Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

But maybe it belongs to her character, to sometimes go somewhere else, as it were, to Sorrow’s Room, or whatever it is, maybe it is a part of their life together—of that unnamed bond that exists between two people who neither can nor want to live without each other. An integrated part of their way of being with each other, but unnamed—quite simply because there are no words for it. Like in Portugal, in the month of December 1989. They had spent a few weeks there, with the aunt who became ill and happened to pass away while they were visiting.

It was that month of December that they had started being together again, had found their way back to each other. She had cried then too, in Portugal, not come out into the sun where he had been, on the patio. But taken care of the aunt like an angel those last days, so in that way certainly been present in situations where presence is required; she had cried in spare moments and at night.

But when the aunt died there were other things to think about: everything that needed to be done, repatriation of the body, all of the practicalities, and then she had livened up again, jumped into it whole-heartedly. And when they had come home again she took a pregnancy test, it was positive, they have always spoken about their first child, Karl-Olof, as a love child who came to them, in Portugal.

But the Sorrow inside her—that was her word, though it is highly likely that it originated from the therapist, the therapists. Or “long-term depression,” but in that case he preferred the Sorrow, a sorrow with an element he referred to as appealing, which moved him so deeply it was almost terrifying.

“We met at the cemetery,” she would sometimes say, but with a laugh, because she could joke about her melancholy as well.

Which could of course still stir certain guilty feelings in him, even if his wife was not aware of it, even needed to be aware of it, all of the details surrounding it. In other words, that game which led to him getting to know her, during childhood. And how messed up he had been at that time. The game that started everything, another crazy one he and his sister Maj-Gun had, out of frustration, devoted themselves to as children, like dogs and cats they had been, running around together when they were not allowed to be at the rectory and he had not been able to sneak in again because his sister had pulled him with her, down to the cemetery, and had a mask with her—they called the mask “Liz Maalamaa,” “the Angel of Death,” or “Liz Maalamaa the Angel of Death.” Many names, though rather alike and secret. But papa Pastor, whom they needed to be kept hidden from most of all since the aunt was his sister, had of course in some way found out about them anyway and become furious. As if the complaints that reached him via the caretaker at the cemetery had not been enough: that his children were running around scaring people with the mask.

They had received the mask as a gift from the aunt, from there the nicknames. It was supposed to represent the face of a movie star, probably Ava Gardner, dark haired, sharp facial features, but the special and terrible thing about it was that when you strapped the mask to your face you looked terrifying—would become afraid if you saw yourself in the mirror.

Not the least bit funny, actually. Not the mask, not the secret names for it. So to speak when the aunt came up, he and his sister, lying on the bed in his room talking about all the money they would inherit from her, whose godchildren they were, after the aunt’s death; her husband had died at some point during that childhood, they had no children of their own and the husband had been tremendously rich.

As luck would have it no one had listened to him and his sister THEN. No one in the world because IT had been the height of childishness, a true manifestation of killing time in the musty summer day, without energy: that aunt, she had been okay, both siblings liked her despite her fervor for cleaning toilets when she came to visit the rectory and that she was so determined that instead of reading real bedtime stories she would sit on the edge of their beds one after the other and paint stories about various imaginary missionary exploits in China, “the wonderful Middle Kingdom”—where she had, as said, never been, despite the fact that the couple had traveled around the world several times with various fine cruise ships. Life is a cruise , she used to say; but then toward the end it had really gotten soiled, her husband’s final years, his spare time spent going back and forth on the Sweden–Finland ferry where he drank himself to death.

But Tom’s future wife, Susette born Packlén, had, in other words, been at the cemetery as a child, come there accompanied by her mother and brought flowers to the graves. Those eyes back then too—and somewhat later, as a teenager, she became his first girlfriend and he the first boyfriend for her too.

But wait now, first this. The Angel of Death . That was what they had called her. He and his sister Maj-Gun, when they were together. The girl who came to the cemetery with her mother, with flowers they had picked from the meadow that became the new side of the cemetery later on. The girl who filled jars with water at the water hydrant, placed the flowers in them. Big eyes. “Have you seen those globes?” he asked his sister. “Should we scare her?” And she galloped ahead, his sister, and he followed after her. Wearing the mask—but the girl was not afraid. Maj-Gun said to him later, “Death is not afraid of Death,” and they laughed. That is why she had for a time in private been called the Angel of Death by the two siblings. But he had of course too, in private, alone, without saying anything to his sister, immediately taken a liking to the girl with the big eyes. Not because of the Angel of Death, but because of who she was. Calm, a bit lost. Something steady in here, anyway. And a few years later he started dating her.

“I’m fascinated by the Death in her,” he had admittedly solemnly recited back then for his jealous sister, which he actually had not meant a word of. Because he had been embarrassed of course, shy. In the presence of everyone. In the presence of himself. The infatuation. Which there had been no words for. Then not inside him in any case And, dear Lord. What an unbearable person he had been, in public. What could be seen of him. As a person. “Old age,” which Maj-Gun talks about. Yes, yes, certainly.

Had gone around wearing a suit and a tie in school and a bow tie at festive occasions and cuff links and the like. God knows why. It had not exactly brought him closer to “friends” his own age at school for example. Not rejected, bullied, just off to the side. As if he wanted to, in some way, prove a point about something, but what this point was would be unclear, completely hidden in the mist , which would have been completely clear if someone had pushed him up against a wall and asked about it in detail—or “interrogated,” which is how he certainly personally would have described the matter at that time. No one had done so, none of his classmates exactly enjoyed getting into a discussion with him: he could debate, follow a line of reasoning, already then. In a way that was truly overbearing too, an overbearance that he would consciously eliminate when he got to the university. It had been easy. On the other hand, he found his place then and was so much more content with life and with himself, in general. Was incredibly interested in his studies from the beginning, it was also something that swallowed him up. So the smugness had disappeared; he knew what he was going to do, and now instead perhaps a bit exaggeratedly but still, almost a humility, a leniency started revealing itself in him. He could move and carry himself in company, deal with people which, granted, had carried and would continue to carry him far in his career.