She is alone there. The pictures on the walls.
“The Winter Garden.” That “exhibition.” At one point in time this was a lovers’ nest, abandoned now, has not been taken down. She does not see the pictures. Was in a story once. The Boy in the woods. There are no stories here, nothing and notime.
She has turned off all of the lights. She is in the dark. The Animal Child’s peering eyes. Dark dots in a darkness. Waiting, different kinds of waiting, rumbling in the pipes in the building, the building is an organism.
Snowfall, slush, rain, snowfall, rain, decay.
Tear apart, “I’m fascinated by the Death in her,” “the manuscript of a life.” Tear, rip into pieces, and “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.”
The wolf, the folk song. A cassette tape from another room. From room to room to room.
Tearing to pieces. Time. Cat food. Sirens, ambulances, police cars, blue lights, waiting, different types of waiting.
•
Later she is in another apartment. Music surges there in the evenings: Carmen. Ratata. Lucia di Lammermoor’s aria of craziness, it is eight minutes long. At a low volume, in the background, but the walls in the apartment are thin, all noises can easily be heard. The Manager—it is his apartment—has carried his stereo into the room next door: a simple gadget, a small portable record player, two plastic boxes for speakers. He is the one on the other side of the door, which is closed in the evenings, reading, working. Using his small nightstand as a workspace since the desk is in the other room, or his bed, a lot of papers, books, spread around him. She has glanced in.
There is also a dining table in the room she is in, a television, and a sofa bed where she sleeps in a sleeping bag at night, on top of clean sheets. A bookshelf with many books. History and Progress, We Are the Future, Architecture and Crime, a lot of titles fly by. Nordic Family Book, an encyclopedia, several volumes, “half French,” a funny term that pops into her head, from the rectory, another context. Pushes it away, or pushes, does not push—however it is, not consciously. Gardening books, books about butterflies, insects, birds, a herbarium for collecting plants.
They eat their evening meals in this apartment at the dining table at five thirty in the evening when the Manager has come home from work. Watch the news. At quarter past six and eight thirty, both newscasts.
Sometimes the Manager is on the telephone out in the hall, the door is closed, the music in his room is playing. He speaks softly, she cannot make out what he is saying.
Sleeps. A lot. She falls asleep as soon as she rests her head on the pillow with its fresh pillowcase. To the music, Carmen, Lucia, faint in the background. Sleeps calmly without dreaming, long nights, like a child.
The Manager moves carefully around the apartment, does not want to disturb her. “Have a good rest.” She rests.
But the waiting. On the television police cars can be heard, sirens—ambulances. Susette’s empty eyes. When are you coming to get her? Justice. The law. She has no plans to escape.
She does not ask because she is mute, but the Manager just says in general that she does not need to explain if she does not want to.
The waiting. Time is passing. Nothing happens. You get used to it. The waiting. Becomes more abstract with time.
•
She is alone in the apartment during the day. After a while she discovers that it resembles the other apartment, the one she was in for several days. Rather quite the same, but where you had a wall in the other one here there is a door that leads to a room where she is now allowed to stay. The very biggest room, with the bookshelf and the sofa and the television. And a balcony facing the town center.
The building is located on a high hill, the apartment is on the fourth floor, you can see quite a ways.
When she gets more energy, she huddles on the balcony, wrapped in blankets, smoking. Cigarettes the Manager gives her: he has a pack, Marlboro, which he bought on a cruise to give to guests, he explains, he does not smoke.
“And now it is coming in handy.”
Smokes, looks through the railing on the balcony on the side, the church with the rectory, the cemetery, the old side and the new side, a ways away.
And straight ahead, as said, maybe a third of a mile, the town center. The jumble of buildings, houses, shops. The square in the middle, a square, well lit.
Cannot be seen, but it is there.
And she does not look toward the town center, sits, as said, on the floor of the balcony, keen on not being seen, not seeing, wrapped in blankets, smoking, huddled.
But the square. It is there after all. The square that is empty for the most part, sometimes a car drives up on it. Hayseeds, “the pistol awakening,” in their vehicles, farmers’ Mercedes-Benzes, all of the fathers’ rusty Toyotas and the like. Driving around around on the square, in wide circles, or tighter ones.
And at the newsstand then. Her personally, on the stool behind the counter in the middle of her busy business. Among the lottery tickets, magazines, and games: not many customers came, especially not during the “wintertime” which included all but three months during the summer.
And then: Ciiiiigarette break! Took the pack of cigarettes from the shelf under the counter where she kept her own things: “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” makeup bag, wallet. Three steps down to the entrance, pushed the door open, lit up.
Hayseeds, if they were still at the square, honking, giving the finger. And she, if she was in that kind of a mood, flipped them off too. Windows rolled down, impertinences, and she, sometimes, yelled back.
The cars disappeared, the sounds of the engines died out; though sometimes, a while later, they were back.
Someone who came walking across the square. A girl from the high school, in fashionable clothes and who, when the cars were suddenly there again circling around her in wide circles, around around, came to a standstill, like Madonna, think about what Madonna has done for fashion Like a Virgin heavy crosses around her neck, in the middle. Nose in the air, eyes looking up. As if: above all of this, toward life, the future whatever, which was around the corner anyway if you just finished grade school, high school, and got out of this hole.
