The Glitter Scene (7 page)

They have a game, the Winter Garden.

The baroness, “Karin,” has at this point in time, July 1969, stopped saying “odd” about Bengt. Says, when speaking of Bengt and Eddie on the terrace of the boathouse, nothing. Pretends not to see them.

Northern wind. The sea dark, foam on the waves.

Still, a beautiful image. Eddie and Bengt. Ideas flying around them. Such invincibility.

What is Bengt saying?

The hacienda must be built?

Something else?

Cannot be heard of course. On the other hand: does it matter if you know it in hindsight? Because that comes to an end as well. Just a few days later the American girl is dead, and Björn, her real boyfriend, has hanged himself in the most distant outbuilding on the cousin’s property.

And Tobias then, who never goes anywhere but has now been to a training seminar in another city, comes back as if to another world.

•

And this is how the American girl’s death is going to be taken down in history: like a teenage love&jealousy drama with a violent end. Björn who argues with his girlfriend Eddie de Wire when he realizes that she has deceived him and he becomes furious and chases her through the woods and they end up at Bule Marsh where he pushes her from Lore Cliff into the deep water with the strong current. It happens quickly, in just a few seconds, how she falls, is sucked into the whirlpool. And Björn, when he understands what he has done, cannot live with it: love is pure, he loved her after all.

Eddie’s body disappears. Becomes stuck on the bottom, the dredging that year results in nothing—not strange in and of itself since the water at Bule Marsh is deep.

Floats up a few years later, after a long period of drought, at the end of another summer, 1975.

But you know that she fell, there are witnesses who have seen it—

•

But, as said, above all. This will become a story.
He who killed for the sake of love
. A story about young love and violent death that lives on in time, lives on in the District.

And will also, many years later, be at a place called the Winter Garden.

Where you can, for example, buy the American girl in a snow globe at the souvenir shop. Two figures in a watery landscape.

“It was a great love, Lille.” Ulla Bäckström with the snow globe, on the field in 2004 … in the first snow, which is falling around her. Looks at Johanna, absorbs her with her beautiful eyes. “Ylla of death … I am obsessed with death.” Ulla-Ylla who is catching real snowflakes on her tongue.

And Ulla Bäckström as the American girl. How she stands on the Glitter Scene, her room in the woods, at the highest point in the wonderful house where she lives in Rosengården 2 and Johanna below, alone among the last trees of the Boundary Woods, in the darkness. Streaming lights, like searchlights. She IS the American girl, so real you can almost see the following: how she falls, crashes down to the ground—

“Don’t push your love too far, E—”

•

But Tobias, in the greenhouse, shrugs impatiently. As if he wanted to say something else now, with authority: once upon a time all of that was real.

And he—just like Solveig—is not interested in the Winter Garden. As if he also wanted to say: don’t bother with all of these stories, tales, productions, which come later.

Because once upon a time, as said, all of this was FRESH and real. And the loss that followed, life changing.

•

“I didn’t want it to happen that way.”

The baroness on her veranda, tired, stammering, waiting for the two sisters of the dead Eddie de Wire.

“Maybe I didn’t understand her.” Says the same thing over and over again in different ways when Tobias comes to her at the Glass House when he is back from his trip; on her veranda, and it is the last time.

“I should have understood, Tobias,” she says, “but—” She carries on like that, ruffled and confused and beside herself. “I was going to send her away, I thought I had sent her away—

“And that poor boy who was wandering around with her little bag … I took him under my wing. I meant well, but—”

•

Then, almost a week after that fateful morning, the following has also taken place. Bengt has been at the baroness’s. He was the one who found Björn in the outbuilding and has gone into shock, become mute, weeks will pass before anyone can get a sensible word out of him.

So the baroness went to the cousin’s house and offered to take Bengt to the Glass House for a while, after everything. So he will get some peace and quiet and be able to get away from everything but also to make things easier for the cousin’s mama who has been beside herself during this time—about Björn, inconsolable. But as luck would have it, things get better for her later, when Doris Flinkenberg is allowed to move into the cousin’s house.

