The Glitter Scene Read online

  The children stay out of the way—like shadows, timids, during the day. But they can be seen at a distance: on the hill on the First Cape, sitting in a row, backs leaning against the stone foundation of the house where they had lived for a while. Tall, big for their ages, look older than they actually are. And when you see them like that, it can happen that you feel a certain… maybe it is not the right word, but worry, discomfort.

  As if it were still hanging in the air, the music from the house from the time the children’s parents were still alive and practicing dance moves on the salsafloor on the ground floor. Rumba tones, sneaking out through the crack in the open window, behind closed curtains. On still, hot summer days: energetic rhythms, certainly “southern,” certainly “happy,” but in the silence where only the music and the pounding of feet could be heard it became something else entirely. Something pulsating, threatening, hypnotically absorbing.

  That rhythm and the quiet children. And so, the children at the foot of the house on the hill, the three cursed ones. A memory, like a sensation, that springs up again a few years later when tragedy befalls the house again in connection with the American girl’s disappearance and death at Bule Marsh.

  Not for Tobias, of course, but for many others. Something about those children…

  Tobias, on the other hand, after having met the twins at the swimming school and having known them for a few years, asked them what they do up there on the hill. “Play,” the girls replied. “The Winter Garden.” “What kind of a game is that?” Tobias asked with friendly interest. “A sibling game,” Solveig explained and Rita elbowed her and added cryptically, giggling, “A world. An own world. We’re building. In our heads.”

  But then when Tobias was about to ask more, both girls were evasive and giggled even more and started teasing him instead in a way that would gradually become an amusing pastime and a special jargon among the three of them. “Will you ask Rita?” one of them said, or “Are you talking to Solveig?” And whether Tobias nodded or shook his head it was always wrong. “I’m Solveig,” one of them said. “No, me, I’m Rita.” And they carried on like that to confuse him because of their likeness—and at the time the twins still looked so much alike that it was impossible even for Tobias to always tell them apart.

  And little by little, about a year before everything with the American girl happens, things become pretty good for the kids in the cousin’s house. A new woman comes to live there about a year after the car accident. A simple one, fond of children, who gets the house in order and has a boy of her own with her, his name is Björn and he is a few years older than the other children who become his “cousins” in the cousin’s house. The cousin’s mama: her real name is Astrid Loman, she is countryman Loman’s daughter from the next county over and she is the kind that opens her arms to all children.

  And God knows in those years, during the aftereffects of the war, there are enough homeless, abandoned children to go around. A little girl like that starts hanging around the cousin’s house too: Doris Flinkenberg, an abused, mistreated child from the Outer Marsh. A special child, filled with light—and who, after Björn’s death, is taken in as a new cousin in the cousin’s house.

  But first, now, the three siblings: the twins Solveig and Rita and their older brother Bengt. The twins catch Tobias’s eye at the swimming school in other words: their exceptional talent, not only when it comes to swimming but in general, their strength, courage. Makes them assistant teachers in the school and that is where one of them, Solveig, distinguishes herself early on and saves a girl named Susette Packlén from drowning and gets the Lifeguard’s Medal, which she keeps under her pillow a long time afterward, many years—there is so much of the child in her too.

  There at the swimming school one of them, Solveig, is called Sister Blue, and the other, Rita, is Sister Red, so that the young students will be able to tell who is who.

  Tobias takes the twins under his wing, not just at the swimming school but otherwise too. He visits them in the baker’s cottage where they live on their own on the other side of the field across from the cousin’s house. He encourages them in school, gives good advice.

  And he is the one who finds them a new place to swim at Bule Marsh when the Second Cape becomes private property. Rita and Solveig are going to become swimmers, have decided that little by little. And if you are going to become a swimmer, you have to train hard and be goal oriented, with discipline. Bule Marsh becomes their training location where they go early every summer morning—and it is there, at the quiet beaches of Bule Marsh, in the middle of the woods’ isolation, where they eventually meet the baroness from the Second Cape. They teach the baroness to swim, something she maintains she does not know how to do. In return, in exchange for the swimming lessons, the baroness teaches the girls English, which is one of the many world languages she has mastered.

  For a time, a few summers at the end of the 1960s, the twins and the baroness are at Bule Marsh almost every morning. And Tobias himself as well, if he happens to come by on one of his morning walks. Like a small family there on the beach; Tobias, the baroness, the twins. Though it ends forever after that morning, late summer 1969, when the American girl dies there at the marsh.

  Falls from Lore Cliff and disappears, is sucked into the water’s currents. And the current is strong, especially under the cliff, and it is very, very deep.

  •

  Bengt, Rita and Solveig’s brother, walks in the woods on his own, or on the Second Cape—even after the summer residents settle there. Tall and gangly, eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, but looks older. And a sketchpad under his arm more often than not: but if you ask him what he is drawing, which Tobias does once, tries to start a conversation that way, for the most part you receive no answer or perhaps just a few evasive mumbles in response.

