The American Girl (23 page)

For example, when she was alone in the house in the darker part of the woods, looking out through the window. Looking out into the woods, out toward the boy who might be there. Be Eddie in front of him, not for real, but like in a game.

And she was still afraid of him, she was. But not in the same way as before. Everything was different now, he had become more real. He had taken on new characteristics for her now, almost
become
a person to her.

Factor X who loved the American girl. The boy in the woods. Bengt.

WOMEN IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY
. THESIS PRO GRADU. RESPONDENT:
Inget Herrman. Opponent: Inget Herrman. Adviser: Inget Herrman.

It was up in the garden by the house on the First Cape when the women were there; Inget Herrman was lying on the plush-covered sofa under the canvas cloth in the shade talking about her master’s thesis. Talking and talking. And it was interesting. The girls,
the Soviet counterpart
, up in the sea apple tree, and with all of the other women around. “Proposal for an aesthetic of resistance,” Inget Herrman explained, taking another gulp of wine, and of course the girls in the tree did not understand a bit of it, “essentially” as Inget Herrman also said, but certainly a lot of excitement and it was nice.

It was nice up there in the garden, so nice that if you happened to laugh at everything you saw and heard, both while everything was going on and maybe sometime afterward, you did not laugh because it might have been funny in a stupid way. So to speak ridiculous and meaningless.

Because there was something important there—you would really understand how important later, when it had disappeared, gone. Not only when the women themselves had left the garden and the house on the First Cape, but gone altogether. “Everything that was wide open becomes a closed world again,” as Lill Lindfors sang on one of the records that were always playing up there.

And that everything would be over, gone, so quickly. It was something you had not foreseen while everything was going on.

It would be missed. And truly.

. . .

Bengt and Magnus von B. who were grilling bittyfish and green sea apples on the stone grill, Inget Herrman with her generously filled glass at her side. She was happy then, Inget Herrman, always happy when she had a very full glass of wine at her side.

Inget Herrman who drew a picture of “the woman’s path and other paths” on the tablecloth with a pen. A figure that maybe slightly resembled the figures on Bencku’s maps but mostly in the intention, so to speak. Not in how they looked, in the aesthetic itself. They were not good-looking in any way, instead rather streaky and straggly.

The woman’s path and other paths: it was a straight line that shot up out of the ground like the trunk of a tree, thick and determined; it was, Inget Herrman explained, “a woman’s path of tradition and custom.” But already almost from the beginning, from the root so to speak, other lines also extended from these, out, this way and that way, thinner, just as thick, in certain places thicker than that straight line that just went straight on and on.

On the one hand the figure became something of a rather entangled bush, but on the other hand you could also see it, if you wanted to, like rays from a sun. Like lines of glitter, individual, separate, all sparkling in their own right.

It was beautiful.

And Inget Herrman exulted:

“And what do we say about this? If it’s also like this?”

And took a big gulp from her glass again, and added thoughtfully:

“I think I’m also going to put this in the folder for my research material.”

It was her thesis she was talking about.

And it was Laura B-H, who was writing a novel up in the tower that summer, a novel about women that would later bring her
honor and fame. Though she did not know it then, she was just sitting and writing.

“About a real woman’s life for real. That’s important, I think.”

Laura B-H who was lying down on her back on the ground in the garden one day, in order to read a poem that she had written once and had never finished. “It was in Ljubljana,” it started, and it had a thousand echo effects that she really could not manage keeping straight. “It was in Ljubljana,” and it described one of her own, personal experiences. How she had been out traveling, as “a lone woman in the world,” and suddenly just grown tired of how you were not allowed to be alone (in peace) anywhere, how there was always some guy there reminding you of who you were, smacking his lips in your ear and grabbing hold. In Ljubljana she had had enough. She had laid down right by the steps to the train station and yelled to everyone, “Come on then. Touch me. Walk over me.”

But in her own mother tongue. No one had understood. And it had of course been, explained Laura B-H, her good luck.

Because then the police arrived and she was arrested for disorderly conduct.

