The Brothers (12 page)

There is a knock on the door and the Old Mistress pushes her face in. It is a calm face; the customary numbness of the evenings has peeled off. On such an evening, then, she leaves her bottles be. She looks at me tenderly and clears her throat, meaning for Erik to open his eyes. When Erik has done so, she says, ‘I think we should set off sooner rather than later.’

Erik raises his head and asks in a feeble voice, as if he were still gasping for air on the riverbank, ‘By night?’

The Old Mistress nods. ‘The sky’s clear and you can see in the moonlight. And there are no neighbours or villagers around to gawp at us.’

‘That’s true,’ Erik concedes. He levers himself onto the edge of the bed. ‘Doesn’t make any difference to me, let’s leave by all means.’

‘I’ll go and prepare some sustenance first,’ the Old Mistress says. Her head vanishes from the doorway, but reappears in no time at all to add, ‘I must put some eggs in the hat.’

The head disappears again. Erik looks at me, baffled, and repeats, ‘In the hat?’

I shrug. I should take something to cover my head, too. I can already see myself in the gig. The road shines ahead of us, a channel piercing the gloom of the forests. The past will be left behind in its entirety; the days to come are calling us to them. I will have to get used to a big town, the noise echoing from the streets and the unkindness of busy people, but I am still young, and eager to accustom myself. I will learn to look bored and toss my head proudly, and if the townsfolk try to boast about their knowledge, I will tell them my bloodiest tales of pig-slaughterings and tough calvings, and if that does not help, I will hint at a contagious disease I have brought with me, one I’ve picked up from animals. At night I will lie down next to my husband and hear the townsfolk – the listless sighing of city lungs, the exhausted twisting of city hearts – and I will turn over, pleased that I can still sense, from afar, the peace of the fields and the silence of the forests. I will be there and at the same time here; I will be in the air amidst all that is alive, I will be in myself.

‘I’d better make sure the mare’s been fed,’ Erik says, and walks stiffly out of the room.

His steps grow faint. I hear the banging of the front door, I watch him cross the yard. Henrik comes from the opposite direction in dry clothes he has found somewhere, his shoulders still hunched as if he were cold. They exchange a few words without stopping. Henrik nods and looks like the Farmhand, just as he is supposed to do. I stir myself and slip light-footedly into the stairway. Not all the words remain in my mouth, some drip off my chin soundlessly. I bump into Henrik in the porch. I shove him by the chest as close to the door as possible and whisper, ‘Don’t interfere in my life again.’

Until a short while ago his eyes were as sharp as poker points. Now they look blanched and lost; they have become the eyes of a child who has just woken up. He laughs sadly and replies, ‘Why would I? I thought I might go to America.’

I glance behind me, just in case. My ears lie in ambush for sounds. ‘How will you get there?’

‘I might get a job on a boat. Otherwise, I’d have to earn the money first.’

‘As long as you don’t earn it in Turku.’

‘No, I won’t. Although there is a port in Turku.’

‘Please, will you stay in the port?’

He contents himself with nodding. Now I have to swallow the bile rising from my stomach. A clock begins striking inside me, I am thrown by the maelstrom of time, the early morning is cool and sweaty. I resist. I grip Henrik’s arm and say, ‘You were good once.’

His face twitches, lowers. ‘And so were you.’

‘Although I knew nothing then.’

An unprecedented din comes from the direction of the kitchen; we both twist round, stunned, in that direction. The Old Mistress is singing. Henrik laughs soundlessly and looks at me with his face opening out, as if seeing me for the first time. ‘But that’s not why. It was…’

‘Yes,’ I say. I turn my back on him. ‘Yes.’

They sit in the cart, stiff and solemn. They could well be leaving for a nocturnal church service. Henrik, holding the reins, wears clothes retrieved from the late Master’s estate, the Old Mistress sits next to him, and Anna and Erik are behind them with the chests and bundles. I do what I have to do: I walk to the side of the cart and look the Old Mistress in the eyes by way of a goodbye. The moonlight falls on the lines of her face, gets caught in her eyelashes and stays there, glittering.

‘You’re staying?’ she asks, or states.

‘I have no choice,’ I say, ‘I’ve been given the title of Farm Manager.’

‘You think you’ll get on all right?’

‘With the title or the man? I’ve always got on with Mauri. And what can he do to me?’

She smiles. ‘No one can do anything to you.’

I move over to shake hands with Anna and Erik. Anna smiles. She has wrapped a blanket round her shoulders over a thick coat and looks very young, like a little girl excitedly anticipating a journey. Erik holds my hand between both his palms and says, ‘You’ll come and visit us in Turku.’

‘Duties permitting,’ I promise. ‘I have become an important official.’

‘And you must write, since you have that skill.’

‘Unless Mauri hires a scribe to help me out.’

I walk round the cart and stop by Henrik. He crouches, stooped, his head drawn between his shoulders, the features of his thin face sharp and stubborn in the bluish light. I have just opened my mouth when he flings the reins from his hands, jumps onto the ground and sets off determinedly past me, towards the house. He takes a lantern suspended from a pillar of the veranda and continues with a heavy tread towards the stable. He has already pulled open one half of the double doors when I go after him.

He stands by the stall, circled by the dim, flickering light of the lantern. I stop by his side. We observe it in silence: a creature that has strayed into our age from the airless centuries of the past, a creature that exudes the nasty smell of a churchyard and whose malevolent gaze bores into us from its immobile eyes, eternally judgemental and accusatory. It does not breathe, it emanates quietly, you can feel life flowing in and out, eternally, through its tough skin.

‘Erik must have paid a pretty penny for Horse,’ Henrik says, looking at the animal he worked so hard to win.

‘On the contrary. He got it practically free as it was no good to anybody. Jansson was probably pleased just to get rid of it.’ 

Henrik nods. He stretches out his hand, the horse has to bend its head, swaying up there so high, to nudge the palm with its rounded muzzle. I feel the warm saliva smell of its breath. Henrik smacks his lips. The horse, or rather the horse-like being, more mysterious and more powerful than a horse, responds by throwing its head up and letting out a sound: not a neigh but rather the boom of an out-of-tune organ, or the hollow, screeching din of heavenly trombones – or infernal instruments. I step back, poised to raise my hands to my ears.

‘You thought you’d let it go,’ I say.

Henrik nods. ‘That’s what I thought.’

I walk outside and move away from the doorway. The horse steps out of the stable slowly, haughtily and insolently. It could quite easily dig man-sized holes in the ground with its hooves, but refrains out of sheer superiority. In the middle of the yard, it stops to look with scorn at the cart and its passengers. Shaking its head discontentedly, the horse carries on to the edge of the field, as if trying to forge those heavy hooves into the earth. It does not need to jump over the ditch. It simply crosses the ditch without acceleration. In the middle of the field, it hurtles into a gallop.

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