And of course, the baroness has had such a bad conscience too. She does not hide it at all.

“I should have understood, Tobias. I didn’t mean everything I said. About Eddie, I mean.”

And she has gotten nice drawing materials for him. Been into the city and bought real painting supplies: an easel and paint, watercolors, oil paints, chalk, expensive felt pens. And is not the least bit quiet about the potential absurdity in that
that
is what she does, goes to the city and buys all of those things in the middle of all of
the chaos. “I was so beside myself, Tobias. Didn’t know what to do.”

There in the Glass House, in one of the largest rooms with a view of just the sea—in other words in the opposite direction, so he would not have to look at the boathouse all the time—she decided Bengt will have peace and quiet, to paint, in all placidity, if he wants to.

Bengt has been there. One day, maybe half, before he disappeared without the baroness even noticing it, and, still, without saying anything at all. Is just gone. And later back at the cousin’s house where he furnishes a room for himself in the barn and lives there. Eventually bringing in a bed and a Russian stove, and insulating the walls.

But after that, for Bengt, when he gradually starts speaking again (but then it is later in the fall and the baroness has left), there is no talk about the Second Cape; his solitary wandering has also ended. The boy with the sketchpad. Does not exist.

•

“I didn’t WANT it to turn out like this … But, Tobias,” says the baroness, “it was when that boy left that I understood you can’t push things aside. You have to … face. Your responsibility, your shortcomings … I didn’t understand that girl.”

The baroness hysterical, babbling, telling Tobias an incoherent story about the last evening, night. A disturbance, a fight, and how she had phoned an acquaintance who came with a car to take the American girl away. And how they had driven away from the property, the last she had seen of the American girl. And Bengt who had come to her, upset, asking to see the American girl and not believing her when she said that she had sent her away.

Bengt, stood there bewildered, with the American girl’s bag—

“They were going to go away, Tobias. Had decided to run away. The two of them, Tobias. Or whatever she had hammered into him, Eddie. My God, that poor boy.”

And how she had seen him leave—so alone, so crestfallen, all of him. As if all the air had left him … that her having gone looking for him again later, afterward, was maybe her way of trying to make things right, asking for forgiveness.

Later, early in the morning, how Rita in her swimsuit had come running to the baroness in the Glass House from Bule Marsh. In need of help, wanting to tell her about something terrible at Bule Marsh—

And then she told the baroness, “Karin,” but in the middle of everything just stopped, as if she was pushing all of it away.

“Blood is thicker than water, Tobias. Maybe I’ve learned that now. But it was an expensive lesson, Tobias. And not worth it.

“I was afraid of Eddie, Tobias. She wasn’t honest. In the end I didn’t know who she was. And maybe I don’t know now either. But this: it is just terrible. I’m sorry, Tobias, I didn’t want it to turn out like this—”

And the baroness on the veranda of the Glass House, so alone, pitiful.

And how she appealed to him about an old friendship, fellowship, solidarity.

“Blood is thicker than water, Tobias. But it isn’t everything.”

But still, Tobias left. She is no longer “Karin” to him. Just … nothing.

Because she said other things as well. About the twins, not directly, but paraphrasing, which in some way was even worse.

“I don’t know if it’s right, Tobias. And please don’t ask me to explain. But I want to stay out of this, Tobias. Completely. Everything. God knows I have enough problems of
my
own now. Of course I don’t mean you, Tobias. But—I’m asking you to respect my decision.”

So that is how it went when the baroness abandoned the twins, when she refused to have anything to do with them anymore.

And for Tobias, who cannot believe his ears yet in some way it is not exactly a surprise either. “Karin.” What “Karin”? A silly dream.

And Tobias leaves the baroness and he never comes back again either.

And that is how it is. The baroness disappears, ceases to exist—for Tobias, and for the twins. And shortly thereafter, as said, she has other people around her, new youths.
Blood is thicker than water:
her
own
relatives, a pair of sisters to Eddie de Wire, they come from America—and Kenny, the younger sister, comes to live with the baroness permanently.

