The Glitter Scene (53 page)

And
so
little too that she can’t help Solveig and the cousin’s mama with the cleaning. Doris isn’t particularly good at cleaning either, though she’s careful not to say it out loud. Later, when she’s living in the cousin’s house and becomes older, it is still the cousin’s mama and I who continue having most of the responsibility for cleaning in the home.

The cousin’s papa has even been in an excellent mood out there in the yard, felt like some sober joking in the middle of the dart throwing. With Rita: about what bad dart throwers they are. “Have you tried poker, Rita?” Maybe it would go a bit better for Rita there, the cousin’s papa joked meaningfully, because in poker it isn’t really about the skill as much as the luck and the art of reading your opponent, which is decisive. You have to have a certain amount of patience. A real game of poker can take a long time. But you can learn patience, determination. The cousin’s papa knows to say, does Rita know that?

The cousin’s papa laughs and Rita has to get her act together to laugh too. I can see it. Rita can’t stand it when anyone tells her that she’s bad at something. But not even she talks back to the cousin’s papa when she doesn’t really need to. Saves her energy. Rita can do that, she will get better at it in time. A certain feeling for the right timing. Like when she has left and taken all the money out of the cousin’s papa’s new hiding place, which I don’t know about because it’s farther up in the future and after that day, the last day of childhood, I won’t be interested in things like secret stashes of money or anything that has anything to do with the cousin’s papa anymore, not—when it happens, and the cousin’s
papa notices it, afterward. Then he’ll be completely perplexed, genuinely surprised.

And in some way also give in to her. Afterward. When Rita is no longer there, because she never sets foot in the cousin’s house or on the cousin’s property again after leaving the District when she goes to the Backmanssons’ after Doris’s death and she’s seventeen years old.

Which means that he isn’t going to try to find out where she is, persecute her, take measures. No. He’ll sit here. In the cousin’s house, on the cousin’s property, for eternal time. Sit, sit. Become even more sheets to the wind than he already was.

He’ll admit to being defeated by her. Rita’s victory. But what? Because then he will in turn have defeated everyone else, except me, of course. The cousin’s mama who doesn’t have the strength to remain, almost doesn’t have the strength to be at all, even though she has already put up with most things with the cousin’s papa on the cousin’s property here in the house, after Doris’s death. Then she collapses and has to be taken to the District Hospital in an ambulance: I call the ambulance. And she never comes back. Astrid Loman moves back to the neighboring municipality where she came from. In order to take care of all of the children, “children’s mama,” in the best way. But I won’t blame her, ever, at all.

I’ll keep visiting her, bring chocolate and crosswords and flowers. I will be kind. Maybe she didn’t do what she should have done, maybe she—something terrible. But I, and no one else or anybody else knows it, will ever tell anyone, ever, because she was here, she stayed with us.

I’ll be here then, afterward. And no longer, with the cousin’s papa, be “nice.”

I’ll just leave him, but still be gripped by a guilty conscience and I’ll have the cleaning company then because I’ll be grown up, have my own life, my own child, which I’ll have to wait a long time for, many miscarriages, but I’ll have that, Irene. So I’ll ask Susette Packlén to go and check on him sometimes.

The pistol will be lying out, on the refrigerator, but no one, there in the house, with the cousin’s papa, while he’s alive, will shoot anything, anyone with it.

Well. Not now. Going through events in advance. Being here.

•

Doris Flinkenberg in the yard outside the cousin’s house during the dart throwing, which she takes part in in her childish way laughs when the cousin’s papa explains the finer points of playing poker to Rita. In her special Dorisway, which undeniably pulls you along, and then she tells her own childish contextless Doris-story that becomes funny mostly because of the way she tells it.

And the cousin’s papa laughs suddenly, a friendly laugh about the story too—or just laughs, friendly, at small smart Doris Flinkenberg, in general. It isn’t that he doesn’t like her. Doesn’t really think anything about Doris Flinkenberg. Just “knocked-about kid,” another clan. And in turn that means that he doesn’t have anything to do with Doris’s terrible circumstances in the Outer Marsh, in general so to speak.

