The American Girl (38 page)

But this is where Rita got off. She did not care about any continuation, either this one or Daniel Danielsson’s own.

In the middle of the massacre she got up, not to mention appropriately calm, opened the door to the stand, and left the two windows that way.

Freedom. It was that simple. Just open the back door and walk out.

A moment of freedom, in other words. Because for Rita’s part the whole thing meant a return to the mops and that dustpan who was always absent anyway when it suited him.

“Back to your roots,” as Solveig would have said, and maybe she said it too. But Rita did not listen to her anymore. She had stopped listening.

She started, sometimes in certain moments, it actually felt, becoming desperate.

That year she and Solveig cleaned the Glass House on the Second Cape alone.

“We are such a good team,” Rita and Solveig said to the cousin’s mama.

The memory of Jan Backmansson. It faded.

•••

And the baroness in the Glass House, later, when she came out and you could see her from a distance from the First Cape. During rain and hard winds you could see her inside the house, in the same way wearing sunglasses in a wheelchair turned toward the sea, in the bay window, the veranda, “my fantastic Winter Garden” or “my lovely garden,” which she also said, but that was such a long time ago. Like a pilot in an airplane who was going to take off. Like the captain of a spaceship. Miss Andrews. The windowpanes so clear clear. Rita knew. She and Solveig had been the ones who had washed, washed these windows, rubbed them.

“One should get a pistol.”

It came from somewhere.

The memory of Jan Backmansson. It faded.

One time, a bit earlier, in the middle of a workday in the Glass House Rita had suddenly become nauseous and just dropped everything and gone home to the cottage to rest.

She had caught Doris Flinkenberg red-handed: rummaging in the pistol cabinet where the pistol she and Solveig had inherited was kept, like a priceless object.

“What the hell? Aren’t you supposed to be in the Alps?”

“No,” said Doris Flinkenberg, who had an ability to appear in a lot of places when you least expected it. “As you can see. No.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for the pistol. Can’t you see? I need it.”

“Well, you can’t have it. It’s not yours. You have no right to be here.”

Then Doris said slowly, almost drawling:

“Erhm. Weren’t you the one who said that about the American girl. That a certain person saw wrong. That was me. That she was alive anyway.”

Rita stiffened.

Then she stated as calmly as she possibly could:

“Well. Maybe it wasn’t really true. But, on the other hand, Doris . . . there are things you don’t know. There are things that . . . it is in any case . . . well, we’ll talk about it later.”

“We’ll have to do that, then,” said Doris Flinkenberg on the glitter scene. “We’ll do that. Can I have the pistol, then? Just for a little while, to borrow?”

“Take it, then,” Rita hissed. “But you’re coming back with it later.”

“Oh. Not a word to anyone.”

“I said go away.”

“Shhh . . .”

“Go away.”

The world in a small rectangle, 7
. When the summer throws you away. And they are driving a hundred miles an hour with Liz Maalamaa on the highway in a sports car that Liz Maalamaa has rented for the day. It is open, the girls in the backseat, Liz Maalamaa turns around sometimes and looks at them and laughs, an encouraging laugh, now we’re going to have fun. And the dog next to Liz Maalamaa, it is whining too, it has curled up next to Liz Maalamaa on the driver’s seat, it seems to like riding in a car, it seems like it is used to speed.

Liz Maalamaa, in sport gloves, scratches behind her ear sometimes, on the go.

And the girls, they say nothing, but they are so joyfully expectant. This trip with Liz Maalamaa, it surpasses everything already, even before anything has happened.

They are on their way to the Eagle’s Nest, a restaurant on the outskirts of the city.

“I’m so hungry, girls,” Liz Maalamaa said there where she was standing among the shards of glass in the basement of the house in the darker part, “and my dog is so thirsty. Yes, his name is Jack. And you may pet him.”

And the girls, still so at a loss, had pet the dog. But now, when Liz Maalamaa had gotten started, then they had instantly caught on.

“You like to dance?” Liz Maalamaa asked because she had of course seen them and heard the music, down in the pool. “Should we kill two birds with one stone, then?” and Liz Maalamaa clapped her hands, “I’m hungry, my dog is thirsty, and you—you actually look like you need to get out a bit, you’re so pale. Get out and look around in the world. And take a dance with the presidents. You need, quite simply,” said Liz Maalamaa, “to get out and dance a little.”

