The Whip Hand

by Nadine Browne

  ‘Not of her future husband, then?’

  ‘Not that.’

  ‘They never do. My sisters never did.’

  Magge watches me calmly beneath bushy eyebrows, as white and wiry as his hair.

  ‘Your sisters are here?’

  ‘No, just me.’

  ‘Nice girls, your sisters. Are they married now?’

  ‘Elina was. Annika has a boyfriend, I think.’

  ‘They never did come back, did they? A better life in the city, I suppose. An easy life.’

  ‘Better, perhaps.’

  ‘And you went even further, Albert? You never came back either.’

  ‘I didn’t have much to come back to,’ I say.

  Magge looks up, towards the house, his eyes following the memory of what had been a path, leading from the gate through the trees and up to the front yard. Now, instead of woodchips and gravel, moss is soft underfoot, long grass and gnarly roots having reclaimed the trail, order having given way to the gentle, inexorable chaos of nature.

  ‘She dreamt of your old man,’ Magge says, watching me.

  ‘Marie’s girl did?’

  ‘And the next day I come to check on him, and find him dead as anything, with his head opened on the flagstones.’

  ‘Where did they take him?’

  ‘Lundberg came for the body.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘We could have done more for you … for you and for your sisters. It’s too late now, but we could have done more.’

  Magge takes one final survey of the place, his eyes skidding on me as he turns and makes his slow, laboured way back down the hill, to the shore of the smallest lake and his own comfortable home, lonely now perhaps, silent with the absence of children and grandchildren, but full of happy warm memories and one ugly grain of guilt.

  ***

  We used to swim in Lilla Justa every year, as early as April. As soon as the snow melted in the ditches and the days outgrew the nights, we’d anticipate the weekend when he’d be called to town. We’d wait for the diesel rumble from the back of the house where the forest had been cleared into a gravelled yard, which narrowed into a track that curled around the hills and into town. We’d listen until the rattle ebbed, until it was a hum, and finally just a suspicion drowned out by the twittering of birds and rush of the lively spring breeze. Only then would I tiptoe to my sisters’ room, barefoot and holding my breath against the fumes of exhaust that always lingered. Elina would be ready, wearing her swimsuit beneath jeans and a woolly jumper.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I’d report, and Elina’s face would brighten in anticipation. She’d snatch the blanket from our little sister’s bed and tug her out.

  ‘Come, Annika, get ready. We have to go.’

  Annika would let Elina pull the nightgown over her head. She’d step obediently into the faded pink swimsuit, and then into the jeans and sweater, while weeping all along.

  ‘But what if he comes back?’ she’d say, her voice soft and trembling, as Elina tied her long golden hair into a braid.

  ‘But what if he comes back?’ she’d say, looking desperately from one to the other, as Elina and I took her by the hands and led her outside.

  And we would gather – my sisters and I, Marie and her brothers, and a few younger kids – by the shore, to see who was brave enough to take the first swim. A wooden jetty poked out into the middle of the lake and we’d jostle each other to the very end, our toes over the edge, holding back until the first of us jumped and then we all joined in, shrieking, laughing, in the icy water.

  Magge and his wife, Marie’s parents, watched us from the vantage point of the granite outcrop that joined their backyard to the lake. They waited with blankets and hot chocolate for us to race back to the house, half-frozen and shivering but happy.

  Later, we walked back home, Elina, Annika, and I, still laughing and teasing until we turned the corner and saw the little wood, our wood, swaying before us. And we slowed, our limbs like lead, and walked in silence until we reached the gate. Annika would cry, and sometimes I did too though I tried not to.

  ‘We shouldn’t have gone,’ Annika sobbed, ‘we should have been good.’

  ‘We said we would. We all said it, Anni.’

  ‘Yes, but it was wrong, we …’

  ‘It wasn’t wrong. We always go for the first swim together.’

  Elina took our sister’s hand as we crept along the path.

