The American Girl (25 page)

“Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this but it’s called, erhm, working girl.” And a moment’s silence had followed during which Tobias Forsström had taken in what had been said, what had come out of his mouth by mistake. “Erhm, I mean prostitute . . .”

From one marsh person to another. Tobias Forsström took on as his special task to take Doris Flinkenberg under his wing. That is to say he originally came from the same marsh. We marsh people, we have to stick together. That was what he had said.

Doris had not really listened all that much to Tobias Forsström’s explanations. She was mainly happy about something else: that she now had TWO words for the same phenomenon, if not three. Prostitute . . . working girl . . . tehee tehee . . . she could barely wait to run over to Sandra and tell her.

But the whores, when they were in the house in the darker part of the woods: in general they were all easily recognizable but at the same time hard to tell apart. In high heels and short skirts, so that, as it were, you did not notice any distinctive features or their different personalities. One had black hair, another was a redhead, a third was blond, and so on, and there was nothing in between in the nuances, rather clear, strong colors that mattered.

A fourth did not look like an “erhm . . .” at all, rather like a prim version of the school’s primmest girl whose name was Birgitta Blumenthal and wore a pleated skirt and blouse with lace. But the difference between the former and the latter was that the former were wearing rather detailed undergarments under their skirts and blouses. Underwear in red and black—

And in general, on all of them, tops over their breasts. Tops in spangle lamé and gold lamé and silver lamé. And socks and panty hose with holes in strange places, or nets, panty hose that were
like fishnets. Sometimes no panty hose at all. No underwear. No
underswear
as you said in the District.

They blended together. All of them but Pinky. Because Pinky, she was an individual, specific. Pinky in pink from top to toe: Pinky in the polyester satin jacket with the white edging, the one that was t-i-g-h-t-f-i-t-t-i-n-g.

Doris and Sandra and Bombshell Pinky Pink
. On the days, those times when the girls were not in the city visiting movie theaters, art exhibits, or the fishermen’s pub with Inget Herrman, they were often lying on the bottom of the swimming pool not doing anything in particular. Talking, watching television, flipping through magazines. Fashion magazines: old issues of
Elle
and
Vogue
, “French”
Elle
and “Italian”
Vogue
. They had taken them from the Closet.

It was Pinky who had found them once when Sandra had taken her there.

The magazines had been there the whole time, but on a shelf high up on top of the fabrics and all of the rest, and Sandra who was quite short had never been able to reach the top. But Pinky, in her eighteen-inch silver glitter heels, was enthusiastic. “It’s just how it’s supposed to be,” she called, delighted.
“French Elle
and
Italian Vogue.”

Not, that is, American or English or anything like that.

“There aren’t many people who are aware of it,” Pinky said importantly. “But this person, she . . . was that your mother?” Pinky asked Sandra.

“Is,” Doris filled in absolutely sure. “It IS her mother.”

“I mean,” Pinky said, for once a bit impatient with Doris Flinkenberg,
“was
in the sense that she isn’t here now.”

Because Pinky was like that sometimes, she said things like that, like those about the magazines and some others, that sometimes
in her mind Sandra mistook the person a little bit and started talking to Pinky in the way she had sometimes, a long time ago, spoken with Lorelei Lindberg in Little Bombay. It was, of course, when Doris Flinkenberg was not there; Lorelei Lindberg in Little Bombay had never belonged to their games.

Besides it did not fit in. The Lorelei Lindberg who existed in the games they played was different, and that was not stupid either, not at all, but as a game. And the name, Lorelei Lindberg, which had come about in Doris’s mouth a long time ago, it fit there. And maybe also here, when it was a matter of Little Bombay, but in another way. That name, it was most obvious then, was needed like a kind of protection. For Sandra herself, protection for something that should still be protected because it was still there, in her, somewhere. The delicate and the difficult, all of that. The name Lorelei Lindberg, as an incantation, a formula for all that
belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which nothing could be woven
.

