The Glitter Scene

SOLVEIG, SISTER BLUE (and what it was like with the American girl, 1969)

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.

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.

At Bule Marsh in the mornings we teach Miss Andrews to swim and she teaches us English. It’s a business exchange, but also, mostly, a game. And actually I would rather practice swimming. I don’t mean all the time. But when we’re there. Sometimes I also suspect that Miss Andrews isn’t as bad a swimmer as she says she is. She seems to float pretty well, in the water I mean. In and of itself, I think she comes to the marsh because she wants to put on a show for Tobias who also shows up there quite often. Tobias is our “almost” godfather, mine and Rita’s.

Rita and I have decided that we’re going to become swimmers. I’m a better swimmer than Rita. I’m a little faster. I’m not afraid to jump from Lore Cliff. Headfirst. High up for the ladies: a vault in the air. When my body breaks the surface of the water I quickly swim away. Away from the current, it is strong. You have to have strength for this, and precision. Rita doesn’t. Maybe she’s afraid. Doesn’t dare: that is an amazing idea, new. Sitting on the beach, making froglike movements in the air, showing Miss Andrews a swim stroke. Talking about the Bermuda Triangle with each other, in English.

I come out of the water after this jump. “Did you see?” Yes, it was nice, Miss Andrews says absentmindedly. Rita too. Saw but didn’t see. Then I get angry. A little. When I get angry I don’t let anyone see. Except for Rita. I mean, we’re twins, she knows.

There comes Tobias from the woods. Then we can talk about swimming practice again. Rita is standing in the sand, concentrating now, digging her heels deep into the sand. “Come, Solveig.”

Then we swim. And we swim.

We are swimmers, we are going to amaze the world.

We aren’t the type to stand on the beach and crow about it, pounding our chests, so to speak. This is serious.

Later when Rita has left I will think about Rita on the beach like that. Switching from the one to the other. Suddenly in one world, then in the other. It will be an extenuating circumstance. It is admirable. But it also gives a false image of what you’re actually able to do and what you can handle.

And Rita has a violent temper. It isn’t a temperament, it’s a mood. Temperament can be seen on the outside, it exists inside someone who always has her own show going on, like Doris Flinkenberg. And now I don’t mean to say that Doris was false. No. As clear as water. But she had show.

No, besides. I don’t want to tell it this way. About my reflections about Rita and myself in that way. Or bring the future in now. We don’t know anything about the future in the present. Maybe it’s best to say it like it is.

I’m a better swimmer than Rita. A little better. Rita lacks stamina and precision: not completely, of course, and in everyone’s eyes it can’t be seen, but she doesn’t have as much of it as I do.

I was the one who was Sister Blue in the swimming school that existed on the Second Cape before the public beach was moved to Bule Marsh. I was the one who saved Susette Packlén from drowning and got the Lifeguard’s Medal, which I still have. Rita saw but didn’t see. Not because she didn’t want to but she didn’t take control. Rita is preoccupied with Miss Andrews. Miss Andrews is the baroness on the Second Cape, an acquaintance. And I say the baroness, Rita says Miss Andrews. But just as much, or even more, I want to be with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s house, the District. I don’t like being on the hill on the First Cape that much, being at the stone foundation and playing the Winter Garden. I would rather be with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s kitchen, a helper with all of her chores.

So if the difference that exists between me and Rita, despite the fact that we are twins, comes out in relation to Miss Andrews then you could say that the difference between Bengt and Björn is most obvious in relation to the American girl Eddie de Wire, who gradually becomes Björn’s first girlfriend. There, suddenly, Bengt and Björn are like night and day.

Björn and the American girl Eddie de Wire: in the future Björn is going to marry her and have a family. Here in the District, or close by. It also isn’t something that needs to be stated in words. And if not with his first girlfriend Eddie de Wire, then with some other girl.

Eddie de Wire is actually the first girl who happens to come by. Literally, slowly wandering down the road from the Second Cape where she’s living in the baroness’s boathouse that summer, it is the year 1969, she is in the District. One evening, two evenings, back and forth on the road she walks, in the sand, on the side of the road, sauntering. Restless teenager in light-colored clothes, walks past the yard where Björn is with his moped. Tinkering for all he’s worth. A teenager’s intuition tells him that he should do something about this. Ears burning, damned shyness.

Up until that evening when she finally calls to him from the road: “Do you have a cigarette?”

After which, since Björn had answered in the affirmative, she comes to him across the yard.

Transistor music, cigarettes glowing in the summer twilight.

On the other hand, not much later Bengt will be hanging around with the American girl during the day when Björn is at work. And as if transformed. Is GOING TO do a lot of other things too, and precisely with her, everything. Run away. The world. The Winter Garden. Everything. Babbling on the terrace of the boathouse. Eddie with her guitar. Yes, she’s talking too, looks happy.

I don’t know the American girl Eddie de Wire. I don’t know anything about her. I have no idea how she relates to everything, or which boy she prefers. But you can also think like this: that if you’re Eddie de Wire, both alternatives are pretty attractive. Bengt and Björn.

Two who are head over heels for her.

Eddie Young: inside each of us there is that eternal YOUNG that wants to glitter, be loved, BE LOVED mercilessly.

And: not a bad way of spending your summer.

It’s so boring at the baroness’s.

You can see it that way too maybe.

But this I know: that I prefer it when Eddie and Björn are together.

Moped, transistor radio, cigarette, going out for a walk.

And cigarettes: spots of light in the opening of the barn, a calm, green summer evening in eternity.

Though it must immediately be said anyway: regardless of what it’s like with Björn and Bengt and the American girl, Björn and Bengt never fight with each other because of her. In Björn’s eyes, Bengt is always a cousin, a brother, they are friends. She is the one who betrays and it’s obvious that you would become furious if you’re Björn when you find out about it. But it isn’t something you kill over. Not her, or yourself. That isn’t why he hanged himself in the outbuilding.

When Björn realizes that Eddie de Wire can’t quite be trusted he does what guys do when they have been left by some girl. Ride off on their moped, come back with a lot of beer, and go out to the barn. He gets drunk, of course.

That evening which is the last evening, night, I will be in the closet. Incidentally there’s also a pistol there. In a shoe box: it is our pistol. Mine, Rita’s, Bengt’s. Our inheritance, which the cousin’s papa has taken away from us. We’re too young to be playing with pistols. I have it under the palm of my hand, I feel it.

We’re in the garden on the hill on the First Cape, me and Rita, we are looking at our reflections in the crystal ball, looking around. You can see a long way from the hill, down to the Second Cape, and also a glimpse of the Glass House.

“Look, Miss Andrews!” Rita says suddenly. We see the baroness from a distance. On the cliffs, by the sea. And the house, with the large veranda with the windows that can swing open toward the sea when it’s really warm. Her Winter Garden, which she had talked about once. Welcome girls to my lovely garden. That’s just something you say, it never happens. The swimming and the English at Bule Marsh are, so to speak, for the baroness, games, another place. I know that better than my sister Rita.

“What now?” I ask because I don’t want Rita to become disappointed.

Rita doesn’t say anything. But she gets angry at me, you can see that.

But otherwise it’s nice up there, you can see in many directions. The coast, the sea, the houses, the woods. Everything is there. Being here.

On that July evening with my twin sister, Rita, it’s not the stone foundation, here we belong together. And of course, naturally in some way waiting for the cousin’s mama to come out on the steps of the cousin’s house below the hill and call us home for supper.

“Come, all my boys!” she calls, but all of the girls are included too, of course. Me and Rita, Rita, me.

And all of the boys come. Björn and Bengt from their directions, often together. From the barn, for example, where they have been lurking with the American girl, the three of them. Carrying out lengthy, quite normal teenage conversations that don’t say much of anything. Because normal teenagers in full possession of their senses don’t stand there and hold speeches for each other.

In other words Bengt, then, as said, the one who has been keeping the group alive.

“.”

Says something in ancient Greek.

In order to impress the American girl. Teach Yourself Ancient Greek. Since she has a book like that and has lent it to him.

But the cousin’s mama who calls and the boys, separate from the girls, to the supper table, all four kids together.

“Wait for meee!”

But then one evening, another hungry, thirsty one shows up on the road. Doris Flinkenberg, the knocked-about kid, who becomes, for a while, “the fifth duckling at the table.” That’s how Doris expresses it herself, when the cousin’s mama quickly sets out a teacup and a plate for her too.

The strange, wonderful, but poor little Doris Flinkenberg.

That it’s a shame about Doris, everyone knows that. Doris, from the Outer Marsh, who wanders around in different places because she has a hard time at home, seeks out calmer places to be. Places where she can rest. So tired. How Doris slumps together after tea and sandwiches, falls asleep in her chair.

But in the middle of her deep sleep, watchful. On the alert at the slightest foreign sound, movement. Her eyes open, wide-open.

Looks around: the danger, the threat, where?

And then it’s just something ordinary. For example the cousin’s mama who turned on the transistor radio, which Björn had brought with him, when everyone had finished eating.

The pop music floods through the kitchen.

