The American Girl (45 page)

“Now we’ve had enough of you, Malcolm, you old worm,” Johnny Thunderstorm and Jerry Nolan said at the same time—they were the ones who were the band’s junkies and had to score for their lives. “Now we’re going to stop with this pandering with the Soviet flag here in this wilderness and go back to New York.”

“What the hell,” said Arthur Killer Kane, he wanted to ease some of the tension. He did not have the desire or the means to stop and he did NOT want to go back to New York.
In any case not right now
. He had a more or less successful alcohol withdrawal behind him and his girlfriend Connie who had stabbed Killer with a knife before the departure was in New York; and the combination of these two was less tempting.

And he did NOT want to disband the band.

He did not have a plan B. The glitter rock band the New York Dolls was his salvation.

“Go to hell,” Johnny Thunderstorm and Jerry Nolan replied at the same time and that was the end of that discussion, the end of the New York Dolls, the whole story, the whole
glitter scene
. In a flash they found themselves on the main country road, on their way to the airport and New York where Richard Hell would so conveniently be waiting for them (though that was something they did not know yet: “What flight will you be on, boys?”).

Maybe Malcolm aka the Worm had made a miscalculation. You don’t start a revolution in the American Midwest. But could he admit that? Admit to himself, in front of the collected world press, that you are wrong?

“Go to hell,” said the Worm. “I’m going back to London now, will cure my venereal disease, but in the reverse order . . . first cure my venereal disease and then . . .” and yada yada yada followed . . . which some Englishmen with a certain accent never understood, aka the Worm, when it was time to quite simply shut up. “FIRST, that is, I’ll cure my venereal disease so my wife, the daring fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, won’t get mad at me, then I’ll borrow Richard Hell’s T-shirt, figuratively speaking, and start a new band, we can call it the Sex Pistols based on the ambiguity of the name. It will, unlike you small vermin” (ALSO aimed at Mama Nolan and the sticky spaghetti because Malcolm was angry now, quite simply furious), “be a truly successful project also in regards to the public and sales. WE are going to make songs with nice punk messages, unlike everything we’ve been able to do with you, losers.

“With you we’ve only been able to lose, losers.”

“Oh, hell, what am I going to do now,” thought Arthur Killer Kane. Good question. Especially since he would not have much more to do in the history of music. His time on the glitter scene was over.

From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?

Malcolm aka the Worm McLaren came home from London (healthy and fit again) and ran straight up to the boys who were standing and hanging outside his and his wife’s trendy clothing shop.

“Now boys,” the Worm said to the boys, “we’re going to start a band that mixes politics and music and we’ll give it a
subversive
name. I have a good idea for a name, how about the Sex Pistols? There’s a lot to be angry about too. Lots of inequalities. It’s not far-fetched to liken the English monarchy to a fascist regime. Write a song about it.”

“Uh,” said Snotty, who would gradually replace Glen Matlock on bass in the band and who according to legend was exceptionally stupid and crazy when it came to big words because he certainly had not attended any school for upper-class boys rather an ordinary one, whatever it’s called in the complicated English school system, “what does far-fetched mean?”

“Go to hell, Snotty,” aka the Worm replied. “You have the right attitude.”

And shortly thereafter Malcolm aka the Worm McLaren locked Rotten Johnny aka Johnny Rotten and the remaining “boys” in a room with refreshments.

“I’m going to lock you in this room now,” the Worm said before he turned the key in the lock on the outside. “And I’m not letting you out until you’ve written a song that is like Television’s ‘Tom Generation.’ ”

X hours later the boys came out with a draft of a song finished, “Sweet Tom.”

And a record was made and the boys made history with it.

“Oh, but what the hell,” Richard Hell said when he heard “Sweet Tom” there where he was on the other side of the Atlantic with Thunder and Jerry Nolan united in yet another, it looked like, loser project, however subversive it may be. “McLaren. What a worm.

“That was my song,” Richard Hell swore. “That was my everything.”

From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start? And who was Richard Hell?

He was a singer in the trendsetting punk orchestra Television, which is legendary because, among other things, not a single film recording has been preserved in which the original band members play. But those who were present and saw it understood that this was something new and tremendous.

The end of a scene,
the
glitter scene. So far from the New York Dolls, so raw, like Iggy Pop, so cool.

The music started here: a deserted field
. Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine were members in the original band. They were best friends. They had met at a boarding school in the Midwest and both had other names then. They had a habit of running away from school. Bumming rides and reading poetry.
French
poetry. Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Verlaine. In redneck country: it was like asking for a beating. Being chased along the country roads.

One time they stayed out in the wilderness, at the edge of a very deserted field. They made a fire to warm themselves or maybe just because they had the desire to see something beautiful and different and tremendous on this field. So they set fire to the whole field.

And ran, ran away from police officers, authorities, rednecks, others.

. . .
WHEN SANDRA RETURNED TO THE DISTRICT AND THE HOUSE
in the darker part everything was the same as before but yet it was not. It was like coming to a new planet. The planet without Doris Flinkenberg. She would live the rest of her life on it. How would that go, anyway?

Someone’s arms around you from behind, like an octopus.

“I’m here, Sandra. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

It was Inget Herrman and a violent nauseous feeling welled up inside Sandra and she threw up over Inget Herrman’s hands, which still had not let go.

“Dear child, I’m here.”

The planet without Doris. This is what it looked like on it.

Then she went to bed.

Then she slept for a thousand years.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

And then she went out in the Blood Woods.

SHE WAS THE
girl in the green sport clothes, the skating girl. The skates tied together by the laces, hanging around her neck, one skate on each breast. In the sunshine. The skates were also green. Painted with old paint, she had done it herself. The leather had become hard and dry because the paint was not expensive leather paint rather the first best thing that had been at hand. An old can with green paint inside, ancient. She had been surprised that it was still possible to dissolve with turpentine.