Someone else. Her with the big eyes. The globes. Susette Packlén. Not that young either, your own age. Still, at a distance, so small, minimal. Jeans, cowboy boots—boots.
Surrounded by the cars too. Stood and pretended nothing was happening so to speak. But frozen, not invincible.
And Maj-Gun, suddenly gripped by a feeling of recognition, liked what was inside her so much. And remembered: they knew each other, youth. Rug rags.
Susette who was looking ahead and straight at her. Maj-Gun who waved, “Come.” Or did she wave? In any case, the cars left, Susette came. The one did not follow the other, that the cars would have left just because of that, like cause-effect, but in some way, that was what it felt like.
“I reeled in the fear.” Reeled in Susette. And the quotes pouring out of her mouth.
“A small poor child I am, in cowboy boots, boots. Wow, Susette. The way you look. Do you have any idea what kind of signals you’re sending out?”
A big smile, neither of them could keep from laughing. And how the quote had just plopped out of her, cracked lips, dry mouth, as if she had not spoken for a long time, maybe she had not. And all of the rest suddenly, the stories, were brought to life.
Susette’s round eyes, lifeless in the middle of the laughter. Or empty: you had to fill them in yourself, quite a lot. Those globes. A whole world.
But then, on the balcony. The next memory that rushes in here exactly now, nothing else in between. Susette in the boathouse on the Second Cape. The American girl’s hangout. The same eyes that just stared at Maj-Gun. Stared and stared, surprised but so to speak confirming. As she, Maj-Gun, hit and hit. And Susette who fell and fell and fell.
And snow. Whirling. Her there later, slipping on the cliffs. And beyond, out into the whiteness.
•
It was from there, from t
he Second Cape, that she had come to the first apartment. Opened the door with a key she had begged off the Manager somewhat earlier. From this Manager. Perhaps several days beforehand in real time, but still an eon. Spoken about a friend who was away and Maj-Gun had promised to water the plants. Stood outside the Manager’s door in the Manager’s building, this complex where the apartment she is in now is located, and showed off like she had a habit of showing off to him at the newsstand, she knew that he liked it. “Just because you’re a count doesn’t mean…” Dot dot dot. Or whatever she had said, picked a page at random from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.” “Susette! Look here!” and the old man with his lottery tickets had been delighted. He had also known they were friends too of course, she and Susette Packlén from the apartment complex where he was the Manager. He had seen them together at the newsstand.
But then that evening, when she arrived at the other apartment straight from the boathouse, it was, as said, another time. No time, not even the Animal Child’s, because it began to be born there again, later, in the darkness. There, in the apartment, where she had waited. First waited in one way, later in another, but both ways had effectively kept her from making a reality out of all the wild plans she had. The “Getawaybag” she had packed in her rented room before heading off, killer rabbit on a killer journey (that was how she had felt, but not at all amusing). A few blouses, makeup stuff, two pairs of underwear, and the Gombrowicz journals that a book editor thought she should read at some point, “how you can use self-pity productively, carry it to the extreme,” but what was this now really, travel reading?
What was in her bag was forgotten. The bag was forgotten. Rug rags. Discovers a multipurpose knife in this bag later, a knife with many uses, for example as a can opener. Useful.
When she was there, in that apartment, the telephone had rung a few times. She only answered once. That was the first evening, or maybe it was already night.
Susette’s employer, Solveig Torpeson.
She had said loud and clear to Solveig that Susette was sick. Angina. Throat was swollen, could not come to the telephone herself but her friend Maj-Gun was there taking care of her so there was nothing to worry about, “she’s sleeping now,” and they had an appointment at the clinic first thing in the morning so that Susette would get medicine for the streptococcus and a doctor’s note to present to her employer regarding her statutory sick leave.
She had also said that Susette would call when she was feeling better.
It surprised her how the words were formed into lies and how the lies carried her. Carried her voice also, how, from speaking, it became that much higher and more definite, climbing to a story. Statutory sick leave. In another situation she would have laughed but now there was nothing to laugh about.
She never wanted to hear that voice again.
Scenes to add to the Winter Garden: Susette lying on the floor in the boathouse. Blood running from the corner of her mouth.
“If you weren’t so curled up in your own suffering, Susette.”
She had hung up the phone and stood in the darkness in the apartment for a while and looked out the window. The snow had turned to rain and she suddenly understood exactly what it was she had understood in the moment she told Solveig on the telephone that Susette was “sleeping now.” Hey. Impossible. Susette.
She would not be coming back.
She had turned on all of the lights in the apartment. The Winter Garden. That Winter Garden, “the exhibitions” on the walls.
The hacienda must be built. Kapu kai, the forbidden seas, a blue girl on a cliff, a scream. But she had not looked at it. The Boy in the woods. My great love, pure and clean, et cetera. Not that either. Turned on a lamp, turned it off, on off, blink blink blink.
Finally, she turned off all the lights and did not turn them on again the rest of the time she was in the apartment.
The Animal Child peering into the darkness. And did not open the door when the doorbell had rung and stopped answering the phone.
