The Glitter Scene Read online

  •

  And—this is becoming long now, when Tom Maalamaa is driving with his wife down the avenues of Rosengården 2, this November evening 2006, a Thursday.

  “Courage,” he says to his wife, takes her hand in his, maybe thinks she is nervous about tonight, his old university friends… or maybe he takes that hand because he has a bad conscience because he has, the entire afternoon, earlier in the evening, up until now, been rather grumpy and cross. About the mess at home, and the new workplace, chaos there too: that is what it is always like arriving in new places, he certainly knows that, should be used to it after so many years. But he had shouted and carried on, and that is why they have been quiet the entire drive from their home to Rosengården 2. For example not spoken about any “dear” old memories that both of them, together, separately, could have from these places, the District, after all they are both from here. Here, where Rosengården 2 now exists, it did not exist back then. This striking, luxurious—almost absurd—development in the middle of what once was a wood where Mama Inga-Britta used to pick mushrooms and cloudberries, lingonberries, rowanberries with the Nature Friends. And possibly somewhat exaggerated this peachy keenness, but “architectural dreams are architectural dreams,” which, for example, is something that Tom Maalamaa under normal circumstances certainly might have said here in the car, with a small bitonality too, though well-balanced because the Bäckströms and certainly many of the others who live here are his friends of course, if not now, then they will be; he has that kind of a job, lives a lot on “contacts.” Still, it is something grotesque, something almost frivolous, amoral. No, not because it would have been showing off—a lot of, as it were, too much of a good thing and Dallas, money&poortaste, but exactly because it is not that, PLUS the money that exists but cannot be seen cannot be seen cannot be seen… the style, all of the good taste, so perfect AND being enclosed, fenced in. Seen as a metaphor the irony of all this had of course not been wasted on him either. These people, these enclosures, these people inside their personally staked-out borders—people just like him, who always have the best, as well as education and class and taste and civilization and the best schools and universities and the power, on their side—how, for example, they can still carry out good deeds there, as he does in the service of mankind. And in contrast to those who have only money, he also has the power of language: can reason well, about almost anything, also their own shortcomings and this grotesqueness which, after all, it is. But with his own quick phrases he can also win people over so that it sounds not only plausible but also something worth striving for. “Here you can say anything as long as it sounds good.” That feeling.

  The irony naturally also applies to what he sees in his job: the other, “the other side,” those lacking legal rights. So too, him personally. And in contrast to what his sister Maj-Gun once thought, he takes his job seriously, what he does—the difficulty then is that it always becomes pompous when you are talking about it. He actually does not like hearing his own voice at all, going on and on about justice and equality in the world. But he likes what he gets accomplished, what he does.

  •

  Well, philosophers. He, Tom, can get carried away too, like papa Pastor in the church when he gets started and talks, talks. As luck would have it, his wife Susette Packlén does not have a predisposition for philosophizing, either to philosophize or to listen to the outlays of others. So it has therefore always been nice to come home, to her, the kids, the family, and just be something else, turn things off. And sometimes, as said, the two of them go out dancing.

  But this day in particular he, in other words, became furious when he came home—or had already been before, at work, but he lost his self-control first at home and quite simply made a racket. And therefore, as a result of just this mess, Tom Maalamaa has, this afternoon, this evening in particular, not had his telephone on and not been able to take the phone calls, the phone calls from his sister Maj-Gun who tried calling many times—and who is now, without his knowledge, right here in the area, exactly right now, this evening, at this point in time. In the Winter Garden, or on the field, or in the woods. The Boundary Woods—below Rosengården 2, its large enclosures, at the edge of the woods, below the Glitter Scene, with her daughter, which he also does not know she has, her name is Johanna.

  On the other hand: if he had the opportunity to speak to his sister, then you can ask yourself, would anything have been different as a result of this conversation in particular? Highly unlikely, because his sister Maj-Gun would not have been able to say anything about everything she needs to say to him on the telephone. They would most likely have arranged a meeting, later. Met for example the following day—it is important but too terrible to speak about on the phone—at some café. As soon as possible, but not soon enough. Because then, in any case, everything that will happen this night would already have happened, it would already in all ways be too late.

  His sister will know that as well, certainly. Because what she has to say almost takes her breath away, it is so great.

  But as said, Tom Maalamaa has not had his telephone on. He usually always has his telephone on. But earlier that day there was something with the telephone lines at work: the new telephone system, the computer integration in it—one big chaos there and chaos when he came home: moving boxes, cardboard boxes everywhere. Of course these urgent phone calls for work are not directly connected to his own separate private telephone but the problems today have certainly affected his attitude toward telephones in general so that he, after a day of working, in one moment of fury and complete frustration, angry at his phone, turned it off at home in his own bathroom.

