The Glitter Scene (54 page)

The cousin’s papa didn’t believe Björn. Björn went to the barn, got this money. What is left, after what he gave
to the cousin’s mama, and what hasn’t been spent on the beer.

I don’t even think he threw it at the cousin’s papa, over the kitchen. Said, simply nothing. Just stood there, it seems, accepted it. An eternity. While the cousin’s papa was really crazy, no game anymore, told Björn who Björn really is. The genes. Bad blood. Björn was someone on whose birth certificate it read “father unknown.” The cousin’s mama’s sobs, crying.

Björn grew still, remained silent, accepted it.

All of the time that had run away from him, all of the unused teenage years. I guess. I don’t know.

•

Björn leaves, stays away.

No one, not even the cousin’s mama, follows him.

I’m in the closet and I’m afraid. Just afraid. I have the pistol. If someone comes I’ll shoot.

That fear is over when I sneak through the house out into the yard a few hours later. I have the pistol with me. I no longer know why I’m holding it in my hand.

•

Movements in the morning-night, many people are in motion. I don’t know that. Nothing about Bule Marsh, the American girl. At least not for the time being. I don’t go there.

A moment, when I have come out. Then it’s like this. If not like another landscape, then another place. Outer space. The surface of the moon. Where I am an astronaut, heavy movements in a space suit, reflective glass over my eyes, and a helmet on my head.

Then it passes. The day, the morning comes to me. Not normal, but real, in any case. Rita, I need to see Rita. How
I had forgotten about Rita, not just this night, but for a long time already. How I almost wanted to get away from her.

Early morning, the sun rising, the glitter of sunshine between the trees—so wonderful, and me here. Dew on the grass, it is late summer, usually tickles in an especially disgusting way when Rita and I run to Bule Marsh from the twins’ cottage. Barefoot, that is also an idea. Hard skin that needs to be toughened, us in our swimsuits, towels wrapped around our bodies, my towel is blue, Rita’s red. It must still be a little after that point in time that I draw near the twins’ cottage.

Suddenly, a brief moment, astronaut again. Or: alienation. Caution. Hesitation. Or maybe just: intuition. I don’t go in right away, peer in through the window on the side facing the field first. That is lucky.

Rita’s bed is empty. She has already gone to Bule Marsh. Without me. But in the middle of the room in a sleeping bag like a stuffed sausage, Doris Flinkenberg. She’s still sleeping.

Doris. Not Doris now. Turn around, carefully. You don’t know with Doris. She’s always, even in her sleep, you’ve seen it in the cousin’s kitchen certain supper evenings, on her guard.

What I don’t know, am not going to see then, is how Doris, maybe awakened by some movement outside the twins’ cottage, wakes up, sees Rita’s bed, and is in a hurry. Rita who promised to wake her and take her with her to the marsh, she was going to get to participate in the training. Doris with hasty steps takes the blue swimsuit and the blue towel that are hanging to dry on the damper of the kitchen stove,
my
swimming things. And runs out. Doesn’t look around, is thinking only about Bule Marsh,
a new experience, swimming practice, Rita—maybe she’ll become a real swimmer, too?

•

A little while later at the twins’ cottage I turn around and start walking. Hesitation again.

But the summer day, here, it is still coming toward me! Bule Marsh, Rita, Miss Andrews!

That is when I notice that I have a pistol in my hand. I try and put it inside the waistband of my pants, hide it. It doesn’t work, it’s too heavy. And otherwise too. I can’t carry a pistol with me, not anywhere.

I go back toward the cousin’s house, I need to take the pistol back.

•

The closer I get to the cousin’s house the more terrorstricken I become. Like a stain among everything that is beautiful, despite everything, in my head.

Björn, the barn, I go there. The barn is empty. Beer bottles.

Then I see, from the barn, the cousin’s mama. She is coming, walking from an outbuilding that is located at the edge of the woods to the left, a ways away from all of the other buildings. I don’t know it then. But she is walking quickly, she is pale, she almost doesn’t see me even though I run out and stand in front of her.

She says with a voice that makes me understand something about the outbuilding that of course I don’t understand then, but terrible, certainly enough, that I should go away, home and
not
to the outbuilding.

