The Glitter Scene Read online

  In and of itself, most of those speeches that she writes she never gives at all—in contrast to her brother Tom Maalamaa, in the service of the international organization, him, on well-paid podiums, he can talk. She just sits at home in her rooms and writes them: walks from room to room to room, different kinds of views to look at in order to find inspiration for the task at hand. Thick, fantastic woods, as said, broad views, horizons, perspectives.

  Walks there and if she is in that kind of a mood and is thinking, writes as a means of passing the time.

  And it is not that bad. A bit lost. Has lost something, but it is not very dramatic, just as it is, and she is not particularly lonely either.

  Djeesss… nah. Tass tass in feng-shuied spaces, on warm wooden flooring, in rag socks.

  Because otherwise, during those times: has toned down the “offensive” in herself a long time ago, which she would get criticized for already at the beginning of her college career. “Maj-Gun, you don’t need to attack like a hyena, going right for the jugular.

  “There is nothing wrong with strong opinions, a strong belief in right and wrong is the backbone of all legal proceedings, the fertile soil from which the judicial system originates…” blah blah blah ink squiggled in the margins of her notebook, talk talk… while she looks up, smiles, at the lecturer whose name is Markus.

  “A hyena does not go for the jugular, Markus,” she says. And djeessus, it sometimes still whistles silently between her teeth.

  Sanded away. And in reality, her imbalance during that first period at the university is due to a long period of loneliness and sun and sea, and the child—like a want. Also a physical want. How she milked her breasts, read true stories about surrogate mothers. True Crimes. Because nah, there really is not a single experience in life that is just yours.

  Come and see my gallery. Read for her entrance exams, walked around in rooms, whitewashed walls, admired landscapes, views, the sea in different ways, the foam on the waves, the horizon, the patio.

  “After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible.” It was a lasting expression during her college years, afterward. “My transformation.”

  Otherwise: age has been an advantage. Partially the visible, that she had been circa ten years older than most of her classmates. Partially the other, the timelessness.

  He became her lover later, for many years, the lecturer, the corporate lawyer Markus.

  •

  “Solveig,” Maj-Gun suddenly bursts out here on the square in the town center in the month of January 1990, with a sudden urgency that almost makes her stammer. “I don’t know how much you know,” she starts, does not even know how she is going to continue but, regardless of what is has been and is like with everything, after all she, someone, has to get something sensible out. “I would like to say something. That I—liked him very much. Your brother.”

  Solveig grows stiff, stares at her.

  And again, fleeting, such a need in Solveig’s eyes.

  But she has pulled herself together in the next moment, cuts her off. “It’ll pass, Maj-Gun. You have your whole life in front of you. And I have my girl, Irene. I’m planning on building a new house at the old place.

  “There must be life,” Solveig adds, like a conclusion. Which is of course something you just say but suddenly, exactly when she says it, Maj-Gun feels as though she is staring at her roundish belly.

  This year I have something kicking in my stomach.

  “You think you’re so important with all of your secrets. Your damned songs. But shall I sing a folk song for you?” The girl at the cemetery, the lass with the folk song, Doris Flinkenberg, the last time she was there. But it was not Doris who was singing that time, that song, it was Maj-Gun herself, with the mask on. The Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa: Maj-Gun who wanted to tease her, get back at her, angry because Doris had not wanted to talk to her during the summer and had gone and tattled on her to the church caretaker who, furthermore, had gone to papa Pastor and told him everything.

  “Last year I walked with the boys in the field. This year I have something kicking in my stomach!” Maj-Gun had sung, she had not wanted to hear any of the girl’s secrets at all at that point. “What do you do if you know something terrible, something everyone has known, all of your cousins, everyone but you?”

  Doris, who had been so depressed and spoken so strangely, had, in other words, not gotten any response from Maj-Gun at that point, just a ridiculous song that of course did not exactly make her any happier in any way. But all of her fear of Maj-Gun had, in that moment, fallen away from her anyway; she had just wanted to turn away bam, run away, you could see that, but Maj-Gun had been standing in the way, singing and preventing free passage in the solitary glow of a cemetery lantern in the otherwise compact October darkness.

