The Brothers (2 page)

Her voice couldn’t get any more tense. ‘They seem to have more than enough business over there. But what do I know? It could be something really important. I made up my mind a long time ago that I don’t need to bother with the affairs of this house any more. Erik deals with all that. And I think I’ve earned a quiet life by now.’

‘Yes, for sure. And Erik has…’

‘A capable wife to support him? Is that what you were going to say?’

‘Capable, why not? Not a bad expression.’

She half-turns towards me. ‘Why did you come back?’ She seems to direct the question to a third person, hidden from view.

‘What sort of a question is that? Surely a man can come home.’

‘Home? No use trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I know full well there’s no such thing as home where you’re concerned.’

Strange, how at times the easiness of words can make your whole face feel light. ‘A man can’t always fathom his comings and goings. I felt there was unfinished business.’

‘Business?’

‘Yes. Certain business.’

She snorts, weakly but furiously. ‘It’d be better if you saw to your certain business elsewhere.’

‘But I happen to be here. So, not much you can do about it.’

I am about to step into the doorway when she says, ‘You obviously didn’t do that well in St Petersburg.’

I stop. I ask over my shoulder, ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘There’s not one new horse in the stable.’

She got that off her chest. Indeed she did, but let her have that small consolation in all its pettiness. I enter the hall and my gaze collides with the Farmhand. He is hanging around next to the wall as if it were his job. This little act gets him a real house. If there were any justice in the world, he would be living in a hole in the ground with smoke vents, and spend his days burrowing away deep down in the earth. I stare at him for a while before I snarl, ‘Why are you skulking here?’

‘You can say what you like,’ he says in his irritatingly slow way. ‘But I’ve never been caught skulking.’

‘Anyone’d think you were standing there with your ears pricked up, listening to other people’s talk.’

He bares his blackened gums. ‘Not possible. I’ve been deaf at least since you were fresh out of swaddling clothes.’

‘In other words, you’ve been deaf for a long time.’

‘Or maybe I can still hear perfectly well.’

He should be flogged. He has the nerve to stand there in front of me with his hat on. The Devil knows why everyone here esteems him so. What strings did he pull in his day? That must all have happened before my time and then been handed on, just like the bad blood they say one generation passes to the next. Thank God the Farmhand’s blood has been stopped up. Then again, he could have a brother he has kept quiet about, maybe even a whole brood of uncouth men, fellows who stand around in dirty boots on rugs bought by others in Vaasa, lacking the manners to remove their smelly, ragged hats.

I glare at him until he finally turns and hobbles outside. I’m tempted to speed him up with a kick. They say sons inherit the sins of their fathers. My father’s sin was taking that shameless rat into this house, leaving me to shoulder the burden.

Mother has obviously been listening, for she slams the drawing-room door shut behind my back.

Just then, I hear a rustle in the passage leading towards the kitchen. Are there ears in every nook and cranny of this madhouse? I stride in the direction of the sound, squeeze into a dark corner and freeze. I sense it: the scent. What an irony, for a man to experience all the smells of a world metropolis only for his feet to be nailed to the floor by a faint scent that brings him slap-bang face to face with the past.

It has always been the way round here: you say something when you mean something completely different, or at least more. There would have been no point continuing my squabble with Henrik. I might as well talk to a barn wall, with the barn about to fall on top of me.

So I went out again. I felt the frost sharpening. The coldest winter months are lying in wait. I had to go to the forest. On a good day, you can hear nothing there but your own thoughts. I could have inspected the traps, and I started off in the right direction, but a strange weariness forced me to sit down on a tree stump. As I sat, I tried not to think of Henrik, and so I thought of him.

Anyone can see he has been to war. That sort of thing is etched on a man’s face, like exhaustion or grief, but I saw more in him: I saw what he used to be. A human being never sheds his past. He drags it around like an old overcoat and you know him by this coat, by the way it looks and smells. Henrik’s coat is heavy and gloomy, exuding the dark stench of blood.

