The Glitter Scene Read online

  Not even Solveig’s own car but her boyfriend’s at the time, Järpe Torpeson, who had fixed it up for Solveig so that she and her sister would be able to sputter around on the small roads and to the Outer Marsh, Torpesonia, where he lived.

  Broom. How Solveig, in the bathroom, had heard the engine start. Gone out, seen the little car disappear into the darkness—the last of her twin sister Rita. Forever.

  All of Solveig’s attempts at getting in touch were in vain. Rita cuts all cords, does not get in touch.

  •

  And what is left? At the cousin’s property, the cousin’s house?

  Doris’s song, maybe. A voice on an old cassette tape.

  “The folk song has many verses, the same thing happens in every one. Over and over again. Such a different way of looking at time.”

  Doris’s voice, soft, a bit hoarse, just a few weeks before she takes her own life. Becomes the first in a long line of those who will go down to Bule Marsh and die at their own hand. Because it is, in real time and history, what Bule Marsh is gradually transformed into. A cursed place, a sanctuary for suicidals.

  But no, it has nothing to do with any old stories anymore. Like, once upon a time, Rumba tones, the three cursed ones.

  Just a darkness that falls over the cousin’s property, over and over again. Woe followed by woe, like pearls in a necklace. With some places, some people it is like that. They are cursed, so to speak. Things happen, and continue to happen.

  Affected by time, another time. The time of the folk song.

  “The folk song. A repetition in time and space. Such a different way of understanding time.”

  But—with the folk song comes realism; it is a shame about Solveig, who is left behind, all alone.

  •

  Because: the one who is left behind is left behind. Being in the world, in the cousin’s house, without Doris-light.

  The cousin’s mama who has no strength left for anything. She collapses completely in the spring and is taken to the District Hospital by ambulance and when she gets better she moves back to the neighboring county where she originally came from. Never returns to the cousin’s property, to the cousin’s papa: because he does not die of course, has eternal life in him.

  And Solveig then, with all of this. Rita in the world, and Bengt who stopped being responsible for his actions a long time ago—a restless one, sometimes here, sometimes there. In the city by the sea, in other places, in other cities and comes and goes in the District. Wanders off, but unlike Rita nothing becomes of him, he deteriorates more and more.

  •

  Solveig. Nah, she did not become an astronaut or a nuclear physicist. Eventually she moves in with her boyfriend Torpe Torpeson, whom she has taken over after her sister Rita, to his home at the Outer Marsh, Torpesonia. Is expecting a child with him; that child and another end up as miscarriages before she finally has Irene in 1984.

  By that time she has been living in Torpesonia for a long time; has taken over the cleaning business as said, Four Mops and a Dustpan, business is decent, makes a living off it and eventually has an employee, Susette Packlén from the District.

  The cousin’s papa dies of natural causes but not until the end of the 1980s; he becomes deathly old. And Bengt—it is an accident of course—falls asleep with a cigarette that sets fire to the cousin’s house and when the fire department arrives, there is nothing that can be done to save him.

  And Solveig, it is a turning point for her.

  She sets herself free from it, turns her back to it, the old stuff no longer exists for her.

  Tears down, builds new, moves in with Irene and eventually Johanna as well.

  Closes the cleaning business, starts a real estate business instead.

  But from the ashes of the old ruins: finds a Lifeguard’s Medal, an old sign of luck, a talisman.

  •

  “But Tobias,” Johanna has started in the greenhouse in the fall of 2004, when Tobias has finished telling the story. A sad story, in a remarkable way a beautiful story, of course, but still, inside Johanna, it has been pounding there, not grown quiet. All of the questions, suddenly millions, wanting to go back to the really old stuff that Tobias has not spoken about. The morning at the marsh, the American girl, Björn who hanged himself.

  Rita and Solveig, the twins at the marsh. Were they there? What did they see?

  And Doris Flinkenberg, the knocked-about marsh kid, was she not running around in the District then too? And then—the Boy in the woods, Bengt. What did he do?

