The Glitter Scene

by Monika Fagerholm

  “Maj-Gun. CAN we stop talking about this now?”

  “Yes, Susette. But you don’t need to be jealous. It was, it IS, your mother. My occasional affinity with your mother, Susette. Originates from there and only there.

  “She didn’t pretend. You could see it in her. A logic. I mean, also in the most absurd of contexts, at the rug rag bucket and among all of the rags.”

  “Be quiet now!”

  “Sorry, Susette,” Maj-Gun says again, one of the last things she says that night but then Susette is already outside. “I mean something else.

  “When you don’t pretend. It isn’t like it is at the newsstand. That you can say anything. But it isn’t like that.

  “You can’t say just anything and yet, even though you think so, it is so beautiful and right when someone says so—so you still keep going, the words pour out of you.

  “I want…” But Susette is already halfway home on the pedestrian and bicycle path, when she really takes it in, the normal, fresh air, the autumn night. “I want something real.

  “A love for example. Which is greater than death. Which overcomes death. It is… if nothing else… then my… readiness.

  “The Boy in the woods. Someone who loves despite everything, Susette. That’s me.”

  And Maj-Gun who calls out after her: “Sometimes I have the feeling that we are the Angels of Death. The two of us. In the same timelessness.

  •

  But otherwise, Susette in the everyday, ten thousand miles away from that. Cleaning with Solveig, traveling with Solveig in the company car to different places, joint cleaning projects and individuals ones, where they clean, each on her own. They have a good collaboration, get on well together, even if they are not friends in that way. Solveig is Susette’s employer, has her own life as well; has a five-year-old daughter, Irene, lives somewhere in the Outer Marsh. In a room on the top floor of an old house, not a single-family home exactly, Solveig laughs sometimes when she is in a good mood, but a shack with “room for many generations” that flow freely over all of the floors, small fry, cousins, sisters-in-law and in the midst of it all the mother of the clan, Viola Torpeson, with a can of beer and Benson & Hedges cigarettes and the apple of her eye Gossip Queen Allison, certainly full grown by now, who comes and goes, on “beauty trips,” as she says to the kids, they worship her and several kids crawl across the floor when she comes home.

  At some point Solveig says she would like to move away with her girl: her husband, Torpe, who comes from that house, has traveled to Germany with his brother Järpe and some cousins, is doing construction work there. Move, not to Germany but to someplace that is just hers, and the girl’s, Irene’s, of course. Should not be impossible, business is booming, this year in particular has been great, with the assignment in Rosengården 2.

  On the other hand, the Outer Marsh, it is okay: the girl gets on well there and does not need to be on her own very often, there are, as said, other kids to play with and always someone acting as babysitter: Gossip Queen, the sisters-in-law, Viola Torpeson.

  Besides, Solveig can also say when she is in one of those moods: the Outer Marsh, an interesting environment. The marshiness, stinging sand in the air, fires on opposite beaches at night. Often someone is burning something there: at night when you cannot sleep, stand at the window on the second floor that faces the marsh, look at the fires, something a bit magical about it all, so to speak, comes close. And then sometimes, when Solveig talks like that, in passing, it whizzes through Susette’s head too: a rug weaver in a small cottage next to a body of water filled with reeds, she was there once. She, Susette, with her mother and the rug rags in sacks, loads of them, which they had cut up at home, brought them by taxi from the town center. Thousands of cats, the stink of urine, and a massive loom in one single room. Solveig shakes her head, no, did not know that woman, knows nothing about it. On the other hand, she is not originally from there. Has, as mentioned, grown up next to the First and Second capes, the cousin’s property, closer to the sea, which she also says as if it is in some way nicer. Still, without having gone into detail, you understand there is a lot of shit in that life: orphaned early on, a twin sister, Rita, who left the District several years ago and has broken all ties with her sister completely.

