The Glitter Scene

by Monika Fagerholm

  The Glitter Scene

  Monika Fagerholm

  Teenage Johanna lives with her aunt Solveig in a small house bordering the forest on the outskirts of a remote coastal town in Finland. She leads a lonely existence that is punctuated by visits to her privileged classmate, Ulla Bäckström, who lives in the nearby luxury gated community.

  It isn’t until Ulla tells her the local lore about the American girl and the tragedy that took place more than thirty years before that Johanna begins to question how her parents fit into the story. She sets out to unravel her family history, the identity of her mother, and the dark secrets long buried with her father.

  In the process of opening closed doors, others in the community reflect back on the town’s history, on their youth, and on the dreams that play in their minds. Soon a new story emerges, that stirs up Johanna’s greatest fears, but ultimately leads to the answers she is searching for.

  The Glitter Scene is a riveting mystery that explores the roles of truth and myth, reality and fiction, and the repercussions of family secrets.

  Monika Fagerholm

  THE GLITTER SCENE

  A Novel

  Translated by Katarina E. Tucker

  There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force—a wild pain and decay—also accompanies everything.

  DAVID LYNCH: Lynch on Lynch

  Orpheus was going to fetch his Eurydice from the underworld. He loved her so much that the gods who had taken her there took pity on him. Go down to her and she will follow you, but do not look back, do not turn around until you have come up again. Hold her hand, she will follow you.

  JOHANNA’S PROJECT EARTH

  THE OLD SONGS (From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1, Where did the music start?): The Summer of Love, a bench in the park. The Marsh Queen: I don’t know about music, if what I mean with music, is music.

  1967, the Summer of Love, a new hour of creation, we are the Woodstock Nation. And so it was Jimi Hendrix who was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He played it like a scream, just the guitar, no words. Without wrath, without the slightest hint of being bothered or as if he wanted to beg for some kind of sympathy. He played the national anthem like it had never been played before, so that there was room for all meanings, nuances.

  And DeeDee on a bench in the park, 1967, 1969? It was the summer of hate in any case, the summer of hate, and for me it wasn’t just about going and watching Jefferson Airplane in Central Park and enjoying LSD. It was about sitting on a bench in the park, drinking wine and doing double hits of heroin.

  And I wondered if there was some systematic plan somewhere with the purpose of fucking up people in this country, deliberately letting all of the drugs in the country fuck up idiots like me whom they saw as a burden. Everyone knew that the CIA was on the opium smugglers’ side so that the countries they ruled over wouldn’t be sold to Communist China and become red. And because it was so profitable, drugs are money, and where did all of those orange methadone crackers come from? Was it just part of the deal?

  IN ANY CASE IT IS DAMNED DISCOURAGING BEING SIXTEEN YEARS OLD SITTING ON A PARK BENCH KNOWING THAT NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.

  I. THE AMERICAN GIRL IN A SNOW GLOBE

  (Johanna and the Winter Garden, 2004–2006)

  The Winter Garden exists, does not exist.

  On the Second Cape, a place.

  At the same time. A dream, a utopia.

  An island that grows inside your head.

  THE ROOM, THE HOUSE

  THE CHILD, FLUORESCENT. Johanna. In the room of dreams, time, history. Pins The Child, fluorescent on the wall. The woman on the meadow with the child in her arms, a black-and-white photo, in a thunderstorm, lightning. The child of light/in the light.

  An explosion, transcendence.

  She is the Child, fluorescent.

  Johanna in the room, looks out the window.

  The meadow, which reveals itself on the other side of the windowpane in the light of the Winter Garden, dusk is now falling. A corner of the woods farther away, Tobias’s greenhouse on the side of the road, like a quivering yellow spot in the rain.

  Lille. Breathes on the windowpane, an island of mist spreads over the glass, erasing the view. Breathes over and over again, so that the island becomes very large and then writes LILLE in the mist in large, clear letters with her index finger.

