The American Girl (31 page)

“And what that is”—Inget Herrman paused before she continued—“you’ll never know.”

And she, Sandra, understood now, down there in the pool, what Inget Herrman meant. She understood it when she climbed down the ladder, those four steps, mile-long steps, like a sleepwalker.

Until she came to him. He opened his eyes and yes, he welcomed her.

Was it a dream?

And the whole house was sleeping, sleeping after yet another heavy hunting party of the kind that was still being organized in the house, sometimes, once in a while. Slightly different parties now that Inget Herrman had come into the picture, no “catering”—or in any case less—but with more room for—how should it be said?—the unexpected. Sometimes very strange people showed up during the night. Inget Herrman’s friends, also some from the fishermen’s pub. Magnus von B. and Bencku sometimes. Sandra could not believe her eyes. Though they were always drunk then.

And there was that thought already, that all which was beautiful was being transformed into one large wet party.

Still, the boy. Bengt.

It happened. And that, the boy in the pool, how do you convey that? Should you communicate that? Could you communicate that? To anyone? Even to Doris, the one who meant the most to you, who was more like you that anyone else in the whole wide world? The way you were yourself.

When you did not know what it was. Or exactly that: you knew. But still, it was so absurd. Where did it fit?

So she could not. Could not say anything.

“Bencku likes small chicks,” Doris said to the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s kitchen one late morning in the month of October while she was eating sweet dough out of the bowl, “those small
frozen ones.” A glance at the garden, a Saturday morning and Doris looked out the window at the cousin’s property covered by a delicate blanket of frost that would thaw in the sunshine as had been promised in the weather forecast; the sun would come out and make the day clear and bright and colorful just as a crisp fall day in the District should be. Empty bowl in hand now, Doris looked out over the property.

She saw Bencku come walking, from the woods. He really looked like what he had presumably been doing, partying all night. And—

“What are you saying, Doris?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are you going?”

“Out.”

And here she came later, walking over the cliffs on the Second Cape. Fall, fall, the summer guests gone, the rats dancing on the tables, all over the Second Cape wherever they wanted. And later in the day that had ended, just as it had been promised: the day sparkled. The glass of the Glass House played in the sun and the water. The sea, the house, everything was on fire. Not for real, but as the result of a sophisticated effect thought out by the architects.

But here she came now, Doris Night, in her pale skin. Her dark clothes. Sandra Night, in her pale skin, dressed in something pink. Princess Stigmata of the Thousand Rooms; those types of lips now, like such a princess, red and swollen.

Heavy with the caresses of the previous night. Doris probably saw them but said nothing.

And Sandra Wärn said nothing.

It was still the two of them, of course.

And without further ado both girls accompanied each other.

“IS IT REALLY PEACE WE WANT, AT ANY CONCEIVABLE COST?”

Echoed over the cousin’s property. So loudly that it quivered all the way into Rita and Solveig’s cottage.

“If Bencku’s revolution would come tomorrow I would take the revolver and shoot myself out of pure boredom,” Rita said to Solveig.

They had a revolver in the cottage. It was on a shelf on the wall. Papa’s revolver. Not the cousin’s papa’s, but their own.

“Pang,” Solveig replied with a laugh.
“Pang pang pang pang.”
And pretended that she was holding a revolver to her temple.

Rita laughed.

At the same time, in the barn. Anxiety in his body again. Bencku washed up and changed clothes, packed and left.

“Bencku,” Doris tittered when she and Sandra were making their way through all of the levels of the house with the cleaning tools. “He’s crazy. Crazier than the two of us put together.” The cleaning was the girls’ own idea again, but with new motivation. Some reports were not important, there was not very much to report about. The work was being carried out as paid work at Four Mops and a Dustpan. Doris and Sandra were saving up for the trip the following year, the big trip, the one that would go somewhere that was
The Sound of Music
mountains. Austria. They were going to visit Lorelei Lindberg and Heintz-Gurt, the adventurous pilot. For that reason the trip was a secret until further notice.

