The Glitter Scene (40 page)

It has to be long. Eternally ongoing. It is, has been, his explanation of love for her.

Her eyes, “I’m not afraid.” The Sorrow, an appeal? What it is. In her. No, he cannot find the words for it. Cannot. But he has loved her, he loves her, for it. The unknown in her, because of the question mark. And, in contrast to what his sister once thought, he is not very
preoccupied with fine-tuning pretty formulations that run out of his head like water, a tap, or like diarrhea, when he is going to hold a speech, debate, he can certainly debate, “You can say anything here as long as it sounds good.”

The opposite. Here. Susette. His wife. A love that simply makes him defenseless, and mute.

Later, he will wish for a great deal, about talking, in the car, that bit to Rosengården 2, that that night some kind of dialogue between him and his wife had played out, a dialogue that could have gone something like this:

“What are you thinking about?” she would have asked suddenly, since they had been sitting in silence the entire car ride.

“I’m thinking,” he would have replied, “about us. About everything.”

“What do you mean?” she would have said but with poorly concealed happy surprise. Despite the fact that she usually does not engage in disputes with him, she has always been good at sulking and keeping quiet and then, when you are going to make up, he has always been the one who has started speaking, spoken his way forward the entire way—but then, despite the fact that she does not want to show it, she has of course become happy.

And then he would have placed his hand on her hand, which he had also done in reality, despite the fact that he had not said any of it, here in the car, on the avenues in Rosengården 2, and she would have taken his hand, held it, as she also does, for real.

“I like it when we dance together,” he would have said.

“Yes,” she would have answered. “I do too.”

And as if it were … or it is, this snippet of a conversation
that was never held but that existed anyway, silence between them, which makes it so that despite the fact that he, in the entire future, will have facts and laws and justice against him, there will always be a figure inside him who will never believe what they accuse her of after her death.

•

They have arrived now. At the right address. Get out. He discovers the small shoe bag with the silver shoes in the backseat, the party shoes, she
has
remembered them. Liz Maalamaa’s party shoes, strass, with a brooch, fifties model, small heel, which he and Susette had taken with them as a memento from Portugal, seventeen years ago. He liked them back then already, how they had fit her perfectly.

“Don’t forget—”

He will always remember the shoes, the silver sandals in the backseat, and her, her eyes, all of her, when he handed them to her.

“Courage,” he says. She laughs a little, everything is okay. And how she takes the silver sandals he hands to her, he has loved, loves her.

THIS, FIRST, is shorter. Suddenly on the avenues, in Rosengården 2, in the darkness, in the car after the entrance and the gate that has closed behind her, she recognizes where she is.

Maybe it is something with the trees, the same trees in straight lines along the road, as if they had always been there. And the tall houses, several stories, despite the fact that there is a light on in almost every window, which there was not then. Remembers. Tabula rasa. Being nothing, and new. That possibility. Spinning around around in the avenues, one fall day, sunshine then.

My love,
my life
, around around, nothing and new.

She remembers a feeling, a body, her body, her skin, the skin on her wrist, patinated by the summer and the sun and the scrubbing of windows on a veranda called the Winter Garden in the Glass House, the French family’s summerhouse, on the Second Cape. Standing high on a ladder wedged between rocks on the beach, scrubbing scrubbing, hating the sea like a secret, not looking up not looking down, a cat meowing on the cliffs, long haired and white.

“I’m only twenty-nine after all”: pulling her nails across her dry summer skin, white powder stripes on the skin.

Twenty-nine years, she never became any older. Has never become. And: as if she has never been anywhere else but here.

Jump, jump, in the avenues. A small baby, a baby bird under her jacket, love, life.
My
love,
my life
, hop crow, hop sparrow—

“You have arrived at your destination,” says the woman’s voice on the navigator, the engine stops. The navigator lady has a name, Gertrude, named after the aupairgirl. “Oh, Gertrude.” They have a habit of saying that, she and her husband, in the car sometimes, even though that lady on the navigator actually has a different name, now she does not remember what it is.