  Several times over, faster and faster, until the name is obliterated and the window is clear and transparent again.

  The road, on the side, the Piss Factory.

  From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?

  Patti and the factory, the Piss Factory. Somewhere, where there really was not anything, not the friendly middle-class family you grew up in. But poverty, the factory, ugly, fat ladies in the factory. During your lunch break you snuck out to the bookstore to buy your Rimbaud, and then you sat by the conveyor belt and tried to concentrate, your Rimbaud in your head: Rimbaud who was supposed to save your life but you could not know that yet. You thought you were stuck there, forever, in the factory.

  The road is about thirty feet from the house where Johanna lives: one direction leading toward the Second Cape, the Winter Garden, and the main country road and the town center and the school in the other. The road: a shiny, dark line cutting through the deserted landscape.

  See the road as a line—

  She is Johanna, the child in the light/the child of light. She is the Child, fluorescent.

  •

  The house where they live, she and her aunt Solveig. At the foot of the hill on the First Cape, just the two of them. Earlier, quite often, there was also a small cousin, Robin, who had a mother, Allison, who worked on boats and was gone a lot. Robin liked being with Solveig and Johanna—especially Johanna, in Johanna’s room. They built the world’s largest race car track, yellow plastic rails joined together across the entire room, a thousand loops. Released small cars on the track, they traveled quickly, too quickly, flying out. But then Allison and Robin moved to another city and Robin stopped coming altogether. Stopped working on the boats, making beauty trips, as people said about her in Torpesonish. “And how are the storks in Portugal doing?” she would ask Johanna, happily ruffling her hair. Then Solveig would get so angry at her there would almost be a fight.

  Allison was Torpe’s sister, the Torpe Solveig once was married to—back then they were living on the Torpesonish homestead at the Outer Marsh. Torpe is in Germany now, remarried, works on different construction sites there. Solveig had a cleaning business once, but now and for a long time already she has been working in real estate. Here, in the District. Has almost always been here. And in this place, not in this house, but in another one. It was called the cousin’s house, it burned down, the outbuildings and the barn were torn down and Solveig built this instead.

  But otherwise, been there done that, you do not talk to Solveig about the past. She has closed that chapter, a lot of troubles. Almost the only thing Solveig wants to remember from her childhood and that she talks about sometimes is how when she was little and went to the swimming school at the Second Cape, she saved another little girl, a classmate in the swimming school named Susette Packlén, from drowning. She, Solveig, Sister Blue, the teacher’s assistant in Tobias’s swimming school; together with her twin sister Rita who was Sister Red. They were called that because of the color of their swimsuits, otherwise it was almost impossible to tell them apart, they looked so much alike. Solveig’s twin sister, Rita. Solveig has closed that chapter too. And the Winter Garden, Rita’s Winter Garden. Ritsch. Solveig has closed the curtains in the kitchen. To Solveig the Winter Garden does not exist.

  But Tobias exists. As said, he once was th
e teacher at the swimming school. Yes, the same Tobias who has the greenhouse on the side of the road a little ways away from the house. Johanna likes Tobias, likes going to the greenhouse and spending time with him there.

  There used to be another cousin in the house, Irene, Solveig’s girl. Much older, already grown up. The fall before the Winter Garden opened on the Second Cape, New Year’s Eve 1999, Irene moved away from home to start studying in another town to be a nurse. Later she went to Norway, works at an EMT station high up in the mountains. Beautiful cards, which Solveig hangs on the refrigerator, come from there, from Norway. Beautiful landscapes, restful. Reminiscent of how Irene is, or was, when she was still living in the house.

  Someone who played the recorder and went to choir practice, a calm and low-voiced type. But—it was impossible not to like her. And to be allowed into Irene’s room across from the kitchen on the other side of the hall, in the evenings, in the rain, the black darkness on the other side of the window. Irene perched on her bed, on a light blue bedspread, knitting long scarves in subdued colors, or playing the recorder, the sheet music on a music stand next to the bed. Or, with a book: one of the four boy or girl books she had in her possession, the kind that when it is raining it just says, “The rain beat against the window.”