The cousin’s papa laughs along with Doris Flinkenberg. You can of course if you’re from someplace else allow yourself to be duped by that laugh, take it for something other than what it is: a temporary happy flaming laugh after you have gotten to explain to Rita about
playing poker. But the cousin’s mama doesn’t understand the finer points of card playing, she just sees that the cousin’s papa is, if not “kind,” then leaning in that direction, and in a sober state of mind for once, and yes, well, happy. Is that why the cousin’s mama has been singing more than usual today?

I have as I said not been there, throwing darts, but scrubbing the kitchen floor and washing the windows in the parlor and been able to cast a glance out in the yard now and then and hear a bit of what is being said.

And Doris, about her then: this is what I remember most about Doris from that day, the last day we were at least wholeheartedly able to imagine that everything was normal: Doris who was joking with the cousin’s papa without me knowing what they were joking about, the cousin’s papa who was laughing. Just Doris’s way of being, with the cousin’s papa. On her guard but at the same time open, fearless. But the whole time with that kind of a nonchalance lying underneath: “I don’t care about you, old man.”

And just as fearless then and yelled, “Hey, cousin’s mama!” to the cousin’s mama who has been busy with her rugs,
pisk-pisk
on the rack, sung and waved and sung even more loudly just from having seen Doris.

Doris not from a landscape, or another one. Doris from all landscapes at once. Something invincible about it. Doris, a bit like the joker in poker, in other words.

I hate Doris. But it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to do anything about my hate. I’m going to be sad when she shoots herself and think that it’s unnecessary. There were reasons. Her friend Sandra from the house in the darker part whom she started hanging out with a lot
not long after coming to the cousin’s house—who didn’t want to be friends with her any longer, they were in love. She was at a loss, confused, suddenly not a child any longer and didn’t know which foot to stand on, who she was. And all of those experiences in her from the Outer Marsh, they hadn’t left her, they were still there.

But first much later, I will be able to understand why Doris really took her own life. Why Rita in some way understood, she heard the shot, and ran, ran out into the woods, but it was too late. Blood on Lore Cliff, blood everywhere on Rita. Then in that moment, right afterward, I thought it was over for Rita.

But it wasn’t. It’s never, ever over for Rita. I know who Rita is, I’m like her, we’re twins, I am, could be Rita. So alike.

Rita doesn’t tell me that Doris has asked about something that causes Doris to realize something else. Which she had certainly known the entire time, in some way, but due to all sorts of things, also her light, her love, for everyone, mama, the new world, the cousin’s house, everything everything, wanted to keep hidden.

And Rita never planned on telling her the truth. But she, Doris, that last fall asks her. And Rita replies, in some way, which makes it so that Doris understands anyway.

And then things fall apart for Doris Flinkenberg for real.

When I find out about this, I am already deep into my own life, have had a child, am living in Torpesonia at Bule Marsh, everything has already happened. I’m in the cousin’s house, the cousin’s papa is in the yard, I’m organizing things. “Good” girl, but with him it’s
just a façade. A pile of old newspapers, in an old cabinet, otherwise just filled with disgusting things. A lot of old crosswords there. Doris and the cousin’s mama liked doing crosswords together, of course, in the cousin’s kitchen, during the time when Björn was no longer there and Doris had moved into the room upstairs. But Doris never really had the patience for solving crossword puzzles properly, she got bored and started filling in her own silly words inside the squares. Too long, too many letters in each square, several squares where there was only supposed to be one. The cousin’s mama didn’t get angry at her about that either, just the opposite, it was just a Dorisoddity.

Well, I’m going to see one of those old magazines, one of those old crosswords with Doris’s own letters in it: a newspaper dated from exactly that fall, about a week before Doris died.

It will be listed there clearly in the squares. Helter skelter, too many letters, but still.

And when I have seen that I will never be able to return to the cousin’s house again. I mean, when the cousin’s papa is there.

Wait, I’ll explain more later, about the newspaper and what is listed in the crossword puzzle.