In some way she might look a little bit like her sister Eddie, but still, so completely different. Essentially different, so light, Kenny de Wire in white clothes. But a delightful person and above all nothing mystical or mysterious about her.

But in some way it is, will be, in another time, in another world.

Because already during the winter after the American girl’s disappearance the baroness is diagnosed with
cancer and that is what she dies of six years later after a course of illness that had been lengthy and painful. The baroness loses the ability to move, has reduced vision and hearing, treatment and medicine make her bloated.

Sometimes you can see her at a distance, from the high hill on the First Cape. The baroness next to her house on the veranda where a winter garden was going to be constructed but it never materializes because of her illness. See her, an ungainly bundle in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets in the middle of a warm summer day, but turned facing the sea, in large, dark sunglasses.

With her then, the new girl, Kenny de Wire. A calm voice that echoes for a long time in the warm, still summer evenings. A pleasing, soft laugh—that charm, that affability.

None of the alienation that once hovered over her sister Eddie de Wire, with Bengt, on the terrace of the boathouse.

•

“But Tobias!” Johanna interrupts him impatiently in the greenhouse. “What happened? At the marsh? The baroness never said anything?”

“But she wasn’t there, Johanna,” Tobias says and adds, after a short pause. “No, no, Johanna. I spoke with her as I said. I have a feeling that everything she told me was true. I know, Johanna. I knew her—”

“But Rita then? Who went to the baroness? What did she say?”

Tobias shrugs—“What she saw—”

“But Tobias,” Johanna starts again. “Rita and Solveig then? Did they have anything to do with that … at Bule Marsh? Was that what the baroness meant?”

And, for a second, Tobias looks at Johanna blankly, completely perplexed. As if: my God, no.

“It was just that she abandoned them. Because she had so much else going on. Her own relatives. And it was already so terrible, everything, for her, she thought. But the twins became very lonely, of course.”

•

Yes, of course. Life goes on, everything passes gradually. But it takes time.
The one who killed for the sake of love:
Björn who caused his girlfriend’s death at Bule Marsh. Also before that story—which is also a bit beautiful, the young love, so shimmering but unconditional—can come out.

The gloom rests heavily over the District, over the cousin’s house. The poor cousin’s mama who lost Björn, and is beside herself, inconsolable.

But something good happens to her during this time too, which at least makes the sadness a bit more manageable, she gets something new to live for. That girl, Doris Flinkenberg, the knocked-about trash kid, whom the cousin’s mama who loves children,
wants all the children to come to her
, has also been attached to earlier, gets to come and live with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s house. It is arranged so that Doris gets a new home in the cousin’s house and Doris, who is beside herself with joy in the middle of all the grief, moves into Björn and Bengt’s old room on the top floor of the cousin’s house.

Small, remarkable Doris, the mistreated one from the Outer Marsh who, after all of the terrible things she has experienced in her early childhood, finally gets some peace around her. And someone like the cousin’s mama
loves her one hundred percent and wants what is best for her.

And how they have such a good time together, the cousin’s mama and Doris Flinkenberg. In the kitchen, in the cousin’s house, with crosswords, the music streaming from the radio, the family magazines,
True Crimes …

Doris, despite her terrible past, is still in some way so bright. And it soon infects everyone who comes in contact with her,
Doris-light
.

But, as said: it takes time. Some weeks, months later everything is still open, raw. Maybe also because Eddie de Wire’s body was not found right away makes it difficult to move on. The body floats up out of the marsh where it has been lying, wedged into the mud on the bottom, six years later, at the end of an unusually dry and hot summer in 1975. And then: what is left of the body is just a skeleton, in a red plastic raincoat—
plastic is an eternal material
. It is Doris Flinkenberg who makes the macabre discovery.

And the other shock: that something like that can happen
here
.

A period of tittle-tattle, creepiness, feeling ill at ease and a lot of thoughts, other thoughts, about what happened at Bule Marsh when the American girl drowned. Thoughts that do not really belong anywhere, but they still do not leave you alone during this strange time.