Doris immediately relaxes and starts singing along with the song, even though she doesn’t master either the lyrics or the melody. The cousin’s mama who, in contrast to everyone else in the kitchen, knows the song, joins in: Doris raises a cry, the cousin’s mama raises a cry—and in the middle of the song, how Doris looks at the cousin’s mama with teacup saucer eyes as if at a creature from an unknown planet. Like mother, like song. Is it possible?

Delightful new acquaintance.

And Doris, still in the song, slides off the chair and steps out on the floor and onto her toes and starts dancing. Silly, in and of itself, Doris can’t dance after all. But she dances anyway, bumpily, because she is also rather small and plump too. And how the cousin’s mama, while the song is playing, sings, Doris dances, looks at Doris so, tears in her eyes but so happy. Doris-light!

And Doris: you can see how a wonderful view unfolds in those eyes. In the middle of the Doris-song, Dorisdance, rosy cheeked, loud voice, and—marsh cunningness. A small glitter; but you can’t say it in Doriscontexts, it sounds so awful.

Afterward, Doris comes to the cousin’s house more and more often. Almost every day. Is drawn to the cousin’s mama, the cousin’s house like a magnet.

Starts staying the night as well. Not in the cousin’s house; it isn’t possible because of the cousin’s papa. But, for example, with me and Rita in the middle of the room between our sleeping bags, you have to, says the cousin’s mama of course, “have pity.” Lets herself be found in different places nearby. Out in the barn, up in the house on the First Cape where she, despite the fact that all the doors are locked, easily makes her way in.

But at the same time: it’s a terrible shame about Doris.

But always, if she doesn’t go herself, she is taken away anyway. The cousin’s papa is angry, eventually he even calls the police and says that they should come and take the child away. The cousin’s mama is crying. Doris is crying. Even tries, when she sees how sad the cousin’s mama is, not to show her own sadness. Brave girl, brave Doris!

Doris who is taken away, Doris who comes back. The cousin’s mama who snaps—

The cousin’s mama who goes to the cousin’s papa.

He likes that, the cousin’s mama doesn’t know that, she doesn’t know him. That the more she asks and asks, the worse it becomes. She is countryman Loman’s daughter and knows this sort of thing can be arranged, the child must be looked after, and it has always been the case that all children should come to her! Astrid Loman, “children’s mama.”

But it is so that the cousin’s mama is no daughter anymore and this is not the neighboring municipality, which he, in various ways, explains to her. Loves explaining to her, the more persistent she is with him. It’s terrible to see because it’s quite likely, or I’m sure of it, that the cousin’s papa would, if Doris just came to the house and stayed in the house without there being a big fuss about it in that way, even like it. Wouldn’t have anything against Doris, actually, but now, here, with Astrid Loman, the countryman’s daughter, he sees the opportunity to play a game. He likes games like these, give with one hand, take with the other, have an opponent whom he always makes sure is at a slight disadvantage, floating around in uncertainty. Uncertainty, obscure promises that he takes back, only to make the same promises again the next moment, or even just fulfill the promise suddenly when you’ve just stopped hoping.

Negotiate the matter, it costs money. Which means that the cousin’s papa, for fun, names a sum of money that he claims he has seriously calculated it would cost to take care of a girl like Doris until she becomes an adult, including the money to pay off the people in the Outer Marsh and so on. If she gives him that sum of money, to be delivered by hand, he might possibly take the matter seriously under consideration. Not even rotten eggs are free, the cousin’s papa repeats. Rotten egg is the cousin’s papa’s nickname for Doris Flinkenberg. Comes from Doris herself, actually: how Doris has a habit of imitating the cousin’s papa’s way of saying the word, which he often says anyway, in general so to speak, in relation to everything and everyone, but the cousin’s papa imitates Doris only when she isn’t around.

Something in Doris makes it so that when Doris is in the cousin’s house the cousin’s papa stays out of sight. But Doris is also good at noticing things; all of her senses on alert, observant.

The cousin’s papa names this sum and the cousin’s mama believes him. Aastriid. A ray of hope lights up in Astrid’s eyes. At closer reflection: is extinguished again. Cannot give in. Is lit.

I go up to the mountains with my lonely heart. It is rather terrible to see.

“Children’s mama.” For a moment I forget that all of it is a game.

I’m with the cousin’s mama in the washroom with the big washing machine and the mangle set up in a basement up in the town center. We have taken the bus there. With dirty laundry, bedclothes, and light-colored clothes, from some summerhouse on the Second Cape.

We stuff the dirty laundry in the machine. I fumble a little, and the cousin’s mama, who never loses her patience, suddenly becomes angry and yells at me. I start crying. Then everything falls apart for her as well and she takes me in her arms and talks about that child, Doris, whom she’s thinking about all the time, it’s so terrible to see.

“Solveig. If only one could come up with a solution.” And that she has money, but it’s not enough.

The cousin’s mama has been saving and she counted all the money she has, but it really isn’t that much, coins and some bills in a glass jar and now she takes all of the cleaning and washing jobs from the Second Cape that she can get, but it isn’t enough. The cousin’s papa says so too, all the time: “So much more is needed.”

And thinking about Doris, how time is passing.

I nod.

Not enough. Both of us know that, the cousin’s mama and I. But I know, as said, something else that I will know the whole time. None of the cousin’s mama’s money will ever be enough. Because for the cousin’s papa, it isn’t a matter of money. This is a game to him, a game, something to pass the time with.

The cousin’s mama doesn’t understand, still. Can’t take it in. “Children’s mama.” Yes, maybe. But also: she comes from a different landscape. And that’s why I can’t say anything to her; I am ashamed of the other landscape, about the fact that I suddenly know it inside and out, as if I were there. I’m not there. I’m not there.

I’m here, cousin’s mama, another landscape and it truly is—and look, cousin’s mama, sun cats!

And that is what overwhelms me in the midst of everything. The sun that has now started shining anyway, after it having been so cloudy all morning.

“I like your name.” Which the cousin’s mama said to me many years ago when she came to the cousin’s house. “Solveig. There is so much sun in it.”

“Look, cousin’s mama! Sun cats!”

Then, in the basement washroom, I do the following: I start dancing. Like the sun cats are dancing. Call to the cousin’s mama again, look at the cats! How they are forcing their way into the washroom under the ground through a window that is almost in the ceiling. But still, in any case, dancing over the heavy mangle that is turning, creaking over the wrinkled, slightly damp sheets.

How I am dancing! Carefully going up on my toes, before throwing myself head-first pretty much, like the high jump for women from Lore Cliff, Bule Marsh, in the dance.

Carrying out my own sun cat’s dance to sun cat accompaniment, on my tiptoes!

Doris-light.

This occupies me completely, precision: because I don’t know the dance, rising up in the dance is difficult, because it is also the idea after all that my dance should be reminiscent of how Doris Flinkenberg dances in the cousin’s kitchen in the evenings.

And: dancing in order to make someone happy. The cousin’s mama, who has become so inconsolable.

And of course, which I know at that moment but prefer not to think about. So to speak influence myself into the right mood by suggestion. To another landscape. Where I should be quite naturally, not in this knowledge: that shit of hopelessness.

Regardless of how I stretch. Tiptapandontiptoe.

I have gone up on my toes. Become tall, tall, so large. And it is impressive, of course, so tall for my age.

But from that skyscraper height I suddenly don’t see stupid little Solveig without fantasy, who has to think in order to go up in the dance. But something else. The opposite. The influence of suggestions inside a square. Applause. What a performance.

“You did that well, Solveig.”

“Look look, Astrid! Sun cats!”

“Don’t be silly now, Solveig.” The cousin’s mama smiles a bit tiredly. “We have a lot of sheets left.”

I go back to work. But hopeless. What happened, what was thought in the dance, does not leave my head. A plan that unfolds, a secret to everyone. “You did that well, Solveig.”

In vain, from the beginning. But the other, it is so much stronger.

The cousin’s papa’s money. The parlor, the cousin’s house, the closet. The cousin’s papa who is an old-fashioned idiot who can’t imagine keeping his money in the bank. He brags about it too, in general, in vague terms, about all the money he has. Sometimes you’ve seen some of it, in the open. Like when Björn was going to buy the moped, for example.

“There’s always more money.”

If you sell the Second Cape you get a lot of money.

Is kept in an old, dungy boot, in a closet. I’m the only one who knows that secret. In addition to the cousin’s papa, of course, but he doesn’t know that I know.

I haven’t told anyone about the money, not even my sister Rita. Because from the beginning Rita was more impatient than me, despite the fact that we look so alike. Just as tall, dark. So different, essentially different, compared to Doris Flinkenberg, for example, small and plump, flaxen hair, light. In general, light.

A bag with money somewhere would for Rita be something you needed to do something about; not necessarily take it and go, but still, attend to in some way.

And now. Maybe lacking that necessary caution, that mood, for example, which would cause everything to go out of control. It can’t get out of control. It’s a matter of Doris Flinkenberg, a child.

And now in other words it isn’t so that Rita would have been badly affected by little Doris’s fate, that she would, for example, have anything against Doris Flinkenberg becoming the fifth wheel at the supper table for good. After all, Doris has spent many nights in our cottage.

