Trafika Europe 5 - Slovenian Interlude

cupboards. ‘Not a book is going to enter this house until you’re more grateful for all the things I do for you!’

Ragna lets out a pretend sob. She even snuffles.

‘The bloody harridan,’ Johan says under his breath, then gets up and walks over to comfort her.

*

Johan is sitting in my chair. And it’s my place at the kitchen table he takes all day long. He’s taken over my time in the toilet, and steals much of the attention and care I otherwise had from Ragna. Johan has got things as he wants them. I have been banished to my bedroom, thrown out and reduced to a gaping hole that has to be fed and emptied, while my head’s hunger, my need to read and write, is ignored and ridiculed. I’m shaking, my jaws are in the process of crushing each other in anger the likes of which I have never felt before. Of course I can move out, become a piece of furniture at a nursing home. But! And at this but ! I feel my jaws press together even harder: I would never have had the idea of leaving this house, my own particular spot in the world, if

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