The Glitter Scene (20 page)

Personally Susette does not care that much about the summer family on the Second Cape having abandoned the cat: actually, deep down inside, she is happy. To suddenly have the little white kitty, it is almost like a gift and at the newsstand with Maj-Gun she is suddenly gripped by a great eagerness to show it to someone.

“But come and see it then!” she exclaims and before she knows it she has, in other words, invited Maj-Gun to her home. And then Maj-Gun immediately forgets everything else, lights up and says, almost devoutly, humbly, yes. “You have to give me the address,” she adds later with a small laugh, but still happily so that it does not sound like it would sound otherwise, like a dig because Susette has never asked Maj-Gun to visit her before, during all the years she has lived in her own apartment on the hills north of the town center.

“Oh! Are you still in your pajamas!” Maj-Gun howls when she rings the doorbell that following Sunday, during the morning, not particularly early, certainly at the appointed time, Susette has slept through her alarm. “I’ve come to look at the kitty! Here is my contribution!” Maj-Gun, who purposefully pushes her way into the apartment, has a chocolate swiss roll and ice cream with her and a one-pound package of coffee as well as some family magazines from her newsstand, throws herself down on the love seat in Susette’s tiny living room and immediately starts speaking expertly about everything she knows about various cat breeds and their particular oddities in accordance with what she has read in some magazine “Cat’s World” despite the fact that she is, after all, which she still gets to point out in the same sentence, “really a dog person.”

•

“Must have a little bit of rag doll in it,” Maj-Gun determines. And clarifies: “Rag doll. A rag doll. One of those soft ones. Loose joints. Can easily be confused with characterlessness.” Lifts the cat up into the air in order to demonstrate: and yes, indeed the animal hangs limply and loose limbed, folded double in her grasp. But so, finished with that demonstration, she throws the cat away again, back on the floor with it—as if done discussing this and moving on to other things, things that are more important, more important things that she has on her chest and that certainly, in her opinion, are the real reason for her visit, naturally, in addition to,
as a guest you don’t diet
, drinking coffee and stuffing herself with as much chocolate swiss roll as possible.

Like, for example, the magazines she has with her then.
“Family magazines.”
Which Maj-Gun underlines so you can hear that she has thought out everything she is going to say ahead of time and cheered herself at the shrewdness in it:

“Magazines for
the entire family
. It can be informative to read about what the rest of mankind is up to, don’t you think?”

With reference, of course, to their mutual solitary situation in that regard.

Humorously said, but still, the smile that Susette has had ready at the corners of her mouth freezes, ebbs out, and she suddenly stops in the middle of everything. Because in exactly this moment it is as if it hit her with full force. That
humbug
. Maj-Gun, everything. And not because of the talk or even because of the cat, which Maj-Gun pretended to be interested in at the newsstand
but which she is now barely paying attention to when she is actually here, rather everything she knows about it. You understand that THAT is not meant so seriously, as usual Maj-Gun’s know-it-all attitude of the well-known type that, in and of itself, could sometimes even be entertaining to listen to at the newsstand.

Maj-Gun who knows everything, so to speak, and establishes: the one with the other and the third.
My statements
, and notes, chosen pieces in “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings” that she loves to quote from. Urbanely, as it were, occasionally superior too—and very sure of herself even if often later,
almost always
, it turns out that she was wrong.

And
how
wrong Maj-Gun is: it did not start in the newsstand or even with the skateboarding film that did not turn out to be a
young adult blockbuster
either, which Maj-Gun persisted in claiming when they were going to go out and get some fresh air among their peers after a difficult and strange time in the house in the town center. Nah, simply originates from the beginning of time, that incorrectness, from the cemetery, the Pastor’s Crown Princess, all of that.

Everything with which Maj-Gun had gotten hold of the wrong part of the stick. About her and her mother for example, the flowers on the Graves of the Forgotten, as if there had already been something crazy about it to begin with. Stood and hissed “the Angel of Death” at Susette at the water hydrant in the stone grove when her mother had been out of sight, wearing that silly mask, “Buhuu aren’t you afraid of me?”

