The Glitter Scene (22 page)

•

Damp. Down on the ground, reality. Maj-Gun grows quiet, does not say anything, looks down—at her hands, her nails.

“My bladder is about to explode,” she says then and gets up. “I have to go pee.”

And she walks out into the hall and into the bathroom. Susette gets up off the couch too, opens the window slightly and fresh air pours into the room. Starts picking up empty coffee cups, empty ice cream bowls and carries them into the kitchen and turns on the hot water and puts the dishes to soak in the sink.

A relief, as if something had let go, no fury, nothing is pounding now. No “What does Maj-Gun want from me?
What is she doing in my apartment?” No feeling of connections, rags, fungus.

But just ordinary, normal. The cat is purring at her legs now, begging for food because it is hungry. Susette takes a can of cat food out of the cabinet, looks for the can opener but as usual does not find it, takes the old pair of scissors instead, uses the tip to make a gash in the lid of the can and bends it up, ladles the food out onto a plate and sets it on the floor in front of the cat who starts eating.

Hears Maj-Gun behind her, coming from the bathroom, and in the midst of everything Susette thinks of something funny, which is also an ordinary way of finishing a conversation.

“Maj-Gun!” she calls. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t need to wait so long. The Boy in the woods. Bengt. He inherited the whole house.”

But then Maj-Gun is standing in the doorway with a pistol in her hand.

“Damn, Susette. What are you doing with a revolver in your sauna bag?”

•

On the other hand, still, at the newsstand, a few evenings later. “More cat food?” Maj-Gun in the doorway, puffing on a cigarette that she tosses away half smoked when she catches sight of Susette who is approaching across the square, holds the door open, bows. “Just because you’re a duchess—” Susette shakes her head, Maj-Gun does not finish the sentence, they go in.

“Think about what Madonna has done for fashion! It’s crazy! Djeessuss!”

A girl is crossing the square, they see her through the window where they are, as always, sitting on either side
of the counter among all of the magazines, lottery tickets, games. The same girl as all the times before: hair teased, bow in her hair, medium-length leather jacket, knickknacknecklaces. And Maj-Gun who yells what she has yelled a thousand times before, and lacking just as much irony in her voice—the opposite, almost filled with reverence, esteem.

Susette who laughs, Maj-Gun who stares at her, and speaks so that it sounds like an accusation:

“You’re so spaced out, Susette. Don’t know anything about what is going on!

“If I looked like you, Susette. Not exactly what you look like now, but
the potential
.

“Come along and change!” Maj-Gun calls out. “With you as bait, Susette. To life, an invitation. NOW we’re going to the disco.”

And that is what they do the following Saturday when Maj-Gun does not have to work: go into the city by the sea and buy clothes and then they go to the disco. Only clothes for Susette, because there is nothing in large enough sizes in the regular stores for Maj-Gun, something she cheerily points out. She is wearing what she calls the tiger blouse party shirt: an ill-tempered leopard mouth with red sequins that swell over her stomach.

And Susette in the fitting rooms in the stores, in the junior department: Maj-Gun who is lugging clothes between the fitting room and the department, fitting room and department, serving as fashion adviser, choosing and deciding. Dresses Susette up for all she is worth, like bait. Broad-shouldered yellow blazer, aviator pants with creases, and in front of the mirror in the restroom at the
train station Susette’s hair is combed back into a curly, poodlelike hairstyle with a ponytail.

The disco is enormous, an ash-gray hall; Susette is sucking on a Blue Angel, which is a blue drink with an umbrella stuck in the glass with white foam on top.
“It’s stardust,”
Maj-Gun explains when they take a seat on a group of couches suitably close to the dance floor,
“stardust stardust,”
stirs her finger in the whiteness, sticks her finger in her mouth, “mmmmm.” Raises her milk glass—Maj-Gun never drinks anything stronger—says cheers! One Blue Angel, two Blue Angels, and a few more: Maj-Gun picks umbrellas out of the glasses as Susette finishes them, one after another, places the umbrellas in a row on the table. Maj-Gun orders new drinks from the waiter or goes to the bar herself and brings more when the hall and the sofas fill with people; “you can’t yell
waiter
because then they’ll get offended!” Maj-Gun drums her fingers on the low coffee table in time with the music and Susette is drinking, later dancing—drinking, dancing, boys are asking her to dance. One boy after another, boys boys how they crowd around her: “She has good luck!” Maj-Gun laughs when Susette returns to the sofa between the dances only to immediately have a new boy there who is going to lead her out onto the dance floor. “Luck, luck.” Maj-Gun laughs until she stops laughing, new people sit down on the sofas, lots of people, strange people, forcing Maj-Gun farther and farther into the corner. Susette too, of course, but then she is not really there but on the dance floor, on the dance floor the entire time, and gradually Maj-Gun grows quiet, just sits, does not say anything at all anymore.

