Someone shouts, “Where’s Solveig?” The cousin’s mama, I wouldn’t have anything against that. Usually just my twin sister, Rita. We’re always together, Rita and I.
I don’t go out when Rita calls. By chance my hands grope around in the darkness in the closet. That’s how I discover the cloth bag with the cousin’s papa’s money. Stuck inside a boot with a high ankle, dried dung on the leather. A lot of money, bills. I don’t think I’m going to take them and go out into the world and build the Winter Garden when I grow up. Just “aha, it’s there.” The cousin’s papa’s stupid secret. The cousin’s papa is one of those old men who prefer to save their money in an old shoe instead of taking it to the bank.
I’m not like my siblings Bengt and Rita. I don’t have any visions, fantasies. I’m just there inside the closet, for a while, in ordinary time.
When I have been in the parlor I sneak out again.
•
Astrid Loman. That’s the cousin’s mama. She has a son with her when she comes to the cousin’s house. His name is Björn and he is fifteen years old, a few years older than Bengt, my older brother. Astrid Loman is the kind of person who draws children to her. All children, especially the small and mistreated.
Astrid and Björn are from the next county over, where Astrid, who is countryman Loman’s daughter, was born and raised. Countryman Loman works periodically as the substitute police commissioner in the District.
Astrid. What a beautiful name. Still, it isn’t used particularly often in the cousin’s house because the cousin’s papa has, from the very beginning, had a very special way of saying it. He stresses the last syllable: sounds like aSTRIID, which is the cousin’s papa’s intention: as if it were impossible to have a name like that.
The cousin’s papa three sheets to the wind, in his room next to the kitchen where he almost always is, the door flung wide open. Three sheets to the wind means drunk in Districtish.
For the most part all of us say cousin’s mama after that.
•
But the cousin’s mama doesn’t care about that. Hums a song in the kitchen. I walk up the mountain with my lonely heart. She’s allowed to hum rather loudly and persistently. In the very beginning, at first, there is no transistor radio or cassette tape player that you could turn the volume up on.
Astrid, the cousin’s papa. It takes time to get used to it. Astrid hums, grows accustomed.
Otherwise, who is she? Someone who likes crosswords, pop music, and magazines. Family magazines, and a popular magazine called True Crimes, has a bundle of old issues with her when she moves to the cousin’s house. Maybe they belonged to countryman Loman. Then the daily paper of course, where Astrid carefully follows what is happening around the country.
The first swallow has come, a cat has run away. Three small siblings who have become orphans as the result of a car accident.
•
“Children’s mama.” That is what some people in the District say about the cousin’s mama. When I get older I understand of course that it doesn’t just mean she has all of these children, which aren’t in fact hers. Björn has no father; actually, there are a lot of children like that everywhere—in the wake of the war, for example—who get to come home to her and whom she takes care of. The children in the cousin’s house whom she never abandons, that’s true too. Left there after Björn, the cousins and Doris Flinkenberg.
When Astrid comes to the cousin’s house her contact with her parental home ends, I don’t know why. But maybe you can see it like this: that countryman Loman was a bit relieved to have his child-loving daughter placed somewhere. Maybe having all of the children come to Astrid Loman wasn’t an easy thing for the police commissioner and his wife to deal with, people who were approaching retirement age and the love between a man and a woman was something Astrid Loman liked learning the words to when she heard them in the songs played on the radio.
•
Because the cousin’s mama likes children most of all. All children everywhere, but particularly children you feel sorry for, who have ended up alone in life. That’s why she settles down at the cousin’s property where Rita and Bengt and I have been living alone with the cousin’s papa since our parents’ fatal accident. It happened when we were much younger. They say these parents were professional dancers, I don’t remember.
Sitting at the stone foundation of the house on the hill on the First Cape, me and my siblings, Bengt and Rita. Sitting at the stone foundation of the house after the car accident, before the cousin’s mama comes, me and my siblings Bengt and Rita. Three of us in the high grass. Pressing ourselves against the stone foundation, cold in the shadows. Hearing rumba tones through the cold stone. A pounding rhythm in the stone, through stone, into our bodies.