•

But: a private joke they have, because Gertrude, their Gertrude, can undeniably maintain order and
navigate
the family’s sometimes chaotic life filled with children and many residences around the world and a great deal of keeping up appearances.
What would we do without Gertrude?
is the question they often seriously ask themselves and each other.

Gertrude who steers and arranges with the same calm voice as the navigator in the car—except when she gets angry, of course; then she roooars, and she has done so today, the aupairgirl’s terrible scream that Susette still has ringing in her ears. Despite the fact that it has not been anyone else’s fault but hers, Gertrude’s, that a bunch of fragile glass was sitting in an unpacked box in an open box in the wrong place in the new residence where the family had just moved from abroad and that Tom, who had been in an unusually bad mood and had come home earlier than usual from his job, managed to knock down on the floor by accident so
CRASH
, a lot of invaluable drinking glasses broken into thousands of pieces.

So Gertrude, she does not always find the right path, does not always navigate correctly. And she has that in common with the lady in the navigator: suddenly ending up in the middle of a winery somewhere in Germany just because she has directed you there—it must have been the previous summer? “Oh Gertrude, Oh Gertrude.” Tom had laughed in the middle of the jungle of vines and suddenly the embittered German wine farmer with the rifle on the little road in front of them, “an
auf hinter zwischen wir sind turisten,”
pretended not to speak the language so that things would not get any worse.
“Grüss Gott.”
An amusing family memory, pointing with the tip of the rifle,
but
they had gotten out in one piece.

“Make a U-turn,” Susette says out loud in the car in Rosengården 2 suddenly alarmed by the strange merriment growing inside her. Hop crow, sparrow,
CRASH
, tabula rasa. But “courage,” her husband Tom said a little while ago, while they were still driving down the avenues, he had taken her hand, it had calmed her down and calms her, a little, now. But she has not been afraid, and besides, he certainly wants to make up after the scene at home earlier. And of course: when she says that about the U-turn Tom does not hear it, even as a joke. He has already gotten out of the car and is on his way to the other side to open the door for her. Then, briefly, almost simultaneously, it quickly rushes through Susette’s head that she has forgotten to tell him that surprisingly his sister Maj-Gun came by the new home that day for a visit. And that Maj-Gun sends her greetings to him—or does she? Now Susette does not remember exactly how it was, also not exactly what was said between her and Maj-Gun, so to speak. Just a bad feeling, and a complete
feeling of alienation, nonconnection. Red and slender,
after the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible
, a person like that, new.

But Susette did not have the intention of hiding from her husband that Maj-Gun had stopped by that day. There just has not, during the afternoon and evening up until now, been an appropriate time to mention it: Gertrude and Tom had been shouting at each other.

And now. No turning back. They are there, here. And Susette:
never anywhere but here
. Never more than twenty-nine; there. Tom Maalamaa opens the door, she steps out.

“Don’t forget.” He discovers the shoe bag with the silver shoes in the backseat. “Thank you.”

And then she drifts away again. Forever. Everything else disappears now. Never anywhere but here. Never more than twenty-nine. The silver shoes. Tabula rasa.

To the house that is beaming; they have stepped into the house.

•

Also here she has recognized where she is, but no longer a surprise. Italian granite on the ground floor. And
crash!
Yes,
that
house. In other respects, foreign.

“Peter, Nellevi.” Laughter. Naturally your name cannot be Nellevi nor can it be Susette either. A name from a tabloid, a serial
Susette and love
.

“So nice.”

A daughter. Ulla. Talented. Oh oh oh. “The theater, the dance, the music … a band called
Screaming Toys.”

Headstrong. Does not come downstairs.

“ULLAAAA! Ulla is sulking. Temperamental. Artistic temperament—ULLAAA!” resounds through the house.
“Peter also has a good singing voice,” the wife, Nellevi, laughs.

ULLLAA! Susette’s ears temporarily become deaf.

“Oh well, to the oysters. When she’s done sulking. Ulla loves oysters.”

