The Glitter Scene Read online

  You remember the mask, which Tom Maalamaa and I used to run around with at the cemetery when we were little, you were there of course, you and your mother, with the flowers by the graves. Papa Pastor had to deal with a lot of complaints, not from you and your mother, of course, but from others who had business at the cemetery and he forbade us to take the mask with us there. He detested that mask because we called it the Liz Maalamaa mask after our godmother and aunt who was also his own sister of course—”

  “Maj-Gun, wait a second,” Susette interrupts her then. “Were you wearing that mask when you saw Doris at the cemetery?”

  “Yes. At some point. Why?”

  “But—isn’t it… I mean… you weren’t a child anymore you know?”

  “Nah, Susette, that’s true. At the very beginning, in the summer, for the most part I definitely wanted to make myself interesting too, in some way, show that I could have some interesting stories too. Later, in the fall, I guess I just wanted to scare people. WANTED it to have an effect on her. Well. It did.

  “She got scared. Quite simply damned disproportionately shitscared. But, Susette, it was never my intention to scare her for real. Here is the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa.

  “But, Susette—” Maj-Gun gets ready again out of her contemplativeness and says with emphasis, “Actually. I didn’t care about her.

  “All the time from the beginning. NOW I’m going to tell you what it was like: that the reason I got close to her at all during the summer was her story. That is to say, what she had been through. Everyone in the District knew about it, it had been in the local papers. That it was her, Doris Flinkenberg from the cousin’s house, who had found the corpse of the American girl. FIVE years after she drowned at Bule Marsh.

  “She had died back in 1969 but her body didn’t surface until five years later. It’s true, no fraud about it there, no sir. But a strange body of water there in the woods, currents, deep and ice-cold. Like a refrigerator. She must have gotten stuck at the bottom in some way, everyone knew the whole time of course that she was there somewhere in the mire, the deep. And she had a red raincoat on; that is what Doris Flinkenberg saw. A red spot somewhere in the reeds… and yes, in and of itself, not much left of her then, of course.

  “The corpse itself I mean. But the plastic was whole, plastic doesn’t decompose. Think, Susette,” Maj-Gun suddenly exclaims, “all the plastic that’s still going to be here when we’re gone—

  “So, Susette. That was what I had in my head when I first tried to get to know Doris Flinkenberg that summer at the cemetery. And I had summer vacation, I had time to do a lot of thinking, so to speak.

  “About a corpse in the marsh, for example, and what it would be like to find it. What something like that would feel like, as it were. That was what interested me. That experience, in general.

  “But when I brought it up with her—well, yes—

  “She really didn’t want to talk to me. She got scared. I understood it later, in other words. What she got scared about.

  “And in the fall, a few months later. Scared shitless. She was shaking—

  “Then the fear in her had grown, a horrible flower had blossomed inside her. Or, like an island. Late one night, as I said. In the darkness, under a solitary lamp there at the cemetery. Just a few days before she shot herself. But no one could know it then, of course, not me either. I was completely defenseless.

  “That revelation. You couldn’t imagine there had been only a few months in between.

  “Not everyone saw it, of course, but I’ve spent a lot of time at the cemetery, Susette, and grown up in a pastor’s family and I have special eyes for that sort of thing.

  “So beautiful on the outside, in the midst of everything—but it was her appearance that was deceptive.

  “Wanted to sing. The folk song had come to her. And the girl she walks in the ring with red golden ribbons. The girl came from her lover’s meeting.

  “Cute. You might think.

  “But, Susette, not at all. Because in the eyes of some there is—like there is age in my eyes, or timelessness. The weight, Susette. The eternal repetition. The idea behind the folk song. You walk out into the woods and there comes the wolf and tears your throat open. In all of the verses, over and over again, and the folk song has many verses, Susette, in time and space.

  “And it should have happened then, Susette, between me and her. It should have been like in one of those stupid movies when after a brief conversation during which a lot of repressed feelings and aggressions you’ve had toward each other finally get aired and you actually get to talk, for real.

