The Glitter Scene Page 7
“Damn it, Doris!” Solveig’s voice suddenly surprises all of them, resounds loud and wild in the cottage. “You put my medal back!” And everything stops, is frozen. Doris above all. Doris sits up, so small pitiful afraid—as if all of the terrible things she has been through bubble up inside her, gather in her eyes in an unbearable way. Opens her hand, it is empty, but says, stammering, “Sorry, sorry…” bottom lip quivering, like a preparation for crying.
“Now, now, girls,” Tobias says but Solveig gets up and walks out, slamming the door behind her.
And later, that night, Solveig goes to the outbuilding farthest away on the cousin’s property alone and she has newspaper and matches with her.
The place where Björn was found when he was dead. It is definitely burning, but just a little, nothing dangerous. The outbuilding itself will fall down under its own weight during a storm, but not until the following year, in the spring.
But suddenly Bengt is there, with the water bucket, and puts it out.
And everyone sees: Solveig standing and crying by the outbuilding. Rita coming, taking her hand, leading her home. They walk, Solveig crying, Rita putting her arm around her. Past the cousin’s mama who is standing on the steps of the cousin’s house, and Doris, heavy with sleep in her pajamas and big boots, just below. Rubbing her eyes, but then, shoots into the cousin’s house and as fast as lightning she is back with a blanket and runs after Rita and Solveig on the field and “if you are freezing, here,” and wants to put the blanket over Solveig’s shoulders. And Solveig stops, turns around, says a soft but very emotional “thank you” to Doris Flinkenberg.
And it is—all of the small things that happen that evening, that night, the only release.
•
But later, gradually, everything evens out. In the District too: life goes on, everything acute and inflammatory comes to rest, the whispering as well. Is pushed aside by new happenings, bad, good, everything imaginable from day to day, big and small, which draws attention to itself. And Rita, Solveig—they are of course on the other hand completely ordinary youths in the District, students at the school, the coed school and the high school up in the town center. And that is finally what wins over everything that does not exist, that is not left: like the American girl and the baroness and the other summer residents. And the winter comes, the spring, the summer, several summers falls winters seasons.
And at the cousin’s property, in the cousin’s house, there is something about Doris Flinkenberg for real. Her mood, her joy, her light. Which infects everything and brings about a change. Something about Doris, so smart, wonderful—she gradually wins everyone’s heart. With the exception of the cousin’s papa’s of course, but he does not count. He has withdrawn to his room next to the kitchen, closed the door. Sits there and boozes by himself, sometimes does not even come out at mealtimes.
The effect Doris has, Doris-light. Doris who, despite everything, comes and makes everything normal again. And when after that scene with Solveig in the twins’ cottage Doris’s own present-getter zeal becomes weaker, it becomes more fun for the twins and for Bengt to be around her. So that you notice that you WANT to give Doris a lot of things—especially when she is not there in person begging for them.
•
Doris came like the first orange after the war. The cousin’s mama says many times when she becomes herself again. And Doris laughs, nods and agrees. WANTS to be an orange, but also banana and pear and large green apples of the kind that can be bought at the real store—the whole fruit basket.
“Look, it’s me!” The fruit basket standing on the prize table at the Christmas bazaar at the fellowship hall in the middle of December: all of those wonderful fruits under the crackly cellophane and the red silk bow around the handle. First prize, of course, and Doris points at it, laughs. And Rita and Solveig and Bengt and Tobias and the cousin’s mama laugh too, it is funny of course and Bengt, who has inexplicable good luck with games, buys a few lottery tickets and wins that basket too, which he then, in full view of everyone, hands over to little Doris Flinkenberg.
So heavy, so large, she barely has the strength to carry it, has to drag it behind her on the floor of the fellowship hall but she gladly does it of course, a fine show besides. But then CRUNCH someone is suddenly there sticking her hand in through the cellophane, swiping the largest most delicious green apple: it is the Pastor’s daughter Maj-Gun Maalamaa, almost as little as Doris, who has been running around among the guests at the church bazaar with a terror-inducing old lady mask, “Here comes Liz Maalamaa, buhuu buhuu!” as if she wanted to frighten people and maybe it is a little creepy because the mask looks dreadful but no one wants to play along with those kinds of games NOW in the whirl of the general Christmas bazaar with the elves and the Christmas peace and the candles, so no one pays any attention. Just her brother who is slightly older, wearing a suit and white shirt with a tie even though he is probably only eight–nine years old, he is trying to keep an eye on his little sister, who the less attention you pay her the more high-spirited and unbearable she becomes.
But she is standing there now, the Pastor’s daughter Maj-Gun Maalamaa, with the apple from Doris’s basket in her hand. Takes off the mask and takes a big bite of the apple right in front of Doris, smack, and “ha-ha-ha” to Doris. “Give it back!” Doris yells. Give it back. But suddenly Doris, when Maj-Gun does not pay her any attention, so pitiful and suddenly almost afraid. “Stop!” she almost whispers, but Maj-Gun does not stop, only when her father the pastor shows up and pulls her ear, does she yell bloody murder, “NO!”
