The Glitter Scene

by Monika Fagerholm

  Arrives at her apartment, it is well cleaned. Hangs her backpack on the hook in the bathroom, again. Yes, she has forgotten the pistol; it was going to go back to the cousin’s house of course. At the bottom of the backpack, wrapped in a towel, that too, as always.

  At that point she is so tired that she falls asleep with her clothes on, on the sofa in her tiny living room. Sleeps for a long time, without dreaming.

  And in the evening, he is there. At her door, ringing the bell. “Hey.” Newsstand toppler. She invites him in.

  •

  Newsstand toppler? One evening, a weekday a few weeks later, Maj-Gun Maalamaa is at Susette’s door. She has two trays of cat food, in cans, 2 × 24 in each, which she bought at the wholesale store where she actually should not be allowed to shop, not even for the newsstand, because all of the acquisitions at the newsstand are dealt with centrally by the Head Office. But Maj-Gun has been to the wholesale store anyway, with her wholesaler’s card, on the newsstand’s budget, in and of itself, on the Head Office’s behalf. Something in the stockroom that had run out, needed to be restocked quickly. Chewy ducks, small sweet troll hearts filled with truffel or the like which there is a rapid consumption of in certain seasons at her newsstand on the square in the town center. You barely have time to fill the minimal plastic bags in which the sweets are sold, five or ten in each, tied at the ends in knots, and they are sold out. So Maj-Gun has, in exceptional cases, been driven in the Head Office’s truck to the wholesaler in the industrial area on the outskirts of the city by the sea, from the newsstand and back.

  The cat food she had probably paid for with her own money at the wholesale shop: a whole load to drag around, the apostle’s horses, from the square almost half a mile past the new and the old cemeteries to the apartment complex where Susette lives in the hills above the town center.

  Filled with anecdotes from the day and similar days and the past days—it has been a while since Susette properly visited the newsstand in the evenings—Maj-Gun rings Susette’s doorbell in the D-block.

  •

  Susette opens and Maj-Gun walks in, “here,” giving the cat food cans to Susette and luring kitty kitty kitty but then she is already in the tiny living room and there is the Boy in the woods, he says “hi.”

  “The cat?” is the only thing Maj-Gun gets out, she is standing in the middle of the room. Susette, behind her, says that it is not there anymore, “It got run over.”

  There is a language that is called the Winter Garden. Pictures on the wall, soiled water colors and a sweetness in the room, stink, tobacco, sweat, beer.

  My love, pure and true.

  The surprise, the heartbreak. Maj-Gun, speechless, stumbles out.

  We can leave her here.

  •

  Maj-Gun and Susette, November 1989. They meet again, it is about a month later then, at the beginning of November, in the boathouse, the American girl’s hangout on the Second Cape. Snow is suddenly pouring down: in the morning, or maybe it was early afternoon, when Maj-Gun came down there to the boathouse, the ground was still bare, the hard wind, the waves were crashing against the other side of the pine forest grove. Cold, yes, but the freshness, the openness, coming there.

  To the boathouse, that is where she is, Maj-Gun Maalamaa, sleeping on the floor in the middle of the room among old junk; nah, nah, not exactly the leftovers of some old story, no remains like that either, meaningless now, so long ago. But things from the sea, fishing tackle, the like—a broken outboard motor that someone had thrown an old rug over. It is the rug Maj-Gun pulls over herself on the floor. Falls asleep, sleeps deeply, does not dream about anything in particular, about the square maybe, hayseeds at the square, pistol awakening with their revolvers, how they shot the empty tin cans. Not a dream you have been longing for either; one of these hayseeds had, earlier that morning, picked her up when she was wandering around in the town center and driven her out to the Second Cape and gotten rid of her after a brief exchange of words a few miles from the cousin’s house where she had later walked, and been there, before she came here.

  And when she wakes up on the floor in the boathouse it is almost with a smile about her dream, then she becomes aware of where she is, and the snow that is snowing now and—a dark shadow on the terrace. She crawls up, Susette turns around, and they discover each other at almost the same time, on either side of the window. Both of them just as surprised, it was not the intention after all, in no way was it arranged.