  “Well. It didn’t happen.

  “Idiotic. I was just thinking about how angry I was.”

  •

  “Wait a second, Maj-Gun,” Susette says suddenly. “So you were standing there at the cemetery with the Liz Maalamaa Angel of Death mask on in the darkness and you scared her?”

  “I already said that I regretted it!”

  “And how may I ask do the American girl and the Boy in the woods fit into all this?”

  “If you would have a little patience, Susette, for once,” Maj-Gun says leisurely, “we’ll get to it, we’re almost there. The fear, her fear.

  “I know interesting things about all sorts of things, Susette.

  “And the fear then, for example the following. That it is a common feeling, like a state, which in the beginning has in and of itself been set off by something specific. But the fear itself, once it has been woken, doesn’t disappear. It is separate: a latent state that just exists inside someone. Once scared, always scared. And you can, if you see it, draw it out.

  “Call forth the fear in someone who is scared to begin with. Hold the one who is scared captive that way. So yes, as I said and I’m up front about it but I’m not proud of it no sir; I wanted to scare someone. Irritated at first when she just ran away from me and was busy with her own business. And then later in the fall when I was angry because the caretaker at the church had spoken with papa Pastor about my disobedience when he was there, demanded to have the extra key to the old, beautiful side of the cemetery returned, the one he had given me in secret.

  “So yes, I told her about my horrible aunt Liz Maalamaa. The Angel of Death, with the mask on.

  “But, Susette: this is where I wanted to get to. Her reaction was not in proportion to how scary it actually was. It was silly of course, she wasn’t a child anymore, sixteen years old already and it was in the middle of the day.

  “Later in the fall, then she was in and of itself so far gone in everything that if you had touched her with your pinkie then fjutt she would have sunk down to the ground. I didn’t, of course, just asked a few questions about all sorts of things, the cousin’s house, the American girl—which I had been going around, pondering about.

  “But it was crazy, Susette. I just didn’t understand the extent of it all. The gravity. It was only when I heard about the suicide that I understood.

  “That she knew something about all of that, which made it so she didn’t want to live any longer. And that was where the fear was coming from, its specific origin, so to speak. Maybe something she had always known but kept hidden, also from herself. But her friend, it had been just the two of them together, those two against the world and that had been a protection against it as well. And when it was gone then there was nothing.

  “And the folk song. Came pouring into her.”

  “What everything did she know about?”

  “Well, of course, the American girl. What really happened. She knew who killed her. And she couldn’t live with the knowledge—

  “Because it was someone close to her, a cousin.

  “All of them were from there, of course. ‘Cousins’ from the cousin’s house.”

  “What are you saying actually happened? There wasn’t anything mysterious about that, was there?”

  “Yes, Susette: that’s where the problem lies. When the American girl died people said it was her boyfriend, who w
as jealous, who pushed her into the water from a cliff at Bule Marsh, and when he realized what he had done he became desperate and went and hanged himself.

  “That boy. Also a ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house. There were several there. The three siblings, the three cursed ones. Rita, Solveig, the oldest brother Bencku, the Boy in the woods, in other words. And then Björn, who had come to the house together with the new mother. And when Björn was gone: Doris Flinkenberg.

  “But, Susette, there was also someone else who loved her. And she, yes, she loved him too. Maybe even more than her real boyfriend. Despite the fact that it was impossible. The age difference alone. She was nineteen, the Boy in the woods was only thirteen. She had promised him something, but then later, she was leaving.”

  “Did she TELL you all of that? Doris Flinkenberg?”

  Maj-Gun squirms a little. “Something like that, Susette. But, Susette, I know… Nobody knew my rose of the world but me. That is like the melody to the story. The rose in the wound. Which no one, no one suspects.

  “And when I started the conversation about that then, you could see, she felt terror.

  “The Boy in the woods. He was also her ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house you know. And brother to the other ‘cousins.’

