The American Girl (33 page)

She pronounced Florida as if there were two
i
’s in it.

But up until then it did not matter what was going on in other places in the world. Because it was in only one place that everything was taking place, everything of importance, in any case. The ordinary was put out of action. The most important things that happened, and it was of decisive importance, they happened in a rectangle. At the bottom of a swimming pool without water, a pool in a basement with panorama windows facing an almost impenetrable jungle of ferns on the outside, toward the marsh. And of course it was that time of year when all the plants in nature were at their tallest and greenest. It was a jungle that blocked all views while also providing protection from the world outside. From the summer and all of the people in it. All other people. And it was effective. In the beginning no one knew what the girls were doing, or where they were. In the beginning no one knew that the girls had not left on their trip.

The only thing they were not able to hold their own against were all the insects: bullymosquitoes, supersized rainbow flies, fern ticks. Both green fern ticks that did not tick and ticking ticks. These and other marsh insects forced their way into the
house and toward the end of the fourteen days you could see them crawling out of the unused ventilation holes in the pool, also forcing their way through the cracks in the mortar, all the more noticeable cracks. During this time there was a period when it rained a great deal; this period occurred just before the sunshine finally came and lasted a few days during which everything had time to become so porous, so porous.

But at the same time, it was also the case that both of the girls in the house, Sandra Wärn and Doris Flinkenberg, actually had so many other things to think about than rigging up mosquito nets, swatting with flyswatters made of plastic in every room and floor, and bug spraying.

These days were, in other words, the world in a rectangle, the world in a small rectangle.

The pool in the basement in the house in the darker part of the woods: zoom in on that now, for the last time. Because when the Islander and Inget Herrman come home from their cruise which, without either of them needing to say anything at all, you would understand it had not gone like either of them had planned, one of the Islander’s first measures will be to have new, better tiles laid in the pool and allow it to be filled, this for the first time during all the time they had lived in the house in the darker part of the woods. With Inget Herrman, whom she personally had nothing against, pointing out in between gulps of wine, as the “instigating factor.” “Can be done,” said the Islander. “Your word is my command,” he said, with all of the feigned enthusiasm he could muster. So fake that not even he, the Islander, who was no thinker, understood that he was standing on the big glitter scene and performing a terrible number.

The wear and tear started showing on the Islander. It was clear it had been a long, long time since he was a man in his prime, for example in the snow in Central Europe, on the one side of a white field with a certain house on the other side. That was one thing. But another thing, which might even be creepier,
was that it really was not all that long ago, almost eons since that night at the end of the hunting season when Inget Herrman had come to the house in the middle of the night and the Bombshell was disposed of. “Over my dead body is she coming into this house!”: Pinky had stood in the hall while Inget Herrman, recently arrived via a taxi, rang the doorbell without being let in. And Sandra, who had gone out in the night because Inget Herrman had wanted to talk with her, and then they had sat in the middle of the stairs up to nothing and talked about the importance of following your own star and realizing your dreams. And while they were talking the Islander had suddenly appeared out of thin air with a tray in his hands; there were drinks on the tray and in the drink glasses there were sparklers or
falling stars
or whatever they are called. And the sticks had sparkled in the night and in some way, though it was not pretty, though nothing was pretty, it had become just that, the Islander with the tray, the sparklers in the night.

We’re transformed into gray panthers without us knowing it, Islander. It was rather creepy, if you thought about it. And if it was in other words you and your father who needed a lot of . . . protection . . . because there would, starting now, come so many difficult things. How crazy he was, the Islander, he still had his strange, persistent inimitable power.

What snow conceals, the sun reveals
.

But was it like that, there were things that had happened you could not shake off? That just continued to come back? And about not being able to hold your ground, had he really not considered that?

But the summer before everything, the world in a small rectangle, maybe there was a storm when they sailed by certain “cliffs of home,” the Islander and Inget Herrman. He did not look to the side. He still looked straight ahead. Straight, straight ahead.

