? She’s wearing me out. And you never help me either.’

‘It would be bloody marvellous if the two of us lived here alone.’

‘Yes, Johan, and we will someday, you’ll see.’

Or: ‘How about a ride on the motorbike?’

‘My sister’s still not quite well yet. I ought to be here and take care of her.’

‘I’m so bloody fed up. You can’t go on behaving like this. Soon you’re going to have to choose. It’s us or her.’

‘Relax. Obviously I’ll choose us!’

*

One afternoon I have a dream that’s so strange I wake up with a start. The images are unusually clear, the experience so vivid and strong that I go on lying there with a wide-open, fixed gaze until it gets dark.