The American Girl

by Monika Fagerholm

  But the other women, the real ones, they were somewhere else. The more unforgettable ones anyway. For example Laura B-H who had finished writing her women’s novel and had gone on tour with it; Saskia Stiernhielm who was back in the Blue Being, you wrote to her and had your letters returned (if you were Bengt, that is, but only Doris happened to know that).

  And Inget Herrman then, who had to stay in the city due to the extensive work of gathering material for her thesis. The work was really advancing, it had received a new title.

  “The material is still alive,” Inget Herrman said in the fishermen’s pub. And then she started telling them about the new title, which was a working title, and it was interesting but . . . the girls still did not listen to it.

  “Is this what it was like as a jet-setter?” Doris then whispered to Sandra Wärn so softly that only Sandra would hear, but Inget Herrman snapped it up and wanted to know more. When Doris could no longer keep quiet she started telling Inget Herrman about the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg and Heintz-Gurt and the whole story . . . and she probably would have blurted out everything if Sandra had not started jabbing her under the table, shut your mouth.

  Inget Herrman had looked at Sandra, amused, but said nothing more about it.

  “But the Islander then,” said Inget Herrman. “Dad. How’s Dad?”

  It was awkwardly clear that Inget Herrman still had the Islander on her mind somehow even though the summer had been over a long time ago and she was engrossed in gathering material for her thesis. Doris was also attentive, and when Inget Herrman went to the bathroom she whispered worriedly, “She hasn’t thought about seducing him has she? Again?” And when Sandra had not answered because what did she know about it, Doris had said, “But Pinky . . . Bombshell Pinky Pink?”

  “How’s your dad?” Inget Herrman asked accordingly several times during the girls’ study visits to the city by the sea even before she started showing up again at the house in the darker part of the woods.

  It was somewhat later in the fall and late Saturday nights and she sometimes arrived in a taxi in the middle of the hunting party after she had sat in the fishermen’s pub and drunk some wine in order to build up some courage.

  “Good,” Sandra replied.

  “Doesn’t he feel a bit lonely in the house?”

  “No, maybe,” Sandra answered truthfully right then because the day Inget Herrman asked the question was also the same day Bombshell Pinky Pink showed up for the first time. In the evening, after Sandra and Doris’s visit to the city by the sea.

  The summer, the women in the house on the First Cape. That party had culminated.

  All of that was so far away now.

  . . .

  Anneka Munveg, the famous news reporter. You could see her on TV during the newscasts and different programs dealing with topics of current interest. Once a bit later in the fall when the Bombshell was already feeling quite at home in the house in the darker part on the weekends, both before, during, and sometimes also a while after the parties (except during the week when it was a regular weekday and no Pinky anywhere) and all three of them had lain on the bottom of the pool and watched TV, Sandra and Doris and Bombshell Pinky Pink. They had dragged the television from the rec room to the edge of the pool and it was rather fun to lie there and relax to your heart’s content among the soft cushions from the sofas in the rec room and among the fabrics from Little Bombay, among the magazines and music cassettes—Anneka Munveg had suddenly been there reading the news in the newsroom and then Doris and Sandra yelled at the same time, “We know her!” not to mention that they gushed with pride.

  “I see,” the Bombshell said trying to appear unaffected. “Is she . . . nice then?” The last part had come a bit hesitantly too with a very frail and whiny voice that was completely different from the Bombshell’s normal hoarse, grating, and deep one.

  “She is.” Doris Flinkenberg had taken a deep breath and looked around so that you would understand she was about to say something incredible. “Fantastic. Indescribable. Delightful.” But at the same time she noticed Pinky’s increasingly uncertain and sad expression, and that had almost been the worst of it, that it in some way seemed like Pinky had expected to hear just these things, and that it also made her even sadder. Then Doris Flinkenberg stopped herself, let her shoulders slump listlessly, and added rather nonchalantly, “Oh. She’s okay. I guess.” And then she turned toward Pinky all over again and studied her with admiration. “Can I touch your hair, Pinky? What kind of hair spray do you use? Can’t you do the same hairstyle on me?”