  After he has, in other words, yelled at his wife, screamed at the aupairgirl Gertrude and even at twelve-year-old Elizabeth Ida, who unlike his wife does not answer back, just looks at him with her big eyes, in contrast to Gertrude, who produces long shrill harangues in French, German, and with assistance Italian as well, if she gets insulted. Which she has been this late afternoon and develops a cacophony of everything, and Tom Maalamaa from his Service of Mankind stood there and battled with the Swiss she learned at the nice private schools and secretarial institutions (oh no, there aren’t any Sri Lankan domestic servants in this household) with complete self-control. And handle things with great care, it does not say things or great on the boxes with the sherry glasses that he fumbles down from the dining room table, craaasssh; it says HANDLE WITH CARE, but he sees the sentence in his head in that way, for some meaningless reason. Well, glass like glass, sherry glasses, wineglasses, china cups, a fine china, can always be bought new but then it has already been way too much, over the edge, and he felt ashamed inside like a dog on the one hand, on the other hand he still barked like the same dog on the outside. For a while. So. Away from here: such an impulse and he went to the bathroom. Where the telephone in the pocket of his blazer started ringing and the name on the display was not the name of one of his golf buddies (he does not like golf, but sometimes you have to play golf, go and bond, he has golfed with cannibalistic dictators and played cricket with terrorist leaders in India; well-brought-up boys from good schools too, besides)—rather from the Head Office! Not the one that is his superior in this country, but another one, the only other one—the Head Office that was and is the entire goal and direction of his career, that level, which he thought he still had a ways to go to get to, now wanted to get in touch with him. But he stood in the bathroom in his own home, overwhelmed by his own rage, and looked at that, stared at it, damned telephone, angry angry at it because he suddenly understood not only that he should answer but that he WANTS to answer but cannot due to the fury still pounding at his temples, it is too great, he is not capable of getting himself together, which rarely happens, he is usually always able to get it together. So he did not answer, it stopped ringing, he turned it off, put it in the pocket of his blazer, and then first calmed down, took care of business, and carefully washed his face with ice-cold water for a good while.


  Ashamed like a dog and mellow mellow. But that energy inside him: if there had been a fresh brush set out ready in the bathroom, which there had once been in the rectory and the Coral washing powder in a glass jar “Goes for Tom too!” he certainly, out of regret and frustration, would have scrubbed and scrubbed the sink shiny with it.

  But, the avenue now, Rosengården 2, they are almost there. “Courage.” “I’m not afraid.” Her hand. In his hand. Handle things with great care. This turned out to be long.

  But it has to be, long, this. And still, these thoughts, ideas, maybe only a distillation of an entire story too long to fit into the few minutes between an entrance gate to a large house in a fantastic location just a third of a mile away. Of everything possible, everything, he had wanted, wants, should have said to her. Which he will always think about, the rest of his life, afterward.

  It has to be long. Eternally ongoing. It is, has been, his explanation of love for her.

  Her eyes, “I’m not afraid.” The Sorrow, an appeal? What it is. In her. No, he cannot find the words for it. Cannot. But he has loved her, he loves her, for it. The unknown in her, because of the question mark. And, in contrast to what his sister once thought, he is not very preoccupied with fine-tuning pretty formulations that run out of his head like water, a tap, or like diarrhea, when he is going to hold a speech, debate, he can certainly debate, “You can say anything here as long as it sounds good.”

  The opposite. Here. Susette. His wife. A love that simply makes him defenseless, and mute.

  Later, he will wish for a great deal, about talking, in the car, that bit to Rosengården 2, that that night some kind of dialogue between him and his wife had played out, a dialogue that could have gone something like this:

  “What are you thinking about?” she would have asked suddenly, since they had been sitting in silence the entire car ride.

  “I’m thinking,” he would have replied, “about us. About everything.”

  “What do you mean?” she would have said but with poorly concealed happy surprise. Despite the fact that she usually does not engage in disputes with him, she has always been good at sulking and keeping quiet and then, when you are going to make up, he has always been the one who has started speaking, spoken his way forward the entire way—but then, despite the fact that she does not want to show it, she has of course become happy.

  And then he would have placed his hand on her hand, which he had also done in reality, despite the fact that he had not said any of it, here in the car, on the avenues in Rosengården 2, and she would have taken his hand, held it, as she also does, for real.

  “I like it when we dance together,” he would have said.

  “Yes,” she would have answered. “I do too.”

  And as if it were… or it is, this snippet of a conversation that was never held but that existed anyway, silence between them, which makes it so that despite the fact that he, in the entire future, will have facts and laws and justice against him, there will always be a figure inside him who will never believe what they accuse her of after her death.

