Monika Fagerholm: The Glitter Scene

Well. No more about that now. It exists in a time in the future, which is many years from now. This morning. So terrible, but still exactly, just because of that, so glittering, meaningful. That you have to go through the terrible in order to come out on the other side. But for the most part if you have determination, you will get out. And then everything is that much stronger, more beautiful, also the smallest tiniest good thing has meaning. I believe that.

The time starts now. When I leave the hill in about an hour and walk down. And I have to do it. I don’t want to, not right then, but there is no choice.

Up there, at the base of the house. If you don’t play the Winter Garden and aren’t filled with your own fantasies, then you see clearly. A great panorama that reveals itself right here.

I am sitting here this morning watching what is happening below.

The cousin’s mama on the cousin’s property again. Where I met her when she looked at the pistol and looked at me like a crazy person and an idiot—but her rage! And I landed solidly on the ground with both feet, ran in with the pistol and ran away.

But the cousin’s mama can’t run away. She has been to the outbuilding, she has seen, what I know later, Björn there, and now she is standing in the yard calling for someone. Bengt! Not for me. Maybe that’s better. I still wouldn’t have been able to help her. Or anyone. In such a way.

Later I understand that the cousin’s mama is standing in the yard due to the fact that she still doesn’t dare go inside the cousin’s house again. The cousin’s papa is there—who’s probably still snoring, he was just a little while ago, when I was inside with the pistol, but then I wasn’t thinking about waking him anymore—and there was everything that had led up to this.

The cousin’s mama is appallingly alone. Doesn’t know where she should go. What she should do.

Then someone comes running along the road. From the country road, not from the Second Cape where she actually lives.

It’s Eddie de Wire the American girl. She comes running toward the cousin’s property in a red coat, on fire, an alarm. Whom is she looking for? Which one of her boyfriends? Bengt? Who is waiting for her somewhere else, he has her bag too. He has packed it because they are running off together. Nonsense. But in the middle of all of those dreams, the American girl has been called to the baroness, she has stolen something there. Now she has to leave. The baroness had enough. She arranged it so that someone with a car will take the girl away.

Locks her inside a room while she is waiting for the person who is going to take the American girl away to arrive, I don’t know. What I do know is that Bengt isn’t there with her then. He’s waiting somewhere else. Somewhere simply. Not in the barn, not in the cousin’s house, not on the hill on the First Cape, not at Bule Marsh. In the wrong places, quite simply. Where he usually is.

With her bag that he is going to have with him later and will place under the floor in the barn when he moves out. Keep it like a relic, a souvenir. A real memory, of something unusually beautiful. Some sort of promise about something, somewhere, he never got too, never came.

And that promise may not have BEEN the American girl Eddie de Wire as she was, or is—but she was a figure for it. Or maybe, what do I know? I will also think about Bengt and Eddie on the terrace of the boathouse. Right in front of the sea, the guitar, Bengt with his sketchpad, the music. Laughter, talking, both of them talking just as much. Maybe it was the way it was, the two of them, one plus one and true.

But Björn was also the American girl’s boyfriend. And she comes running toward the cousin’s property now, to the barn, maybe Björn is there, she barely sees the cousin’s mama who is standing in the middle of the yard. The cousin’s mama walks toward her.

I don’t know what they say, but it is soon evident that it is an argument. Almost a fight. “Children’s mama.” Is that what she’s like when she is beside herself? My body is pounding—but I see, I have to see.

But then they disappear too. Eddie runs toward the woods, the path. And the cousin’s mama runs after her, it’s like a dance. They disappear, the cousin’s mama is chasing her, screaming and shouting can also be heard. The cousin’s mama who grabbed her as hard as only the cousin’s papa usually does in the yard.

She’s so angry. Björn, suddenly it’s as if everything that the cousin’s mama can’t control or understand is, or could be, the American girl’s fault.

I don’t know.

That is where they are running to now anyway, toward the marsh.

The cousin’s mama can’t know how strong the currents in the water under the cliff are. She’s just beside herself. Onto someone. Who is not her “child,” who has taken her “child” away from her.

And you achieve nothing by raging against the cousin’s papa. You’re powerless against him. She knows it in her bones now.

It is quiet, some time passes.

Shouts again.

The cousin’s mama comes running from the marsh, she runs into the cousin’s house and shuts the door behind her.

Doris a little while later, from the woods, in a blue bathing suit, crying. On the steps of the cousin’s house, pounding on the door, but no one opens, she doesn’t get in.

She sits down on the steps, Doris crying, Bengt who shows up, has a bag in his hand.

He runs to the marsh, and back. Doris on the steps across from him. But Bengt in the wrong places, everywhere.

First he runs to the marsh. And then to the outbuilding—yes, he runs there too.

And Doris after him, Doris in a blue swimsuit, crying, toward the outbuilding behind Bengt. He goes inside, knocks Doris over, but only so that she won’t go in!

It isn’t Bengt who is screaming in the yard. It is Doris Flinkenberg.

But I don’t see that, then I’m no longer there.

I have left the hill, gone down, straight through everything, to the twins’ cottage.

It has become morning for real—me through the beautiful morning, the sun that is already high in the sky, but everything is still completely still. How everything is glittering again, it is getting windy.

Home. Rita. The twins’ cottage. Rita is back.

I come to the cottage. Walk into the cottage. Sun. Pouring in through the windows and with the wind and the trees the sun makes sun cats, which are playing on the floor where I am standing. In the middle of the room in the house, next to Doris’s rolled-up sleeping bag.

A glance in the round mirror on our wall. So long, stately, tall. Solveig. She is lying in her bed on her stomach, Rita. In her swimsuit. The red swimsuit, even darker. Dirt on the bottoms of both feet and around her ankles and calves. The towel over her head.

“Rita.” She isn’t sleeping, she’s awake. She is moaning, her body is shaking.

I carefully get closer. “Rita.” Then she turns over and I get a red towel thrown in my face.

I was the one who was the lifeguard, Sister Blue.

I know that. I know everything about Rita.

Then we are also, from that moment on, together but also apart. But also. Such tenderness.

Which will never disappear later. Even though we don’t see each other anymore, despite the fact that Rita doesn’t return, you’re sad at first, but that’s how it goes.

And, understandable—that she doesn’t come back.

It was Rita who was forced to lie the most, to Doris Flinkenberg. She and Doris at the beach at Bule Marsh. First Rita alone, then Doris Flinkenberg. No one else, no Miss Andrews. She was still in her house, because of Eddie de Wire.