  Then Pinky brightened and cheered up again.

  “No. It’s not possible. It’s a hairstyle that is unique to just me.”

  “A unique striptease dancer hairstyle,” Doris Flinkenberg clarified loud and clear in an unmistakable Doris way, whereupon she got up and walked over to the television at the edge of the pool and positioned herself under the screen on which Anneka Munveg’s magnified serious face was talking. Then Doris took a few dance steps of the kind the Bombshell had a habit of doing on those occasions when she was seriously demonstrating for the girls what she called the striptease dancer’s trade secrets, what every striptease dancer should know, and so on. And the girls, especially not Doris Flinkenberg, had never done anything in these situations to conceal their great thirst for knowledge on this subject.

  “Please, Pinky,” Doris begged while acting like a striptease dancer in front of the television screen. “Can’t you please do one almost the same for me?”

  Said and done. Pinky had not been able to resist such a Dorisplea. And the television was turned off completely shortly thereafter and the girls, with whom Pinky was included on these long Saturday afternoons, were thoroughly occupied with dressing up Doris Flinkenberg as the ultimate “erhm, working girl,” and it was this playful activity and its visible results in the basement of the house in the darker part that would later lead to Doris Flinkenberg being forbidden from entering the house on all Saturdays, starting in the late afternoon, throughout the entire hunting season. This is because just as Doris on the big glitter scene, which consequently for this purpose was the edge of the pool, was performing her “erhm, working girl’s” striptease dance show with her own “especially daring” choreography, the cousin’s mama in her brand-new Four Mops and a Dustpan cleaning overalls happened to come into the house via the door to the basement, which for the most part was used only in the fall in connection with the hunting league’s meetings since it was a convenient entrance/exit for the cleaning and catering personnel. “But cousin’s mama!!” Doris yelled beside herself. “It was just for fun.” But nothing helped. Doris Flinkenberg’s fate was sealed. “Now you see to it that you get home immediately!”

  That is how Doris and Sandra came to take over the cleaning in the house after the hunting parties. Doris was not allowed to be there, but she was so curious. So every Sunday morning after there had been a hunting party, Doris came to the house in the darker part of the woods and Sandra and Doris put on their Four Mops and a Dustpan overalls, the new ones, specially designed for the new business.

  “It really smells like a brothel in here,” Doris Flinkenberg whispered delightedly.

  The flesh is weak. In other words it was now that the notorious hunting parties were launched in the house in the darker part of the woods: Saturday evenings, Saturday nights, and sometimes even up until early Sunday morning. Then the house in the darker part was invaded by the hunters from the hunting league. Not by all of them of course, but quite a few, above all the ones who, after a long and wild day out in the countryside, were in the mood for a long night filled with pleasures just as wild.

  With the striptease dancers, or “erhm, the working girls,” or whatever it was they were supposed to be called. “The catering,” the Islander said, but obscurely.

  “Erhm, the working girls.” This erhm originated by the way from Tobias Forsström, one of the teachers at the school up in the town center. He was the one who, in conne
ction with a certain essay that Doris Flinkenberg had written a hundred years ago, the one called “Profession: Striptease Dancer,” had stirred tremendous commotion and made it impossible for Doris Flinkenberg and Sandra Wärn to be in the same homeroom in the future, had taken Doris Flinkenberg aside and kindly explained that you were not supposed to say striptease dancer but call the phenomenon by its proper name.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but it’s called, erhm, working girl.” And a moment’s silence had followed during which Tobias Forsström had taken in what had been said, what had come out of his mouth by mistake. “Erhm, I mean prostitute . . .”

  From one marsh person to another. Tobias Forsström took on as his special task to take Doris Flinkenberg under his wing. That is to say he originally came from the same marsh. We marsh people, we have to stick together. That was what he had said.

