The Glitter Scene (43 page)

Maj-Gun at the rag-cutting bucket. Rug rags. Her dearest, most devout connection. “The loom, Mama, where is it?” A completely unintelligible question in reality, because there was no answer—but Maj-Gun, if you had said that, would have understood it, intuitively
.

On the other hand. That Maj-Gun. Did not exist. Anywhere. A figure in your head only, Majjunn Majjunn, a sound from your childhood, in your mouth
.

Had been clear the entire time afterward. At the cemetery after Liz Maalamaa’s funeral. Maj-Gun had been so different, so stiff, so ordinary. And today, earlier this day, when everything happened, she had been on the Glitter Scene, a girl lying dead in the woods, they found her now, the entire family, but Susette does not know about that because she is at the house in the darker part of the woods now, she has forgotten everything else
.

Thinks, at the loom that is rising up inside the basement before her eyes, only her eyes, no one else’s eyes: Maj-Gun during the day, that same day. How she should have said something, about something, which Susette had forgotten. But she had stood there and been ordinary, red, slender, and like all of the other people in the world. Had not spoken
kiss kiss kiss
as she once had at the newsstand, about the silver shoes for example
.

We
are the Angels of Death, Maj-Gun
.
I
am alone
.
We
are nothing
.

Helpless in the presence of her story. “A life-long depression. You can live with depression. And then there is medication—”

Liz Maalamaa, the stories, the medication. Liz Maalamaa had already been ill when they came to Portugal, she and Tom, in December 1989. Had been going on for some time, heart failure, dizziness. She had been walking about then, but already the next day she had not gotten out of bed. And then Susette immediately started spending time with her in the bedroom while Tom enjoyed the sunshine on the patio. But he did not dislike it, just the
opposite, said that it was so nice that she wanted to devote herself to the aunt
.

And Liz Maalamaa, while she still had the energy to speak, told Susette about her life. No anecdotes that made you sleepy listening to them, those people who have it on their minds to talk and talk about themselves, about their business, who assume that only they can explain vividly enough, so that you will sit there in silence and be transformed
with joy
too, all ears because it is so wonderful to just listen. But—if you did not want to, did not have the energy, to listen? In what way does this affect me? If you thought like that. And did not come up with a single connection; then that person who was just babbling and babbling was transformed into just babble. But
quiet now. Stop screaming
.

Maj-Gun, at the time she was Maj-Gun at the newsstand, had caught sight of it. Because everything that Maj-Gun had told her had, as it were, been something else, at the same time. Another message, so to speak. A signal. The rug rags. A bucket. Mama. “Don’t be afraid.”
“She didn’t give way, your mama.”
At the same time both of them had been unaware if it too, what it was that pulled them together
.

Young and insecure and fragile. There was that something in each other they wanted to reach, rug rags, but could not figure out how. So it had turned out wrong, that too. “The loom, where is it?”

“It’s so nice that you’re together with Tom,” Liz Maalamaa had said in the bedroom
.

“I know Maj-Gun too. We’ve been good friends.”

“Do you? That makes me so happy. Maj-Gun is a special girl.”

And Liz Maalamaa had brightened up considerably and despite the fact that they had not spoken about Maj-Gun or Tom, Susette’s fiancé, anymore, whom Susette would live happily ever after with, the fact that Maj-Gun had been mentioned, both of them felt, brought them closer together
.

But otherwise, in the bedroom, which was transformed into a sickroom and to a death room, but soft, normal, when Liz Maalamaa had spoken about her life it, had, in other words, been brief. In occasional images, scenes, some episode from here or from there. The transience, like from an album
,
come and see my gallery
,
so beautiful
.

A dog, Handsome. Two swans, Dick and Duck
.
Young man against a backdrop of flames;
an image on a wall in a hotel which, for a few terrible moments, looked that way but which later, afterward, had still been something else, just an armful of roses, in a bowl. “You know, Susette, hotel room art, it can be very anonymous.” And the silver shoes, which she liked dancing in and her husband too. “Life with him wasn’t easy, never easy, but I miss the dancing.” And the movie stars she had loved in her youth, Ingrid Bergman, and China where she had never been but traveled to so much in her fantasies that it had almost become real, “that wall, it is LONG, you know, long walk, I think that sometimes, and God and me and reality … There is a kind of loneliness too, in God, that loneliness is intangible.”

“I’m staying here. I’m not leaving,” Susette had repeated several times and gotten medicine, food, made the bed with clean, fresh sheets
.

Toward the end, when Liz Maalamaa no longer had the energy to speak, Susette just sat there and held her hand
.
And the very end, the final days, mama Liz mama
,
I’m not leaving you, never again alone
,
she had crawled up into the bed next to Liz Maalamaa and laid down next to her. “My girl.” Liz’s arms around her, pulling her closer
.

And there, in the bed, two bodies pressed against each other, something that could have been called Susette’s story could have been told, that which was not her mother, but the other, which had also happened. Though without words, words are unnecessary, a story that had pulsated between them like blood in their bodies. And from her to the older woman. From Susette Packlén to Liz Maalamaa
.

A story in rags, fragments. Also about what had fallen and would fall outside the actual story, with context, coherence that had to do with coming out of a wood to Tom to here, Liz Maalamaa, Portugal—and farther on in life
.

About being in a forest: “Once I was in a wood …”

Or, “all walls collapse.” About leaving work in the middle of the day, one day in November, just a few weeks earlier at that point in Portugal, but there in the bed with Liz Maalamaa, already an eternity since then. That morning, a project in the city by the sea that she had come to, an independent one that she did not work on together with Solveig but alone and that was that, an apartment in a high-rise in a suburb of the city by the sea, where Solveig had dropped her off that morning
.