And one time among the fabrics in the Closet where Sandra had been with just the Bombshell, it happened that Sandra started asking Pinky a lot of things that Pinky had not been able to answer, on the whole she spoke in a serious way, which she had never done with Pinky before or even Doris Flinkenberg.

“What kind of Dupioni do you prefer? With which kind of weave? Do you like taft or eighteen-millimeter habotai? I have to say that my great weakness is really thin silk habotai.”

Of course Sandra instantly realized her mistake, but it had still been too late. You could truly see how Pinky became uncomfortable where she was standing listlessly, leaning against a shelf while Sandra was rooting in the piles of fabric; Pinky in silver glitter shoes with mile-high heels, in the polyester jacket and in a miniskirt made of plastic-coated fabric suddenly demonstrably chewing on that chewing gum that was in her mouth like always, whether it was or not.

And what had suddenly come out of Sandra’s mouth was a language she did not understand, it was just silly and artificial . . . habotaidupioni what kind of drivel was that? And when Pinky did not understand she became irritated and dissatisfied on the whole, started rolling her eyes in the way that a striptease dancer is not allowed to roll her eyes, except in her free time and preferably not even then since bad habits can imperceptibly take hold so that they pop up in other situations as well.

“Does a man want to look at someone who squints? There’s nothing teasing about that,” Pinky had once pointed out to both girls. “Tease. That means playfully seduce in English. And that’s what a strip dancer should do. Tease.”

“Tease with what?” the inquisitive Doris Flinkenberg had of course asked that time even though she definitely knew. But Doris had not been after information, instead she wanted to see and hear how Pinky Pink explained it.

“Well, if you don’t understand then—” Pinky had stood up on the edge of the pool and wiggled her backside in the small pink skirt and stuck out the one body part and then the other as belonged to her profession. “Senses. Certain ones. Do you understand now?” Pinky stuck out her chest.

All three of them had laughed. It was so funny, but at the same time it also struck Sandra in moments like these, but in a good way, like a surprise, how strange the understanding that so suddenly and so strongly existed among the three of them, the Bombshell, Doris, herself, these early Saturday afternoons when the hunting league was not back yet. Sometimes it was like there were not two girls and one adult but three who were best friends and almost the same age. And actually there were not so very many years between them. The line between them, it arose later, when it became evening, Doris’s ban took effect and a party gathered again.

And right then, in the Closet, that time when Sandra and Pinky were there just the two of them and Pinky started rolling her
eyes at something strange Sandra had said and Sandra became so sad, so very infinitely sad so that she was not able to hide it, a lot of noise could suddenly be heard from the yard. A glance out the window in the Closet and there, the hunting league had gathered on the stairs after the day’s exercises in the woods and a moose that had been shot on the ground (it was waiting to be lifted into Birger Lindström’s van).

Pinky, in the Closet, had started thinking about other things. She stopped rolling her eyes over Sandra also because now she saw how sad that had made her. “Hey,” she said and touched Sandra’s cheek. “I didn’t mean it, sorry. I say and do stupid things sometimes. It’s just that I don’t know anything about that sort of thing. And when I don’t know I get insecure and angry with myself but don’t want to show it.” And then, with a glance out the window and back at Sandra, as if she had discovered Sandra for the first time in a new guise, she exclaimed:

“And think about what you know. I mean about all of those fabrics. I think you’re becoming a real woman.”

And Sandra, she had blushed again and become a bit speechless, but in a new way—speechless from embarrassment but also from bizarre pride that she both wished and did not wish that Doris Flinkenberg had been there and witnessed just then. Woman. Like a task. For a second Sandra felt chosen, floating so to speak lightly on a cloud in the face of the task she had ahead of her.

On the other hand, she could also imagine what Doris would say then. “Sandra. Woman. Hmm. An interesting thought. But God, so entertaining.” And Doris would then start laughing and Sandra would also start laughing. Because they really did not want to become anything, either of them, just be together, like they were.

“But come on now!” Pinky had woken Sandra in the middle of her dreams in the Closet. “We have time to see
Happy Days
before they’re finished cutting up the moose or whatever it is they’re doing.”