Rita detests the cousin’s papa and feels sorry for the cousin’s mama, just like I do.

So in that way it would be much easier, with Rita, together, having a plan. But as I’ve said, that thing about the mood, caution…

And another thing. Up on your toes, in the sun. I want it to be me. Only me.

“You did that well.” The cousin’s mama will be happy afterward and applaud me and no one else.

So one day I sneak into the parlor and take the money out of the cousin’s papa’s hiding place in the boot in the closet. I don’t count how much, a wad of bills, I think it’s enough, and I put the money in my underpants which have a strong elastic band, it’s held in place, I tested it ahead of time with ordinary paper.

In the middle of the day, no one else is in the house. I will also remember that day, maybe more than what I do, that entire business. We had been cleaning the entire morning, I helped the cousin’s mama inside the house and now she’s busy with the rugs outside. It’s almost late summer, the saturation of summer, me in the parlor, that feeling I like. Everyone else somewhere else, me off to the side, yet not alone.

The others are in the yard, I hear sounds from out there, I stand for a moment and sneak a peek, hidden behind the curtain, of everything that is going on in the yard, like a play. Carefully, so no one sees. The cousin’s papa is throwing darts, the cousin’s mama is beating rugs that she hung over the rug rack that Björn has made for her out of some boards. Rita and Bengt and the cousin’s papa are throwing darts: some sort of mediocre competition seems to be going on. The cousin’s papa has actually gotten out of his chair, which always needs to be dragged out for him so that he has somewhere to sit when it is cleaning day at the cousin’s house. Now he’s dragging himself around in the yard, in the same blanket with holes, like a chieftain.

In the silence of the parlor this afternoon: the sound of darts hitting the dartboard on the wall of the barn. Plonk, plonk. Rugs being beaten: damp, damp. The voices in the yard. I can’t make out what they’re saying, but ordinary voices, no particular energy or excitement in them, but not anything else either.

All of this which is going to disappear. I don’t know that yet. But still, I know it, right in this moment. The saturation of summer, the completion. Me in the parlor, off to the side. Sweaty bills in my underpants, but suddenly in my head, me, so exactly in the middle. Everyone who is suddenly looking at me, clapping their hands loudly. The cousin’s papa too, he isn’t impossible either really, Rita and Bengt and the cousin’s papa, in the yard. They’re even laughing at something together, a dart that lands in a funny way with the feathered side first on the dart board. Bonk. Ends up on the ground.

At the same time. Exactly because of that. The moment that will follow, unavoidable. The summer that throws you away. The ordinary time that disappears. And that is now.

The cousin’s papa has turned around and thrown a hasty glance at the cousin’s house. Looks in my direction. Doesn’t see me, it is impossible anyway. Turns toward the dartboard again, throws the dart toward the barn, it strikes the ring, right in the bull’s-eye.

An omen that nothing can become like it is now.

I’m back out in the yard again. Same day, in the afternoon. Money in my pants. What now?

Alone at the cousin’s property. I shilly-shally up toward the mailbox where there are rarely any letters addressed to me, except when I got the Lifeguard’s Medal from the Lifeguards’ Club a few years ago, in the winter after the summer I rescued Susette Packlén from drowning at the public beach on the Second Cape—a registered letter that required the signature of the addressee, so the postal worker drove onto the property and came up and knocked on the door to the cousin’s house and I got to sign myself and confirm the delivery. I who had been Solveig in the blue swimsuit, Sister Blue, during the summer.

Everyone has gone inside except Rita and Bengt who have disappeared off somewhere else. Bengt to the Second Cape probably, where he is spending more and more time together with the American girl Eddie de Wire, especially on the days that Björn is at work. Rita to our cottage, maybe to look for me. “Where’s Solveig?” she had shouted out in the yard while I was still inside the parlor. To the cottage; she thought I was there.

I stand in the yard and think about my plan. Brilliant. And if you have a brilliant plan then you shouldn’t shout it from the rooftops, everywhere.

The problem is simply this: money in my pants, I realize right here in the yard, that I don’t have a plan.

So now what?

Go straight to the cousin’s mama? No, not that. There would just be trouble. The cousin’s mama is the police commissioner’s daughter and understands the difference between right and wrong—all of these old magazines, True Crimes.

“HAVE YOU, Solveig?” The cousin’s mama would ask and all the sun cats would disappear, smack, because when the cousin’s mama looks at you in a certain way then you can’t lie.

“Now you go and return that money to the cousin’s papa and then you say you’re sorry.”

The cousin’s mama would say that too. Regardless of whether or not all hell would break loose because of it, regardless of the intention and the goal.

“Cat got your tongue?”

But there comes someone driving home on his moped.

It’s Björn, who is shouting.

No not that!

Suddenly this power inside me, deliverance, how I become happy! Björn and me: the two of us, we’re the ones who will. There it comes, like a letter in the mail, in just that moment it feels like I’ve known it the whole time. Björn and me. And everything falls into place inside my head.

“I have something…” I mumble, pulling Björn after me inside the barn where I initiate him in a plan I don’t really have. Afterward it’s uncertain what is said and actually what is agreed upon, if anything at all. I don’t think about that then, I’m just so relieved.

Not many words are exchanged: Björn is not someone with whom you sit and discuss, so to speak. And I am too shy: suddenly there in the barn with all of that happiness I get the idea that I have a crush on him. That love comes up right then and exactly in that second: maybe we will get married when we grow up. Despite the fact that we’re cousins, we aren’t blood relations and it’s rarely the case that your first love lasts a lifetime. If you lose one you get another thousand! And suddenly I’m one of these thousand, maybe downright already the second one, or the third one, and besides I also have a pretty hard time in a discreet way, back turned toward Björn in the darkness of the barn, getting those damp-with-sweat-bills out of my clothes.

But something is decided, with the plan, that is to say. For example, Björn’s surprise when he sees the money and when I tell him where it came from and how I found it. And about the cousin’s papa, the cousin’s mama. Doris Flinkenberg. I’m just about to tell him about the parlor too, in a general kind of way, about my own special place that is just mine and no one else’s. Initiate him in the secret too, like when the words can start pouring out of someone who is otherwise taciturn like Bengt with the American girl because you’ve fallen in love.

But then suddenly before I’ve even gotten started, Björn’s instant surprise about the money and the entire story about the cousin’s mama and the cousin’s papa and Doris Flinkenberg is gone and it turns into pure and simple rage and shortly thereafter the American girl arrives.

“That idiot,” Björn has time to utter, so furious in the midst of everything, like I have never heard him before. Under ordinary circumstances when Björn gets angry he goes off on his own and comes back after a while and then everything is normal again. “That idiot,” he spits out again and that it can’t go on like this and that’s saying a lot coming from Björn but then both of us see the American girl Eddie de Wire come strolling across the yard in the direction of the barn and there is no opportunity to say anything more at all but he has time to take the money and say, I think, we are going to take care of the matter and that this will stay between the two of us and that neither of us is going to say anything to anyone—and we shake on it.

Then Eddie de Wire comes.

“Hey, girl!” she says to me as I’m leaving all excited and almost rush right into her arms. “Don’t run away.”

Lights a cigarette. Björn also gets out his pack and lighter.

I don’t run away. So then I’m there for a while, in the opening of the barn, at the cousin’s property, Solveig, with two teenagers, the three of us together.

The time it takes for a teenager to smoke a cigarette: that is what I experience of the American girl Eddie de Wire while she is still alive. Eddie, in white pants, white blouse, and a light blue sweater. All three of us sitting in the opening of the barn, silent. Björn and Eddie next to each other, me a little bit farther down on the steps. Eddie is humming a song. Not the song like the messed-up song that Doris and Sandra start singing much later. Just an ordinary one. Ordinary pop music, the kind that’s popular back then. Björn puts his arm around her. They giggle. Not meanly toward me or anyone else, because they aren’t talking about anything in particular, just giggling. The way two teenagers do, quite simply, together; two who like each other in a normal way too. Naturally I understand exactly during those minutes that I’m not going to marry Björn later either, he’s just way too old for me, so I giggle a little bit too.

Then Eddie says something about the baroness, in a low voice, that the baroness is a real shit, says it in a teenager kind of way, who doesn’t leave Eddie alone and let Eddie do what she wants to do. The baroness said that Eddie will have to leave if she doesn’t change.

Imitates the baroness: “chaange.” Jumps on the word, sounds a bit funny too, I start thinking about the fact that the baroness at Bule Marsh probably does talk a bit in such a way that you become impatient, we’re going to swim, not talk about art and life and Uffizi galleries and then the American girl has that American accent in her Swedish as well, which is due to the fact that she’s actually from America.

But nothing more about that either. Otherwise, I mean with the baroness. Of course I understand that that’s the way youths can talk when they aren’t in agreement with the adult generation, which is a different generation and doesn’t understand the younger generation’s striving for freedom.

And most of all I’m not sitting there on high alert putting two and two together, the baroness, Miss Andrews, who has been pretty nervous lately and scatterbrained in a different way than normal in the mornings at Bule Marsh.