  But, “maps,” “special buildings,” “architecture”—on a rare occasion he finds his tongue, even becomes excited. Then for the most part, his cousin Björn is with him and Björn is the one who explains it as a way of introduction, with admiration in his voice too. But then when Bengt relaxes and starts talking on his own it does not become much more intelligible; Björn rolls his eyes and starts laughing in the middle of everything. “You aren’t right in the head, Einstein,” he says but with respect, so to speak, as if being crazy is a sign of honor, and Bengt thaws even more and suddenly words start gushing out of him. Then you see the age difference too, of course—despite his gruffness and seriousness, how much of a little brother Bengt is in relation to his cousin Björn with whom he shares a room on the upper floor of the cousin’s house; his best friend, his only friend, before the American girl comes in any case.

  Björn and Bengt, together the two of them make a rather odd couple, as it were. Bengt who is five years younger and still a head taller than Björn. And no, they do no talk very much, not always and especially not in large groups. The collective silence you sometimes say when you see the cousins together. But for the most part it is that ordinary teenage shyness too; in any case with Björn, none of that restless, quiet anxiety about him.

  Björn is kind, someone everyone likes, nothing strange about him. A perfectly ordinary boy who tinkers with his moped on the cousin’s property; he bought it with his own money, he works at the gas station up in the town center and is going to be a car mechanic when he grows up. And of course, something that becomes very clear later on when he gets together with the American girl, eventually get married and start a family and have many children with her.

  It is in the middle of June 1969 when she comes walking from the Second Cape where she is living that summer, the American girl Eddie de Wire. Cuts across the cousin’s property with her eyes trained on Björn who is working on his moped outside the barn, the transistor radio hanging on a hook on the wall of the barn. Teenager drawn to teenager, like a fly to flypaper—Eddie to Björn and, of course, despite the great shyness, vice versa. Eddie who sits down in the opening of the barn, lights a cigarette and smokes. Bj
örn toying with his moped, screwing and screwing because he has no idea what to say but for everything in the world he does not want her to go away. And then he finally builds up some courage and lifts the radio down from the hook on the wall, takes it in one hand and Eddie in the other, and then they go for a walk. So Björn becomes Eddie’s official boyfriend that summer. The one she “is going steady with” as it is called in the pop songs that should be playing on that radio as they walk up and down Saabvägen, backward and forward; but for the most part there are just talk shows, or the news and the weather report.

  Eddie and Björn, by the barn on the cousin’s property, many evenings that summer. And gradually, after a while, Bengt joins the group. As shy as a weasel at first, a quiet presence—but does not go anywhere, remains there.

  •

  “The architecture,” “the buildings” that Bengt talks about, they are his world. Architecture, houses, dreams about houses—both in fantasy and reality. For example the houses on the Second Cape that were once part of the housing exhibition: he loves them, has them on his mind, as if they in some way are his. He was on site already when they were being planned and built, asking the builders and architects questions and trying in different ways to make himself useful to the construction workers. But without progress: Bengt is not, so to speak, despite his wild and strange mind, the slightest bit practically oriented.

  Also after the summer guests have taken possession of the Second Cape he continues going there, moves around just as he pleases and at whatever time of day suits him. He does not pay attention to the property lines, ignores the sign PRIVATE PROPERTY that is eventually put up in the little copse of trees that naturally demarcates the summer world on the Second Cape from the remaining parts of the District. The strange boy, you notice him. There is nothing obviously charming or childishly attractive about him either; almost something a bit frightening where he is wandering among the houses and on the cliffs, sketch book under his arm, tall and gangly. Stirs, yes, a certain discomfort, thoughts that cannot really be uttered out loud, in any case not if you are an adult and a parent on the Second Cape because he is, after all, you can see that too, just a child. A child like your own children, who have their own eyes and ears to see and hear with as well of course, who can monitor what they hear in the voices of the adults, the kind of underlying things that cannot be said in public.

  So maybe that is why no one on the Second Cape really intervenes when the children finally take matters with Bengt into their own hands. Attack him, chase him into the woods behind the houses, surround him, and punish him. Many times, over and over again.

  Before the American girl arrives and becomes his friend and gets involved, saves him. And the time that follows, a few intense weeks in July and the beginning of August 1969, you can see them on the terrace of her boathouse. Mouths moving, especially Bengt who is talking the hind legs off a donkey—all that dark gruffness and shyness in him blown away.

  •

  But punishment or not, and also before the American girl: nothing can beat Bengt. Sooner or later he is back again.

  On the bare cliffs by the sea, for example, looking up at the Glass House where the baroness lives. One of the most elegant houses on the Second Cape, with the entire front made of glass. Windows from floor to ceiling and a veranda in the middle which, from a certain perspective, off to the side, looks a bit like it is floating above the water.

  “That boy is different.” It is the baroness who says that about Bengt to Tobias when Tobias visits her in the Glass House. They sit down there on the veranda on long, light summer evenings and talk to each other. The American girl is not there yet, it is the summer before the catastrophe that changes everything. Changes the baroness too—and in those times, the baroness is not the baroness but rather just “Karin,” to him.

