My Brother by Karin Smirnoff

Author:Karin Smirnoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTYONE

Katarina’s upstairs floor was warm and stale. The potplants in the bedroom were drooping in the sunlight. I wondered if they should live or die. She had plants everywhere often in pots standing on the floor. Some of them like the palms and cactuses wouldn’t mind dry conditions but others would. In any case the plants hadn’t harmed anyone. I carried them outside into the shade and watered them.

I got it into my head that someone had been here. A chair had been moved. The bathroom cabinet was empty but I wasn’t sure if it had had things in it before. A rolledup rug was leaning against the wall in the hall.

The letters were still in their box. I took it downstairs and put it on the kitchen table.

I spent the rest of the day clearing up and tidying. It was a straightforward job. Thoughts came and went but nothing meaningful. The sorted heaps grew. Rubbish bags piled up on the veranda.

When we were children magnus lived in the same house as katarina. Magnus had been given a prefix just like nicenora bigsture raiderragnar. He was hunkymagnus.

Hunkymagnus had many siblings. His parents spoke finnish. They cleaned themselves in the sauna.

Katarina and I had been competing for his attention ever since the autumn when we were fifteen. Sometimes he chatted with us. Sometimes not. Not was more usual. It was almost summer again before something happened.

Hunkymagnus was more into football than girls. The days went by without him caring much for either of us and that was allright. But a few weeks before the end of summer term I went down with the flu. When I was back at school magnus and katarina were a couple.

My jealousy was boundless. It invaded my whole body and made it shiver as if I were feverish. I couldn’t bear looking at them. Looked away pretended not to listen whenever katarina.

She even wrote me a letter that I never opened.

They walked around school hand in hand. Sat next to each other in the classes. Kissed in front of everyone and were so in love the teachers didn’t know where to look. It was touching.

Inside me endless waves of emotion rose fell back rose again. What I felt must be expressed. I wanted to be liked a lot. Especially by magnus. And I wanted magnus to like me a lot in order to hurt katarina.

So I started a rumour that she had done it with andreas. Andreas who had been in love with katarina for ages agreed to back the story if I paid him.

Naturally it couldn’t be proved but it couldn’t be disproved either. No smoke without fire. I was the fire. It was burning high. Soon katarina would go up in flames too like a mayday bonfire at gallow’s hill. I almost felt sorry for her. She refused to go to school for months and she had changed when she finally returned towards the end of the last year. Not only her body but everything about her way of being had transformed from a child’s into a grownup’s.

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