The Looking-Glass Sisters Read Online Free PDF Page A

the hallway. With nimble fingers she threads the cotton silently – displaying deep concentration as she places a piece of material over each hole and manoeuvres the trousers in under the pressure foot.
    Ragna finds a comfortable sitting position and draws in her breath, presses the pedal as far down as it will go. Everything proceeds at breakneck speed, the trousers fly this way and that, in one direction and then the other, under the insistent hammering of the needle. Johan stares at the efficiency, the assuredness, the violent energy. The trousers are ready in no time. Ragna holds them up, swings them back and forth to judge the result, then throws them into his lap without a word and with a smirk on her face.
    *
    Already after five weeks I note that the nature of the visits has almost imperceptibly begun to change. The energetic working partnership has become more physical and direct; now it is clearly a question of looking each other over.
    As, for example, the Friday Johan comes to dinner. I am also sitting at the table, my sister in the middle and Johan on her right. Ragna has covered the table with a tablecloth and decorated it with a sprig of rosebay, so I eat as tidily as I can in order not to spoil the occasion.
    I don’t say anything, pretend not to notice what I see and gradually understand: Johan, chuckling with a potato in his mouth, has his gaze fixed on my sister’s scraggy neckline. The table rocks, the rosebay sways, Ragna’s chest is bright scarlet. The kitchen thuds and thumps, divides intotwo worlds: what is happening above the table and what is happening below.
     
    Or the Monday Johan comes back from town in the late afternoon with his bag full of provisions. (The previous day he had volunteered to do the weekly shopping in the village for Ragna. All that exertion and so much to carry, no, he’s got a motorbike and has to do his own errands anyway.) Sweat pours off him, his rucksack is lifted down on to the kitchen floor with a groan. Ragna opens the larder, starts to unpack and stack the items on the shelves. Cold air and the smell of dried meat seeps out into the kitchen. Johan squeezes into the tiny room with her; I can see both of them from where I’m sitting in my room. From here I also watch him pulling at her sweater, lifting it over her shoulders, taking hold of her breasts, which stand stiffly apart, above her plunging neckline. Johan kneads away, my sister clucks with pleasure, then casts a swift glance in my direction before slamming the door.
     
    And like the morning Johan comes before Ragna is up, and long before I normally surface. His steps must have woken me, and when he taps on her window, lightly and cautiously, I am wide awake. She is out of bed in a trice and lets him in, her quick movements betraying that she has been lying there waiting for him. They whisper together, imagining they are undiscovered. The front door is open, allowing a breeze to come in, and there is a slight creak from a beam overhead.
    I’m asleep, I’m not asleep. I try to get back to a point in my sleep where I don’t have to witness what I fear ishappening. I clench my eyes tight. Johan has closed the door of Ragna’s bedroom; now he’s taking off her nightgown, it falls to the floor. The walls are paper-thin. I concentrate on breathing: my breath is deep and heavy, sleep breathing, regular and rhythmical. Come rest, allow me some repose, free me from my sister, who is breathing more heavily, who is sucking in breath in irregular gasps, rhythmically to Johan’s suppressed moans. Now he is grasping her breasts, the old tatters of them, his great fists tearing at her flesh, which gurgles and bubbles and boils. He’s already stirring away inside her, I can smell it all the way from here, the juices, the mixing slobber, my sister who’s being kneaded and is fermenting. I breathe in and out, open my eyes and swallow, start to whistle the national anthem – ‘Yes, we love with fond devotion this our