The Glitter Scene (35 page)

There was room in that language. For everything.
I am not without space
.

And there in that time then, a moment, a fragment of your own life. A fragment in a landscape with fragments of other landscapes inside it, the landscape of others. Across all borders, in time and space. Across narrow family borders too of course: mother father child inheritance beyond these inheritances but also these. And how obvious that the DAY OF DESIRE is housed in this landscape too. Something old that is not you but has come up inside you. The Happy Harlot, the Girl from Borneo, whatever; they are of course, were of course, just denotations. The Disgust as it were, as it was called for a time after childhood when there had been a built-in sense of
that which was yourself but yet so much bigger than
. But the Disgust then, devastating so to speak, so termed by Tom Maalamaa, in royal supremacy, Gustav Mahler behind his back. The Pastor’s Crown Princess who was the heiress to the words, and the words existed for him and became his and that pathetic girlfriend who quietly rolled her eyes next to him. Prompting, nodding in silent support, as if on order. Though, it was easier to agree of course, no resistance in it. Be in his landscape that was given limits the more he spoke, the limits of his words, became secured as the only landscape.

So that you became, if you were his sister Maj-Gun, an extremity. Some sort of comment, the other. The Harlot, that is, with a capital letter suddenly
hamba hamba
, she came from Borneo—at least it was effective. Something in your eye then, if nothing else, because the brother who was standing at the window in his room in the rectory was suffering the view over the cemetery in a grand way. The Disgust still would have been a little tantalizing
if not for the fact that this Happy Harlot was his own sister.

But djeessuss, if you were the sister, you were supposed to be all of that to a T, you received. In order to
prove a point
. The Day of Desire.
Don’t give way
.

But on the other hand, all that was just as true but that she, the sister, had not wanted to bear: first, the jealousy. The brother and the girlfriend behind the closed door in the brother’s room in the rectory and Maj-Gun on the other side, alone. Without her brother, rather much alone, regardless of how the siblings had been like cats and dogs with each other during childhood.

“What do you see in her?” Maj-Gun could go into her brother’s room and ask when the girlfriend was not there. “I am fascinated by the Death in her,” he would have been able to say then, while he, as it were, was preoccupied with buttoning the cuff links on his starched shirt. But all of it was just silliness really, a slight becoming feeling of the “metaphysical” (he had loved that word for a while too) because later, when death showed itself for real, the girlfriend’s father who became ill and was suddenly dying, Tom Maalamaa had pulled away or maybe she was the one to retreat but one thing was certain: that when she left the rectory for the last time he had not exactly run after her. Let it be. Ordered
Reader for the Preparatory Course for Future Lawyers
as COD “papa is paying,” and became engrossed in it.

Second,
We go to paradise singing
. The Day of Desire. An experiment—or whatever it had been. It had drained off of her rather quickly—that is to say the Desire in all of it. Partly for the obvious: that it had not been much fun. Standing with your freezing bum among the
headstones and that girlfriend who naturally happened to come running from the rectory just at the moment when she truly realized it was rather shitty, all of it, and out of resentment Maj-Gun had, in other words, cried. In other words cried NOT because she was ashamed or because it was a pity about her. In any case not in the way the girlfriend with the saucer eyes had seen it,
poor poor thing what have they done to you?
Which of course had made Maj-Gun even more frustrated and in combination with the jealousy that also always came to the fore during that time, in the girlfriend’s immediate presence, she had suddenly been standing there, howling about the WONDERFUL in all of this … about the Desire that was great and strong and et cetera. Djeessuss. The girlfriend, who had not understood a thing, had looked at Maj-Gun, frightened and suddenly so unhappy, confused, alone (her father was very ill then too), who Maj-Gun had, many times afterward with Susette, developed even more of a bad conscience from it.