To me the baroness, who is Miss Andrews at Bule Marsh, is mostly a game, at Bule Marsh, sometimes Tobias is there as well. They like each other, he and the baroness, it sometimes is, rather often too, a very pleasant atmosphere.

And it has nothing to do with the baroness and her boarder Eddie de Wire in the boathouse.

Eddie’s striving for freedom. I don’t really know anything about that either, I mean, I never will, even after she’s dead. What I know is that the baroness is going to try and send her away a few days later and that things are going to end in a tragic way for the American girl Eddie de Wire, due to all the unexpected circumstances.

Which have to do with my story, but not cause-effect, in that way, in such a crystal clear way. Circumstances, coincidences—that’s how it is, and remains.

But now nothing has happened yet, Solveig, a moment in the teenagers’ world. An entirely different world too from Miss Andrews and Rita who speak English with each other at Bule Marsh. Not in the water, where I am, but on the beach. Tobias comes and then at least Rita and I can focus on the essentials again. Swimming, that we’re going to become swimmers, Rita and I.

The teenagers’ world: it’s peculiar in and of itself and for a moment entirely enough.

Eddie suddenly asks, “Are you Solveig or Rita?” and adds, as if she’s already lost interest in the answer while she’s asking, which you do when you’re young and your head is full of more important things: “It’s quite difficult to tell you guys apart.”

But I answer the question politely. “Just Solveig.”

And that’s the first and only thing I ever say to the American girl, answer a question politely. Because I don’t say anything about the next thing she says, though, in and of itself, she mainly just tosses it up into the air, a bit ironically too.

“I’m sure it’s fun swimming with the baroness. Splashing around with her in Bule Marsh. She and her boyfriend. What’s his name? Tobias?”

I don’t answer, as I said. First: I have never thought about it in that way. And if it really is like that, that Tobias is the baroness’s “boyfriend,” what’s so special about that then?

Personally she, Eddie de Wire, had TWO boyfriends. But you can’t exactly say that out loud since Björn is here and you just can’t gossip about certain things, some things a man has to find out on his own, and besides, Bengt is my brother and Björn and Bengt are friends and I don’t like it when there’s arguing and fighting, who would do that? And then I’m too young to be going around putting two and two together about people in that way.

And then to start bickering with Eddie de Wire, Björn’s first girlfriend, right here and now.

And sure enough, it passes. Just something that swished through the teenager’s mind in order to disappear in the next second. Darkness falls, Björn switches on the transistor radio, the cigarettes have been finished. “Hm. It’s cold,” Eddie says in the opening to the barn, pulls her sweater more tightly around herself.

Björn pulls her toward him, holds her more firmly.

I get up and leave.

“Bye,” Eddie de Wire calls after me. Björn too: “Bye, Solveig.”

When I’m on my way, across the yard in the direction of Rita’s and my cottage on the other side of the field, Bengt is coming, at a high speed. He barely sees me, straight ahead, toward the opening of the barn! Eddie and Björn are there, of course, and as soon as he catches sight of them he starts talking about something learned and silly even before he has made it to where they’re sitting.

Something from “shopping mall theory,” in order to impress the American girl. She also has a book like that which she lent him but barely read herself, some old birthday present, but he has read it, really studied it now! Bengt, ears aflame, as if it were important.

Bengt and the American girl Eddie de Wire, maybe we can talk about that here, say something about that as well, a few words, what I know.

I see it, like a scene: Bengt and Eddie on the veranda on the Second Cape, Eddie with the guitar, Bengt who’s drawing, talking. Eddie who’s trying to sing, nah, she doesn’t have a singing voice, doesn’t remember the song, starts laughing. Bengt who’s laughing. The sea in front of them, blue and foamy, and waves that are crashing, wind, you can’t hear what they’re saying, what Bengt is saying, the American girl, but she’s talking too, they’re talking at the same time. Can see them that way, from some house on the Second Cape where I’m cleaning with the cousin’s mama, lock my gaze on them in the middle of cleaning, see. I don’t know what I’m seeing, as I said, Bengt and the American girl, but I can imagine, Bengt and Eddie, that is also true, it is also, was also, as it should have been. So true. So right.

“What did the girl want?” Eddie asked Björn there in the yard by the barn when I got up and was almost out of earshot, just before Bengt here, now, is tumbling head over heels with his stupid theories.

“What did the girl want?” I don’t hear Björn’s answer, almost nothing at all. He’s already in another world, he and Eddie, in their own teenage world. New music on the transistor, trallallaa, new pop song, that’s the way it is.

Even if the summer will soon throw them away, though they don’t know that, I don’t know that either, yet. My plan: that is something I’ve also completely forgotten for the time being.

Walk calmly to Rita’s and my cottage, let myself be filled with Eddie, Björn, cigarette smoke, the steps. I’ll tell Rita about it. I’m burning with desire and excitement, hurry up the stairs, run the last bit.

Three evenings later, or it’s almost night then, Björn throws all the bills I gave him in the barn right in the cousin’s papa’s face in the kitchen of the cousin’s house. You can imagine: all of the money flying about, raining down over the kitchen where the cousin’s papa is sitting in a straight-back wooden chair, with his cane. This evening he has crawled out into the kitchen from his room, the cousin’s mama crying, or it’s more than crying. Loud shrieks, sobs, and scream scream, terrible. Björn who hasn’t known what to say but who does that. And rather drunk, so that too. Has been sitting in the shed with beer bottles the whole evening up until now. Björn who doesn’t say things like that, who doesn’t know what he’s going to say, who never knows, he isn’t someone who talks, but the cousin’s papa is someone who talks, can destroy with his talking.

Doesn’t Björn understand? And me, about Björn—don’t I understand?

Björn from another landscape. And the cousin’s mama, Astrid. “Children’s mama.” Only the two of them in the kitchen with the cousin’s papa. In that landscape. Exposed.

Everyone else somewhere else. Rita and Doris Flinkenberg in our cottage, where I should also be. Bengt and the American girl Eddie de Wire where they are now: in Eddie’s boathouse on the Second Cape. Bengt hasn’t been around all day.

I’m in position. Though still not. Because I’m sitting in the parlor, in the closet. In my closet. The whole time. Shaking, curled up, listening, but I can only imagine what’s going on in the kitchen. In the closet. Like always: no one knows that I am there.

I have snuck into the parlor and the closet at the beginning of the evening and now I can’t get out. I know what’s going on in the kitchen, I don’t need to see it with my own eyes. But at the same time I don’t know, I have no idea. That it isn’t going according to plan is clear. But as soon as I have the chance to think “plan,” then I also think that Solveig, idiot, there has never been any plan. “What did the girl want?” The American girl’s question, an unbearable question ringing in my ears, hits home, “You did that well.” That was where I was going, the cousin’s mama’s shining eyes on me, but the road there was murky, gave the money to Björn and that was almost a relief, and then it ended up like this.

When I at long last, it’s a long time afterward, maybe a few hours even, when it has been quiet in the kitchen for some time, dare to come out, there is barely anything left of what I heard with my own ears in the closet but only been able to imagine. No money is lying scattered about. They’ve done the dishes, no pots on the stove, the kitchen table, the counter shiny and clean, even cleaner than the day before. The magazines, newspapers, True Crimes and the family magazines with all of the crosswords, which the cousin’s mama likes to solve, in a neat pile on top of the refrigerator. Ordinary. The cousin’s mama understands that too.

For a moment I think I’ve imagined it, that nothing has happened. Then I see the transistor radio. On the windowsill, behind the curtain that I lift up. Broken to bits. In a mash. Yes. Unbelievable. But that’s what can happen if you throw it on the floor and go after it with a cane. That landscape. I’ve been there.

Ordinary. But the cousin’s mama who understands that, as said. Has done the dishes and cleaned the kitchen again, in the middle of the night. So that it will be just as nice as after yesterday’s cleaning, during the day. Even cleaner and nicer. Early morning, it’s getting light outside. The counter is shining, piercing the eyes. I was the one who cleaned it and polished it yesterday, during the day.

The cousin’s papa is sleeping with his clothes on in his room, the door is ajar, snoring, sawing wood, the house shaking, no exaggeration.

The cousin’s mama is also lying in her bed, in the bedroom, unmoving, the covers pulled almost all the way over her head. Maybe she’s sleeping, as well. Otherwise maybe she would be paying attention to the sounds that, despite everything, can be heard from me, in the kitchen, in the hall, from the parlor too. I couldn’t open the door without it creaking when I finally dared come out, the hinges aren’t oiled; the parlor, people rarely ever go there. The sound of a small rat, from a closet. From the parlor, besides. The forbidden room, but rats there as well. But forbidden and forbidden, now, after everything, you wouldn’t think it would matter.

But she’s lying still, not paying attention.

The cousin’s mama’s crying, the screams, the shouts. Over. And Björn who has gone out, has been a few hours by now. The cousin’s mama who has remained, the cousin’s papa who has fallen asleep sometime later, in any case, finally.

The cousin’s mama who hasn’t gone out after Björn then either. But has gone after the kitchen table, the dishes, the pots and the kitchen counter, polished, rubbed rubbed. It’s natural in a way, like it’s supposed to be, that too. But still, in the closet, I haven’t really been able to imagine exactly that.

