The Brothers (5 page)

I tried desperately to think of something sensible to ask. ‘Will I have to milk cows, then?’

He appeared determined to pluck a button off his waistcoat. ‘No need. There are maids for all that.’

‘Do you have dances?’

A rivulet of perspiration appeared on his forehead and set off on a journey towards one of his bushy, near-black eyebrows. ‘Of course there are dances. In summer in particular, we have fêtes. A really big fête at Midsummer, and dances at weddings, of course.’

We were quiet for a while, I chewing my tongue secretly, he staring tenaciously at a space where I saw only the toe of my shoe, sticking out from under the hem of my dress, and floorboards, and a smattering of dust the maid must have missed. Then he sat up straight, left his buttons in peace and began looking at me with the same expression I had once seen on a shaggy male dog in the street, just before it mounted a passing bitch.

‘I can buy a new carriage,’ he said. ‘A real carriage with a canopy.’

‘And a piano?’

‘Of course a piano.’ Relief spread across his face. ‘How could I forget? It was uppermost in my mind. I must get a piano.’

I have still not seen that piano. Instead, I gradually became used to this house and to people whose speech tells you they have rough palms. I did not even try to get used to the desolation of the fields and the menace of the forests, but I did find a place on the riverbank where I could sit by myself among the subdued murmur of the water and the scent of leaves decomposing in the shadow of the embankment, without hating anybody. I learnt to understand housekeeping and the significance of each of the individuals who have ended up in this household, especially that of the Farmhand, who has always been much more important than one might deduce from his station. When I began carrying Henrik in my womb, I was afraid, but I decided to cease fearing. I sensed that motherhood was terrible, perhaps sweet at times, but above all terrible. Not because one human child would be more horrendous than another, nor is it so that offspring cannot bring joy when little and be useful when grown up, but because motherhood makes it possible for future generations to be rocked by dark tragedies. On the other hand, I concluded, it could not be my fault alone. I could not be its origin. There must have been before me, maybe long ago, a woman who sinned gravely and who left her fall as a legacy to her female offspring: an Eve of her generation who had imagined she would be forced to milk cows with her fine, delicate hands.

As the years went by, the boys grew and Arvid became so sickly and so bent that he began to resemble a big-boned bird pecking at the ground. I took up the habit of moving all the yesterdays and tomorrows discreetly to one side. I have never deceived myself in this respect: I gulp down spirits like a sailor. I have done it so skilfully, however, that I have not had to compromise on my dignity, if impeccable manners are enough for that. What else could I have done, when my closest companions for a large part of my life have been empty moments and sleepless nights that end in pale dawns? I might as well have been trapped on a remote island: a pitifully ageing white woman, the soiled widow of a pioneer, surrounded by dirty natives, grubbing pigs and tumbling, whooping bugs.

I have had my chickens, and for a time I was able to watch the boys grow up with at least distant pride. But boys are fated to grow into men, and a mother has to follow this tragedy as a silent bystander. And now it seems they will kill each other, and then this, too, can be added to my never-ending list of losses.

I know now what I will do with the musty clothes in the chests. I will ask the Farmhand to build a bonfire.

Anna will hardly even look at me. Her hips escape my hands. Her hair keeps back its scent. If I speak to her, she replies to the nearest saucepan. Does she already know? Has Mother gone and told her, after all? Should she not offer me support, particularly now that Henrik has turned up at the house, as if we did not have enough misfortunes? I feel as though, after two days’ absence from home, I have lost my wife.

This house is a cadaver. The others are too close to see it, but it has already begun to decompose. I flinch from its decay. It is as if a collection of bones had been unearthed and dressed up in fine clothing to create the illusion of a real body. The wallpaper and chandeliers make no difference. Anyone who is even slightly in the know can scent at a ten-verst distance that the ceiling is leaking, the ridge beams are rotting and the drawing-room floorboards are as bent as an old jetty.

Fortunately, I did not come here because of the house.