Sucking, temperamental and dancing. To someone who understands dance, that is. For the one who wants to dance, or can.
We three siblings don’t want to. Can’t.
We build the Winter Garden instead. A world. Everything exists there. Whatever you want. Dreams, fantasies, reality, whatever you want. Bengt sketches, draws maps. The Winter Garden has its own language. We speak the language. Make up our own words, names, expressions. Bengt and Rita make them up. That’s how it is for the most part. I don’t have as much imagination. After the cousin’s mama comes I would rather be with her below the hill. I like the cousin’s mama.
But it’s hard to leave Bengt and Rita, especially for me, leaving Rita. I wait until they’re finished. We remove ourselves from the spot. Go down.
Bengt goes to the cousin’s house where he slept by himself in a room on the second floor before Björn came. Had a ladder on the outer wall of the house so that he could use the real entrance as little as possible. It isn’t necessary anymore now that he and Björn are sharing the same room upstairs. As I said, Rita and I live in a separate cottage on the other side of the field. It’s an old baker’s cottage, says the cousin’s mama. Where you used to bake bread, and have children. I like it when the cousin’s mama talks about things like that. I listen carefully.
Before the cousin’s mama it’s like this: another landscape.
•
But so, when the cousin’s mama and Björn come everything changes. It becomes another time: the time that most other people live in. Daily paper in the mailbox, pop songs of the day, pop music that Björn listens to on his transistor radio, which hangs on a hook hammered into the side of the barn, while he tinkers with his moped in the yard. Carefully lifting the transistor from its hook when it’s time for supper, all of the cousin’s children, in the kitchen. Sets the transistor on the fridge, plugs it into the wall if the batteries are dead—so that after supper, tea and cheese sandwiches, evening pop music floods over the entire kitchen. Astrid sings along, closes her eyes. Björn laughs, ruffles her hair. Bengt, Rita, Solveig: we watch. The lyrics aren’t familiar, we can’t sing, but it’s fascinating to watch. Björn and the cousin’s mama: they are from another landscape. It’s so obvious in that moment. The cousin’s papa is sleeping in his room. He is rarely awake on peaceful supper evenings.
•
Björn bought the transistor radio with his own money. He works as a mechanic’s apprentice at the service station in the town center. It’s the same radio he lifts down from the nail in the barn wall a few years later when he’s going to walk back and forth along the road with his first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire.
The radio in one hand, the first girlfriend in the other: being teenagers together. “Eating” music. Even though rather often, when it’s time for these walks, the radio isn’t playing anything other than the weather report. The sound on the machine can conveniently be turned up anyway and the antenna pulled out to its maximum length and when pointed a bit to the side you don’t hear too much static.
Don’t hear much of anything else either. For example, talking.
And that’s okay.
Because talking with other people is something that Björn has a hard time with, especially
together with his first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire.
When Björn is together with the American girl he’s a little bit like my brother Bengt is in general. Not sullen, but quiet.
•
But for Bengt, exactly that changes with the American girl Eddie de Wire. Björn’s first girlfriend: and Bengt, in the company of Björn and Eddie de Wire, finds his tongue in the midst of everything. Really energetically too, when after his initial shyness he wholeheartedly affiliates himself with the couple. They hang out in the opening of the barn in the evenings. You can hear the voice from a distance, Bengt’s voice. With the older teenagers’, Bengt’s, who is three–four years younger, his mouth moving.
•
Otherwise Björn and Bengt are best friends, and together with Björn, Bengt becomes different, so to speak, softens, relaxes. That prickliness that in and of itself is always going to be a part of him is evened out. Bengt is peculiar after all, has always been too: “his own kind.” Which doesn’t mean what the cousin’s papa says: crazy. The cousin’s papa and Bengt don’t get along. According to the cousin’s papa, Bengt isn’t good for anything, walks around and mucks about. A dreamer, Astrid Loman tries to say, but then the cousin’s papa says deranged and he hits. Bengt isn’t someone who lets himself be beaten, he hits back. He has always hit: arms flailing in the empty air when the cousin’s papa held him when he was younger. The cousin’s papa laughing. Wiggle fish. But as is often the case with these kinds of stories there comes a time when the smaller one grows and acquires some force behind his punches—and hits right in the face. The cousin’s papa isn’t particularly strong either. And we three siblings, Bengt and me and Rita, are all rather tall. We have that in common: the height, the stature.