Now, when I’m standing in the hall, looking into the bedroom, how much time? An eternity, but the cousin’s mama is breathing, lying on her side, not paying attention. I don’t dare open my mouth, not after everything. Terror struck, and I have a pistol in my hand. For protection. Otherwise I never would have dared come out of the closet, here, back, out.

It’s just that Björn left like he usually does when he’s angry. But this, this is more than angry. I know that already, the cousin’s mama knows, us in the house, everyone. Or does everyone, know?

Björn has left, and in contrast to other times, ordinary times when he gets angry, this time Björn won’t come back but stay away.

But when he left he was alone! Astrid. Didn’t she see that?

Oh. That’s just the sort of thing you think about, afterward.

Me in the closet, the parlor. I was also scared. And only when it had been completely quiet, for a long long time, did I dare come out. The pistol, the inheritance from the shoe box, in my hand. For protection. I have it with me now too, when I, in the silence of the morning-night sneak out just as quietly as I have moved around inside the sleeping house.

Björn was in a bad mood the night before. That’s how it starts. In and of itself, maybe it already started earlier. During the day, even if nothing had been noticed yet. Björn had been at work as usual but came driving home on his moped at a high speed somewhat earlier than usual. Left the moped in the yard and gone straight to the Second Cape where Bengt is intensely hanging out with the American girl Eddie de Wire, mainly during the day, which most everyone except Björn has been aware of for quite some time, at least a week. And a while later Björn came back, and got on his moped and drove off and got some beer. Came back, to the barn, and started gulping it down.

Up until then the day had been deceitfully good, which if you think about it is of course normal right before catastrophes. Sunny weather, insidious of course too, because in reality, summer has already thrown you away.

When it comes to the plan, it has been going back and forth in my head. Sometimes as if it hasn’t been there at all. But, confidence. Björn has been initiated, it will happen soon. It? That Björn will go to the cousin’s papa and talk some sense into him? Give all that money to the cousin’s papa and say: Well, Doris? Now we have, the cousin’s mama and Björn (and me, but that comes out later when everything is okay and we have, what, a party mood and the table has been laid in the parlor?), carried out our end of the agreement.

The cousin’s mama. Maybe Björn has spoken to her? And they have their own little secondary strategy, because they’re older and can think about the practical details better.

Björn and the cousin’s mama: I haven’t asked Björn about it directly, but the cousin’s mama and Björn talked to each other in the barn for a long time the previous evening.

On the morning of that day, after breakfast I tried winking in Björn’s direction, but he hadn’t had the chance to notice it. Rita was there of course. Always together otherwise, me and Rita. “Got something in your eye?” and sang happily, but thank goodness so softly that neither Björn nor anyone else heard: “Aha, I understand. Daj daj daa.” It didn’t exactly make things better because then I had even less of a chance to look in Björn’s direction in order to send signals about our agreement.

The fact that the cousin’s papa might occasionally count his hidden boot money has also flickered through my mind. From the beginning. Yet another factor that is taken away when considering if you should have a plan like this at all.

But I’m so little, of course. You can’t expect me to be able to think about everything. On the one hand that. On the other hand, a logical false conclusion that you can make exactly if you haven’t grown up yet, and I haven’t grown up yet; this, exactly this day, is actually the last day I am ever a child even though I don’t know that yet. A small thought here, or along these lines: “There’s always more money.” Which the cousin’s papa has a habit of saying pretty often, contentedly, as it were. On the one hand he meant, insinuated, his own money. All the money he has and that Rita is going to steal from him when she runs away as a teenager, which he has hidden somewhere. On the other hand there has also, in his tone, been something that can, by a sharp person, be understood as happy expectation. All the money that isn’t yours yet but that can be attained, get and have. That attitude, that money in general, makes you happy. And then of course you really become pleasantly surprised if you get even more money, in general so to speak. Especially if the amount you’re offered is in exchange for peanuts—my God, the house is big, there are several houses on the property, Doris, there’s probably room for everyone here—maybe doesn’t just match but rises above the amount you had asked for in the beginning. In addition to the fact that the “sum” I stole out of the boot, which I didn’t count, has taken on mystical proportions in my head and what the cousin’s papa wants to have for Doris is something I haven’t even paid attention to in the beginning, just a lot, granted—but in addition to that I have, in other words, seriously recently, while nothing is happening except that I am waiting a bit nervously, seriously started imagining that the cousin’s papa will be happy too. The cousin’s papa’s joy and the cousin’s mama’s joy and Doris’s joy and everyone’s joy—for eternity afterward, in the cousin’s house.

“Go and hang yourself, fathead.”

“Daj daj daa,” Rita has been singing in the yard, in other words, meaningfully, in the morning, after breakfast, Björn has gotten on the moped and gone to work.

“Come now, Solveig. Morning session. Training.”

And actually that has been the best thing of all.

He who likes Björn so much too, especially Björn out of all the children. Had given some money for the moped, and for the transistor radio, in the beginning. The boy’s practical skill. In contrast to the shitkids, really. Björn will certainly in some way find a way to put the plan into action. Solveig’s plan. I am in other words convinced of it by just looking at him, which I still don’t get a chance to do very often because of Rita.

“Daj daj daa,” Rita sings as it were, meaningfully.

“Come on now, let’s go and train a bit more.”

And in reality that has been the most fun. Not standing there pondering. Taking my blue swimsuit, my blue towel, Rita her red swimsuit, her red towel, and running on the path through the woods to Bule Marsh, jumping in. In peace and quiet, of course. Miss Andrews, the baroness, usually comes only to the very early morning session.

In the afternoon there has been big cleaning and scrubbing of floors and on days like this the cousin’s mama is always in a wonderful mood, she likes cleaning. She’s been singing unusually a lot this day. The cousin’s papa has been throwing darts from his chair in the yard. Plonk plonk. The darts on the board. He has better luck when he isn’t three sheets to the wind. Still, not in the center, not today. Not even the eight or the nine. Just like Rita who has been there, Rita is terrible at darts; the fact that she lacks precision is truly obvious when it comes to throwing darts. And Doris Flinkenberg has shown up as well. Wanted to join in. Been allowed to. Thrown darts around her in general. But she’s so little that it doesn’t matter how she throws.

And so little too that she can’t help Solveig and the cousin’s mama with the cleaning. Doris isn’t particularly good at cleaning either, though she’s careful not to say it out loud. Later, when she’s living in the cousin’s house and becomes older, it is still the cousin’s mama and I who continue having most of the responsibility for cleaning in the home.

The cousin’s papa has even been in an excellent mood out there in the yard, felt like some sober joking in the middle of the dart throwing. With Rita: about what bad dart throwers they are. “Have you tried poker, Rita?” Maybe it would go a bit better for Rita there, the cousin’s papa joked meaningfully, because in poker it isn’t really about the skill as much as the luck and the art of reading your opponent, which is decisive. You have to have a certain amount of patience. A real game of poker can take a long time. But you can learn patience, determination. The cousin’s papa knows to say, does Rita know that?

The cousin’s papa laughs and Rita has to get her act together to laugh too. I can see it. Rita can’t stand it when anyone tells her that she’s bad at something. But not even she talks back to the cousin’s papa when she doesn’t really need to. Saves her energy. Rita can do that, she will get better at it in time. A certain feeling for the right timing. Like when she has left and taken all the money out of the cousin’s papa’s new hiding place, which I don’t know about because it’s farther up in the future and after that day, the last day of childhood, I won’t be interested in things like secret stashes of money or anything that has anything to do with the cousin’s papa anymore, not—when it happens, and the cousin’s papa notices it, afterward. Then he’ll be completely perplexed, genuinely surprised.

And in some way also give in to her. Afterward. When Rita is no longer there, because she never sets foot in the cousin’s house or on the cousin’s property again after leaving the District when she goes to the Backmanssons’ after Doris’s death and she’s seventeen years old.

Which means that he isn’t going to try to find out where she is, persecute her, take measures. No. He’ll sit here. In the cousin’s house, on the cousin’s property, for eternal time. Sit, sit. Become even more sheets to the wind than he already was.

He’ll admit to being defeated by her. Rita’s victory. But what? Because then he will in turn have defeated everyone else, except me, of course. The cousin’s mama who doesn’t have the strength to remain, almost doesn’t have the strength to be at all, even though she has already put up with most things with the cousin’s papa on the cousin’s property here in the house, after Doris’s death. Then she collapses and has to be taken to the District Hospital in an ambulance: I call the ambulance. And she never comes back. Astrid Loman moves back to the neighboring municipality where she came from. In order to take care of all of the children, “children’s mama,” in the best way. But I won’t blame her, ever, at all.

I’ll keep visiting her, bring chocolate and crosswords and flowers. I will be kind. Maybe she didn’t do what she should have done, maybe she—something terrible. But I, and no one else or anybody else knows it, will ever tell anyone, ever, because she was here, she stayed with us.

I’ll be here then, afterward. And no longer, with the cousin’s papa, be “nice.”

