The Brothers by Asko Sahlberg Page A

heavy figure throws itself down on top of them from my side and everything ceases. The human horse stops flailing and twitching and all you can hear is the laborious breathing of the brothers. The Old Mistress lies across them like some sort of eternal foremother, sacrificing herself for her offspring and conquering them with the sheer might of her motherhood. She is a stone statue, the first mother of the ferocious females of the past, who has plunged off her pedestal. She says calmly, as if looking up distractedly from her rocking chair, ‘Stop this din!’
    I reach out my hand and help her onto her feet. She leans against my shoulder, but not by any means out of exhaustion. Erik, too, is soon on his feet, while Henrik pushes himself upright bad-temperedly, moving slowly like a bear that has just crawled out of its cave. Anna finds her way quickly to Erik’s side, but in the gleam of the blaspheming moon I notice that her eyes, oddly shiny and hot, are stuck on Henrik. This is not the first time I am troubled by nothing being quite what it seems.
    ‘Why didn’t you let me go?’ Henrik asks threateningly.
    ‘Because I’ve still got my wits about me,’ Erik answers. ‘And because it’s the wrong way to go.’
    ‘Who are you to decide? Should I take orders from a man who cannot even hold on to his house?’
    ‘I may not have held on to the house but I did hold on to you.’
    I see it coming: Henrik presses his shoulders forwards and his fists start swinging by the sides of his thighs like weights fastened on plumb lines. I leap between them, facing Henrik, and say, ‘Why don’t you go now? You can see well enough to travel in the moonlight.’
    He eyes me for a moment, stunned. Then his eyes flash and he raises his hand. I wait for the blow, motionless. I will not close my eyes, I will not. He yanks his fist behind his shoulder and his face, turned towards the moonlight, twists with immense rage. I see the blow before it is on its way and I realize this could be the end.
    ‘Stop it, Henrik!’ the Old Mistress snaps in a steely voice. ‘You will not hit your father!’
    That is how it happens in the end. I have been waiting for this revelation for a long time, imagining a solemn affair, a little like an announcement in church or a declaration issued in the market square that people have gathered to hear in their Sunday best, pious expressions ready on their faces.
    A confused, bubbling sound escapes from Anna’s lips. Erik looks at me with a frozen face. Henrik stands with one hand drawn behind his shoulder, but his head droops to the side as if he has been hit in the face or the muscles in his neck have given way.
    ‘No point pretending. You did know, or at least guessed,’ the Old Mistress says coldly. ‘Arvid wasn’t up to making babies, even before he got ill. And don’t judge me. I’ve got blood in my veins and, once it surges, I have a hunger that eating won’t cure.’
    They have always had different ways of walking, Henrik and Erik. Henrik moves slowly and heavily but Erik is still boyishly agile, one moment here, the next gone. That is why I remain stupidly still as Henrik executes a twist in the air and launches into an incredible run. He gallops along the surface of the yard, trampled down hard, in the direction of the slope leading to the river. Erik dashes off. I am still pawing snow with my feet until I finally work up some speed and jog after them as best I can. The path thuds, the moon casts fleeting shadows, snowy spruces twist and turn anxiously beside me. Now Erik is catching up with Henrik, I lag further and further behind, I stumble, I nearly fall over, damn this old age, I see Henrik reaching the riverbank down below, and the foam of the black water, flowing between the icy banks, and then Henrik, suddenly up in the air, above the river, suspended for a moment in a void. Then he falls, breaking the swirling, muscular surface of the water. Erik makes it to the embankment and I see