On the other hand, I would rather live here than in that windowless hole in a backstreet of St Petersburg. Reeking of cabbage, the building was so labyrinthine, so full of narrow passages and steep stairways, that I often had trouble finding my room. As I searched, I would have to pass doorless nooks whose occupants would put their whole miserable lives on show, without a trace of shame. In one opening, you would see a couple copulating wildly, in another, a man emptying his bowels into a wooden tub. Then there were the rats, and the pigeons that nested in every cranny of the façade, producing the slippery sludge that coated the entire front of the house and the steps leading up to it.

The place was fine if you wanted to forget. You just needed to learn the art of forgetting to begin with. I tried with vodka. The memories failed to dissolve, though; they simply went into hiding to await the soot-coloured mornings. I tried with cheap women, but that did not help, either; I was merely left with the taste of ashes in my mouth. Finally, I could resort only to loneliness, echoey with emptiness. That lasted a while, but then grew unbearably familiar. I was too glued onto myself, I was twitching in my hole to get rid of myself. Eventually, I enlisted in the army. I do not think I have ever done anything so desperate, but at least I received decent clothes and enough food to stop the howling in my guts.

How could I have known there would be a war? It never occurred to me that this godforsaken land would drive great rulers mad. I did not consider that even a peasant nation pays taxes and is good for cannon fodder, that its barren fields and swampy forests are as well suited to become part of the domains of kings and emperors as any wilderness or desert. Nor did I understand that wars are being waged all the time, that lines of men marching with their muskets are merely the visible culmination of constant power struggles, and that actual warfare takes place in salons lit by oil lamps in which liveried flunkeys pour expensive champagne into crystal glasses, and wasp-waisted women wave their ivory fans languidly, and gentlemen sitting amidst thick cigar smoke – heirs of noblemen knighted by Gustav I of Sweden, or offspring of the Grand Dukes of Novgorod, owners of tens of thousands of souls – realize that they suddenly hanker after a ninth city palace or a sackful of diamonds, or that their lives have simply become too monotonous. And furthermore, every man wages his own wars, small, grubby battles that may be as senseless as the rulers’ troop concentrations and fire commands but that he is nevertheless condemned to fight.

That is why I am preparing for my own private little battle. With my luck, he has no saddle, but that is the least of my worries. Until night comes, I will have to keep the others on tenterhooks, let them imagine that I have turned up here to demand something.

Easy. So benevolent are human beings, they are always prepared to think the worst of others.

He does not ask me, he does not even order me. He merely looks at me sideways, meaning: unharness the horse, take it to the stable, give it feed. This is the way I have been treated all these years. In another family, there would at least be a bit of respect for one’s own flesh and blood, poor or not.

Henrik, for his part, does not even deign to see me. Even so, I am not complaining. All in all it is a stroke of luck that he happens to be here. If I had had the wits to ask for anything, that is exactly what I would have asked for. In fact, he came to mind as I was standing in front of the Town Hall, waiting for Erik. I was watching the better folk of the town pass by, idle gentlemen with young ladies on their arms, felt hats on their heads and silver-topped walking sticks in their hands. One never knows, I mused. And then it struck me that if I could get them both here, I would. I am not so concerned about the Old Mistress, for she is the only one in this family who has ever shown me any goodwill.

I do not include the Farmhand in the family. If he belonged to it, I probably would not have needed to go to all this trouble.

I have finished in the stable. I walk across the yard without seeing anyone and rap my knuckles on the door of the Farmhand’s hut. I stand there for a while before he appears, looking suspicious and shading his eyes with his hand as it were a bright summer day. On seeing me, he grunts, relieved, and turns to go in without further ado. I knock the snow off my boots, follow him in and sit down on the bench. The main room is lit by the flicker of the range. A pot on the fire lets out a dark, luxurious aroma.

‘You celebrating?’ I ask.

‘I was planning on saving it for Christmas,’ the Farmhand replies. ‘I didn’t know this day would come first.’

‘Must be chicory in there.’

‘Nothing in there but the real thing. Roasted it myself and ground it just now.’

‘You know how to live, all right. Like a lord.’

‘You can have a cup. Just don’t put it about that we live like pigs in clover round here. Or should I say like emperors. Or kings.’

