It was supposed to be their new home, here, in the District, they would plant roots and live as a family here for real in the darker part of the woods. Of course it was not very successful. Wrong place, wrong foundation for a house, and the architecture and the construction were not really to anyone’s credit either so the mother could not put up with the marshiness; rather she left and remarried and the father and daughter were left alone in the strange house. Then they lived there just the two of them, father and daughter, until the daughter grew up and became the Marsh Queen and went out into the world, to the punk music, to become a footnote.
But in the house, large wild parties were held there once. They could last for days because the Islander loved glitz and glamour. Even after his daughter had grown up and left home and he was living somewhere else, he would come back during the hunting season and then there were parties, for days and nights. Until it gradually ebbed out on its own: one party was the last party and the Islander stopped coming altogether. It was like this: you could stand in the forest, in the darkness, and watch the parties from the sidelines. Like a ship, an island of light—which was traveling by. Then suddenly the house was evacuated and it was empty and dark all over again.
Johanna goes to the house sometimes—there is a panorama window on the ground floor at the back through which you can see the basement. She cups her hands around her face, looks in: an old earth-filled swimming pool, filled with disgusting water that seeps up from the ground through the cracks in the tiling. Trash floats on the calm surface. Paper, scraps of fabric, bottles, the like.
•
But it was here, exactly right here in the pool, that she, the Marsh Queen, had grown up. The Marsh Queen whom she later became, when she went out into the world, to the punk music. The Marsh Queen who rose from the mire. Lived alone in the house with her father the Islander, her name was Sandra Wärn: a little girl who collected matchboxes and silk fabric—her mother had owned a silk fabric store that had gone bankrupt and all of the unsold fabric was brought to the house in the darker part and when her mother left, everything was left behind. Bundles, packages from a closet on the upper floor were unwound in shimmering, colorful lengths and spread out over the entire house. Down in the swimming pool too, when the Marsh Queen was a child, was just a square, sloppily tiled hole in the ground, never filled with water—there was so much about that house that in some way was unfinished. The girl hung out down there in the swimming pool, it became her world. And a moment in her life, childhood, the only world, for a time she came to share with a friend who became everything to her, they were always there. But that friendship ended abruptly and tragically, they had a falling out, the friend went and shot herself. And then in some way, Sandra Wärn had lost everything, there was nothing left.
•
Imagine: Sandra Wärn after her friend’s death. Among all the fabric, in the waterless swimming pool. Colorful, shimmering lengths she wrapped herself in, and fell asleep. Slept and slept, in sorrow, inconsolable, wrapped in fabric. But from them, like from a cocoon, the Marsh Queen was born, the one who went out into the world, to the music. Never returned, but—forgot nothing. All of it, the house, the swimming pool, her and her friend’s world, all of the fabric, she took them with her to the music. Wrote songs about them, such as one called “Death’s Spell at a Young Age.”
She has talked about it in interviews. But smack, back to reality. At that point in the story the Marsh Queen stops herself, almost throws everything away, tears the silk fabric into pieces… “Oh, maybe it’s just a way of saying something else. Maybe I left because I wanted to be with people called Jack, Vanessa, Andy, and Cathe—”
•
“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille.”
And that is just about how it is, at the basement window in the house in the darker part, that day, one afternoon in November 2006, when Johanna suddenly hears a voice behind her, turns around fast as lightning, and stands face-to-face with Ulla Bäckström.
The same Ulla yet another one, different. Certainly older than two years ago in the field, wearing completely ordinary clothes now. Jeans, dark blue quilted jacket, a red hat pulled down over her ears, out of breath, as if she had been running. And she has something in her hand. A toy mask.
“Crehp, crehp, Lille. Through fabric, long strips. Curls down into a bucket. While she’s talking, talking, Djiissuss—you never get away.
“Maybe she’s crazy, Lille. You must know who I’m talking about. The Red One. What’s her name? Maalamaa.