. . .

Well. Everything the girls needed was in the house in the darker part of the woods. In the beginning they did not even need to go to the store to buy food. They ate what was in the refrigerator and they found an entire moose steak in the freezer from the previous year. A large forgotten clump of ice all the way at the bottom. It lasted quite a while, until they could no longer eat the moose steak, and they lived for a while on hard candy, chips, and chocolate.

They went into their own world, with their own games, their own talk and allowed themselves to be devoured by them. Maybe it started as a farewell to childhood. During the year that had passed, especially since the Mystery with the American Girl had been solved and left to its destiny, so many of the old games and stories had not had any meaning for a long time.

But childhood revisited for a few days: you cannot step down into the same river twice as a Greek philosopher and Inget Herrman used to say. It was not the same thing. It did not become the same thing. It started burning. “If you put your finger in the flame, it burns,” Doris once said to Sandra, as a statement. Now she would get to experience it herself. For real.

At some point during this time with Sandra in the house in the darker part, in the small rectangle, the swimming pool without water (“Little Bombay?” she started saying, bitterly questioning when they had carried as many silk fabrics as possible down in the basement and built Maharajah’s Palace, moreover one of the last things they did before
the sexual awakening
, and Sandra had jumped, “no,” she had resisted, then tried to laugh it off, do everything like normal, by saying, “no, still not that now, but almost”), it happened that Doris would remember something she had left at home in the cousin’s house, which she had not taken with her, because when she left the cousin’s house she was on her way out into the world, and which she missed a little bit and got the idea that she needed. Certain
music cassettes. Not “Our Love Is a Continental Affair” because even Doris Flinkenberg had finally grown tired of that hit (and it was not a day too soon, thought everyone, even the cousin’s mama, who were tired of hearing her play it over and over again on the Poppy tape player), her book for worship of an idol, her little memory book. All those things she had a habit of dragging around with her. But
you can’t return hom
e. That is the price you pay. Everything has a price. You have to pay something.

But: pay for what? That was what would be cocked and loaded, that was what would no longer be clear, after almost fourteen days with Sandra Wärn and just the two of them in the house in the darker part of the woods.

The world in a rectangle, small.

When Doris came back to the cousin’s house she would on the one hand probably be thankful for still having all of these things, which she had not taken with her, up there in her room. But they would have lost their meaning, all the meaning they had ever had in their own contexts. The stories about them would be, if not worthless, then shattered to bits. In shards from the crushed window on the floor in the pool section next to the television that was on but the screen snowed and snowed.

A red raincoat in a photograph
.

“He came in a white Jaguar—”

“One thing, Sandra. That telephone number. It doesn’t exist.”

“Let me tell you something, dear, blessed child. That the mercy God has measured out for just you, it is so great that not a single human being can grasp it with their intellect.”

The old connections did not exist, the ones that together had formed a world you moved in as a matter of course. Now it was a matter of building new worlds.

But with whom? Sandra. For alleged reasons they would not be able to be together anymore, though it must be seen.

Sandra and Doris. They had danced on “the wicked ground,” barefoot (in the pool). The dream had ended because true love
had ceased to exist, Nat King Cole was playing on the record player, and it was true even though it was only a song.

But in other words, in the cousin’s house: Doris would be grateful to have her things anyway. They would be needed to the highest degree, as navigation points. Concrete grounds for recognition that would help her find her way back to the best number of them all on the glitter scene. Doris Flinkenberg, everything is like it always is, everything is normal.

Robot practice. Walk around the planet without a name.

Look in control, happy. Bring out the best mood you have.

Pull up the blackout curtain. Discover Bencku and Magnus and Micke Friberg in the yard.

Say to the cousin’s mama:

“I’m going out.”

“Where?”

“Out.”

Drink beer with the boys. It was always a solution. If only temporary.

