Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

Time is spent in bed, as before, except that the mattress here is hard and resists when my body presses against it. I miss sinking into soft pillows, and I miss my daydreaming; I pass nearly all my time lying with my eyes half-closed, peering, turning a bit every now and again, and without all that many thoughts in my head. I know that I ought to be up training, get hold of my crutches, take the few steps over to the door, perhaps as far as out into the attic room and over to the stairs. I was eager to begin with, but then I was still full of hope of an imminent reunion with my former life on the ground floor.

I have also raged and created havoc around me; occasionally I scream horribly and bang my crutches against the furniture and the wall. Ragna and Johan then react with stillness, whispers, and the pent-up laughter stops completely. But the stillness never lasts for all that long, they’re too happy in their newly won freedom. I can see them in my mind’s eye, sitting at the kitchen table when it happens; looking at each other and praying silently that they can last out: sooner or later these terrible attacks of rage of mine must come to an end. If not, surely they would have come up here, seen how I was doing, blessed me with some water and some care?

No, nothing’s as it should be. This violent shifting between surges of strength and exhaustion, I don’t understand it; sometimes I am consumed by a fuming rage, and this despite my insane thirst and my physical state. The surges of strength come suddenly, I’ve no idea from where, but it’s probably natural they start to grow in intensity every time I think of what’s happened — that I’ve been dumped and forgotten by both of them. It starts as a slight tingling sensation, a touch of resentment; perhaps I feel the longing for Ragna’s hands. But the surges increase under the heavy weight of everything that has created my screwed-up life. And they grow even stronger and more violent when I think of what Johan has set in motion.

At some point or other it’s as if I lose all control, and it’s difficult to say if the surges come from inside or outside me. Everything is seen from the outside, I am reduced to an observing eye, I stare at myself and my actions, matter-of-factly, neutrally, from a place in the corner here. I see myself arch my back, I see my arms, the muscles quiveringly taut, and then I see myself thrust forward with my feet, lift my body with my lower legs, my thighs, hold myself upright on powerful legs. And in this way I stand in bed, like a mountain, and roar.

Yet what surprises me most is not the surges of strength or the lower body that in an instant starts to function. No, it’s what happens the following morning or night, or perhaps just a few hours later (what do I know about the cycle of day and night in this eternally burning light?). Twice it’s happened, and on both occasions after an attack: I wake up and discover that the furniture is not in the same condition as before, or rather, the furniture that I smashed, destroyed during the attack, all the discarded things that I pulled out of boxes and suitcases in the attic room outside — they’re gone, every single thing has been removed and tidied away. There’s not a strip of paper to be seen, not a trace of splintered wood, not a scrap of razor-sharp glass shattered into a thousand fragments visible anywhere.

The last time I lay down on the floor, I even sniffed, smelt, examined things; bored my eye down into every single crack along the length of the floorboards. A grain of dust, a strand of hair, a little dirt here and there, oh yes, but not the trace of the mirror or the washbasin that I had just smashed to pieces. The mirror dust, the millions of small mirror particles, ought to have been winking up at me in the light, glittering in brief flashes and all the colours of the rainbow. But the floor was swept clean of all traces of my outburst. Only the wall where the washbasin and mirror had once hung confirmed what had happened. Yes, that’s right, it’s absolutely true — I stood up and went over to that corner of the room, on my own legs, surely and steadily. And I bashed my crutches against the porcelain and the glass until everything was in ruins around me. The turned-off water taps that now jut out into the room, the marks on the walls from the crutches, there can be no other explanation: it’s true that the washstand and the mirror have been here, and it’s equally true that every little piece of them has gone.

True?

If I sucked the marrow from my bones and spat it out, the very core of my innermost being, then perhaps completely different truths would be revealed, come gleamingly to light. It is all fantasy, a product of my endless life in bed, lost in aimless daydreaming as I always am. Daydreams with night in them and with nameless moons and planets as homes for a mind that’s gone astray.

But I fear the worst, that which is worse: that I am dying and approaching final annihilation, yes, that I’m in the middle of an apocalypse, in its shining, swelling nucleus.

I ought to be prepared. I’ve always been aware of the fact that sooner or later it will happen. I am, in spite of everything, someone who has lived at the furthest extremities of life, and I experience these extremities daily, inside the walls of this house. The lopsidedness of the chair, the dull sheen of the glass, the fatigue in everything and everyone, I have constantly observed the frailty, visible proof of the fact that nothing ultimately endures in the struggle against the forces of destruction. Disintegration, cessation — I’ve lived with the threat every single day: death quivering in a cup, in a step, in a single action, in the slightest movement. The things around me and I have realized that death can come at any moment, just a wrong step, a small slip, and the cup is broken and I am gone. It’s got nothing to do with my helplessness, my dependence on crutches, but is simply due to the unpredictability of death.

*

So perhaps things have come to this: I am perhaps close to annihilation, while they sit downstairs enjoying their coffee. It’s unbearable, for Johan is sure to be squirming in pleasure on the chair where I ought to have been sitting, and munching away at cakes I ought to have been eating. And Ragna, who ought to have been busy nursing and caring, is probably sitting there right at this moment, flaunting herself with her blouse open and her breasts bared. It is shameful how they are enjoying good food and each other while I’m left lying abandoned and unsure whether I am alive or dead. And just to make it quite clear once more, I still do not want to be among the dead.

So what else is left to me other than to rage: bang on the floor with my crutches, shout out their names, yell the filthiest words I know, and finally smash the chair and bedside table. But no matter how much racket I make, no matter how much I hammer and wreck the place, it will only ever be a faint clinking compared to the noise of the rage that thunders deep down within me. And once again I end up just as uncomprehending, confused at what later happens: the scraps of wood that made up the bedside table are gone, as are the remains of the chair — there’s not a splinter left. So now the room is empty and completely clean, and all that’s left is me and the bed. But of course we are also inseparable, forever bound to each other.

*

I seep and trickle, murmur like a tiny stream at the bottom of life. I get the idea of undressing, folding my clothes neatly, placing them on the pillow, going out into the small streak of water, dipping my head into the silvery liquid and quenching my thirst on the very last vestiges of life inside myself.

Maybe I ought to just stay lying like this, motionless, let the water run into my eyes, nose, fill my mouth, lungs, lie and let my thirst be quenched, and then trickle away, become part of the water, gleaming and transparent: the ultimate confirmation of my invisible life.