The Glitter Scene

by Monika Fagerholm

  But the aunt had often caught him red-handed and as a punishment for his disobedience he was forced to scrub the sink in the bathroom with a dish brush and detergent. Small, horrid paper edging to glue on the tiles above the same sink. “Remember to wash the washbasin after every use!!! That goes for Tom too!” That strip was taken down when the aunt went home again; Mama Inga-Britta had not wanted to hurt the aunt’s feelings while the aunt was there but she thought the paper edgings made the furnishings look terrible. And yes, maybe they did.

  But the Day of Desire, the Happy Harlot. For Maj-Gun, his sister, the game had not remained in the room, at the rectory. She had to take it with her. To the Cemetery. And how Tom, her brother, had been ashamed, disgusted, been angry, angry at her—because at that time they had not even been children anymore, teenagers. His shame, his fury, had naturally just egged on his sister even more, though he truly understood that only afterward, as an adult. And how everything had become even worse for a while, combined with his sister’s jealousy when he got his first girlfriend and she, the sister, who in and of herself was always at loggerheads with him otherwise too, still had, as it were, become more alone and kept to herself. Had been a peculiar one among the teenagers in the District, a rather quiet one of course, nothing that reached the ears of the adults. How Maj-Gun Maalamaa “held court” at the cemetery. But inside her, no shame. It had been her idea from the beginning, she had held to that when he, her brother, in various ways, tried to explain to her the disgust he felt.

  In any case. Gone. And they, he and Maj-Gun, as said, have set it aside, a long time ago. Nothing to talk about. And she is someone else now, a lawyer like him, and he can, for example, admire her because she left at the beginning of a brilliant career; quit her job at one of those awful family law firms, one of those with “a good reputation” that tend to be the very worst, and started working with law and justice for real, as the director of a legal assistance bureau in the northern region of the country. His sister, Maj-Gun. Another, but still the same. Because the Disgust. No. When he thought about it later sometimes, as an adult, he realized that it had for the most part been about him when they were young. That he had been ashamed and irritated on his own behalf. Because still, always, his sister: such a purity in her.

  But despite everything, this should be interposed in the context: Tom Maalamaa has also sometimes felt a certain relief and gratefulness that his own children do not seem to take after either his sister or himself in that respect. Children completely of their time, in step with everything. The oldest, Karl-Olof, sixteen years old, badminton champion and fencing champion and soccer player and popular among his friends at the boarding school in Canada where he goes to school; like a fish in water, here, there, everywhere, and it is not hard won—is planning on beginning his studies in international relations and political theory at some esteemed university in the United States or England. And Mikael, the middle child, who when he was younger you might have worried a bit about: trouble concentrating at home, at school, not far from an ADHD diagnosis at one point—had suddenly on his own found an outlet for all of this extra energy and restlessness. Computer games. Now earns money from his hobby even though he is not more than fifteen years old: plays and tests games for a large gaming company. Yes yes, too good to be true, you can almost laugh, but it is true, is completely true. And then the youngest, Elizabeth Ida, named after the aunt, twelve years old but seems young for her age. How calm, how sweet, with her stuffed animals, her dolls, her small friends who visit her and whom she visits. Elizabeth Ida: not the center of the party but always invited to them, Little Miss Friendly, that type. Crawls up in her father’s lap in the evenings. He tells her stories. She, big eyed, listens. Well. They outgrow you too, the kids. Because the stories, Tom cannot help but break into a smile when he thinks about it more deeply. Stories: despite everything it has been quite a while ago now with Elizabeth Ida. How she, all of the kids, are growing, outgrowing you.

  “I just want our children to be happy and well-balanced people,” his wife has a habit of saying sometimes. And Tom agrees. Small individuals, all of them. To see your children develop into that, a privilege. “Well-balanced.” Tom Maalamaa particularly likes hearing her, his wife, say that. Has always had a certain forgetfulness about her, a kind of absence, sometimes, like… not with major things—but the worst in that respect was when the children were younger and she forgot them in a park in Rio de Janeiro. Just forgot, came home, but there was something she had forgotten. After that they hired an aupairgirl: Sonja, Anna, and the last in a line for a few years, Gertrude.