  ‘Anni, don’t be afraid. It will be bad for a little bit but then it will be okay. You had a nice time, didn’t you? It was lovely, wasn’t it?’

  ‘We should have been good …’

  I open the front door and step inside. Our grandfather built the house on the site of an old farmyard, preserving what had once been the flagstones of an inner court in our hall and kitchen. This stone floor is always cold, always damp, and now, at the foot of the stairs that lead to the first floor, it is stained brown with my father’s blood.

  I had looked away from it when I’d first arrived, but now I stand with my toes on the edge of the very last blood the old man will ever spill. I feel a chill rising from the stones, through my flesh, through by bones, and I try to warm myself up with thoughts of hell.

  I never fully believed in either heaven or hell as a child. I wondered then why, if there was such a thing as a God who had created the world and all its beasts, he would hate my sisters for growing out of their childhood forms.

  Elina was the first to disappoint. She had received her eleventh, and final, angel, and woken up the next day to find herself stained with womanhood. The eleven angels on their shelf could offer no explanation, no comfort.

  ‘So now you are a whore, like Eve, like your mother,’ he’d said, and punished us all for it.

  Later Annika asked her sister why she’d done it.

  ‘Why couldn’t you be good? That’s all father wants, that we be good so we can be angels in heaven.’

  I don’t know how long I have been here. I know it’s been a day at least, and I have yet to deal with any of the things I have come here for. I have not contacted the undertaker, or the lawyer. Nobody at St Gabriel’s has been asked to dig a hole.

  I am sitting on a rug, eating the last of my provisions, when my mobile cuts into the silence.

  ‘How is it?’ Elina asks.

  I can hear her kids laughing in the background, and suddenly I think that I might cry.

  ‘Albert? Are you there?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘How is it?’

  ‘If you cared, you could have come yourself. You or Annika could have come.’

  ‘What? Albert, what …’

  ‘I say let’s forget about this. I don’t need the money. Do you? Do you think Annika wants his money? I say let’s leave it as it is. Fuck it. Burn it down. It doesn’t matter to me.’

  Elina’s breath is jagged and quick; she’s somewhere else now, in another room, and I can’t hear the kids anymore.

  ‘Okay, Albert. That’s okay with me.’

  ***

  The silence is absolute and cannot be concealed by wind or birdsong. I lay listening to my own heartbeat and hoping that sleep will come.

  I open my eyes and see his face for the briefest of moments. It is the face I last saw fifteen years ago. It is a smooth, noble face, with clear blue eyes and a thin mouth.

  He opens his mouth and I wake up screaming, covered in sweat.

  I get dressed and spend a while going through the stack of documents, bills, letters, that he kept locked in his desk. I wasn’t able to find the key and had to use a screwdriver to break open the drawers, shattering wood and making a mess of splinters, the fine dust getting into my throat and refusing to settle. Why he wished to keep this junk under lock and key is a mystery; I find no scandalous correspondence, no revelations – just four decades of household bills and contracts.

  I hear a sound outside, like tiny bells, and go to the window. It is a bright, warm day and, among the long grass and ancient trees
, I spot something small and nimble.

  Outside, I walk a few steps into the shade of the thicket and wait. There is a rustle, and something peeks out from behind a huge old oak. Older than the house, older than whatever homestead was here before the house, its branches hang low, like the arms of a giant, and its trunk is as wide as a shed around the base.

  The little girl steps out and watches me as I watch her. She smiles, and I feel something warm and familiar spread through me.

  ‘Hello, Ulla,’ I say.

  She frowns and takes a step closer.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she says.

  ‘My name is Albert.’

  ‘Oh well, I know that. I know your name is Albert and you used to kiss my mum. And you don’t have a hand.’

  I lift my right hand and wiggle my two remaining fingers.

  ‘See, I do,’ I say.

  ‘That’s not a hand. That’s just two fingers. You’re supposed to have …’ she frowns, considering, ‘you’re supposed to have five. Five fingers.’

  She’s wearing a white summer dress with bare feet, and old Magge was right, she is the spitting image of her mother.