  Rita, Sister Red. And Solveig, her twin sister, once upon a time they were inseparable, she was Sister Blue. In the swimming school for the District’s children on the Second Cape, a long time ago, where they were the teacher’s assistants for Tobias the swim instructor, who is still a good friend of Solveig’s, because they were skilled swimmers even from an early age. Were going to become swimmers, trained hard: there, at the Second Cape, and later, for a while, when the public beach was moved from the sea bay out to the woods, to Bule Marsh. Sister Blue, Sister Red, they were called that based on their bathing suits because otherwise it was quite impossible to tell who was who, especially in just their bathing suits and with their hair wet. But sometimes at the swimming school they changed bathing suits on purpose in order to confuse everyone and especially Tobias who stubbornly insisted on calling them by their first names, claimed that he definitely saw the difference, which was not true of course, he mixed them up all of the time too.

  But “I was the one who was Sister Blue.” Solveig has been able to carry on with Susette in the company car sometimes, these hundred years later. Because an episode that Solveig remembers very well but that Susette has almost completely forgotten belongs to the time in the swimming school when Susette was also a student once when she was really little. That one time at swimming school she, Susette, had ended up too far out at sea and almost drowned, but then, in other words, it was Solveig who had been the attentive one and thrown herself into the water and crawled out to Susette who was sinking already then, Solveig and no one else got hold of her and pulled her to land and gave her CPR there on the cliffs. And later, that same fall, Solveig was awarded the Lifeguard’s Medal, at the Lifeguards’ Club’s yearly banquet even though she had not been able to be there herself. Was at home in bed with the mumps, but got the medal by post.

  “I was the one who was Sister…” with Susette in other words, in the company car, she insisted on it and could sometimes get really agitated too. If Susette, for example, in order to tease her tossed out the idea that what IF the one who had saved her had been her sister Rita who happened to have Solveig’s blue bathing suit on that day.

  “I mean. I don’t know, of course. You two looked so much alike.” Though in reality, it is just for fun, because Susette really does not imagine for a second that Solveig could be wrong.

  Not because she has any real memory of it, just something blue flickering before her eyes, she was so little after all, long before Majjunn, the Pastor’s Crown Princess, the loom, the rug rags, that is how it feels anyway. Apart from in general, what it had felt like to sink, lose her breath, blubb blubb… she can certainly recall that in her consciousness but mostly in situations when she is not thinking about it, it rises up, a discomfort and then of course the fact that she hates the sea so vehemently that it is almost a secret, at least it is not something she discusses with anyone. Besides, she has her job to do. The Glass House, the Second Cape, she cleans there in the summer after all, one of her cleaning projects, the individual ones. Is being rented by a French diplomatic family during these years: they play music on the glass veranda in the evenings, the whole family, mother father children, in floor-length polyester shirts, it becomes a complete tiny chamber orchestra, freshly squeezed orange juice in icy frosted pitchers on a small glass table for refreshment when they take their breaks. Looking in through the crack in the door, on the way to the second floor with the ammonia bucket—the music, the orange juice, and the sea in the background, in protest. High rolling gray waves, white foam, a hellish roar from the sea, which is thrown up against the windows.

  And becomes stuck there. And you, if you are Susette, the following day, alone on an A-ladder wedged in between the rocks on the beach right ne
xt to the bay where she once swam out and almost drowned. The Frenchman’s white summer cat meowing on the cliffs, hating the sea, but high up on the ladder, not thinking, scrubbing, polishing the windowpane clean, not looking back—or down.

  But otherwise, Solveig, Rita: it is obvious that it was Solveig and not Rita who came to the rescue in the swimming school, no doubt about it, seriously.

  Back then she had not needed more than a few seconds in Rita’s company to realize it. Businesswoman of the Year’s two-window ice cream stand on the square where Susette and Rita had worked together for a few days before Susette was transferred to the strawberry fields in the middle region of the country by her employer.

