The Story of a Marriage by Geir Gulliksen

Author:Geir Gulliksen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

7

One evening later that autumn Timmy came home; she’d been out riding, which made a strong impression on our youngest boy. She was wearing riding boots and tight jodhpurs. He’d never seen her in these clothes before, and she told him she’d borrowed them. She’d met a man who owned a horse and was going to teach her to ride. She had borrowed them from him. An acrid smell came from her, the boy came up in a rash and his eyes itched. She hung the clothes in the hall, went for a shower and came back looking more like herself again, in her dressing gown and with wet hair.

But that night he woke up and remembered that his mother now had a horse. He’d got it into his head that this horse was very small. She couldn’t live without this horse. True enough, she had lived without it up until now and been fine. But now that she knew of the horse’s existence, how would things turn out? It was a brown horse, no bigger than a dog that reached her knees. She left home each evening to be with her horse. It visited her whenever she was alone. It didn’t like anyone else. It didn’t like her family. Or rather, it liked him and his brother, and perhaps even their father too, but it was his mother it wanted to be with. It waited for her at the end of our road, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes it came and walked beside her without a word. Just her and the horse. Its mane was black, its pelt a rich brown, the color of old logs, or new-turned earth in a shaft of sunlight, like his mother’s hair in the pictures he’d seen of her when she was a child long ago. Now she had black hair with a fringe, like the horse with its thick dark mane that hung over its eyes. They resembled each other, with large brown eyes and long dark eyelashes. Her horse stood and peered up at her. It contemplated her with a calm she’d never known before. To think such peace could exist. She saw herself in that big black unflinching horse-eye, she saw her life change there, and she said

—I want you in my life.

The horse continued to observe her, a dark, steady, insistent gaze. It was the horse that had said it. The horse wanted her in its life, and now she repeated its words. It leaned in to her, she felt the weight of that strong horse-body against her thigh. It pushed itself against her. And then it began to visit her at home. Each time she was alone in a room, the horse would come. It would stand by the wall, turn its head and watch her intently. Each time it would seem as though the horse had been waiting for her. She ought to have come sooner. It shook its mane, it shook its tail, and its coarse hair brushed against the wall and it crossed the floor toward her.

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