Читать книгу The Brother - Rein Raud - Страница 10

“I’ve never asked myself what someone else would do in my situation. For me, Monday has always been on Monday and Friday is on Fridays. From quite an early age, it was clear to me that cause and effect only have a connection if we ourselves put it there, and that whomever is punished is the one to blame. And so, I decided not to scream: the strength it takes for cursing the walls that I dash headfirst into time and again could help me to see through them instead—as if they weren’t even there. I was sixteen and I’d been left for the first time, not counting when Father went away. I was colorless and frail like a flower that has grown in a dim room. If I quit asking, I realized, then people will entirely forget that I exist, except for when I happen to cross their path, and back then, I didn’t know to be afraid of that kind of outcome.”

“And you’ve never, ever thought that you should have had a different kind of fate?”

“Some people move through the world in such a way that their sense of order goes along with them. When they enter my room and see an open book lying face-down and crooked on the desk, they will, without fail, pick it up, bookmark the page with a strip of paper, and position it neatly on the corner of the desk, face-up, its spine evenly parallel to the edge. Those people must possess a great clarity, which keeps them connected to the overarching sense of order, and which comes to mind when they see the errors of the world. I don’t have that. When I bump something in a strange room by accident, I always try to put it back exactly where it was before. I don’t know whether the spot is right or wrong. I wish for nothing other than to be capable of slipping through the world without leaving a single trace behind.”

“As if it were a mirror?”

“I was good at it in school. Everything they taught us was absurdly easy, but I realized before long that I mustn’t let it show. As long as I’m a good enough student who causes no problems, I won’t have any problems with them either; but if I’m too good, if I understand everything without needing their explanations and ask questions about things that they might not have noticed at all, I’ll be penalized—then, in class, the teacher will call on me to give the correct answer in order to put down the others who haven’t been able to come up with it; and at the end-of-year assembly, I’ll be brought up in front of the whole school and their hateful glares as if to stand as a role model, but in reality, it’s a pillory, and it’ll be that way every time. As a result I was diligent, but dull. Things grew more complicated after graduation. I would gladly have given birth to a couple of rambunctious kids who weren’t like me in any way, and gone around cleaning up after them, but the Villa didn’t allow it—it was like a stone around my neck; our fates were intertwined and it was still there no matter how much I might have wanted to fade into the world.”

“Because you yourself could be forgotten, but not your name?”

“I can’t say I’ve come to terms with it. You don’t come to terms with those kinds of things. Like how you can’t get used to torture—you can only lose consciousness. Although it might appear to be the exact opposite, it’s actually always been very easy for me to make decisions. Decision-making means that something is being changed, doesn’t it. This is the way it will be from now on, not anyhow else anymore. The chance for things to go otherwise has been erased. We’ve chosen our path. But there’s nothing for me to choose. As a result, every decision of mine has been an agreement. I agree to what comes. No matter that it’s hard and painful sometimes—that’s how it is for everyone, inevitably, isn’t it? I generally don’t go out more than I really have to, just every once in a while in springtime—when the amusement park opens up on the river bend, I go and I wander around there; I watch the skilled sharpshooters winning stuffed teddy bears for their sweethearts and the flushed young mothers keeping watch over their sons galloping on the carousel horses. I’m not cheered by the fact that I’m not one of them, but I’m not saddened by it, either. And I don’t feel like a spy there like I did at school dances, which I attended with the other girls just so that my absence wouldn’t be noticed. One time on a whim, without really understanding what I was doing, I bought a ticket for the Ferris wheel and let it hoist me up above the town. And I just stared at the floor of the cabin.”

“Do you know how many people never actually learn to be alone?”

“I’ve never talked about myself this way. At least I don’t remember having done so.”