The Glitter Scene (4 page)

The Glitter Scene is my life
. New songs, other songs, their own songs.

Well. Just a story, a fantasy. It does not happen. Nothing happens, in reality. Aside from time passing, months, years. Robin who moves, Tobias who dies, the greenhouse that deteriorates on the side of the road. It becomes the fall of 2006, the months of October and November. A glimpse of a stranger in the Boundary Woods. She is called the Red One, a woman in her fifties, and she wears red clothes.

The Red One, from the Winter Garden.

The American girl in a snow globe
. Sometimes Johanna thinks about it too. Lonely thoughts. Two characters in
a watery landscape.
Don’t push your love too far, Eddie
. Ulla on the Glitter Scene, Johanna down below at the edge of the woods, alone like always, in the dark.

Ille dille death, Lille
. “There is so much death.” The memory of Ulla from two years ago, 2004. “
I am Ylla of death.”
Ulla Bäckström catching snowflakes on her tongue on a field.

•

The house in the darker part, November 2006
. If you follow the longest path into the Boundary Woods, which starts behind what was once Tobias’s greenhouse next to the road, and you continue across all of the First Cape to where the sea meets you on the other side, you will come to the house in the darker part. Though, it should be mentioned: in those outskirts you do not exactly think
sea
when you see the water, it is such an inland-located overgrown muddy bay—the poles of an old jetty sticking up out of the water.

But in any case there is a house next to that beach, the only house in all of the Boundary Woods, an old alpine villa in the mud. Has been standing empty for many years, a great staircase takes up almost the entirety of the front of the house leading up to the entrance on the second floor. Many wide steps in gray concrete, cracked in places; during the summer moss and weeds grow tall from within the cracks. One large staircase in the middle of nowhere: can look like that from a distance during the fall and winter when all the leaves have fallen from the trees and all the undergrowth has withered away. Isolation and such loneliness around the abandoned house where a special darkness rules, even during the day. Almost timeless, without a season—or as
if it were the same season all year round. Late fall, just before the snow.

A feeling that endures after the Winter Garden comes to the Second Cape, which is located just a few miles away and illuminates all of its surroundings with its powerful lighting systems. But the light does not quite reach the house in the darker part: just streams down carefully among the tall conifers or grows stiff, into aurora borealis–like streaks across the sky during the cold, clear winter evenings.

But the house, someone lived there once. A small family, mother, father, child who came to the District straight from the international jet-setter’s lifestyle which, during the winter, took place at various Central European ski resorts. But the dad, he was called the Islander, loved his wife more than anything else on earth and in secret had the house in the darker part built based on the model of a lodge that the mother had fallen in love with during a sunny winter walk high up in the Alps and he gave it to her as a surprise.

It was supposed to be their new home, here, in the District, they would plant roots and live as a family here for real in the darker part of the woods. Of course it was not very successful. Wrong place, wrong foundation for a house, and the architecture and the construction were not really to anyone’s credit either so the mother could not put up with the marshiness; rather she left and remarried and the father and daughter were left alone in the strange house. Then they lived there just the two of them, father and daughter, until the daughter grew up and became the Marsh Queen and went out into the world, to
the punk music
, to become a footnote.

But in the house, large wild parties were held there once. They could last for days because the Islander loved glitz and glamour. Even after his daughter had grown up and left home and he was living somewhere else, he would come back during the hunting season and then there were parties, for days and nights. Until it gradually ebbed out on its own: one party was the last party and the Islander stopped coming altogether. It was like this: you could stand in the forest, in the darkness, and watch the parties from the sidelines. Like a ship, an island of light—which was traveling by. Then suddenly the house was evacuated and it was empty and dark all over again.

Johanna goes to the house sometimes—there is a panorama window on the ground floor at the back through which you can see the basement. She cups her hands around her face, looks in: an old earth-filled swimming pool, filled with disgusting water that seeps up from the ground through the cracks in the tiling. Trash floats on the calm surface. Paper, scraps of fabric, bottles, the like.