  Rita Rat with higher prospects: would never have lifted a finger to help anyone without thinking about what was in it for her. Could clearly be seen on her face. Rita’s sullen silence, a mute rage in the air, tangible like an approaching thunderstorm. A trembling point of power, collected energy. Certainly fascinating but it had not interested Susette any further, she was preoccupied with her own problems. Some pangs of conscience for having quit her job at the private nursing home for the elderly and infirm where she had a full-time position. “They will be so sad, the old sick men and women, they are so attached to you,” the manager’s farewell words echoing in her ears and a certain disappointment, which she had had her hands full trying to hide. The ice cream stand, was this it? The J.L. kerchief and Rita Rat grumbling beside her: is this what she had longed for in the quiet hospital corridors where she had stood in front of the window and looked out over the square on warm spring days, scoops of ice cream on cones, sweet tastes, wild strawberries, pears, and chocolate?

  Had not really made heads or tails of those thoughts either, so what she had done at the ice cream stand with Rita Rat was what she had already been good at, at the time: making it look like she was sleeping. But she was not sleeping, was as alert as could be, conscious of everything going on around her. A peculiarity she in other words still has, and Solveig in the company car can sometimes get annoyed about it. Some mornings in the car for example when they are heading into the city by the sea and need to get an early start and Solveig picks her up at the first bus stop by the main country road outside the town center, where Susette has walked all the way from her apartment in the complex on the hills on the north side; how she then sits there and dozes next to Solveig who is driving and playing the radio or one of her old cassette tapes. As they approach the city, how Solveig turns the volume up to an insufferable level in order to wake the bear who is sleeping, as she says. But completely unnecessary, which is proved by Susette who, several hours later in the middle of the working day, suddenly just starts rambling loudly about the high water level from the weather forecast or singing some song, and the girl she moves in the dance with red, golden ribbons, which Solveig was playing in the car that morning.

  But in the car Susette is startled by an unpleasant surprise, the sound buzzing through the front of the car, she straightens her back, says grouchily, “Thanks for saving my life Sister Blue. I am so damned grateful.”

  “And with these words I give you Susette Packlén,” Solveig says in turn and then you are supposed to remember what no one remembers, what “these words” were, that is to say what Jeanette Lindström had said when she and Susette got into an argument while catering and Jeanette pushed her employee up to Solveig in the middle of her wedding.

  But joking aside. Sister Blue, Sister Red—or Rita Rat, no more about her. I was Sister Blue. Except one thing. Susette can certainly understand exactly what it is like to be the shapeless one of two who are so alike on the outside.

  The other, the one off to the side, whom no one has any real memory of. Because it is true after all, also for Susette. You do not remember Solveig, you remember Rita.

  And then to just be left behind alone when the other has left for good.

  Left at the childhood home, the cousin’s property, just that old man, the cousin’s papa, whom Susette always cleaned for and visited and looked in on sometimes as part of her work responsibilities and who had died in the late summer before that fall.

  “What are you going to do with the house?” Susette asks Solveig after some time has passed. Solveig shrugs her shoulders, answers that it is not hers. The old man left everything to her brother. The whole shitload, Solveig clarifies, spitting out the words, poorly restrained wrath bubbling under the surface, Susette has never seen her so angry so angry. “That property still has a certain value after all.”

  “You have a brother?” Susette asks in surprise while at the same time realizing how stupid the question is. Of course she knows, has always known. Just had not really thought about it.

  “Of course I have a brother,” Solveig hisses impatiently. “Bencku. Don’t you remember anything?”

  “Djeessuss!” rushes out of Susette’s mouth, because in that moment something else has occurred to her of course. The Boy in the woods. Bengt. My love it is pure and true. Maj-Gun at the newsstand. Susette just cannot, even though it is unsuitable, hold back a little laugh.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “Nothing, sorry. But shit, Solveig. Seeing as how you’ve been stuck with everything.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Solveig says, cutting her off, collected again. “Business is good. There are loans from the bank.”