But if you then much later, so to speak, when the water had flowed under the bridges and you had more of a will
of your own, for example in the newsstand, personally ventured to hint to Maj-Gun about everything she had been wrong about, just something completely normal, even in joking, then Maj-Gun would instantly become grouchy and snap:

“Well! You’re probably lying too.” And of course put you on the defensive. “What do you mean?” Maj-Gun has started tallying. “First, The Sea Captain. Your father. Back in school. When we were little. YOU said that he was a sea captain. AND second …” And then of course you were forced to stop listening, it is not possible to discuss things with Maj-Gun when she is in that kind of a mood, putting her own spin on things, it just gets worse, leads nowhere.

But still,
nothing
of that NOW, here, in the apartment, not even important. Just the following, so simple. That here for once you have gone to Maj-Gun as one friend to another and been beside yourself about a cat you had just gotten as your own and wanted to share your happiness with her, with someone. But Maj-Gun who, as soon as she has commented on her commonplace knowledge, “rag doll,” has just brushed the cat aside as if what was coming out of her mouth was so much more important.

Humbug. And Susette feels the anger pulsating inside; so angry so angry like she has never been before.

Even if you cannot see it on her, because she does not say anything, does not move a muscle.

But it has become quiet for a few minutes during which Maj-Gun, with her feelers, registers that her joke was not appreciated, maybe she can hear that it is not as funny as she thought it would be. But immediately, in the next moment, she pulled herself together and so to
speak discovered the cat anew. Carefully lifted it up in her arms again, burrowing her face into its fur. “Joking aside,” blinking a bit roguely, eyes narrowed through the cat hair, “you can find a lot of
almost
fat-free recipes in them, for single people too.”

And it is a little bit funny after all, cannot be helped, Susette cannot help but break into a smile. And she softens, the hot fury disappearing almost as quickly as it came over her.

Ventures to ask too: “Something from ‘The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings’?”

“Oh,” Maj-Gun answers, squirming a bit in her seat, but of course she cannot hide that she is happy again, about the appreciation and the attention. “Just something I made up. By myself, so to speak.”

•

“But now, Susette, for the remaining entertainment,” Maj-Gun continues then, the afternoon that passes, the chocolate swiss roll eaten, the ice cream melted into slush in the bowls on the table, the cat fallen asleep in Susette’s arms, heavy and sweaty on her pajama-covered legs, still in her bedclothes, wearing just her bathrobe. “Shall I tell you about something else? Something about myself and my life? Things are happening there too even though it may not look like it from the outside. But a little bird has whispered in my ear: that
I
may not be here for very long. It is starting to burn, Susette …

“You know, Susette, as I have a habit of saying. I’m flying away. The two alternatives … money or love, you remember. And now I’m
not
talking about the former. My aunt Elizabeth and all of her money that I’m going to inherit and that will provide me with the opportunity
to live an independent life as a single person with loads of financial freedom so that I can leave this joint … I’ll be able to have a nice apartment too, and certainly be able to get started on the right diet right away, so that
my life
, oh djeessuss how I’ll be able to say it,
my life
, like an architectural monument, white and airy and with high ceilings … so that my life—well, it won’t be any story about Fat-Dick and Fat-Sally who found love together, 484 pounds of true love and then they lived happily ever after with only vegetable fat on the table, Susette—ha-ha.” Maj-Gun laughs at her own joke but then she suddenly grows quiet and, “where was I?” Looks around Susette’s cozy little living room as if she had just woken up, a living room that is such a different environment from the newsstand where she otherwise sits and tells her stories, everything sounds so different here. A few seconds’ pause, and then she has found her place again. “Well HERE I was: that, the jump in the lake, Susette.