  Many times later in life Tobias will remember how she said it, “Karin,” the baroness; without anything condemning, no customary District suspiciousness in her voice. But softly, with admiration. The calm, the softness… like an extenuating circumstance because he liked her very much once, keeping in mind everything that happens later.

  Up there on the veranda in the Glass House, Tobias and “Karin,” at the beginning of time. Him talking, her listening with interest when he tells her about Bengt and his two sisters—about their tragic family history, of course, but also about their talent, fantasy. And about the game they have, the Winter Garden, they are building their own world, with their own language that only they understand. People float freely away from themselves. In the middle of the Winter Garden there is Kapu kai, the forbidden seas. The hacienda must be built…

  How he has taken it upon himself to support and help the twins, in school, in all ways, sneak them a little money now and then, “granting small scholarships.” With swimming as well; they are talented, good swimmers, both of them: one of them saved a little girl named Susette Packlén from drowning at the swimming school that Tobias held for the District’s children a few years ago, right here, on the Second Cape.

  “The hacienda must be built.” The baroness laughs on the veranda of the Glass House, and it is as if she is enlivened for real, likes what she is hearing. “You are kind, Tobias,” she says as well. “It must mean a lot to them that you are here.” And Tobias shrugs and says nothing but it touches him of course that she, the baroness, “Karin,” which she is for him during this time, says that.

  And he will also like thinking that the baroness getting to know the twins at Bule Marsh has something to do with what he is telling her about them, that it makes her interested, so to speak, so that she wants to be involved, take part in something.

  She starts coming to the twins at Bule Marsh, precisely in the mornings.

  They teach her to swim and she, who is widely traveled and knows a great deal about most things, talks to the girls about life and the world that is large, the many interesting places to visit, a lot of interesting things to see along the way. But the world in a metaphorical sense as well, like the world inside you: that you can be and become yourself. It being your duty as a human being to take advantage of all these possibilities. I have placed you in the center of the world… The baroness quotes Pico della Mirandola there at Bule Marsh. The world as a garden. Welcome girls to my lovely garden—

  Pico della Mirandola, the Renaissance there at Bule Marsh, of course, you can smile a little. I have placed you in the center of the world. On the other hand, completely realistic.

  And Tobias comes there often. Like a small family on the beach—or what should you call it; but a somewhat special kinship, a unit, a possibility. But in some way, at that time, he is already thinking—so fragile.

  “I can’t swim, Tobias.” The baroness laughs as it were there on the veranda many times. “So it’s about time I learn. But funny girls—”

  But, of course, on the veranda, they also talk about other things. Their own things, interests they share. About gardens, plants, the woods, and nature. “I’m going to have my winter garden here on the veranda.” The baroness laughs. “My hacienda. My own world.”

  •

  Below the Glass House, at the edge of the beach, there is a boathouse, a small hut on poles stuck between the rocks on the beach, a terrace facing the sea. That is where she spends her time, the American girl Eddie de Wire, a short time, a few months during the summer of 1969 when she is in the District.

  She has come from America, the baroness has taken her under her wing, they are distant relations. She lived with her since the winter and comes with her to the summer residence on the Second Cape. Meets Björn who becomes her boyfriend and Bengt who is six years younger but the two of them become good friends as well, gradually spending a lot of time together, just the two of them.

  But otherwise, Eddie de Wire, who is she? You do not really know. It is one summer—yet, like a question mark, a mystery. It is also a bit like this with the American girl: one day she is in the District, and few months later she is gone. Just nineteen
years old when she falls from Lore Cliff at the beginning of the month of August and tumbles to her death in Bule Marsh.

  “Blood is thicker than water.” It is the baroness who says that to Tobias on the veranda at the Glass House, where they are sitting, talking to each other that summer before all of the horrible things happen. She says it many times on various occasions, in various tones of voice. Sometimes ironically, sometimes excusing herself, sometimes as if “despite everything,” officiously and decidedly.

  The blood, the water, the kinship. It is about the American girl, who is such a disappointment to her. She makes no secret of it either: after Eddie de Wire’s death several others in the District will be able to hear those words ringing in their ears, “such a disappointment.”

  So Eddie de Wire living in the boathouse and not up in the Glass House with the baroness can be seen as an expulsion. Which the baroness, “Karin,” herself does not say outright, not even to Tobias but it can be gathered by the mood. Something that is suddenly so different this year: the baroness’s exhaustion, hesitation, anxiety—or, pure fear? Can also be seen in the mornings with the twins at Bule Marsh. Yes, the baroness is there this summer as well, but not as often. Clearly irritated sometimes, snaps at the girls, “Don’t stand there and dawdle like the cat’s got your tongue.” Says things like that, which make the girls confused, careful and clumsy, nervous. And then when she still tries to be like before, starts talking about all of her trips, about Italy, the world, Pico della Mirandola, the Renaissance… it often happens that she just stops. Does not get in the water, wraps her bathrobe more tightly around herself, remains sitting on the beach.