Monika Fagerholm - The Glitter Scene

The cousin’s mama is not aware of these love affairs. She has never been interested in the story between Björn and Bengt and Eddie de Wire: in her eyes Bengt and Björn are her children, are still in some way just children.

And she’s thinking about other things now. Because just about then the cousin’s mama, who still has the summer day inside her, has—and Doris and the cousin’s papa who were joking with each other in the yard!—gone to the cousin’s papa in his room.

Set out for the cousin’s papa: money. Everything she saved in the glass jar, a bit more than she had a while ago, which wasn’t enough, in the laundry room up in the town center, and a little that she has borrowed from Björn too, he had some left over from his paycheck.

“Enough!” she said, triumphant. Then the cousin’s papa smiled his most sneering smile. He has been waiting for this, you see. I who have been in the kitchen and heard everything have suddenly understood this, like a bolt of lightning in my head, now, though one plus one, it should have been sorted a long time ago, already with the dart throwing in the yard. How the cousin’s papa was talking with Rita about the art of playing poker: you have to learn to read your opponent.

And this was in other words the moment the entire day was supposed to lead up to, he has decided, ahead of time. That is why he has been, and is, relatively sober too.

Some rat has been gnawing on his purse strings. Suddenly he had this “bag” in his hand too, held it up in front of Astrid. Has Astrid taken him for a fool? The cousin’s mama stood there for a few long seconds, lost her power of speech, not understood a thing.

The cousin’s papa did not care a bit about what the cousin’s mama has or hasn’t understood: he had a damned rat in his trap, damned Astriid, that is the main thing. Followed after Astrid who backed up, terrorstricken into the kitchen and hit the transistor radio that has been in the house during the cleaning that day and that Björn, this evening, because he has been drinking beer in the barn has not come to get, on the wall.

And thereafter, he went after the cousin’s mama. Rita and Doris disappeared from the yard where they had been waiting for supper, Rita quickly pulled Doris with her into the twins’ cottage—“Come, Doris, we can play cards.” And Doris who has an intuitive timidity for similar situations followed along. I was not able to go with them, I had to stay, I had understood that much inside, stay. It isn’t Astrid’s fault after all.

I ran out to the barn and got Björn.

Björn came to the cousin’s house.

I snuck into the parlor, to the closet.

There isn’t so much more to say about that night. The cousin’s papa who went after Astrid, Björn who got in the middle and put a stop to it.

And then he confessed, about the money. He had taken all the money, him and no one else. Grown out of the moped, wants to buy a motorcycle.

No one else’s name was mentioned. As said. I’m in the closet, the parlor, even if you can’t see, you can hear.

The cousin’s papa didn’t believe Björn. Björn went to the barn, got this money. What is left, after what he gave to the cousin’s mama, and what hasn’t been spent on the beer.

I don’t even think he threw it at the cousin’s papa, over the kitchen. Said, simply nothing. Just stood there, it seems, accepted it. An eternity. While the cousin’s papa was really crazy, no game anymore, told Björn who Björn really is. The genes. Bad blood. Björn was someone on whose birth certificate it read “father unknown.” The cousin’s mama’s sobs, crying.

Björn grew still, remained silent, accepted it.

All of the time that had run away from him, all of the unused teenage years. I guess. I don’t know.

Björn leaves, stays away.

No one, not even the cousin’s mama, follows him.

I’m in the closet and I’m afraid. Just afraid. I have the pistol. If someone comes I’ll shoot.

That fear is over when I sneak through the house out into the yard a few hours later. I have the pistol with me. I no longer know why I’m holding it in my hand.

Movements in the morning-night, many people are in motion. I don’t know that. Nothing about Bule Marsh, the American girl. At least not for the time being. I don’t go there.

A moment, when I have come out. Then it’s like this. If not like another landscape, then another place. Outer space. The surface of the moon. Where I am an astronaut, heavy movements in a space suit, reflective glass over my eyes, and a helmet on my head.

Then it passes. The day, the morning comes to me. Not normal, but real, in any case. Rita, I need to see Rita. How I had forgotten about Rita, not just this night, but for a long time already. How I almost wanted to get away from her.

Early morning, the sun rising, the glitter of sunshine between the trees—so wonderful, and me here. Dew on the grass, it is late summer, usually tickles in an especially disgusting way when Rita and I run to Bule Marsh from the twins’ cottage. Barefoot, that is also an idea. Hard skin that needs to be toughened, us in our swimsuits, towels wrapped around our bodies, my towel is blue, Rita’s red. It must still be a little after that point in time that I draw near the twins’ cottage.

Suddenly, a brief moment, astronaut again. Or: alienation. Caution. Hesitation. Or maybe just: intuition. I don’t go in right away, peer in through the window on the side facing the field first. That is lucky.

Rita’s bed is empty. She has already gone to Bule Marsh. Without me. But in the middle of the room in a sleeping bag like a stuffed sausage, Doris Flinkenberg. She’s still sleeping.

Doris. Not Doris now. Turn around, carefully. You don’t know with Doris. She’s always, even in her sleep, you’ve seen it in the cousin’s kitchen certain supper evenings, on her guard.

What I don’t know, am not going to see then, is how Doris, maybe awakened by some movement outside the twins’ cottage, wakes up, sees Rita’s bed, and is in a hurry. Rita who promised to wake her and take her with her to the marsh, she was going to get to participate in the training. Doris with hasty steps takes the blue swimsuit and the blue towel that are hanging to dry on the damper of the kitchen stove, my swimming things. And runs out. Doesn’t look around, is thinking only about Bule Marsh, a new experience, swimming practice, Rita—maybe she’ll become a real swimmer, too?

A little while later at the twins’ cottage I turn around and start walking. Hesitation again.

But the summer day, here, it is still coming toward me! Bule Marsh, Rita, Miss Andrews!

That is when I notice that I have a pistol in my hand. I try and put it inside the waistband of my pants, hide it. It doesn’t work, it’s too heavy. And otherwise too. I can’t carry a pistol with me, not anywhere.

I go back toward the cousin’s house, I need to take the pistol back.

The closer I get to the cousin’s house the more terrorstricken I become. Like a stain among everything that is beautiful, despite everything, in my head.

Björn, the barn, I go there. The barn is empty. Beer bottles.

Then I see, from the barn, the cousin’s mama. She is coming, walking from an outbuilding that is located at the edge of the woods to the left, a ways away from all of the other buildings. I don’t know it then. But she is walking quickly, she is pale, she almost doesn’t see me even though I run out and stand in front of her.

She says with a voice that makes me understand something about the outbuilding that of course I don’t understand then, but terrible, certainly enough, that I should go away, home and not to the outbuilding.