•

But it was here, exactly right here in the pool, that she, the Marsh Queen, had grown up. The Marsh Queen whom she later became, when she went out into the world, to the punk music.
The Marsh Queen who rose from the mire
. Lived alone in the house with her father the Islander, her name was Sandra Wärn: a little girl who collected matchboxes and silk fabric—her mother had owned a silk fabric store that had gone bankrupt and all of the unsold fabric was brought to the house in the darker part and when her mother left, everything was left behind. Bundles, packages from a closet on the upper floor were unwound in shimmering, colorful
lengths and spread out over the entire house. Down in the swimming pool too, when the Marsh Queen was a child, was just a square, sloppily tiled hole in the ground, never filled with water—there was so much about that house that in some way was unfinished. The girl hung out down there in the swimming pool, it became her world. And a moment in her life, childhood,
the only world
, for a time she came to share with a friend who became everything to her, they were always there. But that friendship ended abruptly and tragically, they had a falling out, the friend went and shot herself. And then in some way, Sandra Wärn had lost everything, there was nothing left.

•

Imagine:
Sandra Wärn after her friend’s death. Among all the fabric, in the waterless swimming pool. Colorful, shimmering lengths she wrapped herself in, and fell asleep. Slept and slept, in sorrow, inconsolable, wrapped in fabric. But from them, like from a cocoon, the Marsh Queen was born, the one who went out into the world, to the music. Never returned, but—forgot nothing. All of it, the house, the swimming pool, her and her friend’s world, all of the fabric, she took them with her to the music. Wrote songs about them, such as one called “Death’s Spell at a Young Age.”

She has talked about it in interviews. But smack, back to reality. At that point in the story the Marsh Queen stops herself, almost throws everything away, tears the silk fabric into pieces … “Oh, maybe it’s just a way of saying something else. Maybe I left because I wanted to be with people called Jack, Vanessa, Andy, and Cathe—”

•

“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille.”

And that is just about how it is, at the basement window in the house in the darker part, that day, one afternoon in November 2006, when Johanna suddenly hears a voice behind her, turns around fast as lightning, and stands face-to-face with Ulla Bäckström.

The same Ulla yet another one, different. Certainly older than two years ago in the field, wearing completely ordinary clothes now. Jeans, dark blue quilted jacket, a red hat pulled down over her ears, out of breath, as if she had been running. And she has something in her hand. A toy mask.

“Crehp, crehp
, Lille. Through fabric, long strips. Curls down into a bucket. While she’s talking, talking,
Djiissuss
—you never get away.

“Maybe she’s crazy, Lille. You must know who I’m talking about. The Red One. What’s her name? Maalamaa.

“But Lille,” Ulla adds, looking around, confused and at a loss, “it’s as if you’ve put a ball in motion.” She grows quiet for a moment and then Johanna understands what it is about her that is different. Ulla Bäckström is afraid. An ordinary empty rotten day in the woods, cold, the first snow is about to start falling again.

But terrorstruck, the fear stinks, screams in her for a few seconds even though she immediately does everything in her power to fend it off.

“My God, Lille,” she calls. “I am so DAMNED tired of it. I’m not interested anymore, I
never
think about it.”

“About what?”

“The American girl. It was just one project among many. I’m doing new roles now, new manuscripts. The world is filled with manuscripts, Lille …”

“What are you talking about?”

Ulla Bäckström comes closer, the fear is suddenly blown away, her voice is steadier. “You know, Lille, it was like this, when I played the American girl, played her on stage. Or it
becomes
like that. If you do the same thing over and over again, play the same story in the same way, beginning middle and end, the same scenes, same same, over and over again …

“Are on the cliff and die of love, fall fall, every time the same way … that, well, it becomes a bit monotonous. And then it can happen that you start thinking about other things. Or just this repetition that makes you uncertain, you start asking yourself:
was
it really like this?

“You know, with that story. The American girl. You start thinking about other possibilities.

“Björn who killed himself. Her boyfriend, after she had died. But Bengt, the other boy, the one in the woods, who loved her too. Who was he?

