Excerpts from
The Principal Sum
By Christina Hesselholdt
When he told me, it was as though a wall arose in my breast
"Do you like her better than us?" I asked.
"I like her in a different way."
"Which way?"
The January light couldnīt make headway in our lifeless, worn-out post-Christmas living room; or perhaps our curtains hadnīt been drawn back although it was very late morning, just in the same way as I still had my nightdress on; we hadn"t taken the day, perhaps the dog had not even been let out. My mother had disappeared the previous day: before that, she had come home from town with two well-filled shopping bags, her shoulders skewed; a couple of cucumbers were sticking out of one bag, the bags were leaning up against the dining table, and I was just trying to pull something up from the bottom of one of them and was being scolded for my pains when someone rang the door bell and a couple of visitors came in and sat down on the sofa. There was talk of being terribly tired, and all the time the shopping bags were leaning against the table, with their contents pouring out, big broken eggs which I wished someone would kneel down to and spread their arms and hair over. They talked about being tired, and shortly afterwards she disappeared with the visitors who virtually glided out of the door.
My dog lay still, the dog lay still that particular morning. It wasn´t wandering about restlessly. It had been taken for a walk. It lay on the floor in its pile of fur and smelled warm, its feet were jerking, it was dreaming that it was running, and so it ran, one corner of its mouth moved up and down, smile and end of smile in one trembling sequence. The fabric on the sofa was called "Moonbeam", it was turquoise with narrow darker turquoise stripes of silk thread. If the cushions were not arranged as they should be, the stripes on the cushions were staggered when they met the back of the sofa. I sat on the sofa and turned my head and looked out at the Christmas tree on the veranda, standing there on a bed of its own needles; by Easter, a brown skeleton would be knocking on the glass door. I had a turquoise bath robe over my nightdress.
"So I want to live with her."
"You mustnīt leave us."
"But thatīs how itīs going to be."
"No, no, no," I shouted and saw that my father was already sitting on the edge of his chair, and I gathered the sofa cushions over me.
Translated by W. Glyn Jones
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