The Glitter Scene (21 page)

“In other words, we didn’t really get along. And in some way, I had certain expectations of her. Her and her friend: I had seen them wearing the same shirts with the writing L
ONELINESS&FEAR
on the front and thought that maybe there was something a bit different there, something with spice for real, in some way. And yes, it can be said in passing even though it isn’t important in this context: it was of course her friend, Sandra Wärn from the house in the darker part of the woods, whom she was really in love with but the two of them ended up fighting in
the end and it broke Doris’s heart; Micke Friberg whom she was together with later, regardless of how he tried to make her forget, oh no, Susette, Doris didn’t forget.

“Because later, in the fall, at the cemetery, in other words she came there again once the way some people come to the cemetery in a fateful mood, was so upset, beside herself, you could see it. But then I was angry at her, as it were, because during the summer she had gone to the caretaker at the church and complained about me. Said she couldn’t do her summer job properly because I was following her all the time and babbling and babbling about myself. So she had arranged a gag order with the summer workers and papa Pastor he was mad because the bit about the Liz Maalamaa mask that I had started using again had reached his ears. Just for fun, of course.

You remember the mask, which Tom Maalamaa and I used to run around with at the cemetery when we were little, you were there of course, you and your mother, with the flowers by the graves. Papa Pastor had to deal with a lot of complaints, not from you and your mother, of course, but from others who had business at the cemetery and he forbade us to take the mask with us there. He detested that mask because we called it the Liz Maalamaa mask after our godmother and aunt who was also his own sister of course—”

“Maj-Gun, wait a second,” Susette interrupts her then. “Were you wearing that mask when you saw Doris at the cemetery?”

“Yes. At some point. Why?”

“But—isn’t it … I mean … you weren’t a child anymore you know?”

“Nah, Susette, that’s true. At the very beginning, in the summer, for the most part I definitely wanted to make myself interesting too, in some way, show that I could have some interesting stories too. Later, in the fall, I guess I just wanted to scare people. WANTED it to have an effect on her. Well. It did.

“She got scared. Quite simply damned disproportionately shitscared. But, Susette, it was never my intention to scare her for real.
Here is the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa
.

“But, Susette—” Maj-Gun gets ready again out of her contemplativeness and says with emphasis, “Actually. I didn’t care about
her
.

“All the time from the beginning. NOW I’m going to tell you what it was like: that
the reason
I got close to her at all during the summer was her story. That is to say, what she had been through. Everyone in the District knew about it, it had been in the local papers. That it was her, Doris Flinkenberg from the cousin’s house, who had found the corpse of the American girl. FIVE years after she drowned at Bule Marsh.

“She had died back in 1969 but her body didn’t surface until five years later. It’s true, no fraud about it there, no sir. But a strange body of water there in the woods, currents, deep and ice-cold. Like a refrigerator. She must have gotten stuck at the bottom in some way, everyone
knew
the whole time of course that she was there somewhere in the mire, the deep. And she had a red raincoat on; that is what Doris Flinkenberg saw. A red spot somewhere in the reeds … and yes, in and of itself, not much left of
her
then, of course.

“The corpse itself I mean. But the plastic was whole, plastic doesn’t decompose. Think, Susette,” Maj-Gun suddenly exclaims, “all the plastic that’s still going to be here when we’re gone—

“So, Susette. That was what I had in my head when I first tried to get to know Doris Flinkenberg that summer at the cemetery. And I had summer vacation, I had time to do a lot of thinking, so to speak.

“About a corpse in the marsh, for example, and what it would be like to find it. What something like that would feel like, as it were. That was what interested me. That experience, in general.

“But when I brought it up with her—well, yes—

“She really didn’t want to talk to me. She got scared. I understood it later, in other words. What she got scared about.

“And in the fall, a few months later.
Scared shitless
. She was shaking—

“Then the fear in her had grown, a horrible flower had blossomed inside her. Or, like an island. Late one night, as I said. In the darkness, under a solitary lamp there at the cemetery. Just a few days before she shot herself. But no one could know it then, of course, not me either. I was completely defenseless.