She’s angry too. She is panting. Fury. In any case, I give her the pistol. Suddenly I think something strange. The cousin’s house. “The idiot.”

It’s a strange thought. As luck would have it I don’t say what I am thinking out loud. It isn’t real either. It is a dream.

The pistol. The cousin’s mama looks at me. Then, in that moment, I see all of my idiocy. My landscape, where I am and have always been. In her eyes.

She hisses in anger that I should take it back.

To reality. I run into the house, the parlor, with all my might, I leave the pistol in the closet and run out, and away, away from here, up up to the hill on the First Cape, the house, the stone foundation, that is where I end up.

And there I am, back leaning against the foundation, the whole time, while I am waiting for Rita to come back. Or maybe I’m not waiting for Rita. Maybe I’m not waiting for anyone in particular. It’s the first time I’m completely alone.

It’s terrifying. I haven’t slept, I’m confused, what I experienced is atrocious. And it will continue, a long time. But in that loneliness there is also something else, something special. The summer day. Or, the winter day, or the day, the night—I’m here. My place.

And it is not the Winter Garden that we, some siblings, have been sitting here and “playing.” A game I don’t understand, I don’t have any imagination, I want to be here. I can be here, and alone. The summer day, glittering, here, which is spreading itself out, a panorama. The cousin’s house, the twins’ cottage, the woods, the outbuilding, the barn, the road. I see everything.

Yes. After this we’re going to sit here. Bengt, Rita, me. Three siblings, people look at us for a while in the District a bit strangely. It will pass. I am here.

And we’ll play the Winter Garden. Maybe even more intensely than before, for a while. Bengt when he has gotten over the shock, gets his speech back. But more hot tempered, so that the game falls apart for him, so to speak, despite dreams, buildings, don’t disappear anywhere. And Rita, who will “play” so that there will just be some quotes around it. She’s going to do something else. Maybe not that Winter Garden,
Rita Strange
, as it turns out. And not much will come of that either really. When the Winter Garden is there, for real. And I know that, the entire time. That it won’t be like that, because I know Rita, I know everything about her. She doesn’t really have—well, she lacks a certain perseverance. She grows tired. And besides, I know that too, you can’t make, build, for real, regardless of how much money and how many opportunities there are, out of opposition, like a revenge.

So in that way, even though I lack imagination, I know that I would have done it better. In a different way. The Winter Garden, on the Second Cape, I mean.

After this morning, this day, when the American girl dies in the woods at the marsh and Björn is also dead—there is already someone who knows, the cousin’s mama, with certainty, I just simply know: something terrible—being up here for a while. Rita and me, Bengt. Playing the Winter Garden.

It may look that way, on the outside. But it’s like this: and that loneliness which also gradually becomes a happiness, a confidence, it also starts here, exactly this morning, right here.
I
am not going to be there playing along. Even though it might look that way, I am sitting with them because it is easier. It is after all, me and Rita.
I will sit there but my thoughts will be somewhere else. And later we will be grown up, a life will come later, and I will also have a lot, things that mean much more. And I will be here, continue to be here. But not my siblings. I am going to be able to leave the game, the Winter Garden, the stone foundation and everything. And then of course the most impossible: leave Rita. In my head.

•

Susette Packlén isn’t going to do anything to the cousin’s papa with the pistol even though it is lying out in the open. She is a colleague, but a friend as well, in some way: we knew each other, for a while. Are parallel so to speak, the same tenacity in both of us. Sun cats. Susette who is dancing on a floor, in one of those beautiful houses in Rosengården 2, in Rosengården, and on the avenues, stupid girl, but playful. She isn’t going to do that with the pistol to the cousin’s papa, which I regret that I had even thought. The cousin’s papa, what is that? That sort of thing passes too.

Bengt who inherits the house. It is a shock, I still thought it would be mine. That the cousin’s papa would have thought about me so much. But that passes too, almost right away—that resentment.

I will come back here, to the cousin’s house, one morning in November 1989. My brother Bengt will be lying in the parlor. Will have blown his head off. That is how it is. I know—he was washed up.