  Susette comes into the boathouse. Words are exchanged, maybe no words. But Susette who is just standing there, with her big empty eyes and Maj-Gun who attacks her, suddenly, hits and hits and hits. Things to add to the Winter Garden: Young man against a background of flames, 1952, was it in Rio de Janeiro? But in any case, that place, a hotel room, where Liz Maalamaa hit the wall for the first time, hamba hamba, the Girl from Borneo, she had bought one of those statues at the market, the one that flew out of her hand when she flew in the room, on top of the bed, the last thing Liz Maalamaa saw before she lost consciousness, everything went black, a portrait: young man against a background of flames, on a wall. Or did she see? Because in reality, when she came to again, there was only a bouquet of flowers in a vase on the wall and her husband was remorseful, bought her silver shoes, that was him. But Maj-Gun Maalamaa in the boathouse in the month of November 1989 who hits and hits: and Susette Packlén, little Susette Packlén, who does not put up a fight really, loses her balance, falls backward, hits her head on an anchor and just lies there. Already dusk now, Maj-Gun who leaves and walks out into the snow.

  And up in the cousin’s house, on the other side of the grove of pine trees, the Boy in the woods. He is lying on the floor in a room as well, in blood.

  Walk walk in whiteness and walk in whirling snow that shrouds you, walk walk walk in the snow.

  THE ANIMAL CHILD AND THE LAW (THE GIRL FROM BORNEO)

  (Maj-Gun Maalamaa, November 1989–January 1990)

  LIZ MAALAMAA AND THE ROSES

  TO THE WINTER GARDEN: a rose, a type of rose. Flaming Carmen/Carmen in flames.

  One of the types that Tobias Forsström is going to try to cultivate in the greenhouse.

  Liz Maalamaa did not like roses. Or maybe “didn’t like” is too strong.

  But she had no relation to roses.

  Sometimes, of course, she thought about roses. She had a romantic side too, of course, don’t we all?

  But in reality, not roses either, in that way (there had been lilies of the valley in her wedding bouquet, she had liked the simplicity). But when she thought about roses, this is how she thought about roses:

  The roses had the look of flowers that are looked at, that is how she thought, on the one hand, like T. S. Eliot (in later years she read a bit of poetry, but in other words not much, scant).

  Liz Maalamaa was more robustly inclined, her dreams had been concrete ones. For example, comfortable shoes, and China.

  On the other hand, a proverb. Life is also a dance on a bed of roses.

  A strange proverb, because roses, they prick of course, whether you sleep on them or not.

  And in time, because she had thought about it mostly when she was young, she understood that it was a rather universal wonder. She was not the only one who had thought about it either.

  But roses, in general. Carmen in Flames. Flaming Carmen. Would have been altogether too… for her.

  THE GIRL FROM BORNEO, 2

  SHE CAME FROM BORNEO, she dances there, in the docklands. “The Girl from Borneo,” it was an amulet, that was where Maj-Gun had gotten the idea to call herself the Girl from Borneo in that hamba hamba Day of Desire dance. Woman with slanted eyes, dark hair, and flamenco skirts. A gift to her niece, her goddaughter Majjunn, from the aunt sometime when Maj-Gun was younger too. A souvenir from Rio de Janeiro where the aunt and her husband went on their honeymoon, a round-the-world trip with some cruises, it might have been 1952 (the silver shoes were from Rio de Janeiro too).

  So she, the amulet
figure, was not from Borneo at all. Maj-Gun had made the name up. Inspired in turn by another story that in turn will inspire her a great deal later, later in her early twenties when she leaves her parental home, her possessions in a seaman’s chest a third of a mile from the rectory down to the town center where her first rented room is located—she has the amulet with her then as well. She is, in any case, thinking like that, then. A story like that, so amusing… but it does not turn out like that of course.

