The Glitter Scene (26 page)

And when she saw the bag in the hall it hit her. That it had been there
the whole time
. It had just been a matter of opening the door, heading on her way.

Right then the doorbell had rung again, voices could be heard on the stairs, a key was in the lock, and she ran ran back into the apartment. Huddled in a corner of the sofa.

That was how the Manager found her. The Animal Child. The surprise, the disgust. But he had immediately come to his senses there out in the open, returned to the stairwell, she heard how he spoke calmly to some grumpy hag, everything was in order, shooshed the woman away—later he would tell Maj-Gun it was a neighbor who had complained about the noise in the bathroom. This week in particular the building’s super was on vacation and the Manager was filling in and when no one answered the telephone or opened the door when she rang the bell, the neighbor had gone to him.

The Manager had closed the front door, come back into the room and taken her away from there. Spoken to her calmly, carefully, and wordlessly, she allowed herself to be convinced, followed along.

To his apartment in another building, next door. And there he had gotten some real food into her, gotten clean
clothes on her. Men’s boxers, men’s socks and washed-out overalls, green and wide, but made of jersey cotton, comfortable and soft. Her own clothes thrown in the washing machine.

But the very first thing had been to run a hot bath for her in the bathroom. And then she lay there in the tub and listened intently to all of the sounds outside. On the one hand, all of her senses on alert, the Manager’s low voice in the hall, he was talking on the telephone. The police? Lain there and imagined scenes, how she would give herself up. Just the handcuffs on. Guilty, guilty. On the other hand, nodded off in the warmth, the water. Woke again when the Manager knocked on the door and when she came out of the bathroom in the overalls he had made up a bed for her in the sofa bed in the small living room that had become hers.

In a sleeping bag, clean sheets beneath.

NAH. Tobacco, the balcony, the square in her head, “the square, the square”—this huddling in blankets on the floor of the balcony, suddenly she could not stand it.

•

When the Manager comes home from work that day she says she is thinking about quitting smoking. Marlboro, it is not even her brand. But does not matter. She has been thinking about quitting anyway. He becomes happy, he smiles.

“Senseless to ruin your health when you’re so young.” She shrugs. “It gives me a bad taste. And I’m not young. Soon it will be Holy Innocents’ Day. I’ll be thirty.”

These have been the first sensible words to come out of her mouth in that apartment, after days, maybe more than a week, a sentence with coherence. And “djeessu—”
automatically following it, whistling it through her teeth, she stops herself. And grows silent.

A fraction of a second, how the Manager’s mouth twitches. As if in laughter, as if he actually, here and now, in this situation, a long way from the newsstand, likes what she has said.

“Now you’re starting to become yourself again.” As if he
wanted
to say it. Like in the newsstand, all of those times she had said something funny to him when he looked like he wanted to pinch her cheek. But naturally, he does not. Tousles her hair, lightly, when he walks by, turns on the TV. “The news is on.”

“I give up. Unconditionally.” She is on the verge of saying it to the Manager—

Police cars, sirens.

They watch TV, the news.

Two newscasts. The one a little past six, the one at eight thirty.

But the Manager, justice, the law, where is it? The Manager plays on his side of the wall,
Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor
.

Current events, sirens. The waiting. More abstract. Weeks which pass; it has become Christmas.

•

A small plastic tree with plastic balls and glitter and electric lights in different colors. The Manager retrieves it from the basement where he keeps it stored and the two cardboard angels with hair made of yarn in a cardboard box marked
CHRISTMAS THINGS
.

Places the Christmas tree on the desk, the angels on the television set. Homemade angels, the work of kids, you can see
that
, not very nice at all.

“Do you have kids?”

“No.”

“Have you been married?”

“No.”