He pours some of the black beverage into two cups. I warm my fingers with it, take a sniff, sip the coffee carefully. I say, ‘What’ll happen? Will they just go for each other, you think?’

The Farmhand’s face is in shadow, but I sense his meek expression. ‘Suppose you’d have nothing against that.’

‘Can’t say I would.’

‘Just don’t get accidentally caught up between them.’

‘Even if I did, neither of them’d notice me.’

The Farmhand gives my words some thought and says, ‘Maybe so. Long time ago I met a blind man. He said he still went on seeing what he’d last taken in with his sighted eyes. Pity the last thing he saw was a powder keg exploding.’

‘You’re saying they’ve each got a powder keg?’

‘They’re bound to have other things, too. But a keg for sure.’

I would love to tell him. I really would. I could almost certainly trust him; he has his notion of honour. But then there is the Old Mistress. The Farmhand might be obliged to tell her and then the brothers would find out, too, and my big moment would be spoilt. I would have let it all slip through my fingers, everything I have been gathering in my fist, artfully and for so long.

So I will not tell him yet.

‘I’ve been wanting to ask something,’ the Farmhand says.

‘Ask away.’

‘I was thinking of asking if anything particular happened in the war.’

A cold iron stabs my insides. ‘Particular? All sorts of particular things were bound to happen. People got killed.’

‘Yes, of course but I meant something else…’ His hands, dimly visible in the dark, seize the pipe lying on the table and begin filling it from a leather pouch. ‘See, I’ve got this feeling there’s something you’ve not said.’

I feel it, here and now: cries of pain, smell of smoke, blood spurting in the air and bits of guts. I squeeze my thighs under the table and try to keep my voice calm. ‘Like what?’

‘You tell me. I get this sometimes – I start sensing things and then they won’t leave me be. And by now I’ve learnt that my gut feeling’s generally right. God knows why.’

‘Aha. Well, I don’t know what it could be.’

He is busy now lighting his long-stemmed pipe. ‘Perhaps something happened that wasn’t really about the war. Something just as bad or worse.’

Tall, thin pines. Heather. A hilltop. Distant shouts of command and the thunder of cannon. I am crawling among the heather, dragging the musket alongside me. Then I suddenly notice on the ridge the movement of a dark-green frock coat, almost imperceptible. ‘It was all bad. And you don’t want to think back on it.’

‘I imagine not. Don’t mind me, I’m just babbling away. When a man gets old, he starts spouting nonsense.’

I do not reply. I am trying to return from crawling, from that slope. I am trying to come back and stay back. I hear snow crunching outside. Someone is walking towards the cattle sheds. The wind is howling in the field. Light, powdery snow sticks to the window. If a real snowstorm blows up, the labourers are bound to return from the woods. A puff of smoke billows from the fireplace into the room. The Farmhand twists round to the fire, discontented.

‘You’ve had a lot of business in town with Erik,’ he says.

‘Erik has. I’ve been the driver.’

He lets smoke dribble down his lips. ‘People get suspicious. Anna especially.’

I do not understand at first. Then I see. ‘It’s not that. Erik’s not seeing other women.’

‘I didn’t think he was. But something must be going on.’

‘No point asking me. There’s this one house he goes to, but I don’t even get to go inside. Or only as far as the porch.’

‘So he’s kept you right out of it.’

‘Yes. And I haven’t stuck my nose in.’

He keeps nodding his head slowly. ‘But you must have found out who lives in the house.’

‘A gentleman. I don’t remember the name. And there are other men, too. You hear the voices.’

‘I hope they’re not hatching any evil plots.’

As often, I find it hard to follow his thinking. ‘Erik? What could he be plotting?’

‘These are strange times. I’ve heard village talk. Not everyone wants to stop fighting. They’re still set on God knows what – don’t like the Russians.’

I nearly sigh with relief. ‘I don’t think Erik would get into all that. He’s not that much of an idiot.’

‘Maybe not. But you can get into trouble if you’re curious enough to listen to idiots talk.’

‘Should we say something to him?’

‘Might be better to wait and see. He may yet come to his senses.’