When I last saw it, it was in Mauri’s hands.’
He shuts his eyes and bites his lips together as if trying laboriously to compress a new thought. ‘What about Father’s old shotgun?’
‘It’s with the Farmhand. Ask him.’
He opens his vacant, bottomless eyes. ‘No point asking him.’
Suddenly I remember him as he once was. Once we were small boys and his eyes were not hard and hostile. His laughter, which in those days rang out often, was not distorted by mockery or contempt or suppressed rage. He was my brother then, nothing could come between us, I could trust him. He coaxed an enraged bull to abandon its attack on me. He shinned up a tree to fetch me when I did not dare to come down. It was a summer evening, mosquitoes circled above the slow, flowing, glittering surface of the river and we floated our fishing rods in the water and he said he wanted to be a fish and swim out to the sea and to foreign countries. I asked to go with him and he said I would need only to hang on to his fins. But his fins began to grow, sprouting ugly scales and pushing out spikes and forcing him into deeper waters, into a gloomy pond of kind I had no business to enter. And as if that were not enough, life threw horses and loves between us.
‘What do you want with a gun?’ I ask.
‘I thought of going to the forest.’
‘You can’t see well enough to hunt now.’
‘My prey is close.’ He lowers his gaze, sees an answer to a silent question on the floor, nods once then twice. ‘I’ll go to the river, then.’
He turns and leaves and I understand. I curse, I rush after him. He is already stepping outside, the door lets in a cold blast, I stuff my feet into my boots. I stumble on the threshold, skid on the steps, hurl myself down them and after him. He is slower than I, always has been, his feet heavy as if his body were weighed down by the merciless weight of the world’s sins, all collected together. I grip his shoulders and he turns, and now I see his grey eyes without seeing them, the furious glow of the rough weave of an eternal night. He swings his fist in a high arc at me and I cling to it with both hands and squash him with my full weight and he begins falling, back-first, in slow motion, a tree yielding reluctantly from its base, and lets out the broken, intensifying roar of a wounded animal, the like of which I would not have thought human lungs able to emit.
THE FARMHAND
Nature toys with humans, pokes fun at us. It is a grim game in general, as when frost hits fields, or a river floods, or a thunderbolt strikes a man dead. At times one feels as if the earth were waging a war against men, along with the sky, the winds and of course the snow. A human being puts up a fight as best he can, but he might as well throw himself down and wait for the axe to fall.
Nature is having good sport as I rush out of my cabin and the moon charges forth from behind a cloud in order to light up the absurd misfortune of man. I was just sitting by myself, listening to my own taciturnity, so I am like someone newly woken. But I trot as fast as my stiff legs will carry me. The brothers are rolling around on the ground and Erik is shouting, he’s letting out a dull, almighty, unending roar. But no, the sound is not coming from Erik. It’s Henrik who’s shouting. Impossible, altogether contrary to the laws of nature, conclusive evidence of the imminent end of the world, the deluge, the Last Judgement. I reach them just as the Old Mistress and Anna appear on the steps. I try to get hold of either of them, of something, a hand, a neck, or a shoulder, but no grabbable limbs protrude from the ball they form, except four, or it looks like eight, legs that move so quickly that my old hands cannot catch them. They have become one unified creature and at the same time more than two men, and not just men, but two-and-two-thirds, or at least two-and-a-half, man-horses, with bared yellow teeth and furiously kicking hooves.
At that moment, a
He shuts his eyes and bites his lips together as if trying laboriously to compress a new thought. ‘What about Father’s old shotgun?’
‘It’s with the Farmhand. Ask him.’
He opens his vacant, bottomless eyes. ‘No point asking him.’
Suddenly I remember him as he once was. Once we were small boys and his eyes were not hard and hostile. His laughter, which in those days rang out often, was not distorted by mockery or contempt or suppressed rage. He was my brother then, nothing could come between us, I could trust him. He coaxed an enraged bull to abandon its attack on me. He shinned up a tree to fetch me when I did not dare to come down. It was a summer evening, mosquitoes circled above the slow, flowing, glittering surface of the river and we floated our fishing rods in the water and he said he wanted to be a fish and swim out to the sea and to foreign countries. I asked to go with him and he said I would need only to hang on to his fins. But his fins began to grow, sprouting ugly scales and pushing out spikes and forcing him into deeper waters, into a gloomy pond of kind I had no business to enter. And as if that were not enough, life threw horses and loves between us.
‘What do you want with a gun?’ I ask.
‘I thought of going to the forest.’
‘You can’t see well enough to hunt now.’
‘My prey is close.’ He lowers his gaze, sees an answer to a silent question on the floor, nods once then twice. ‘I’ll go to the river, then.’
He turns and leaves and I understand. I curse, I rush after him. He is already stepping outside, the door lets in a cold blast, I stuff my feet into my boots. I stumble on the threshold, skid on the steps, hurl myself down them and after him. He is slower than I, always has been, his feet heavy as if his body were weighed down by the merciless weight of the world’s sins, all collected together. I grip his shoulders and he turns, and now I see his grey eyes without seeing them, the furious glow of the rough weave of an eternal night. He swings his fist in a high arc at me and I cling to it with both hands and squash him with my full weight and he begins falling, back-first, in slow motion, a tree yielding reluctantly from its base, and lets out the broken, intensifying roar of a wounded animal, the like of which I would not have thought human lungs able to emit.
THE FARMHAND
Nature toys with humans, pokes fun at us. It is a grim game in general, as when frost hits fields, or a river floods, or a thunderbolt strikes a man dead. At times one feels as if the earth were waging a war against men, along with the sky, the winds and of course the snow. A human being puts up a fight as best he can, but he might as well throw himself down and wait for the axe to fall.
Nature is having good sport as I rush out of my cabin and the moon charges forth from behind a cloud in order to light up the absurd misfortune of man. I was just sitting by myself, listening to my own taciturnity, so I am like someone newly woken. But I trot as fast as my stiff legs will carry me. The brothers are rolling around on the ground and Erik is shouting, he’s letting out a dull, almighty, unending roar. But no, the sound is not coming from Erik. It’s Henrik who’s shouting. Impossible, altogether contrary to the laws of nature, conclusive evidence of the imminent end of the world, the deluge, the Last Judgement. I reach them just as the Old Mistress and Anna appear on the steps. I try to get hold of either of them, of something, a hand, a neck, or a shoulder, but no grabbable limbs protrude from the ball they form, except four, or it looks like eight, legs that move so quickly that my old hands cannot catch them. They have become one unified creature and at the same time more than two men, and not just men, but two-and-two-thirds, or at least two-and-a-half, man-horses, with bared yellow teeth and furiously kicking hooves.
At that moment, a
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