“But Lille,” Ulla adds, looking around, confused and at a loss, “it’s as if you’ve put a ball in motion.” She grows quiet for a moment and then Johanna understands what it is about her that is different. Ulla Bäckström is afraid. An ordinary empty rotten day in the woods, cold, the first snow is about to start falling again.
But terrorstruck, the fear stinks, screams in her for a few seconds even though she immediately does everything in her power to fend it off.
“My God, Lille,” she calls. “I am so DAMNED tired of it. I’m not interested anymore, I never think about it.”
“About what?”
“The American girl. It was just one project among many. I’m doing new roles now, new manuscripts. The world is filled with manuscripts, Lille…”
“What are you talking about?”
Ulla Bäckström comes closer, the fear is suddenly blown away, her voice is steadier. “You know, Lille, it was like this, when I played the American girl, played her on stage. Or it becomes like that. If you do the same thing over and over again, play the same story in the same way, beginning middle and end, the same scenes, same same, over and over again…
“Are on the cliff and die of love, fall fall, every time the same way… that, well, it becomes a bit monotonous. And then it can happen that you start thinking about other things. Or just this repetition that makes you uncertain, you start asking yourself: was it really like this?
“You know, with that story. The American girl. You start thinking about other possibilities.
“Björn who killed himself. Her boyfriend, after she had died. But Bengt, the other boy, the one in the woods, who loved her too. Who was he?
“If it was him… And then, when you start thinking like that you sort of became unsure about everything.
“I gathered material. Sold flowers in the Winter Garden. But I didn’t get anywhere. Then you start asking around elsewhere, here and there. Putting balls in motion, Lille. Google, write some messages… and then, gradually, you come across someone”—Ulla pauses—“whose name is… Maalamaa.
“Well, there’s not so much to say about that. But now, Lille. The Red One, now she’s here. In the Winter Garden. And I’ve been there.
“And she talks about completely different things—
“Strange things. Like, well, that change everything.
“And suddenly, even though you don’t want to hear any more, you get hooked.
“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille. Heavy scissors, crehp crehp through the fabric, curling down into a bucket on the floor—”
“What does she talk about?” Johanna suddenly asks, loudly and eagerly.
Ulla Bäckström stops herself, stares so intensely into Johanna’s eyes that Johanna almost regrets asking.
“Well.” Ulla shrugs. “Just different stuff. She knew that boy, Bengt. Well, he wasn’t a boy then any longer, a grown man… the one who died here, burned in the house.
“But that—maybe there was another secret. About what happened. Also with the American girl. Where everything started. Three siblings, Lille, who were united by a secret that should have kept them together but instead it drove them apart and everyone turned against each other. Is it fam—”
“What three siblings?” Johanna interrupts her.
But then Ulla suddenly laughs and puts on the mask she has in her hand.
“You know, Lille,” she yells, with the mask on. “And her name is the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa—and your moooo
otheeer HA HA HA!
“And SO, Lille, it becomes an entirely different story. About two people and a newsstand. Maybe you know it too? HA HA, Lille! Buhuu!”
And with these words Ulla turns around and walks away, November 2006, for the last time.
“Dark boring groupie,” she yells. “EVERYTHING can be stuffed into your head!”
•
But that same evening, though much later, almost night by that time, Ulla Bäckström is standing on the Glitter Scene, the glass door wide open. And she falls, flies out.
A shadow behind her, that mask. The Angel of Death. Liz Maalamaa.
To add to the Winter Garden. Ulla falling, the mask, Screaming Toys.
It howls through this experience, screams, Screaming Toys.
•
But Johanna, still during the day, has run home from the woods, the house in the darker part, to her room.
The American girl in a snow globe.
Bengt in the woods.
Three siblings united by a secret.
Solveig closing the curtains in the kitchen. Ritsch. To her the Winter Garden does not exist.
Rita’s Winter Garden. The Rita Strange Corporation.
From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?
The Marsh Queen: I don’t know about music, if what I mean with music, is music.