  Don’t push your love too far, Eddie.

  Ulla on the field. “There was not one who loved her, but two. They say she died from love. The one who killed her loved her too much.”

  Bengt and the American girl Eddie de Wire, on the terrace of the boathouse. Her own father, Bengt.

  “But Tobias—” Johanna, with an urgency that could no longer be concealed.

  Then Tobias himself suddenly looks up at her and says, “Johanna. To you this isn’t about Project Earth, is it?”

  And Johanna nodded, carefully, but could not get a word out anyway, suddenly mute in some way. And Tobias was just about to say something, had taken a few steps forward and then staggered. As if still, tired of his own words, tired of everything, of the age in his body too, all the energy leaves him. The plants he does not have the energy to look after, as if he saw it in that moment too: how they are becoming overgrown, have grown above his head, roses, thick full stems and thorns that tear at the skin on his hands because he has of course forgotten his gloves somewhere again.

  A record on the record player, Carmen, it has finished playing. And the uncertainty about what to do next, fumbling, what was he going to say now? Has taken the spray bottle to fill it with water but stumbled and hit the bookshelf next to him, it rocks and damp books from the top shelves come tumbling down. History and Progress and several others, Tobias has to duck in order to avoid getting the books on his head and almost loses his balance so that Johanna has to grab him and help him down on the stool where she had just been sitting and then she gathers up the books on the floor.

  Among them too Architecture and Crime, poorly bound, old glue on the sides is falling off—not just the covers, a quick stolen look, loose pages as well.

  Drawings, characters in dark lead, blue watercolor. “In the woods a body of water reveals itself. It happened at Bule Marsh.” And a name on the first page of the book, “This book belongs to” with straggling letters and then his name, Bengt.

  The Boy in the woods, with the sketchpad. Bengt.

  A blue girl on a cliff.

  “Sister Blue.” How it sweeps through her head.

  Rita. Solveig. Bengt. A crack that became a wound that was opened. A secret that drove them apart.

  Solveig. Sister Blue.

  Solveig who pretends the Winter Garden does not exist.

  Ritsch! The kitchen curtains.

  The book in Johanna’s hand. At first she thinks about asking, “Can I borrow it?” but changes her mind and says straight out, “This book was my father’s. Can I take it?”

  “What is it Tobias? Put on your gloves, Tobias?”

  And right then, before Tobias has a chance to answer, Solveig is suddenly standing in the entrance to the greenhouse.

  •

  Sometime later, spring 2005, Tobias becomes ill and does not come to the greenhouse anymore. Falls off his bike, it is slippery, an early morning on his way to the greenhouse, he is lying in bed with a cast on his leg. An accident, he has fallen off his bike before.

  But never really recovers again. Develops other problems. His stomach, his heart, and he dies in the month of April 2006.

  The greenhouse deteriorates, no one goes there anymore.

  JOHANNA IN THE ROOM, IN THE EVENING, NOVEMBER 2006

  THE AMERICAN GIRL in a snow globe.

  She has taken it out again.

  Solveig is not home, she has gone out.

  •

  Looks at the snow gl
obe, she is alone in the house, in the darkness in her room, shimmering quiet, the light, the property.

  Oh! Turns on the light.

  Digs in a drawer and finds the book. Architecture and Crime.

  The drawings in the book.

  A blue girl on a cliff, above the water, she is screaming.

  •

  Ulla Bäckström earlier that day, at the house in the darker part of the woods.

  About the Red One in the Winter Garden. She talks about strange things.

  A completely different story.

  Three siblings who were united by a secret that was supposed to keep them together but it drove them apart and turned them against each other.

  •

  Three siblings. Remembers Tobias’s story. The three cursed ones. At a house, the stone foundation.

  Rita, Solveig, Bengt.

  •

  Rita who left, never to be heard from again.

  Bengt who died, burned up in a house—this house.

  •

  And Solveig who remained.

