Gøhril Gabrielsen - The Looking-Glass Sisters

‘To get rid of me.’

‘Pull yourself together. What are you babbling about?’

‘I won’t do it. I’m not moving!’

‘Open the door, damn it!’ she says, shaking the handle.

‘Those men,’ I try to say, placing my mouth close to the wood. ‘You’ve fetched help,’ I whisper softly.

Ragna kicks the door. Her voice is sharp.

‘What the hell are you talking about? These are Johan’s mates from Finland!’

‘Finland? They’re from the nursing home.’

‘Are you ill? Unlock the bloody door.’

‘You don’t fool me.’

She kicks the door again in reply and steps away, then starts talking to Johan. I place my ear up close. There’s something that doesn’t seem right. I can hear Ragna and Johan heatedly discussing things, but without any interruptions from the three men, who are standing talking a language there’s no mistaking.

‘Ragna,’ I say, banging on the door. ‘Ragna! Who are these men?’

Ragna comes back and places her mouth close to the door.

‘They’re from Finland, like I just told you. They’re old workmates of Johan’s. They’re here to put up a house for a building company and he’s invited them over.’

Ragna’s furious, so furious that what she says must be true. Het up and confused, but also suddenly frightened about the consequences of having insisted something else was going on, I turn the key in the lock. Ragna heaves at the door before it’s fully open. Her jaws are clamped shut, and if we’d been on our own she’d have hit me now, as she passes me. Johan follows immediately behind. He’s really mad and he hurries after her into the kitchen. The Finns are clearly at a loss. They stand there, stamping their feet and spitting on the ground. I quickly register that two of them are Johan’s age, perhaps because of their weight, but the other one, a scrawny little bloke, must be a bit younger. Johan calls to them and waves them in. They enter reluctantly, distrustfully, nudging each other when they discover me up against the wall in the corridor.

‘Jee-zus,’ one of them mutters as they pass.

Ragna makes pancakes, the smell filling the house; a thin film of moisture now covers my bedroom window. I lie on my bed, listening to what’s taking place out there — Ragna and Johan, who are having guests for the first time. Conversation is halting, reduced to short sentences and words of one syllable, and I assume — since I can’t see them from the bed — full of facial expressions and gestures.

Laughter comes easily. It takes only a word or two for loud guffaws to hit the wall. I smile indulgently, think that it would hardly be as amusing if I weren’t in the next room, that they are idiots and charlatans who are trying to outdo each other showing off.

The noise level increases: the sound of sizzling from the frying pan, the clattering of plates and cutlery being laid out, feet shuffling, chairs scraping against the floor, huffing and puffing, hands that grip and let slip. I’ve never heard a racket like it. I shut my eyes, transform the sounds into pictures so that I can more easily follow what is going on out there, search for a reason for the visit: Finns, what are they doing here, when it comes to it?

‘Can I invite you men to partake of some rather decent firewater?’ Johan asks.

‘ Vitun hyvää ,’ the Finns answer.

The cork is rolled off the bottle with a flat hand in a rapid movement, it’s easy to hear. It falls to the floor and rolls round. Cupboards are opened, glasses set out, drinks poured. There is much swilling and toasting, clearing of throats and contented sighing.

Ragna approaches the table, the men grab their cutlery, stick forks haphazardly into the pile of pancakes.

‘ Helvetin hyvää ,’ says one of the Finns with his mouth full.

‘ Helvetin hyvää ,’ the two others agree, and toast Ragna and Johan.

After the meal, the men dig out a pack of cards. While they try to agree on a game and on rules, Ragna disappears unnoticed into her room. Through the thin wall I hear her pulling out a drawer; it must be the bottom one, for now she’s lifting the lid off the white box.

My heart hammers with shame and anxiety on my sister’s behalf. There’s a rustling of fabric, more huffing and puffing. Oh, God, now she’s putting on the bra and smearing her lips with red grease. After a short while she’s out of the room. I can’t see her from the bed I’m lying on, but a strong whiff of partying and the promise of an available woman seep all the way to my bedside.

One of the Finns catches sight of Ragna and gives a loud whistle.

‘Madonna!’

The laughter resounds, there is a chinking of glasses and more toasts.

‘My woman! My wifey!’ Johan yells.

Ragna giggles nervously, the scraggy bag of bones, with not an ounce of shame in her. She’s given a seat at the table and a glass is put in her hand, and now she’s knocking them back; I can hear from her swallowing how her throat is greedily working away. The cards are shuffled and dealt. Ragna expresses her delight at her hand, one of the men grunts, there’s more drinking, slurping, the card game’s started.

An hour passes. The first enthusiasm has died down, the roars of laughter are more infrequent, tension has built up. A chair is shoved hard against the wall, the legs tilt from the floor. One of the men gets up and trudges across the kitchen, opens the door to the corridor with a bang, then the front door, and outside, under a sky that’s turning grey, he relieves himself over the heather with contentment and low moans.

Johan is drinking, he’s the one pouring liquor down himself, and the conversation between him and the Finns suddenly grows quiet and intense. And Ragna? It must be Ragna who gets up so suddenly that a chair falls over. She heads to the worktop and turns on the radio, tries to find a channel with music.

The voices have dropped to a mumbling bass, the music stops me from making out the words; they’re talking about something outside, but all I can hear is the sharp accent of the Finns, along with Johan’s and Ragna’s familiarly pitched voices.

Clothes in motion through the air, unsteady feet across the floor. Why aren’t they talking any longer? And this rustling — is it paper being spread out? The silence inside gives way to a sudden noise of repressed sounds that rise up from every nook and cranny: the wind sighs heavily against the window frame, there’s a trickling from the stream outside, the rippling must be coming from the bogs and the small suggestion of a whimper must be the door of my room, which is vibrating almost invisibly from the unaccustomed pressure that is building up from the breathing of many people.

Sounds and images merge — first the one, then the other — and it almost makes me shake my head, it’s hardly credible: from what I can hear, the thing that must be happening is that Ragna has lain down on the kitchen table and pulled up her skirt, and she’s now letting each of the men take her in turn, and during all this Johan is proudly observing the proceedings.

What moral decline. What depravity — and in our own home! Ragna is as if transformed, utterly bewitched. What can’t such behaviour lead to? Yes, I already fear the worst, the consequences, if she continues with her sexual excess in future: possessed by drink and lust, she will abandon herself to every newly discovered desire and go off with men, never to return. After a while, she’ll end up a drunken wreck on some sofa in Finland, servicing randy Finns all day long in every conceivable set of undergarments — yellow and blue and red and with cups that are far too big. And then the tragic finale: Ragna in the arms of the Finns and Johan, through hot nights that become years, while I lie rotting in this bed, slowly, little by little, in this dreadful spot that will become overgrown and disappear from the rest of the world.