  She was a beautiful, kind child.

  Marie.

  She was never what you expected her to be. When we were little, she was wise and patient. She waited for the smaller kids to catch up, and never teased them for being slow through the wood or scared of the dark. When we were older, while the rest of us stumbled through as awkward adolescents, she glided through a world of old toys abandoned for new yearnings without fear or hesitation. When someone, a stranger or a neighbour, would note how pretty she was, how extraordinarily fair and sweet, Marie would laugh and say that everything around here was beautiful and sweet.

  Every winter, on the thirteenth of December, Marie was our Lucia. She would tour the village dressed in a white gown, a red ribbon around her waist, a crown of candles on her head and a train of little girls in white following behind. They would give out warm lussebullar to the crowd that always gathered, and they would sing songs and walk through the snow from St Gabriel’s to the school, holding candles against the winter darkness.

  During the short walk outside, parents would run around the train of kids, bundling them up in coats and pulling on woolly hats, offering mittens and hot chocolate from thermoses. They’d rush ahead to the school and wait by the front doors to pull off coats and hats.

  One day Marie was waiting for me after class. It was a long walk around Mellan Justa, through the village that huddled by its shore, and back up the hill to our houses. Some of the kids rode their bicycles, but I didn’t have one and enjoyed the distance.

  Marie was waiting by the edge of the playground, where it dipped into a narrow field. A path ran through the grassland, now covered in snow, and we stepped out together, our boots crunching on the gravel. Later in the winter the lake would freeze solid, and we’d be able to cut across it, straight to the tiny crescent beach behind the post office, but for now only a thin crust of ice lay gleaming on its surface. The deep snow muffled sounds, hushing the world and filling the early dark with sparks.

  Marie took my hand. She was bundled up in a heavy coat, hat and scarves, only her eyes and the pink of her cheeks showing. I felt her fingers, hard and determined, through her mitten, and thought that she must feel mine, limp and uncertain, through my thin glove.

  We didn’t speak. We walked through the woods, beneath the bare branches of elms that scratched at the sky and beneath the dense pines and spruces that dropped loads of snow with heavy thuds.

  And all the time she held my hand, and as we walked my fingers grew bolder, stronger, returning her grip with their own. I pulled off my glove and stuffed it in my pocket, and gently pulled off her mitten and let it dangle by its knitted cord. Her hand was warm and soft, and she did not complain about the cold. When we got to the crossroad where we would have to part, Marie took my hand to her mouth and touched her lips to it.

  ‘You could kiss me, if you’d like to,’ she whispered in my palm, her breath small white clouds.

  I kissed Marie. We walked over the frozen ground and into the woods. In the dark, in the cold, I kissed Marie, and kissed her again, until I heard a snap and looked up to see one of Marie’s little brothers watching us.

  ‘Albert is kissing Marie,’ he said, softly, and then louder, ‘Albert and Marie are kissing, they are, they are!’

  He grinned at us, and set off at a run down the hill, awkward in his padded overalls, slipping and falling and getting up again.

  It took a day for my father to find out. We were out chopping wood in the twilight, my father and I, when Magge came strolling down the path from our house.

  ‘I’ve got your generator in my truck,’ Magge said, watching us work with knuckles on hips. ‘Icy as hell; I don’t know how I’ll make it back down the hill again. I may end up helping you bring down a few trees.’

  My father handed me the axe and shook Magge’s hand. He asked if Magge would like some coffee, back at ours.

  ‘Thank you, but I should get back. How are you, Albert? Cold, isn’t it, son?’

  I could tell, from his smile, from the twinkle in his eye; I could tell what was coming. I put down the axe and began to back away, stumbling on a knot of roots and landing flat on my back.

  ‘Take it easy, boy,’ Magge laughed, ‘she was going to get kissed sooner or later, and I much prefer you to that loud-mouthed Axelson kid.’