His “almost” goddaughters are the ones who have made these angels, he explains, and gave them to him for Christmas. When they were little, they are grown up now. And they have names as well, the angels, that is: Sister Blue, Sister Red, or if you want, the Astronaut, the Nuclear Physicist. “Which one do you think is which?” the Manager asks jokingly as if it were a particularly interesting thing to ponder and answer, it is neither, just idiotic. AND you cannot see a difference anyway. Both are just as ugly, the empty toilet paper rolls benevolently camouflaged in water color, but she does not say that, Maj-Gun shrugs her shoulders, says nothing.

They eat ham and turnip casserole for three days. And listen to music, the same opera, during the day too. She says that he can leave the door ajar, she likes music.

On the television, the news, the third day: a dictator and his wife have been shot. An old couple is lying dead under a wall on frosty ground—the image, black and white, opens the newscast. Thick winter clothes, fur, do
not
look peaceful, or wretched, just dead. Terrible people, terrible regime. And soon fresh earth and sandy earth, that serves-them-right-earth will soon be shoveled over them.

But “djeessus!” comes out of Maj-Gun’s mouth then, loud and clear, whistling between her teeth, it is also a surprise. From
Carmen, Lucia
, small electric lights to this. The first image from the first real newscast since the highlights on Christmas Eve.

Maj-Gun puts her hand over her mouth—

Then the Manager turns the TV off in the middle of the news.

They sit in silence on either side of the dining table.

And the Manager suddenly speaks, softly. Says serious things to her. She should not be ashamed. Regardless of what has happened, life must go on. Also her life.

Then he adds, word for word, and calmly:
that he liked her so much there in the newsstand
.

When she said the kinds of things she said, who she was. She was not like other people, like
no one
else. She should not misunderstand him when he says this but there is so much
life
in her.

It becomes quiet again. So much life, and suddenly, just because he says it: everything she once was comes pouring into her—

But stop now. Because in the following and immediately: Susette with the big eyes, the globes, a whole world.

“If you weren’t so curled up in your own suffering, Susette.”

Her own voice from somewhere—had she actually said that, had she personally really said that? Yes. And it comes back. Susette falling in the hangout. Her eyes during the fall. The emptiness in them, not even surprise. Before she came to lie there, dying and dying.

And Maj-Gun, what is she doing here? Justice, the law. Why doesn’t anything happen?

Later, in the Manager’s living room, she has started crying. A big child’s big tears: screaming and shrill and insistent, and then, while she is crying, it comes out of her. She left her friend to die in the boathouse. And
everything else too, pell-mell: the Boy in the woods, the jealousy, Susette, the fight, the meeting, the boathouse—and the snow, the cliffs, and the snow.

Why
did Justice not come? What is so wrong with it?

And now when the crying, many weeks after, in the Manager’s apartment, Boxing Day 1989, is set free in the quiet apartment, how it sprays out of her eyes, nostrils, mouth, all orifices. Tears, snot spray over the rest of the ham, the mustard, and turnip casserole on the plate.

At first the Manager does not say anything. He lets her cry. Does not come to her to give her a hug, comfort her or the like. Nor does he put the TV on again, or some other record in order to drown it out, does not leave but goes to the kitchen to get more paper towels, which they have used as napkins during their meals, and tears a few sheets from the roll that he gives to Maj-Gun to snuffle in.

Then he sits down on the other side of the dining room table, clears his throat, and says, “Maj-Gun. Should we start from the beginning? Your friend, Susette Packlén. Right? She isn’t—dead—”

At first Maj-Gun is so absorbed in her crying that she does not even hear but then it forces its way inside, she stops crying, everything stops, stop—and a desertlike silence follows.

The Manager’s mouth is moving. In a state of shock she only sees his mouth moving at first, but the anesthetic slowly eases and she hears as well.

“And is in good health. She has been tired and upset. They traveled to Portugal during Christmas to rest. She and her fiancé.”

Fiancé?

But, the Manager adds, “of course it’s a tragedy,” and then he tells an amazing story that does not match up with anything at all.

There has been a fire, in the cousin’s house, the whole house has burned down. Bengt, Solveig’s brother—yes, they’re good friends, Solveig and the Manager, have known each other their entire lives—had fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand. The fire truck came, but it was too late.