“Don’t pay her any attention,” says Solveig, who has been standing next to Doris the entire time; and it turns out all right later, because the Pastor comes and apologizes and takes Doris and Rita and Solveig to the kitchen of the fellowship hall where he has sweets that he lets his disobedient daughter Maj-Gun offer them. Especially Doris, who will get the nicest piece, a shiny red chocolate heart with a truffle inside wrapped in paper. “Maj-Gun should apologize,” says the Pastor. And Maj-Gun finally says it, sorrysorry.
The fear, how it had flamed up in Doris’s eyes. The Pastor had also seen it. And probably thinks it is a matter of the old lady mask so he explains to Doris Flinkenberg who has her mouth so full with delicious chocolate that she cannot speak but just makes her eyes wide—that the mask is not dangerous at all but represents the face of a famous actress, Ava Gardner, does Doris want to try it on?
But just as Doris is going to nod yes please there is a furious howl from Maj-Gun Maalamaa who snatches the mask out of papa Pastor’s hand and yells that it is not a movie star but her horrible godmother Liz Maalamaa! And Doris recoils, almost frightened—but Maj-Gun has run away, with the mask, the apple, before the pastor has time to become even angrier with her.
But the fear in Doris’s eyes, you think about it later. That it is still there beneath everything. Under the surface of this that and the other—jump rope jumping, cassette player, song of the day I go up the mountain with my lonely heart in the cousin’s kitchen, crosswords, True Crimes with the cousin’s mama… and the cousin’s mama!—it remains. Like the scars in her skin, the burns from the grill, the cigarettes, under her clothes.
Can pass, but never leave.
A fear that exists there and can be called forth.
Like an omen as well. Because that fear, it disappears for a long time but returns when she gets older and contributes so that she, many years later, in her teens, will take her own life: goes and shoots herself at Bule Marsh.
Just sixteen years old—and incomprehensible. At the same time not. Because by that time there is also another story. Doris’s own, private one. Because what also happens and very soon, already the following spring, after Doris arrives at the cousin’s house, is that she starts going out on her own. On the prowl for a companion of the same age, a friend of her own. Because despite everything, things become a bit humdrum with the cousin’s mama and the older cousins at the cousin’s property.
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sp; And she finds her way to the house in the darker part, completely new then. And a girl the same age lives there. Her name is Sandra Wärn and she becomes like fat on bacon with Doris for many years. A friendship that becomes love for Doris and that Doris enters into hook, line, and sinker. But it ceases, a fight, some misunderstanding, as can happen between two who are close, maybe too close—and when it suddenly ends Doris is skinless.
Beaming, smart Doris, who is still so fragile under the surface. It does not disappear even though it cannot be seen.
A betrayal, a love that died: the most important in Doris’s life, the only one that existed. Yes, of course, there would certainly have come more events, and experiences, a new time. But a blow, and it is decisive and fateful, there is nothing for Doris, no real time.
To be sucked into a black hole: then there is all of the old stuff, other betrayals, tattooed into the skin and an unbearable fear then, of everything, which flares up inside her. A betrayal, a love that died, the most important in Doris’s life.
And so then. Doris, conquered by a time that has run away with her—to another time.
And suddenly trapped in that time.
“The folk song. A repetition in time and space. Such a different way of understanding time.”
Maybe it is like that. Because that is what she does during the final months of life, Old Doris who is New Doris: sings folk songs in a band. Her boyfriend at the time Micke Friberg, Micke’s Folk Band—they are together a few weeks that last fall—Doris sings and talks about the folk song in between the songs.
“I’m Doris, this is Micke, and we have a band, it’s Micke’s band, Micke’s Folk Band. We sing old folk songs in modern arrangements, they’re Micke’s arrangements—”
But regardless of how hard Doris tries to devote herself to the music that Micke Friberg talks about, regardless of how she tries to be Micke Friberg’s girlfriend, everyone already knows it is a lie. There was someone else, Sandra, whom she loved.
•
But that is later, not yet. And Rita and Solveig, this is what happens to them. Turn twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and continue living together in the twins’ cottage on the other side of the field across from the cousin’s house. For a long time anyway, up until Rita, just after Doris’s death, leaves the District for good in the fall of 1976.
But she spends a lot of time in the house on the First Cape as well; where new inhabitants come. First a group of women who rent the house for a few years, have a collective of some sort or another and Bengt and a boy from the Second Cape, Magnus von B., whom Bengt starts spending a lot of time with, running around among them, trying to curry favor, make themselves useful in every way. Yes, yes, Bengt has “a way with women,” but it is still girls from the District who fall for him most of the time—not those women who make fun of him there where he is standing with his “flower power cap” on, talking about big things, about revolution and things like that.
But then the house is bought by a real family from the city by the sea: they are called Backmansson and they have a boy, Jan, the twins’ age, and Rita starts going with him just about as soon as the family moves in. And intensely; gradually Rita is at Backmanssons’ on the First Cape almost all the time when the family is there, more or less moves into Jan Backmansson’s spacious room in the tower. They cultivate mutual interests there, for Rita, new interests—nature photography, for example.
