The Glitter Scene (27 page)

And maybe, a little, Rita, Solveig—and Bengt. Three siblings, the three cursed ones. Something she also always knew but had not thought about in relation to anything in reality, so to speak. Exactly because it still has never been real to her, a story.

The Boy in the woods
. “The one who killed out of love.”

“But what are you babbling about?” That is what Bengt said, she will not forget it, when she, on that horrible day, had actually said that to him.
What are you babbling about?
He quite simply had not understood a word.

But WHERE is Susette Packlén? It was almost ridiculous later, because in the midst of everything Maj-Gun has known the answer to that question too, before she even finished thinking that thought.

“Portugal.” The fiancé. Djeessuss! Djeessuss! Tom Maalamaa who spoke with the Manager, about his fiancée.

But djeessuss too, which cannot be said either, not to the Manager, not to any one at all.

The polo shirt, the blazer, and the disco.
Susette and love
. Oh God. “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.” A blank page, “Tom’s world.” Djeessuss.

She remembers herself at the disco. Sitting, squeezed onto the sofa, in an unbearability, though nothing compared to later unbearabilities, but out of whack, Melancholy. Susette dancing on the dance floor. Rag doll.
Dance my doll
. For a while it had been a bit entertaining. As if that which connected them—rug rags, long strips, loom lengths—made it possible to control her, Susette, as it were. Perhaps stated exaggeratedly, but still. “You are so easy, Susette,” which she had also said once.

Susette who was dancing, disappeared, slipped away on the dance floor. One among the crowd, bodies, bodies, smoke. And then, in that moment, how Maj-Gun had suddenly thought, a pang inside her. A pistol in the bathroom, in a bag. “God, Susette, what are you doing with a revolver in your sauna bag?” The utterly incomprehensible.

That which had become so clear when Susette slipped away, disappeared, on the dance floor.

That Susette was a stranger. That she, Maj-Gun, knew nothing about her.

“I’m fascinated by the Death in her.”

And then, at the disco, she caught sight of her brother. Tom Maalamaa, in the throng at the disco, on the dance floor. Like
a fish in water
, the blazer, the polo shirt, and
those crooked idiotic cones that were running down along his cheeks. Then she immediately got up, careful so that her brother should not see her, and left the disco. Because it had first been, at the sight of her brother in the crowd that she had, there in the throng, squeezed onto the sofa, been gripped by … not shame, but some type of hopelessness in her that was out of step, fat or skinny, it was not important, but so
old
. And not on her life had she wanted her brother, who immediately would have understood, the only one in the world who would have understood, to see it.

Goatee? she asked him roguishly on the phone when he called a few days later. Rather unexpectedly, and despite the teasing tone, she had been a bit happy, certainly. He had not understood what she was talking about. She said that she had seen him at the disco, he sounded surprised, oh, she had been there. Yes, she said, with a big group of young people, other shop assistants and the like, from newsstands, and they had so much fun, so much so that she only caught a glimpse of him in the crowd, but was so caught up in the music then, the young people, the dance, that she lost sight of him and when she looked for him she could not find him.

She also said, as if in passing but certainly oh so meaningful, that Susette had been there, and he was rather surprised about that too. And she knew her brother well enough that she could tell when he was lying and this time he was telling the truth.

“Hee hee hee … maybe you want her phone number?” she chirped on the phone. “Do you want to get in touch with her? She’s quite lonely.” Because that had
been before she brought the cat food to Susette’s apartment and everything had fallen apart for her.

But he took the phone number, Tom Maalamaa. That he had.

And my God, they HAD gotten together, and oh God, everything about Susette—what you did not know about her. Scissors in the cabinet, dried blood—

But
the Boy in the woods
, Bengt, what was he to her?

“I don’t know anything about anything.” Again, Susette in the hangout. No, unavoidable. It had been real. And when Maj-Gun had hit, not even then had Susette been unsympathetic.

And it IS for real, cannot be talked away, pushed away. “If you weren’t so curled up in your own suffering.” Everything else disappeared in the presence of this attempted murder, a concrete action almost carried out. Susette’s big eyes, the boathouse, the snow. It happened: and she, Maj-Gun,
had to
remember it, carry it in her consciousness, it always had to be there.