And Pinky had taken off her high-heeled silver glitter shoes and then they ran down to the pool again and turned on the television and they had just enough time to finish watching Saturday’s episode of
Happy Days
before the hunting league took a sauna and the “catering girls” started dropping in. Everything was set up for dinner in the parlor on the upper floor and little by little everyone gathered at the long, laid table where silver candelabras with lit candles were standing. The Islander took his place at one end of the table and Sandra, who was of course the daughter of the house, at the other.

But still a detail, down there in the Closet. It was something Pinky had said just before she took off her shoes and Sandra took off her shoes and they raced down to the basement barefoot. “Then I would never have left this,” she said suddenly.

And she had spoken about Lorelei Lindberg of course, Pinky, her voice was low and serious. A quick glance through the window toward the yard where the Islander in a red knit cap was, as it is called, “chatting happily” with the remaining members of the hunting league in the middle of the long, tall stairs below where the moose that had been shot was lying, ready for further transport in Birger Lindström’s van, but still smelling of all the life that had recently left it.

“Some people never get enough,” said Bombshell Pinky Pink. “Some people just need to have and have. More and more.” And Pinky had looked around among the fabrics and the other things in the Closet one more time, the remains of what had once been Little Bombay. “As if this wasn’t nice enough and beautiful enough for her. As if this just wasn’t good enough.”

The evening turned into night, and even more night. The dinner was eaten, the party got going for real. It was, of course, a
completely different kind of party than for example the women’s parties in the house on the First Cape, but a party all the same and as such it was fascinating in and of itself. Sandra liked parties, as said, above all the part about being a bit off to the side and studying the party carefully. Furthermore it was now a matter of being especially watchful since Sandra had the special task of reporting to Doris Flinkenberg; this report would be submitted the following morning during the cleaning, when she and Doris Flinkenberg, dressed in their brand-new Four Mops and a Dustpan cleaning overalls, would tear through the house like torpedoes with vacuum cleaners, rags, and cotton cloths and different kinds of fresh-smelling disinfectant solutions. Doris usually had a thousand questions and she expected answers to them. Doris was extremely careful about being able to form a detailed and meticulous picture of everything that had happened.

The hunting parties were actually even more fascinating compared to the parties on the First Cape. It was, for example, because everything changed and became something else for a while. For example, the closeness you had felt to Bombshell Pinky Pink earlier in the day was gone like a stroke of magic. Pinky outgrew you and became someone else and if there was someone whom Sandra was a bit embarrassed to see during the party’s continuing evolution it was her, Bombshell Pinky Pink. But Pinky also avoided looking at Sandra, almost pretended like she did not know her. And it was a relief in some way, it truly was.

But during the party, what happened: of course what you knew was going to happen. The hunting men’s jokes became cruder and rawer and all of that and the alcohol flowed, and it was real liquor, pure schnapps and mixed drinks with whiskey in other words; no homemade wine here, no sir. And erhm . . . well, let’s just say whores quite simply, not in order to heighten the pleasure factor or the like . . . and the whores in other words, they did what they were there to do as much as they had time for, more and more, the later it got, so that everyone saw. The
clock was ticking in other words, it got later and later, but Sandra sometimes managed to stay a rather long time, as a gradually more invisible presence, as invisible as she could possibly become . . . Little by little everything was one big wound-up chaos and the party culminated.

Howling men—also in that respect the Islander who had the ability to be the worst—and prostitutes who danced on the tables sometimes completely naked except for their glittering shoes with high silver heels . . . and then everything continued exactly in that fashion toward the climax point whereupon it always quickly disintegrated. And thereafter you could be witness to the most bizarre scenes in different places in the house. Grown men who suddenly cried like children, shrieked and wailed over all of their shortcomings in life. Never, in a place like that, more than one man, but often more than one whore. And women who cried over all of their shortcomings, though in other places, alone or in groups. Whores who spoke about their dreams, talked and talked and talked, but to themselves as it were because no one, above all the men, heard them. They were just whores and that they always would be, that and nothing else, suddenly became important too, for the men—like a last defense against a threat, something something, which you did not know what it was.