“If
it was him … And then, when you start thinking like that you sort of became unsure about everything.

“I gathered material. Sold flowers in the Winter Garden. But I didn’t get anywhere. Then you start asking around elsewhere, here and there. Putting balls in motion, Lille. Google, write some messages … and then, gradually, you come across someone”—Ulla pauses—“whose name is … Maalamaa.

“Well, there’s not so much to say about that. But now, Lille. The Red One,
now
she’s here. In the Winter Garden. And I’ve been there.

“And she talks about completely different things—

“Strange things. Like, well, that change everything.

“And suddenly, even though you don’t want to hear any more, you get hooked.

“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille. Heavy scissors,
crehp crehp
through the fabric, curling down into a bucket on the floor—”

“What does she talk about?” Johanna suddenly asks, loudly and eagerly.

Ulla Bäckström stops herself, stares so intensely into Johanna’s eyes that Johanna almost regrets asking.

“Well.” Ulla shrugs. “Just different stuff. She knew that boy, Bengt. Well, he wasn’t a boy then any longer, a grown man … the one who died here, burned in the house.

“But that—maybe there was another secret. About what happened. Also with the American girl. Where everything started.
Three siblings
, Lille, who were united by a secret that should have kept them together but instead it drove them apart and everyone turned against each other. Is it fam—”

“What three siblings?” Johanna interrupts her.

But then Ulla suddenly laughs and puts on the mask she has in her hand.

“You
know, Lille,” she yells, with the mask on. “And
her
name is the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa—and
your moooootheeer HA HA HA!

“And SO, Lille, it becomes an entirely different story. About two people and a newsstand. Maybe you know it too? HA HA, Lille! Buhuu!”

And with these words Ulla turns around and walks away, November 2006, for the last time.

“Dark boring groupie,” she yells. “EVERYTHING can be stuffed into your head!”

•

But that same evening, though much later, almost night by that time, Ulla Bäckström is standing on the Glitter Scene, the glass door wide open. And she falls, flies out.

A shadow behind her, that mask. The Angel of Death. Liz Maalamaa.

To add to the Winter Garden. Ulla falling, the mask, Screaming Toys
.

It howls through this experience, screams,
Screaming Toys
.

•

But Johanna, still during the day, has run home from the woods, the house in the darker part, to her room.

The American girl in a snow globe
.

Bengt in the woods
.

Three siblings united by a secret
.

Solveig closing the curtains in the kitchen
. Ritsch.
To her the Winter Garden does not exist
.

Rita’s Winter Garden. The Rita Strange Corporation
.

From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?

The Marsh Queen:
I don’t know about music, if what I mean with music, is music.

“Wembley Arena, 2012.” Everything that brings you to the music. “Maybe I left because I wanted to be with people called Jack, Vanessa, Andy, and Catherine.”
A new hour of creation, we are the Woodst …

But of course, fantasies only. Leftovers of a Project Earth, the Marsh Queen, in the wastepaper basket, torn to bits.

•

“You have to know your history, to know who you are.”

It was Tobias who said that once. But Tobias is dead, the greenhouse is dark, at the side of the road. It obscures the field.

And Johanna is alone with a story, a very different one, one she does not know what to do with.

A gust of wind, November 2006, Child, fluorescent on the wall.

And it is blowing through this experience.

TOBIAS HAS A greenhouse, he grows roses there, lots of different kinds, you can remember names, such as one called Flaming Carmen.

Tough, sharp stems are forced up from plants and he is not very good at it. A rather hopeless task too if you think about the climate, he explains to Solveig sometimes, a bit vaguely as always when he is talking to her about his greenhouse that he built on property Solveig has rented to him. He certainly has all sorts of fertilizer in there, strong chemicals and strange lamps to “stimulate” the vegetation, he says with authority, even though it does not help. Tobias does not really have the knack; all the knowledge he has acquired about plants, and mainly about roses, he has gotten from books. According to Solveig, it may all be beautiful but in reality it just is not enough.