But Susette on the dance floor: under the blue, white lights, in the smoke that comes from the floor and whirls
around the dancers under the disco ball turning around around silver and glittering on the ceiling. Susette who is dancing, dancing—and sees Maj-Gun at a distance, on the sofa, among all the unfamiliar people, squeezed in between them, in the corner. And not that Maj-Gun is looking in Susette’s direction any longer, does not try to make eye contact with Susette in order to signal an understanding like she did earlier in the evening. Now, is sitting,
is sitting where she sits
, among all the ordinary girls and boys who are swelling in every direction on the group of sofas, pretending not to notice Maj-Gun, not bothering about her, Maj-Gun is like air to them. But yet, it is still Maj-Gun who, due to her size, is the most obvious of them all. Is shining, fleshy white around the arms, paler than ever: Maj-Gun like a beacon through the gray smoke and silver light, a leopard mouth adorned with sequins exploding over her enormous bosom and a half-filled glass of milk on the table in front of her that she no longer touches.

Rag doll
. “Dance my doll while you are young, when you become old you’ll be no fun.” No, Maj-Gun does not sit there and hum that rhyme now anymore either, just sits, Maj-Gun, alone.
I’m more romantically inclined. The Boy in the woods will come soon. And all my longing will be enclosed in my dream of love
. Maj-Gun’s stories about love, Susette suddenly finds herself thinking on the dance floor: Why can’t Maj-Gun get them, fantasies or not?

•

But Maj-Gun disappears there, no thoughts any longer, out of sight in the sea of all the people on the dance floor. Susette who is dancing, dancing, with boys boys,
all
the boys and they do not call her
the Angel of Death
even though it feels that way. Because it is like this and it is inexplicable: “Such a beautiful little Angel of Death.” Her mother, her voice in Susette’s head in the midst of everything, and cuckoo of course because her mother who in and of herself had death on her mind those last years
never
spoke like that. But now, in any case, like from a dream: glitter glitter in her head in time with the
stromblights
, which Maj-Gun earlier in the evening had for sure incorrectly informed Susette that was what those blinking lights at the disco were called. Her mother, in a memory that in other words is not a memory even though it could have been one of course because in reality, during Susette’s childhood and also as a teenager after her father’s death when Susette had quit school and been working full-time at the nursing home for the elderly and infirm, she and her mother had done the same thing. Picked flowers and taken them to the cemetery, set them out there. On
the Graves of the Forgotten:
that is what her mother used to say and Susette thought it was beautiful. All of these graves that no living person took care of aside from the general grave maintenance of the parish.

“If you later come to wander in the valley of the shadow of death no harm will befall you.” Her mother had also said that. And in the church later, during Susette’s teenage years,
her mother and funerals
. Suddenly they had been there, for real, she and her mother at the very back of the church, together, her mother had sung along with the hymn. And afterward, at the funeral reception in the fellowship hall, organized addresses on the funeral table in alphabetical order, in neat fans
with a grave and dignified hand
about which her mother used
to preach to Susette in silence. “The grieving have their own sorrow to think about.” These dead ones then, not exactly strangers but certainly often ones they had not known directly—for example, former patients at the nursing home, which was Susette’s place of employment at the time.

Her mother, glitter, at the disco: Susette small again, during her childhood. Her mother who suddenly, in the middle of picking flowers on the way to the cemetery, looks at her daughter and does not say what she says in reality, “What beautiful flowers you have in your bouquet, Susette,” but:

“What a beautiful little Angel of Death, my Susette.”