I just want to say two things, now. First, Doris. I hate Doris but Doris is a joker and Doris will, in her own way, save life at the cousin’s house. Will make it possible to go on afterward. Move on. Live on. Doris-light. And when Doris moves to the cousin’s house the cousin’s papa calms down too. Doris and the cousin’s papa will never fight with each other. Nor will they be “close” either. When Björn is gone and Bengt has moved out to the
barn and Doris is the only one of the cousins left in the house, the cousin’s papa will shut the door to his room next to the kitchen. Coexistence.

And second: those of us who know what happened that night, with the American girl, and I who know about Björn, about everything—will never say anything to Doris about it.

Maybe we don’t do it for Doris, I don’t, in any case. But for the cousin’s mama. But that is no plan either. Nothing uttered. We just know, we three siblings, and what we know we keep quiet about, forever. Others know too. They’re keeping their mouths shut as well. The baroness, countryman Loman, maybe someone else.

•

But now back to the sunshine day, Doris who’s yelling “Rottenegger” at the cousin’s papa this day in the garden, imitating the cousin’s papa right in front of him when he has sat down in his chair again now and Doris is dancing around it.

He doesn’t get angry, just mutters; when Doris is in a dancing kind of mood it’s impossible for anyone to be angry at her.

The cousin’s mama is running in and out with the rugs. In the midst of all this she comes to me where I’m busy in the kitchen, the counter that needs to shine, whispers in my ear, “It will all work out!”

And winks, and without hesitating even though I don’t know the reason, I wink back. Will work out, in general, so happy.

•

Then evening falls. Björn who has gone to the Second Cape comes back, is drinking beer in the barn. Bengt
whom there has been no sign of, no sign of, is with Eddie de Wire, for sure, in the boathouse on the Second Cape.

The cousin’s mama is not aware of these love affairs. She has never been interested in the story between Björn and Bengt and Eddie de Wire: in her eyes Bengt and Björn are her children, are still in some way just children.

And she’s thinking about other things now. Because just about then the cousin’s mama, who still has the summer day inside her, has—and Doris and the cousin’s papa who were joking with each other in the yard!—gone to the cousin’s papa in his room.

Set out for the cousin’s papa: money. Everything she saved in the glass jar, a bit more than she had a while ago, which wasn’t enough, in the laundry room up in the town center, and a little that she has borrowed from Björn too, he had some left over from his paycheck.

“Enough!” she said, triumphant. Then the cousin’s papa smiled his most sneering smile. He has been waiting for this, you see. I who have been in the kitchen and heard everything have suddenly understood this, like a bolt of lightning in my head, now, though one plus one, it should have been sorted a long time ago, already with the dart throwing in the yard. How the cousin’s papa was talking with Rita about the art of playing poker: you have to learn to read your opponent.

And this was in other words the moment the entire day was supposed to lead up to, he has decided, ahead of time. That is why he has been, and is, relatively sober too.

Some rat has been gnawing on his purse strings. Suddenly he had this “bag” in his hand too, held it up in front of Astrid. Has Astrid taken him for a fool? The
cousin’s mama stood there for a few long seconds, lost her power of speech, not understood a thing.

The cousin’s papa did not care a bit about what the cousin’s mama has or hasn’t understood: he had a damned rat in his trap, damned Astriid, that is the main thing. Followed after Astrid who backed up, terrorstricken into the kitchen and hit the transistor radio that has been in the house during the cleaning that day and that Björn, this evening, because he has been drinking beer in the barn has not come to get, on the wall.

And thereafter, he went after the cousin’s mama. Rita and Doris disappeared from the yard where they had been waiting for supper, Rita quickly pulled Doris with her into the twins’ cottage—“Come, Doris, we can play cards.” And Doris who has an intuitive timidity for similar situations followed along. I was not able to go with them, I had to stay, I had understood that much inside, stay. It isn’t Astrid’s fault after all.

I ran out to the barn and got Björn.

Björn came to the cousin’s house.

I snuck into the parlor, to the closet.

•

There isn’t so much more to say about that night. The cousin’s papa who went after Astrid, Björn who got in the middle and put a stop to it.

And then he confessed, about the money. He had taken all the money, him and no one else. Grown out of the moped, wants to buy a motorcycle.

No one else’s name was mentioned. As said. I’m in the closet, the parlor, even if you can’t see, you can hear.