  I ran. I ran through the woods and found the tallest tree, and I took off my gloves and jacket and scurried up the branches like a squirrel. I could hear Magge laughing and chatting, telling my father what had happened, telling him how sweetly Marie must have blushed, and how lovely it is to be young and foolish and in love.

  A while later I heard Magge’s truck splutter and wheeze; I heard it skid down the track, the brakes squealing.

  And then I heard heavy footsteps through the snow, and my father’s face emerged beneath me, between the branches.

  ‘I’ll wait here all night, boy. I’ll wait until you fall down,’ he said, the axe balanced on his shoulder, the steel white with the moon.

  And he did.

  ***

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Ulla asks, a frown between her pale eyebrows.

  She has come closer still, and is balancing on a granite boulder, arms out, hopping on one leg and then the other.

  I feel, as I sometimes do when it is cold, the phantom sensation of my missing fingers. I feel them as I clutch my hand into a fist.

  ‘He is upset, you know,’ Ulla says, and jumps down from the rock, taking a seat on it instead.

  Her cheeks are chubby like all little pups, and she has two front teeth missing. She’s watching me, her eyes focused and unblinking, and jiggles with her thumb what’s soon going to be another missing tooth.

  ‘Who is upset?’ I ask.

  ‘Your dad. He is very sorry, he said.’

  I stare at the girl. ‘What are you saying? When did you speak to him?’

  ‘In my dream. He was very upset. Mister? What’s in the black box behind the glass?’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘He said that there is something in the black box behind the glass. He is upset, your daddy. He is dead, isn’t he?’

  I struggle to remain standing, and I think that, if I can get inside the house, I might be able to sleep. Finally, I might be able to get some rest, and then tomorrow I will leave. There is nothing I can do here. I’ll phone the lawyer from the road and ask him to get rid of the house: sell it, burn it, give it away, whatever he wants. I’ll send Lundberg a cheque and tell him to do with the body what he usually does with unwanted, unclaimed remains.

  ‘Go home, Ulla. Go play somewhere else.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Leave!’

  It comes out harsher than I mean it to and the child blinks at me a few times before getting to her feet and running off, her steps almost silent on the thick, soft moss.

  ‘He is ri
ght,’ she shouts over her shoulder, ‘you are bad!’

  Inside, it is cold and dank, so I light a fire and begin to stuff my things back into my bag. I want to be ready to go, first thing in the morning. I don’t want to think before then. I want to lie down and slip into nothing, dream of nothing, feel nothing.

  I switch off my mobile and close my eyes, my right hand still tingling.

  He comes to me as well. I am looking at him from above, from between branches, as I did that one day, long ago. I want to wake up, but it’s a long way down and the branch I’m holding onto is slippery and wet.

  My father’s watching me. His face is clear and the night is bright with the moonlight and the snow.

  You bleed like a pig, he says, and his lips don’t move. I’ll wait here all night. I’ll wait until you fall down.

  And with a scream I do fall down, through the branches, and land in the snow whipped and torn.

  I struggle to get to my feet, tangled up in blankets and half-asleep.

  The fire has gone out and it is very cold. I look out through a window and am surprised to find that it is still summer outside.

  I grab my bag, hoping that the rental is still in the ditch where I left it. My mobile won’t come back on, and I don’t know what time it is, but I am sure I’ll find a hotel along the way, and if not I’ll drive all the way to Arlanda.

  At the front door I stop and turn around.

  I run up the stairs and into my father’s office, stepping back into the mess of broken wood and old papers. I pick up the inkwell from the desk and hurl it at the cabinet, at my father’s treasure chest.

  I start back and swallow a cry when I see him again, young this time but wild, reflected in the glass the moment before it shatters.

  I pick up objects – valuable, delicate objects, scientific instruments, things with dials and coils – and smash them into oblivion.

  These were the things my father loved. He collected them to remind himself of the goodness in man. Of the great things, the great beauty, that man can achieve when he allows his soul to lead him.

  When there is nothing left, I notice my hands are bleeding. I also notice, tucked away at the back, a small box.