Then I will set fire to the house. There will have to be enough of tomorrows, consequences. It will have to be here and now. And it will come to me, and Johanna too. And Maj-Gun Maalamaa. I like her. Always have. In reality that feeling started early, I was just a child. It
was during the time when Björn was gone and Doris was suddenly in the house and was taking up everything, had to have everything everything—was so happy and fulfilled, and you couldn’t deny her anything. At the same time, how you disappeared. And the cousin’s mama who disappeared completely. But you were simply, not a child. And yet, everyone saw it, of course, everyone felt it, Doris came with life, light, the future, and everything. As I said, we would have gone under otherwise, without Doris Flinkenberg.

But still. Doris. For example that first fall after everything, before you had really gotten used to everything new, found your place, that state between child that would gradually become a real youth, it would be a relief as well—but then, you got tired and irritated, even though you were supposed to be an adult, restrained, happy despite everything with Doris and for the cousin’s mama (which you were, of course!) but still, there was never really space for that happiness inside you. And Bengt who was gripped by the general giddiness of giving a lot of welcome gifts to Doris who, after all the grief and woe, was allowed to come to the cousin’s house and become a full member there, and the cousin’s papa who also hadn’t become “kind” but “bearable,” we were at a Christmas bazaar at the fellowship hall, the cousin’s mama and all the children, and Bengt won the big fruit basket that was the first prize for the Christmas lottery. And gave, because Doris had become delighted with all of the beautiful fruit, the basket to her immediately. But then there came a girl, the Pastor’s daughter, Maj-Gun Maalamaa in a creepy mask, and quite simply
scratsch
, stuck her hand through the cellophane that was covering
the contents of the basket and took the largest, most beautiful green apple, right in front of Doris Flinkenberg’s nose. Who became angry of course and stamped on the ground and Maj-Gun Maalamaa had to say she was sorry several times, in the kitchen of the fellowship hall, and the Pastor himself furious at her. But we got, all of us children, candy that the Pastor offered us because he was kind, and Maj-Gun accepted the scolding but ha ha ha she finally shouted at last and just ran away, she didn’t regret it. Can’t be helped, but it felt good. And I’ve told Maj-Gun about it too, maybe I’ll tell it one more time, it will be part of this story. That certain things, scenes, at first glance meaningless get their claws into you from the beginning and make it so that you can never doubt them or hesitate about them, like in your heart, as the cousin’s mama would have said.

That is how it was, has always been for me, with Maj-Gun Maalamaa. And maybe I regret it now, that maybe I should still have told Johanna more about her.

•

Well. No more about that now. It exists in a time in the future, which is many years from now. This morning. So terrible, but still exactly, just because of that, so glittering, meaningful. That you have to go through the terrible in order to come out on the other side. But for the most part if you have determination, you will get out. And then everything is that much stronger, more beautiful, also the smallest tiniest good thing has meaning. I believe that.

The time starts now. When I leave the hill in about an hour and walk down. And I have to do it. I don’t want to, not right then, but there is no choice.

Up there, at the base of the house. If you don’t play the Winter Garden and aren’t filled with your own fantasies, then you see clearly. A great panorama that reveals itself right here.

I am sitting here this morning watching what is happening below.

•

The cousin’s mama on the cousin’s property again. Where I met her when she looked at the pistol and looked at me like a crazy person and an idiot—but her rage! And I landed solidly on the ground with both feet, ran in with the pistol and ran away.

But the cousin’s mama can’t run away. She has been to the outbuilding, she has seen, what I know later, Björn there, and now she is standing in the yard calling for someone. Bengt! Not for me. Maybe that’s better. I still wouldn’t have been able to help her. Or anyone. In such a way.

Later I understand that the cousin’s mama is standing in the yard due to the fact that she still doesn’t dare go inside the cousin’s house again. The cousin’s papa is there—who’s probably still snoring, he was just a little while ago, when I was inside with the pistol, but then I wasn’t thinking about waking him anymore—and there was everything that had led up to this.

The cousin’s mama is appallingly alone. Doesn’t know where she should go. What she should do.