And they arrive at the Eagle’s Nest, it is located up in a tower and what a view: a round restaurant with a round dance floor in the middle. And they take a table by the window, the dog Jack on the table, he drinks water out of a mug on a tray. And Liz Maalamaa eats beefsteak and the girls also want some.

Though later the music starts playing and at the same time the presidents come. And the regents. The peace treaty is signed, now there will be BEEF and DANCING. And so they dance. Sandra in the glitter clothes, and Doris as she is, but she is so beautiful—like a day, so she gets asked anyway, most of the time. And they dance with America’s president, they dance with the fat Leonid Brezhnev from the Soviet Union, they dance with Kekkonen and quite a few from the Bernadotte family . . . but suddenly in the middle of the dancing, Doris falls to the ground unconscious.

Liz Maalamaa calls from somewhere, “But I’m going to tell you girls that grace is so large so large. Little Doris, did you trip, is there something wrong with you?” But no, there is nothing wrong with Doris. She has just heard another song:

“Yet every wave burns like blood and gold, but the night soon will claim what is owed.”

And it comes from considerably closer and farther away. From a certain tape player, from a certain cassette collection. And suddenly she longs to be there.

“Home,” says Doris. “Now I want to go home.”

And Doris says, “I’m going now and no one follows me.”

And Liz Maalamaa and the dog and Sandra and the presidents, they just stare.

“I’m going by myself. Now.”

And Doris leaves the Eagle’s Nest and walks away.

Home. The whole long way home.

And that is how it is, when the summer throws you away.

This was how it was when the summer had had enough of you and you went home.

Doris Flinkenberg was red like a lobster, beyond sunburned, when she returned to the cousin’s house.

Home.

At home.

What to do?

Lock yourself in?

Lock yourself into the cousin’s mama’s kitchen with the crosswords and all of the magazines.
Ladies’ Home Journal
and the others.
True Crimes
. That is what my life has become. The dictionaries. Learn to spell new beautiful words. Like for example “apotheose,” “anomaly,” and “monkey business.”

Should you actually do that? Was it possible?

“Doris, you should know that I came down too hard,” said the cousin’s mama when Doris came home. “I want to ask you for forgiveness. May I?”

“You can ask for whatever you want,” said Doris Flinkenberg.

And the cousin’s mama had, with a lump in her throat, nodded.

“Here, take this salve and rub it over your skin. Sweet child, how you’ve burned yourself.”

“Thanks.”

“Here. Take the sleeping pills as well. Lie down now and rest. Get enough sleep.”

“But we have to go to the house in the darker part . . . we have to clean.”

“Shh, Doris. We’ll have time. Sleep now.”

And the cousin’s mama pulled down the blackout curtain. And
ritsch
. When the cousin’s mama had left Doris pulled it up again. Sleep. Sleep did not help.

Look through the window. And who was there then, in the yard, as if on cue? Normalcy.

Bencku and Micke Friberg and Magnus von B.

With their bags of beer. Go out there, to the barn, to the boys, drink beer with them. It was something to do in any case. Something that was normal.

“. . . manufactured,” said Magnus von B. In the barn. And counted all the ingredients needed to manufacture dynamite. There really were not many and could, said Magnus von B. expertly, be gotten almost anywhere. And Bencku nodded. And opened a new bottle. And Magnus von B. talked.

That is how it was in Bencku’s barn. As usual.

But Doris did not look at them. She looked, yes she also looked at the map, but only quickly because then she looked down. Below the map. Where Micke Friberg was sitting, on Bencku’s bed. And plucking at his guitar.

Dazed and Confused. On the one hand, and the other. Forward and backward, just about. He was that skillful with the guitar. But he also looked up.

And then, suddenly, he discovered Doris-lull in the barn opening, against the light.

“Is anything going to happen here?” she asked with a drawling, inimitable Dorisvoice.

“And I was a sold man,” Micke Friberg said to himself in that moment and a thousand times later to Doris Flinkenberg during the fall, before Doris died.

“No one can love like us,” Micke Friberg whispered in Doris Flinkenberg’s ear already shortly thereafter.