She read that poem and it was hideous as a poem. Most of the women up there thought so too, but the ordeal itself, the experience was true. It existed.

And you saw nothing of it then, it was something you would think about mostly later. That all of those people in the garden, everyone who had come here, who spent this time with the women in the garden, they all had something in their past that caused them to be right here at right this moment in the history of the world, and not anywhere else.

In the garden in the middle, for the girls, for Magnus and Bencku, for the women themselves, but for others, still: on the side.

In the garden in the middle, but still off to the side.

The garden in the middle, but only for a while.

The women would leave the house on the First Cape barely a year later, and that bus,
Eldrid’s Spiritual Sojourn
, would not start. While the women hung out in the garden, the light red bus
Eldrid’s Spiritual Sojourn
would stand parked below the hill and slowly rust away.

“Now we have to get to the bottom of this,” Doris continued in the house in the darker part. “Take everything from the beginning. Leaving no suspects out.”

Look, Mom, they’ve destroyed my song
. When Doris and Sandra were not in the garden with the women they were occupied with their secret mystery. They listened to the record, the Eddie-record, when they were alone, over and over again. Sandra hummed and spoke like Eddie had spoken; she was quite good at it now.

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.”

“The heart is a heartless hunter.”

And the very best:

“I’m a strange bird. Are you one too?”

And she was wearing Eddie-clothes (it was a specially designed outfit that the girls had come up with, all on their own, and after coming up with this idea, Sandra Wärn had sewn it for herself using the sewing machine).

And Doris rolled her eyes.

“But Sandra. It’s so good. It’s just right.”

And added:

“Can I be factor X now?”

Sandra nodded.

And Doris was factor X and came forward and then they did everything they imagined Eddie and factor X had done. With feeling of course. But it had nothing to do with the embrace in the moss, the one that had taken place on Midsummer Eve, once quite a long time ago.

It drifted away now. For the time being.

. . .

“Eddie,” said Doris. “She stole. Things. From the baroness. It drove the baroness mad with despair. ‘She is such a disappointment to me,’ she said to the cousin’s mama. It could very well have been a motive for murder.”

“Mmm,” said Sandra, in the middle of the Eddie game.

“Sandra, are you listening?”

“Yeah.”

“But still. I don’t really believe it. It was . . . family. And besides. Why would she invite the girl here from America just to kill her here?

“It’s not really convincing,” Doris said and shoved Sandra who was humming her Eddie-song again.

“And the cousin’s mama,” Sandra said.

“What about her?” Doris asked viciously.

“She couldn’t stand Eddie de Wire. I’m not saying she did it but we were going to look at everything, leaving nothing out. Maybe she was jealous. I mean, Bencku and Björn, they were the apples of her eye. Her children. And then the American girl came out of nowhere and took them away from her. Both of them, at once.”

This had made Doris Flinkenberg deliberate for a moment.

“Yeah,” she said carefully. “You’re right. But I don’t think so . . .” Doris thought for a while in order to come up with a real argument. “Once while Eddie was alive and was with Björn out there on the cousin’s property, she said, ‘That girl, Doris, is a theatrical performance.’ But later when everything had happened, she regretted it terribly. ‘I have such a hard time living, Doris,’ she said, ‘because of everything I’ve said. It’s too terrible. Certainly this is a tragedy, it breaks your heart. Young people, that they have to suffer so much.’ Sandra,” Doris asked, “do you think someone who had committed murder would talk like that?”

Then Sandra became doubtful.

“No. Definitely not.”

“And besides,” Doris suggested, “just because you don’t like a person doesn’t mean that you want to kill her. Right? Not even the marsh mama wanted to kill me, directly. I was just so to speak—”

“Sorry, Doris. I didn’t mean it. I don’t think that it was the cousin’s mama either.”

“What do you think then?”

“I don’t know.”

“Things in motion,” Doris Flinkenberg continued. “That’s what Eddie, the American girl, said to him. It made an impression on him. He fell head over heels in love with her. For a while it was just the two of them. No one knows how serious it really was. It was one of the secrets about them. I saw.”