It all began with the horse. So little is needed for a man’s life to go wrong. At first the horse was a colt. This colt lived on the neighbouring farm. The day Henrik laid eyes on the colt, and saw the horse it would become, the fate of this house was determined. Henrik was born to understand horses. In any other man, such an understanding would be a gift. In Henrik’s case, the gift proved a curse. He didn’t see in the colt a future work-horse or even a mount. Such a vision was not enough for Henrik. Was he looking for something in animals that he did not dare look for in humans? I was sharpening my scythe at the edge of the field when I heard Henrik’s breathless voice behind my shoulder: ‘I’m going to get a horse.’

I smiled. One underestimates one’s own bygone dreams, sneers at them as they were sneered at in their day by obtuse old men. I asked anyway, ‘Where will you get one of those? There’s many a grown man doesn’t manage it.’

‘From Jansson’s farm,’ Henrik said. ‘And it isn’t a horse yet, it’s only a colt. But I’ll work enough days for Jansson for it to be mine when it’s grown up.’

‘How can you work for Jansson? You’re not a tenant of his.’

Had I been more alert, I would have heard the determination in Henrik’s voice. ‘I’ll do it anyway. I’ll work for Jansson as long as it takes to get the horse. It’ll be a big stallion.’

‘Can’t it be bought? You should at least ask your father.’

‘It wouldn’t be mine if Father bought it. I’ll earn it myself.’

‘Well, in that case, it’ll be a man’s horse, not a boy’s.’

I did not even notice that Henrik raised his head too proudly for a boy his age. ‘I’m almost a man now.’

‘Or you became a man when you decided to earn that horse.’

A man’s life, looked back on, often makes him clutch at his heart. If I could return to the moment when the half-grown Henrik told me about the horse, I would throw the scythe down onto the field. I would grab the boy by the scruff of his neck and alter the future. Horse deals are not the business of a youth who has not yet even earned his first pair of boots. And there was enough work at home for a small army. However, I was not the master of the house, only a servant. And servants do not, as a rule, meddle in their masters’ affairs.

So Henrik began doing jobs for Jansson. On Sundays and long weekday evenings he repaired Jansson’s barns and built versts of fencing round fields. He would only turn up at home after sunset, blank-eyed with exhaustion, like a spectre. For his age, he was tall and frighteningly strong, even before he began hammering fence posts into the ground and lifting stones out of their way. After five years, he had become a man and the colt had become a horse. In a way, they grew up together, unaware of each other, or maybe, on the contrary, too aware of each other, united by some mysterious bond. You never know with animals like Henrik and the horse.

Finally, I too saw the horse. We had threshed the grain and I had promised to help out Jansson. His labourer had stepped on a nail and was suffering from blood poisoning. At first, I did not give the matter any thought, it had slipped my mind, but then I walked past Jansson’s enclosure and noticed something standing there, something that was too big to stand there – unless the enclosure had shrunk.

I saw at once that the animal would be no use to anyone. It would probably kill a man one day, unless somebody had the wits to put it down before that happened. Its size was unnatural; it was not fat, but excessively muscular. It was not just one horse but one and a half, or at least one and a third. Its hooves were like buckets that had got stuck on its feet, coming back from the well. But it was its gaze that sent a shiver down my spine. Over the years, as he wanders through life, a man gets used to the gentle eyes of horses. But Henrik’s horse had the burning eyes of a wolf or a lion, or maybe the Beast of the Book of Revelation.

I had never made the acquaintance of an animal with such a severe stare.

‘So you decided to give a monster like that to a young man,’ I said to Jansson.

He pushed his hat to the back of his head and sighed. ‘I didn’t want to. But the boy wouldn’t stop pleading. And it might yet become useful.’

‘It’ll never be an Officer of the Guard’s parade horse, that’s for sure. Has it ever pulled a plough?’

He sighed again. Or was he panting out of sheer terror? ‘We gave it a try, but it’s just too unruly.’

‘And you’ll attend Henrik’s funeral with a good conscience?’

He shoved his hat over his eyes, probably to avoid seeing the creature glaring at us from the enclosure. ‘Well, there’s not a lot I can do about it now.’

