Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

That you could escape to the music from the Disgust . “The Disgust.” In these moments in the room at the window with the view that otherwise is so beautiful: trees and hills, the church with its bells ringing on the weekends, six o’clock on Saturday evenings. Isolated words that had been thrown into the air, when the record, “Mahler’s Ninth,” on the record player had ended.

As that relationship with Tom Maalamaa had also, in other words, gradually ended. Nothing dramatic about it either: they parted as friends of course and lost touch with each other as a matter of course. Tom Maalamaa who, according to what his sister Maj-Gun said at the newsstand, had finished high school and moved away from home and started studying law at the university and after finishing his studies became a human rights lawyer for an international charity.

And Susette herself who had finished school after high school in connection with her father’s death and started working at the private Christian nursing home for the elderly and infirm in the town center. She worked there for almost one year: kept watch over the dying ones, which the manager maintained Susette was good at and maybe it was true but suddenly she had enough and quit and gone to the Businesswoman of the Year and begged for a normal summer job instead. Which later, as said, after a few days of working at the ice cream stand in the two-window shack on the square in the town center, had continued at the strawberry fields in another part of the country, to Janos, the Lithuanian, the second lover, what later became “Poland,” all of that.

But Tom Maalamaa’s voice, how it pushes its way through her memory. Speaking “softly,” says, “the Disgust,” at the window in his steady but soft voice. One spring evening, March–April, big and bright. Tom who is speaking, Susette who is nodding, the quiet understanding around a feeling that they share without needing to formulate it into words.

Afterward, in that other life that was not “Poland,” which she had said to her mother, to Maj-Gun, which had gone on for a while, three years in other words before she returned home again, she had been able to recreate that feeling many times. A feeling that became inseparably glued to the District in particular, the entire district, what had happened to her personally, her mother’s death, everything mixed together. “This Disgust” over everything.

The cemetery, the death, all death, her father’s death. “No, Susette,” her mother had said admonishingly when she let go of everything, “it’s not easy living in a house of sorrow.” And Maj-Gun, Majjunn , the Pastor’s Crown Princess, “say the password”… a metal gate tjii this way tjii that way in the wind… and Maj-Gun older, receiving: Maj-Gun’s bleeding teenage bottom in the sleet between the headstones.

And at the nursing home later, the lonely dying ones on whom Susette, according to the manager, had a favorable effect: to these beds in particular where both nursing home cats were often already lying at the foot—they had a habit of sneaking in just before death came, jumping up onto the beds, had a nose for death.

Sitting there on a chair at the bedsides, holding hands, saying good-bye.

The Disgust. Instead of the beautiful and the normal. Which had been exactly that, no descriptions. Her mother at the cemetery: “What a beautiful bouquet, Susette!” “Listen! They are ringing for the weekend service. Listen how beautiful it is.”

The Disgust. In relation to the District—her youth, her home, everything. In relation to herself with: the memory of it—padding steps, soft and meek, down those corridors. Did not say much, almost mute, but stick thin and with those big eyes, bulging globes that greeted her in the mirrors of the nursing home. Padding over shiny waxed floors: were seasons, summers, springs, falls, going on anywhere?

Looking out through the window, the square, the life, the movement.

“Kitty, kitty come to me.” Scchhhh hisssss: the nursing home cats who saw red at the mere sight of her and ran for their lives down the corridors.

The Disgust in relation to time, to herself, to everything.

Which had also been a reason why she remained in the city by the sea, in other cities, in other places, a long time. Sporadically getting in touch with her mother at the house. Called from “Poland,” just a designation, no camouflage for anything tremendous.

Because Janos, her second love , the Lithuanian, from the strawberry fields, there had not been much to it. The story had barely started when it ended.

And gradually undeniably, you came up with a way to talk about it and think about it, with the comic points as well. How they had “escaped” from the boardinghouse in the middle of the summer night where all of the strawberry pickers were lying, sleeping, packed their things, headed off. Out into the woods—but the woods in the center of the country are bigger and more deserted than those in the District could ever be. And getting lost there.

She had found her way out again a day and a half later, suddenly found herself by the side of a road on which cars passed now and then. Hungry and exhausted she set herself up by the side of the road in order to bum a ride: it had not gone very well and she had been so tired she had not been able to stand and had to sit on a rock to rest. She had fallen asleep on the rock and when she woke up there were some boys in a car that had stopped by the side of the road and they asked her if she was feeling all right, if she needed a ride.

And she had been allowed to hang out with them, they gave her food and she slept in the backseat the whole way and when she woke up again they were in the city by the sea and she stayed there with the guys for a while, somewhat older, nice guys, had been their “mascot,” but no one was allowed to touch her, they were very kind.

Everyone had been so nice to her: “mascot.” But then she left and got a job and her own place to live. And stayed in the city awhile, and then traveled to another city, and so on.

Janos, her second love. A few days there, then—the whole time, gone.

But here, now. My life . How it is flying by. An opportunity exists. Be nothing and new. The Disgust? Of course it was, of course it is, so beautiful here. The open spaces.

But still, Maj-Gun. At the cemetery, one April evening as a teenager, Susette who happened to come by, on her way home from Tom, the Disgust? It had not been like that. Indifferent, almost in a bad mood, told Susette to go away. And Susette had gone away, home. They had not spoken about it either, ever.

Maj-Gun at the rug rag bucket—no, that was something else. Maj-Gun at the newsstand… “I was standing there, reeling in the fear.” But she had not been scared. In the middle of the square, Maj-Gun waving.

As if there was a connection between them. Invisible threads, rags, rug rags. Moss that was growing over their heads, moss like a fungus from the earth, old folk songs.

Maj-Gun with a mask over her face: Liz Maalamaa the Angel of Death.

Oh. Up here in the empty room, it blows away, so beautiful, open.

“Overturn houses?” Nah, standing firmly you know, on the ground.

Tiny love, tiny baby bird under your jacket, tiny seed—

I love you . And running over plains.

“SUSEEETTTE!”

Solveig’s voice blasting from one of the lower floors, through the house. Have to go.

But then CRASH . A glass rabbit that splits into a thousand pieces, raining over the hard, stone floor. Susette has left the attic, polishing rabbits half a floor down, has returned to her work.

This house: partially open plan living divided over three floors, ceiling height and space and Susette at the railing on the third floor: high above the ground level where Solveig is polishing the hard floor made of expensive Italian granite way down below, and Susette who is supposed to be dusting, but that strange thieflike merriment in her again.