"my sister" (tindersticks)

(quadro de amedeo modigliani, "nu couché", 1917)


"Do you remember my sister? How many mistakes did
she make with those never blinking eyes? I
couldn't work it out. I swear she could read your
mind, your life, the depths of your soul at one
glance. Maybe she was stripping herself away,
saying

Here I am, this is me I am yours and everything
about me, everything you see... If only you look
hard enough I never could. Our life was a
pillow-fight. We'd stand there on the quilt, our
hands clenched ready. Her with her milky teeth, so
late for her age, and a Stanley knife in her hand.
She sliced the tyres on my bike and I couldn't
forgive her.

She went blind at the age of five. We'd stand at
the bedroom window and she'd get me to tell her
what I saw. I'd describe the houses opposite, the
little patch of grass next to the path, the gate
with its rotten hinges forever wedged open that
Dad was always going to fix. She'd stand there
quiet for a moment. I thought she was trying to
develop the images in her own head. Then she'd
say:

I can see little twinkly stars, like Christmas
tree lights in faraway windows. Rings of brightly
coloured rocks floating around orange and mustard
planets. I can see huge tiger striped fishes
chasing tiny blue and yellow dashes, all tails and
fins and bubbles. I'd look at the grey house
opposite, and close the curtains. She burned down
the house when she was ten. I was away camping
with the scouts. The fireman said she'd been
smoking in bed - the old story, I thought. The cat
and our mum died in the flames, so Dad took us to
stay with our Aunt in the country. He went back to
London to find us a new house. We never saw him
again.

On her thirteenth birthday she fell down the well
in our Aunt's garden and broke her head. She'd
been drinking heavily. On her recovery her sight
returned, a fluke of nature everyone said. That's
when she said she'd never blink again. I would
tell her when she started at me, with her eyes
wide and watery, that they reminded me of the well
she fell into. She liked this, it made her laugh.

She moved in with a gym teacher when she was
fifteen, all muscles he was. He lost his job when
it all came out, and couldn't get another one. Not
in that kind of small town. Everybody knew
everyone else's business. My sister would hold her
head high, though. She said she was in love. They
were together for five years until one day he lost
his temper. He hit over the back of the neck with
his bullworker. She lost the use of the right side
of her body. He got three years and was out in
fifteen months. We saw him a while later, he was
coaching a non-league football team in a Cornwall
seaside town. I don't think he recognized her. My
sister had put on a lot of weight from being in a
chair all the time. She'd get me to stick pins and
stub out cigarettes in her right hand. She'd laugh
like mad because it didn't hurt. Her left hand was
pretty good though. We'd have arm wrestling
matches, I'd have to use both arms and she'd still
beat me.

We buried her when she was 32. Me and my Aunt, the
vicar, and the man who dug the hole. She said she
didn't want to be cremated and wanted a cheap
coffin so the worms could get to her quickly. She
said she liked the idea of it, though I thought it
was because of what happened to the cat, and our
mum." (1)

tindersticks


(1) canção "my sister" do álbum tindersticks, dos tindersticks (1995). retirado daqui