Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

But “I’m fascinated by the Death in her.” His solemn words to his sister at the rectory. He could barely think about it now. Of course he had not said it to poor Susette personally, not then and not ever. That would certainly have scared the life out of her from the beginning—or no, incidentally, despite that appeal, that Sorrow, whatever it was, there was something in her that did not yield. But it would without a doubt have called forth a coloring in their relationship from the beginning, transformed it into something it was not.

There as teenagers in his room at the rectory they had listened to music. Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. He remembers that, truly, even if he does not want to. Those pretentions in him. During the pauses he had spoken when the record was finished playing. Not many words as luck would have it, which quite simply also depended on his rather great shyness and strong timidity. He had not known, of course, what he should say to her, just wanted to be with her, so much . But what had come out of his mouth, however spare, insufferable. “Consciousness of life” and “consciousness of death,” which were united in an “intricate way” in Mahler’s Ninth, which was playing on and off on the record player. “Gustav Mahler’s music says more about the nature of emotion than all philosophers.” Elegant? Terrible. And maybe she had understood that intuitively, nodded (but submissively), absent as it were but still agreeing, in other words. But sought to be closer to him, his body, like a kitten.

Was this romantic? “All of us were young once.” And that fumbling, clumsiness. Yes, he could think like that. But he has still never been able to listen to Gustav Mahler after that.

And will never—incidentally—listen to Gustav Mahler again. With Susette they do not listen to very much music, have never done so. Sometimes they go out dancing. Just the two of them, she and he. Tango, salsa, Latin. Transformed in the dance. Good together. And the nights afterward.

That night 1989, seventeen years ago, when they started being together again, for real, in reality, she had called him. He had driven through the darkness after her, the same time of year, the same darkness, as now. But in snow. Here, now, no snow, just black black on the ground, everywhere. An appalling whirl of snow then and she had said on the telephone that she did not know where she was, but was on a road, and had been very upset, he had to come after her. Had been difficult to find out exactly where she was, but he had not hesitated for a second. Borrowed a former classmate’s car—Peter Bäckström’s, incidentally, the one they are going to visit now, and his family in Rosengården 2 where they are driving down the avenues to the right address—and yes, he, Tom, had found her in the end.

That night when he had picked her up in the snow, on the side of the road, in this area (as said, she was also from here, so that was not strange), and seen her, a small figure with a Fjällräven backpack on the side of the road in the snow, in the light of the headlights, he had known not only that she had been found, but he as well.

And not many words were needed after that, that had been clear. She had tried to speak, said, “I’ll do everything for you. I’ll—” Repay? No, she had not said it like that, not that word, there were no complicated words like that inside her, had never been, and also, for that reason, how he loved loves her.

But that had been her message, she was worn out: bloody, beaten, but appealed quietly and determined for a promise that he would never ask about it—but, she pointed out, no one had done anything to her. She would go to therapy, never talk about what happened, otherwise. Otherwise she would not be able to… live?

She had not needed to say that. He had promised, just as silently. And it had been clear. He had thought it would be good for her and for both of them to get away for a while. Thought about his aunt, in Portugal, who often wrote and invited him but he had not visited, had not had time; in and of itself had not had time then either, but he had been able to arrange the leave from work. The aunt was also sick, of course, needed help. “I know where we’re going!” he said to his fiancée Susette Packlén who was going to become a Maalamaa and have a child with him already that next year at the same time and then they would be living in New York, his first lengthy foreign assignment. “We’ll go to Portugal!” And she became as happy as a child too because she had never been abroad really and the aunt had also sounded happy on the phone and immediately wired money for the airline tickets, and shortly thereafter Tom and Susette were sitting on a plane, flying above the clouds in the beautiful clear air, her pale skin, her tired eyes—but held his hand, as said, those attacks of sorrow and melancholy were not over, of course, it would periodically be difficult in Portugal as well. But the main thing was the direction, the will, the approach, and he had not needed to say it out loud like when he held a speech for work, lay out the direction, the approach—this was without words, she knew. “Ja sieltä ei sit tuoda mitään ruumiita Kotiin / and then no corpses are brought home from there,” someone in the row behind them on the plane had said, vacationers in a vacationing mood who were describing how they had been let off by friends from their hometown when they were going on their first charter , country bumpkins among country bumpkins who had never been anywhere who clapped their hands when the plane took off, cheers!, in red wine and beer and sangria! No corpses. Ironic maybe, amusing, because it turned out that way when, roughly a month later, Tom Maalamaa and Susette returned to the homeland it was in connection with the repatriation of a corpse: the aunt who had died while they were there visiting her. A difficult time, a lot to take care of those final days in Portugal, so it had not exactly turned out as they thought it would. But Susette, his future wife, mother to his three children, had been invaluable, and still, also, as if the hardships involved with everything that needed to be arranged down there in Portugal and later with the funeral in the homeland only brought them closer together.

And—this is becoming long now, when Tom Maalamaa is driving with his wife down the avenues of Rosengården 2, this November evening 2006, a Thursday.

“Courage,” he says to his wife, takes her hand in his, maybe thinks she is nervous about tonight, his old university friends… or maybe he takes that hand because he has a bad conscience because he has, the entire afternoon, earlier in the evening, up until now, been rather grumpy and cross. About the mess at home, and the new workplace, chaos there too: that is what it is always like arriving in new places, he certainly knows that, should be used to it after so many years. But he had shouted and carried on, and that is why they have been quiet the entire drive from their home to Rosengården 2. For example not spoken about any “dear” old memories that both of them, together, separately, could have from these places, the District, after all they are both from here. Here, where Rosengården 2 now exists, it did not exist back then. This striking, luxurious—almost absurd—development in the middle of what once was a wood where Mama Inga-Britta used to pick mushrooms and cloudberries, lingonberries, rowanberries with the Nature Friends. And possibly somewhat exaggerated this peachy keenness, but “architectural dreams are architectural dreams,” which, for example, is something that Tom Maalamaa under normal circumstances certainly might have said here in the car, with a small bitonality too, though well-balanced because the Bäckströms and certainly many of the others who live here are his friends of course, if not now, then they will be; he has that kind of a job, lives a lot on “contacts.” Still, it is something grotesque, something almost frivolous, amoral. No, not because it would have been showing off—a lot of, as it were, too much of a good thing and Dallas, money&poortaste, but exactly because it is not that, PLUS the money that exists but cannot be seen cannot be seen cannot be seen… the style, all of the good taste , so perfect AND being enclosed, fenced in. Seen as a metaphor the irony of all this had of course not been wasted on him either. These people, these enclosures, these people inside their personally staked-out borders—people just like him, who always have the best, as well as education and class and taste and civilization and the best schools and universities and the power, on their side—how, for example, they can still carry out good deeds there, as he does in the service of mankind. And in contrast to those who have only money, he also has the power of language: can reason well, about almost anything, also their own shortcomings and this grotesqueness which, after all, it is. But with his own quick phrases he can also win people over so that it sounds not only plausible but also something worth striving for. “Here you can say anything as long as it sounds good.” That feeling.