Almost Autumn Page 4

  Her legs. They’re slim, but her skin is dry. She wets a finger in her mouth and draws it along her leg; it creates a stripe in a different color, fresher looking, no longer quite so white. Might butter help? Mum would be furious if she were to apply butter to her legs; if there was anything her mother had any control over it was the tiny knob of butter they managed to buy when there was any to be had at the shop. She recalls the flour episode, how she had patted it on her face to see if it could be used as powder; she’d taken so little but there had been such a kerfuffle about it, it would only be worse if she were to touch the butter.

  Her thighs don’t meet in the middle. There’s a gap between them when she stands with her lower legs touching. She thinks of Sonja as she makes her notes. When Sonja undressed in the evenings, Ilse would compare their bodies. Sonja’s irritatingly tiny waist formed a slim meeting point between her upper and lower body, her breasts perfectly round, the muscles in her back visible when she bent over to pull off her tights. She looked like a sculpture in a museum, Ilse mused. No such luck for her, though; she was like an unsuccessful early attempt concealed within the sculptor’s workroom, deep in a cellar, a model carved in stone that refused to be manipulated into something more appealing, sharp and strange and utterly impossible to put on display.

  Her breasts. What a sad, sorry mess. Sonja had started wearing a proper bra when she had turned fourteen, the kind that fastened at the back with three catches. Sonja hoisted and squeezed and hooked things into their proper place while Ilse stood beside her in a childish undershirt. She had asked their mother if she could have one too, the kind with hooks at the back. One day during the winter her mother had come home with a parcel for her; she had been to the lingerie shop, but she had bought a different type, one without hooks. It was a tight undershirt that had to be pulled over your head and which neither lifted nor hitched up anything in the slightest.

  Maybe she could put something inside her undershirt, socks or some of her mother’s yarn, two small balls, maybe? She notes the idea down in her book, something she can return to at a later date. Imagine if Miriam turned out like Sonja; she suddenly pictures them both as adults. Two sisters with finely sculpted bodies, breasts like ripe fruit, and then Ilse, all sharp lines in an undershirt stuffed with itchy balls of yarn. Ugh, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

  At least I’m happy with my ears, she thinks, turning her head from side to side in front of the mirror. They’re neat and a nice shape and don’t stick out from her head. She is almost tempted to write “pretty ears” in her notebook. She smiles to herself. Ilse with the pretty ears. It’s something, and a little something at that, but better than nothing at all.

  Her dark hair is shoulder length when she undoes her braids. She shakes her head and hopes that it might form pretty waves; she’s had her braids in for a good long while now. It doesn’t sit prettily, not at all. It looks untidy and wispy, dangling down like dry straw. She inspects strands of hair, pinching them between her thumb and forefinger, observing the split ends. When it comes down to it, her hair is the only thing that she can realistically do anything about, and she needn’t delay the task. It’s almost as if the scissors are sitting primed and ready for her in the kitchen drawer. Positioned in front of the living room mirror, she tries to work out exactly how much to trim. Not too much; she has to try and get it just right. She opens the scissors and lets her hair fill the gap between the blades before squeezing tight and watching as the clipped hair floats to the floor. She cuts it to the same length all the way around, but when she’s finished she notices that it’s shorter on the left-hand side, lopsided. She snips at the right-hand side a little, finds her pocket mirror, and checks the back of her head. Is it still uneven? She snips a little more, then a little more after that. Now it’s quite short, the ends tickling the middle of her neck. Will she be able to tie it up anymore? She tries pulling it back, but the hair at the sides is too short and slips out of her grasp.

  Ilse quickly gathers up the tufts of hair on the floor and throws them into the rubbish bin in the kitchen. Why did she have to do that today? Couldn’t she have made better use of this miserable day by doing something more constructive than taking stock of her own appearance? Now her stomach aches even more than it did before; the sense of discomfort has somehow expanded, a creeping queasiness that seems to flutter within her. She’s tempted to march over and knock on Hermann’s front door, just to gain even the slightest smidgen of comfort.

