“Is she living here?”
Sten and I were sitting on the stone steps to the stable, watching Ellen. It was the first time she’d left the house in four days, and now she was standing barefoot in the middle of the yard, playing with Soffi as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She was wearing a pair of loose long pants and one of the brothers’ checked shirts, which almost reached her knees, and when she turned around with her arms out to the side, the shirt unfolded like a sail in the wind.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anton hasn’t said anything about it.”
“Nice?”
I shrugged. It wasn’t a good idea to share your innermost thoughts with Sten. You never knew what he got out of them, and there was something in him that I didn’t understand. Sudden inclinations that consumed him briefly from within. Snail races. Playing cards with naked women. Fishing trips to Følle Strand, where we never caught a thing. And then there were the dangerous ones, like when he’d stabbed a pencil into the buttocks of a first grader he’d caught in the schoolyard and thrown over his shoulder. He did it again and again as the boy screamed and fought, tearing desperately at Sten’s hair, and he probably would have done it a few times more if it hadn’t been for the teacher on recess duty, who freed the boy and furiously hurled Sten to the ball wall. Sten just laughed while he saw to his punishment.
“She looks nice,” he said, pursing his lips. And then, as if he’d thought of something, “Look at these.”
He took a jelly jar out of his jacket pocket and held it up against the light. Two smooth, blue-white lumps, each about the size of a walnut, slid along the edge of the jar as he slowly turned it around.
“Gross.”
He unscrewed the lid from the jar and stuck it right under my nose.
“Cut it out!”
I pushed his hand so hard he nearly dropped the jar, then pulled it back with an offended expression. Anders and Anton had castrated seven piglets that morning. Just hearing the screams from the stalls had made me nauseous and put me into a cold sweat, but naturally, Sten couldn’t stay away. He’d sniffed around it like a dog would a dung heap.
Ellen had found a stick that she was throwing for Soffi, but the dog didn’t understand the game and remained there, stupid and happy, sniffing her hands. She looked over at us and laughed.
“Hey, Soffi!”
Sten put his thumb and middle finger in his mouth and whistled sharply, then reached out a flat hand. Soffi came running, wagging her tail a little hesitantly. He had once bitten her ear for fun, and she hadn’t forgotten it. He stuck his fingers into the jar and fished out one of the testicles. The gleaming lump was covered in a clear, red juice, and its white flossy tail clung to his wrist.
“Would you like a treat?” he said. “Come and get a treat from Uncle Sten.”
He stuck the lump in Soffi’s face and pulled it back again, then pressed it into the licorice-black snout before finally letting her sink her teeth into it and slowly pull it from his hand. Soffi wagged her tail in thanks before running to the other side of the stables, her teeth still gently closed around the lump.
“What was that?”
Ellen, who had come over to us, looked for the dog, and Sten smiled pleasantly.
“A little delicacy,” he said. “You should try it sometime. They taste best when you lick them.”
She sent me a quick, questioning look, which I didn’t dare return. I fervently wished Sten had stayed away. Ellen walked back over the yard to the cow fence, where she pulled up long tufts of grass as she snuck in to visit the munching animals.
“She’s hot,” said Sten. “How old is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“If she stays here all summer, you may be allowed to find out. There’s nothing wrong with an older woman. Nothing at all.”
“Shut your mouth, Sten.”
He fell quiet and sat there pouting, poking an earwig between the cobblestones. He’d gotten it to raise the hind part of its body and snip hot-temperedly with the little pincers on its ass. There had been no news on Lise. He never said anything and I didn’t ask, but he looked tired. Had been alone with the chickens until two o’clock in the morning, he said. There was still vaporized chicken shit in his hair and under his nails.
“And here comes the retard.”
He straightened up and pointed, then sniggered like he always did when he wanted to draw attention to something that wasn’t really funny. A younger boy who had fallen over and had hurt himself in the schoolyard. Or someone who had dropped their lunch. Without fail, he’d nudge someone with that idiotic snigger as though we were still twelve years old. I hated when he did it in school, and I hated it now.
“Look,” he said. “Anders is in love.”
Anders had gone over to Ellen. He had picked some strawberries, which he offered her with a flat hand and lowered eyes. Sten laughed and made a quick movement with his hand over his crotch.
“What do you think Anders does with girls?” he asked. “Has there ever been anyone?”
There was something both hurtful and curious in his eyes. Sten’s own success with girls was limited—it was those teeth and the fact that he was so small. His dick was still microscopic and almost hairless.
“Think about it,” he said. “A whole life without any . . . Do you think he does it with the pigs?”
Again that stammering laugh, asking for trouble, that I could never quite manage.
“Shut up. You’re disgusting,” I said.
I could tell I was getting angry. Not only because of what Sten said, but also because of what had happened in the yard. Ellen’s hand on Anders’s shoulder while she chose and ate a berry with the other. She should take better care of herself, keep more of a distance, because just like with Sten, there was something about Anders that was incomprehensible. He stood there, towering over her like a giant.
Ellen turned around and looked at me. Smiled and waved us over, but we both stayed sitting. Sten cast me a sidelong glance. Took a packet of cigarettes out of his back pocket and lit one without offering me any. His cheeks went completely hollow when he took a drag.
“Maybe Anders isn’t so stupid to girls when it comes down to it.”
Later, when Sten had finally pedaled home, I pulled off my T-shirt in the narrow bathroom. Filled the washbasin, lathered my hair, face and upper body with a washcloth and soap and rinsed off with boiling hot water. Then I went into the living room and rummaged around in my bag for a clean T-shirt.
The door to Great-Grandmother’s room was ajar, but I didn’t give it a second thought until I heard weak scratching against the wallpaper and a coat hook on the floor. A shift of weight and something moving.
“Hello?”
There was no answer. Only silence, as if both I and the person on the other side of the wall were holding our breath. Then I walked silently over to the entrance and pushed the door open.
Anders was standing in front of the bed. Unmoving, his arms hanging heavily by his sides. He still had on the overalls he usually wore in the pigpen, pant legs shrouding his stockinged feet. Light fell through the yellowish-white lace curtains, drawing gray shadows on the wall over the short double bed. The bedspread and comforter were pulled aside, and there was a creased hollow in the middle of the pillow, as if someone had just rested their head there.
“Oh, it’s you.”
He nodded, turned toward the bed and pulled the comforter and bedspread into place. Clapped it once with a flat hand and walked past me, his head lowered. I heard his wooden clogs on the stairs and farther out on the bumpy cobblestones to the pigpen.