  It is, in other words, that story, a story about two houses, down in the town center. In the suburbs, below the square where she later starts working at the newsstand. Tall, white houses, “colonial architecture,” a bit of the American Deep South style, so maybe not very much of the Southern Pacific in them really. But the South Pacific houses is what they are called, Java and Sumatra—those are their names too. And at some point in her childhood, Maj-Gun and her brother Tom have in a passing sort of way spoken about those unusually beautiful houses. “Twin houses” because they are identical in plan and construction—and completely different from all of the other small picturesque buildings around, which come later.

  Probably a hundred years old, two captains lived there. They were brothers, confirmed bachelors, who had sailed the seas to strange countries and had gotten to see so many strange things. Like the South Pacific islands, Java, Borneo, Sumatra. Come home, leave the harbor, try and relive their beautiful memories here. It does not really work, there are just occasional photographs, black and white, barely that kind even, and if they exist they are rather meaningless. Function mainly as documentation; I was there but otherwise no real life or real feeling in them. But Negro in Sunshine, hanging breasts on dark patinated native women, almost naked, next to White Man in the Tropical Hat, pulled down properly so that you cannot even see the eyes.

  It wasn’t like that. So the captains built these houses instead and lived there for the rest of their days, each on his own hill across from each other. They had been confirmed bachelors, both of them, had no blood offspring, but one of them got married to his housekeeper in his later years, a Ms. Lindström who was a widow with her own children, and when the captain passed away the Sumatra house went to the Lindström family—and Göran Lindström, one of the sons and eventually also a teacher at the school, would later, in addition to his wife Gunilla and their children, take it over.

  It turned out that the other captain had been a bit in debt, so after his death the Java house had to be sold at a compulsory auction; it was purchased at the end of the ’50s by an engineering family named Packlén.

  The Girl from Borneo, that is where the journey leads, from the rectory to Java and Sumatra. First to Java, later, as it turns out, it is not planned but is a coincidence, in reality to Sumatra. The seaman’s chest with her possessions loaded onto a wheelbarrow that she pushes a few blocks over the cobblestones, from the one house to the other.

  And of course, it should have been a nice story to tell, rather amusing too, even beautiful—because those two houses really were beautiful, white with bright attic rooms that would become her room in each house. And nice people there too: Packlén who cut rug rags in Java, and Lindström, the teacher’s family, in Sumatra. So, in a way, she really would have been able to get on well there.

  But it was funny. Because at the same time as she was supposed to be in this funny story, the Girl from Borneo—not the Harlot anymore, but the Seaman, with the seaman’s chest—it started falling apart for her. But not so that the story itself would betray her; it would go on as usual, Borneo and Java and Sumatra—but her personally. Suddenly there was no room in it. Or another room—but which one?—other than the one she had planned for herself.

  It was in the attic room in Java where it all started. She had come there with her books, compendiums, was going to study for the entrance exams at the university. There turned out not to be so much studying after all, and the letters she wrote to her brother who was eagerly studying and dynamically interested in his major—these letters where she vividly and humorously was describing her journey, from Borneo to the South Pacific Islands and yet it was still just ha-ha-ha the town center, the District! Just that way—think, Java, now that I’ve arrived here… yes, they had rarely, gradually never, been finished, and besides, she had very quickly stopped writing to her brother altogether.

  All of that in and of itself might be meaningless, but still funny, which only her brother, she thought, would be able to understand. Was forgotten. Even the interesting information that the woman, who often sat in the kitchen on the ground floor in Java, was the mother of the big-eyed Susette Packlén from the cemetery, your first girlfriend!, which when she figured that out, she really thought she would be able to take pleasure in it—to be able to write that, to Tom!—yes, even that started feeling meaningless before she even had the energy to get out her light pink stationery.

