The Looking-Glass Sisters (9 page)

I smile and clap my hands, astonished. You are so quick, so sure; you are Ragna, my older sister, and you’re always completely in control. You answer by laughing and tossing
your hair proudly – huh, that was nothing. But suddenly you spin round. Wasn’t that a sound coming from the grass, a tiny hiss, a small sigh among the blades? You raise an eyebrow, pretend to be deciding what it can be, to be devising a plan.

‘It’s still burning,’ I say. ‘Not so much, but some flickers here and there.’

‘Something stronger’s called for,’ you shout, and pull off your pants. I stare entranced, amazed at you suddenly standing there with white legs and round buttocks in the middle of the grass, then squatting down, legs wide apart, and letting the flood descend and gush over the grass. There’s a rushing, then a crackling, and look – smoke billows up into your white bottom. I point and shout, you turn round and see the same thing, and roll your eyes affectedly before collapsing in a fit of giggles. There you lie, on the burnt, pee-wet grass, with your bum in the air, and you laugh, you laugh and I laugh, we laugh and laugh. You roll over on your back, and I roll round on to my back, then we hold our stomachs and lie there, laughing for a long time in a way we’d never done before – and haven’t since.

Will a memory like that save us, Ragna? Will it provide hope for a possible sisterliness?

I bang my head against the wall, confirm to myself that there can’t possibly be anything else but a hard, empty shell; I can’t think of anything apart from my relationship with Ragna. It’s always Ragna, little Ragna, big Ragna, difficult Ragna. And I know it makes me afraid, this recognition of
the fact that I live through Ragna, so I have to pinch my flesh, bore my fingers into my chest, feel the thin blood vessels burst, see the juice ooze out into the skin, become blue, almost black stains.

But the physical pain seems like small scratches on a horny surface. I can’t burrow deep enough, far enough, never reach the very substance of our relationship. Our illness is too serious, the injuries too extensive, simply impossible to allow for a simple diagnosis. And admittedly I am completely inadequate to make such investigations. I lack the ability to put forward logical explanations and solutions. That’s why I move restlessly among memories, moods and impressions – and that’s why I can’t do anything other than taste, smell and feel our chronic sister inflammation.

Suppose that all these episodes and memories don’t exist, that there is no bitter enmity. Suppose that everything I experience is fabrication and daydreaming, and that now, tired of my notions, I am telling my story as it appears to a clear-sighted gaze – if there is such a thing as a gaze that sees clearly.

I will therefore make a tear, a hole in my life perspective, to search for a way to admit that what I experience is possibly neither correct nor true. I will be open to everything that streams out of this hole, open to thoughts that I live a quiet, simple life, a life without the dramas with which I tend to embellish every occurrence.

Can it be the radio that causes me to think in the way I have done? All these radio plays, voices that invade my room, it’s possible I can’t cope with them, their life stories, they lure me into believing concocted stories, into fabricating a problem from Ragna’s and my relationship.

But if I have an urge to rewrite, explain away, magnify everything that happens, what then? There aren’t any truths in the world anyway – well, apart from measurable facts such as length and content and mathematical formulae that no one in their right mind would question. I would argue that as long as emotions and impression and thoughts can’t be expressed in diagrams, it is natural to feel some uncertainty as to what the truth of one’s life resembles.

Even so, something inside me hacks away at these conceptions. A hacking that turns into a constant gnawing feeling of betraying myself no matter which conception I tend to favour. I think resignedly that I am adrift in a kaleidoscope of lies, while something inside me whispers that I can only obtain calm and certainty from examining the skeleton, the very marrow juice of the lies.

‘Suck the shit out of the bone,’ I say out loud to myself. ‘Spit it out. Let the final truth appear to your naked eye!’

Yet again. All this playing around and avoiding the subject, I shuffle insights as I shuffle words, change events by changing a comma. Everything becomes drafts and sketches, no matter how I twist and turn my life.

