Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

Sure. This was added on silently in the District back then too, before everything. Who did they think they were? Ha-ha. Really, seriously, nothing to write home about exactly. That “cousin’s property,” for example, which they came from, what kind of a place was it anyway?

Now, in this context, you remind yourself of what you know about them, not much, but strange things. The terrible man, the “cousin’s papa” who won the property in a card game, the parents who died, dancers, circus artists? And so, a memory that strikes down like lightning. Dance music coming from the open window, closed curtains. Rumba tones . A persistent, absorbing rhythm in the still, hot summer days around the house on the First Cape. The dancer, his wife, who were training for dance competitions on the salsafloor.

The rhythm, and the quiet children. The three cursed ones . And later, after the accident, sitting outside the house, the three children in a row. Tall kids who seemed so much older than they were, backs against the stone foundation.

Rumba tones, absorbing, as if they could still be heard around them.

That kind of inheritance, that kind of evil blood in the genes.

A shiver ran through you. Those children. The boy, who was friends and maybe more than friends with the American girl, and Rita, Solveig, the twins.

Back to Bule Marsh. Those girls with the baroness who did not get along with her young relative Eddie de Wire who died right there, at Bule Marsh.

Nothing you walk around saying out loud, you dismiss the thought as soon as you can. But still, difficult to get it out of your head once it has gotten in. And because all of it cannot be said out loud, after all they are only children , strengthens the feeling.

And so it becomes that much of that vagueness, the fear, the discomfort, the suspicions that were hanging in the air after the American girl’s death without a goal or a direction gather around the twins, unspoken. Rita, Solveig, exposed for a short while; the eyes of the District upon them, stolen looks.

And a circle of emptiness around them, which only Tobias does not care about at all and pushes his way through. Continues visiting the twins in their cottage, just like before. Encourages Rita and Solveig to focus on school: the world is large, is open to them, and so on. Everything that had also been said in the woods at Bule Marsh with the baroness—but that sounds different now. Pedagogically severe and square so to speak, yes, he certainly hears it. But someone has to say something, he cannot remain quiet. Do not throw away your talent: high school, college, university! Reminds them of their old nicknames, which existed before “the swimmers,” before everything. “The astronaut,” “the nuclear physicist.” Which were of course also what they were going to become… and the twins nod and start bickering a bit loose-limbed about who was going to be what, as they had a habit of doing during the time when they enjoyed teasing Tobias because even he did not want to admit that he also had a hard time telling them apart because they looked so much alike. “I AM the nuclear physicist, not Rita.” “No, me Rita.” An old jargon but without any energy in it: grown out of it, not very much fun anymore.

They do not talk about swimming, at all. Never again. Naturally unthinkable to continue training at Bule Marsh as if nothing had happened. But there are swimming pools, in the city by the sea for example where you can easily get to by bus, not to mention one in the next county over. And when it becomes summer again, other public beaches in the District.

“Shall we go and swim? Rita? We can bike.” Solveig will be heard nagging at Rita a few times. But Rita is determined. Does not listen at all, all of that is over and done with.

So, what do you mean “swimmer”? Two ill-fitting swimsuits that are hanging, forgotten, on a clothing hook in the hall of the twins’ cottage under shirts, coats.

An old Lifeguard’s Medal that is hidden away in a desk drawer is forgotten. A reminiscence from another life.

So in the very beginning, it is like this, you cannot escape: Rita and Solveig on shining late summer days and in the fall that follows August of 1969. September that becomes October and the beginning of November. High blue skies, wild white clouds, and the play of colors when the leaves fall from the trees, the ground grows hard, the first snow.

Sitting on the steps of the twins’ cottage on the other side of the field, across from the cousin’s house.

Rita, Solveig, just the two of them while everything continues around them.

On the cousin’s property, for example, about three hundred feet in front of them on the other side of the field: the new girl in the cousin’s house, Doris Flinkenberg, she is jumping rope. Concentrated, persistent, does not look around, in the middle of her own personal game, as if she had personally discovered the art of jumping rope. And not just any old, rotten jump rope she is handling either, but a brand-spanking-new one, which the cousin’s mama has bought for her in a real store with her own money from cleaning houses that she has saved in a tin can in the cabinet in the kitchen. In addition to the glossy photos and the stationery of a kind that not only a small child like Doris Flinkenberg could be made happy with, printed with Keep-on-going-and-smile suns at the top edge. Not to mention the radio cassette player, a real radio cassette player , which also suddenly appears at the house instead of the old transistor that belonged to Björn and had been broken into a thousand pieces.

Welcome-Doris-presents is what they are called. Gifts that are given to Doris Flinkenberg to make Doris happy, Doris who has had such a difficult time and has now finally gotten a real home. With the cousin’s mama, in the cousin’s house. “Today I’ve gotten, and tomorrow I will get and get …” That is how Doris’s little song goes, the one she walks around humming during this time too.

Doris who is jumping rope a few hundred feet away. “Stipplo.” One of the twins says it, so that only the other one hears. “Stipplo.” But in the next moment how it actually happens: Doris on the cousin’s property, a desert away from them, trips over the rope, tangles her legs in it, falls flat on her stomach. Dump on the ground, she is not particularly graceful. And Doris, there where she is lying, looking around, a brief moment of astonished hesitation—as if she really did not know how she was going to deal with this unexpected mishap, with what kind of reaction. On the one hand: naturally just a trifle, what is tangling yourself in your jump rope compared to all of the horrible things you experienced in your early childhood in the Outer Marsh that fortunately for that matter is now over? On the other hand: objectively speaking it is also damn painful falling flat on your face, not to mention skinning your knees. But such a normal evil for a normal child can be blown away by a normal mother. And as if she was thinking just that, she casts a quick glance in the direction of the cousin’s house and the kitchen window where the cousin’s mama can be found on the other side… and first then, how her face wrinkles and she starts crying at the top of her lungs.

“Maamaa!”

The cousin’s mama is out of the house in no time, running to Doris Flinkenberg, taking her in her arms. And then the scrapes on Doris’s knees are inspected by the cousin’s mama and Doris Flinkenberg together. Whereupon, cheeks ballooning, puust on the owie and soon Doris stops sobbing because it is so much fun and she starts puffing as well. And the cousin’s mama helps Doris to her feet and they disappear inside the house. To the kitchen, where a snack is being served and pop songs and crosswords are filled in family magazines and there is reading from True Crimes .