The True Deceiver Read Online Free PDF

his head and smiled. “That’s different,” he explained. “And anyway, they don’t talk about it so much.”
    But Katri went on. If Mats got to read four of his own books, then he had to read one of hers, just one. She worried that her brother would lose himself in a world where the bad parts of life were hidden away behind falsely foursquare adventures. Mats read Katri’s books to make her happy, but he didn’t talk about them. In the beginning, she would ask, and he would say only, “Yes, that was extremely fine.” So she stopped asking.
    They rarely talked to each other. They owned a silence together that was peaceful and straightforward.
    It had been dark for some time when Mats came home. He had probably been with the Liljebergs. Katri didn’t like that. He was always hanging around the Liljebergs, hoping they would talk about boats. They were nice to Mats the way people are nice to a house pet. They let him hang around, but he didn’t count. Her brother didn’t count. Katri put out the food and they ate as usual, each with a book. These reading meals had always been the most tranquil moment of the day, a complete and blessed peace. But this evening, Katri couldn’t read. Again and again, she returned to Anna Aemelin’s house, and again and again she left it in defeat. She had ruined everything for Mats. Katri raised her eyes from her book, which she no longer understood, and looked at her brother. The lamp between them had a broken shade and the light fell on his face in a gentle network of light and shadow that made her think of the dappled shadow of leaves under trees or the sun reflecting on a sand bottom. No one but Katri could see how beautiful he was. All at once she had an overwhelming desire to speak to her brother about the implacable goal that never left her thoughts: to explain her notion of honour, defend herself, no, not defend, just explain, just talk to him about everything it was unthinkable to talk about to anyone but Mats.
    But I can’t. Mats has no secrets. That’s why he’s so mysterious. No one must ever disturb him; we have to leave him undisturbed in his clean, simplified world. And maybe he wouldn’t understand but just worry that I’ve got problems. And what would I actually explain..? But I know what I have to do. I just have to take what I take completely openly and fight as honourably as I can.
    Mats looked up from his book. “What is it?” he said.
    “Nothing. Is that a good book?”
    “It’s great,” Mats said. “I just got to the sea battle.”

Chapter Four
     
     
    E VENINGS IN THE VILLAGE WERE VERY QUIET , just the barking of a mongrel dog or two. Everyone was at home having dinner, and there were lights in every window. As usual, it snowed. The roofs had heavy overhangs of snow, the paths tramped into the snow during the day went white again, and the hard-packed banks on either side grew higher and higher. Inside the snow banks were deep, narrow tunnels where the children had dug hideouts for themselves during thaws. And outside stood their snowmen, snowhorses, formless shapes with teeth and eyes of bits of tin and coal. When the next hard freeze came, they poured water over these sculptures so they’d harden to ice.
    One day Katri paused before one of these images and saw that it was a likeness of herself. They had found shards of yellowish glass for eyes and given her an old fur cap, and they’d captured her narrow mouth and her stiff, straight bearing. Attached to this woman of snow was a large snow dog. It wasn’t well done, but she could see they meant it to be a dog, and a threatening dog at that. And crouched at the hem of her skirt, very small, was a dwarfish figure with a red potholder on its head. Mats usually wore a red wool cap in winter.
    Katri kicked the little figure to pieces, and when she got home she threw her brother’s cap in the stove and knitted him a new one in blue. Later she retained a single, grimly valued memory of the