The American Girl (26 page)

But at the same time, for the whores, whoring and having just that job and no other in that situation took on a completely different meaning. It became a way of concealing and protecting all of the other stuff that was also inside you . . . inside the whore herself that is. A way of protecting what was fragile and wounded, those places inside that are soft-hard and transparent. Those that are inside every person, and that, according to one of Doris’s terrible pop songs, are, to quote, “the best she has.” Suddenly, prostitution as protection in other words. But zero communication with each other, whether it be the men or the women, afterward.

The truly great loneliness, in other words, and it was terrible but also interesting to see.

That no one was listening to each other, that no one was listening to anybody, but suddenly everyone still had such a need to find an outlet for their own personal woes. Of course it resulted in a rather intense and hot atmosphere in the entire house (except in Sandra’s room of course; it was strictly forbidden to go in there, on that point the Islander was adamant; and Sandra had also been encouraged to lock the door to her room where she finally, despite all of the escapades that were going on around her, was lying and sleeping quite peacefully in the marital bed).

Of course there would have been a thousand women from the garden on the First Cape for example who, if you had told them about what happened at the hunting parties in the house in the darker part of the woods, would have had the opportunity to really feel sorry for the “poor men” who could not have any real fun. But there were also others. For example, Inget Herrman who during Sandra and Doris’s study visits to the city by the sea asked Sandra about this and that at the fishermen’s pub after the art exhibit or the good movie they had seen.

Inget Herrman listened to the description of the party and smiled in recognition. Then she said both learned and interested that these were actually the kind of parties that closely corresponded to the original definition of a party, as it came up in the time of the ancient Greeks. Where there had not really been a question about losing oneself in a bourgeois way, “to have fun” (which Inget Herrman pronounced with contempt while at the same time taking a big gulp from her beer glass), rather to leave your entire day-to-day life and all of the role playing there. Divorce it for a while, like during a carnival.

“You don’t do it for relaxation or that sort of thing,” Inget Herrman continued at the fishermen’s pub where she loved to sit and talk and drink and talk and drink, more than, you suspected, go to a nice movie or an art exhibit, more than anything. “But to cleanse yourself,” said Inget Herrman. “Those men, they’ve understood that. This is one of the original meanings of the ancient Greek’s bacchanalia.

“In other words it’s not the fun that is the main thing,” said Inget Herrman. “It’s the cleansing bath.”

And the girls, Doris and Sandra, Sandra and Doris, their eyes had opened wide, but they had understood. They had truly understood.

Though the idea during the hunting parties themselves was that Sandra was not supposed to be part of them for so long.

“Ahem, ahem,” someone usually started at the dinner table already, “isn’t it the little girl’s bedtime?” It might be, for example, one of erhm, the working girls, or perhaps Tobias Forsström the times he was there. Tobias Forsström was in some way visibly troubled over sitting at the same table as one of the students in the school where he worked, but still, he did not go home, he did not make a move, say thanks and leave, not at all.

But on the other hand he was careful in other words about getting Sandra to bed, sometimes even before dessert.

Then, when someone said that, it happened that the Islander came alive and as it were discovered his daughter over the candles on the other side of the table and said something along the lines of:

“Aren’t you going to go to bed, my dear?”

Interestingly enough when he said this, his voice was not filled with a bad conscience. Yet in other words he had, somewhat earlier, not been able to do anything but agree with the cousin’s mama when she had said to the Islander, speaking of Doris Flinkenberg’s banishment and that it had to be kept, that the hunting parties really were not the environment where a child belonged. Furthermore he had sworn that he would make sure Doris’s banishment was upheld.

But when it came to his own Sandra he made no connection to her. The Islander was, so to speak, the first one to forget about his daughter at the hunting dinner table, and it did not directly depend on nonchalance or bad parenting but something else, which Sandra had an understanding for deep down in her bones, though she did not think about it anymore. Just
her and no one else. It was namely a reminiscence from the time they were living the jet-setter’s life, when it had been the three of them, Lorelei Lindberg, the Islander, and herself. In the jet-setter’s life, what it now had involved (honeymoon trips, nightclub scene, interesting people, famous movie stars, artists, and beauty queens, which had also floated together into one big soup in her memory), they had shared everything and for the most part been together. There had not been very many limits. And the little girl had always been
there
—and she would always be there (also according to her own opinion, as said, otherwise she would have burst into tears).

