Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

I LIKE THE PARLOR in the cousin’s house. That’s my secret. I have a habit of going there and spending time there, even though it isn’t allowed. Not even Rita, my twin, my sister, knows; we live together in our own cottage on the field across from the cousin’s house. The cousin’s mama, the parlor, it is her creation. There’s a round table there with a white, embroidered tablecloth and a glass cabinet with china. The cousin’s mama has arranged it, it wasn’t there before her time. The parlor is used only when there is a party. Then the door is opened wide, the table is laid with coffee cups, napkins, plates. You spend a few hours there, then you leave. The door is closed, and until the next grand occasion no one is allowed to go in there again.

I still sneak in there sometimes. There is a closet in the parlor. That’s where I stay, on the floor among the shoes, I can fit without a problem, I am so small. I sit and listen to everything around me, inside the house, outside. The walls in the house are thin, sounds are easily heard. Off to the side, but still a part of things. In peace, but not alone. The calm and the quiet in the parlor, while the normal time that has come to the cousin’s house together with the cousin’s mama and Björn continues outside.

Someone shouts, “Where’s Solveig?” The cousin’s mama, I wouldn’t have anything against that. Usually just my twin sister, Rita. We’re always together, Rita and I.

I don’t go out when Rita calls. By chance my hands grope around in the darkness in the closet. That’s how I discover the cloth bag with the cousin’s papa’s money. Stuck inside a boot with a high ankle, dried dung on the leather. A lot of money, bills. I don’t think I’m going to take them and go out into the world and build the Winter Garden when I grow up. Just “aha, it’s there.” The cousin’s papa’s stupid secret. The cousin’s papa is one of those old men who prefer to save their money in an old shoe instead of taking it to the bank.

I’m not like my siblings Bengt and Rita. I don’t have any visions, fantasies. I’m just there inside the closet, for a while, in ordinary time.

When I have been in the parlor I sneak out again.

Astrid Loman. That’s the cousin’s mama. She has a son with her when she comes to the cousin’s house. His name is Björn and he is fifteen years old, a few years older than Bengt, my older brother. Astrid Loman is the kind of person who draws children to her. All children, especially the small and mistreated.

Astrid and Björn are from the next county over, where Astrid, who is countryman Loman’s daughter, was born and raised. Countryman Loman works periodically as the substitute police commissioner in the District.

Astrid. What a beautiful name. Still, it isn’t used particularly often in the cousin’s house because the cousin’s papa has, from the very beginning, had a very special way of saying it. He stresses the last syllable: sounds like aSTRIID, which is the cousin’s papa’s intention: as if it were impossible to have a name like that.

The cousin’s papa three sheets to the wind, in his room next to the kitchen where he almost always is, the door flung wide open. Three sheets to the wind means drunk in Districtish.

For the most part all of us say cousin’s mama after that.

But the cousin’s mama doesn’t care about that. Hums a song in the kitchen. I walk up the mountain with my lonely heart . She’s allowed to hum rather loudly and persistently. In the very beginning, at first, there is no transistor radio or cassette tape player that you could turn the volume up on.

Astrid, the cousin’s papa. It takes time to get used to it. Astrid hums, grows accustomed.

Otherwise, who is she? Someone who likes crosswords, pop music, and magazines. Family magazines, and a popular magazine called True Crimes , has a bundle of old issues with her when she moves to the cousin’s house. Maybe they belonged to countryman Loman. Then the daily paper of course, where Astrid carefully follows what is happening around the country.

The first swallow has come, a cat has run away. Three small siblings who have become orphans as the result of a car accident.

“Children’s mama.” That is what some people in the District say about the cousin’s mama. When I get older I understand of course that it doesn’t just mean she has all of these children, which aren’t in fact hers. Björn has no father; actually, there are a lot of children like that everywhere—in the wake of the war, for example—who get to come home to her and whom she takes care of. The children in the cousin’s house whom she never abandons, that’s true too. Left there after Björn, the cousins and Doris Flinkenberg.

When Astrid comes to the cousin’s house her contact with her parental home ends, I don’t know why. But maybe you can see it like this: that countryman Loman was a bit relieved to have his child-loving daughter placed somewhere. Maybe having all of the children come to Astrid Loman wasn’t an easy thing for the police commissioner and his wife to deal with, people who were approaching retirement age and the love between a man and a woman was something Astrid Loman liked learning the words to when she heard them in the songs played on the radio.

Because the cousin’s mama likes children most of all. All children everywhere, but particularly children you feel sorry for, who have ended up alone in life. That’s why she settles down at the cousin’s property where Rita and Bengt and I have been living alone with the cousin’s papa since our parents’ fatal accident. It happened when we were much younger. They say these parents were professional dancers, I don’t remember.

Sitting at the stone foundation of the house on the hill on the First Cape, me and my siblings, Bengt and Rita. Sitting at the stone foundation of the house after the car accident, before the cousin’s mama comes, me and my siblings Bengt and Rita. Three of us in the high grass. Pressing ourselves against the stone foundation, cold in the shadows. Hearing rumba tones through the cold stone. A pounding rhythm in the stone, through stone, into our bodies.

Sucking, temperamental and dancing. To someone who understands dance, that is. For the one who wants to dance, or can.

We three siblings don’t want to. Can’t.

We build the Winter Garden instead. A world. Everything exists there. Whatever you want. Dreams, fantasies, reality, whatever you want. Bengt sketches, draws maps. The Winter Garden has its own language. We speak the language. Make up our own words, names, expressions. Bengt and Rita make them up. That’s how it is for the most part. I don’t have as much imagination. After the cousin’s mama comes I would rather be with her below the hill. I like the cousin’s mama.

But it’s hard to leave Bengt and Rita, especially for me, leaving Rita. I wait until they’re finished. We remove ourselves from the spot. Go down.

Bengt goes to the cousin’s house where he slept by himself in a room on the second floor before Björn came. Had a ladder on the outer wall of the house so that he could use the real entrance as little as possible. It isn’t necessary anymore now that he and Björn are sharing the same room upstairs. As I said, Rita and I live in a separate cottage on the other side of the field. It’s an old baker’s cottage, says the cousin’s mama. Where you used to bake bread, and have children. I like it when the cousin’s mama talks about things like that. I listen carefully.

Before the cousin’s mama it’s like this: another landscape.

But so, when the cousin’s mama and Björn come everything changes. It becomes another time: the time that most other people live in. Daily paper in the mailbox, pop songs of the day, pop music that Björn listens to on his transistor radio, which hangs on a hook hammered into the side of the barn, while he tinkers with his moped in the yard. Carefully lifting the transistor from its hook when it’s time for supper, all of the cousin’s children, in the kitchen. Sets the transistor on the fridge, plugs it into the wall if the batteries are dead—so that after supper, tea and cheese sandwiches, evening pop music floods over the entire kitchen. Astrid sings along, closes her eyes. Björn laughs, ruffles her hair. Bengt, Rita, Solveig: we watch. The lyrics aren’t familiar, we can’t sing, but it’s fascinating to watch. Björn and the cousin’s mama: they are from another landscape. It’s so obvious in that moment. The cousin’s papa is sleeping in his room. He is rarely awake on peaceful supper evenings.