  But she cried after that, his wife, and how she had cried. It was that Sorrow which existed in her too that he had never really understood and gradually he was able to admit that to her openly as well; in the beginning he had a guilty conscience. “You don’t need to understand,” she once said, with that endless gentleness that exists within her. And it had been a relief, as said, and in some way, even though it sounded like the opposite but it was not, had brought him and his wife, Tom and Susette, even closer together. And she has gone to therapy, many years, and it has, according to herself, helped her.

  But maybe it belongs to her character, to sometimes go somewhere else, as it were, to Sorrow’s Room, or whatever it is, maybe it is a part of their life together—of that unnamed bond that exists between two people who neither can nor want to live without each other. An integrated part of their way of being with each other, but unnamed—quite simply because there are no words for it. Like in Portugal, in the month of December 1989. They had spent a few weeks there, with the aunt who became ill and happened to pass away while they were visiting.

  It was that month of December that they had started being together again, had found their way back to each other. She had cried then too, in Portugal, not come out into the sun where he had been, on the patio. But taken care of the aunt like an angel those last days, so in that way certainly been present in situations where presence is required; she had cried in spare moments and at night.

  But when the aunt died there were other things to think about: everything that needed to be done, repatriation of the body, all of the practicalities, and then she had livened up again, jumped into it whole-heartedly. And when they had come home again she took a pregnancy test, it was positive, they have always spoken about their first child, Karl-Olof, as a love child who came to them, in Portugal.

  But the Sorrow inside her—that was her word, though it is highly likely that it originated from the therapist, the therapists. Or “long-term depression,” but in that case he preferred the Sorrow, a sorrow with an element he referred to as appealing, which moved him so deeply it was almost terrifying.

  “We met at the cemetery,” she would sometimes say, but with a laugh, because she could joke about her melancholy as well.

  Which could of course still stir certain guilty feelings in him, even if his wife was not aware of it, even needed to be aware of it, all of the details surrounding it. In other words, that game which led to him getting to know her, during childhood. And how messed up he had been at that time. The game that started everything, another crazy one he and his sister Maj-Gun had, out of frustration, devoted themselves to as children, like dogs and cats they had been, running around together when they were not allowed to be at the rectory and he had not been able to sneak in again because his sister had pulled him with her, down to the cemetery, and had a mask with her—they called the mask “Liz Maalamaa,” “the Angel of Death,” or “Liz Maalamaa the Angel of Death.” Many names, though rather alike and secret. But papa Pastor, whom they needed to be kept hidden from most of all since the aunt was his sister, had of course in some way found out about them anyway and become furious. As if the complaints that reached him via the caretaker at the cemetery had not been enough: that his children were running around scaring people with the mask.

  They had received the mask as a gift from the aunt, from there the nicknames. It was supposed to represent the face of
a movie star, probably Ava Gardner, dark haired, sharp facial features, but the special and terrible thing about it was that when you strapped the mask to your face you looked terrifying—would become afraid if you saw yourself in the mirror.

  Not the least bit funny, actually. Not the mask, not the secret names for it. So to speak when the aunt came up, he and his sister, lying on the bed in his room talking about all the money they would inherit from her, whose godchildren they were, after the aunt’s death; her husband had died at some point during that childhood, they had no children of their own and the husband had been tremendously rich.

  As luck would have it no one had listened to him and his sister THEN. No one in the world because IT had been the height of childishness, a true manifestation of killing time in the musty summer day, without energy: that aunt, she had been okay, both siblings liked her despite her fervor for cleaning toilets when she came to visit the rectory and that she was so determined that instead of reading real bedtime stories she would sit on the edge of their beds one after the other and paint stories about various imaginary missionary exploits in China, “the wonderful Middle Kingdom”—where she had, as said, never been, despite the fact that the couple had traveled around the world several times with various fine cruise ships. Life is a cruise, she used to say; but then toward the end it had really gotten soiled, her husband’s final years, his spare time spent going back and forth on the Sweden–Finland ferry where he drank himself to death.