•
Drank water, lived on water that flooded out of the faucet. And when she got hungry she ate cat food: there were two packs of unopened cans, 2 × 24 cans in each, still wrapped in plastic that she tore open, hacking the lids open with a knife—the rag scissors, rusty blood with white hairs, were lying on a shelf in the pantry, she got it on her hand when she was looking for a weapon to open the cans: could not be used, she put it in her bag, get rid of it.
Bent open the lids and ate with her fingers directly from the can. Tasted like shit, of course, but when hunger struck hunger struck. There was a hunger that could not be checked, the one that came in fits and needed to be silenced despite the fact that it turned into nausea right after. She had not thrown up. Strained in order to hold back the gagging, hold back the food in her. More water, that helped.
But: it had been surprising, this unruly seed of life that existed inside her, like an instinct. Had not really been able to relate to it. Though, naturally, that she had started reflecting on it at all was a sign—then some time had already passed.
The telephone rang. The pictures on the walls. A body of water reveals itself in the woods. The Winter Garden. The hacienda must be built. Kapu kai. Words that went inside her, meant nothing. A blue girl on a cliff. Hand over her mouth—a scream.
Sirens, ambulances, shouts, from outside.
Justice, according to the Law. She waited. Nothing happened. It did not come.
At some point she started cleaning a little, took the pictures down from the walls, placed them in her bag in the hall, just away. That getawaybag, it was as if she had discovered it again, properly. Put the pictures in her bag. Not for any particular reason, just not to have them there in front of her eyes. Because it was upsetting.
And when she saw the bag in the hall it hit her. That it had been there the whole time. It had just been a matter of opening the door, heading on her way.
Right then the doorbell had rung again, voices could be heard on the stairs, a key was in the lock, and she ran ran back into the apartment. Huddled in a corner of the sofa.
That was how the Manager found her. The Animal Child. The surprise, the disgust. But he had immediately come to his senses there out in the open, returned to the stairwell, she heard how he spoke calmly to some grumpy hag, everything was in order, shooshed the woman away—later he would tell Maj-Gun it was a neighbor who had complained about the noise in the bathroom. This week in particular the building’s super was on vacation and the Manager was filling in and when no one answered the telephone or opened the door when she rang the bell, the neighbor had gone to him.
The Manager had closed the front door, come back into the room and taken her away from there. Spoken to her calmly, carefully, and wordlessly, she allowed herself to be convinced, followed along.
To his apartment in another building, next door. And there he had gotten some real food into her, gotten clean clothes on her. Men’s boxers, men’s socks and washed-out overalls, green and wide, but made of jersey cotton, comfortable and soft. Her own clothes thrown in the washing machine.
But the very first thing had been to run a hot bath for her in the bathroom. And then she lay there in the tub and listened intently to all of the sounds outside. On the one hand, all of her senses on alert, the Manager’s low voice in the hall, he was talking on the telephone. The police? Lain there and imagined scenes, how she would give herself up. Just the handcuffs on. Guilty, guilty. On the other hand, nodded off in the warmth, the water. Woke again when the Manager knocked on the door and when she came out of the bathroom in the overalls he had made up a bed for her in the sofa bed in the small living room that had become hers.
In a sleeping bag, clean sheets beneath.
NAH. Tobacco, the balcony, the square in her head, “the square, the square”—this huddling in blankets on the floor of the balcony, suddenly she could not stand it.
•
When the Manager comes home from work that day she says she is t
hinking about quitting smoking. Marlboro, it is not even her brand. But does not matter. She has been thinking about quitting anyway. He becomes happy, he smiles.
“Senseless to ruin your health when you’re so young.” She shrugs. “It gives me a bad taste. And I’m not young. Soon it will be Holy Innocents’ Day. I’ll be thirty.”
These have been the first sensible words to come out of her mouth in that apartment, after days, maybe more than a week, a sentence with coherence. And “djeessu—” automatically following it, whistling it through her teeth, she stops herself. And grows silent.
A fraction of a second, how the Manager’s mouth twitches. As if in laughter, as if he actually, here and now, in this situation, a long way from the newsstand, likes what she has said.
“Now you’re starting to become yourself again.” As if he wanted to say it. Like in the newsstand, all of those times she had said something funny to him when he looked like he wanted to pinch her cheek. But naturally, he does not. Tousles her hair, lightly, when he walks by, turns on the TV. “The news is on.”
“I give up. Unconditionally.” She is on the verge of saying it to the Manager—
Police cars, sirens.
They watch TV, the news.
Two newscasts. The one a little past six, the one at eight thirty.
But the Manager, justice, the law, where is it? The Manager plays on his side of the wall, Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor.
Current events, sirens. The waiting. More abstract. Weeks which pass; it has become Christmas.
•
A small plastic tree with plastic balls and glitter and electric lights in different colors. The Manager retrieves it from the basement where he keeps it stored and the two cardboard angels with hair made of yarn in a cardboard box marked CHRISTMAS THINGS.
Places the Christmas tree on the desk, the angels on the television set. Homemade angels, the work of kids, you can see that, not very nice at all.
The Glitter Scene Page 19