•

And it IS true: the essence of a development. The normalcy that disappeared and was obliterated. And she, Susette, could not say when it happened, just a peculiar transition from the one to the other.

The rug rags that suddenly piled up in the kitchen in the house: garments, garments, old garments and towels and worn-out sheets, you cut and cut but could not keep up. “It’s not easy living in a house of sorrow.” Her mother’s words, at the rug rag bucket, and later: all the death that was suddenly everywhere but rug rags were to be collected and cut up and wrapped in spools that would be placed back into the bags for weaving even though the weaver had been dead for a long time already. Her father who, while he was still alive, had built houses out of balsa,
a fragile structure
. Measured and cut out teensy pieces from paper-thin wood with a small saw, glued the pieces together carefully, and Susette had liked watching. One of her father’s hobbies in the living room in the
evenings in the house during the time when everything was still normal and ordinary. That house, it had been standing there on the living room table later—

And buried in rags, crushed by the weight of rug rags too.

“Where is the weaver, Mom? And the loom, where is it?”

Gone from door to door, she and her mother, in the picturesque suburbs below the square where ordinary families lived in beautiful single-family homes, a lot of family noise and dogs and cats and neat gardens; apple trees, plum trees, and cherry trees in the gardens. Her mother and her, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of them over the cobblestones, over asphalt and on sandy paths. Rung doorbells, knocked and asked for, begged for,
silk velvet rag scraps
, everything that could be woven into rugs instead of being thrown out. And Susette who had been ashamed, gradually anyway: when everyone knew that the rug weaver in the Outer Marsh was dead and there was no other loom anywhere. Transported plastic bags home and washed garments, or not washed them, started cutting right away, long scraps that were called loom lengths, to roll up onto the spools later. But still, away from everyone’s eyes, easier to be there, in the house, the kitchen. The mother and Susette, just the two of them, each with scissors, each sitting on a stool at the bucket … and Susette who left her first love because of the grief, the death, her mother—or not left exactly, just walked away from the rectory once and then never went back. Her father’s death, which got in the way then; maybe she thought he, the boyfriend, would arrive as her savior, take her away from the house, her mother, all of
it. On the other hand, furthermore, she had not thought that way at all: she knew of course Tom Maalamaa was not like that.

Her mother with the better scissors, the textile scissors, her dearest possession, you might think. Were kept stored in their own case in a kitchen drawer and were not to be used for anything other than cutting fabric so that the edges would not become dulled, her mother had been very careful about that. Her mother who had asked Susette to sharpen the scissors before using them, her eyes were so bad.

So no, you could not have lived there. Understandable. Gone away and stayed away too long, and Maj-Gun on the telephone: “Your mother. They buried her. Mydeepestcondolences. When are you coming home?”

“Calm down now,” Maj-Gun said again, when Susette had returned, her hand on Susette’s shoulder. “I understand completely.”

“Understandable.” The mess in the house when Susette returned after having been gone for three years. Her mother who had been a “collector” due to the war, that generation. And in the mess, Maj-Gun who had stood and said exactly that: “It’s the war, she told me. Understandable.” All the old rags in the plastic bags along the walls, everywhere, cut, uncut—and when Susette became better they had gotten the house in order. Thrown things out, dragged out black plastic bags filled with clothes, rags, glass jars for flowers, plastic yogurt containers for the flowers … which her mother had collected.

And so, still, in the midst of everything, in the middle of the cleaning, sat down there again. At the rag bucket in the kitchen, with the scissors.

“Your mother. She was for real.

“She didn’t give in.

“Such a cute little Angel of Death.

“We cut rug rags … we talked about you.

“Silk velvet rag scraps—”

Each on her own stool, Maj-Gun’s stories later, cloth in long strips that whirled down into the plastic bucket between them.

Who was Maj-Gun?

•

Still, so easy to blame it on Maj-Gun. Her silliness, stupid talk. Maj-Gun had been friendly too, for real. Comforted, in her own way, as best she could. And not held Susette responsible for her lies. Lied, could not stop lying, had to have another story, coherence, there has to be life.