  Doris had not really listened all that much to Tobias Forsström’s explanations. She was mainly happy about something else: that she now had TWO words for the same phenomenon, if not three. Prostitute . . . working girl . . . tehee tehee . . . she could barely wait to run over to Sandra and tell her.

  But the whores, when they were in the house in the darker part of the woods: in general they were all easily recognizable but at the same time hard to tell apart. In high heels and short skirts, so that, as it were, you did not notice any distinctive features or their different personalities. One had black hair, another was a redhead, a third was blond, and so on, and there was nothing in between in the nuances, rather clear, strong colors that mattered.

  A fourth did not look like an “erhm . . .” at all, rather like a prim version of the school’s primmest girl whose name was Birgitta Blumenthal and wore a pleated skirt and blouse with lace. But the difference between the former and the latter was that the former were wearing rather detailed undergarments under their skirts and blouses. Underwear in red and black—

  And in general, on all of them, tops over their breasts. Tops in spangle lamé and gold lamé and silver lamé. And socks and panty hose with holes in strange places, or nets, panty hose that were like fishnets. Sometimes no panty hose at all. No underwear. No underswear as you said in the District.

  They blended together. All of them but Pinky. Because Pinky, she was an individual, specific. Pinky in pink from top to toe: Pinky in the polyester satin jacket with the white edging, the one that was t-i-g-h-t-f-i-t-t-i-n-g.

  Doris and Sandra and Bombshell Pinky Pink. On the days, those times when the girls were not in the city visiting movie theaters, art exhibits, or the fishermen’s pub with Inget Herrman, they were often lying on the bottom of the swimming pool not doing anything in particular. Talking, watching television, flipping through magazines. Fashion magazines: old issues of Elle and Vogue, “French” Elle and “Italian” Vogue. They had taken them from the Closet.

  It was Pinky who had found them once when Sandra had taken her there.

  The magazines had been there the whole time, but on a shelf high up on top of the fabrics and all of the rest, and Sandra who was quite short had never been able to reach the top. But Pinky, in her eighteen-inch silver glitter heels, was enthusiastic. “It’s just how it’s supposed to be,” she called, delighted. “French Elle and Italian Vogue.”

  Not, that is, American or English or anything like that.

  “There aren’t many people who are aware of it,” Pinky said importantly. “But this person, she . . . was that your mother?” Pinky asked Sandra.

  “Is,” Doris filled in absolutely sure. “It IS her mother.”

  “I mean,” Pinky said, for once a bit impatient with Doris Flinkenberg, “was in the sense that she isn’t here now.”

  Because Pinky was like that sometimes, she said things like that, like those about the magazines and some others, that sometimes in her mind Sandra mistook the person a little bit and started talking to Pinky in the way she had sometimes, a long time ago, spoken with Lorelei Lindberg in Little Bombay. It was, of course, when Doris Flinkenberg was not there; Lorelei Lindberg in Little Bombay had never belonged to their games.

  Besides it did not fit in. The Lorelei Lindberg who existed in the games they played was different, and that was not stupid either, not at all, but as a game. And the name, Lorelei Lindberg, which had come about in Doris’s mouth a long time ago, it fit there. And maybe also here, when it was a matter of Little Bombay, but in another way. That name, it was most obvious then, was needed like a kind of protection. For Sandra herself, protection for something that should still be protected because it was still there, in her, somewhere. The delicate and the difficult, all of that. The name Lorelei Lindberg, as an incantation, a formula for all that belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which nothing could be woven.

  And one time among the fabrics in the Closet where Sandra had been with just the Bombshell, it happened that Sandra started asking Pinky a lot of things that Pinky had not been able to answer, on the whole she spoke in a serious way, which she had never done with Pinky before or even Doris Flinkenberg.

  “What kind of Dupioni do you prefer? With which kind of weave? Do you like taft or eighteen-millimeter habotai? I have to say that my great weakness is really thin silk habotai.”