  But Tom’s future wife, Susette born Packlén, had, in other words, been at the cemetery as a child, come there accompanied by her mother and brought flowers to the graves. Those eyes back then too—and somewhat later, as a teenager, she became his first girlfriend and he the first boyfriend for her too.

  But wait now, first this. The Angel of Death. That was what they had called her. He and his sister Maj-Gun, when they were together. The girl who came to the cemetery with her mother, with flowers they had picked from the meadow that became the new side of the cemetery later on. The girl who filled jars with water at the water hydrant, placed the flowers in them. Big eyes. “Have you seen those globes?” he asked his sister. “Should we scare her?” And she galloped ahead, his sister, and he followed after her. Wearing the mask—but the girl was not afraid. Maj-Gun said to him later, “Death is not afraid of Death,” and they laughed. That is why she had for a time in private been called the Angel of Death by the two siblings. But he had of course too, in private, alone, without saying anything to his sister, immediately taken a liking to the girl with the big eyes. Not because of the Angel of Death, but because of who she was. Calm, a bit lost. Something steady in here, anyway. And a few years later he started dating her.

  “I’m fascinated by the Death in her,” he had admittedly solemnly recited back then for his jealous sister, which he actually had not meant a word of. Because he had been embarrassed of course, shy. In the presence of everyone. In the presence of himself. The infatuation. Which there had been no words for. Then not inside him in any case And, dear Lord. What an unbearable person he had been, in public. What could be seen of him. As a person. “Old age,” which Maj-Gun talks about. Yes, yes, certainly.

  Had gone around wearing a suit and a tie in school and a bow tie at festive occasions and cuff links and the like. God knows why. It had not exactly brought him closer to “friends” his own age at school for example. Not rejected, bullied, just off to the side. As if he wanted to, in some way, prove a point about something, but what this point was would be unclear, completely hidden in the mist, which would have been completely clear if someone had pushed him up against a wall and asked about it in detail—or “interrogated,” which is how he certainly personally would have described the matter at that time. No one had done so, none of his classmates exactly enjoyed getting into a discussion with him: he could debate, follow a line of reasoning, already then. In a way that was truly overbearing too, an overbearance that he would consciously eliminate when he got to the university. It had been easy. On the other hand, he found his place then and was so much more content with life and with himself, in general. Was incredibly interested in his studies from the beginning, it was also something that swallowed him up. So the smugness had disappeared; he knew what he was going to do, and now instead perhaps a bit exaggeratedly but still, almost a humility, a leniency started revealing itself in him. He could move and carry himself in company, deal with people which, granted, had carried and would continue to carry him far in his career.

  But “I’m fascinated by the Death in her.” His solemn words to his sister at the rectory. He could barely think about it now. Of course he had not said it to poor Susette personally, not then and not ever. That would certainly have scared the life out of her from the beginning—or no, incidentally, despite that appeal, that Sorrow, whatever it was, there was something in her that did not yield. But it would without a doubt have called forth a coloring in their relationship from the beginning, transformed it into something it was not.

  There as teenagers in his room at the rectory they had listened to music. Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. He remembers that, truly, even if he does not want to. Those pretentions in him. During the pauses he had spoken when the record was finished playing. Not many words as luck would have it, which quite simply also depended on his rather great shyness and strong timidity. He had not known, of course, what he should say to her, just wanted to be with her, so much. But what had come out of his mouth, however spare, insufferable. “Consciousness of life” and “consciousness of death,” which were united in an “intricate way” in Mahler’s Ninth, which was playing on and off on the record player. “Gustav Mahler’s music says more about the nature of emotion than all philosophers.” Elegant? Terrible. And maybe she had understood that intuitively, nodded (but submissively), absent as it were but still agreeing, in other words. But sought to be closer to him, his body, like a kitten.