“I was so angry so angry so angry …” she says to the Manager. “Probably jealous too. I thought I was … in love with him …”

“Maj-Gun, I’ve understood that she has had a difficult time,” the Manager says. “But she is going to therapy. Some great sorrow in her past. Unresolved,” the Manager determines and it is probably true, very true, because that is also what Susette, many years later, in the future, will say. “Like being in a forest. Not finding your way out.”

I love you
. Running over the plains. All stories, and blood. “Can you imagine killing out of love?” Susette. Duel in the sun. Bengt.
Djeessuss
. Oh God. Tom.
Someone in a polo shirt. Tom Maalamaa came and got her.
And behind her it was burning
.

“But it’s better now,” says the Manager. “Everything is better now. And now it seems like she and all of us are ready to move on. You too, Maj-Gun—”

Yes. But first. Bengt. She has to say it anyway.

“But Bengt—”

“It’s very tragic,” the Manager says again and though it can seem indifferent there is still nothing sugarcoated about it.

The angels on the TV. Rita, Solveig—and the third one, the brother Bengt.

Pictures on the wall
. His pictures, drawings. Blue pictures. “The Exhibition.”
The Winter Garden
.

“Did you know … him?” Maj-Gun asks carefully.

“Of course. Were very good friends, the three of us. The kids had no real childhood. I knew them since they were little. Tried to help them as best I could. Especially the girls.

“But,” he adds, “it can, well … you know, sound … the way it sounds. But, it
wasn’t
exactly unexpected, what happened. But, dear Maj-Gun. You need to think about yourself now. You have so much inside. So much life.”

And then he catches his breath, stretches, and asks her about the future, what she is planning on doing now, on becoming “when she grows up.”

•

“I am grown up, Manager. I don’t know. I—I wanted to become a pastor once, I think.”

And then she starts relating an episode from her childhood, at the rectory. That childhood, that rectory: one Sunday at the dinner table, her brother Tom Maalamaa,
who was a pompous brooder as a teenager and this particular Sunday he brooded a bit more than usual and realized what he decided to “proclaim,” to his gathered family this Sunday in particular, his word that too, wearing a blazer, which he always did back then, despite the fact that he was only fifteen or sixteen. That HE did not have a calling to become a pastor and would, for that reason, unfortunately not be able to pass on the family tradition from father to son.

“I’m sorry, Father,” he added, like in an old-fashioned movie. One of those brooding films that played nonstop in his head at that time; they had in common that it was always his alter ego in the lead role that, after long scenes in an inappropriate childhood, youth, ended the same way: with the alter ego becoming “famous,” something “successful,” Gustav Mahler, Ingmar Bergman, the like.

On the other hand, Tom Maalamaa had on this Sunday afternoon explained that he understood that he could “serve humanity” in another way and had in other words come to the conclusion that he would become a lawyer. He had already mail-ordered the compendium for “the preparation course” for the admission exam at the law school.

“Where is your girlfriend?” was all papa Pastor asked with a small roguelike glint in his eyes, when Tom Maalamaa had stopped speaking, because that girlfriend with the big eyes, cuute, who never said a word, but who, during the past few months, had been present at all of the Sunday dinners at the rectory, was not sitting at the place at the table where she usually sat despite the fact that the place had been set for her: the chair was gaping emptily
for a quiet and big-eyed Susette Packlén, poking at her food, in tight jeans, boots.

“She’s gone. Ended things,” his sister willingly and helpfully prompted loudly after a hasty destructive look at her brother Tom—Tom in the sense of TOM, seen as a world, in that subjective perception of reality that no one other than the two siblings in this family shared.

A world where the Happy Harlot in the middle of the DAY OF DESIRE, which had been great and wonderful (in any case, it should be mentioned, like a hypothesis), has been transformed into the Disgust, a world where it was “a shame about,” there … there … and Maj-Gun had almost stammered internally out of anger
and here here here Tom Tom you’ll get for this
.