  “Pure fantasies, Susette. I see what you’re thinking.

  “But she spoke about three siblings who shared a dreadful secret. She said that. And that everything was spinning, she didn’t know what she should think or believe about anything. So just sang, folk songs.

  “Yes. And then—” Maj-Gun hesitated a little. “Then she died. And when I heard about it… that was when I really fell in love with the Boy in the woods.

  “I put two and two together and then it hit me. My love. Was cemented.”

  “But, Maj-Gun,” Susette starts. “If you now know all of that for certain, shouldn’t you go—to the police? Or should have gone, a long time ago?”

  THEN Maj-Gun pays attention. Then Maj-Gun looks at Susette again, like at a ghost.

  “The police? What, the long arm of the law?

  “The law’s long fucking arm I say. Don’t you get anything? Djeessus. I’m planning on fucking.

  “I love him, Susette. That kind of love. Like a fate you don’t choose yourself.

  “I want it to take possession of me. Want and want, moreover. Just as if love… were my will.

  “Love him because he died for the sake of love. It’s for real. Something that has happened. And the only salvation.”

  “Yes, you’ve said that.”

  “But don’t you understand, Susette? Love like a conversion. Like when the princess kisses the frog, the spell that is broken. Or the white cat in the folk song that says to the prince ‘cut my throat’ and I will become your princess and the prince does and she becomes one.

  “You have to be careful. You have to come to love. New.”

  “You’ve said that too—”

  And silence, when it zooms through Susette’s head of course that fundamental silliness in everything Maj-Gun is saying about the Boy in the woods, again: in other words, one Bencku in a barn where people partied and Bencku partied the most and for a while in his youth that made an impression, plus the fact that he was good-looking and the girls in the District had taken their bikes out there just in order to sit, lined up along the walls of the barn in the darkness, slowly becoming DRUNK too while waiting to be seen and some were cuter than others and then they were seen more often and so on. Starling darling kiss ready for the evening entertainment. It must be Maj-Gun Maalamaa in order to get something meaningful out of that.

  But at the same time, on the other hand. Something that effectively obscures all desire to laugh for example. The three siblings. The cursed ones. Bencku, Rita—and Solveig. And Doris Flinkenberg, with the folk song. Not because Susette had not known, but she had, so to speak, not thought about Solveig that way. Solveig in the company car, Doris Flinkenberg on a cassette tape. Nah, Susette does not know anything about Doris, that fall when she killed herself, Susette had not been in the District any longer. And the cousin’s house, where Susette had cleaned, cleaned, the old man, the cousin’s papa. Who had died—and not that long ago either. And there, in the cousin’s house, after the ambulance had left she walked around with death in her hands.

  And so, still, how all of that is also suddenly obliterated because of another image, another scene.

  Just: a terrified girl at the cemetery, Maj-Gun with the mask, the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa.

  “Damn it, Maj-Gun! You scared her! With your damned mask! And do you HAVE to say the Boy in the woods all the time? He’s probably a hundred years old and his name is Bengt!”

  •

  Damp. Down on the ground, reality. Maj-Gun grows quiet, does not say anything, looks down—at her hands, her nails.

  “My bladder is about to explode,” she says then and gets up. “I have to go pee.”

  And she walks out into the hall and into the bathroom. Susette gets up off the couch too, opens the window slightly and fresh air pours into the room. Starts picking up empty coffee cups, empty ice cream bowls and carries them into the kitchen and turns on the hot water and puts the dishes to soak in the sink.

  A relief, as if something had let go, no fury, nothing is pounding now. No “What does Maj-Gun want from me? What is she doing in my apartment?” No feeling of connections, rags, fungus.

  But just ordinary, normal. The cat is purring at her legs now, begging for food because it is hungry. Susette takes a can of cat food out of the cabinet, looks for the can opener but as usual does not find it, takes the old pair of scissors instead, uses the tip to make a gash in the lid of the can and bends it up, ladles the food out onto a plate and sets it on the floor in front of the cat who starts eating.