I’ll just leave him, but still be gripped by a guilty conscience and I’ll have the cleaning company then because I’ll be grown up, have my own life, my own child, which I’ll have to wait a long time for, many miscarriages, but I’ll have that, Irene. So I’ll ask Susette Packlén to go and check on him sometimes.

The pistol will be lying out, on the refrigerator, but no one, there in the house, with the cousin’s papa, while he’s alive, will shoot anything, anyone with it.

Well. Not now. Going through events in advance. Being here.

Doris Flinkenberg in the yard outside the cousin’s house during the dart throwing, which she takes part in in her childish way laughs when the cousin’s papa explains the finer points of playing poker to Rita. In her special Dorisway, which undeniably pulls you along, and then she tells her own childish contextless Doris-story that becomes funny mostly because of the way she tells it.

And the cousin’s papa laughs suddenly, a friendly laugh about the story too—or just laughs, friendly, at small smart Doris Flinkenberg, in general. It isn’t that he doesn’t like her. Doesn’t really think anything about Doris Flinkenberg. Just “knocked-about kid,” another clan. And in turn that means that he doesn’t have anything to do with Doris’s terrible circumstances in the Outer Marsh, in general so to speak.

The cousin’s papa laughs along with Doris Flinkenberg. You can of course if you’re from someplace else allow yourself to be duped by that laugh, take it for something other than what it is: a temporary happy flaming laugh after you have gotten to explain to Rita about playing poker. But the cousin’s mama doesn’t understand the finer points of card playing, she just sees that the cousin’s papa is, if not “kind,” then leaning in that direction, and in a sober state of mind for once, and yes, well, happy. Is that why the cousin’s mama has been singing more than usual today?

I have as I said not been there, throwing darts, but scrubbing the kitchen floor and washing the windows in the parlor and been able to cast a glance out in the yard now and then and hear a bit of what is being said.

And Doris, about her then: this is what I remember most about Doris from that day, the last day we were at least wholeheartedly able to imagine that everything was normal: Doris who was joking with the cousin’s papa without me knowing what they were joking about, the cousin’s papa who was laughing. Just Doris’s way of being, with the cousin’s papa. On her guard but at the same time open, fearless. But the whole time with that kind of a nonchalance lying underneath: “I don’t care about you, old man.”

And just as fearless then and yelled, “Hey, cousin’s mama!” to the cousin’s mama who has been busy with her rugs, pisk-pisk on the rack, sung and waved and sung even more loudly just from having seen Doris.

Doris not from a landscape, or another one. Doris from all landscapes at once. Something invincible about it. Doris, a bit like the joker in poker, in other words.

I hate Doris. But it doesn’t mean anything. I’m not going to do anything about my hate. I’m going to be sad when she shoots herself and think that it’s unnecessary. There were reasons. Her friend Sandra from the house in the darker part whom she started hanging out with a lot not long after coming to the cousin’s house—who didn’t want to be friends with her any longer, they were in love. She was at a loss, confused, suddenly not a child any longer and didn’t know which foot to stand on, who she was. And all of those experiences in her from the Outer Marsh, they hadn’t left her, they were still there.

But first much later, I will be able to understand why Doris really took her own life. Why Rita in some way understood, she heard the shot, and ran, ran out into the woods, but it was too late. Blood on Lore Cliff, blood everywhere on Rita. Then in that moment, right afterward, I thought it was over for Rita.

But it wasn’t. It’s never, ever over for Rita. I know who Rita is, I’m like her, we’re twins, I am, could be Rita. So alike.

Rita doesn’t tell me that Doris has asked about something that causes Doris to realize something else. Which she had certainly known the entire time, in some way, but due to all sorts of things, also her light, her love, for everyone, mama, the new world, the cousin’s house, everything everything, wanted to keep hidden.

And Rita never planned on telling her the truth. But she, Doris, that last fall asks her. And Rita replies, in some way, which makes it so that Doris understands anyway.

And then things fall apart for Doris Flinkenberg for real.

When I find out about this, I am already deep into my own life, have had a child, am living in Torpesonia at Bule Marsh, everything has already happened. I’m in the cousin’s house, the cousin’s papa is in the yard, I’m organizing things. “Good” girl, but with him it’s just a façade. A pile of old newspapers, in an old cabinet, otherwise just filled with disgusting things. A lot of old crosswords there. Doris and the cousin’s mama liked doing crosswords together, of course, in the cousin’s kitchen, during the time when Björn was no longer there and Doris had moved into the room upstairs. But Doris never really had the patience for solving crossword puzzles properly, she got bored and started filling in her own silly words inside the squares. Too long, too many letters in each square, several squares where there was only supposed to be one. The cousin’s mama didn’t get angry at her about that either, just the opposite, it was just a Dorisoddity.

Well, I’m going to see one of those old magazines, one of those old crosswords with Doris’s own letters in it: a newspaper dated from exactly that fall, about a week before Doris died.

It will be listed there clearly in the squares. Helter skelter, too many letters, but still.

And when I have seen that I will never be able to return to the cousin’s house again. I mean, when the cousin’s papa is there.

Wait, I’ll explain more later, about the newspaper and what is listed in the crossword puzzle.

I just want to say two things, now. First, Doris. I hate Doris but Doris is a joker and Doris will, in her own way, save life at the cousin’s house. Will make it possible to go on afterward. Move on. Live on. Doris-light. And when Doris moves to the cousin’s house the cousin’s papa calms down too. Doris and the cousin’s papa will never fight with each other. Nor will they be “close” either. When Björn is gone and Bengt has moved out to the barn and Doris is the only one of the cousins left in the house, the cousin’s papa will shut the door to his room next to the kitchen. Coexistence.

And second: those of us who know what happened that night, with the American girl, and I who know about Björn, about everything—will never say anything to Doris about it.

Maybe we don’t do it for Doris, I don’t, in any case. But for the cousin’s mama. But that is no plan either. Nothing uttered. We just know, we three siblings, and what we know we keep quiet about, forever. Others know too. They’re keeping their mouths shut as well. The baroness, countryman Loman, maybe someone else.

But now back to the sunshine day, Doris who’s yelling “Rottenegger” at the cousin’s papa this day in the garden, imitating the cousin’s papa right in front of him when he has sat down in his chair again now and Doris is dancing around it.

He doesn’t get angry, just mutters; when Doris is in a dancing kind of mood it’s impossible for anyone to be angry at her.

The cousin’s mama is running in and out with the rugs. In the midst of all this she comes to me where I’m busy in the kitchen, the counter that needs to shine, whispers in my ear, “It will all work out!”

And winks, and without hesitating even though I don’t know the reason, I wink back. Will work out, in general, so happy.

Then evening falls. Björn who has gone to the Second Cape comes back, is drinking beer in the barn. Bengt whom there has been no sign of, no sign of, is with Eddie de Wire, for sure, in the boathouse on the Second Cape.

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.

She’s angry too. She is panting. Fury. In any case, I give her the pistol. Suddenly I think something strange. The cousin’s house. “The idiot.”

It’s a strange thought. As luck would have it I don’t say what I am thinking out loud. It isn’t real either. It is a dream.

The pistol. The cousin’s mama looks at me. Then, in that moment, I see all of my idiocy. My landscape, where I am and have always been. In her eyes.

She hisses in anger that I should take it back.

To reality. I run into the house, the parlor, with all my might, I leave the pistol in the closet and run out, and away, away from here, up up to the hill on the First Cape, the house, the stone foundation, that is where I end up.

And there I am, back leaning against the foundation, the whole time, while I am waiting for Rita to come back. Or maybe I’m not waiting for Rita. Maybe I’m not waiting for anyone in particular. It’s the first time I’m completely alone.

It’s terrifying. I haven’t slept, I’m confused, what I experienced is atrocious. And it will continue, a long time. But in that loneliness there is also something else, something special. The summer day. Or, the winter day, or the day, the night—I’m here. My place.

And it is not the Winter Garden that we, some siblings, have been sitting here and “playing.” A game I don’t understand, I don’t have any imagination, I want to be here. I can be here, and alone. The summer day, glittering, here, which is spreading itself out, a panorama. The cousin’s house, the twins’ cottage, the woods, the outbuilding, the barn, the road. I see everything.

Yes. After this we’re going to sit here. Bengt, Rita, me. Three siblings, people look at us for a while in the District a bit strangely. It will pass. I am here.

And we’ll play the Winter Garden. Maybe even more intensely than before, for a while. Bengt when he has gotten over the shock, gets his speech back. But more hot tempered, so that the game falls apart for him, so to speak, despite dreams, buildings, don’t disappear anywhere. And Rita, who will “play” so that there will just be some quotes around it. She’s going to do something else. Maybe not that Winter Garden, Rita Strange, as it turns out. And not much will come of that either really. When the Winter Garden is there, for real. And I know that, the entire time. That it won’t be like that, because I know Rita, I know everything about her. She doesn’t really have—well, she lacks a certain perseverance. She grows tired. And besides, I know that too, you can’t make, build, for real, regardless of how much money and how many opportunities there are, out of opposition, like a revenge.

So in that way, even though I lack imagination, I know that I would have done it better. In a different way. The Winter Garden, on the Second Cape, I mean.

