The Glitter Scene Read online

  But Susette on the dance floor: under the blue, white lights, in the smoke that comes from the floor and whirls around the dancers under the disco ball turning around around silver and glittering on the ceiling. Susette who is dancing, dancing—and sees Maj-Gun at a distance, on the sofa, among all the unfamiliar people, squeezed in between them, in the corner. And not that Maj-Gun is looking in Susette’s direction any longer, does not try to make eye contact with Susette in order to signal an understanding like she did earlier in the evening. Now, is sitting, is sitting where she sits, among all the ordinary girls and boys who are swelling in every direction on the group of sofas, pretending not to notice Maj-Gun, not bothering about her, Maj-Gun is like air to them. But yet, it is still Maj-Gun who, due to her size, is the most obvious of them all. Is shining, fleshy white around the arms, paler than ever: Maj-Gun like a beacon through the gray smoke and silver light, a leopard mouth adorned with sequins exploding over her enormous bosom and a half-filled glass of milk on the table in front of her that she no longer touches.

  Rag doll. “Dance my doll while you are young, when you become old you’ll be no fun.” No, Maj-Gun does not sit there and hum that rhyme now anymore either, just sits, Maj-Gun, alone. I’m more romantically inclined. The Boy in the woods will come soon. And all my longing will be enclosed in my dream of love. Maj-Gun’s stories about love, Susette suddenly finds herself thinking on the dance floor: Why can’t Maj-Gun get them, fantasies or not?

  •

  But Maj-Gun disappears there, no thoughts any longer, out of sight in the sea of all the people on the dance floor. Susette who is dancing, dancing, with boys boys, all the boys and they do not call her the Angel of Death even though it feels that way. Because it is like this and it is inexplicable: “Such a beautiful little Angel of Death.” Her mother, her voice in Susette’s head in the midst of everything, and cuckoo of course because her mother who in and of herself had death on her mind those last years never spoke like that. But now, in any case, like from a dream: glitter glitter in her head in time with the stromblights, which Maj-Gun earlier in the evening had for sure incorrectly informed Susette that was what those blinking lights at the disco were called. Her mother, in a memory that in other words is not a memory even though it could have been one of course because in reality, during Susette’s childhood and also as a teenager after her father’s death when Susette had quit school and been working full-time at the nursing home for the elderly and infirm, she and her mother had done the same thing. Picked flowers and taken them to the cemetery, set them out there. On the Graves of the Forgotten: that is what her mother used to say and Susette thought it was beautiful. All of these graves that no living person took care of aside from the general grave maintenance of the parish.

  “If you later come to wander in the valley of the shadow of death no harm will befall you.” Her mother had also said that. And in the church later, during Susette’s teenage years, her mother and funerals. Suddenly they had been there, for real, she and her mother at the very back of the church, together, her mother had sung along with the hymn. And afterward, at the funeral reception in the fellowship hall, organized addresses on the funeral table in alphabetical order, in neat fans with a grave and dignified hand about which her mother used to preach to Susette in silence. “The grieving have their own sorrow to think about.” These dead ones then, not exactly strangers but certainly often ones they had not known directly—for example, former patients at the nursing home, which was Susette’s place of employment at the time.

  Her mother, glitter, at the disco: Susette small again, during her childhood. Her mother who suddenly, in the middle of picking flowers on the way to the cemetery, looks at her daughter and does not say what she says in reality, “What beautiful flowers you have in your bouquet, Susette,” but:

  “What a beautiful little Angel of Death, my Susette.”

  •

  And it IS true: the essence of a development. The normalcy that disappeared and was obliterated. And she, Susette, could not say when it happened, just a peculiar transition from the one to the other.

