— Are you planning to starve me all the way to the grave?
Sometimes she give Runa her clothes. Then she cries because Runa doesn’t want to go out in them.
— Mom, Grandma keeps giving me this hideous blouse.
She holds up a knitted northern shirt. Mom laughs.
— I can’t stand it when she does this!
One time, Runa came into her bedroom to find Grandma setting folded underwear on her bed. Runa got really mad.
— Mom, will you take this disgusting stuff away?
Grandma cried her eyes out when she saw that Runa didn’t want to wear her underwear. She thought she was ungrateful and snobbish.
— Shame on you, disdaining these good things I’m giving you!
— Mom!?!
Our cat, Steamball, also moves into the new house with us. Steamball is a really dangerous brute. She won’t tolerate strangers and attacks people who come to visit us. She comes running and jumps on people without warning, lunging with her mouth and claws extended.
One time, a woman who worked with my Mom visited. Steamball was sunbathing in the windowsill. The woman went to stroke her but Mom warned against it, telling her that she was bad-tempered. The woman carried on regardless, leaning towards Steamball.
— What a pretty little kitt-
Steamball lashed out a paw and sliced up her cheek. Then she hissed and attacked her legs. Mom had to pry her off the woman and throw her into the bedroom.
In almost everyone’s opinion, Steamball is mental. But she isn’t insane enough to have ever attacked me. Even though I’ve treated her really badly ever since I was a baby. I’d pick her up by the scruff of her fur and carry her about like a purse, or drag her behind me by the tail. She never once clawed me or hissed at me. Not even when I dressed her in clothes or decorated her with scotch tape. At most, she tried to avoid me. And when I slept, she snuck up to me and coiled herself around my head. Perhaps she felt some mysterious solidarity with me. In the end, we couldn’t have her any longer because she became even fouler-tempered with age. Dad took her outside somewhere and shot her with his service revolver.
~ ~ ~
I walk around the apartment and get to know it bit by bit: its dark crannies and its open spaces. I smell everything. The surroundings shift and change color; objects vanish and others come into existence. Bookshelves and odd cabinets spring up where before there were walls. Every day has a new smell.
One day when I wake up there are carpets in the room instead of the cold stone that was there before. New doors, too. New colors on the walls. A mirror that reflects everything except me. I am too little.
This is my world. It consists of me, Mom, Runa, and Grandma Anna. And sometimes Dad.
I go outside with Runa.
Suddenly everything around the house has become green. Grass. I don’t know where it came from. Everything happens so fast.
All at once, I’m in the bath. Runa bathes me. She gives me something blue that is shaped like a stone but still soft. It’s got a good smell.
— Take a bite.
— What is this?
— Candy.
I look at her. She nods her head, wearing an encouraging expression. I like candy. It’s got a good smell and tastes good.
I bite gently on the thing. It burns my tongue. A disgusting taste fills my mouth and gums up my teeth. My lower lip scorches. I spit, trying to get rid of the bitter, stinging taste. Runa rolls about laughing.
— That’s soap! What sort of moron eats soap?
I look at the stick of soap with my teeth marks in it. Runa washes my hair. Then she sprays cold water on my back with the hand shower; it makes me gasp for breath. She laughs peals of laughter because she finds it hilarious that it gives me such a shock.
Runa finds me annoying. She won’t put up with me, and often gets upset when Mom orders her to look after me.
— I want to go out with the girls.
— Can’t they come round?
— Oh, get real!
I’m not allowed to go into her bedroom. If I touch something or damage it she says she will kill me. But I still like being around her.
~ ~ ~
[…] then there is Runa, who was born in ’55; she has completed her high school education and works as an office girl. It is the case that he gets on well good with Runa if they are alone, but if people come to visit Runa then he won’t stop needling her; he keeps opening the door to her bedroom, and says exceedingly annoying things. These types of incidents have happened many times, and Runa has from time to time tried to stop him and see that he leaves her and her guests in peace. The parents feel that the boy looks up to Runa, and the mother says that the girl ought to facilitate that more, to let him play, instead of separating herself from him — even though she herself has at times had to seek help when he has been at his most difficult: making mischief and acting out and using bad language.
(National Hospital, Psychiatric Ward,
Children’s Hospital Trust, 08/02/1972)
~ ~ ~
Then all at once everything stops changing. One day everything’s found its place and is there forever. It’s like we’ve always lived here. The past blurs, dissipates, and vanishes.
~ ~ ~
We subscribe to two newspapers: The Morning News and The Nation’s Will. The Nation’s Will is a Communist paper. The delivery boy isn’t allowed to put it through the mail slot because if Grandma Anna sees it she begins to cry.
— Am I to understand that you continue reading this muck?
Then she rips the paper into pieces and throws it in the bin.
Dad reads The Nation’s Will. He finds it both more remarkable and more enjoyable a newspaper than what he calls The Mug’s News.
One day, Grandma Anna stops crying and complaining. She goes to the hospital and dies. Her bedroom empties, and all at once her bed becomes my bed. My toys have been moved into her room and are now inside a big storage closet. My bedroom becomes my world. In a single night, Runa’s bedroom has transformed into a telephone room. Runa has gone, too. I don’t know where. There’s no one left but me and Mom, and sometimes Dad.
~ ~ ~
Mom dresses me in my rain gear and sends me outside.
— Don’t go far.
I’m not going anywhere. I think it’s fun to play in the mud outside the house. I make a road and drive my car along it.
While I play, my surroundings transform from unbuilt to built. Huge machines come and go; some strangers call by. Sometimes, these callers talk to me. They are entertaining and have turned-up sleeves.
Then the mud disappears, and I’m sitting on asphalt.