But as said, not amusing. Something violating about it too, there among the headstones, “receive.” That is to say, completely private.
The innocence of one’s childhood
. The boys who had come to the cemetery, the hayseeds often with some religious affiliation. Well, she had not really bothered about it actually, but afterward they had not looked at her and those years later, on the square, they seemed to have completely and totally forgotten that it was her, the Happy Harlot, the same person as the fatty in the newsstand, “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” The Happy Harlot had just been an idea to them. They drove cars around around the square, but around others “just think what Madonna has done
for fashion,” girls like that, or that hollow-eyed one who had suddenly been there again—Susette Packlén, “I am fascinated by the Death in her,”
silk velvet rag scraps
rug rags. That one.

At their level given Maj-Gun the finger from the cars; ordinary fingers, nothing special about that. And her personally, of course, if she had been in that kind of a mood, flipped them off in return.

And at the same time, on the other hand, again again:
he
had been nice, that hot-rod farmer who had driven her from the square to the capes in his car that terrible day in November, just a few months ago when she was going to … yes, what was she going to do, kill, die? Who had carefully asked about “meeting.” “Go to the movies?” In other words, one of those kinds of meetings, youthful, normal. And nor was there in that question any apology for anything that had taken place at the cemetery in the past, he had possibly been one of them, but been there done that, in this situation, a question only, from a boy to a girl, perfectly normal. “Don’t have time. First I’m going to do something terrible. Then I’m going to run away to the ends of the earth. So.” Naturally she had not said that because she could not have known what was going to happen ahead of time, but still, she had that feeling, transparent in exactly that moment, an imminent catastrophe, like a fate,
because you were the catastrophe
, not for any other reason. And then not drag some other outsider into this: then what she had de facto said in the car had been that she
might
be busy, did not have time to chitchat, and fired up by the catastrophe that was pounding inside her right when everything could have been normal shot off as a closing remark, “and now
there have been quite enough of these advances, you can let me out here!” “Here?” They had in other words been in the middle of the woods, or in the middle of nowhere, on this road out to the capes, but a whole two miles there and almost as far to the cousin’s property where she had consequently ended up in the following.

“Can I call you?” had been his last question before he drove off the side of the road and stopped but
hmptt tjjjmp
she slammed shut the car door, a powerful existential slam that echoed in the silence, in the entire world. And the car, the hot-rod farmer inside it, had driven off.

But that fate had an irony: after everything, hours later, he had been there again. The same lout, the same car, the same road, roughly the same place, whirling snow. Terrible road conditions. The car that suddenly showed up just right in front of her in the middle of the road where she had been plowing her way through the snow just falling and falling, in an unbearable state of terror and shock, inexpressibly that she never wanted to suffer again. Bloody hands in her pockets, no mittens. The car had stopped, the door opened again, and she had been grateful then, gotten in.

“Shall we run away together? To the ends of the earth? See. I have the getawaybag with me.” She had said, or something along those lines.

“Nah,” the hot-rod farmer had replied, and added, a bit legendarily: “I dunno. Can’t. Homandeat.”

So: back to the square again, they had skidded their way there, slowly slowly. To the middle of the square, the familiar square, despite the abundant snow that was walling up everything there too. But suddenly, when she stepped out and the car started with a
vroom
and slid out
of view, Maj-Gun, bloody paws even more well hidden in her pockets, had not had a clue about where she was.

Started walking, up to Susette Packlén’s apartment above the town center. Justice. The sirens.

•

But now, in church, as if she had awoken from a dream. To reality. HERE she is after all, now. Has gone through everything, to this, to the middle of the hymn, the church,
to her father’s house
. A fragment of everything, in everything, others, her own, inside her. And her father who is looking at her: “Welcome home.” And suddenly, she knows exactly how she is going to introduce herself to her father again when they have the chance to talk after the funeral, just the two of them. How she, with a glint in her eye, will go up to him and say to him that unfortunately she came late to the memorial service because she had, by mistake, gotten on the wrong bus a few times on the way there but then she had gotten on the right bus after all. And arrived. And how he, her father, now she knows this too, will look at her then with yes—he knows how he would look at her regardless of what she says to him. That dearest Maj-Gun, we have all missed you, welcome home. Open-mindedness.
We go to paradise with song … but

OWWW in her stomach.