Finally, though, after much resistance, reluctance, disinclination, I ask the questions I have never posed before:

Can it be that I, the sick one, have given rise to impatience in Ragna because of my exaggerated gestures and unreasonable demands? Can it be that I, the helpless one, have bred the anger in her by making myself more pathetic than I am? And can it be that I, in my struggle to gain the inviolable position of victim, have forged and fashioned Ragna the violator?

Furthermore, can it be that I, after years of exaggerated care needs, have robbed her of the ability to think, to create a living, inner life? Can it be that I, the crippled one, have created a cripple – a mute, empty being?

Et cetera. Can it be that this urge towards untruths is not due to my painful experiences, my dejectedness, forsakenness, but that the lies rise up in me because of the sudden love relationship between Johan and her, that I paint as black a picture of both of them as I’m able because their love threatens my leisurely existence?

If that’s how it is. If that’s how it really is, the marrow can only be swallowed with the mouth held close round the hollow bone shaft, and only in the deepest abyss, in the black boggy soil, can I regurgitate the confession, hold it out:

I’m the one with horns, the one with goat’s eyes.

My god is oversensitive suffering. My gospels: illness and dependence. And my prayers: a constant yelping, mixed with moans and shrieks of pain.

Help me, anyone who can. I’m a woman on the periphery of all truths.

The room’s ice cold. The house completely silent. Not a puff of wind to be heard.

‘Ragna! I’m completely wizened with the cold!’

Ragna stands in front of me in the half-darkness, peering. Her eyes are heavy with sleep, her jaws clamped shut in a determined wish to be able to get back to bed.

‘What the hell are you whining on about? And in the dead of night?’

‘I’m so afraid, Ragna! I keep on thinking such weird thoughts!’

‘Then get some bloody sleep like any normal person and see if that doesn’t make all the madness disappear.’

Ragna is shivering and flaps her arms around her.

‘You must damn well pull yourself together. Waking me up for nothing at all, you deserve a good hiding!’ She hunches up even more, waves a clenched fist in my face.

I sniffle, but already feel better, almost relieved, the flickering of Ragna’s white skin in the dark room, her voice, her whole being confirm that I am alive, present in the same story that I have always concocted.

The days leap forward, almost colliding with winter. Suddenly we’re caught by crunching frost and all-engulfing darkness.

For me winter means sleep, I who am never out of the house. But at a certain point I’ve had enough. Through an indescribable tiredness I register the fact that I am scarcely able to distinguish myself from the bed and the dust, and as a reflex my will to live awakes and raises my body into a sitting position.

Hell’s bells, I think, shaking my head in confusion.

How could I contemplate sleeping when I should be investigating the plans being made for my own disappearance?

Johan is noticeably back. From the sounds I deduce that grabbing and grubbing are going on. The winter clearly does not reduce his enormous appetite. He greedily helps himself to whatever’s offered, whether it’s in the kitchen or in Ragna’s bedroom.

The long period of exile and the sudden awakening mean that I observe my surroundings with renewed interest. Among other things, I notice that Ragna has acquired many of Johan’s expressions and gestures. She openly picks her nose and has started to blink in the same way he does. Nor does she remove her scooter outfit when she comes indoors, just lifts off the top part and lets the arms dangle round her hips like empty pistol holsters. They both sway from room to room like this, ready to be off in a shot on the scooter. They’re clearly at the ready – in case something needs to be done in a hurry. But what?

I’ve got to admit, his company motivates me. No sooner does he cross the threshold than I start to crawl out of bed, make him aware of my presence by rattling my crutches
a bit more than usual, and I totter back and forth in our corridor under the pretext of needing to train my muscles. The corridor isn’t long, no more than three metres, and I can’t manage many steps, perhaps sixteen a minute. But I can’t deny the party feeling that comes over me when I covertly observe his expression as I painfully slowly and tenaciously pass the kitchen door: he who knows that I know that I irritate him by my mere presence, that I am so cheeky and am doing this quite deliberately, and that he can’t do anything about it, except pretend that I don’t exist. He’s utterly annoyed. I’m maliciously delighted. That really pisses him off.