  “But that’s the last thing you’re going to do,” she chides herself. From here on in he’ll have to seek her out. If Hermann happens to bump into Ilse with the pretty ears, he’ll be the one making all of the effort.

  SONJA SITS HUNCHED OVER THE SEWING machine with one foot resting on the pedal, her elbows on the table; she fiddles with a pencil, sketching on a piece of paper and pretending to work. The clock above the front door tells her it’s fifteen minutes past closing time. Darkness is beginning to set in; there’s a faint gray tinge to the evening air outside, almost like fog.

  Her father is sweeping the floor. He whistles softly, swaying slightly on his feet with each long, meticulous stroke of the broom, the swishing sound of the bristles resonating in the space. Ilse sits farther inside the shop reading, apparently entirely absorbed by her book.

  They should both surely be heading home soon, Sonja thinks to herself. They usually leave as soon as Dad has locked the door and flipped the sign that hangs in the window. Ilse has a habit of pacing impatiently, sometimes as early as half an hour before closing time, glancing at the clock, sighing and hurriedly gathering her things as if she can’t leave quickly enough.

  Sonja drums two fingers against the tabletop, making small, nervous gestures and glancing toward the back room. Nobody suspects a thing, nobody has noticed that anything is missing, nobody has asked why she has been staying behind recently after the others have left. Don’t wear yourself out, my girl, her father has said, gazing upon her with a mixture of pride and unease. She was his eldest daughter, and here she was, sacrificing her own time for the sake of the family business, staying behind at work in the evenings, giving everything she had to help keep things afloat. If only he knew.

  “Ilse?” Sonja almost whispers. “Ilse, it’s quarter past.”

  Ilse looks up at Sonja for a moment, casting a glance at the clock before looking back down at her book.

  “I just have to finish this chapter,” she mumbles.

  Her father sets aside his broom, leaning it against the wall in a corner of the room. He picks up the dustpan and throws the sweepings into the dustbin.

  “No,” he says, clasping his hands together in front of him. “Your mother will be waiting for us at home.”

  He makes his way into the back room, fetching his coat and putting on his hat before looking at them both with surprise.

  “Aren’t you coming, girls?” he asks.

  Sonja inserts a needle in the machine, her hands fumbling as if she were a novice—she’s done this hundreds of times, thousands even, but at this moment it is as if her brain can’t send the necessary signals to her fingers quite quickly enough.

  “I’ll stay a little longer, Dad,” she says without looking up at him.

  “Again?” he asks. “You need to eat, Sonja. Surely there’s nothing with such an urgent deadline?”

  Sonja wets the dark blue cotton between her lips and threads it through the eye of the needle.

  “I’m just finishing up Mrs. Nagel’s order,” she says, her voice low. “You two go on, I won’t be long.”

  “This is unbelievable!” Ilse exclaims, slapping her book closed. “I can’t believe I haven’t read this before. It’s as if it’s been written about me; I mean, there’s even an annoyingly pretty older sister.” Ilse flashes Sonja half a smile.

  They both eventually leave. Sonja waits for a few minutes before moving; if her father had forgotten something, he could come back to fetch it.

  The shop is quiet. Sonja makes her way toward
the back room. The box is there, under a table. She slides it out and removes the lid, reaching inside and feeling the cool, thin fabric in her hands. She carries the item over to the sewing table, unfolding it and standing for a moment to observe it. There’s not much left to do, just sewing the edging and removing the tacking thread; she might even finish this evening if she works quickly. She’s due to deliver it on Tuesday, only a few days from now.

  For several years now, Sonja has visited the National Theater, sneaking in after the performances have begun, content to stand until her feet ache in the darkness of the auditorium, gazing upon the costumes on display. Dresses that sparkle in the stage lights, hats, wigs, high-heeled shoes that click-clack across the stage, a world of perfume and heavy tapestries, applause and chandeliers, highly strung actresses and well-to-do people sipping from tiny glasses during intermissions. More recently she’s taken a notebook with her to make sketches, her head full of dreams, troublesome, beautiful. It went against everything that she was, everything that was intended for her, everything that had been decided for her from the start.

