Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

White foam from the waves that crash against the windows and remains there as a stickiness, a hell to scrub away, something that is part of Susette’s work: hang on the windowsill, try and get at the crap from the inside, rig up an A-ladder in the water along the beach, wedge it into place between the rocks, and climb up and scrub, scrub… it is really stuck as said, so you really have to focus, she does not have time to think about much of anything else, such as hating the sea for example.

Or going to the cousin’s papa in the cousin’s house, which is located right behind the Second Cape behind a copse of trees, farther in toward Solveig’s former home, which Susette was immediately assigned as an individual project when Solveig hired Susette a thousand years ago and Susette had given an account of her work experience in which cleaning was not included but quite a bit of care work with the elderly and the sick, both at the private nursing home in the District and after that in other places.

“Can you take care of the old man?” Solveig had asked and added, “I’m going to say it like it is. I just can’t be bothered. But that stays between the two of us and for Christ’s sake, don’t ask any questions.”

And of course, Susette certainly said yes: she is used to old people, likes old people. And so maybe there was not anything particularly lovable about the old guy but there was not anything horrible or repulsive about him either. Tired, cranky, bulging from having drunk too much aquavit in the middle of a mess of shit and gloomy clothes and unwashed pots and pans and a sweet corroding stink of old sweat and alcohol and tobacco that hangs in the air in there. And of course, obviously, it must feel rather terrible to see that decay in person when it is your own home so she understands why Solveig does not want to go there herself.

But for Susette, who does not have any roots like that—mainly a job among others, and she has a habit of going there once or twice a week. Airing things out and doing the dishes and cleaning and what have you and when the weather is nice she quite simply forces the grouchy old man out into the garden so he will not be in the way while she was cleaning. He goes along with it most reluctantly of course, but in reality Susette has the impression that he protests mainly for the sake of protesting. Because he certainly must like having things cleaned up a bit and maybe he did not have anything against bickering with her; with a glint in his eyes too, “sweet tease,” the loneliness becomes quite lonely, having a bit of company.

Once, in the very beginning, when she had gotten the cousin’s papa out into the garden, she discovered a pistol lying on a pile of newspapers on the refrigerator. She took it, slipped it into her backpack, Fjällräven, among her things for the sauna, because she is going to the sauna later that evening, is planning on going there right after work, but something else comes up, and then the backpack is left hanging on a hook in her bathroom.

On the other hand, with Solveig, that old man the cousin’s papa is rarely brought up at all.

“How’s the old man?” Solveig asks now and then, mostly in passing. “Fine,” Susette replies, adding, “Still going strong. He seems to have nine lives.”

But then he dies after all despite everything, several years later, but still. Exactly in that year, 1989, when Susette starts hanging out with Maj-Gun at the newsstand again. A Thursday in the month of August he is lying on the kitchen floor in the cottage unconscious when Susette arrives there by bus and she calls for an ambulance, calls Solveig, and the old man is taken directly to the District Hospital where he dies that same night from a subsequent heart attack without ever having regained consciousness.

An old age regardless; he was eighty-two.

But then, that time, when she sees Maj-Gun again and starts hanging out with her, in the middle of her life—completely occupied with her everyday existence, work and hobbies.

In her life. In My Life , which she also starts thinking about in a particular way when she starts hanging out with Maj-Gun in the newsstand. Like a newspaper headline or something to write down in “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings” (Maj-Gun’s notebook that she sometimes quotes from).

My life. With contours in other words, so nameable, chiseled.

“What happened with your admission interviews, Maj-Gun?”

“I don’t know.” Maj-Gun shrugs on one of those late evenings when they are standing in the doorway to the newsstand, Maj-Gun is smoking. Tosses the cigarette away, a spot of ember lands on the dark sidewalk on the asphalt in the twilight.

“Lost steam. I guess.”

“And then there weren’t any good opportunities to study at the new rental place either. Concentrating was difficult, to put it mildly. Motormouths, motormouths in that family. Djeessus , Susette. If you only knew—”

“Well—.” Maj-Gun holds the door open, they walk in again. “Moss is growing on our heads, years are passing—but, Susette, maybe it is just a way of saying something else. Maybe I’m sitting here… waiting. For, option one, the less likely: that my horrible godmother Liz Maalamaa will die so I can get her money. After having nagged her husband to death at an early age, he drank himself to death on the Sweden–Finland ferry, wasn’t even fifty, maybe he just had to drink aquavit in order to put up with her… If he was DRUNK, Susette, then she has been SOBER all her life. My dad the pastor used to say that a little bit of wine made you NICE but she didn’t listen at all.

“An old hag with lots of money, mercy me. Millions, you know.

“And then, Susette, I’ll fly away. Far away from here.

“Flyyy,” Maj-Gun, sitting on the stool at the newsstand, clarifies. “Fjuuh, Susette.” And she stretches her arms out at her sides behind the counter, gliding in other words. “What a screamingly funny sight, Susette. With my extra weight—I know what you’re thinking. A giant bee with helicopter wings flidderfladdering away. Djeessuss,” Maj-Gun establishes and grows serious again.

“Doesn’t seem particularly likely in other words. So, option two, the other possibility . And believe it or not the more realistic one, because she’ll never die of course , for example. My only love, my greatest love. The Boy in the woods . That he will come. Back.

“And, Susette,” lowering her voice, whispering, “a little crow has whispered in my ear that it will happen soon—the Boy in the woods. Bengt.”

And Maj-Gun tries to make eye contact with Susette with a meaningful blink blink.

“I have always been the romantic type, Susette. Feel feel feel,” placing a hand on her large torso. “How it’s pounding. Inside. My heart. My blood. Love.

“Djeessusss—” she stops herself then when she does not really reach Susette in that way, gets new ideas, new clues, there are always new clues. Starts for example continuing the flight humor, since that association was actually funny, folding paper airplanes using empty lottery tickets, which she throws around wildly and then, more high-spiritedly, starts tearing pages out of certain magazines, The Joy of Motherhood that is lying on the counter in order to get them to fly as well. “Just a few sample issues, Susette,” she shouts with excitement, “so don’t shed a tear over them—”

Calms down again. “So many men, so little time, Susette. If I looked like you. With your looks I wouldn’t be sitting here, rotting away.

“I mean,” she adds more officiously, after a small, pregnant pause, “not the way you look now. But the potential . Come along and change. A bait for life.

“Your eyes, Susette. Those globes. A whole… world.”