“The Islander would lose it if he knew,” Sandra said to Doris. “I’ve received strict instructions from Lorelei Lindberg to keep quiet about everything.”

“They’ll probably find out later,” Doris said importantly. “Everybody. Time enough. We’re going to surprise them.”

“Bencku.” Doris giggled again. “There’s definitely nothing heroic about such a Bencku-silliness.”

. . .

The Four Mops and a Dustpan overalls were too uncomfortable. Doris and Sandra had put on other clothes. The old, discarded Loneliness&Fear shirts. “Games of childhood,” Doris Flinkenberg said contemptuously and stuck the arm of her shirt in the floor wax and rubbed the pool tiles with it.

P
ANG, DORIS SHOT HERSELF ON LORE CLIFF AT BULE MARSH
on the eighth of November 1975. It was a Saturday, early evening, the shot echoed in the woods. Calm and cold, one of those numb days like the last days usually are before the snow falls and stays on the ground. A day for the lifeless, a day for death.

A day for death
. There was only one shot but when Rita and Solveig heard it in the cottage on the other side of the cousin’s papa’s field, Rita immediately went to the cabinet where the pistol was stored in order to check—the pistol was inherited, the only thing of value that Rita and Solveig had ever inherited from anyone, a Colt pistol, purchased at the department store in the city by the sea in 1907. It was as she thought. It was not there.

All of a sudden Rita started moving. She snatched her coat and rushed out, Solveig after, but Solveig had a hard time keeping up because she had sprained her foot the evening before in Hästhagen (the dancing hall) and had a hard time moving around.

And to be honest. At first Solveig did not understand at all why Rita was in such a hurry. The hunting season was not over yet and it was not exactly unusual to hear shots in the woods. But on the other hand, Solveig certainly knew that a pistol and a rifle make different sounds. And this had been a slightly different bang: it had sounded like a large paper bag had been filled with air and then placed in the hands of a giant. Like when something
“that is filled with nothing” pops, which Doris Flinkenberg sometimes had a habit of saying about her head.
Bang
. Then it was no more.

But Rita had known exactly how and where she should go and that it was urgent, perhaps too late. It was too late. When she came to Bule Marsh, Doris’s body was on its stomach on Lore Cliff, her shattered head and clumps of hair were hanging over the dark, quiet water that would freeze to ice just a few days later.

Rita rushed forward and started pulling on Doris. At least that is what it looked like from a distance.

Solveig screamed and screamed. When Solveig reached them, Rita was sitting on her knees by Doris’s dead body and shaking and pulling at it, moaning and sniffling and whimpering. For a brief, absurd moment Solveig thought Rita had attacked the already dead Doris Flinkenberg with her own blows and slaps. “Stoopp!” Solveig roared, but Rita, who was already entirely smeared with blood, had turned her face toward her, and in that face there was an expression that Solveig would never forget, she had bellowed:

“Help me! Don’t stand there staring like an idiot!”

Then Solveig understood that Rita was trying to lift the dead Doris there where she was lying on the cliff and carry her in some way.

“Rita! Stop! She’s dead!”

But Rita did not hear anything then.

“Help, I said! We can do it with the two of us!”

“Rita, come on! Doris isn’t alive! We have to get help! She’s deaaa—”

And Solveig had tried to pull Rita away from Doris, but Rita had not wanted to let go and in the end they had both become filthy and the smell of baked coffee rested heavily everywhere. That is how blood smells, but you could not sense that smell right then, but you would have it in your nose for a long time afterward.

Carry Doris over dark waters
.

But it did not work. You were helpless. You could not. You could not do anything.

Suddenly, some time must have passed but they were not aware of it, they were not alone at the marsh any longer. Suddenly the cousin’s mama, paramedics, and the police were by the marsh. And Bencku, so drunk he could barely stand. Bencku walked around at the scene and coughed and snuffled and stumbled and fell over and over again among all of the police officers and the paramedics and curious spectators who were there, thank goodness not many because it was already late in the fall, dark and winterlike.

“Bencku! Go home now!” the cousin’s mama yelled at Bencku. She was hysterical, as if it was the most important thing of all that Bencku should go home and not be there and embarrass himself.