  But still, despite everything: it was meaningful anyway, what happened in Java, even if from the outside, it looked liked nothing was happening. A slightly crazy woman who cut rug rags and talked about things like death and grief—but in a particular way, which was absolutely impossible to recreate or communicate directly afterward, just a feeling of something real, almost completely revolutionary in Maj-Gun Maalamaa’s life. And it had such an effect on her—in addition to the fact that she and the woman who would die just a few years later became good friends—that everything changed. She threw away, stopped thinking about—in her head that is—everything, all stories, all amusing things, anything smart, all the thises thats from her fantasy, rather started writing, something simple, honest, real. And that is what she did in the attic room, summers, winters when she was not at the newsstand or with the woman on the first floor, wrote and wrote and it was to darkness and to light it was to everything and back and forth, but there it was, worlds opened. And were imposed with meaning, another light—her personally, about her, everything she saw—

  And did not see. The woman died, the big-eyed one came home, Susette Packlén, then they almost became friends. A while, something with Susette, always with Susette… yes something, something called forth in Maj-Gun… something she wanted to get to and was frightened by… no, it could not be explained, but a driving force… to that in particular, there it was, like with the woman with the rug rags in the kitchen, Susette’s mother, entirely real, realistic.

  But then she was in Sumatra, and for many years already. And had lost a thread, a rag, while at the same time she had all the threads, rags in her hand—wrote and wrote, further, but all of the stories just multiplied in her head. And at the newsstand and in “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings” where she sometimes wrote down this and sometimes the other, “useful,” my statements or whatever it was—it multiplied, but there it was, I am without space, it did not exist. And she had to get to it, could not live without it.

  And then Susette was there again, a big-eyed one, who was a connection, because among all the stories she had in her head, everything she had dragged out of herself, all of the this and that and the Literature, the Critics, with the new landlords, Gunilla, Göran, art was suddenly happening here, in this house like starry-eyed listeners in the house, so that was what she gradually started telling Susette, the rag cutter woman’s daughter, which was the only real thing—and yet that realness did not exist in what was told. Strange? Yes? Because she would become angry at Susette later, and kill her.

  Out of love, another story, which suddenly, even though it was not real, also was. All the feelings, everything that flew past, just sitting… Because it was also like that with all of these stories, even though they were a façade for what was real, it was there, so they started, like the story about the Girl from Borneo from Java to Sumatra, to affect her too.

  Anyway, confused. Anyway, she got on very well in Sumatra. Better than anywhere else, after the rectory—she loved the children, and Göran and Gunilla. That is what it was like—well. Maybe this should not be investigated further here, it just was like tha
t. Strange. But in the end, a confusing fall, it is this fall 1989, led up to the horrible, the horrible thing that has now happened and that is irrevocable, thus she has been sitting there in Göran and Gunilla’s kitchen serving them stories about the Girl from Borneo as if on a silver platter, and they have been enjoying it so. How beautiful, the seaman, the seaman’s chest…

  And of course how beautiful. But what would she do with that story now? And everything else, which she has, as it were, gotten herself mixed up in? Nothing worked. Yes, except maybe. Follow the story line to the end, in order to find the beginning of another story, her own, if afterward—a story that is about losing everything and winning everything but then not knowing what you should do with any of it. Complicated? Metaphysical? Maybe. “We aren’t much for the metaphysical,” as her brother Tom will tell her later in life when they, after a great deal of shilly-shallying, renew their brother-sister bond for real, and then Maj-Gun is able to start a future, become a lawyer, the Red One, become skinny, after the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible, and have her own life, with her own independent rooms to live in.

  Well, follow the story line to its end. And then this is not the least bit metaphysical. Just the Girl from Borneo, the Happy Harlot, or the Seaman (and she threw that amulet away somewhere a long time ago of course—does not exist). Because in the final chapter of that story the following now happens: the shipwreck.

  And if you have been shipwrecked then you have been shipwrecked, you have come from nowhere to nowhere, are no one—someone who is clinging to a nearby piece of driftwood and lets go.

  THE SHIPWRECK

  Experiences from the apartment. She becomes the Animal Child. Peering into the darkness. In that apartment, an apartment complex on the hills above the town center. November 1989. Three–four days maybe, does not keep track of the time when she is there. The Animal Child is timelessness, notime.