“Wembley Arena, 2012.” Everything that brings you to the music. “Maybe I left because I wanted to be with people called Jack, Vanessa, Andy, and Catherine.” A new hour of creation, we are the Woodst…
But of course, fantasies only. Leftovers of a Project Earth, the Marsh Queen, in the wastepaper basket, torn to bits.
•
“You have to know your history, to know who you are.”
It was Tobias who said that once. But Tobias is dead, the greenhouse is dark, at the side of the road. It obscures the field.
And Johanna is alone with a story, a very different one, one she does not know what to do with.
A gust of wind, November 2006, Child, fluorescent on the wall.
And it is blowing through this experience.
THE STORY, TOBIAS’S GREENHOUSE, 2004
TOBIAS HAS A greenhouse, he grows roses there, lots of different kinds, you can remember names, such as one called Flaming Carmen.
Tough, sharp stems are forced up from plants and he is not very good at it. A rather hopeless task too if you think about the climate, he explains to Solveig sometimes, a bit vaguely as always when he is talking to her about his greenhouse that he built on property Solveig has rented to him. He certainly has all sorts of fertilizer in there, strong chemicals and strange lamps to “stimulate” the vegetation, he says with authority, even though it does not help. Tobias does not really have the knack; all the knowledge he has acquired about plants, and mainly about roses, he has gotten from books. According to Solveig, it may all be beautiful but in reality it just is not enough.
Maybe Solveig is right, Johanna does not know. On the other hand: Johanna does not care about greenhouse gardening, the art of getting roses to grow or die; she likes Tobias, likes going to the greenhouse, being there with him. Just the two of them, Solveig has asthma and cannot handle the air, but sometimes she shows up anyway. Suddenly standing in the doorway, reminding Tobias to wear his gloves. This period, the last period, Tobias in the greenhouse before he gets sick and dies, he often had to come to Solveig in the kitchen and get Band-Aids, his hands covered in small cuts.
But for the most part it is just Johanna and Tobias in the greenhouse, on their own. Tobias moving up and down the rows, cutting and pruning. Johanna in her place, a stool made of an upside-down bucket next to the water hose and the books by the entrance. Yes, there is a bookshelf with books in Tobias’s greenhouse, next to all the greenhouse equipment and a record player playing opera music: a part of Tobias’s large library that he could not take with him when he moved from the apartment on the hills north of the town center to the senior housing facility by the square. For example A Lesson in History—A Sense of Belonging to the Village, Architecture and Crime, and History and Progress, which was once Tobias’s favorite work of reference: a heavy, worn bundle, several pounds of it, on the top shelf, mold on the edges.
“You need to know your history in order to know who you are.” Tobias was once someone who said things like that, with a pedagogic fervor that had pretty much left him even before he left the teaching profession; he had taught history at the coed school and the high school. He had also been Solveig and Rita’s teacher, that is how long Solveig and Tobias have known each other. Even longer too: they became friends at the swimming school where Tobias had taken notice of the twins’ swimming talent, the twins’ talent in general, the twins always did well in school too.
You have to know your history, Tobias said to Johanna once and started telling her about some local history but her concentration started fading while listening to the Old Men’s Choir over five generations, the like. That’s not mine, Tobias, she had wanted to say, but on the other hand: her own history, in that way, what would she have to add? The Marsh Queen, the corridors at school, to the music, but Råttis J. Järvinen who also says that then, Johanna, one might also learn how to play an instrument, practice a little. Nah. My story. Not exactly elated at the thought.
So they have not done a lot of talking there in the greenhouse, it just turned out that way. Just been there together, the damp everywhere, Tobias’s music playing on the record player. Tobias slowly moving up and down the rows between the plants, Johanna on her bucket, and the titles of the books her gaze rests on, the scissors, the knives. The dusk falling outside can be seen through a hole in the plastic wall, see the road like a line, the light, the Winter Garden.
“Tell me about the American girl, Tobias.”
