I am clear about what’s going on but will keep myself to myself. Stand by and watch as bror drinks himself to death.

I have no real friends. Because the only real friend I have had will soon be buried. I leave those who say they love. I am jealous and grudging. I have sex without contraception because if I get pregnant I will have it terminated. I take pleasure in revenge. I shoot animals during the mating season. I despise my workmates because they are overweight and dull. There are times when I want to cause pain. I could probably kill.

Later that night lying on john’s arm in the pullout bed I said all this. Told him I couldn’t be with him. I didn’t love him and had never said that I.

Now hold it he said. I can understand if things seem to happen too quickly but we have got something together.

I got up and dressed. Irritated by his gaze following me like the eyes of an anxious dog. I told him that he was hairy and ugly. That it was hard for me to bear the way he looked and that I was not at all convinced that he hadn’t murdered maria.

Outside the stars were glowing sirius strongest of all. Sirius was the strongest and I decided to go to bror. My home and the home of my brother on a hill in the parish of smalånger where 119the book of revelation was nailed like the theses on the panel of the doubledoor of the church.

Then I began to create.

There was a room in the house that was no longer in use. It was a large room with large windows. We called it the blueroom when we were little. Nowadays it is yellow.

Mother kept her loom there. Guests might have stayed the night. I dragged the loom across the floor. It was heavy and unwieldy.

I shoved it into a corner. It ought to be sawn up into little bits. Weaving was a curse cast on women. Weaving ragrugs for dirty boots to walk on. Weaving with strips torn from clothes nobody wanted. Weaving with monotonous movements swish dunk tramp swish dunk tramp.

Like a train without a terminus.

The train that had taken me southwards.

The loom was called something else in the south but the sounds it made were the same. Swish dunk tramp. Swish dunk tramp. Do what is expected because what is wanted is the expected.

What I painted turned into photographs and what I photographed turned into clay.

Now I was sitting on a flattened cardboard box in the centre of the yellowroom. I pulled lumps off the ball of clay and warmed them in my hands.

My fingers shaped them into people. Some were deformed and looked like dwarfs.

120

TWENTYONE

Stefan was still with his mother when I arrived the next morning.