The world in a small rectangle, 1
. This was how it started. First: they were still themselves. They made the house theirs and took up their old games. For fun, on a small scale. Doris Flinkenberg was Lorelei Lindberg who met Heintz-Gurt at the nightclub the Running Kangaroo, and Sandra played the American girl, to the hilt. “Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.” “I’m a strange bird.” “The heart is a heartless hunter.” She recited this until the words had lost almost all meaning. And Sandra crowed, “Look, Mom, they’ve destroyed . . .” at the top of her lungs and made crazy erhm-movements, exaggerated and obscene, with her body, and Doris could not help but try and crawl in the same way . . . though just for a while. Then they stopped. Grew quiet. Felt ill at ease over the sacrilege.

Because it was too real, in any case.

Eddie, she had not lost her magical power over them. And Doris could still playfully, easily in her memory call to mind a certain summer day when she had found the body—or what was left of it—wrapped in a red plastic raincoat that was so whole so whole, completely intact. And there was still so much that was dreadful and unclear about that memory.

So they let the games be for a while and were just like two ordinary teenage girls: got drunk on what was in the bar, smoked the Islander’s cigarillos, taking deep drags that made both of them throw up. That night both of them fell asleep in the pool among the soft pillows from the rec room’s sofa, which had ended up in the pool again, which they always did when the Islander was not there, when only Doris and Sandra were in the house. And wrapped themselves in fabrics from Maharajah’s Palace. “Little Bombay,” Doris Flinkenberg tried again, but Sandra flinched, she did not catch on. “No, not that.” “Why not?” “Stop pestering.”

And Doris stopped pestering. Willingly. Since there was something else in the air, had been the whole time. A fragile mood, like a rubber band being stretched, stretched between them. That was the strange thing but also what was in some way most delightful.

And suddenly Doris seemed to understand that was why they were actually there. That was why there had not been a trip. She thought that Sandra looked at her sometimes, carefully, in hiding. With a new look, or an old one, whatever you wanted to call it. But a look that wanted something from her. That wanted her so much it became shy, looked down or away or just gave way.

And Doris. She enjoyed it. A memory from one midsummer evening a long time ago floated up more and more often in Doris’s head, but also in Sandra’s, the evening they had started solving the Mystery of the American Girl. Something in the moss, something, which was then aborted. And it was okay like that. But now.

That was what was lying in between.

And suddenly, in the middle of a game, Sandra kissed Doris. Or was it Doris who kissed Sandra first? It did not matter. It was beautiful. It was the way it was supposed to be. And they both had the moss inside them, the memory of the moss . . . and when they started kissing nothing—lightning nor thunder—could stop them.

“No one can kiss like us,” Doris Flinkenberg whispered. Though then it was already after the First Time, with cigarillos and gin and tonics.

It happened in the middle of a new game, a cat-and-mouse game, their own version of it (it had in other words nothing to do with Rita and Solveig and the others, who broke into the houses on the Second Cape during the fall when the summer guests had left and did what they wanted to there). This was much more innocent, mostly a pastime. A whim, an idea that maybe came about because Sandra and Doris in any case, despite the fact that they enjoyed each other’s company and were probably still themselves, started thinking it was sometimes a bit boring just staying indoors.

“ ‘The primal scream freed me,’ ” Doris Flinkenberg read out loud from a magazine, an ordinary women’s magazine, which might have originated from Pinky’s time in the house in the darker part.

“What is it?” Sandra asked listlessly and Doris explained it was the scream you screamed when you came out of your mother’s belly and many people would feel good by screaming that scream again as adults. It sounded rather vague, so Sandra asked apathetically:

“When then?”

“Well, for example,” said Doris, who thought it was important to be able to provide answers to questions in all situations, “if you’re terribly afraid of something it can help you to release it with the primal scream. Face the fear with a scream so to speak.”
She added that last part with a tone Sandra had learned meant that she really did not have a clue what she was talking about.