An intense pain, like a reminder, she almost folds over double inside on the church pew because she can control herself after all: but that is the memory,
this year I have something kicking in my stomach
. Unpleasant consequences … how could she forget that? And at the same time, exactly at the same moment she becomes aware of it: something that she, of course, in some way had been
aware of the entire time, has been said to her besides, should not come as a surprise. But still, like a bombing. The gaze that traveled over the pews in the church, over the people in them, naturally also to the family in the first rows. Her brother’s erect neck that is sticking out of the stiff shirt collar, his neck sunburned—and another neck, the one next to his. Hair in a ponytail, gray shoulders, skin shining, despite the great amount of sunshine in the south where it has also been—white.

Maj-Gun remains staring.

It is Susette Packlén. Who turns her head slowly, looks back in the middle of the hymn, eyes meet Maj-Gun’s eyes, big eyes.

Suddenly, during a few seconds, which will later slip away, for a long long time, Maj-Gun has understood exactly everything.

On the other hand, of course, the obvious though nonetheless fantastic for that.
Susette and love
. Polo shirt, blazer, sideburns. Susette from the underworld, under the disco ball, gray, glittering. Susette on the dance floor, through the cigarette smoke. At the other end of the dance floor: polo shirt, blazer, sideburns. Tom Maalamaa. Her own brother.

Rag doll. “Loose limbed.” Dance my doll … Susette and love: like a story to dance to.

“Sometimes I have the feeling that I planted things inside her, Manager.” The Manager, who has not really understood, but on the other hand, she had not really been able to to go into detail or explain what she meant. But: all stories. The Boy in the woods. Duel in the sun. Dead. For love. The boy in the house. Susette in the hangout. When she was falling and falling—

Rug rags.

On the other hand, this is the landslide, something she will keep hidden for a long time in life because it is so amazing. That Susette,
a stranger
. She knows nothing about Susette. Has never known anything.

Her head spins, her stomach turns. Her stomach. OW! OW! OW!

Her stomach.
This year I have something kicking in my stomach
. Solveig on the square: “a wild pain.”

“What are you babbling about?”

The Boy in the woods. A violation.

•

She cannot keep the child. It was never hers.

•

So after the memorial service, the burial. At
this
cemetery, another place, another city, the little town where Liz Maalamaa’s husband had come from. This is where she will now be lowered after all: in this earth, for her not the earth of home but foreign earth, though no more heartfelt singing about this either. The swans, Dick and Duck, her aunt on the ship, maybe there was some truth in all of this too. “I didn’t understand what connected people, Manager. Though now I guess I’ve grown up. Been slapped in the face.”

A lush cemetery, picturesque, you can see it despite the fact that it is a dull and snowless January day, no leaves on the trees, gobs of old, dirty snow on the ground. The temperature is above freezing again but there is a biting wind that goes down to your bones and it makes it feel like fourteen degrees at least. Maj-Gun has been freezing in her new red winter coat with a silky soft lining during the roughly thousand feet she and all of the
other funeral guests wandered from the church behind the creaking black cart with the white casket on top—three male descendants on either side, Tom Maalamaa at the very front on the right, the most important spot, like oxen pulling the hay wagon along behind them.

The cemetery grove itself where the family grave is located is particularly nice: so if one had the desire to say something nice, something that could be said in the presence of all relatives from both sides of the family, then it would, for example, be exactly what Maj-Gun herself is going to say afterward at the reception, mainly in order to put an end to a certain burial ecstasy that has caused some of the closest relatives on the dead husband’s side to start getting out of hand.

“God knows everything,” Maj-Gun is going to say, “but the grove is beautiful and that Aunt Liz Maalamaa would have appreciated resting in that place is something we all can agree on.