“That revelation. You couldn’t imagine there had been only a few months in between.

“Not everyone saw it, of course, but I’ve spent a lot of time at the cemetery, Susette, and grown up in a pastor’s family and I have special eyes for that sort of thing.

“So beautiful on the outside, in the midst of everything—but it was her appearance that was deceptive.

“Wanted to sing. The folk song had come to her.
And the girl she walks in the ring with red golden ribbons. The girl came from her lover’s meeting
.

“Cute. You might think.

“But, Susette, not at all. Because in the eyes of some there is—like there is age in my eyes, or timelessness. The weight, Susette. The eternal repetition. The idea behind the folk song. You walk out into the woods and there comes the wolf and tears your throat open. In all of the verses, over and over again, and the folk song has many verses, Susette, in time and space.

“And it should have happened then, Susette, between me and her. It should have been like in one of those stupid movies when after a brief conversation during which a lot of repressed feelings and aggressions you’ve had toward each other finally get aired and you actually get to talk, for real.

“Well. It didn’t happen.

“Idiotic. I was just thinking about how angry I was.”

•

“Wait a second, Maj-Gun,” Susette says suddenly. “So you were standing there at the cemetery with the Liz Maalamaa Angel of Death mask on in the darkness and you scared her?”

“I already said that I regretted it!”

“And
how
may I ask do the American girl and the Boy in the woods fit into all this?”

“If you would have a little patience, Susette, for once,” Maj-Gun says leisurely, “we’ll get to it, we’re almost there. The fear, her fear.

“I know interesting things about all sorts of things, Susette.

“And the fear then, for example the following. That it is a common feeling, like a state, which in the beginning has in and of itself been set off by something specific. But the fear itself, once it has been woken, doesn’t disappear. It is separate: a latent state that just exists inside someone. Once scared, always scared. And you can, if you see it, draw it out.

“Call forth the fear in someone who is scared to begin with. Hold the one who is scared captive that way. So yes, as I said and I’m up front about it but I’m not proud of it no sir; I wanted to scare someone. Irritated at first when she just ran away from me and was busy with her own business. And then later in the fall when I was angry because the caretaker at the church had spoken with papa Pastor about my disobedience when he was there, demanded to have the extra key to the old, beautiful side of the cemetery returned, the one he had given me in secret.

“So yes, I told her about my horrible aunt Liz Maalamaa. The Angel of Death, with the mask on.

“But, Susette: this is where I wanted to get to. Her reaction was not in proportion to how scary it actually was. It was silly of course, she wasn’t a child anymore, sixteen years old already and it was in the middle of the day.

“Later in the fall,
then
she was in and of itself so far gone in everything that if you had touched her with your pinkie then
fjutt
she would have sunk down to the ground. I didn’t, of course, just asked a few questions about all sorts of things, the cousin’s house, the American girl—which I had been going around, pondering about.

“But it was crazy, Susette. I just didn’t understand the extent of it all. The gravity. It was only when I heard about the suicide that I understood.

“That she knew something about all of that, which made it so she didn’t want to live any longer. And that was where the fear was coming from, its specific origin, so to speak. Maybe something she had always known but kept hidden, also from herself. But her friend, it had been just the two of them together, those two against the world and that had been a protection against it as well. And when it was gone then there was nothing.

“And the folk song. Came pouring into her.”

“What everything did she know about?”

“Well, of course, the American girl. What really happened. She knew who killed her. And she couldn’t live with the knowledge—

“Because it was someone close to her, a cousin.

“All of them were from there, of course. ‘Cousins’ from the cousin’s house.”

“What are you saying actually happened? There wasn’t anything mysterious about that, was there?”

“Yes, Susette: that’s where the problem lies. When the American girl died people said it was her boyfriend, who was jealous, who pushed her into the water from a cliff at Bule Marsh, and when he realized what he had done he became desperate and went and hanged himself.