So already before what happens with the American girl and with Björn, after which Bengt moves out to the barn on the cousin’s property, the real fights between Bengt and the cousin’s papa have stopped altogether.
Crazy. The cousin’s papa continues saying it when he’s in that kind of a mood. From his chair, panting. Bengt imitates him sometimes. At a distance. Then he goes out.
•
Of all the children, the cousin’s papa immediately prefers Björn. Because Björn comes from a different landscape? Probably not. What does the cousin’s papa know about that, inside his room, three sheets to the wind? He drags himself out into the yard only when it’s cleaning day. Sitting in an old blanket with holes in it, which the cousin’s mama throws over him so that he won’t get cold, like a mean old Indian chief. Sits in a recliner in the yard, fifteen feet from the barn wall where he’s throwing darts. Then back inside.
And in that “landscape,” if he then one evening on his own accord happens to wander out into the yard, “propperty”: waters the flagpole with the spray bottle. His woods, which he stands and asserts with determination to no one in particular. It is of course unclear whether or not he knows that the flagpole isn’t one of the trees in the woods that he owns or just an old rotten flagpole that will eventually break in a storm. But that’s how it’s supposed to be: this ambiguity. Uncertainty. That’s what it is and has always been like being in his landscape.
But what the cousin’s papa appreciates most about Björn is “his skill.” Björn does carpentry, hammers on old boards in houses and barns and it results in something. And when Björn saves money for a moped and becomes impatient because it is taking too long, the cousin’s papa gives him the outstanding amount. “There’s always more money.”
•
Björn is also the only one who can actually stand to listen to all of the ideas Bengt has in his head. The houses on the Second Cape, which he had on his mind when they are being built, knows everything about them. In and of itself, he has them on his mind just as much later, when the summer residents who have bought the houses arrive, he runs around there. It’s pathetic, sometimes you’re ashamed of him. If someone asks, “Is that your brother?” you don’t want to answer. Then it’s nice being together with Rita. She answers back, fiercely. Certainly not because she doesn’t think that Bengt is making a fool of himself, but because she is someone who always answers back. There are those who are a bit afraid of her even when she’s still young. But there is one good thing about Bengt’s preoccupation with the houses on the Second Cape: not a lot of talk of the Winter Garden anymore. When we walk up to the house on the First Cape, Rita and I, it’s usually just the two of us. And then we don’t do anything in particular. Stroll around in the old abandoned garden. The beginning of an English Garden, says the baroness whom we call Miss Andrews, whom we swim with in the mornings at Bule Marsh. I look at my reflection in the crystal ball sitting in the middle of the tall grass surrounding the houses. My face looks funny. We laugh.
Björn listens to Bengt, as I said. Björn in the yard with his moped, Bengt is sitting in the opening to the barn wearing a cap and is explaining things to him. When he notices that Björn is listening, the words just pour out of him, like they will flow later as well, all the time, with the American girl. Bengt so excited he’s almost stammering. Björn who’s listening and asking normal questions that you wouldn’t dare ask yourself, not me in any case, because then Bengt becomes furious.
“How is it possible?” and that question, from Björn, Bengt loves answering. Though I’m certainly not listening to what he’s saying. “Why didn’t you say that right away?” Björn says. “NOW I understand.” And only then does Bengt become happy. Even if it can be the case of course that Björn says that only to make Bengt happy.
But it isn’t bad. Because I’ve actually started thinking that it’s still a bit beautiful in a way. Bengt a dreamer, head filled with dreams. Which the cousin’s mama tried to tell the cousin’s papa, who got angry at her.
And besides: you can’t get away from the fact that Bengt draws really well.
“A budding artist,” Miss Andrews says, at Bule Marsh.
•
Bengt and Björn: in other words they’re the ones who have both fallen head over heels for the same girl. Björn’s first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire. Then on the other hand, the difference between them will become that much more obvious. Not “the skill,” as the cousin’s papa goes on about, that sort of thing barely makes a difference now. But otherwise.
Maybe it’s the case in general that what is different about two people who seem to be on the same wavelength on the outside stands out the most, sees the chance to stick its head out, in relationship to a third. Like with me and Rita and Miss Andrews at Bule Marsh, for example. Miss Andrews, the baroness from the Second Cape: the name she makes up in order to tease us, I know that. Rita takes it much more seriously, takes an exception to Miss Andrews, and Miss Andrews exactly as Miss Andrews, not the baroness, more than I do.
At Bule Marsh in the mornings we teach Miss Andrews to swim and she teaches us English. It’s a business exchange, but also, mostly, a game. And actually I would rather practice swimming. I don’t mean all the time. But when we’re there. Sometimes I also suspect that Miss Andrews isn’t as bad a swimmer as she says she is. She seems to float pretty well, in the water I mean. In and of itself, I think she comes to the marsh because she wants to put on a show for Tobias who also shows up there quite often. Tobias is our “almost” godfather, mine and Rita’s.
Rita and I have decided that we’re going to become swimmers. I’m a better swimmer than Rita. I’m a little faster. I’m not afraid to jump from Lore Cliff. Headfirst. High up for the ladies: a vault in the air. When my body breaks the surface of the water I quickly swim away. Away from the current, it is strong. You have to have strength for this, and precision. Rita doesn’t. Maybe she’s afraid. Doesn’t dare: that is an amazing idea, new. Sitting on the beach, making froglike movements in the air, showing Miss Andrews a swim stroke. Talking about the Bermuda Triangle with each other, in English.
I come out of the water after this jump. “Did you see?” Yes, it was nice, Miss Andrews says absentmindedly. Rita too. Sa
w but didn’t see. Then I get angry. A little. When I get angry I don’t let anyone see. Except for Rita. I mean, we’re twins, she knows.
There comes Tobias from the woods. Then we can talk about swimming practice again. Rita is standing in the sand, concentrating now, digging her heels deep into the sand. “Come, Solveig.”
Then we swim. And we swim.
We are swimmers, we are going to amaze the world.
We aren’t the type to stand on the beach and crow about it, pounding our chests, so to speak. This is serious.
Later when Rita has left I will think about Rita on the beach like that. Switching from the one to the other. Suddenly in one world, then in the other. It will be an extenuating circumstance. It is admirable. But it also gives a false image of what you’re actually able to do and what you can handle.
And Rita has a violent temper. It isn’t a temperament, it’s a mood. Temperament can be seen on the outside, it exists inside someone who always has her own show going on, like Doris Flinkenberg. And now I don’t mean to say that Doris was false. No. As clear as water. But she had show.
No, besides. I don’t want to tell it this way. About my reflections about Rita and myself in that way. Or bring the future in now. We don’t know anything about the future in the present. Maybe it’s best to say it like it is.
I’m a better swimmer than Rita. A little better. Rita lacks stamina and precision: not completely, of course, and in everyone’s eyes it can’t be seen, but she doesn’t have as much of it as I do.
I was the one who was Sister Blue in the swimming school that existed on the Second Cape before the public beach was moved to Bule Marsh. I was the one who saved Susette Packlén from drowning and got the Lifeguard’s Medal, which I still have. Rita saw but didn’t see. Not because she didn’t want to but she didn’t take control. Rita is preoccupied with Miss Andrews. Miss Andrews is the baroness on the Second Cape, an acquaintance. And I say the baroness, Rita says Miss Andrews. But just as much, or even more, I want to be with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s house, the District. I don’t like being on the hill on the First Cape that much, being at the stone foundation and playing the Winter Garden. I would rather be with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s kitchen, a helper with all of her chores.
The Glitter Scene Page 37