  Of course Sandra instantly realized her mistake, but it had still been too late. You could truly see how Pinky became uncomfortable where she was standing listlessly, leaning against a shelf while Sandra was rooting in the piles of fabric; Pinky in silver glitter shoes with mile-high heels, in the polyester jacket and in a miniskirt made of plastic-coated fabric suddenly demonstrably chewing on that chewing gum that was in her mouth like always, whether it was or not.

  And what had suddenly come out of Sandra’s mouth was a language she did not understand, it was just silly and artificial . . . habotaidupioni what kind of drivel was that? And when Pinky did not understand she became irritated and dissatisfied on the whole, started rolling her eyes in the way that a striptease dancer is not allowed to roll her eyes, except in her free time and preferably not even then since bad habits can imperceptibly take hold so that they pop up in other situations as well.

  “Does a man want to look at someone who squints? There’s nothing teasing about that,” Pinky had once pointed out to both girls. “Tease. That means playfully seduce in English. And that’s what a strip dancer should do. Tease.”

  “Tease with what?” the inquisitive Doris Flinkenberg had of course asked that time even though she definitely knew. But Doris had not been after information, instead she wanted to see and hear how Pinky Pink explained it.

  “Well, if you don’t understand then—” Pinky had stood up on the edge of the pool and wiggled her backside in the small pink skirt and stuck out the one body part and then the other as belonged to her profession. “Senses. Certain ones. Do you understand now?” Pinky stuck out her chest.

  All three of them had laughed. It was so funny, but at the same time it also struck Sandra in moments like these, but in a good way, like a surprise, how strange the understanding that so suddenly and so strongly existed among the three of them, the Bombshell, Doris, herself, these early Saturday afternoons when the hunting league was not back yet. Sometimes it was like there were not two girls and one adult but three who were best friends and almost the same age. And actually there were not so very many years between them. The line between them, it arose later, when it became evening, Doris’s ban took effect and a party gathered again.

  And right then, in the Closet, that time when Sandra and Pinky were there just the two of them and Pinky started rolling her eyes at something strange Sandra had said and Sandra became so sad, so very infinitely sad so that she was not able to hide it, a lot of noise could suddenly be heard from the yard. A glance out the window in the Closet and there, the hunting league had gathered on the stairs after the day’s exercises in the woods and a moose that had been shot on the ground (it was waiting to be lifted into Birger Lindström’s van).

  Pinky, in the Closet, had sta
rted thinking about other things. She stopped rolling her eyes over Sandra also because now she saw how sad that had made her. “Hey,” she said and touched Sandra’s cheek. “I didn’t mean it, sorry. I say and do stupid things sometimes. It’s just that I don’t know anything about that sort of thing. And when I don’t know I get insecure and angry with myself but don’t want to show it.” And then, with a glance out the window and back at Sandra, as if she had discovered Sandra for the first time in a new guise, she exclaimed:

  “And think about what you know. I mean about all of those fabrics. I think you’re becoming a real woman.”

  And Sandra, she had blushed again and become a bit speechless, but in a new way—speechless from embarrassment but also from bizarre pride that she both wished and did not wish that Doris Flinkenberg had been there and witnessed just then. Woman. Like a task. For a second Sandra felt chosen, floating so to speak lightly on a cloud in the face of the task she had ahead of her.

  On the other hand, she could also imagine what Doris would say then. “Sandra. Woman. Hmm. An interesting thought. But God, so entertaining.” And Doris would then start laughing and Sandra would also start laughing. Because they really did not want to become anything, either of them, just be together, like they were.

  “But come on now!” Pinky had woken Sandra in the middle of her dreams in the Closet. “We have time to see Happy Days before they’re finished cutting up the moose or whatever it is they’re doing.”

  And Pinky had taken off her high-heeled silver glitter shoes and then they ran down to the pool again and turned on the television and they had just enough time to finish watching Saturday’s episode of Happy Days before the hunting league took a sauna and the “catering girls” started dropping in. Everything was set up for dinner in the parlor on the upper floor and little by little everyone gathered at the long, laid table where silver candelabras with lit candles were standing. The Islander took his place at one end of the table and Sandra, who was of course the daughter of the house, at the other.