And Doris paid attention. He was so beautiful. And it was a solution. For a time.

“Where have you been all my life?” Micke Friberg whispered in her ear just a few hours later, during one of their first hugs.

“What do you mean?” Doris whispered back, tenderly and devoutly.

And so, after that, it was the two of them together.

The day after Doris hooked up with Micke Friberg she and the cousin’s mama cleaned the house in the darker part of the woods. After the summer. Which had now gotten rid of you so it did not really matter what happened with everything, or most of it, later.

Sandra was on Åland. Wherever the hell she was. New York?

Couldn’t care less, Doris thought with a lump in her throat.

She was surprised about the lump. What was it now? The voice of the blood? Oh, damnation.

And traces could be seen and not be seen in the house. But everything she could sweep away, she swept away.

And the strange thing: the window in the door that had broken when Liz Maalamaa came in, it was whole. It had never broken either. The same dirty window as always.

She was going to search for a lot of things, when Sandra was not there. Evidence. But she did not. She did nothing.

She did not bother about anything and went to Micke Friberg afterward.

Though she found the pistol and she took it home with her.

“I don’t like it when you’re like that,” said Micke. “Swearing and like a teenage girl. When there’s so much else inside you. Style. “Besides you have a good voice.

“We’re going to sing together,” said Micke Friberg. “We’re going to have a band. Micke’s Folk Band.”

The pistol. Liz Maalamaa. The love that died. The red plastic raincoat on Lorelei Lindberg and on the American girl.

And the telephone numbers that did not exist in reality.

Sandra, what was it?

Sandra. Where is Lorelei Lindberg, really?

And the image on Bencku’s map. The woman in the pool. She forgot it now. On purpose.

Because it
belonged to the hard things in the soul from which nothing could be woven
.

“Do you think so, Micke?”

“What did you say, Doris?”

“That I can sing?” “Of course.”

“Well. Are we going to sing, then?”

They were the Rats
. They went from house to house, from villa to villa, over the empty Second Cape. It was late in the fall in the middle of the week, for the most part, those times just before the snow was going to fall, everything was theirs. The rats, they went into the houses: sometimes it was easy, no effort (a window was open, a door was not properly locked), sometimes it was harder (you had to break a window, or so, but not worse than that), never impractical. They went from room to room in the houses, from floor to floor, through all of the floors from floor to ceiling: opening cabinets and drawers, reviewing the contents of them. In the kitchen, ate their crackers, crumbled them over the floor, stuck their fingers in their old marmalade jars and smeared on the sandwiches and on each other and sometimes on the furniture. Bombarded each other with old hard corn kernels, macaroni, rice.

Sat on the sofa groups in their living rooms, parlors, on all of their verandas. Sofa groups, what a word. Solveig, for example, she was quite good at imitating it. “Come and sit here in the sofa group, Järpe.” And Järpe came and opened his never-ending beer and frothed over the fabric the sofa and recliners were upholstered in. In their dens, lit long matches, pushed them still burning against the white tiles over the fireplaces. There were marks
of course, but not worse than that, it could be washed away. It was not THAT bad.

They were the Rats. Järpe, Torpe, Solveig, and a few more, and Rita, Rita Rat above all. She was the one who was, so to speak, the essence of it all. And it was strange because all of it everything was for her completely totally immoderate plus minus zero, indifferent, did not mean a DAMN thing. A way to pass the time, just as meaningless as all other pastimes.

Skimmed through their left-behind magazines, tore out a page, made paper airplanes out of others, filled in the WRONG LETTERS in different places in their crosswords if such lay unsolved on the tables. Relics from summer delights gone by, they would be sabotaged now. But it was not THAT bad. Nothing more than that.

Looked out their windows.

Admired their views. So exquisite.

It was an unusually rainy and windy fall. Pouring rain, storms, and for the most part it was dark when the Rats were moving around the Second Cape. Pitch-black. Saw nothing in front of you. Not even as much as a finger.

One could then so to speak in other words just as well have been anywhere.
Damn nice here like this
. And pfft. Blew on the windowpane and drew figures on the glass. No obscene words or shapes, that was just childish. Stupid words. Meaningless.