You shouldn’t should you I said. That would’ve been for the best.

Suddenly mother stood there. She had heard the row when she was hanging up laundry. I told her to go away. She didn’t answer. Just pulled me out of the way. There was something about her eyes and the feeling in her hands. I obeyed. Went to bror who had hidden among the pigs. They surrounded him snouts pointing outwards ready to bite.

The ambulance arrived. Drove father with blinking bluelights to the hospital in ume with the hayfork still in his belly and blood pumping out of the tight precise entrance holes. 107

After supper we went down to the byre again. A dead father was neither here nor there. The milk must be dealt with and the animals fed and locked up for the night. The work was a joy. Even bror was smiling. The fearful lines had once again left his smooth childish cheeks. We gave everyone an extra helping of hay and a fistful of oats meant for the winter.

108

NINETEEN

Two days later we learned that father wasn’t going to die. The hospital phoned to tell us the good news. He was in intensive care and would pull through thanks to the hayfork having been left in place. It was miracle they said.

The police had been visiting. Asking questions about the accident.

Such awfully bad luck the nurse said. Slipping and spearing himself like that. And falling on the cement floor causing a bleed inside his head. He would be operated on soon. It will take time before he is well enough to come home. It could be months she said. At the time I couldn’t understand why father had lied to her.

Our world, bror’s and mother’s and mine, was now within a time limit. Mother might even have changed. Talked more. Embroidered less.

Bror is my twin. The task of protecting him from father demanded my presence. The same was true for bror. We had been sticking to each other a lot but now we could look outside. Join the others in the village. It could happen that someone came home with one of us. One could sense that the house was at peace. Even father’s smell had gone.

One month passed. Then another one.

Mother now and then travelled to ume for hospital visits.

When she was back she was eager to tell us how father was doing. That his liver had recovered as livers do when the person 109stops drinking. She never mentioned the spears of the hayfork or the bag attached to his stomach.

He has changed you know. I think he has come to jesus she said. He is kinder. Asks for you, wants to know how you are. You too jana. You must visit him.

Must mother said. One day we set out for the city. We got a lift from allanberg.