  “I was Sister Blue.”

  •

  The lifeguard, who saved a little girl named Susette Packlén from drowning.

  A blue girl on a cliff, in the picture.

  •

  Three children at the foot of the hill. Rhythm. Rumba tones.

  The three cursed ones.

  They had a game called the Winter Garden.

  •

  The house that burned, Bengt who died in the fire, Solveig who built a new one, Solveig and the Winter Garden, Rita’s Winter Garden.

  “Rooms under the earth, Lille. The truth about everything.”

  There is a blue child screaming on a cliff.

  Sister Blue.

  Burned?

  The outbuilding that burned. Fire on a stick. Solveig who tried to set fire to it.

  •

  Ulla with the mask, the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa.

  The Child, fluorescent, on the wall, the Red One, in the Winter Garden.

  It’s your MOOOM.

  Ulla, who out of sheer devilry had imitated the district dialect that she does not speak unless it is needed on stage.

  •

  “She knew him. The Red One. They were adults then.”

  •

  “And so, Lille, there was a completely different story, about two at a newspaper stand. Ha ha ha—”

  “Who is my mother, Solveig?”

  Solveig, never, does not answer.

  The storks in Portugal.

  •

  Transcendence. Explosion. And suddenly Johanna sees like a picture a scene for the Winter Garden.

  A man who is lying in a room, in a house.

  It is winter, snow outside. Walk in snow.

  But he is lying dead, shot. Blood everywhere, on him.

  •

  The Boy in the woods. And she knows. It is her father, Bengt. In the house, before it starts burning.

  •

  Mooom.

  “You put balls into action, Lille. Come to someone… Maalamaa.”

  But Ulla who was afraid. At first. Before she put the mask on.

  “I said I don’t want to. Doing something else now. Screaming Toys.”

  Project Earth. You think you are going to get one story and then you get another.

  •

  And now Johanna is afraid.

  More afraid than she has ever been.

  •

  She is standing on the field outside the window.

  The Red One. Maj-Gun Maalamaa.

  The Child, fluorescent. Flames up on the wall.

  But Johanna gets dressed, to the Winter Garden, and to the Red One, out to her.

  II. THE MASK, THE ROSE, THE SILVER SHOES

  (An entirely different story, or maybe not?)

  THE MASK

  TO THE WINTER GARDEN, Liz Maalamaa’s things:

  The Angel of Death, Liz Maalamaa (a mask).

  A mask that Elizabeth “Liz” Maalamaa received in a small package at the post office in her childhood during the forties. Came from Hollywood, she was pen pals with them. The movie stars. Ingrid Bergman, Ava Gardner. Really, truly. She received autographed head shots with letters at home. She took them and saved them in a scrapbook, or hung them on the wall in her room in the farm up north. And then the mask, one time. You could put it on and then you had the face of a movie star. Maybe Ava Gardner, Janet Leigh? Funny, as an adult she would not remember. Funny too that when you put that mask on, you did not look like a movie star at all. Just horrible, and frightening.

  Did not go to the movies that much, there in the countryside, there was no movie theater. The movie theaters were in the cities. The movie stars, Hollywood, she had come in contact with them through a magazine, the Film Journal. An exciting magazine that she read, in addition to God’s word, the latter of course increasingly more.

  There were strange things in the Film Journal, you did not know much English back then. Readers who sent in letters and asked questions, how should that movie star’s and the other one’s names be pronounced? In particular she remembered a question like that, they used to laugh themselves silly about it, and the answer, her and her brother, Hans, in the parental home. “Janet Leigh, but how do you say Janet?” Djanet was written out phonetically in the column, it was wrong that too. It should have been Djehnet.

  She would explain this to the family she came to later, when she married a man from a society family in the city where she attended a training school for deaconesses. They would not understand. They would be absolutely certain that she was the one who had said Djanet, and in these circles they, skilled in languages, would correct her Djehnet Djehnet, in a well-mannered way. But first repeat her Djanet, so that the tone could be heard like a sheep bellow from the farm where she originated.