  Until Doris Flinkenberg herself in the middle of Maj-Gun’s stupid song hissed, angrily, almost disgusted: “What the hell do you want from me you damned idiot?”

  Then Maj-Gun lost all interest and Doris Flinkenberg left and that was the last Maj-Gun had seen of her because Doris killed herself a few days later. But from there, when Maj-Gun had known that and had all the time in the world to think about Doris and what had been said between them—most of all, everything that had not been said but insinuated in passing,—from there, in any case, a crazy story was born. The Boy in the woods, which here, now in the middle of the square with Solveig, ends.

  Like all stories end.

  Here again, in absolute reality, realism.

  Though the song does not stop because of that; Maj-Gun’s own little folk song, it keeps playing in her head and her body, like a mockery.

  And Maj-Gun, on the square, fingers like ice cubes: all of the things she is carrying that slip from her hands, fall down on the ground. “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” the shirt, the carton of cigarettes, the opened pack of cigarettes among others. Because suddenly she has known, an insight that becomes formulated clearly first somewhat later but it comes to her exactly here and now. She cannot keep the child. She cannot. It was never hers.

  “Here, the cigarettes.” Solveig helps her pick things up off the ground.

  “And good luck with school!”

  They go their separate ways, Maj-Gun and Solveig, each in her own direction on the square.

  •

  “You look fresh. Pale. But fresh. Have you also started dieting?”

  “After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible. Strong character and discipline. Starting anything is difficult. Then it becomes a habit.”

  And just a few minutes later Maj-Gun is sitting at the table in the cozy kitchen in the Sumatra house, where she lived as a renter for several years up until the beginning of November, stuffing down Danishes that her former landlady Gunilla had purchased expressly for this afternoon when she has a free period from school and Maj-Gun, as agreed, arrived to settle business. Pay the outstanding rent, empty the room, say good-bye. “Oh, sweet Maj-Gun we’re going to miss you, and the kids will miss you too! They’re at school now. Look at what they drew for you as a farewell present!”

  A drawing representing a large monster sitting in a recliner: “Good-bye Terrible Animal Child!” it reads under the drawing in straggling middle school handwriting followed by a red heart, and it cannot be helped, Maj-Gun is moved to tears; she likes those kids so much, the kids who would often stand at the door to her room with the desk and the Thinking Chair upstairs despite the fact that their parents, “Gunilla,” “Göran,” often rebuked them with shhhh, the genius is working, don’t disturb! “Grrr, Terrible Animal Child, come out and play!” The Animal Child, that was Maj-Gun’s own name she used with the kids, she had come up with it herself.

  •

  “And how was it at the rectory?” Maj-Gun replies “fine.” As usual she cannot hide how much Gunilla also always appreciated that Maj-Gun Maalamaa, that she in particular, their renter, was the daughter of the former, very well-liked vicar. In the beginning, to the point it was almost uncomfortable.


  Not to mention, what a transition. From the other rental place, Java, the rug rags, Susette Packlén, to Sumatra, here. Suddenly being someone. How Gunilla, otherwise a robust woman, a math teacher at the junior high school and the high school, rather round as Maj-Gun herself had gradually become here at the house, but partially due to other reasons, without space, it was true too—that Gunilla was almost embarrassed in front of the old pastor’s daughter about everything that perhaps was not “proper” enough in this house. Not only that the classics were missing and all sorts of good literature on the bookshelves, bookshelves were missing altogether in that sense, instead filled with other knickknacks and record collections, but everything with the furnishings was always turning out wrong wrong… probably had something to do with her senses of color and taste not being as they should be, in a fundamental way, so to speak. Regardless of how she approached the business of furnishing the home, buying wallpaper, paint samples, different types of knickknacks, and other things to place tastefully here and there.