  •

  They have arrived now. At the right address. Get out. He discovers the small shoe bag with the silver shoes in the backseat, the party shoes, she has remembered them. Liz Maalamaa’s party shoes, strass, with a brooch, fifties model, small heel, which he and Susette had taken with them as a memento from Portugal, seventeen years ago. He liked them back then already, how they had fit her perfectly.

  “Don’t forget—”

  He will always remember the shoes, the silver sandals in the backseat, and her, her eyes, all of her, when he handed them to her.

  “Courage,” he says. She laughs a little, everything is okay. And how she takes the silver sandals he hands to her, he has loved, loves her.

  THE GLITTER SCENE

  (Susette in landscape, 2006)

  THIS, FIRST, is shorter. Suddenly on the avenues, in Rosengården 2, in the darkness, in the car after the entrance and the gate that has closed behind her, she recognizes where she is.

  Maybe it is something with the trees, the same trees in straight lines along the road, as if they had always been there. And the tall houses, several stories, despite the fact that there is a light on in almost every window, which there was not then. Remembers. Tabula rasa. Being nothing, and new. That possibility. Spinning around around in the avenues, one fall day, sunshine then.

  My love, my life, around around, nothing and new.

  She remembers a feeling, a body, her body, her skin, the skin on her wrist, patinated by the summer and the sun and the scrubbing of windows on a veranda called the Winter Garden in the Glass House, the French family’s summerhouse, on the Second Cape. Standing high on a ladder wedged between rocks on the beach, scrubbing scrubbing, hating the sea like a secret, not looking up not looking down, a cat meowing on the cliffs, long haired and white.

  “I’m only twenty-nine after all”: pulling her nails across her dry summer skin, white powder stripes on the skin.

  Twenty-nine years, she never became any older. Has never become. And: as if she has never been anywhere else but here.

  Jump, jump, in the avenues. A small baby, a baby bird under her jacket, love, life. My love, my life, hop crow, hop sparrow—

  “You have arrived at your destination,” says the woman’s voice on the navigator, the engine stops. The navigator lady has a name, Gertrude, named after the aupairgirl. “Oh, Gertrude.” They have a habit of saying that, she and her husband, in the car sometimes, even though that lady on the navigator actually has a different name, now she does not remember what it is.

  •

  But: a private joke they have, because Gertrude, their Gertrude, can undeniably maintain order and navigate the family’s sometimes chaotic life filled with children and many residences around the world and a great deal of keeping up appearances. What would we do without Gertrude? is the question they often seriously ask themselves and each other.

  Gertrude who steers and arranges with the same calm voice as the navigator in the car—except when she gets angry, of course; then she roooars, and she has done so today, the aupairgirl’s terrible scream that Susette still has ringing in her ears. Despite the fact that it has not been anyone else’s fault but hers, Gertrude’s, that a bunch of fragile glass was sitting in an unpacked box in an open box in the wrong place in the new residence where the family had just moved from abroad and that Tom, who had been in an unusually bad mood and had come home earlier than usual from his job, managed to knock down on the floor by accident so CRASH, a lot of invaluable drinking glasses broken into thousands of pieces.

  So Gertrude, she does not always find the right path, does not always navigate correctly. And she has that in common with the lady in the navigator: suddenly ending up in the middle of a winery somewhere in Germany just because she has directed you there—it must have been the previous summer? “Oh Gertrude, Oh Gertrude.” Tom had laughed in the middle of the jungle of vines and suddenly the embittered German wine farmer with the rifle on the little road in front of them, “an auf hinter zwischen wir sind turisten,” pretended not to speak the language so that things would not get any worse. “Grüss Gott.” An amusing family memory, pointing with the tip of the rifle, but they had gotten out in one piece.

  “Make a U-turn,” Susette says out loud in the car in Rosengården 2 suddenly alarmed by the strange merriment growing inside her. Hop crow, sparrow, CRASH, tabula rasa. But “courage,” her husband Tom said a little while ago, while they were still driving down the avenues, he had taken her hand, it had calmed her down and calms her, a little, now. But she has not been afraid, and besides, he certainly wants to make up after the scene at home earlier. And of course: when she says that about the U-turn Tom does not hear it, even as a joke. He has already gotten out of the car and is on his way to the other side to open the door for her. Then, briefly, almost simultaneously, it quickly rushes through Susette’s head that she has forgotten to tell him that surprisingly his s
ister Maj-Gun came by the new home that day for a visit. And that Maj-Gun sends her greetings to him—or does she? Now Susette does not remember exactly how it was, also not exactly what was said between her and Maj-Gun, so to speak. Just a bad feeling, and a complete feeling of alienation, nonconnection. Red and slender, after the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible, a person like that, new.

  But Susette did not have the intention of hiding from her husband that Maj-Gun had stopped by that day. There just has not, during the afternoon and evening up until now, been an appropriate time to mention it: Gertrude and Tom had been shouting at each other.