  She would learn to hold her tongue in these circles.

  She gave the mask to her niece and nephew later. She and her husband were childless.

  THE GIRL FROM BORNEO, 1

  SHE CAME FROM BORNEO, the little girl. Borneo’s docklands, she dances there, the Happy Harlot. Hamba hamba, for her brother in the rectory. Maj-Gun Maalamaa, or Majjunn as her aunt Liz calls her, the aunt who often comes to the rectory to visit, comes to “rest,” in dark sunglasses, sometimes she has bandages. Maj-Gun, and her brother, Tom, who is lying stretched out on his bed in his room behind the closed door, peering through the fingers of his hands he is holding in front of his eyes, “Idiot, there aren’t any docklands in Borneo, there’s just jungle, an island.” But then, he cannot control himself, he starts laughing so that he chokes, more and more, in the musty summer heat in the room—he sits up, stamps a beat on the floor with his feet, claps his hands.

  Maj-Gun, hamba hamba, a dried dandelion in her mouth, it is supposed to represent the harlot’s red rose. And her aunt’s silver shoes, she has once again been into the guest room and swiped them from her aunt’s bag without permission. The aunt does not like it, she gets angry.

  “And now for the thousandth time: get out! Out into the fresh air!”

  And then suddenly, of course, in the middle of the dance, the door is flung wide open and Mother is standing there or the aunt herself, yelling.

  Two sweaty children, must go out into the summer day—wrinkled brows, still in high spirits from playing indoors, out out into the hot sun, the sunshine from the hazy high-pressure-filled sky is always stuffy in this childhood that is not unhappy, just the opposite. They do not know, these two siblings, what they are going to do, what they should get up to out there. On the other hand, the dance, there is no question about that either. A means of passing the time when you do not go outside. Not wanting to go out; these siblings have that in common. And a means of not fighting. Maj-Gun and Tom, always at each other’s throats, it is almost comical. Like mama Inga-Britta says, dog and cat, dog and cat.

  Sometimes when they have been chased outside, Tom will sneak back in. Locking the door behind him, lies there a
nd reads the first best book, such as Gustav Mahler’s memoirs, something like that. But then his sister is not allowed to come in anymore; she is going to stand there knocking on his door for ages if she also manages to sneak into the house again without anyone seeing her. Just silence on the other side of the door, dog and cat, she does not get in. As it turns out somewhat later, as teenagers, when her brother has his first girlfriend there. The Big-Eyed One, from the cemetery, who has grown up. The brother on the other side of the door, not talking, and Mahler’s Ninth playing over and over again. Maj-Gun rushes to the cemetery and is hamba hamba the Happy Harlot, with everyone who wants to. The DAY OF DESIRE with the hayseeds, it is pretty and big and strong and everyone who wants to come—hamba hamba, dancing there, with everyone for a while. Imagines her brother at the window and the pale girlfriend at the window. And he is standing there, really: “The Disgust, Maj-Gun,” you are Vile Disgusting Get Out of My Sight, buttons the cuff links of his shirt, no girlfriend there then, just the two of them and a pale, icy mood.

  The Big-Eyed One, the first girlfriend, from the cemetery, that is in other words where they meet her, Susette Packlén, both of them almost at once. Because sometimes on a frustratingly beautiful summer day it just is not possible to get indoors again. Then they take the mask with them and run down to the cemetery. The mask: the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa—it is the unofficial name (if papa Pastor knew he would become furious of course). They had gotten it from their aunt, you see, and to do something with their time, which is now spreading out in front of them like an ocean, they run down to the cemetery and scare people, in other words. It is actually a mask that is supposed to represent the face of some stylish dark-haired old movie star, but the interesting thing is that in reality it is frightening, you can become scared of it yourself, when you strap it to your face and look in the mirror in the bathroom when you are alone (yes, Maj-Gun has tried).