The Glitter Scene (50 page)

“What now?” I ask because I don’t want Rita to become disappointed.

Rita doesn’t say anything. But she gets angry at me, you can see that.

But otherwise it’s nice up there, you can see in many directions. The coast, the sea, the houses, the woods. Everything is there. Being here.

On that July evening with my twin sister, Rita, it’s not the stone foundation, here we belong together. And of course, naturally in some way waiting for the cousin’s mama to come out on the steps of the cousin’s house below the hill and call us home for supper.

“Come, all my boys!” she calls, but all of the girls are included too, of course. Me and Rita, Rita, me.

And all of the boys come. Björn and Bengt from their
directions, often together. From the barn, for example, where they have been lurking with the American girl, the three of them. Carrying out lengthy, quite normal teenage conversations that don’t say much of anything. Because normal teenagers in full possession of their senses don’t stand there and hold speeches for each other.

In other words Bengt, then, as said, the one who has been keeping the group alive.

“
.”

Says something in ancient Greek.

In order to impress the American girl.
Teach Yourself Ancient Greek
. Since she has a book like that and has lent it to him.

But the cousin’s mama who calls and the boys, separate from the girls, to the supper table, all four kids together.

•

“Wait for meee!”

But then one evening, another hungry, thirsty one shows up on the road. Doris Flinkenberg, the knocked-about kid, who becomes, for a while, “the fifth duckling at the table.” That’s how Doris expresses it herself, when the cousin’s mama quickly sets out a teacup and a plate for her too.

The strange, wonderful, but poor little Doris Flinkenberg.

That it’s a shame about Doris, everyone knows that. Doris, from the Outer Marsh, who wanders around in different places because she has a hard time at home, seeks out calmer places to be. Places where she can rest. So tired. How Doris slumps together after tea and sandwiches, falls asleep in her chair.

But in the middle of her deep sleep, watchful. On the alert at the slightest foreign sound, movement. Her eyes open, wide-open.

Looks around: the danger, the threat, where?

And then it’s just something ordinary. For example the cousin’s mama who turned on the transistor radio, which Björn had brought with him, when everyone had finished eating.

The pop music floods through the kitchen.

Doris immediately relaxes and starts singing along with the song, even though she doesn’t master either the lyrics or the melody. The cousin’s mama who, in contrast to everyone else in the kitchen, knows the song, joins in: Doris raises a cry, the cousin’s mama raises a cry—and in the middle of the song, how Doris looks at the cousin’s mama with teacup saucer eyes as if at a creature from an unknown planet.
Like mother, like song
. Is it possible?

Delightful new acquaintance.

And Doris, still in the song, slides off the chair and steps out on the floor and onto her toes and starts dancing. Silly, in and of itself, Doris can’t dance after all. But she dances anyway, bumpily, because she is also rather small and plump too. And how the cousin’s mama, while the song is playing, sings, Doris dances, looks at Doris so, tears in her eyes but so happy. Doris-light!

And Doris: you can see how a wonderful view unfolds in those eyes. In the middle of the Doris-song, Dorisdance, rosy cheeked, loud voice, and—marsh cunningness. A small glitter; but you can’t say it in Doriscontexts, it sounds so awful.

Afterward, Doris comes to the cousin’s house more
and more often. Almost every day. Is drawn to the cousin’s mama, the cousin’s house like a magnet.

Starts staying the night as well. Not in the cousin’s house; it isn’t possible because of the cousin’s papa. But, for example, with me and Rita in the middle of the room between our sleeping bags, you have to, says the cousin’s mama of course, “have pity.” Lets herself be found in different places nearby. Out in the barn, up in the house on the First Cape where she, despite the fact that all the doors are locked, easily makes her way in.

But at the same time: it’s a terrible shame about Doris.

But always, if she doesn’t go herself, she is taken away anyway. The cousin’s papa is angry, eventually he even calls the police and says that they should come and take the child away. The cousin’s mama is crying. Doris is crying. Even tries, when she sees how sad the cousin’s mama is, not to show her own sadness. Brave girl, brave Doris!

Doris who is taken away, Doris who comes back. The cousin’s mama who snaps—

The cousin’s mama who goes to the cousin’s papa.

•

He likes that, the cousin’s mama doesn’t know that, she doesn’t know him. That the more she asks and asks, the worse it becomes. She is countryman Loman’s daughter and knows this sort of thing can be arranged, the child must be looked after, and it has always been the case that all children should come to her! Astrid Loman, “children’s mama.”

But it is so that the cousin’s mama is no daughter anymore and this is not the neighboring municipality, which he, in various ways, explains to her. Loves explaining to
her, the more persistent she is with him. It’s terrible to see because it’s quite likely, or I’m sure of it, that the cousin’s papa would, if Doris just came to the house and stayed in the house without there being a big fuss about it in that way, even like it. Wouldn’t have anything against Doris, actually, but now, here, with Astrid Loman, the countryman’s daughter, he sees the opportunity to play a game. He likes games like these, give with one hand, take with the other, have an opponent whom he always makes sure is at a slight disadvantage, floating around in uncertainty. Uncertainty, obscure promises that he takes back, only to make the same promises again the next moment, or even just fulfill the promise suddenly when you’ve just stopped hoping.

Negotiate the matter, it costs money. Which means that the cousin’s papa, for fun, names a sum of money that he claims he has seriously calculated it would cost to take care of a girl like Doris until she becomes an adult, including the money to pay off the people in the Outer Marsh and so on. If she gives him that sum of money, to be delivered by hand, he might possibly take the matter seriously under consideration. Not even rotten eggs are free, the cousin’s papa repeats. Rotten egg is the cousin’s papa’s nickname for Doris Flinkenberg. Comes from Doris herself, actually: how Doris has a habit of imitating the cousin’s papa’s way of saying the word, which he often says anyway, in general so to speak, in relation to everything and everyone, but the cousin’s papa imitates Doris only when she isn’t around.

