The Looking-Glass Sisters Read Online Free PDF

land that looms!’ – then continue, louder, more piercingly, ‘Rugged, storm-scarred o’er the ocean, with her thousand homes!’
    I hold my breath. I hear agitated whispering. Low yelping, my sister complaining, hands fumbling, Johan continuing; his fingers in her flesh, he pummels away at her while I whistle piercingly, shrilly, ‘Love her, in our love recalling those who gave us birth!’
    Something happens. Feet stumbling over each other, Johan makes a final assault, my sister in reverse, I see what I hear; her body succumbs while, with clenched teeth, she stares at the door in a rage.
    I howl. Johan comes with a groan, my sister lets dry air escape from the slit of her mouth.
     
    Silence. I lie there, my eyes shut, try to become calm, breathe gently. The door is thrown open. Ragna half-naked, quivering. Her smell above my face, the sweat of the hand that slaps my skin. I hold my cheek, look at her as she disappears, the vertebrae sticking out from her back.
    *
    I’ve always liked to think of Ragna as one of those people who find every experience disappointing, everything she sees and smells and senses; she is the sort of person who constantly longs for more, every single second. I think of her body and soul as painfully separated; there is a constant discrepancy between her dissatisfied ego, which wants more, and the body’s monotony of work and rest and biological rhythms. I think that Ragna’s spirit will never be satisfied within the restricting boundaries of the body, that she will always stare yearningly towards the infinity outside and inside herself. And then I think: This lack is really a longing to be gone, to cease entirely.
    But something has happened. There is now expectation in her eyes, a questioning upward gaze when Johan is around. Maybe when she put her hands on his shoulders, when she leaned towards him for the first time, maybe she opted for life in that movement. Is there a sting in her breast? The certainty that her earthly sensual happiness is so brief, nothing more than an ecstatic sigh in eternity? Does, then, the thought of what will be gone – that something is over and done, even in the kiss itself – hurt more than a thousand times as much?
    *
    Johan. One morning when I decide to have breakfast in the kitchen, he’s already sitting in my chair, eating. I place myself next to him, supporting myself heavily on my crutches, rap a bit on the chair as a sign that he is to move. Ragna’s gaze wanders slightly, but Johan keeps on talking, unperturbed, doesn’t turn round, reaches out for the butter and spreads large lumps over his bread.
    ‘Damn it,’ he says, ‘they should have gone in for tourism. There are loads of Germans here every summer!’
    Johan is sitting in my chair. The chair I most like sitting in when I’m eating. That I have to sit in if my back isn’t going to hurt. But he pretends not to notice and continues.
    ‘A bloke told me this weird story recently,’ he says, slurping his coffee. ‘His wife was asleep in the sun outside the house and when she woke up she was surrounded by this gang of Germans, who were pointing and speaking all at once. They didn’t take any notice of her at all. And this was on her own bloody plot of land!’
    I hurl one of my crutches to the floor with a crash. Johan still doesn’t turn round, but he lowers his voice, says indifferently to Ragna, ‘What does she want?’
    ‘You’re sitting in her chair.’
    ‘Can’t she find somewhere else to sit? Can’t she bloody well see I’m eating at the moment?’
    ‘Can’t you wait a bit?’ says Ragna, in my direction.
    ‘Wait?’ I say to her resignedly. ‘Am I meant to wait for where I always sit?’
    Johan laughs, either to me or at me, he laughs to Ragna, as if my request was some private joke.
    ‘She’s hot-tempered, that one. It can’t always be easy for you, Ragna.’
    ‘Are you blind as well as deaf?’ I bang the crutch I am still holding against the floor. ‘I’m