  But to be allowed to come into this neatness, just ordinary things there: hairbrush, music stand, boy book, girl book, knitting, Johanna loved it regardless. Remembers how she used to stand in the doorway and stare at Irene, who was playing, stare and stare until Irene noticed her and put down her flute and looked up: “Hi, Lille, what, cat got your tongue?” And laughing, stretched out her arms toward Johanna. “Come here, you small silly changeling!” And at full speed Johanna had rushed right into her arms.

  •

  When Irene moved away from home, Johanna got her room. For a while, in the beginning, she tried to live like Irene, maintain the order and the neatness. But it did not go very well: little by little everything was, is, one big mess anyway. Things—paper, books, pictures, this and that—all over the place, everywhere.

  But still, with Irene, as if there was a fundamental difference between the two of them. Despite everything having been so different in the District when Irene was growing up; there was no Winter Garden or high school or school for artistic expression and theatrical performance where she would have had the opportunity to develop her recorder music to a professional level, like there would be later—the school Johanna attends, and Ulla Bäckström from Rosengården 2. So like a fish in water you might think that the school had been designed just for her; the theater, the dance, and the music, the singing about Ulla Bäckström in the corridors at school.

  But still, Irene on the one hand, Johanna on the other: in Irene there was nothing that ran wild, that could take its own wild paths, become too much of too much—

  •

  So for the time being, this is Johanna’s room. Everything that brings you to the music. The Story of the Marsh Queen, the Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1: a never-ending first chapter that washes over the room and buried the yellow plastic cars a long time ago.

  The Marsh Queen who rose from the mire. The material that will be made into a story is constantly growing. Quotations, clippings, informations. All over the place, everywhere.

  “Write her into the story. There aren’t many women in the history of music. At least make her a footnote. In The History of Punk Music.”

  It is Råttis J. Järvinen, a music teacher, who said that to Johanna at school. In school there they are doing Project Earth; it is supposed to be a story, inspired by the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. This is what Råttis J. Järvinen says, and it is beautiful: “To be young is to lose an innocence but find a treasure—like Orpheus who loved his Eurydice so much he was prepared to follow her to the underworld.”

  Project Earth. A project that is supposed to be about something that touches you, someone else’s story about you. The person you are, the one you could be and want to be, to the music. “Make the music yours, in your own language.”

  Everything that brings you to the music. The Marsh Queen who says: “Being on stage is so terrible, they tear you to bits with their admiring looks, admiring hands, you could just die.”

  The Marsh Queen who says: “The Glitter Scene is my life.”

  Patti, Debbie, Ametiste, and the Marsh Queen, who once grew up here in the District in the house in the darker part of the woods: her name was Sandra Wärn.

  So when it is at its best in the room, the room with broad views, big vision. The Marsh Queen. Johanna. “Take the world by storm.” Wembley Arena 2012. “The Glitter Scene is my life.”

  But first it is a matter of: from here. The window. See the road like a line. The field. Tobias’s greenhouse stands like a dirty yellow spot on the side of the road, in the cool abstract glow of the Winter Garden. The Winter Garden that is shining, shining.

  “See the road like a line.” Patti and the women, in the Piss Factory. Patti at the assembly line, away from here, reading her Rimbaud during her lunch break.

  The Piss Factory.

  Johanna and the Child, fluorescent on the wall.

  •

  Johanna turns off the lights, crawls under the covers in her bed across from the window, does not close the curtains. Wants to have the light, a dull glow from the Winter Garden. The room, the dreams, the Marsh Queen, time, history, vision: you can float in it, like a boat.