  “Maj-Gun, do you think this is nice?” she had a habit of asking anxiously, as if Maj-Gun, just because she was who she was and not to mention was sitting upstairs in her room, “with the Literature,” which Maj-Gun already at that time, in other words, was writing that Book. “The Manuscript,” which Maj-Gun later, with a growing irritation that was not dependent on Gunilla though Gunilla thought so, had corrected her.

  “Maj-Gun, do you think this looks nice?” Maj-Gun had replied: “‘1,001 Castles to Furnish Before You Die,’ Gunilla, I don’t know anything about home furnishings.” As was the case but it was also an amusing line from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” at least she thought so herself, but Gunilla had not understood the verve in the quote, had only become sadder. Sighing, uncertain: “Well, maybe one should find another hobby.” And flipped through to a new page in the magazines Maj-Gun tended to bring home from the newsstand and of course she did not have to flip through for very long before, quite right, a new possibility had revealed itself. Inga and Petrus have wine tasting as their hobby. “Maybe that could be something?” But then quickly changed her mind again: “Yes, of course, I know you don’t drink, if you’re going to create something then you need to do it with a sober mind, right?”

  And Maj-Gun had smiled mysteriously, like a real sphinx, because at that point she had of course quite simply started hating that word, “create,” but could not show it, she liked Gunilla, after all, did not want to make her sad. “Yes, for a while now I’ve been in the working and editing phase in close contact with the Book Editor, then what is known as the finalspurt remains.”

  “And may I ask how it’s going with the Bo—” Had, like always with Gunilla, come back to the same thing.

  And Maj-Gun’s angry shrug of the shoulders, which had given rise to even more misunderstandings. “Yes, sorry, I’m walking along like an elephant in a china factory.”

  But Maj-Gun, with regard to her size, had laughed loudly. The Book, the Manuscript. Or whatever it was called, Authorship. That was in a way what was wrong with everything after all, or had started to be, there in the cozy house, the cozy family life. I am a dwarf in these rooms, Maj-Gun tried to say to herself, but it did not fit either really. Because otherwise, if it were not for “the Book,” which had started taking on mystical proportions at that kitchen table, “go upstairs and work, write,” then Maj-Gun would have been able to spend time sitting in the kitchen with Gunilla whom she really appreciated and talk chitter chatter about just about anything, “One should really start dieting.”

  “Listen to this, Gunilla, what your stomach fat says about your character.” A funny thing she had also written in “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.” But the talk, which there was not anything special about, still fun, relaxing.

  And Göran and the kids too, of course, when they were in the kitchen. “Maj-Gun is walking around here like a Poet in Bourgeoisie,” Göran could say, with a funny tone of voice, and then all of them could actually laugh, a bit relieved.

  On the other hand: “I should probably go up and write some now,” because right then, in moments like that with Göran and Gunilla and the kids in the kitchen, Maj-Gun had once again been reminded in some way about something she should have. Like flipping through to find a new page in a magazine. Get something like that for herself. Become hungry like a wolf, go to the movies, the disco, out and hunt.

  “No, now I really should go up and write.” So Maj-Gun, book-pregnant elephant girl, girl, gradually the only gracious thing about that creature, had removed herself from the warm, bright kitchen.

  I am without space. Up to the room. The novel. Djeessuss. The Thinking Chair. The Book. Authorship, the Animal Child here and paper there, in all places.

  Paper paper, between her, the world, everything. Had been working “in tight connection with the Book Editor for a while now” who had certain “minor” changes, that hellish word which always entered her mouth when she was standing, hanging by the door, wanting—certain “minor” suggestions for changes and comments…

  The room, the Thinking Chair, the desk. But the truth was also the following: at the very beginning, ages ago, when she had come to this house, from Java to Sumatra, she had “the manuscript” with her. But it had not been “the manuscript” then, in any case not in the same way, but at that time this writing had in other words been real.