An old woman there as well, in the apartment, who was playing a film and had the radio on at the same time. “All walls crashing down.” A historical moment, in Germany. The wall that had come down in Berlin and now people were moving in hordes, happy, singing, from one side to the other. The woman had recorded
newsreels from the day before and was sitting, while the radio was on, playing morning pop songs, watching those clips over and over again, tears running down her cheeks, and said, “a historical moment, all walls are coming down.”

Under normal circumstances Susette would have asked about it of course. If the older woman knew anyone in Germany, or if she was just happy about the step forward in history
.

But it had not been an ordinary day. She had met Maj-Gun on the walking path in the town center that morning, and Maj-Gun had been angry, an omen that too
.

About the impossibility, of everything. And she had taken the rugs out onto the courtyard, hung them over the rug rack, and there, “all walls coming down” ringing in her ears, she understood what it was. What she had forgotten
, kiss kiss kiss,
as if Maj-Gun had said it too, had she said it? If not, then she should have
.

And suddenly she heard the folk song. “The folk song has many verses, the same thing happens in every one. Over and over again—”

The girl at the cemetery who was singing, a song from the company car in the morning. And then Susette had understood: there is no way out of this
.

Susette left the rugs on the rack, and left. Took the bus back to the District and came back home and took the backpack and then the bus again, to the capes, the sea, she was headed there
.

The Winter Garden. Some scribble, pictures on the wall in her apartment, a lot of words there too
. Kapu kai.
He had been in the cousin’s house, of course, he was there when he was not hanging out in her apartment. She was
going to drop off the pistol, she did not need it any longer, she was headed to the sea after all
.

But he was in the way. The Boy in the woods, the boy from the woods. But she did not know him. Another story, had always been. All walls coming down. The cat in his eyes as well
.

And there had, certainly, been blood, blood, there too. She did not remember. It was difficult to remember. Some things just cannot—

In any case she had not had the pistol or the backpack when she came down to the Second Cape, the cliffs, the sea
.

But wait, Liz, about this blood. The Boy in the woods, the following must be said. Bengt, who he was—and was not
.

“That once, Liz, I was in a wood.” Another wood. In the middle region of the country. Janos, the strawberry-picking fields. Fifteen years old, or sixteen. And she and Janos her second love, “the Pole but actually he was from Lithuania,” had gotten lost in this wood after they had run away from the strawberry fields. His idea, but good ideas and most of all, who had been the originator of them is easily forgotten after a day’s wandering about in the woods and they had started fighting violently, wordlessly, and suddenly in the woods even Susette had become furious
.

He had hit her, she had hit back. That damned unintelligible language, and they had nothing to say to each other anyway. He teased her because she did not know the way out, this was her damned wood, her country. They had not eaten for days, water could be found in the wood, of course, in any case
.

He accused her of all sorts of other things too. A scuffle, naturally Janos had been stronger than her. But she had
been angrier: might one have been able to tell, in general, have been able to tell a therapist about such a rage? Which just grew inside you, as a result of all the powerlessness in the world
, CRASH,
someone who stepped on a house of balsa wood, and it went to pieces, The Angel of Death the Angel of Death, someone who was standing and yelling at you. One’s own mother. And the cats at the hospital who were hissing, and the manager, Little Susette, Sweet Little Susette, the old dying ones will become so sad if you leave now
.

On the other hand. Maybe in hindsight it was a fabrication. Because she had forgotten that moment, would forget, more and more, just here in the bed, with Liz, wordless, let it come out
.

Maybe she took the rock just because it happened to end up under her hand there in the middle of the seventymilewoods in the middle region of the country where east was west and north was south, she had no idea, just that it was twelve o’clock somewhere certainly, because the sun was shining that way, as if it were the middle of the day. And Janos had pushed her down on the ground. She took the rock and threw it and it hit him and he sank down to the ground, it was like in a movie, remained lying there
.

Moss, mosquitoes, and hunger thirst in her stomach. And a strong sun, as mentioned, and a damned silence, loneliness
.

She had continued walking
.

“Once I was in a wood …” And though she might have regretted it then already that she had left him behind, it really did not matter, the woods were the same the same
everywhere, she still would not be able to find her way back to that place
.

And suddenly she had been out of the wood. Almost laughable, maybe just a few hours later after a day of being lost with her second love: found a road where there were cars. And she had just sat down on a rock, taken a breather, out of relief. And fallen asleep. And when she woke up there had been someone who was shaking her and it was a boy, not Bengt, but Magnus, a friend of Bengt’s who was in the car. She did not recognize him, or them: she realized first several years later when she met Bengt in the woods anew who he actually was
.

Just two guys, maybe in their twenties, who were on their way from somewhere to somewhere like youths are, in a car, loving that vagueness too: “from somewhere to somewhere.”

She got a ride with them, and they gave her food, she had been so hungry after all. Fallen asleep in the backseat and when she had woken up again she was in the city by the sea. “Our mascot. We can’t leave her here.” And she stayed with them for a few days in an apartment in the city by the sea. There was a lot of partying and a lot of beer and a lot of people coming and going, sometimes the guys went to the docks in order to earn money, you could do that sort of thing back then
.

“Our mascot.” They had been so kind, she had not been Susette but mascot, no one had been allowed to touch her. And as said: no talk of the District, no thought about the District either, just a few youths, she like a little sister-mascot, and the two boys, in an apartment, the city by the sea. And the last thing she wanted to do was tell them
who she was, where she came from. Because it had been so obvious: back to her mother, she could not. She had known that already before Janos, before she left for the strawberry fields
.