  The rug rags that suddenly piled up in the kitchen in the house: garments, garments, old garments and towels and worn-out sheets, you cut and cut but could not keep up. “It’s not easy living in a house of sorrow.” Her mother’s words, at the rug rag bucket, and later: all the death that was suddenly everywhere but rug rags were to be collected and cut up and wrapped in spools that would be placed back into the bags for weaving even though the weaver had been dead for a long time already. Her father who, while he was still alive, had built houses out of balsa, a fragile structure. Measured and cut out teensy pieces from paper-thin wood with a small saw, glued the pieces together carefully, and Susette had liked watching. One of her father’s hobbies in the living room in the evenings in the house during the time when everything was still normal and ordinary. That house, it had been standing there on the living room table later—

  And buried in rags, crushed by the weight of rug rags too.

  “Where is the weaver, Mom? And the loom, where is it?”

  Gone from door to door, she and her mother, in the picturesque suburbs below the square where ordinary families lived in beautiful single-family homes, a lot of family noise and dogs and cats and neat gardens; apple trees, plum trees, and cherry trees in the gardens. Her mother and her, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of them over the cobblestones, over asphalt and on sandy paths. Rung doorbells, knocked and asked for, begged for, silk velvet rag scraps, everything that could be woven into rugs instead of being thrown out. And Susette who had been ashamed, gradually anyway: when everyone knew that the rug weaver in the Outer Marsh was dead and there was no other loom anywhere. Transported plastic bags home and washed garments, or not washed them, started cutting right away, long scraps that were called loom lengths, to roll up onto the spools later. But still, away from everyone’s eyes, easier to be there, in the house, the kitchen. The mother and Susette, just the two of them, each with scissors, each sitting on a stool at the bucket… and Susette who left her first love because of the grief, the death, her mother—or not left exactly, just walked away from the rectory once and then never went back. Her father’s death, which got in the way then; maybe she thought he, the boyfriend, would arrive as her savior, take her away from the house, her mother, all of it. On the other hand, furthermore, she had not thought that way at all: she knew of course Tom Maalamaa was not like that.

  Her mother with the better scissors, the textile scissors, her dearest possession, you might think. Were kept stored in their own case in a kitchen drawer and were not to be used for anything other than cutting fabric so that the edges would not become dulled, her mother had been very careful about that. Her mother who had asked Susette to sharpen the scissors before using them, her eyes were so bad.

  So no, you could not have lived there. Understandable. Gone away and stayed away too long, and Maj-Gun on the telephone: “Your mother. They buried her. Mydeepestcondolences. When are you coming home?”

  “Calm down now,” Maj-Gun said again, when Susette had returned, her hand on Susette’s shoulder. “I understand completely.”

  “Understandable.” The mess in the house when Susette returned after having been gone for three years. Her mother who had been a “collector” due to the war, that generation. And in the mess, Maj-Gun who had stood and said exactly that: “It’s the war, she told me. Understandable.” All the old rags in the plastic bags along the walls, everywhere, cut, uncut—and when Susette became better they had gotten the house in order. Thrown things out, dragged out black plastic bags filled with clothes, rags, glass jars for flowers, plastic yogurt containers for the flowers… which her mother had collected.

  And so, still, in the midst of everything, in the middle of the cleaning, sat down there again. At the rag bucket in the kitchen, with the scissors.

  “Your mother. She was for real.

  “She didn’t give in.

  “Such a cute lit
tle Angel of Death.

  “We cut rug rags… we talked about you.

  “Silk velvet rag scraps—”

  Each on her own stool, Maj-Gun’s stories later, cloth in long strips that whirled down into the plastic bucket between them.

  Who was Maj-Gun?

  •

  Still, so easy to blame it on Maj-Gun. Her silliness, stupid talk. Maj-Gun had been friendly too, for real. Comforted, in her own way, as best she could. And not held Susette responsible for her lies. Lied, could not stop lying, had to have another story, coherence, there has to be life.

  “Poland.” And a stomachache.

  “… the black Madonnas, the incomprehensible language…”

  “You were never really there. And certainly not pregnant? Take it easy now, Susette. I understand completely.”

  Still, Maj-Gun, who was she? Majjunn, like a sound in your mouth?

  “Hell, Susette, what are you doing with a revolver in your sauna bag?”