  Where she had started writing, in the other rented room, with the woman on the first floor, rug rags. Suddenly, amid the rags in that kitchen in Java, she had seen the Animal Child, peering into the darkness. Demanding. So close. She had almost been able to touch it and feel the raw, slightly damp fur with her fingers. Unexplainable, but not crazy; it became crazy only when you tried to explain the Animal Child. Here it is. That closeness.

  But then, the woman died, the talk. All of the talking. Became vaporized. Rug rags. Susette.

  Search for it in Susette as well, in Susette’s big eyes. But djeessuss, still, every time she had become so disappointed with Susette.

  “And may I ask how it’s going with the boo—” Gunilla has asked her one last time in the kitchen now during the farewell coffee. And then for once Maj-Gun does not look moody instead she says that she is thinking about putting the book project on the shelf and starting to study law at the university. Which, she still has to add out of loyalty to something she once was, may be bad news for the Literature but good news for the kids—they worship that typewriter, that is why she is giving it to them.

  Gunilla cheers up, whether or not it is the typewriter, she seems a bit relieved otherwise too.

  “Oh, but I’m sure it must still have been nice to rest up at the rectory. You looked, to put it mildly, a bit worn out.”

  •

  And in the room for the last time, and alone. Gunilla had to go back to school: “Don’t worry, we haven’t touched anything, no one has been in the room since you left!” The key in the lock, pushing the door open carefully, almost sneaking in. The mess. Almost even worse than she imagined. There was paper here, paper everywhere. “The Manuscript of a Life,” ten thousand pages, swelling over the desk, the floor, the Thinking Chair, and the bed, “all the shortcomings.”

  “The true story” and that and that and that… one of those thousand working titles in horrible glittery red letters, solidified nail polish, red and mother-of-pearl, which she and the children had amused themselves with by coloring together when she let them come in at some point, also wanting to play, not be alone.

  And other papers: the letter from the Book Editor, which she still, before the appointed evening that had been the last evening in this room when everything had overflowed, neatly stored in a leather-bound folder in the top desk drawer and taken out and hastily glanced at sometimes, reading a few lines: “Promising in places, kill your darlings and tone down the self-pity…” And periodically it had given her a calm feeling of confidence but she had not been able to follow the advice, had not toned down but up. All of
the humiliations, everything that was done to me and me and me, in a thousand scenes, “characters,” an ocean, billowing waves that could, from the Thinking Chair, be heard like a satisfied clucking from her mouth sometimes when she thought she had been able to jot down a few particularly good parts. Sometimes not written at all, just thought things out, because she would gradually become so inspired that she did not even have time to write anything down, ideas, impressions that rushed through her head. And the jealousy. And Susette. MY love. A new story that came pouring in. Had not exactly improved matters any.

  But now, as mentioned. All of that. Foreign. Gone.

  Despite the fact that everything is exactly the same as when she left the room almost two months ago, turned off the lights, click, click, taken the getawaybag, and headed out.

  In the morning. Early. Susette, on her way to work, was going to be picked up by Solveig down by the main country road, she had known that. Had waited for Susette in the darkness, stood in front of her on the walking path a bit past the town center. “I don’t know anything about anything.”

  Had she said that? Could not remember, maybe she had not said anything. Just stood there and stared ahead, with her big dumb eyes.

  “You’re so easy, Susette.” And Susette had become frightened, pushed past her.

  They were going to meet up later in the day. On the Second Cape. Neither of them had known that then. Then, in the morning, Maj-Gun still had no idea that she would be heading out to the capes, not at all.

  In other words, they had not arranged to meet at the American girl’s hangout in the early afternoon. “Come down there, and we’ll settle things.” Nah. The Killer Rabbit had not said anything like that on the walking path that morning-night, it in no way had any plans. Killer Rabbit. That was namely how she had felt, as well, somewhere. Like a terrible black rabbit who, because it looked so horrifying, was called the Evil Rabbit, not the Killer Rabbit even though that was the word you thought about in that context, the context of the children’s garden, and in other words for that reason, the rabbit had been considerately placed on the highest cabinet where it could not be reached or seen in order not to scare the life out of the kids in the children’s garden from where it was now on the run.