Something in Doris makes it so that when Doris is in the cousin’s house the cousin’s papa stays out of sight. But Doris is also good at noticing things; all of her senses on alert, observant.

The cousin’s papa names this sum and the cousin’s mama believes him. Aastriid. A ray of hope lights up in Astrid’s eyes. At closer reflection: is extinguished again. Cannot give in. Is lit.

I go up to the mountains with my lonely heart
. It is rather terrible to see.

“Children’s mama.” For a moment I forget that all of it is a game.

•

I’m with the cousin’s mama in the washroom with the big washing machine and the mangle set up in a basement up in the town center. We have taken the bus there. With dirty laundry, bedclothes, and light-colored clothes, from some summerhouse on the Second Cape.

We stuff the dirty laundry in the machine. I fumble a little, and the cousin’s mama, who never loses her patience, suddenly becomes angry and yells at me. I start crying. Then everything falls apart for her as well and she takes me in her arms and talks about that child, Doris, whom she’s thinking about all the time, it’s so terrible to see.

“Solveig. If only one could come up with a solution.” And that she has money, but it’s not enough.

The cousin’s mama has been saving and she counted all the money she has, but it really isn’t that much, coins and some bills in a glass jar and now she takes all of the cleaning and washing jobs from the Second Cape that she can get, but it isn’t enough. The cousin’s papa says so too, all the time: “So much more is needed.”

And thinking about Doris, how time is passing.

I nod.

Not enough. Both of us know that, the cousin’s mama and I. But I know, as said, something else that I will know
the whole time. None of the cousin’s mama’s money will ever be enough. Because for the cousin’s papa, it isn’t a matter of money. This is a game to him, a game, something to pass the time with.

The cousin’s mama doesn’t understand, still. Can’t take it in. “Children’s mama.” Yes, maybe. But also: she comes from a different landscape. And that’s why I can’t say anything to her; I am ashamed of the other landscape, about the fact that I suddenly know it inside and out, as if I were there. I’m not there. I’m not there.

I’m here, cousin’s mama, another landscape and it truly is—and look, cousin’s mama, sun cats!

And that is what overwhelms me in the midst of everything. The sun that has now started shining anyway, after it having been so cloudy all morning.

“I like your name.” Which the cousin’s mama said to me many years ago when she came to the cousin’s house. “Solveig. There is so much sun in it.”

“Look, cousin’s mama! Sun cats!”

Then, in the basement washroom, I do the following: I start dancing. Like the sun cats are dancing. Call to the cousin’s mama again, look at the cats! How they are forcing their way into the washroom under the ground through a window that is almost in the ceiling. But still, in any case, dancing over the heavy mangle that is turning, creaking over the wrinkled, slightly damp sheets.

How I am dancing! Carefully going up on my toes, before throwing myself head-first pretty much, like the high jump for women from Lore Cliff, Bule Marsh, in the dance.

Carrying out my own sun cat’s dance to sun cat accompaniment, on my tiptoes!

Doris-light.

This occupies me completely, precision: because I don’t know the dance, rising up in the dance is difficult, because it is also the idea after all that my dance should be reminiscent of how Doris Flinkenberg dances in the cousin’s kitchen in the evenings.

And: dancing in order to make someone happy. The cousin’s mama, who has become so inconsolable.

And of course, which I know at that moment but prefer not to think about. So to speak influence myself into the right mood by suggestion. To another landscape. Where I should be quite naturally, not in this knowledge: that shit of hopelessness.

Regardless of how I stretch. Tiptapandontiptoe.

I have gone up on my toes. Become tall, tall, so large. And it is impressive, of course, so tall for my age.

But from that skyscraper height I suddenly don’t see stupid little Solveig without fantasy, who
has to
think in order to go up in the dance. But something else. The opposite. The influence of suggestions inside a square. Applause. What a performance.

“You did that well, Solveig.”

“Look look, Astrid! Sun cats!”

“Don’t be silly now, Solveig.” The cousin’s mama smiles a bit tiredly. “We have a lot of sheets left.”

I go back to work. But hopeless. What happened, what was thought in the dance, does not leave my head. A plan that unfolds, a secret to everyone. “You did that well, Solveig.”

In vain, from the beginning. But the other, it is so much stronger.

•

The cousin’s papa’s money. The parlor, the cousin’s house, the closet. The cousin’s papa who is an old-fashioned
idiot who can’t imagine keeping his money in the bank. He brags about it too, in general, in vague terms, about all the money he has. Sometimes you’ve seen some of it, in the open. Like when Björn was going to buy the moped, for example.

“There’s always more money.”

If you sell the Second Cape you get a lot of money.

Is kept in an old, dungy boot, in a closet. I’m the only one who knows that secret. In addition to the cousin’s papa, of course, but he doesn’t know that I know.

I haven’t told anyone about the money, not even my sister Rita. Because from the beginning Rita was more impatient than me, despite the fact that we look so alike. Just as tall, dark. So different, essentially different, compared to Doris Flinkenberg, for example, small and plump, flaxen hair, light. In general, light.

A bag with money somewhere would for Rita be something you needed to do something about; not necessarily take it and go, but still, attend to in some way.

And now. Maybe lacking that necessary caution, that mood, for example, which would cause everything to go out of control. It can’t get out of control. It’s a matter of Doris Flinkenberg, a child.

And now in other words it isn’t so that Rita would have been badly affected by little Doris’s fate, that she would, for example, have anything against Doris Flinkenberg becoming the fifth wheel at the supper table for good. After all, Doris has spent many nights in our cottage.