The Glitter Scene (52 page)

Something from “shopping mall theory,” in order to impress the American girl. She also has a book like that which she lent him but barely read herself, some old birthday present, but
he
has read it, really studied it now! Bengt, ears aflame, as if it were important.

Bengt and the American girl Eddie de Wire, maybe we can talk about that here, say something about that as well, a few words, what I know.

I see it, like a scene: Bengt and Eddie on the veranda on the Second Cape, Eddie with the guitar, Bengt who’s drawing, talking. Eddie who’s trying to sing, nah, she doesn’t have a singing voice, doesn’t remember the song, starts laughing. Bengt who’s laughing. The sea in front of them, blue and foamy, and waves that are crashing, wind, you can’t hear what they’re saying, what Bengt is saying, the American girl, but she’s talking too, they’re talking at the same time. Can see them that way, from some house on the Second Cape where I’m cleaning with the cousin’s mama, lock my gaze on them in the middle of cleaning, see. I don’t know what I’m seeing, as I said, Bengt and the American girl, but I can imagine, Bengt and Eddie, that is also true, it is also, was also, as it should have been. So true. So right.

•

“What did the girl want?” Eddie asked Björn there in the yard by the barn when I got up and was almost out of earshot, just before Bengt here, now, is tumbling head over heels with his stupid theories.

“What did the girl want?” I don’t hear Björn’s answer, almost nothing at all. He’s already in another world, he and Eddie, in their own teenage world. New music on the transistor, trallallaa, new pop song, that’s the way it is.

Even if the summer will soon throw them away, though they don’t know that, I don’t know that either, yet. My plan: that is something I’ve also completely forgotten for the time being.

Walk calmly to Rita’s and my cottage, let myself be filled with Eddie, Björn, cigarette smoke, the steps. I’ll tell Rita about it. I’m burning with desire and excitement, hurry up the stairs, run the last bit.

•

Three evenings later, or it’s almost night then, Björn throws all the bills I gave him in the barn right in the cousin’s papa’s face in the kitchen of the cousin’s house. You can imagine: all of the money flying about, raining down over the kitchen where the cousin’s papa is sitting in a straight-back wooden chair, with his cane. This evening he has crawled out into the kitchen from his room, the cousin’s mama crying, or it’s more than crying. Loud shrieks, sobs, and scream scream, terrible. Björn who hasn’t known what to say but who does that. And rather drunk, so that too. Has been sitting in the shed with beer bottles the whole evening up until now. Björn who doesn’t say things like that, who doesn’t know what he’s going to say, who never knows, he isn’t someone who talks, but the cousin’s papa is someone who talks, can destroy with his talking.

Doesn’t Björn understand? And me, about Björn—don’t I understand?

Björn from another landscape. And the cousin’s mama, Astrid. “Children’s mama.” Only the two of them in the kitchen with the cousin’s papa. In that landscape. Exposed.

Everyone else somewhere else. Rita and Doris Flinkenberg in our cottage, where I should also be. Bengt and
the American girl Eddie de Wire where they are now: in Eddie’s boathouse on the Second Cape. Bengt hasn’t been around all day.

I’m in position. Though still not. Because I’m sitting in the parlor, in the closet. In my closet. The whole time. Shaking, curled up, listening, but I can only imagine what’s going on in the kitchen. In the closet. Like always: no one knows that I am there.

I have snuck into the parlor and the closet at the beginning of the evening and now I can’t get out. I know what’s going on in the kitchen, I don’t need to see it with my own eyes. But at the same time I don’t know, I have no idea. That it isn’t going according to plan is clear. But as soon as I have the chance to think “plan,” then I also think that Solveig, idiot, there has never been any plan. “What did the girl want?” The American girl’s question, an unbearable question ringing in my ears, hits home, “You did that well.” That was where I was going, the cousin’s mama’s shining eyes on me, but the road there was murky, gave the money to Björn and that was almost a relief, and then it ended up like this.

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, fathead.”

“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.