But all of this was, as said, something in the marrow. And difficult, almost impossible, to make someone else understand, in words.

“Of course, Dad.” Sandra would not have wanted to make the Islander sad. She had gotten up without protest, said good night, and left the party to its fate. Almost to its fate, that is to say, just looked out now and then afterward, in certain places, if it was necessary.

But Pinky, at night, toward the morning, to become a woman, was that it? How the white legs would glow against the fire-colored chiffon and bright pink organza, Pinky’s white white legs
. It was edging on early morning after just such a party when Sandra had gone to bed right after dinner. She had woken up early, it was only four or five o’clock, but suddenly with an almost Doris-like hunger in her body. She had just quite simply been forced to get up and go get a midnight snack in the kitchen.

She wrapped herself in her bathrobe, stuck her feet in her morning slippers, carefully unlocked the door, opened it, and crept out into the corridor.

It was completely quiet in the house, all of the doors in the cramped upper floor were closed: the one to the Islander’s bedroom, the one to the parlor, the one to the guest room, and the
one to the library. You could only imagine what was going on behind these doors. But in reality it was not very interesting, in and of itself—as Doris had said once when Sandra had reported, “If you’ve seen a coitus like that then you’ve seen them all, can’t you tell me about something more interesting?”

And she was right, Doris—but now, still, there was something that got Sandra to stay on her toes and that was when she discovered that the door to the Closet at the opposite side of the corridor, next to the entrance, was ajar. And, could sounds not be heard from in there?

Muffled, half-stifled shouts and louder groans. Small, small screams. And oh yes, somewhere Sandra certainly knew she should not have been so curious, but she still had not been able to stop herself. She just had to turn around and peer in through the gap, carefully.

And there, somewhere among all of the fabric, among Dupioni, habotai, crepe de chine, and silk georgette, among silk brocade and jacquard, there was, lying with her head in the beautiful fabrics, her head buried so to speak, the unforgettable head that belonged to no one other than Pinky Pink, the Bombshell, you could not see it but you did not need to see, you knew. Because it was enough with the following: backside in the air, the short pink skirt pulled up over her stomach, like skin on a grilled sausage, the white thighs glowing—and he was at it behind her, pants pulled down, on his knees but not on his stomach like her, it was Tobias Forsström. He had a hard grip on Pinky’s neck, pushed her head down into the fabric as if he wanted to suffocate her, and just when it looked as if she was not getting any air he pulled her head up again by tearing at her hair and then down with it again, at the same time as he was fucking, fucking her for dear life, for everything he was worth.

Then, suddenly, as if he had felt the eyes on his own neck, he turned around.

And discovered Sandra in the door opening.

It was a few seconds, but it might as well have been an entire eternity.

But Pinky, her white thighs. A silver shoe was still lying in the corridor. Sandra took it with her to her room like a treasure.

Yuck, Pinky.

In the morning Pinky was clearly in a bad mood. She was sitting at the kitchen table completely dressed with her jacket on while drinking black coffee out of a mug when Sandra came into the kitchen for her breakfast.

“My God, what a disaster last night really was!” she exclaimed and maybe she was going to say something more but she did not have time because a car honked its horn out in the yard and a voice called from somewhere:

“Pinky! The taxi is here!” And Pinky got up at once and hurried off.

Sandra did not tell Doris Flinkenberg about what she had seen in the Closet. Not because she kept any secrets from Doris, but because it just was not right. And she did not want to make Pinky sad—more so than she already was. Because Sandra knew, and maybe Pinky herself had understood, that all of this marked the beginning of the end of Pinky’s era of greatness in the house in the darker part of the woods.

The heart is a heartless hunter, as the American girl used to say, one of her lines.