  Was this romantic? “All of us were young once.” And that fumbling, clumsiness. Yes, he could think like that. But he has still never been able to listen to Gustav Mahler after that.

  And will never—incidentally—listen to Gustav Mahler again. With Susette they do not listen to very much music, have never done so. Sometimes they go out dancing. Just the two of them, she and he. Tango, salsa, Latin. Transformed in the dance. Good together. And the nights afterward.

  That night 1989, seventeen years ago, when they started being together again, for real, in reality, she had called him. He had driven through the darkness after her, the same time of year, the same darkness, as now. But in snow. Here, now, no snow, just black black on the ground, everywhere. An appalling whirl of snow then and she had said on the telephone that she did not know where she was, but was on a road, and had been very upset, he had to come after her. Had been difficult to find out exactly where she was, but he had not hesitated for a second. Borrowed a former classmate’s car—Peter Bäckström’s, incidentally, the one they are going to visit now, and his family in Rosengården 2 where they are driving down the avenues to the right address—and yes, he, Tom, had found her in the end.

  That night when he had picked her up in the snow, on the side of the road, in this area (as said, she was also from here, so that was not strange), and seen her, a small figure with a Fjällräven backpack on the side of the road in the snow, in the light of the headlights, he had known not only that she had been found, but he as well.

  And not many words were needed after that, that had been clear. She had tried to speak, said, “I’ll do everything for you. I’ll—” Repay? No, she had not said it like that, not that word, there were no complicated words like that inside her, had never been, and also, for that reason, how he loved loves her.

  But that had been her message, she was worn out: bloody, beaten, but appealed quietly and determined for a promise that he would never ask about it—but, she pointed out, no one had done anything to her. She would go to therapy, never talk about what happened, otherwise. Otherwise she would not be
able to… live?

  She had not needed to say that. He had promised, just as silently. And it had been clear. He had thought it would be good for her and for both of them to get away for a while. Thought about his aunt, in Portugal, who often wrote and invited him but he had not visited, had not had time; in and of itself had not had time then either, but he had been able to arrange the leave from work. The aunt was also sick, of course, needed help. “I know where we’re going!” he said to his fiancée Susette Packlén who was going to become a Maalamaa and have a child with him already that next year at the same time and then they would be living in New York, his first lengthy foreign assignment. “We’ll go to Portugal!” And she became as happy as a child too because she had never been abroad really and the aunt had also sounded happy on the phone and immediately wired money for the airline tickets, and shortly thereafter Tom and Susette were sitting on a plane, flying above the clouds in the beautiful clear air, her pale skin, her tired eyes—but held his hand, as said, those attacks of sorrow and melancholy were not over, of course, it would periodically be difficult in Portugal as well. But the main thing was the direction, the will, the approach, and he had not needed to say it out loud like when he held a speech for work, lay out the direction, the approach—this was without words, she knew. “Ja sieltä ei sit tuoda mitään ruumiita Kotiin / and then no corpses are brought home from there,” someone in the row behind them on the plane had said, vacationers in a vacationing mood who were describing how they had been let off by friends from their hometown when they were going on their first charter, country bumpkins among country bumpkins who had never been anywhere who clapped their hands when the plane took off, cheers!, in red wine and beer and sangria! No corpses. Ironic maybe, amusing, because it turned out that way when, roughly a month later, Tom Maalamaa and Susette returned to the homeland it was in connection with the repatriation of a corpse: the aunt who had died while they were there visiting her. A difficult time, a lot to take care of those final days in Portugal, so it had not exactly turned out as they thought it would. But Susette, his future wife, mother to his three children, had been invaluable, and still, also, as if the hardships involved with everything that needed to be arranged down there in Portugal and later with the funeral in the homeland only brought them closer together.