“And we’re there again,” Sandra said and grew tense.

“Yes,” Doris said in a sober tone of voice. “With factor X. With Bengt.”

“So you’re sure it wasn’t him?” Sandra asked softly, as if she wanted to reassure herself again.

“Bencku.” Doris laughed again. “No. Not Bengt. Then I would probably prefer the version everyone believes in. That it happened the way it looked like it had happened. Björn got mad at her at Bule Marsh and pushed her in the water and then he went off and hanged himself. It was the easiest so to speak.”

“Yeah,” said Sandra. “But Doris. Why all of that? I really don’t understand any of this. Why are we going to solve a mystery if there really isn’t a mystery?”

And Sandra was calm and started pretending in the Eddie-clothes, glancing through the window as well, maybe one too many times because Doris was of the attentive kind.

And Doris got up and climbed out of the pool.

She went out into the rec room where the record player was.

And came back, with the Eddie-record in her hand.

. . .

One last time. She stood at the edge of the pool with the record in her hand.

“A little bird whispered in my ear,” she said happily, “that the American girl might be—”

And then. She broke the record in half.

“Alive.”

Sandra saw the broken record. THE RECORD!! with Eddie’s voice, the highly unique—and she was beside herself.

“What did you do?” And she became so angry that Doris was struck dumb.

“You destroyed it!”

“Yeah and so! We have other things to do than to lie here in the pool and pretend for strangers.”

“Damn you, Doris!” Sandra screamed and ran away from the pool and up to her room and closed the door. Threw herself on her stomach in the marital bed and lay there and cried and screamed, cried and screamed, until little by little she did not understand why she was so upset.

That record, Eddie. The American girl. All of it was so stupid. So damn stupid.

Alive? Dead or alive. What did it matter? She was tired of this now, of the whole game.

Doris. Where was Doris now?

Had Doris left?

But Doris had not left. She had not left the house. She had waited loyally outside the locked door to Sandra’s room. Standing there, occasionally knocking, furtively.

“Sandra. Let me in now. I’m sorry.”

And then, gradually, with Doris outside the door, and the crying that had stopped, the anger left her, Sandra calmed down. It was just a stupid record. In a game.

And she crept over to the door and opened it.

And there Doris was standing in her Playboy outfit, authentic
according to the girls’ understanding about it all. A short skirt and rabbit ears on her head. It was too funny.

“Now, Sister Night, we’re going to leave this for a while. Now we’re going to a party. There’s a masquerade in the garden on the First Cape. This is my outfit,” said Doris, as if it were news: Doris always wanted to have the same outfit if there was a masquerade. “And that’s your outfit. You can wear the Eddie-clothes. Is it even, then?”

Women in a state of emergency (and the party culminates)
.

And it was off to the garden, as always.

“What is a thesis pro gradu?” Doris Flinkenberg asked Inget Herrman, now that she was bolder.

“You’ll find out later,” said Inget Herrman. “When you’re older.” Because it was a bit later in the summer and Inget Herrman was not talking about her thesis so much anymore. “Believe me,” said Inget Herrman, “there will come a time when you’ll wish you didn’t know. That you hadn’t known at all.

“When you realize that you felt better when you didn’t know,” Inget Herrman said and looked at the clock.

It was a few minutes before noon.

“It would be nice with a glass of wine,” Inget Herrman said, testing.

“Not before noon,” Sandra said urbanely.

“That’s something Sandra learned from the jet-setter’s life,” Doris explained to Inget Herrman. “During the time when she was there. With the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg. It was hot and passionate—”

Then Sandra had elbowed Doris, quiet now, it’s enough now.

But suddenly all words were unnecessary. The clock struck twelve and the sun was at its zenith, the middle of the day.

“Erhm.” And suddenly he was standing there in the garden,
no one other than the Islander himself. “There’s a party in the house in the darker part of the woods,” he said, almost shyly. “And all of you are welcome there.”