Because where was the Islander when Pinky was lying with her rump in the air among the fabric in the Closet? Of course he was in the house, but in his bedroom behind a door locked from the inside. With Inget Herrman, who had shown up in the middle of the night; the phone had suddenly rung in the middle of the night and it had been Inget Herrman from the fishermen’s pub in the city by the sea and she had just said, “I’m taking a taxi and I’m on my way!”

Later Inget Herrman told Sandra that she really respected the Islander.

“It’s so interesting to discuss things with him. Has so many interesting stories. Has experienced so much. Interesting.”

The heart is a heartless hunter, Pinky.

That had been the first time Inget Herrman showed up in the house in the darker part of the woods when there was a hunting party, but not the last. She would also continue coming to the house, arriving via taxi at odd times of the day, often quite late at night.

But still, on the morning after the night when Sandra had surprised Pinky and Tobias Forsström, Sandra went to the Closet in order to clean up there before Doris came. She discovered then that someone had certainly been in there and tried to put everything back in order again. Some of the fabrics had been helpfully folded and organized on the shelves.

But there was also a shoe lying there. Pinky’s other shoe. The silver glittering one with the thousand-foot-high heel and platform. Sandra took it to her room as well and hid it—from everyone, so that not even Doris Flinkenberg was allowed to see.

And Doris, she had come later, walking up the stairs up to the house where they changed into their Four Mops and a Dustpan cleaning overalls and Doris sniffed the air, “Hmmmm, it smells like a brothel in this house,” and then they took their buckets and rags and steel brushes and dug in, and everything, everything was actually good again.

And when the fall became winter Bombshell Pinky Pink was disposed of.

“How’s your dad?” Inget Herrman asked at the fishermen’s pub.

“Good.”

“But now to the art exhibit,” Inget Herrman said. “You must have a lot of questions.”

“Nah,” Doris and Sandra said at the same time but still tried to sound interested.

“Your dad, he certainly has a melancholic streak,” Inget Herrman said at the fishermen’s pub. “It must get lonely in the house sometimes. Right?”

“Maybe.”

“Strong stuff,” Inget Herrman said about the movie or the art they had just seen. “Is there a party every Saturday? Also tonight?”

It was later, that Saturday night or the following one. Sandra had left the dinner table and gone to bed and the party had, true to form, continued without her participation. A few hours later she was woken up by a noise out in the corridor. There were angry voices, and at the same time, in the background, the doorbell at the front door was ringing.

Nach Erwald und die Sonne. Die Sonne. Die Sonne
.

“Over my dead body is she coming into this house!” Sandra heard that it was Pinky, who was standing in the corridor howling. And then there was the other voice, which you immediately understood was the Islander’s, calming and appeasing.

“But Pinky. Calm down now.”

“But Pinky. Of course I wouldn’t do anything to make you sad.”

The entire time, in the background and rather loudly to boot, that unbearable verse was playing, over and over again.

Nach Erwald und die Sonne. Die Sonne. Schnapps
. . .

And of course you understood that there was someone out there on the steps whom Pinky did not want to let in.

Then it had been quieter for a short while again, something happening at the front door, and then, suddenly, there was a knock at Sandra’s door.

“Sandra. Are you awake? She wants to talk to you.”

Sandra got up and opened the door and outside, in the corridor, Bombshell Pinky Pink was standing and was as upset as Sandra had ever seen her, holding Sandra’s jacket in her hand.

“Here,” Pinky said and handed Sandra her jacket. “Sorry that I woke you. But this is an emergency. She’s out there. On the steps. She wants . . .” Pinky’s voice broke. “I said she’s not setting a foot inside this house!”

Sandra put on her jacket and went out and it was of course Inget Herrman who had been outside the door and not been let in. Inget Herrman who had taken a taxi to the house in the darker part of the woods again but now the taxi had driven off. Pinky had not let her in, what was she going to do? All of this was hanging in the air when Sandra came out to her, but it was nothing she said, instead she cheered up, Inget—because she was, despite all unexpected obstacles, in a wonderful mood—and that it was actually for her sake, Sandra’s, that she had taken a taxi all the way here from the city by the sea.