  “That brother,” Solveig asks carefully. “Where is he now?”

  Solveig laughs shortly. “Djeessuss. Who knows? And I don’t mean anything mystical by it. To hell with him. That’s it. And don’t ask me where it started for him. Nowhere, everywhere. Being adrift, more shit. He is drawn to it, so to speak.”

  And that has almost been the most Solveig has ever said about herself in that way, in the company car, or while working.

  Because Solveig and Susette, they do not exactly talk about personal matters, whether they are cleaning or riding in the company car together. So, seriously, they do not talk about anything really. Ordinary things and that jargon they have, isolated observations from various cleaning projects. Susette about the Frenchman on the Second Cape, for example. Not about the sea or the music on the veranda and all that, but about the floor-length polyester blouses that the entire diplomatic family, mother father and three children, change into every evening when it is not about representation but having spare time, whether or not they are making music. The French family’s idea about how a real summer archipelago life should be lived, running around in pajamas on the cliffs.

  On the other hand, with Solveig, in general: it is good. Stories; old stories, been there done that, it blows away. Traveling with Solveig in the company car—that year, the last year Solveig and Susette clean together and in general, Solveig gets a new car, a Volkswagen Transporter, marbled gray, four-wheel drive. And Solveig who plays the radio, the news, the weather forecast or her old cassette tapes. Folk songs, Micke’s Folk band, And the girl came from her lover’s meeting, the volume higher, less exorbitant.

  With Solveig during the day, but actually, how do you know a person? How do you get to know them? By talking, endless arguing about this and that, stories, stories about life and death and success and adversity and all the experiences you have had? Nah. That is not the only way, Susette knows. Because with Solveig, despite the fact that they never share information about themselves—when Solveig says something for real, something important about herself, it comes in passing—but still, Susette knows exactly who Solveig is. And that both of them, she and Solveig, in some way are alike. Not like twins, but parallels so to speak.

  And besides, does everything have to be attributed to something that has happened, something in the past?

  Because later, with Solveig, in Rosengården 2. Walking, running down the avenues, in such a pounding NOW, sunshine.

  Tabula rasa. Being nothing, and new. That possibility.

  •

  As mentioned, it is early fall, they are in Rosengården 2 almost all the time when they are working together
. Vacuuming, washing windows, polishing so that the houses will be ready to be lived in. Those who have bought the houses and are going to live in them are rarely seen, you do not know who they are of course except for the fact that they have a lot of money and most of them come from somewhere else, not from the District. A mother-in-law or wife with girlfriends with an eye for color and good taste who show up sometimes, give good advice. My grandmother this, at Marttorna we learned it this way… and so on, though of course they do not grab the polishing rags personally, but they know exactly how they should be used.

  But for the most part Solveig and Susette alone, in Rosengården, in the empty houses: all architectonic masterpieces, different from one another but certainly at least three floors in each one of them. Enormous spaces, millions of feet up to the ceilings, the floor space. Furnishings like landscapes that in some of the houses should be completely ready when the residents arrive. Curtains hung up, beautiful patterns, material, paintings along the walls, sculptures, art. An exquisite family of rabbits, for example, made of heavy and transparent glass, in countless pieces. Two larger and two smaller ones that for several weeks have been standing ready on a podium on one of the landings outside the door to a room that presumably will be the nursery: washing machine–friendly jungle animals on the wallpaper in there.

  These rabbits collect dust: need to be dusted, crrrrfllll Solveig hisses all the time.

  Moving inside the houses, a bit like a thief. With endless care, of course, no Solveig is needed in order to point that out. Tippytoe. But a certain thieflike merriment amid the respect.

  Or, then, outside: on the lush avenues cutting through Rosengården 2, which is going to be fenced in with high walls and have an electronic monitoring system at the gate so that the area can be kept closed off from outsiders. “This is the future.” Solveig laughs, there on the avenues, silly maybe, though when you find yourself in that exact place, it is not at all.