  But calmly, all of the lights in the house in the background. Solveig’s and Tobias’s voices from the kitchen: Tobias has a habit of stopping by in the evenings after he has been at his greenhouse before he bikes back to the residential housing for seniors where he lives up in the town center. He is stubborn about that bike, despite the fact that it is more than six miles and he is old, his legs are getting worse and worse. But if the road conditions are bad Solveig convinces him to let her drive him—not so easy, Tobias is woven of a stubborn cloth. But still: voices in the yard, car doors slamming, she will be back soon.

  Or, other evenings, Solveig who is watching television in the living room, the volume turned down very low, a quiet hum in the background. Sometimes Johanna gets up and goes to her, lies down on the sofa in the living room, her head resting in Solveig’s arms. Steep stairs, white houses on television: women, men who are running up and down stairs, meeting in hallways, talking, talking and having relationships with each other. Johanna does not follow along, Solveig’s fingers in her hair, she is not thinking about the Marsh Queen then either, not thinking about anything in particular, or about the houses. The houses that Solveig sells, supplies through her business. Blueprints, photographs, sometimes Johanna is allowed to be at a showing. To walk through the empty apartments, through the houses, imagine, all sorts of things. Brochures about Rosengården 5 and 6 and 8, residential areas, all of them alike. Old brochures about the Winter Garden before it was finished, a special language in them. Kapu kai. The forbidden seas. The hacienda must be built.

  Not the Winter Garden that would exist later, for real. But the Winter Garden when it was still just an idea on paper, presented in brochures: the one planned by the Rita Strange Corporation—with all the history, stories from the District. The American girl. It happened at Bule Marsh.

  In reality, the Winter Garden became something else. But still, what it was supposed to be does not disappear from your mind just because of that. The Winter Garden, an island that grows inside your head, that connects to you personally. To what is most personal. Because there is so much in the Winter Garden that affects you. You know it, you just cannot put your finger on exactly how. Or maybe you just do not want to.

  So the Winter Garden that exists in your head cannot be shared with anyone, not with Solveig, for example. Ritsch, Solveig has closed the curtains in the kitchen. To Solveig the Winter Garden does not exist.

  And yet, there are things Johanna would like to ask Solveig, which Johanna knows belong there, to the Winter Garden.

  On TV St
eep stairs, white houses. “I love you.” People in pastel-colored clothes who really do not say anything to each other. “Are you really my daughter?” “Yes, yes, I love you.” “My daughter! I love you, too.”

  “Solveig,” one might want to ask, “who is my mother?”

  •

  But thoughts. Sometimes, quite often, Johanna grows tired of all the thoughts, is just sleepy. Solveig’s warm fingers, the smell of the woods and leaves in her nose, coming from her own skin.

  “Aren’t you going to clean your room?” Solveig might whisper. Nah nah. Sleeping now. ZZZZZZZZZZ to Steep stairs, white houses.

  Of course it happens that Johanna grows tired of the mess in her room, of everything. During the day, puts on her clothes, goes out. To the Boundary Woods, alone, where it is quiet; that is Johanna’s world.

  THE BOUNDARY WOODS/SCREAMING TOYS, 2004–2006

  2004, THE BOUNDARY WOODS. What is left of the large woods that were once large and uninterrupted, with the Outer Marsh farthest to the north. Now it is a small belt running between the Winter Garden and the mainland: stretching across all of the First Cape and then inland.

  Great, desolate woodlands that over the years have been leveled by logging, construction work: new residential areas that have sprung up, called things like Rosengården 2, 3, and 5 and of these Rosengården 2 is the farthest to the south, toward the sea, the very nicest and oldest. It was built already during the 1980s, long before all of the other Rosengårdar and many years before a place like the Winter Garden on the Second Cape had even been imagined. But despite the new houses, Rosengården 2 remains as an unattainable ideal: the place that all other Rosengårdar try to imitate. These family homes, several thousand square feet in size, with gardens surrounded by wall-like fences that allow no one to see in but from where the sound of barking dogs can be heard; Spanish wolfhounds, no terriers exactly.