  And suddenly, something she had forgotten, even though it was not more than a week ago. Maj-Gun had been standing in the kitchen in her apartment with the pistol in her hand. “Djeessuss, Susette.” As if she had not known up or down, what she could have said otherwise.

  Then put the pistol to her heart.

  “Maj-Gun!” Susette shouted. “It could be loaded!”

  How Maj-Gun looked at her then. “Take the pistol and put it away, Susette.”

  Snip, nothing.

  As if nothing had happened.

  CAN you actually go on after this as if nothing happened?

  Answer. Yes. You can.

  Maj-Gun in her childhood, the Pastor’s Crown Princess, at the cemetery. Stood and pointed at the Confession Grove.

  “There it is. Shall I show you the way?”

  “I’m fascinated by the Death in her.” Her first boyfriend, Tom Maalamaa, had spoken that way once at the cemetery. To his sister Maj-Gun: the two siblings, who otherwise were always at each other’s throats, could, you had discovered, have certain very close moments just the two of them. Like that time in the cemetery back when Tom Maalamaa was her boyfriend and she had been on her way into his room where his sister also was: they had not noticed her at first and Susette had stood in the doorway and heard them talking to each other like that, certainly not about her but it still felt that way.

  Two children at the cemetery, with masks, Liz Maalamaa.

  Answer again. Yes. You can. Because those were just images, scenes.

  All of that darkness, the death, nourished by guilt from longing, fear of yourself, not from Maj-Gun but from herself.

  The whole time with Maj-Gun, as if that was exactly the point with Maj-Gun. How she calls forth those things in you. Intensifies them until they roar in your head and dunk dunk become more real than the original scenes, what actually happened.

  More real than the real. Maj-Gun in the kitchen, how they were cutting rug rags, Maj-Gun’s laughter, Maj-Gun’s panting laugh, the sweat running down her face. Maj-Gun at the newsstand… the ordinary that became strange all of the time. In the midst of life there is an instinct to death. She wanted to get away from there, but still, had to stay, motionless on the stool.

  You thought you could see horrible slimy underworld-fungus hanging from Maj-Gun’s head as if it were hair.

  Something held them together, but what? Maj-Gun like a message she tried to decipher.

  Something held them together. In the midst of life…

  And neither of them wanted it, as if both of them were fighting it. Starling darling, to life, an invitation.

  Still: “a logic you have to go along with.”

  From room to room, they were in the same room.

  Maj-Gun, her, and her mother.

  Crehp. Crehp.

  Maj-Gun, a figure, silk velvet rag scraps in her head.

  “I was standing there, reeling in the fear.” Susette in the middle of the ring on a square. Cars driving around. Nah. She had not been afraid. Other than, then, of a destiny. Had wanted to blow up the ring, Maj-Gun, everything else in the way. We are two Angels of Death, Susette, in a timelessness.

  •

  Still. Susette. She is not there after all, on the square. She is here of course. Has been here the entire time, dancing, on the floor of the disco.

  “Little” Susette, big earrings and a lot, even though you cannot see it, of death inside her head.

  •

  She becomes aware of everything again: the smoke, the sweat, the people.

  Blue Angel. The nausea wells up inside her, she has to run to the restroom, push her way past the whole line and puke and puke in the stall and when she is back in the hall she searches for Maj-Gun but does not find her.

  The sofa where they had been sitting is filled with other people. Four umbrellas are neatly lined up on the table. Among the cigarette butts and stickiness from a milk glass, half empty.

  “Hey.” A hand on her shoulder. She is standing face-to-face with Tom Maalamaa.

  In a blazer, some sort of beard, and a polo shirt.

  •

  And Susette Packlén, a bait for life, has run, is running running away, has left the disco.

  The cat meets her in the hallway in her little apartment when she comes home.

  Then she is completely calm, takes off the horrible new clothes.

  The avenues, running in the avenues.

  Overturning houses.

  Houses made of balsa. A fragile structure.

  Buries her face in the cat’s fur.