“The old bitch will never die, believe you me. It never becomes evening there—nah, always morning in that life. Early morning hours, a hysterically bursting dawn particularly in the company of someone with her healthy fluids who would love to lie around in her pajamas and lounge around until the afternoon. And
five
glasses of water every morning to not feel hungry and she doesn’t feel any hunger, I promise, before her morning aerobics and the long morning walks that occur daily. But—what do you get out of it, Susette? From those kinds of healthy habits? Hallelujah, Susette, you get eternal life.

“But now that wasn’t what I was going to talk about rather it was the other alternative: a small bird has
whispered in my ear that the Boy in the woods is back. Love, Susette. That possibility.

“Yes, in other words,” she adds. “I haven’t actually seen him. But I know. There is so much you know that you don’t know. Can you explain it?

“A criminal returns to the scene of the crime. That’s what I mean. I love him. Because he … loved so much he killed—
‘Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.’
It was a tragic story. The American girl who died at Bule Marsh. Do you remember?”

Certainly, of course, an old story from the District, Susette shrugs her shoulders: “And what about it then?”

“Well. HE. Loved her. The American girl. So much that he killed—”

“Sorry, but who are you talking about again?”

“Djeessuss.” Maj-Gun rolls her eyes, opens them wide. “I’m talking about the Boy in the woods of course. Haven’t you heard? Djeessus, Susette. If you weren’t so curled up in your own suffering,” Maj-Gun continues, but not at all as exaggerated as she sounds. “And now I don’t mean you personally but
for example
you—

“Or
me
for example. Because that’s how it is with all people. Your head is filled with so many other things, so many other things, your own things, that you aren’t attentive. And then of course you need—protection. To protect yourself, protect each other.

“Like you at the rug rag bucket when we were young, in the house. You were in shock after your mother’s death and you had such a terrible stomachache and of course I talked about my love then too but I couldn’t just tell you everything because you were so unwell. What it was really like. With him and the American girl.

“Well, anyway. What I want to say is that there is a suffering which, even if you see and hear it, regardless of how obvious it is, you don’t bother with it, not out of meanness but because you’re so preoccupied with your own things. So. For example me. I should have been more aware because that girl went and shot herself.
Pang
. A bullet through the head. Also at Bule Marsh. The same place where the American girl drowned.”

“What are you talking about? What girl?”

“Doris. That was her name. A year or so older, the folk band girl. The soloist in that band, Micke’s Folk Band … Micke Friberg whom all the girls had a crush on because he was good-looking and musical and so
deep
, something big was going to become of him, do you remember? Oh, well, Susette. I don’t either. The two of us are just as forgetful. There are lots of golden boys with prospects and there isn’t room for all of them on Olympus or whatever it’s called later in life. Well. Anyway. Doris Flinkenberg was his girlfriend for a few weeks that fall and Micke Friberg was in love with her and she also tried to love him but it didn’t work out because she was in love with someone else.

“We, Doris Flinkenberg and I, in other words, had raked the cemetery together the summer before. Of course, she was the one doing the raking because it was her summer job but I had summer vacation, long, free vacation days at the cemetery, my hangout in the world at that time. And as I said, it would turn out, her last summer but you couldn’t know that then, not even later in the fall when she came back to the cemetery once and I met her there a few days before she took her own life.

“Maybe it was like this. That she knew something about all of that with the American girl that made it so she no longer wanted to live. Something really awful. But I thought about that later when it was too late so to speak. Maybe we should have brought everything out in the open while there was still time, so it wouldn’t have been just a few sentences she had spoken in passing. Just think if
I
had been able to help her. I saw that she was depressed, of course: the fear, the anxiety that stank around her. Still, oh hell, I didn’t understand—not then.

“And I was so angry at her too. Thought she was proud. During the summer, at the cemetery, she just walked around and talked about everything she was going to do
later
when her summer job was finished. Travel to Austria with her best friend and all of the fun things they would do there. Rather dismal for an outsider to listen to in the long run. But in and of itself, it’s understandable in hindsight too: you know, how you can pin all your hopes on a trip like that to anywhere, just escape, when you don’t see any other way out. Because there wouldn’t be any trip later, with her friend. It was probably just daydreams and bragging.