“That boy. Also a ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house. There were several there. The three siblings,
the three cursed ones
. Rita, Solveig, the oldest brother Bencku, the Boy in the woods, in other words. And then Björn, who had come to the house together with the new mother. And when Björn was gone: Doris Flinkenberg.

“But, Susette, there was also
someone
else who loved her. And she, yes, she loved him too. Maybe even more than her real boyfriend. Despite the fact that it was
impossible. The age difference alone. She was nineteen, the Boy in the woods was only thirteen. She had promised him something, but then later, she was leaving.”

“Did she TELL you all of that? Doris Flinkenberg?”

Maj-Gun squirms a little. “Something like that, Susette. But, Susette, I
know … Nobody knew my rose of the world but me
. That is like the melody to the story. The rose in the wound. Which no one, no one suspects.

“And when I started the conversation about that then, you could see, she felt terror.

“The Boy in the woods. He was also her ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house you know. And brother to the other ‘cousins.’

“Pure fantasies, Susette. I see what you’re thinking.

“But she spoke about three siblings who shared a dreadful secret. She said that. And that everything was spinning, she didn’t know what she should think or believe about anything. So just sang, folk songs.

“Yes. And then—” Maj-Gun hesitated a little. “Then she died. And when I heard about it … that was when
I
really fell in love with the Boy in the woods.

“I put two and two together and then it hit me. My love. Was cemented.”

“But, Maj-Gun,” Susette starts. “If you now know all of that for certain, shouldn’t you go—to the police? Or should have gone, a long time ago?”

THEN Maj-Gun pays attention. Then Maj-Gun looks at Susette again, like at a ghost.

“The police? What, the long arm of the law?

“The law’s long
fucking
arm I say. Don’t you get
anything?
Djeessus. I’m planning on fucking.

“I
love him, Susette. That kind of love. Like a fate you don’t choose yourself.

“I want it to take possession of me. Want and want, moreover. Just as if love … were my will.

“Love him because he died for the sake of love. It’s for real. Something that has happened. And the only salvation.”

“Yes, you’ve said that.”

“But don’t you understand, Susette? Love like a conversion. Like when the princess kisses the frog, the spell that is broken. Or the white cat in the folk song that says to the prince ‘cut my throat’ and I will become your princess and the prince does and she becomes one.

“You have to be careful. You have to come to love. New.”

“You’ve said that too—”

And silence, when it zooms through Susette’s head of course that fundamental silliness in everything Maj-Gun is saying about the Boy in the woods, again: in other words, one Bencku in a barn where people partied and Bencku partied the most and for a while in his youth that made an impression, plus the fact that he was good-looking and the girls in the District had taken their bikes out there just in order to sit, lined up along the walls of the barn in the darkness, slowly becoming DRUNK too while waiting to be seen and some were cuter than others and then they were seen more often and so on.
Starling darling kiss ready for the evening entertainment
. It must be Maj-Gun Maalamaa in order to get something meaningful out of that.

But at the same time, on the other hand. Something that effectively obscures all desire to laugh for example. The three siblings. The cursed ones. Bencku, Rita—and Solveig. And Doris Flinkenberg, with the folk song. Not
because Susette had not known, but she had, so to speak, not thought about Solveig that way. Solveig in the company car, Doris Flinkenberg on a cassette tape. Nah, Susette does not know anything about Doris, that fall when she killed herself, Susette had not been in the District any longer. And the cousin’s house, where Susette had cleaned, cleaned, the old man, the cousin’s papa. Who had died—and not that long ago either. And there, in the cousin’s house, after the ambulance had left she walked around with death in her hands.

And so, still, how all of that is also suddenly obliterated because of another image, another scene.

Just: a terrified girl at the cemetery, Maj-Gun with the mask, the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa.

“Damn it, Maj-Gun! You scared her! With your damned mask! And do you HAVE to say the Boy in the woods all the time? He’s probably a hundred years old and his name is Bengt!”