  “Mom. I have the feeling that I want it to be over now. Everything.”

  •

  Susette who is sitting on the sofa in her little apartment and cutting up the garments that had been bought that day. The parrot jacket with the shoulder pads, the creased pants.

  The cat deep asleep in the corner of the sofa, in the light of a solitary floor lamp.

  With the “textile scissors,” an inheritance, one of the few things of her mother’s Susette had taken with her from the parental home before it was sold. Long strips, loom lengths.

  SUSETTE, MAJ-GUN, AND THE BOY IN THE WOODS, 1989

  THE NEXT MORNING SUSETTE PACKS her backpack and takes the morning bus out to the capes to bury the white kitty.

  Sunny day, few clouds, tepid. No one on the bus except her. She gets off at the last stop at the grove of trees where the Second Cape and the sea are, on the other side. Roaring, wind in the trees, is felt, is heard.

  She walks back on the road toward the mainland, onto the cousin’s property from the left, where it looks deserted as usual. To the barn, which is never locked, across from the house where she is also going to leave something, but it will have to be later, the other thing is more important now. Takes a shovel from the barn and continues into the woods on the path that starts on the other side of the road below a high hill where a half-burned house gapes with a large, dark hole in its side, like always. Otherwise it is quiet, no people anywhere.

  Into the woods, to a place where the ground is soft enough to be dug into. Not particularly easy to find, she has to walk quite a ways, backpack heavy on her back, shovel in her hand. Turns down on the path to Bule Marsh, which reveals itself, still, shiny water, between the trees. Does not continue all the way down because she discovers a pretty glade a few feet off to the side of the path. Hardwood trees, soft mossiness. Shovel in the ground, yes, no bedrock there. Carefully takes away the whole layer of moss first.

  When the hole is deep enough she takes the package with the dead animal out of her bag: has wound it in terry cloth towels and in thin light blue plastic bags used for cleaning. Lays the bundle in the ground, hears a noise behind her, turns around. He is standing there on the path looking at her. She becomes a bit nervous but not scared; not because of him, he is not a stranger after all, but the surprise.

  He asks her if she needs help. “Nah.” How thick and strange her own voice sounds, in the midst of everything. Together they cover the bundle with soil and p
lace the layer of moss on top.

  Later she is going to tell him about the beautiful small white cat she took from the Glass House on the Second Cape where she had cleaned during the summer, about the French family, the diplomatic family, that just left it behind. About how she brought it home and how she had it for only a few weeks when the night before she met him she found it dead on the floor in the hall in her apartment. That she did not want to take it to a cemetery for animals, or to the veterinarian, but put it in the earth, out in nature, where it belonged, where it came from.

  Now they were walking in silence back on the path toward the road, she with her backpack in hand, he with the shovel. He says he saw her from the cousin’s house. Saw her take the shovel from the barn, became curious. She says quickly that she only wanted to borrow the shovel, she knew there was a shovel there since she used to come to the house and clean when the old man was still alive, she works for Solveig’s cleaning company. And then suddenly it also occurs to her who he is. Here. The Boy in the woods. Solveig’s brother. Bengt.

  How long had he been here, in the cousin’s house? He shrugs. A while. Then Susette thinks he looks the way she had imagined based on Solveig’s descriptions. Like someone who has been here and there and at some point stopped accounting for anything, even with just a little bit of effort, placing anything into some sort of context, coherence. “Completely washed up.” Which Solveig had also said, in the company car. “Gone to hell.”

  He takes her hand on the forest path. Strange. She squirms out of his grip and when they come out of the woods she keeps going, alone. Along the road, in the direction of the main country road and the town center. She walks for several miles, then the bus from the capes comes, she gets on.

  We can leave her here, Susette Packlén. Wandering forward along the road, one fall day in the sun, the Fjällräven backpack dangling over her shoulder. Small poor child I am, in cowboy boots, boots. Or on the bus, where she is the only passenger on this Sunday morning. Gets off at the square in the town center, walks home.