Excerpts from
The Snail's Shell
By Anne Marie Ejrnæs
It was only to give Thea a chance to finish weeping that Marie drank her coffee and poured the grounds into the saucer. Eagerly she passed her brown landscape to Kirsten, who was content to change destinies. She slurped up the new one into her toothless mouth and Marie turned into slops with everything she had inside her. She was eaten, gulped down, and there was a stench of Thea´s fresh underarm sweat and a smell of putrescence that came from Kirsten´s skirts, and she was already regretting it.
- And Marie? She´ll marry a chimney pot and a smallholding, and that chimney will become two and a farm, and the one that grew into two, in time can grow into -
I don´t want to hear it!
Marie had slapped her palm into the coffee grounds and turned scarlet with rage. She closed her eyes to her temper and between her outstretched fingers the grounds felt like heathland sand, and the crowberries were almost ripe, and the leverets frolicked around in all the hollows. Behind her eyelids, the evening sun was red above wide plains, and she had done her duty, for far away they were laughing at her in the stuffy room. With three measured peals Thea tore away the view of the heath as she blew her nose, and Marie submitted to the handkerchief also being used to wipe the grounds from her hand, as if she was a little child.
Translated by Anne Born
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