Is it at all strange that I start cackling as soon as I’m out of his field of vision, very quietly, as if I want to spare him my revealing observations? That pisses him off even more.

Oh, what an intoxicating hotchpotch of unsuccessful intentions and contrived misunderstandings!

Winter tightens its grip, holds us captive in a cocoon of freezing darkness and snow. Ragna spends all her time indoors; only Johan opens the front door when he comes to visit or leaves again, and then it’s usually to the village to fetch news, post and food. Nor should I conceal that Johan carries in firewood. He shovels away the snow that builds up in front of the front door. He is strong and healthy, and so one could even argue that I benefit from his strength.

Compared to the open plains right outside our door, the presence of the three of us in the small house is almost
claustrophobic. But that does not prevent me from getting up and making my daily trips along the corridor. This exercise, which began as an excuse, has become an important routine. It leaves me feeling wide awake and clear-headed, and confirms my position as a member of the household. Ragna and Johan, who have acquired the habit of buzzing and whispering at the kitchen table, spot me passing the kitchen door morning, afternoon and evening, back and forth, tenaciously and purposefully. As I pass, we nod briefly to each other, and I probably bare my teeth. As soon as I am out of sight, I am not out of mind; I know that the scraping of the crutches saws its way into the cosiness and warmth in there – a constant reminder of my existence. For that reason, I occasionally surprise them on good days with a couple of extra rounds.

No, I’m not so stupid as to be unaware of my hidden reasons for continually and constantly taking out my crutches. The exercise is one thing, but first and foremost the crutches are my sceptres, the power I have to create a little discomfort, to gain a little attention.

I train despite wanting to sleep and dream my time away, despite the cramp that comes after a couple of hours of rest. I massage myself as best I can, I don’t want to ask Ragna when Johan is paying a visit – and that is fairly often. So after the lament of the crutches it is my sobs that accompany the sounds of the house. I don’t ignore the fact that they drown everything being buzzed and whispered – in the pauses between Johan’s lustful moans, it should be noted. I laugh a little and think of the noise
we produce as a composition, that our voices rise and fall in a disharmonious musical score.

Yes, of course the exercise increases my strength. I am awake – and in the darkest depths of winter too!

One afternoon, when the sky opens in shades of mauve and the snow appears like pink-shimmering sugar, I lapse into thoughts about the capacity of colours to create a feeling of character, of content, how they create an expectation of taste, an experience. Just as a pink sweet seems to promise to taste sweet, while a green one is almost certain to taste more acidic.

This train of thought causes me to lie there wondering what people can resemble and remind one of, everything from colours to animals and insects. Ragna, for example, I am sure resembles a wasp, for she is one in her entire being. And Johan reminds me of a special breed of dog I’ve seen in a magazine. He sticks out his lower jaw in precisely the same way, hard. And therefore his cheeks, like those of the dog, hang heavy and meaty past the corners of his mouth like jowls.

‘Woof, woof, Johan. Doggie fetch a bone!’ I whisper and laugh quietly to myself, and go on thinking about Ragna
and Johan until I start pondering about myself and how I perhaps appear to other people.

‘Ragna,’ I say during morning care in my room on a cold day in early December. I’m sitting on a chair in front of the washstand, my face turned towards the mirror, watching her as she rubs the flannel up and down my back. After my withdrawal that lasted for several weeks she has paid more attention to my hygiene, she scrubs my armpits, lower legs and thighs every other day, in spite of the fact that I can hardly be dirty – it’s more in her mind that I am unclean and grimy. So I find it suitable and quite natural to elaborate on the question I have been dying to ask her.

‘Ragna,’ I say again, ‘what colour am I? Can you tell me that?’