After this morning, this day, when the American girl dies in the woods at the marsh and Björn is also dead—there is already someone who knows, the cousin’s mama, with certainty, I just simply know: something terrible—being up here for a while. Rita and me, Bengt. Playing the Winter Garden.

It may look that way, on the outside. But it’s like this: and that loneliness which also gradually becomes a happiness, a confidence, it also starts here, exactly this morning, right here. I am not going to be there playing along. Even though it might look that way, I am sitting with them because it is easier. It is after all, me and Rita. I will sit there but my thoughts will be somewhere else. And later we will be grown up, a life will come later, and I will also have a lot, things that mean much more. And I will be here, continue to be here. But not my siblings. I am going to be able to leave the game, the Winter Garden, the stone foundation and everything. And then of course the most impossible: leave Rita. In my head.

Susette Packlén isn’t going to do anything to the cousin’s papa with the pistol even though it is lying out in the open. She is a colleague, but a friend as well, in some way: we knew each other, for a while. Are parallel so to speak, the same tenacity in both of us. Sun cats. Susette who is dancing on a floor, in one of those beautiful houses in Rosengården 2, in Rosengården, and on the avenues, stupid girl, but playful. She isn’t going to do that with the pistol to the cousin’s papa, which I regret that I had even thought. The cousin’s papa, what is that? That sort of thing passes too.

Bengt who inherits the house. It is a shock, I still thought it would be mine. That the cousin’s papa would have thought about me so much. But that passes too, almost right away—that resentment.

I will come back here, to the cousin’s house, one morning in November 1989. My brother Bengt will be lying in the parlor. Will have blown his head off. That is how it is. I know—he was washed up.

Then I will set fire to the house. There will have to be enough of tomorrows, consequences. It will have to be here and now. And it will come to me, and Johanna too. And Maj-Gun Maalamaa. I like her. Always have. In reality that feeling started early, I was just a child. It was during the time when Björn was gone and Doris was suddenly in the house and was taking up everything, had to have everything everything—was so happy and fulfilled, and you couldn’t deny her anything. At the same time, how you disappeared. And the cousin’s mama who disappeared completely. But you were simply, not a child. And yet, everyone saw it, of course, everyone felt it, Doris came with life, light, the future, and everything. As I said, we would have gone under otherwise, without Doris Flinkenberg.

But still. Doris. For example that first fall after everything, before you had really gotten used to everything new, found your place, that state between child that would gradually become a real youth, it would be a relief as well—but then, you got tired and irritated, even though you were supposed to be an adult, restrained, happy despite everything with Doris and for the cousin’s mama (which you were, of course!) but still, there was never really space for that happiness inside you. And Bengt who was gripped by the general giddiness of giving a lot of welcome gifts to Doris who, after all the grief and woe, was allowed to come to the cousin’s house and become a full member there, and the cousin’s papa who also hadn’t become “kind” but “bearable,” we were at a Christmas bazaar at the fellowship hall, the cousin’s mama and all the children, and Bengt won the big fruit basket that was the first prize for the Christmas lottery. And gave, because Doris had become delighted with all of the beautiful fruit, the basket to her immediately. But then there came a girl, the Pastor’s daughter, Maj-Gun Maalamaa in a creepy mask, and quite simply scratsch, stuck her hand through the cellophane that was covering the contents of the basket and took the largest, most beautiful green apple, right in front of Doris Flinkenberg’s nose. Who became angry of course and stamped on the ground and Maj-Gun Maalamaa had to say she was sorry several times, in the kitchen of the fellowship hall, and the Pastor himself furious at her. But we got, all of us children, candy that the Pastor offered us because he was kind, and Maj-Gun accepted the scolding but ha ha ha she finally shouted at last and just ran away, she didn’t regret it. Can’t be helped, but it felt good. And I’ve told Maj-Gun about it too, maybe I’ll tell it one more time, it will be part of this story. That certain things, scenes, at first glance meaningless get their claws into you from the beginning and make it so that you can never doubt them or hesitate about them, like in your heart, as the cousin’s mama would have said.

That is how it was, has always been for me, with Maj-Gun Maalamaa. And maybe I regret it now, that maybe I should still have told Johanna more about her.

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.

And Tobias was away during these weeks. Sometimes I have thought that things could have been different if Tobias had been there. With his swimming ability, for example. Or just because.

And among everything that is falling apart, cracks, there is always something else. Something just as meaningful, maybe more meaningful, even if you don’t see it right away. With Tobias, for example, when he comes back in a few days and finds out everything. He comes to me and Rita in the cottage, like before. We don’t hug each other or anything. It is never like that with Tobias. But he, in some way, without a lot of fuss and big gestures, without words, walks beside us.

For me it is enough. I’m here. Even more.

But it was Rita who was there and saw everything and has to tell Doris a little lie. The American girl who ran out onto Lore Cliff, the cousin’s mama after her, and the American girl couldn’t get any farther.

The cousin’s mama on the cliff who remained standing there. Doris up onto the cliff to the cousin’s mama, but the cousin’s mama had already run away. On the cliff, Doris who was standing and screaming, blue, in my bathing suit, as if she were Sister Blue.

And turned and ran after the cousin’s mama.

Rita alone, who came home.

Told Doris Flinkenberg that it was a game, “she came up again later.” You can believe that sort of thing if you want to, if you’re young and a child.

Even if it still doesn’t leave you, it remains there. Is that why Doris needs to drag her new friend Sandra Wärn from the house in the darker part into it a few years later? Into the story? Start over again, “find out.”

Possibly. I don’t know.

But we lied to Doris, everyone lied to Doris, it was never written down on paper like an agreement.

The cousin’s mama, the “children’s mama,” who really didn’t know what she had done. But then there was also Björn.

She stayed with us.

And we, all of us, wanted it that way.

But later, when Doris grew up and was unhappy, then she wanted to know how things had been. So. Asked Rita. Rita had to answer.

In any case: in the newspaper much later when I take care of the cousin’s papa alone and am cleaning up in the kitchen, find in a cabinet, a newspaper from the fall Doris died, there is a crossword puzzle, half finished. There is a last name in the row where the correct word is supposed to be filled in: “Astrid a pop song for the day.” And it is the idea that you’re supposed to fill in the surname of the singer who had sung that song some time during the ’60s I guess it was. “A song for the day.”

I don’t remember that song. Doesn’t mean anything to me.

But it is the name, Astrid. And after the name, in straggling angry teenage letters there is a long word that doesn’t fit in the boxes following it, there are only four of them. Letters on top of each other, a terrible word, I’m not going to say it, but something with m.

I never showed it to the cousin’s mama when I went and visited her, she was living in the neighboring municipality back then. I threw the paper away. I forgot. And have forgotten.

“The folk song has many verses, the same thing happens in every one, over and over again, an eternal repetition of time and space. Such a different way of looking at time.”

Doris Flinkenberg who is singing folk songs on an old cassette tape, talking about the folk songs between the songs. “And the girl she walks in the dance with red, golden ribbons”; “I went out one evening, out into a grove so green”—those kinds of songs, others like them.

I used to play the old cassette in the company car sometimes. Susette, my colleague who was sleeping next to me, in the morning. I turned up the volume so she would wake up, sometimes just the news and especially the weather forecast; a morning sleepy person who otherwise could sleep almost anywhere, standing, and sitting then, in the company car.

I don’t know if I liked those songs Doris sang, in some way it already felt so big, bewitching, exaggerated. But you could of course also see them as Doris’s message to all of us who would be left behind and live on after her too. I don’t know. I didn’t think about that then, at least. Rather mostly that they could still in some way carry me back to certain memories that I had from when it was still so beautiful in some way, but not in the way that you wanted to talk about it anyway.

Or maybe to muffle a bad conscience because I was never able to like Doris Flinkenberg. I don’t know.

In any case. After Bengt’s death I stopped playing that cassette almost completely. That simple. Just turned it off.

Turned the radio to the morning news and the weather forecast instead. The sea level, all of the lighthouses. Bulleholm southwest eighteen. But for a while it only made me sad. I came to think about Susette, my colleague Susette, and missed her. Susette, who in order to show me how awake she still was in the morningcar even though it looked like she was sleeping, would start rattling off those reports in the middle of the workday too. Idiotic. But also charming, a bit.

Started thinking about what became of her. Here for a while, then gone. I’ve never been angry at her exactly, definitely not, but I thought that it would have been nice to hear from her, that she could have been in touch, sent a card, the like. On the other hand, of course, we were colleagues, had our own separate lives, we didn’t know each other.

And then I closed the cleaning business, sold it to Jeanette Lindström, who naturally, when her entire “imperium,” which she called it in her prime, fell in connection with the recession at the beginning of the nineties, drove it into bankruptcy. Four Mops and a Dustpan; but shall I grieve, as Doris sings, I had already started my real estate business instead at that time. And Irene was there and Johanna—all of us living in the newly built house below the hill on the First Cape. Tobias came by a lot, it was a new life, a different life, a good life. And nothing more about that here, now.

But Rita and I, still on this morning. The moment before I get a red towel thrown in my face—but I don’t care so much about that, I know Rita, her anger too, her fear too, her still, like my own, smallness.