  Only a month ago she had bumped into Helene from her sewing course. Sonja had been looking at the posters framed behind glass outside the theater, reading about the next performance, Mary Stuart, another play she longed to see.

  “Sonja?”

  She looked up. Helene stood before her, smiling in a brown coat fitted at the waist. She had just left work, she said, nodding at the large theater building.

  “You work in the theater?” Sonja replied, astonished.

  “I’ve been here for a while now,” Helene said. “I work in the sewing room. It’s good fun, and they pay quite well too. I’ve moved into my own little place, a room with a kitchen in Majorstua. What about you?”

  Sonja told Helene she was working in her father’s shop.

  “They need more seamstresses here,” Helene said. “I could recommend you, I know how good you are. Imagine if we worked here together! That would be wonderful. But you have to submit a sample costume, and you need to supply your own fabric for it. Do you have anything in the shop you could use?”

  Sonja pictured the back room of the shop. It wasn’t exactly overflowing with materials, and they hadn’t had any nice fabrics for a long time, mostly just coarse wool and thick tweed for stitching hard-wearing coats.

  “I’m sure I can get my hands on something,” she said, still unsure of how in the world she’d go about it.

  Later that evening Sonja had gone through the shop, upending boxes, rifling through drawers, hunting through the contents of shelves and turning the storeroom upside down; there had to be something that she could use, something that her father had stashed away and forgotten about. Inside a box tucked away deep within the storeroom she had found a thin white material, crumpled and carrying the faint smell of mildew, but Sonja had carefully lifted it from where it had been stowed away, feeling the quality of the fabric and admiring the way it draped in her hands. She settled herself at her sewing table and began sketching. What did they want to see? It would need to be something magnificent, something impressive that would look good onstage.

  Sonja unfolds the dress that she has tacked together. It might not be a costume, as such—it isn’t particularly resplendent, impressive, sparkling, or voluminous, and it certainly isn’t worthy of being donned by a diva on the stage. Nonetheless, it is good handiwork; surely they’ll be able to see that. The dress itself is sewn in the fine, almost transparent material, which she lined with thicker, more rigid inner fabric. Nipped in at the waist, the skirt cascades in one soft, smooth wave, and she plans to add a trim to the plunging neckline using a small piece of silk that she found lying around. The smell continues to linger, a nauseating odor of mildew, dust, and darkness.

  Her father hasn’t noticed. Not yet. What if he were to find out that she has been slinking around after closing time like a thief in the night, making plans a world away from those he has for her? Her stomach has ached at the mere thought of it. And if her sample is successful, if the theater were to employ her? Her parents would be so disappointed; her father paid for her sewing course, it had been expensive but it was an investment, in the business, in Sonja, and ultimately something that would benefit him too. She would take over, run the business in the future, but had he ever even asked her if that’s what she wanted? When had they ever had that conversation?

  Sonja has always wanted to sew, she’s always liked working with her hands, creating something beautiful or practical, taking a length of material and transforming it into something new. Dresses lighter than air. Suits in soft, comfortable fabric. Coats with fur collars. Tailoring for men. Drawing sketches, making patterns, snipping and tacking, she could make anything she wanted to—she was skilled, her hands were steady, her approach was methodical, she was like a magician drawing new items of clothing from her hat with nothing but the wave of a wand. But here, what could she create here in the long run? Could she really remain in her father’s dusty premises, mending other people’s clothing, taking in and letting out, sitting in the dimly lit shop and watching the passing of the sun through the shop windows?