•

“I CAAAAAN HEEEAAR YOU! LAAATER!”

A voice from upstairs. The voice cracks everything. Absurd, immense. Like from the abyss.

“Ulla
is
talented.”

“Are you cold?”

Tom Maalamaa puts his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Nono.

The living room, the kitchen … beautiful view. You see: the Winter Garden. Like a blaze of light, strong, farther away. Light over the trees as well, part of the road.

The Winter Garden.
The Rita Strange Corporation
.

In the living room, the sofa.

“We knew each other. From the Rita Strange Corporation. The Winter Garden. Was going to be magnificent. Wasn’t. An idea. Became something else.”

“Architectural dreams.”

“Ho-ho, Tom.” Peter Bäckström laughs. Tom, like himself.

These people, Peter and Nellevi, are also in the “business,” of course, architects, both of them.

But she, Susette, as mentioned, actually, she is not listening. Is not really even there. Twenty-nine years old, never got any older. Rosengården 2, her Rosengården. Recognizes and recognizes.

•

She gets up.

“The bathroom is upstairs, one floor.”

I know. She mumbles, quietly, to herself. Already on the stairs then.

“The American girl.” A black-and-white poster on the wall in the bathroom.

The girl on a cliff, her hair flowing, flying. She is going to fall.

Black-and-white photography on the poster, matches the decor. White tiles, black trim. THAT was what it was like then. Otherwise she does not look at the picture. An old story. Neither it nor the old theater poster says anything to her.

She steps out. Not back to the others, but up the stairs, landings. The third landing.
There they are
. The rabbits.

She is
here
. Has never been anywhere else.

And farther, quickly up the small stairs, to the attic room. The door is slightly ajar, but she sees, before she sneaks in,
THE GLITTER SCENE
in glittery letters, on a plaque on the door.

•

And Susette in landscape here again
. The same room, the empty room, fall 1989, before everything. The duality NOW, still, full empty full empty, the old new at the same time, everything here:
Susette on the Glitter Scene
.

And it is windy on the Glitter Scene
. The door has been standing open as said, but wedged fast with a small piece of wood, because you notice the draft when you come in. Because of the glass door at the other end, the one that was part of the large window and could not be opened, is open all the way. Cold late fall weather wells into the room.

The girl is standing in the opening. Not far from the edge, many feet of open fall down. All the openness.

The girl, the daughter, Ulla Bäckström, in white, with her back facing the room. A great mane of hair falling over her shoulders, long white skirt flapping around her legs.

Does not notice Susette in the door opening.

Susette who has taken off the silver shoes, left them at the door to the room. And tippytoe, an old thieflike merriment now completely unstoppable, tippytoe tippytoe, sneaks onto the stage carefully, into the room, the greatness.

The empty landscape/the Glitter Scene. A room where there is nothing and everything.

And EVERYTHING. Theater things, books, papers, manuscripts. Musical instruments and clothes, more clothes, ordinary clothes, dress-up clothes, on racks along the walls or in piles on the floor, notes, bags, shoes, and things, things.

Pictures on the wall, art, posters:
Screaming Toys
.

And: the American girl, the same poster here too. And other posters, theater performances:
Singin’ in the Rain, Miss Julie
, among others. The same girl,
the theater, the dancing, the music
, the same name, Ulla Bäckström, on all of them.

But here, still, you might think that at least something would stir something to life inside Susette, a connection, shake her, to something else.
The American girl
. That old story. Which was Maj-Gun Maalamaa’s story. The one about
the Boy in the woods
, which she went on about.

Maj-Gun at the newsstand,
kiss kiss kiss
, red sticky lips, glitter. But nah, does not stir anything. Maj-Gun does not exist. “We are two Angels of Death.” Which she said once. But nah.
We
. Are nothing. Maj-Gun had stopped
existing. They have seen each other today, earlier in the day. The Red One. Another. No connection. Rather Majjunn Majjunn, but for Susette it is something else, has always been: a sound in her head.