He does not take them off, he does not hear me, of course. Now he freezes in the air with his arms stretched out, his head pushed between them – the tautening of a slender figure, like a flexing bow – and then he too is in the water, and I carry on trotting along the sloping bank, clumsy as a hobbled cow. I adjust my route and get off the path, I turn downstream, but it is a mistake because I sink into the snow, right up to my thighs, and so I have no choice but to return to the path. My temples are thumping, my chest is about to burst and my knees threaten to give way, I start scooping air with my hands as I run and suddenly the river is there, I nearly tumble in myself but manage to turn and begin dropping down the embankment downstream. The river is strong, too strong, cunning under its soft skin, from afar I see a hand raised out of the water, but then it, too, vanishes, so death must be certain now, I carry on trotting along the riverside but only to trot towards the end. I feel like throwing myself into the river or collapsing in the snow and sinking into it and asking for forgiveness for all my sins, and roaring out a final prayer before they bury me: a prayer in my own words, one that has been waiting for me all along, dedicated to me.
He is finally mine, I clutch him, and I do not let go, I squeeze his hot flanks with my knees, the wild flying of his mane, his hot breath on my face, I am riding him.
She is finally mine, I clutch her, and I do not let go, I squeeze her hot flanks with my knees, the wild flying of her mane, her hot breath on my face, I am riding her.
We gallop deeper and deeper, towards darkness, together, free, swaying, now.
Henrik. Fish fins. I bought Jansson’s horse for you. I cannot give you both of them. I will get down from the tree, Henrik. I will come down.
But just then the dark surface breaks and first one head pushes through, then another. The heads do not look as if they belong to two separate bodies, but to a two-headed creature risen out of the sludge. Erik manages to turn onto his back and tries to get to the bank, frantically splashing about with one arm while using the other to support Henrik’s head. I reach them and begin looking feverishly for something I can stretch out. Among the shadows cast by the insolent moon, I spot a dry branch sticking out of the snow. I snatch it free from the suction of the lumpy snow and fling myself onto my knees by the water to hold it out to Erik.
‘Grab this!’ I shout. My cry sounds like wordless roaring. ‘I’ll pull you out!’
Erik beats the rushing water with his free hand. His head bounces on the surface, while Henrik’s looks immobile, like a stone sticking out of the river. I try to extend my arms and slither over the bank until almost the whole of my upper body is swaying above a void. Erik lets out a yell – desperate or anguished or merely frantic – and rises partially out of the water, springing out of it backwards in an arched leap. Henrik’s head is in his arms like a loaf clutched by a starving man. Erik clasps the stick I am holding out. I tug with all my might, for a moment I worry that their weight will pull me into the river, but now Erik grabs my shoulder and then the embankment, and I use my last ounce of strength to lie back, tucking my feet underneath myself for grip. I reach forward to seize Henrik’s wet shock of hair. He becomes detached from the river like an exhausted fish and collapses face-first on top of me.
I hear their panting through my own puffing. Henrik starts coughing water onto my face, I shift him off me. I hear sounds approaching from further along the bank. I push myself into an upright position, I sway. The brothers lie on the ground next to each other with their chests heaving, so alike. Anna reaches us and throws herself onto her knees next to Erik. The Old Mistress has stopped at the bend in the river, not because she does not have the strength to go any further, but because she can see all she needs to from where she is. I bend down to push Anna to the side and help Erik to sit up by taking hold of his armpits.
‘You should’ve taken your boots off,’ I say. ‘They gulp down water.’
‘There wasn’t time,’ he gasps.
‘We’ve got to get into the house at once,’ Anna says. ‘Otherwise you’ll catch your death.’
Henrik lifts his head listlessly. ‘Doesn’t sound like a bad idea.’
‘Keep your mouth shut!’ Erik snaps. ‘I’m not planning to go to my grave because of you.’
‘Though you nearly did,’ Henrik says, his voice quivering.
Erik pushes himself up. ‘I would have let go.’
‘I expect you would have. But would I?’
We half-run upstream. The Old Mistress has already turned round to trudge back ahead of us. Henrik trails behind, his head bent, hugging himself with both arms. Erik turns to me and asks, ‘It is true, then?’
I nod. ‘It’s true, most likely, no way round it.’
He thinks for a moment and states calmly, ‘Why not, suits me fine.’
I look over my shoulder; Henrik is following us. He looks lonelier than ever as he comes up the slope. I stop to wait for him. This is the way he must have trudged for months, struggling uphill, sullen, alone. Reaching me, he is minded to pass at first, but then he turns his face towards me and, with it, his eyes. They lack their usual gleam. Maybe it is because of the bluish light of the moon that his expression appears almost gentle, unless he is just exhausted, unless his strength has finally been depleted and he has, at last, given in. ‘St John used to baptize folk in a stream,’ he says.
We had no choice in the matter. No generation can fail to hear the demands that are sung out by the choir of the tribe that came before. The legacy of landowners in particular is to burden their offspring with their gains and losses; they are to succeed, come what may. When it began to dawn on Arvid and myself during that night in the bridal chamber that he had not been blessed with the capacity to make fruitful the field that he had been given to sow, something that later became undeniable, we understood that hostile fate had picked on us and was beginning to nudge us towards shameful oblivion. I would have borne our situation, but it made the sickly Arvid seriously ill. The flesh fell off his bones, he lost his appetite, he stayed awake brooding at night. The gloom in his eyes reached such proportions that even animals shied away from him and when he took to his bed in the evenings, you would think he was arranging his limbs in a coffin.
‘I’m not fit to make babies,’ he sighed, resigned.
‘It isn’t your fault,’ I tried to comfort him.
‘I must have done some wrong, to be punished like this.’
‘Maybe you’re having to pay for the sins of past generations.’ ‘In that case there must have been many generations of sinners in this family. I’d happily go hang myself so you could get a new husband, but that too is a sin, as we know, and there’s nothing to be gained from me roasting in hell.’
I do not remember now, or I do not want or dare to remember, which one of us came up with a way out of the horrible situation. I only recall, or choose to recall, how once again we had laid our heads on the pillows of our marital bed, airless in its chastity, and the idea worked itself into our subdued talk, as if presented by heavenly mercy. Arvid said, ‘What if I had a chat with the Farmhand? We could agree on one Sunday a month.’