What is it? Real teenage love. Maybe. On the other hand, Rita has other boyfriends too when the Backmanssons are not home and they are not always around because the parents are field biologists and travel quite a bit: boys from the District, ones like Järpe and Torpe Torpeson, for example.
And it is hard to know with Rita, becomes harder all the time, she is not exactly someone who explains herself, in that respect she definitely does not become a speech maker with age. Says nothing about her business, gradually not even to her sister Solveig, not to mention Tobias who continues supporting her and Solveig as best he can. Opens his wallet, “gives scholarships,” just as fair with both of them.
But Rita, she slips away more and more… and there is something wild and unmanageable about her. More and more too, with time, as if Rita in some way is two people. One who spends time at the Backmanssons’ house when they are home and otherwise another who exists in the District, in school, outside class and makes several of her classmates afraid. Rita Rat, she who provokes, allows herself to be provoked, and does not hold back, the one who hits.
But at the same time, despite everything and all of the time: Rita does well in school, has good grades in just about every subject. “The astronaut,” “the nuclear physicist,” it still matters, at least to her. In reality Solveig is the one who starts fading away and it does not turn around either: later when Rita leaves the District in the middle of high school, Solveig becomes pregnant shortly thereafter by one of the Torpeson boys from the Outer Marsh. Drops out of school and it is left unfinished despite the fact that she miscarries after a few months. Starts cleaning full-time for the cleaning company Four Mops and a Dustpan, which the cousin’s mama leaves behind.
•
But Rita, still during that final period when she remains: drags certain youths with her from the District over to the Second Cape in the fall when the summer residents have gone home. Rita and the Rats: break into the abandoned vacation homes, make them theirs for the night, have parties, but mostly are just there, creepy crawling, invading. Do not destroy, vandalize to leave a mark behind: we were here.
Solveig is there too of course. Still, something in Rita Rat those final weeks that also makes Solveig keep her distance. Rita is always the one who keeps on to the bitter end, if someone goes too far it is always Rita. One of the last nights Rita is in the District: how she breaks into the Glass House, starts breaking the windows on the veranda, with a cane, furious. Solveig remains standing on the hill, smooth as glass, hard, shiny, as if frozen in the moonlight—and watches.
It is Rita’s last fall in the District, the Backmansson family has been gone quite a while, it is more than a year now actually. The house on the First Cape has burned, not completely but it was damaged in a forest fire that spread at a violent speed. The Backmanssons were not home then but the house has become inhabitable and it needs to be repaired, and in the meantime the Backmansson family is living in their apartment in the city by the sea again. The intention is that they will return as said, but time is passing—the renovation never gets started and for a long time, it will be many years, the house just stands there on the hill with a dark, open gaping hole on the side, deteriorating even more until it is torn down at the end of the 1980s.
But when the Backmanssons left they promised Rita that she might be able to come and live with them in the apartment in the city, finish high school there, in one of the city’s schools. But time is passing, as said, and nothing happens: the house on the First Cape stands where it stands, as if the Backmanssons have forgotten what they said to Rita before they left. It is not mentioned when Rita visits her boyfriend Jan Backmansson in the city by the sea and the visits have also become fewer and farther between the final months Rita is in the District. As said, the Backmanssons travel a great deal and then Jan Backmansson has his own hobbies that Rita does not share but that his parents suddenly think he should make time for in addition to his demanding schoolwork. Scouting and something called “convent activities.” Rita does not even know what it is, but things like that, similar things.
And she waits, waits—until she does not have the strength to wait anymore.
•
No one says out loud that Rita is the one who goes after the windows on the veranda of the Glass House, no one tells; a crime no one gets any clarity in. It is Solveig who explains to Tobias much later how it was.
And the baroness passes away that fall, never hears about it.
Besides, so many other things happen that fall—everything. Doris dies, Rita leaves.
As if everything culminated,
but in an entirely separate story. That cursed October night when Doris Flinkenberg due to her unhappiness, her rejected, defrauded love, gets it into her head to go and shoot herself.
Doris, the amazing, who despite the darkness within her was so light on the outside: goes down to Bule Marsh, out onto Lore Cliff, has a pistol, presses the muzzle to her temple and fires.
•
And the night after Doris Flinkenberg’s funeral, that is when Rita heads off. To the Backmanssons in the city by the sea, without asking permission or telling anyone about her plans ahead of time.
One Saturday night in November 1976 Rita is suddenly standing below the Backmanssons’ third-floor balcony on a calm and civilized street in the chic southern areas of the city center. Dirty, slightly intoxicated, everything she owns in a shabby plastic bag.
Calls out to the people standing on the balcony, guests of Mr. and Mrs. Backmansson who are having a large party that night.
But Rita waits on the street, and is let in.
•
That is how it is told to Solveig later by a few youths from the District whom Rita bummed a ride from into the city after she wrecked Solveig’s tiny rickety old car that she had driven off in from the twins’ cottage while Solveig was in the shower. Certainly deliberately: out into the field, toward a tree at a low speed, then walked to the main country road with her things in a plastic bag.