Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

‘Well, what are you waiting for? Eat! It’s cheese. And I’m busy!’

‘You don’t have to stand there,’ I say between bites. It’s difficult to chew, as I have hardly any saliva in my mouth after drinking much too little during the night.

‘I want to wash up before I leave. The worktop has to be clean and ready for when I get back with the hearts. I need the space before I hang them up in the cupboard.’

I chew and chew — it’s impossible to move the bread inside my mouth unless there’s enough saliva to soften it and send it down to my stomach. Ragna, wearing her outdoor clothes, now fidgets by the window, staring with clenched jaws at the heather outside, but I know that her attention is fixed on my mouth, which is trying to keep shut over my teeth and the bread.

‘Can I have a glass of milk?’ I say after finally managing to swallow.

Ragna rushes out the room, rattles with a glass and the milk jug, is back in an instant and sticks the glass right under my nose.

‘Drink!’

I have already taken another bite and my mouth is full of bread. I look beseechingly at her, point with a finger at the bulge in my cheek. She sighs impatiently, presses the glass against my lips, forces my mouth open and pours in the milk. I swallow and swallow. It’s not easy, for I have to make sure that the bread doesn’t slide against my palate. I grasp her hand to remove the glass, but at the same moment some crumbs tickle the back of my throat, the milk goes down the wrong way and I cough up the contents over her arm.

‘You monster!’

She slams the glass down on the bedside table and wipes her arm dry on the bedclothes.

‘I only want to help, but look what happens! Well, you’ll just have to manage on your own!’ She storms out of the room into the kitchen. I hear her rummaging around by the worktop and pouring coffee into a thermos flask with quick movements.

I pick up the lumps of bread from the bedspread and put them on the tray. I set about eating the rest of my breakfast. My chest is sodden, but I chew and chew and am about to drink the milk when she is back at my bedside again. She smiles and bares her teeth, then suddenly whisks the bread and milk glass out of my hands.

‘You’ve finished, that’s good,’ she says, and places the glass on the tray.

I sit there astonished, my hands as if frozen: the one hand without the glass, the other close to my mouth without the bread. I must look ridiculous, but I stay sitting like that while listening to the clinking of the glass and tray as she goes out into the kitchen, throws away the rest of the bread and washes up. Clink, clink, like faint bells.

And in an instant she is out of the door.

*

This is how any afternoon might develop:

Ragna is resting in her room, I am in mine. Maybe we sleep for half an hour before I need to pee. I lift aside the duvet as carefully as I can, almost without a sound, so as not to wake her. But there is no way I am able to avoid breathing, perhaps panting when I sit up in bed, stop my crutches from making a rattling noise when I place them on the floor, and I am unable to prevent my nightdress from swishing when I slide down from the bed and plant my legs on the floor. When I straighten up, there can be no doubt. The creaking and cracking from my limbs and my back tell anyone that I am purposefully moving across the floor in the direction of the toilet, and now only one thing counts: to get my body moving faster, to reach a speed that can guarantee me a swift meeting with the lavatory seat well before Ragna picks up my movements. But despite all my exertions, I know from the faint rush of air across the back of my neck that the same thing as always is happening: Ragna will get there just before I do and, before I have time to protest, she will be inside the toilet and have shut the door behind her.

(This is all Ragna knows about waiting for something from a hole:

Lying on a frozen lake with a line and with one eye on the ice hole, nice and warm in a scooter outfit and on a reindeer fur. Soon the char will come, prime and plump and, within half an hour, it will take the hook. She waits, preening herself from sheer pleasure, jiggles the line a bit, maybe drinks a cup of coffee; she’s waiting for the fish that’s sure to come, large and red, inching its way towards the ice hole, her ice hole, smooth and deep. The water surges and falls, a cloud drifts past, Ragna squints at the sharp winter sky and then there is a sudden jerk on the line, the fish is caught and now it is pulled up and out of its wet hiding place. Ragna smiles and seizes it by the gills, thinks of the frying pan back home as she breaks its neck — the fish, half-dead, floundering on the grainy ice; soon gutted and gleaming with fat.)

I stand outside the toilet door; heavy with a thousand lakes and ten thousand char, help me, jig, jig, there’s no time to lose, the ice hole is about to burst, run over, cascades of water and landed fish!

‘Ragna! Why have you locked the door?’

‘Because I want some peace, you simpleton!’

‘Yes, but I need to pee first!’

‘No, I’m in here right now!’

‘Ragna!’

‘That’s exactly why I lock the door, otherwise I can’t get any peace!’

The water surges and falls, surges and falls, a thousand rivers feeding the lake, which fills up, drips and gurgles and flows. I can’t walk, can hardly stand, can’t sit down, can’t lie down. I am locked, motionless, and if I move at all, the water will overflow and drown all life.

‘Ragna, open up!’

I lean cautiously against the door without moving my feet and lower body, place an ear against the wood. What is she up to?

From the sound of the cistern I can make out Ragna’s intermittent low breaths, small light grunts that tell me she is straining. It must be all the meat she’s eaten recently, mince from the innards she cooked the other day.

I give her a little time, try to think of other things, hoping the water will recede. It has to be a mild summer’s day, yes, I’ll think of a mild summer’s day, one with the washing hanging out, white and clean, billowing in the light breeze to the humming of the mosquitoes, the rustling of the birch trees, the babbling and trickling of the stream…

‘Ragna! Get a move on!’

I hammer on the door with my crutch.

That sound inside, is she laughing? I place my ear against the door again. It’s seething and bubbling in her throat, now she’s letting go, and her laughter lets rip in the tiny room.

‘Ragna! Ragna!’ she mimics with a distorted voice. ‘Ragna! Get a move on!’

All I can do is stay calm, I say to myself. Don’t think of anything. Don’t get upset. With these words I slide into a state of patience, and I manage to wait, for some seconds, yes, even a couple of minutes perhaps. Until I hear the sound of running water. Ragna has flushed and is now turning the taps on. She whistles loudly while letting the water run. There’s no tune to it, just an echo of her hollow interior at an assumed cheerful register.

The dam gives way under the pressure and the water gushes out. It happens in a moment, but I have time to notice this dual feeling pass through my body: the pain of holding it back, the relief at finally letting go. At the same instant, I am stricken with intense sadness, the tears well up, but maybe it’s the relief and not the pain, or both, but I cry and leave off, cry and leave off — it’s lovely and it’s sad, it’s good and it’s bad — I cry at myself and Ragna’s gurgling laughter, at her hidden rage in every single gasp, and I cry at what is about to come — her vocal cords that will whip and lash when she discovers what misery I have caused out here in the corridor.

*

And this is how many of our mornings turn out: