The Glitter Scene

by Monika Fagerholm

  When I at long last, it’s a long time afterward, maybe a few hours even, when it has been quiet in the kitchen for some time, dare to come out, there is barely anything left of what I heard with my own ears in the closet but only been able to imagine. No money is lying scattered about. They’ve done the dishes, no pots on the stove, the kitchen table, the counter shiny and clean, even cleaner than the day before. The magazines, newspapers, True Crimes and the family magazines with all of the crosswords, which the cousin’s mama likes to solve, in a neat pile on top of the refrigerator. Ordinary. The cousin’s mama understands that too.

  For a moment I think I’ve imagined it, that nothing has happened. Then I see the transistor radio. On the windowsill, behind the curtain that I lift up. Broken to bits. In a mash. Yes. Unbelievable. But that’s what can happen if you throw it on the floor and go after it with a cane. That landscape. I’ve been there.

  Ordinary. But the cousin’s mama who understands that, as said. Has done the dishes and cleaned the kitchen again, in the middle of the night. So that it will be just as nice as after yesterday’s cleaning, during the day. Even cleaner and nicer. Early morning, it’s getting light outside. The counter is shining, piercing the eyes. I was the one who cleaned it and polished it yesterday, during the day.

  The cousin’s papa is sleeping with his clothes on in his room, the door is ajar, snoring, sawing wood, the house shaking, no exaggeration.

  The cousin’s mama is also lying in her bed, in the bedroom, unmoving, the covers pulled almost all the way over her head. Maybe she’s sleeping, as well. Otherwise maybe she would be paying attention to the sounds that, despite everything, can be heard from me, in the kitchen, in the hall, from the parlor too. I couldn’t open the door without it creaking when I finally dared come out, the hinges aren’t oiled; the parlor, people rarely ever go there. The sound of a small rat, from a closet. From the parlor, besides. The forbidden room, but rats there as well. But forbidden and forbidden, now, after everything, you wouldn’t think it would matter.

  But she’s lying still, not paying attention.

  The cousin’s mama’s crying, the screams, the shouts. Over. And Björn who has gone out, has been a few hours by now. The cousin’s mama who has remained, the cousin’s papa who has fallen asleep sometime later, in any case, finally.

  The cousin’s mama who hasn’t gone out after Björn then either. But has gone after the kitchen table, the dishes, the pots and the kitchen counter, polished, rubbed rubbed. It’s natural in a way, like it’s supposed to be, that too. But still, in the closet, I haven’t really been able to imagine exactly that.

  Now, when I’m standing in the hall, looking into the bedroom, how much time? An eternity, but the cousin’s mama is breathing, lying on her side, not paying attention. I don’t dare open my mouth, not after everything. Terror struck, and I have a pistol in my hand. For protection. Otherwise I never would have dared come out of the closet, here, back, out.

  It’s just that Björn left like he usually does when he’s angry. But this, this is more than angry. I know that already, the cousin’s mama knows, us in the house, everyone. Or does everyone, know?

  Björn has left, and in contrast to other times, ordinary times when he gets angry, this time Björn won’t come back but stay away.

  But when he left he was alone! Astrid. Didn’t she see that?

  Oh. That’s just the sort of thing you think about, afterward.

  Me in the closet, the parlor. I was also scared. And only when it had been completely quiet, for a long long time, did I dare come out. The pistol, the inheritance from the shoe box, in my hand. For protection. I have it with me now too, when I, in the silence of the morning-night sneak out just as quietly as I have moved around inside the sleeping house.

  •

  Björn was in a bad mood the night before. That’s how it starts. In and of itself, maybe it already started earlier. During the day, even if nothing had been noticed yet. Björn had been at work as usual but came driving home on his moped at a high speed somewhat earlier than usual. Left the moped in the yard and gone straight to the Second Cape where Bengt is intensely hanging out with the American girl Eddie de Wire, mainly during the day, which most everyone except Björn has been aware of for quite some time, at least a week. And a while later Björn came back, and got on his moped and drove off and got some beer. Came back, to the barn, and started gulping it down.

  Up until then the day had been deceitfully good, which if you think about it is of course normal right before catastrophes. Sunny weather, insidious of course too, because in reality, summer has already thrown you away.

  When it comes to the plan, it has been going back and forth in my head. Sometimes as if it hasn’t been there at all. But, confidence. Björn has been initiated, it will happen soon. It? That Björn will go to the cousin’s papa and talk some sense into him? Give all that money to the cousin’s papa and say: Well, Doris? Now we have, the cousin’s mama and Björn (and me, but that comes out later when everything is okay and we have, what, a party mood and the table has been laid in the parlor?), carried out our end of the agreement.

  The cousin’s mama. Maybe Björn has spoken to her? And they have their own little secondary strategy, because they’re older and can think about the practical details better.

  Björn and the cousin’s mama: I haven’t asked Björn about it directly, but the cousin’s mama and Björn talked to each other in the barn for a long time the previous evening.

  On the morning of that day, after breakfast I tried winking in Björn’s direction, but he hadn’t had the chance to notice it. Rita was there of course. Always together otherwise, me and Rita. “Got something in your eye?” and sang happily, but thank goodness so softly that neither Björn nor anyone else heard: “Aha, I understand. Daj daj daa.” It didn’t exactly make things better because then I had even less of a chance to look in Björn’s direction in order to send signals about our agreement.

  The fact that the cousin’s papa might occasionally count his hidden boot money has also flickered through my mind. From the beginning. Yet another factor that is taken away when considering if you should have a plan like this at all.

  But I’m so little, of course. You can’t expect me to be able to think about everything. On the one hand that. On the other hand, a logical false conclusion that you can make exactly if you haven’t grown up yet, and I haven’t grown up yet; this, exactly this day, is actually the last day I am ever a child even though I don’t know that yet. A small thought here, or along these lines: “There’s always more money.” Which the cousin’s papa has a habit of saying pretty often, contentedly, as it were. On the one hand he meant, insinuated, his own money. All the money he has and that Rita is going to steal from him when she runs away as a teenager, which he has hidden somewhere. On the other hand there has also, in his tone, been something that can, by a sharp person, be understood as happy expectation. All the money that isn’t yours yet but that can be attained, get and have. That attitude, that money in general, makes you happy. And then of course you really become pleasantly surprised if you get even more money, in general so to speak. Especially if the amount you’re offered is in exchange for peanuts—my God, the house is big, there are several houses on the property, Doris, there’s probably room for everyone here—maybe doesn’t just match but rises above the amount you had asked for in the beginning. In addition to the fact that the “sum” I stole out of the boot, which I didn’t count, has taken on mystical proportions in my head and what the cousin’s papa wants to have for Doris is something I haven’t even paid attention to in the beginning, just a lot, granted—but in addition to that I have, in other words, seriously recently, while nothing is happening except that I am waiting a bit nervously, seriously started imagining that the cousin’s papa will be happy too. The cousin’s papa’s joy and the cousin’s mama’s joy and Doris’s joy and everyone’s joy—for eternity afterward, in the cousin’s house.

  “Go and hang yourself, fat
head.”

  “Daj daj daa,” Rita has been singing in the yard, in other words, meaningfully, in the morning, after breakfast, Björn has gotten on the moped and gone to work.

  “Come now, Solveig. Morning session. Training.”

  And actually that has been the best thing of all.

  He who likes Björn so much too, especially Björn out of all the children. Had given some money for the moped, and for the transistor radio, in the beginning. The boy’s practical skill. In contrast to the shitkids, really. Björn will certainly in some way find a way to put the plan into action. Solveig’s plan. I am in other words convinced of it by just looking at him, which I still don’t get a chance to do very often because of Rita.

  “Daj daj daa,” Rita sings as it were, meaningfully.

  “Come on now, let’s go and train a bit more.”

  And in reality that has been the most fun. Not standing there pondering. Taking my blue swimsuit, my blue towel, Rita her red swimsuit, her red towel, and running on the path through the woods to Bule Marsh, jumping in. In peace and quiet, of course. Miss Andrews, the baroness, usually comes only to the very early morning session.

  •

  In the afternoon there has been big cleaning and scrubbing of floors and on days like this the cousin’s mama is always in a wonderful mood, she likes cleaning. She’s been singing unusually a lot this day. The cousin’s papa has been throwing darts from his chair in the yard. Plonk plonk. The darts on the board. He has better luck when he isn’t three sheets to the wind. Still, not in the center, not today. Not even the eight or the nine. Just like Rita who has been there, Rita is terrible at darts; the fact that she lacks precision is truly obvious when it comes to throwing darts. And Doris Flinkenberg has shown up as well. Wanted to join in. Been allowed to. Thrown darts around her in general. But she’s so little that it doesn’t matter how she throws.

  And so little too that she can’t help Solveig and the cousin’s mama with the cleaning. Doris isn’t particularly good at cleaning either, though she’s careful not to say it out loud. Later, when she’s living in the cousin’s house and becomes older, it is still the cousin’s mama and I who continue having most of the responsibility for cleaning in the home.

  The cousin’s papa has even been in an excellent mood out there in the yard, felt like some sober joking in the middle of the dart throwing. With Rita: about what bad dart throwers they are. “Have you tried poker, Rita?” Maybe it would go a bit better for Rita there, the cousin’s papa joked meaningfully, because in poker it isn’t really about the skill as much as the luck and the art of reading your opponent, which is decisive. You have to have a certain amount of patience. A real game of poker can take a long time. But you can learn patience, determination. The cousin’s papa knows to say, does Rita know that?

  The cousin’s papa laughs and Rita has to get her act together to laugh too. I can see it. Rita can’t stand it when anyone tells her that she’s bad at something. But not even she talks back to the cousin’s papa when she doesn’t really need to. Saves her energy. Rita can do that, she will get better at it in time. A certain feeling for the right timing. Like when she has left and taken all the money out of the cousin’s papa’s new hiding place, which I don’t know about because it’s farther up in the future and after that day, the last day of childhood, I won’t be interested in things like secret stashes of money or anything that has anything to do with the cousin’s papa anymore, not—when it happens, and the cousin’s papa notices it, afterward. Then he’ll be completely perplexed, genuinely surprised.

  And in some way also give in to her. Afterward. When Rita is no longer there, because she never sets foot in the cousin’s house or on the cousin’s property again after leaving the District when she goes to the Backmanssons’ after Doris’s death and she’s seventeen years old.

  Which means that he isn’t going to try to find out where she is, persecute her, take measures. No. He’ll sit here. In the cousin’s house, on the cousin’s property, for eternal time. Sit, sit. Become even more sheets to the wind than he already was.

  He’ll admit to being defeated by her. Rita’s victory. But what? Because then he will in turn have defeated everyone else, except me, of course. The cousin’s mama who doesn’t have the strength to remain, almost doesn’t have the strength to be at all, even though she has already put up with most things with the cousin’s papa on the cousin’s property here in the house, after Doris’s death. Then she collapses and has to be taken to the District Hospital in an ambulance: I call the ambulance. And she never comes back. Astrid Loman moves back to the neighboring municipality where she came from. In order to take care of all of the children, “children’s mama,” in the best way. But I won’t blame her, ever, at all.

  I’ll keep visiting her, bring chocolate and crosswords and flowers. I will be kind. Maybe she didn’t do what she should have done, maybe she—something terrible. But I, and no one else or anybody else knows it, will ever tell anyone, ever, because she was here, she stayed with us.

  I’ll be here then, afterward. And no longer, with the cousin’s papa, be “nice.”

  I’ll just leave him, but still be gripped by a guilty conscience and I’ll have the cleaning company then because I’ll be grown up, have my own life, my own child, which I’ll have to wait a long time for, many miscarriages, but I’ll have that, Irene. So I’ll ask Susette Packlén to go and check on him sometimes.

  The pistol will be lying out, on the refrigerator, but no one, there in the house, with the cousin’s papa, while he’s alive, will shoot anything, anyone with it.

  Well. Not now. Going through events in advance. Being here.

  •

  Doris Flinkenberg in the yard outside the cousin’s house during the dart throwing, which she takes part in in her childish way laughs when the cousin’s papa explains the finer points of playing poker to Rita. In her special Dorisway, which undeniably pulls you along, and then she tells her own childish contextless Doris-story that becomes funny mostly because of the way she tells it.

  And the cousin’s papa laughs suddenly, a friendly laugh about the story too—or just laughs, friendly, at small smart Doris Flinkenberg, in general. It isn’t that he doesn’t like her. Doesn’t really think anything about Doris Flinkenberg. Just “knocked-about kid,” another clan. And in turn that means that he doesn’t have anything to do with Doris’s terrible circumstances in the Outer Marsh, in general so to speak.

  The cousin’s papa laughs along with Doris Flinkenberg. You can of course if you’re from someplace else allow yourself to be duped by that laugh, take it for something other than what it is: a temporary happy flaming laugh after you have gotten to explain to Rita about playing poker. But the cousin’s mama doesn’t understand the finer points of card playing, she just sees that the cousin’s papa is, if not “kind,” then leaning in that direction, and in a sober state of mind for once, and yes, well, happy. Is that why the cousin’s mama has been singing more than usual today?

  I have as I said not been there, throwing darts, but scrubbing the kitchen floor and washing the windows in the parlor and been able to cast a glance out in the yard now and then and hear a bit of what is being said.

  And Doris, about her then: this is what I remember most about Doris from that day, the last day we were at least wholeheartedly able to imagine that everything was normal: Doris who was joking with the cousin’s papa without me knowing what they were joking about, the cousin’s papa who was laughing. Just Doris’s way of being, with the cousin’s papa. On her guard but at the same time open, fearless. But the whole time with that kind of a nonchalance lying underneath: “I don’t care about you, old man.”

  And just as fearless then and yelled, “Hey, cousin’s mama!” to the cousin’s mama who has been busy with her rugs, pisk-pisk on the rack, sung and waved and sung even more loudly just from having seen Doris.

  Doris not from a landscape, or another one. Doris from all landscapes at once. Something invincible about it
. Doris, a bit like the joker in poker, in other words.

  I hate Doris. But it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to do anything about my hate. I’m going to be sad when she shoots herself and think that it’s unnecessary. There were reasons. Her friend Sandra from the house in the darker part whom she started hanging out with a lot not long after coming to the cousin’s house—who didn’t want to be friends with her any longer, they were in love. She was at a loss, confused, suddenly not a child any longer and didn’t know which foot to stand on, who she was. And all of those experiences in her from the Outer Marsh, they hadn’t left her, they were still there.

  But first much later, I will be able to understand why Doris really took her own life. Why Rita in some way understood, she heard the shot, and ran, ran out into the woods, but it was too late. Blood on Lore Cliff, blood everywhere on Rita. Then in that moment, right afterward, I thought it was over for Rita.

  But it wasn’t. It’s never, ever over for Rita. I know who Rita is, I’m like her, we’re twins, I am, could be Rita. So alike.

  Rita doesn’t tell me that Doris has asked about something that causes Doris to realize something else. Which she had certainly known the entire time, in some way, but due to all sorts of things, also her light, her love, for everyone, mama, the new world, the cousin’s house, everything everything, wanted to keep hidden.

  And Rita never planned on telling her the truth. But she, Doris, that last fall asks her. And Rita replies, in some way, which makes it so that Doris understands anyway.