There would be no funeral. This became clear to me as I was weeding the ditch between our and Jansson’s lands and saw Henrik, speeding along on the horse as if he had been born to ride it. I do not know which one of them spotted me, but in any case they started storming towards me. I stared as they approached. I heard the thudding of the heavy hooves and the low whinnying of the horse. I decided – if I was able to decide anything, in my fright – that as I would not have time to run to the edge of the forest, it would be best to throw myself face-down into the ditch. I was on the point of doing so when the horse came abruptly to a halt. It did not seem to stop, in fact; instead it just ceased moving instantaneously. It floated in the air for a moment with its front hooves raised. Then it stood there as if it were already bored.

‘So is it yours now?’ I asked.

Henrik did not look like a rider on horseback, but like someone or something that had pushed out its head and shoulders, and finally the rest of its body, through the skin on the horse’s back. He replied, ‘It’s not yet mine. But next week the five years will be up.’

‘So they will be. Jansson’s already letting you ride it, I see.’

‘Jansson’s in town.’

‘And you took the horse. You couldn’t wait till next week.’

‘I didn’t take it. I’ll return it to the stable soon.’

Just then, I caught the smell of the horse. It reminded me of a graveyard in autumn. ‘You’d better. I expect it’s got a name by now. I hope it’s a name fit for an elephant.’

‘It’s called Horse.’

‘Even Jansson wouldn’t give a stallion such a stupid name.’

Maybe Henrik’s hatred of me was born at that moment. ‘It’s called Horse!’

I would have said something conciliatory but I did not have the chance. As unexpectedly as it had stopped, the horse turned, or rather it did a furious backward roll in the air. Faster than I could have said ‘Amen’, they were racing ahead, already in the middle of the meadow. The smell of the horse still shimmered around me. It was not the smell of others of its kind; it was more pungent and more ominous. Once it had got into your nose, it would not leave. I had to wait another few years before I understood that the beast smelt of war.

Nowadays, a woman’s honour is neither here nor there, if it ever was. When there are no men of honour, there can be no women of honour. Men charge round in a woman’s life like mad bulls, and the wisest thing to do would be to sit quietly in a dimly lit corner. But what can you do when there is blood in your veins? That blood will surge and make its demands. And then you have a thirst that is not quenched by drinking.

I hear him through the walls. The walls breathe fear and shame into me. My hands are stuck in dough, forgotten, turned to stone. The Old Mistress will arrive soon and begin nagging, but she should not blame me. I did not want a maid who cannot even bake. Erik suggested we get the new girl from town, but the Old Mistress had gone and made a promise to the tailor’s widow and there was nothing to be done about it.

I would prefer to be frightened only for myself. If I could, I would send word to Erik. Why does he have to go to Vaasa so often and leave me in this house? You always feel uneasy here, as if you were in the wrong room.

Now Henrik comes out from the large room that the Old Mistress insists we all call the drawing room. He walks into the hall, boots creaking. My feet seem to move, although I am rooted to the spot. The front door opens and closes. I hear men’s voices from the yard. I am sure that the Farmhand too is afraid of Henrik. A man’s fear of a man must be different from a woman’s. Probably it is colder, like water newly drawn from a well compared with water that has long been standing in a jug.

‘Is he outside?’ the Old Mistress asks behind my back.

The one good thing about this house is that sooner or later you learn not to start. ‘He went out just now.’

‘Where’s the Farmhand?’

‘In the yard. They were talking out there.’

‘Did you hear what they were saying?’

‘No.’

In her own room she always moves heavily, but elsewhere in the house she is quiet; the pantry door seems to creak open by itself. ‘Right. You shouldn’t listen to men.’

I know full well that not all of the bottles are in the drawing room. They have been hidden all over the house. She wanders between them during the day as if she were dutifully following a set path. And yet she no longer hides it, at least not from me, not any more. She has tired of concealment a little like I have tired of drawing a comb fifty times through my hair every night, or washing between my legs. When things grow useless, you let them go.

‘You want some?’

‘Is it the strong stuff?’

A knock, as glass hits the table. ‘No.’