In any case Johanna is thinking about what Tobias said about needing to know your history when she goes down to Tobias in the greenhouse after meeting Ulla on the field the first time, after being given the snow globe, from the Winter Garden.
“Project Earth, Tobias. It’s something we’re doing at school.”
Tobias stops what he is doing, surprised, but at the same time, what else is there to say about that?
“I know, Tobias,” says Johanna, “that Bengt is my father and he loved the American girl and that Björn, the one who killed her, was also from here, the cousin’s house—
“And now, Tobias, I want to know everything. You know just as well as I do that Solveig doesn’t say anything. I want to know. Tobias. Everything.”
THAT RHYTHM AND THE QUIET CHILDREN, 1969
TOBIAS TALKS ABOUT THE DISTRICT like another world, even though it is not more than thirty–forty years ago. About the capes: the Second Cape, next to the sea, where he, at the beginning of the 1960s, runs a swimming school for the District’s children before the summer settlers take over the beautiful cliffs of the archipelago. A housing exhibition of the vacation homes of the future is being built on the Second Cape, the first of its kind in the country, it is finished in 1965. Modern houses in a bold, new architecture are sold as summer camps for people who can afford to buy them because they are expensive houses—mostly outsiders, from the nearby city by the sea for example. Located just forty miles away and there is a road the whole way so it makes the area especially attractive. Thus the Second Cape is transformed into a secluded place, rather inaccessible for the District’s own residents. The public beach is moved to the woods behind the First Cape, Bule Marsh.
The First Cape is located right behind the Second Cape, a bit off to the side, farther inland. It has more reeds, no sandy beaches or jetties there. The tall hill on which at that time there was only an old three-story house on it with turrets can be seen from a distance, far out at sea as well, like a landmark. In the very beginning, when Tobias comes to the District as an elementary school teacher in 1959, the house is empty and there is no sign of any owner making claims to the house. In and of itself it is not striking at tha
t time: after the war, the entire District was a military base for the occupying power and was closed to all outsiders and when it is returned and opened again, not everyone who had been evacuated returns. The devastation was immense, homes, properties destroyed, burned down—not something you particularly want to see.
And below the hill then “the cousin’s property,” a red cottage with outbuildings and a tumbledown baker’s cottage where the twins, Rita and Solveig, will come to live and grow up together. The cousin’s property: named after the old man who owns the place; he is called “the cousin’s papa” and nothing else. A jovial name for a grouchy and obstinate man who, shortly after the District becomes an open area, comes out of nowhere together with his brother and his brother’s wife and their three small children and has, it turns out, papers saying that he is the new owner of certain land on the First and the Second capes. He won them in a poker game from one Baron von B. who, naturally after the game had taken place in some military barrack at the end of the war, tried to do everything in his power to invalidate the transaction. But it was futile, Baron von B. had signed over portions of his property in the presence of witnesses, nothing to be done about the matter.
In other words, such a strange, small clan: maybe you think what kind of loose rabble—who, without asking anyone’s permission, settles down in the house on the hill on the First Cape and do not leave voluntarily; a countryman is needed to get them to leave. A bit amusing; here today, somewhere else tomorrow, people like that, as it were. But they do not disappear, they just move down to the foot of the hill and when you realize the cousin’s papa actually owns that place (and large sections on the Second Cape as well, which he later sells to the company with the housing exhibition) you adjust your attitude a little. All this ownership still musters an ounce of respect together with the fact that shortly thereafter a terrible thing happens, the mother and father to the three small children die in a car accident. Crash into a hill at a high speed on the way to a dance competition (that was what they were, circus performers, professional dancers). And three small orphaned children left to fend for themselves with the man in the cottage, in that mess… and children are children despite everything, you can see from a long way off how it is going with those children. You try and do what you can for them, get them clothes, food, even if it needs to happen in secret so that the old man, who mainly spends his time sitting in his room boozing, will not become angry.
The Glitter Scene Page 3