  Hears Maj-Gun behind her, coming from the bathroom, and in the midst of everything Susette thinks of something funny, which is also an ordinary way of finishing a conversation.

  “Maj-Gun!” she calls. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you don’t need to wait so long. The Boy in the woods. Bengt. He inherited the whole house.”

  But then Maj-Gun is standing in the doorway with a pistol in her hand.

  “Damn, Susette. What are you doing with a revolver in your sauna bag?”

  •

  On the other hand, still, at the newsstand, a few evenings later. “More cat food?” Maj-Gun in the doorway, puffing on a cigarette that she tosses away half smoked when she catches sight of Susette who is approaching across the square, holds the door open, bows. “Just because you’re a duchess—” Susette shakes her head, Maj-Gun does not finish the sentence, they go in.

  “Think about what Madonna has done for fashion! It’s crazy! Djeessuss!”

  A girl is crossing the square, they see her through the window where they are, as always, sitting on either side of the counter among all of the magazines, lottery tickets, games. The same girl as all the times before: hair teased, bow in her hair, medium-length leather jacket, knickknacknecklaces. And Maj-Gun who yells what she has yelled a thousand times before, and lacking just as much irony in her voice—the opposite, almost filled with reverence, esteem.

  Susette who laughs, Maj-Gun who stares at her, and speaks so that it sounds like an accusation:

  “You’re so spaced out, Susette. Don’t know anything about what is going on!

  “If I looked like you, Susette. Not exactly what you look like now, but the potential.

  “Come along and change!” Maj-Gun calls out. “With you as bait, Susette. To life, an invitation. NOW we’re going to the disco.”

  And that is what they do the following Saturday when Maj-Gun does not have to work: go into the city by the sea and buy clothes and then they go to the disco. Only clothes for Susette, because there is nothing in large enough sizes in the regular stores for Maj-Gun, something she cheerily points out. She is wearing what she calls the tiger blouse party shirt: an ill-tempered leopard mouth with red sequins that swell over her stoma
ch.

  And Susette in the fitting rooms in the stores, in the junior department: Maj-Gun who is lugging clothes between the fitting room and the department, fitting room and department, serving as fashion adviser, choosing and deciding. Dresses Susette up for all she is worth, like bait. Broad-shouldered yellow blazer, aviator pants with creases, and in front of the mirror in the restroom at the train station Susette’s hair is combed back into a curly, poodlelike hairstyle with a ponytail.

  The disco is enormous, an ash-gray hall; Susette is sucking on a Blue Angel, which is a blue drink with an umbrella stuck in the glass with white foam on top. “It’s stardust,” Maj-Gun explains when they take a seat on a group of couches suitably close to the dance floor, “stardust stardust,” stirs her finger in the whiteness, sticks her finger in her mouth, “mmmmm.” Raises her milk glass—Maj-Gun never drinks anything stronger—says cheers! One Blue Angel, two Blue Angels, and a few more: Maj-Gun picks umbrellas out of the glasses as Susette finishes them, one after another, places the umbrellas in a row on the table. Maj-Gun orders new drinks from the waiter or goes to the bar herself and brings more when the hall and the sofas fill with people; “you can’t yell waiter because then they’ll get offended!” Maj-Gun drums her fingers on the low coffee table in time with the music and Susette is drinking, later dancing—drinking, dancing, boys are asking her to dance. One boy after another, boys boys how they crowd around her: “She has good luck!” Maj-Gun laughs when Susette returns to the sofa between the dances only to immediately have a new boy there who is going to lead her out onto the dance floor. “Luck, luck.” Maj-Gun laughs until she stops laughing, new people sit down on the sofas, lots of people, strange people, forcing Maj-Gun farther and farther into the corner. Susette too, of course, but then she is not really there but on the dance floor, on the dance floor the entire time, and gradually Maj-Gun grows quiet, just sits, does not say anything at all anymore.