Rita remained, sitting a little way away from Lore Cliff and sobbed and cried. Solveig tried to put her arm around her,
it was despite everything the two of them
. But Rita pulled away from her sister’s grasp.

And all of this, everything everything and more, while Doris Flinkenberg was being carried away on a stretcher and a heavy snowfall started. Large, heavy flakes that would drown everything in snow, even if it was the type of snow that thawed overnight and became rain again.

And yet. Nothing could change the fact that Doris Flinkenberg had killed herself on Lore Cliff at Bule Marsh and that at her death by her own hand she was only sixteen years old.

Sandra was on Åland the day Doris died, by the sea. The cursed sea. She was standing looking at it through the window on the porch in a large house where she otherwise shuffled around in a heavy, terry cloth bathrobe, homemade knitted rag socks, and a
woolen scarf wound in layers around her sensitive throat. She had the mumps, the last children’s disease. But . . .
this restlessness when Doris Flinkenberg was not there
. . . even with a fever of 102 it was difficult to keep Sandra in bed as she should, which “the aunt” and the house doctor were both very much in agreement about. And especially just at the exact point in time when Doris died.
Memento mori, by the cursed sea, and the waves that washed over you
.

But she would find that out later when she counted back in time and thought about what had happened. That in exactly the moment when Doris shot herself she, Sandra, Sister Night, Sister Day, had been standing at the window on Åland humming the Eddie-song. For dear life. For all she was worth.

Look, Mom, what they’ve done to my song. They’ve destroyed it
.

Just as if this furtive, inaudible humming could have saved anything at all.

Later, when Sandra received the news that Doris was dead, it was already the next day and it was storming. The Sunday after the Saturday and Sandra at the window let the sea crash over her. Not for real of course,
gooberhead
, but in her imagination. A windowpane separated her from reality. Like alwaysalwaysalwaysalways. The sea was gray, foamy, and the waves were several feet high. They were like houses. Right at the moment when you had the sea in front of you like a wall and you thought it would fall over you and drown you or suck you out into the terrible dark currents, it pulled itself back an itty-bitty bit so that the wave crashed down on the cliff below the bay window instead, just foaming and spraying against the glass. Piquant. This for the image of nature and the simile: interesting. She had, she determined again, zero emotions in her befitting an islander, for the person who should have been inside her, which all of these relatives whom she did not understand nagged about here in the house and on the whole island. “The aunt” who stood behind her and wanted to put her arms
around her, who stood there the whole time as if fully prepared to embrace her. And wanted to whisper, what? Blood is thicker than water?
When it was not like that at all
. Sandra took a step to the side.

Somewhere in another room in the big house the phone rang. At first “the aunt’s” voice could be heard distantly, then, in the moment that followed, behind her again. “Sandra. It’s for you. Some Inget Herrman. What kind of name is that?” What in the world were you supposed to say to that? She had already said it herself, “the aunt,” in her tone of voice. It was quite simply not a real name.

But still, when all is said and done, when Sandra turned around and looked at “the aunt,” who looked genuinely troubled, Sandra understood that she was too congested, too sick in general, to be able to work up any real indignation over anything at all. And furthermore, everything changed the following moment and that which at one time had been important lost all meaning in one fell swoop. Because it really was Inget Herrman on the telephone. She explained everything, her voice thin and horridly foreign even before she had carried out her errand.

Sandra had wanted to go home immediately, but the home doctor on Åland had strictly forbidden her to do so. He said her swollen glands and feverish body would endure neither a flight nor a trip by boat, and she had not protested. Or insisted. She had not said anything at all, not really. Except yes and no as if she had been replying to ordinary questions, the kind of questions that should have answers. Like a robot. Open and take your medicine. Turn on your stomach so we can take your temperature. Shouldn’t we change pajamas? To comfortable and clean ones? How you’re sweating. Sit up now, stretch out your arms so we can get your top off. There. Nice and cool, isn’t it? Head on the pillow now. Now we’re going to rest. Now we’re going to get better. Now we’re going to sleep.