  At home they’re used to the fact that Sonja clears the table once they’ve eaten. Sonja does the washing up, Sonja darns the socks, Sonja knits and sews, Sonja hangs the laundry out to dry in the backyard. Sonja or Mum, rarely ever Ilse. Her mother nagged Ilse, running around after her and asking her to tidy up, sending her to the shop with a list, scolding her. Ilse would shout right back, ugh, you never stop, she would say, sullen. Mum tried to teach Ilse needlecraft, Sonja even had a go, but to no avail. I can’t do it, Ilse would cry, casting her work away, the needles clattering against each other, I’m sorry but it’s just not for me. Sonja was thirteen when Miriam was born. She had changed her and cared for her, fed her, rocked her to sleep in the evenings, knitted her clothing. Ilse was only nine at the time, but would things have been any different if it had been Ilse who had been thirteen instead? Would she have done the things that Sonja had done, would she have been given the same responsibilities? Ilse was an older sister too, but it was different, she played with Miriam, drew with her, took her for walks around the block, showed her the world. Sonja waited at home with dishcloths and dressing-downs, head lice comb in one hand and cod-liver oil in the other.

  Ilse dreamed of traveling abroad. She even said the word in her own special way, abroaaaad, she would say, when I grow up I’m going to travel abroaaaad. She talked about America, Paris. Sonja’s greatest desire was to have a profession that would satisfy her, to earn her own money, move away from home, rent a little place of her own.

  At home Ilse tells stories; her laughter is contagious and spreads with such ease, and she can do uncanny impressions of their neighbors. She makes such a fuss if there is something wrong, loud enough that everyone can hear, but Sonja buries her face into her pillow when something troubles her, turning to look at the wall, silent and invisible tears melting into the pillow. The nights are teeming with dreams; distinct, tingling, quivering, like a swarm of bees. Over the course of the past few weeks her dreams have woken her almost every night, causing her to sit up in bed, suddenly aware of the sweat across her chest, her nightdress damp and clinging to her body, the sense of unease that streams into the darkness, the regularity of her sisters’ breathing, her mother and father too, both asleep in the next room, entirely unaware of Sonja’s plans.

  Sonja removes the pins from the trim, smoothing out the fabric and carefully slipping it into place in the machine. She puts a little pressure on the foot pedal and hears the recognizable hum of the machine in action. If she were to work at the theater, she’d be bringing more money in, she could contribute more at home. Perhaps she could put it to them like that; after all, Helene had said it was well-paid work, perhaps Mum and Dad would accept that, she’d adopt the role that she’d always assumed, the one that she was used to, the one that they wanted her to have. At the same time she remembered what Helene had said about re
nting a place to live. A room with a kitchen in the city center. Imagine that! Sonja can already recite the advertisement she’d place: “Young woman in permanent employment seeking furnished room for rent.” She’d seen many others like it in the newspapers. It was probably more expensive to rent a furnished room, but she didn’t own anything, not even a single chair, so furnished it would have to be. She has pictured it so many times, the same scene: leaving the theater late one evening having worked all that day, wandering through the Royal Palace Park in the cool night air and unlocking the door to her own home. She can see the furnished room as clear as day: a bed, a table and chair, her own clothes, all of her things, a room of her own where she can lock the door behind her, space to breathe. It didn’t have to be in Majorstua, it could be anywhere at all. A door, a bed, a room. Peace and quiet.

  The trim is in place, and now all that remains is to remove the tacking stitches. Sonja glances at the clock. It’s late. She’ll have to finish the rest after closing time tomorrow. She places the dress inside the box, putting on the lid and carrying it into the back room, then unhooking her coat from the peg, finding the keys, and opening the front door. The air is hazy and dense, heavy with autumn. She locks up the shop, and as she does so she catches sight of her reflection in the glass windowpane. In the frosted glass everything looks different: her head, body, face, gaze; it is as if the pieces don’t quite fit together.

  ISAK SITS ON THE EDGE OF HIS BED FOR A few moments before getting up. Hanna lies facing the wall. He can hear the sound of her breathing, quiet and steady. Over the past week he’s been woken several times by her tossing and turning; the bed creaks beneath them and she talks in her sleep, mumbling, indistinct. And on those mornings that he has woken before her, he has lain in the darkness, alone and deep in thought. Now she rests in silence with her legs tucked up underneath her body. Gently he pulls the blanket up over her shoulders. It’s only just past six o’clock; she can rest for another hour before she needs to be up and about.