Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

Björn bought the transistor radio with his own money. He works as a mechanic’s apprentice at the service station in the town center. It’s the same radio he lifts down from the nail in the barn wall a few years later when he’s going to walk back and forth along the road with his first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire.

The radio in one hand, the first girlfriend in the other: being teenagers together. “Eating” music. Even though rather often, when it’s time for these walks, the radio isn’t playing anything other than the weather report. The sound on the machine can conveniently be turned up anyway and the antenna pulled out to its maximum length and when pointed a bit to the side you don’t hear too much static.

Don’t hear much of anything else either. For example, talking.

And that’s okay.

Because talking with other people is something that Björn has a hard time with, especially together with his first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire.

When Björn is together with the American girl he’s a little bit like my brother Bengt is in general. Not sullen, but quiet.

But for Bengt, exactly that changes with the American girl Eddie de Wire. Björn’s first girlfriend: and Bengt, in the company of Björn and Eddie de Wire, finds his tongue in the midst of everything. Really energetically too, when after his initial shyness he wholeheartedly affiliates himself with the couple. They hang out in the opening of the barn in the evenings. You can hear the voice from a distance, Bengt’s voice. With the older teenagers’, Bengt’s, who is three–four years younger, his mouth moving.

Otherwise Björn and Bengt are best friends, and together with Björn, Bengt becomes different, so to speak, softens, relaxes. That prickliness that in and of itself is always going to be a part of him is evened out. Bengt is peculiar after all, has always been too: “his own kind.” Which doesn’t mean what the cousin’s papa says: crazy. The cousin’s papa and Bengt don’t get along. According to the cousin’s papa, Bengt isn’t good for anything, walks around and mucks about. A dreamer, Astrid Loman tries to say, but then the cousin’s papa says deranged and he hits. Bengt isn’t someone who lets himself be beaten, he hits back. He has always hit: arms flailing in the empty air when the cousin’s papa held him when he was younger. The cousin’s papa laughing. Wiggle fish. But as is often the case with these kinds of stories there comes a time when the smaller one grows and acquires some force behind his punches—and hits right in the face. The cousin’s papa isn’t particularly strong either. And we three siblings, Bengt and me and Rita, are all rather tall. We have that in common: the height, the stature.

So already before what happens with the American girl and with Björn, after which Bengt moves out to the barn on the cousin’s property, the real fights between Bengt and the cousin’s papa have stopped altogether.

Crazy. The cousin’s papa continues saying it when he’s in that kind of a mood. From his chair, panting. Bengt imitates him sometimes. At a distance. Then he goes out.

Of all the children, the cousin’s papa immediately prefers Björn. Because Björn comes from a different landscape? Probably not. What does the cousin’s papa know about that, inside his room, three sheets to the wind? He drags himself out into the yard only when it’s cleaning day. Sitting in an old blanket with holes in it, which the cousin’s mama throws over him so that he won’t get cold, like a mean old Indian chief. Sits in a recliner in the yard, fifteen feet from the barn wall where he’s throwing darts. Then back inside.

And in that “landscape,” if he then one evening on his own accord happens to wander out into the yard, “propperty”: waters the flagpole with the spray bottle. His woods, which he stands and asserts with determination to no one in particular. It is of course unclear whether or not he knows that the flagpole isn’t one of the trees in the woods that he owns or just an old rotten flagpole that will eventually break in a storm. But that’s how it’s supposed to be: this ambiguity. Uncertainty. That’s what it is and has always been like being in his landscape.

But what the cousin’s papa appreciates most about Björn is “his skill.” Björn does carpentry, hammers on old boards in houses and barns and it results in something. And when Björn saves money for a moped and becomes impatient because it is taking too long, the cousin’s papa gives him the outstanding amount. “There’s always more money.”

Björn is also the only one who can actually stand to listen to all of the ideas Bengt has in his head. The houses on the Second Cape, which he had on his mind when they are being built, knows everything about them. In and of itself, he has them on his mind just as much later, when the summer residents who have bought the houses arrive, he runs around there. It’s pathetic, sometimes you’re ashamed of him. If someone asks, “Is that your brother?” you don’t want to answer. Then it’s nice being together with Rita. She answers back, fiercely. Certainly not because she doesn’t think that Bengt is making a fool of himself, but because she is someone who always answers back. There are those who are a bit afraid of her even when she’s still young. But there is one good thing about Bengt’s preoccupation with the houses on the Second Cape: not a lot of talk of the Winter Garden anymore. When we walk up to the house on the First Cape, Rita and I, it’s usually just the two of us. And then we don’t do anything in particular. Stroll around in the old abandoned garden. The beginning of an English Garden, says the baroness whom we call Miss Andrews, whom we swim with in the mornings at Bule Marsh. I look at my reflection in the crystal ball sitting in the middle of the tall grass surrounding the houses. My face looks funny. We laugh.

Björn listens to Bengt, as I said. Björn in the yard with his moped, Bengt is sitting in the opening to the barn wearing a cap and is explaining things to him. When he notices that Björn is listening, the words just pour out of him, like they will flow later as well, all the time, with the American girl. Bengt so excited he’s almost stammering. Björn who’s listening and asking normal questions that you wouldn’t dare ask yourself, not me in any case, because then Bengt becomes furious.

“How is it possible?” and that question, from Björn, Bengt loves answering. Though I’m certainly not listening to what he’s saying. “Why didn’t you say that right away?” Björn says. “NOW I understand.” And only then does Bengt become happy. Even if it can be the case of course that Björn says that only to make Bengt happy.

But it isn’t bad. Because I’ve actually started thinking that it’s still a bit beautiful in a way. Bengt a dreamer, head filled with dreams. Which the cousin’s mama tried to tell the cousin’s papa, who got angry at her.

And besides: you can’t get away from the fact that Bengt draws really well.

“A budding artist,” Miss Andrews says, at Bule Marsh.

Bengt and Björn: in other words they’re the ones who have both fallen head over heels for the same girl. Björn’s first girlfriend, the American girl Eddie de Wire. Then on the other hand, the difference between them will become that much more obvious. Not “the skill,” as the cousin’s papa goes on about, that sort of thing barely makes a difference now. But otherwise.

Maybe it’s the case in general that what is different about two people who seem to be on the same wavelength on the outside stands out the most, sees the chance to stick its head out, in relationship to a third. Like with me and Rita and Miss Andrews at Bule Marsh, for example. Miss Andrews, the baroness from the Second Cape: the name she makes up in order to tease us, I know that. Rita takes it much more seriously, takes an exception to Miss Andrews, and Miss Andrews exactly as Miss Andrews, not the baroness, more than I do.