It was burning. That house is located pretty remotely, the Manager says, and the weather was bad, it took some time. And when the call came in, there was nothing to save. A tragic accident, even though he was “an alcoholic, washed up,” says the Manager.

“I’ve understood that they were close in some way.” The Manager is talking about Susette now, about Susette and Bengt, though it takes a while before Maj-Gun understands this too.
I
was the one who loved him. On the other hand, right when she is about to say it, like a real objection, a type of reflex just like all of the millions of “djeessus” that come out of her mouth as soon as she does not pull herself together, it hits her again again again:
but it was just a story
. And in the same moment, how that story leaves her; it is almost terrible.

The Boy in the woods. Bengt, and at the same time. She had been there with him. She, Maj-Gun, that exact same day, beer (he had been drinking) and cigarettes she had brought with her and then yes … dot dot dot … this and the other but damn it, “What are you babbling about?” how he had looked at her like a crazy person and laughed at her, but then everything was already over. No one came, she was alone with him, a
complete stranger whom she did not know, and in some way was afraid of too.

But: she had been in that room, that house. And he: so alive. And he: lying on the floor in the room.

•

But why, Manager, why why had he not said anything earlier?

The Manager says that yes, he
should
have said something, he knows that. In particular, he should have asked when she had gotten more energy and become more herself again. Says that again, herself, with almost happiness in his voice. But then … in the beginning. She was so weak. And the other apartment: had been such a shock to him too. He had not understood very much, first lately, in this apartment, it had started dawning on him that it might be a question of a misunderstanding.

But he had known that they were friends after all, she and Susette Packlén who had had Bengt in her apartment. Not living there, Susette had explained to the Manager several times. It was the neighbor lady who alerted the Manager to the fact that Susette had Bengt there, and that if he
was living
there then a notice of change of address should be filled out. So the Manager had asked, but of course he knew what stories like that could be like, here today, gone tomorrow. But Susette Packlén had flat out denied it and held her ground.

And yes, he also knew of course what it could be like between girlfriends, if jealousy was playing a role, or otherwise, discord, sadness over the other one having left. He had not been able to imagine that she, Maj-Gun, had gone around brooding in another way.

And yes, that mess in the apartment, and—yes, he had been shocked too. Thought about asking about it too, when she got better, but on the other hand, had not wanted to bring it up. He had thought, yes, has thought, that it was so nice seeing her get her strength back and become … hersel—

This is where the Manager stops, as if he had suddenly become confused. That it was absurd.

But he tries to explain, as businesslike as possible. He has enjoyed having her in the apartment. The days that have passed, and celebrating Christmas … which there was not anything really special about … but, in any case …

•

SO he has gotten it together again, gotten a grip and told her everything he had de facto set about doing for her during this time. Contacted her family, spoken with her father the Pastor on the phone, the old vicar whom he knows and has in confidence, between two old men, been able to tell him a little more about the situation, her condition, and kept him updated the entire time: to the others he said that she has severe angina, but everyone has been worried about her. And her brother Tom Maalamaa had personally been in touch.

He had also been in touch with the newsstand, the Head Office, been connected to the correct personnel department via the operator … and her landlords down in the town center whom he is acquainted with too. Said that she is recovering at her parents’ home, with the Pastor’s family, who live in another county. Her landlords, Gunilla and Göran, sent many warm greetings to the
patient and are not worried at all about the rent being paid. Maj-Gun has always been a hundred percent exemplary boarder. It has been easier that way, this white lie, the Manager explained, referring to himself as well: for example his job as a teacher at the school where both Göran and Gunilla are his colleagues and Göran a Lions brother, outside of work.

“Angina!” A breeze through Maj-Gun’s head, something she once said on the telephone. To Solveig, Susette’s employer, the only conversation in that horrible apartment which, in that moment, and for always, seems like a million years ago. Then it dawns on her, so she does not need to ask anything else about the matter that is for certain. The angels on the television set. Solveig, Rita. “My almost goddaughters, friends for a long time.”