But. To paint her white skates to match the green outdoor suit she had sewn for herself was the first thing Sandra had done when she got out of the marital bed where she had been lying, not for a few months or a year, but certainly for several weeks.

Other concepts of time had ruled inside the room. Time had been different, quite simply. Both long and short and no time, standing still, unmoving.

But now it was March, clear and beautiful, the first Monday after spring break during which Birgitta Blumenthal had, time after time, inquired with the Islander about how she was doing. “She can’t even come out and skate on the ice? Dad has plowed it!” the Islander conveyed Birgitta Blumenthal’s case to his sick daughter in the bed who refused to have any personal visits during the break when there was not any homework to do and, in other words, no external reason for being together.

The daughter reported that no, she was not up to it. And turned her face toward the wall, and for a moment in the door opening the Islander might have been about to speak his mind once and for all, that there was now going to be an end to this nonsense. But he said nothing. The seriousness of the situation prevented him.
It was, despite everything, not that long since Doris had died by her own hand. And despite the fact that he did not understand the entire story he decided to leave his daughter alone.

“A sick animal also leaves the herd for a while when it’s hurt itself,” the Islander said downstairs, which Sandra heard through the house when she lay in bed with the door open. “A hunter knows that better than anything.”

“Do you see a herd of animals anywhere?” Inget Herrman asked, certainly in a friendly way, even straining to be friendly (maybe somewhere she still suspected that she was in the house on borrowed time; “I’m not mature enough yet to live under the same roof with a woman,” the Islander had said and continued saying to her).

Inget Herrman’s question only confused the Islander. He did not answer. Sandra understood him. She, and Doris too,
she would have understood
. The reason why they had promised each other in the swimming pool never never to grow up was in order to avoid carrying on those ambiguous scenes-from-a-marriage conversations.

“Should we . . . go and shoot?”

“No,” said Inget Herrman.

Inget Herrman did not shoot. She was a pacifist.

Inget Herrman really did not want to shoot. She wanted, but she almost did not dare say it out loud, to go to a restaurant. For a long time after Doris’s death that was the only thing Inget Herrman wanted to do when the idea of leaving the house in the darker part and doing something else sometimes came up. She did not say it of course, but it could be heard in her voice. Sandra recognized it.

“Shoot,” Inget Herrman snorted. “It’s always about shooting.”

“Daaaaaamn fun,” the Islander could be heard saying down in the basement where he and Inget Herrman were hanging out on
the weekends with their drinks at the edge of the pool. It echoed throughout the entire house: daaaaamn fun! Sandra wondered if Inget Herrman detected his irritation.

“Maybe we should try to get her out of bed gradually,” Inget Herrman suggested kindly. “Out of the
marital bed
or whatever it is you two usually call that thing?” That is how it was. She could not talk without everything becoming poisonous and ambiguous.

But with a laugh too. The Islander laughed too. And then he put on a gramophone record. He played
The Jungle Book
, a children’s record that he liked a lot. It was one of the numbers he used to charm people, also, when together with someone. He liked playing songs from children’s records.

He put on the monkey song from
The Jungle Book
.

Louis Armstrong, the black jazz musician, was singing on the record, in English.

“Oobee doo. I wanna be like you. I wanna walk like you. Talk like you.”

And the Islander sang and danced along: “You see, it’s possible; an ape like me can learn to be someone like you.”

“Imperialistic shit,” Inget Herrman declared and turned down the volume.

“Then you know,” the Islander said after a quiet pause, “the art of killing the joy another person feels.”

They were scenes from a marriage, before it had even started, the film version.

Though it was a pity about them both. The nicest people ever when they were not together, the nicest otherwise. But together—why did it turn out like that? It seemed like they had no idea either.

It was a pity about Inget Herrman. It was so obvious. The Islander would never . . . whatever she was thinking, with her.

But it was a pity about the Islander too. Inget Herrman would never . . . whatever he was thinking, with him.

And both of them were sitting here and trying their best and still nothing came of it.

But now, in other words, it was the Monday after spring break, the middle of the day, students back at school, the Islander at work, Inget Herrman in her apartment in the city by the sea where she was during the week (the Islander was consequently very definite about the fact that they should live apart) writing her thesis, collecting material half of the day, writing during the other half. She had changed topics again, or if anything, narrowed it a bit more.

“To a more manageable format,” she explained to the Islander. “This topic is a more realistic goal, so to speak.”

“I see,” the Islander said, and tried to make it sound as though he found it interesting.

But now, in other words, away from that. Sandra had come out into the world again, outside. And now she was walking through the woods to Bule Marsh where there was a newly plowed iceskating rink on the ice. While she was walking she was, almost from the beginning, aware she was being observed. The boy was standing in the bushes watching her. And he was no boy anymore.

He was Bengt and he had turned twenty in December.

Now it would happen
. The meeting. After water that had washed under bridges, had grown still. After winter, darkness, ice. After death. Now, in the light of spring.

But at the same time Doris-in-Sandra said to Sandra: dance on my grave.

How did that go together?

And sitting in a drift of hard snow Sandra laced up her skates and then she glided out onto the ice. The ice princess on the big glitter scene, in front of an invisible audience.

Doris Day said DANCE.

Show what you can do.

• • •

And bam. Landed on her butt on the ice. Not to mention it was uncomfortable. Sandra’s feet were too big for the miserable skates and her joints were searing, like fire. Sandra hated skating. Now she remembered it too. Plus her passionate loathing for having ice skates on at all.