Sun cats that reflect in the room, like a dance. I stand there where they are dancing over my body, warm beams, here in the room, it is warm.

Rita and I, Bule Marsh in my head, like an image.

The beaches at the marsh: root ends winding around each other. But you see that only when the sand around them has washed away, which will happen in the time to come, gradually. When the sandy beach washes away, it wasn’t natural either, transported there. Heavy, thick roots, with large knots, which are hiding underneath, and in the reediness.

That image can’t really be explained. But it exists. Has an effect on you, always.

And we won’t become swimmers, Rita and I.

I drive home. I have been at exhibitions, looked at a few new objects in another part of the District. It is the month of November 2006, in the evening, late, maybe already night. There has been a fire at the Winter Garden, fire trucks pass me on the road. You don’t see much of the fire, it has already been put out. The darkness suddenly falls now and it’s only when I drive past Tobias’s old greenhouse on the side of the road that it hits me that it’s due to the fact that the lights from the Winter Garden aren’t on, the fire that has been neither large nor destructive seems to have taken out the lighting, goodness knows what it’s good for: the Winter Garden, I have never been there.

Light in the window of the house.

I come home. Johanna and Maj-Gun Maalamaa in the kitchen. We drink tea, and eat sandwiches, and then I tell them this.

JOHANNA, THE GLITTER SCENE, 2012 (OTHER SONGS)

PROJECT EARTH. ORPHEUS was going to his Eurydice. What had been lost. There in the underworld. The Winter Garden. Underworldly rooms. Which are burning, disappearing. No one was ever there. And yet: you were there the whole time.

I am Johanna, I’m growing up. The Winter Garden, on the Second Cape. Doesn’t exist, but does. For real. Was something else. Becomes something else, “SPA-ponderings,” further changes.

The old stories, tales aren’t there anymore. For example the story about the American girl, the American girl in a snow globe, the souvenir shop, it is fading. The story itself lives on in the District but is also fading. There is so much else after all, a lot of other things that are happening. There are other stories, more brutal ones, more terrible, violence, murder. Like what happened with Ulla Bäckström, for example, in November 2006. How she fell from the Glitter Scene, died.

For a while after, in school, in the entire District, the shock was intense. But later, almost more shocking, it passed. Rather quickly, faster than the American girl was ever forgotten. The Bäckströms moved away. New girls came, and new girls come, all the time, the theater the dance the music. But then I was no longer there. Came somewhere else. To the music, the stories. Yes, you could put it that way.

That was in any case when I got out all of the old stuff, my stories, the beginning of my Project Earth. The Winter Garden, what existed for real and in my head, all of my “material.” The Marsh Queen too, an eternal first chapter, where did the music start? What was left, in other words, still quite a bit, which I never tore up. And then I had so much of it in my head, of course.

And started writing a story about me and my cousin Robin whom I miss sometimes, he moved with Allison as said, I never heard from him. But a story about how we are children and left the house at the foot of the hill on the First Cape, and the Winter Garden reveals itself in front of us, an island in darkness, all the promises, beaming with light. A feeling that can exist only when you are young, a feeling you have never felt before: to there. Must go there.

The girl in the story grows up, but the same longing, the Winter Garden. And into the story comes a boy, his name is Glitter (!). He is the Marsh Queen’s son and returns in the story about a Project Earth, which you do together because you don’t want to do it alone. Because you already know that “lose an innocence, find a treasure,” it can truly be frightening, turn everything upside down. In the middle of the Winter Garden there is Kapu kai, the forbidden seas.

“Underworldly rooms, pictures on the walls, it happened at Bule Marsh, the truth about everything.” Ulla Bäckström who whispered all of that, on the field. White Ulla, red roses in a basket, the Flower Girl. Shimmering clips in her hair, in the light from the Winter Garden that became ever stronger in the dusk.

“Ille dille death,” she hummed, laughing, training her eyes on me, teasingly, I was so young. “I am Ylla of death.”

A memory that comes so strongly right then, forces everything else away, makes it impossible to say anything about the Winter Garden, that loss, that kind of longing, and everything else that belonged there, in general.

But stories, music. There are other stories, other music, the world is filled with stories, music. And I make my story about the Marsh Queen instead, the Marsh Queen and the punk music, the first and the second chapters and so on, to the end. In my way, with my language, but it is a true story of course, because the Marsh Queen, Sandra Wärn, is not a made-up person, she exists, existed. Death’s spell at a young age. How she sings that song, it is dreamlike, it is hard, it is unforgettable.

And it becomes a good story, and after that story other stories follow, other songs. But about the Winter Garden, Ulla Bäckström, I can’t say anything, it is too painful.

Though gradually that story, the one about the Marsh Queen, when it has been told, it fades away. A story among many others. Though everything continued, continued anyway, changes.

Like in reality, with reality, in the District, everywhere.

The Boundary Woods disappeared. A new Rosengård was built, number 6 or 7 in that order, family homes. Around Bule Marsh, which has been drained down to something that looks like a properly bred pool in the middle.

And the house in the darker part of the woods no longer exists either—where the Marsh Queen once lived: a little girl, Sandra Wärn, wrapped in silk fabric from which the Marsh Queen was born, like from a cocoon. The house sank deeper in the mud and was torn down. What remains, a stairway in the woods. A single stairway in the middle of nowhere. Cannot be seen from here because of all of the houses. But imagine it. A great staircase in a wood. Moss that is growing on it, weeds in the cracks, concrete decomposing.

Beautiful? Maybe. As I said I can’t see it, not from here. Where I am now, on the Glitter Scene, in what was once Ulla Bäckström’s room.

Alone here now, for a while, at the window where there no longer is a door. In this landscape, I don’t live here, I live somewhere else, I am in the music, my stories, I have everything, otherwise, another life.

But here in the house in Rosengården 2 with Solveig, one last time. I have been visiting Solveig, who still lives in the house at the foot of the hill on the First Cape and she has told me that she is going to sell what once, several years ago, was the Bäckströms’ house in Rosengården, for the new owners, and I have asked if I could come along.

The Glitter Scene. An empty room. Nothing up here. And what a space and all my dreams about what it was like here and would be like here. How I wanted to come, also here. Ulla Bäckström, Ulla with butterflies in her hair, Ulla in the corridors of school. And I who stood there and looked at her from off to the side, but she didn’t see me. Dark sad groupie. And when I occasionally happened to walk behind her in the hall she turned around and said and laughed so that everyone heard, “Don’t step on my shadow, Lille, turn around.”

Don’t step on my shadow, turn around. How I hated her—and loved her. Still, she was mine. Is mine.

An image I carry with me: Ulla on the field, Ulla in the Boundary Woods, my world, catching snowflakes on her tongue. Says wonderful things. That was who she was. Even if I didn’t know her, knew nothing about her.

And she didn’t know me, knew nothing about who I was. No connection. Understood nothing about her stories, what she was doing, how important it could be for someone like me. Like the story about the American girl. Just a play to her, new idea, new songs to sing, to hum. Weave herself inside something for a while, then weave herself out. And go on, the theater the dance the music, as if nothing would leave a trace.

But still, a connection, and here, now, I am the one who would see it.

Suddenly, here on the Glitter Scene, everything coincides, or can be fixed, in some way. In another image, my image, and it was Ulla Bäckström who brought me to it. Before everyone else, before my own mother too. And I see it more clearly than ever now, on the Glitter Scene, Ulla’s room, a cloudy day in January 2012.

It is Bengt, my father, and the American girl Eddie de Wire, on the terrace of the boathouse, one day in August 1969, a few days before Eddie disappears forever.

Eddie de Wire and Bengt on the terrace, just the two of them, and their mouths moving.

Feet dangling over the water, the sea opening up in front of them. Eddie with the guitar that she is plucking at, amused, Bengt who is drawing, talking. He who was always so quiet, as if transformed—suddenly something happy about all of it.

On the Second Cape otherwise, the summer life that is continuing on its own path around them and all of the other people in the world somewhere else.

But the unusual characters on the terrace of the boathouse. Brace yourself in them. In this moment, they are the ones ruling over everything.

Northerly wind. The sea dark, foam on the waves.

Eddie and Bengt. Ideas flying around, long, happy, excited.

What is Bengt saying?

The hacienda must be built?

Something else?

You don’t know. You won’t know. It can’t be heard. Travels away with the wind.

But, where did the music start? Here. Exactly right here, in any case.

And: it is not an image. It is how it is. Bengt, my father, and the American girl Eddie de Wire who in one eternal moment rule over everything.

And at the same time, on the Glitter Scene, this room now. In the sun that suddenly, for a few seconds, peers out and lights up everything, the first rays of sun in January. The great deserted wooden floor is glittering.

With tinytiny butterflies. I turn around. Now I see.

That what remains up here in the empty room is tinytiny butterflies wedged in between floorboards everywhere. Velvet insects, different colors, in silver clips. The ones that fell out of Ulla Bäckström’s large, wonderful hair.

“JOHANNAA! Come now!” Solveig calls from the floor below. I leave the room, have to go.