Welcome to America. Linda Boström Knausgård

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СКАЧАТЬ my lovely girl. You were never any trouble. No, daddy, I said. I was never any trouble.

      He needed reassuring. Even though he was dead. In that respect, there’s no difference between the living and the dead.

      I tried to keep him away. Ignored his questions. But he was everywhere, the same as when he was alive. To the fatherland, he’d say, filling up his glass. To the old woman who has no teeth.

      It was all so easy. My mum says it was denial. That I wanted life to pass by me, instead of standing there getting drenched in it like everyone else. She thought less of me now, but that was hardly surprising. I thought less of her, too. We were standing on each side of a trench, measuring out a distance between us. Or perhaps we were measuring each other. Measuring each other with our eyes. Who was the stronger? Who was weak? Who would come creeping in the night, sobbing and reaching out to be held?

      Nevertheless, she’d been loath to make an issue of it. That’s what she told my teacher at school, who after a week was in tears. It’s a whim, she said. She’s full of them. Don’t make a thing about it. Leave her alone. She’ll grow out of it again. There’s nothing the matter with her.

      Along with speech went the light. It no longer danced on the walls where we lived. We’re a family of light, my mum would say, though my dad lay in bed staring at the wall when he was alive. What light, my eyes would ask. What light are you talking about? Maybe we’d always measured each other. Maybe the question of who was strong and who was weak had been there from the start.

      I was afraid of my brother. Always had been. All the time, he was there, his hands and his rage. My grandma up north sent me a box of raisins. He snatched it from my hand. I lost my temper and picked up a knife. But what was I going to do with a knife? He stood there laughing at me as he filled his face.

      I kept a stash in the bathroom, of books, sandwiches, fruit. All hidden away on the top shelf, behind the toilet paper we bought in bulk. As soon as my mum went out and shut the door behind her, my brother would turn on me and I would flee to the bathroom. And there I would sit for hours on end. I read books, or at least tried to make the words stick, but usually the fear meant my eyes just skated about on the page, and I could never remember what they saw. Of course, he would eventually tire of keeping me prisoner, and there was a tacit understanding that at some point he would stop and let me out.

      And then we could play together. We played pirates, or pretended we were blind. He only let me play if he could pull my nails out. I closed my eyes and held out my hands. They lay like little windows in his palm when it was done.

      Love between siblings. Was that what it was like? He was moody and I was mild. That was how we’d dealt the cards. You can always pass, no matter how good a hand you’ve got, my dad always said. If you’re good enough you can.

      I was good. I could be cagey, then lay down a hand of aces when the others were naive enough to fall for it. Card games, pucks flying through the air. The theatre was there always, like a great sky. Was that what I missed the most?

      Maybe I just can’t get away from my mum the way I’d like. She’s too big, too buoyant, too omnipotent by half. But I try. I see her diamond rings all sticky with dough. I see the strength of her. How wonderful it was to clutch her tight when I was little. Am I grown up now?

      I’ve only just turned eleven. It’s fair to say the day was a joke, the birthday song—Long may she live!—and the presents tossed at me like I was a dog.

      Did I want to live? my mum asked me when the cake was eaten. Did I? Her eyes bored into mine.

      I’m falling away, were the words that came to me. Words spoken only as thoughts. Repeated over and over again. I’m falling away, I’m falling away from all that is living.

      And my sleep at nights. As if I were crossing the sea on stilts. Striding high above the waters, the curve of the earth in front of my eyes.

      It could have been worse.

      The room is quiet around me. The walls are bare after I pulled down the posters. I sit in the windowsill, looking down at the only tree in the courtyard. A chestnut tree. Music seeps through the wall. My brother’s room is next door. Mine is what used to be the maid’s room, though spacious like every other in this apartment. The staff here had plenty of room in the old days. There’s an entrance from the yard, a secret staircase, a narrow spiral of cast-iron leading to the kitchen. The door is never locked. My mum doesn’t care to lock doors. She feels so easily shut in. Sometimes I’m scared I’ll talk in my sleep. That someone will hear me and hold it against me at some future time. I see my mum’s triumphant face. It wouldn’t be right.

      The room is dark. But I don’t switch on the light. We’re a family of light. A light to ourselves. There’s a lot that doesn’t bear thinking about.

      My brother’s footsteps as he crosses the floor. The way he moves about in there. Tramping, yet timid at the same time. His voice inside me when he tells me to do something. Take his plate away. Fetch him a glass of water. I’m his servant. Or slave. I do as he says, afraid of his hand, the way it grips my throat. I don’t like to think about being afraid of my brother. But I think about it a lot.

      Before, there was always the park. I used to play in the tree with my friend. We sat for hours, talking about the world the way we saw it. We were together there in the tree, and we climbed higher and higher, until at last we sat at the very top, each in our own fork, with legs that dangled down. Now she plays with another girl. I don’t know if they climb the tree. But I saw them skipping across the school playground, the way we always did, where one abruptly bolts like a horse, pulling the other along with her. The panic that struck between her strides, converting into sudden acceleration. Their laughter, which sounded like crying.

      The smell of my mum. Her perspiration in sleep. The warm bulk of her body to snuggle up to and sleep beside. Her heavy breathing, in and out. The bedroom, with its velvet curtains and the picture on the wall. The framed diploma from the academy of dramatic arts above the table and telephone. The black garter draped over the picture, a souvenir from some show or other. The ashtray of brown glass. My mum’s room, smelling always of stale smoke and naked body. Or exhaust fumes when she opened the window in the mornings to let in the air. The street separated the building and the park. The cars drove fast. They took chances, accelerating to catch the lights before they changed. We lived splendidly, overlooking the park. Six rooms and a kitchen. My mum needed a fair amount of income. She took pupils in the living room. When I came home from school I would hear her smooth voice and the efforts of her pupils in there. The dramas of the world echoed around the apartment. We got used to it. Our friends did too, though we always had to explain the situation to begin with. The screams and the laughter. We were supposed to be quiet when mum had her pupils, or else play outside. When her classes were over, she would open the doors of the living room wide, as if to show us we were allowed to enter. The walls seemed still to tremble with the nerves of her pupils. But after a few laps on our roller skates, through the bathroom, into the great drawing room with the door that led out onto the balcony, into the serving corridor with its black-and-white chequered flooring, and back into the living room again, it was as if the room once more was ours. We practised our starts in the hall. From zero to a hundred, the front door was our brake. My brother had his friends. I had mine. It was mostly his who practised their ice-hockey shots against the door, leaving it peppered with black marks, but sometimes we joined in, me and my friends, dribbling forward and sending the puck skidding across the floor. Sometimes I went to my friends’ houses as well, but the smells there, and the sense of order I always found, confused me. I would long to go home. I would long for my mum. Her hands, her solicitude. I would long to be biking along the pavement with her, on our way home from the theatre in the dark light of evening. Always on the pavement, even if it was against the law. СКАЧАТЬ