“And to be honest,” his sister added in a steady voice, “you can have some understanding for it.
I love you
over the plains. Love’s representative, a bit
pale
in that perspective.” This too like a silent reference to something that only the brother and the sister in the family shared: then, a long time ago, before Tom Maalamaa started hanging out with his first girlfriend, he had certainly enjoyed himself when his sister Maj-Gun, when talking about that mother with the big-eyed girl Susette at the cemetery, had grown quiet at the mere thought of the name, “CAN you be called that, Tom?” Asked humorously, rhetorically so to speak, and added, “nah I don’t think so. Newsstand toppler. Susette.
I love you over the plains—”

“We are SEPARATED,” Tom Maalamaa, with poorly restrained anger, personally declared out loud at the dinner table, though somewhat paler in the face. In and of itself, possibly, not entirely wrong either because in
reality his sister did not know the details surrounding the breakup of his relationship—that Susette Packlén’s father was ill, dying, both of them knew that, probably papa Pastor too, who looked after the members of his congregation but that was work, nothing to touch upon with great seriousness during these pleasant Sunday dinners when the whole family had the opportunity to get together in peace and quiet for once.

So it could just as well have been Tom Maalamaa himself who had slowed things down, because in some way, the Weakling that was hiding under the Ponderer’s cowl that he had invisibly put on and that did not suit him very well, significantly less well fitting than those woolen mantles of quality he would use later in life … that Weakling was not prepared for illness, death. Unthinkable, for a thousand reasons, also because quite simply if it affected someone else more, then that person’s rules applied, there would be another main character in the story, so to speak. Following that sweet girl who says nothing to the very darkest, Death’s landscape, no, that had not occurred to him. But he was afraid of death too, in that blunt, naked way that healthy youths, who are not dragging themselves out into war and dying the hero’s death, are—the difficult, lengthy illnesses, death as violent but relentless decomposition, death as a physical utterance too, and handling the dead body, the whole
coffin hell
, quite simply, should be handled by deaconesses, mothers, wives, girlfriends—that was their role in life, which would come to show itself in practice later.

But it was not exactly something you wanted to endure. Your fear. That kind of “disgust.” And then the contemplation came in situations exactly like that and
it existed so that it would come to you in situations exactly like this, with messages like the following: that you were young and had your future ahead of you, a boy with prospects, a purpose in life. Do something, for, like,
humanity
. And Gustav Mahler, but regulated, not like it had surged at the worst moments in your room with your girlfriend, in order to soften the anxiety in the presence of a disownment—because, say what you want to about Tom, maybe he was empty but not stupid. His sister in her capacity as the Happy Harlot as a
happy
appellation, not fresh, but
hamba hamba
, in the openness of childhood, without boundaries, who was not let into his room, but was left outside, pounding on the door.

“Well, well, let’s not quarrel, children.” Mama Inga-Britta finally jumped in and as always, when she stepped in, it became calm around the dinner table, even a relatively nice mood again.

“I have the church’s calling,” Maj-Gun explains to the Manager in the apartment on Boxing Day 1989, that she had carefully whined at the dinner table on that Sunday.
That
is in other words what she says: not about Tom Maalamaa and Susette Packlén and her father, or about the Happy Harlot and so on—or about her own shortcomings with her brother, in general, the metaphysical violence in them, that does not belong there. Brave but determined, this whine, she points that out here to the Manager now, since there were drawbacks to coming with a similarly brave announcement in this Pastor’s family, which was Old Testament–minded.

“The woman in the congregation is silent,” the Pastor, who was gentle despite his religious indomitability and strictness, which unfortunately unfortunately still had to
come before everything, sorrowfully determined in the presence of his daughter but looked at her with an endless gentleness and started speaking about the work of the deaconship as a true challenge to her … um … femininity. At that point he had some difficulty again because she was just a teenager after all, almost genderless in her own eyes too. That DESIRE in her from the DAY OF DESIRE, for example the Girl from Borneo, was not Woman’s Dawning Sexuality that would gradually lead to a balanced marital sensuality that could then be stimulated further with sex tips from all the magazines and regular childbirth but that was mankind’s happy horrible amoral physicality, wonderful on the one hand, but no show-off, also terrible and dangerous as a-moral is, but crossing all boundaries: wanted to enjoy enjoy, caress, play … feel … her life, her life force without all the boundaries. Without gender, a life force unpersonified and so on, but no more about that now—there is also something here with the Manager now, the mood, during all of these days, which makes it so that it is important not to travel forward with too many words, move carefully, with caution.