Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

Rita, Sister Red . And Solveig, her twin sister, once upon a time they were inseparable, she was Sister Blue. In the swimming school for the District’s children on the Second Cape, a long time ago, where they were the teacher’s assistants for Tobias the swim instructor, who is still a good friend of Solveig’s, because they were skilled swimmers even from an early age. Were going to become swimmers, trained hard: there, at the Second Cape, and later, for a while, when the public beach was moved from the sea bay out to the woods, to Bule Marsh. Sister Blue, Sister Red, they were called that based on their bathing suits because otherwise it was quite impossible to tell who was who, especially in just their bathing suits and with their hair wet. But sometimes at the swimming school they changed bathing suits on purpose in order to confuse everyone and especially Tobias who stubbornly insisted on calling them by their first names, claimed that he definitely saw the difference, which was not true of course, he mixed them up all of the time too.

But “I was the one who was Sister Blue.” Solveig has been able to carry on with Susette in the company car sometimes, these hundred years later. Because an episode that Solveig remembers very well but that Susette has almost completely forgotten belongs to the time in the swimming school when Susette was also a student once when she was really little. That one time at swimming school she, Susette, had ended up too far out at sea and almost drowned, but then, in other words, it was Solveig who had been the attentive one and thrown herself into the water and crawled out to Susette who was sinking already then, Solveig and no one else got hold of her and pulled her to land and gave her CPR there on the cliffs. And later, that same fall, Solveig was awarded the Lifeguard’s Medal, at the Lifeguards’ Club’s yearly banquet even though she had not been able to be there herself. Was at home in bed with the mumps, but got the medal by post.

“I was the one who was Sister…” with Susette in other words, in the company car, she insisted on it and could sometimes get really agitated too. If Susette, for example, in order to tease her tossed out the idea that what IF the one who had saved her had been her sister Rita who happened to have Solveig’s blue bathing suit on that day.

“I mean. I don’t know , of course. You two looked so much alike.” Though in reality, it is just for fun, because Susette really does not imagine for a second that Solveig could be wrong.

Not because she has any real memory of it, just something blue flickering before her eyes, she was so little after all, long before Majjunn, the Pastor’s Crown Princess, the loom, the rug rags, that is how it feels anyway. Apart from in general, what it had felt like to sink, lose her breath, blubb blubb … she can certainly recall that in her consciousness but mostly in situations when she is not thinking about it, it rises up, a discomfort and then of course the fact that she hates the sea so vehemently that it is almost a secret, at least it is not something she discusses with anyone. Besides, she has her job to do. The Glass House, the Second Cape, she cleans there in the summer after all, one of her cleaning projects, the individual ones. Is being rented by a French diplomatic family during these years: they play music on the glass veranda in the evenings, the whole family, mother father children, in floor-length polyester shirts, it becomes a complete tiny chamber orchestra, freshly squeezed orange juice in icy frosted pitchers on a small glass table for refreshment when they take their breaks. Looking in through the crack in the door, on the way to the second floor with the ammonia bucket—the music, the orange juice, and the sea in the background, in protest. High rolling gray waves, white foam, a hellish roar from the sea , which is thrown up against the windows.

And becomes stuck there. And you, if you are Susette, the following day, alone on an A-ladder wedged in between the rocks on the beach right next to the bay where she once swam out and almost drowned. The Frenchman’s white summer cat meowing on the cliffs, hating the sea, but high up on the ladder, not thinking, scrubbing, polishing the windowpane clean, not looking back—or down.

But otherwise, Solveig, Rita: it is obvious that it was Solveig and not Rita who came to the rescue in the swimming school, no doubt about it, seriously.

Back then she had not needed more than a few seconds in Rita’s company to realize it. Businesswoman of the Year’s two-window ice cream stand on the square where Susette and Rita had worked together for a few days before Susette was transferred to the strawberry fields in the middle region of the country by her employer.

Rita Rat with higher prospects: would never have lifted a finger to help anyone without thinking about what was in it for her. Could clearly be seen on her face. Rita’s sullen silence, a mute rage in the air, tangible like an approaching thunderstorm. A trembling point of power, collected energy. Certainly fascinating but it had not interested Susette any further, she was preoccupied with her own problems. Some pangs of conscience for having quit her job at the private nursing home for the elderly and infirm where she had a full-time position. “They will be so sad, the old sick men and women, they are so attached to you,” the manager’s farewell words echoing in her ears and a certain disappointment, which she had had her hands full trying to hide. The ice cream stand, was this it? The J.L. kerchief and Rita Rat grumbling beside her: is this what she had longed for in the quiet hospital corridors where she had stood in front of the window and looked out over the square on warm spring days, scoops of ice cream on cones, sweet tastes, wild strawberries, pears, and chocolate?

Had not really made heads or tails of those thoughts either, so what she had done at the ice cream stand with Rita Rat was what she had already been good at, at the time: making it look like she was sleeping. But she was not sleeping, was as alert as could be, conscious of everything going on around her. A peculiarity she in other words still has, and Solveig in the company car can sometimes get annoyed about it. Some mornings in the car for example when they are heading into the city by the sea and need to get an early start and Solveig picks her up at the first bus stop by the main country road outside the town center, where Susette has walked all the way from her apartment in the complex on the hills on the north side; how she then sits there and dozes next to Solveig who is driving and playing the radio or one of her old cassette tapes. As they approach the city, how Solveig turns the volume up to an insufferable level in order to wake the bear who is sleeping , as she says. But completely unnecessary, which is proved by Susette who, several hours later in the middle of the working day, suddenly just starts rambling loudly about the high water level from the weather forecast or singing some song, and the girl she moves in the dance with red, golden ribbons , which Solveig was playing in the car that morning.

But in the car Susette is startled by an unpleasant surprise, the sound buzzing through the front of the car, she straightens her back, says grouchily, “Thanks for saving my life Sister Blue. I am so damned grateful.”

“And with these words I give you Susette Packlén,” Solveig says in turn and then you are supposed to remember what no one remembers, what “these words” were, that is to say what Jeanette Lindström had said when she and Susette got into an argument while catering and Jeanette pushed her employee up to Solveig in the middle of her wedding.

But joking aside. Sister Blue, Sister Red—or Rita Rat, no more about her. I was Sister Blue . Except one thing. Susette can certainly understand exactly what it is like to be the shapeless one of two who are so alike on the outside.