The American Girl (58 page)

He drank himself silly and thought ominous thoughts. Went to that damned outbuilding and was there almost the whole night. And Bengt and Eddie. Well. They didn’t know anything about it.

That was probably also what made Bengt go insane.

And then it was that cursed morning. It was so, I don’t know, stupid, shit, terrible. We had already really started losing heart, Miss Andrews, Solveig, and I. We were bored to death of her—also of her showing up and her nervousness. When we weren’t even allowed to play a part, we had no part. We were just “the godchildren” at the beach, which she came to sometimes, I don’t know why, but maybe because there was still something there that should be normal.

But maybe it was good we had lost interest then before everything happened. I mean, we already knew we couldn’t expect anything from her.

I don’t mean when Eddie drowned in front of our eyes and we didn’t do anything, I mean afterward. It wasn’t exactly a big surprise that she didn’t acknowledge us in any way then either.

That in the future we would have to get along as best we could.

She certainly came, in some sort of inappropriate feeling of guilt, and put on airs for Bencku. Invited him up to the house so he could “practice his art there.” She had seen his maps in the boathouse when she was straightening up there after Eddie’s death. She invited him to the Glass House in other words, what for us had been and still was the most forbidden. Maybe she felt guilty, it’s possible, thought that it was enough to “replace” us with him. We were siblings, of course.

Well, that terrible morning anyway. It was very early, we were at the marsh, Solveig and I. I don’t remember why we had gone there so early, earlier than usual. Maybe it was the anxiety. We didn’t know anything about what was going on. But maybe we felt it anyway. I’m thinking about Björn, what he did that night. And about Eddie, and about Bengt. What they were doing. And what they had been doing.

The one thing had led to another before Miss Andrews came. To us, at the marsh, in her wooden clogs and her bathrobe and her swimsuit. Well, if there was something you saw at a distance of a thousand miles it was that Miss Andrews had been pushed to the brink now. And therefore it would now be normal. So normal.

Well, first, before Miss Andrews came. We were going to swim, but we hadn’t gotten around to starting that either, I mean Solveig and I, the two of us.

We were sitting on the rocks on the beach, trying to wake up, the motivation had probably started leaving us. What, swimmers?

What did we think of ourselves?

Well, there came Miss Andrews then.

As background for what happened later I can now tell you about what we didn’t know then yet, Solveig and I, about what had been going on in and around the Glass House and the boathouse
during the night. The previous night Björn, who would of course be the first lover in this tale, had surprised Eddie and Bengt in the boathouse, in an intimate situation that left no room for interpretation, or whatever it’s now called.

Then he hadn’t known what to do. And gone, somewhere. But no one had gone after him. Neither Bengt nor Eddie. Instead, when they had been surprised, they started putting together their own plans. I have no idea what Eddie was thinking, for her it was probably very much a game right now, well, that with Bengt, or what do I know. But I know that for Bengt it was dead serious.

He was going away, he was going away with her now, to the end of the world if that was the question.

And they agreed to leave right away; Eddie had enough of the baroness as well, which she had explained so many times to Bencku. But, well, they needed things. Money. And so they made a plan. Eddie would go up to the Glass House, to where she no longer had a key—that’s why she had to stay in the boat-house because the baroness didn’t want her in the house any-more—Eddie would go up there and arrange money somehow. And then she and Bengt would meet at a fixed place in the woods and she would have her things in her backpack and he would have his things in his backpack and then, away.

Bengt left to pack his things and get ready for the big journey, and Eddie, she went to the Glass House. That was the last time he ever spoke to her. Before she went up to the Glass House and Miss Andrews.

What happened there in the Glass House no one really knows. But in some way the baroness must have caught Eddie red-handed when she was rummaging among the baroness’s things, or maybe Eddie was bolder than that. Quite simply said what she wanted, and was going to get it out of the baroness, so to speak by force. Money. But she failed in this.

And that was the important part, of course. The baroness locked her in a room in only her underwear, so that she wouldn’t
run away. And then she didn’t know what she was going to do. She didn’t come up with anything else except calling the Black Sheep. “Come.” And he came.

Her friend in the white Jaguar, her former boarder. Take her away from here. Eddie was dragged out to the car, still, I assume, without clothes on.

Eddie was going away. Wherever, just away from there.

And Bencku, he waited and waited for her in that place in the woods where they had agreed to meet, but of course she never came. Then he became nervous and started walking around and that was when he was standing on the side of the road and the car drove past and there was Eddie. That he saw.

That was the last time he saw her.

How she was sitting there in the backseat, stiff and unrecognizable, as if she were vulnerable to a threat.

He saw her, and it came to nothing for him. And he realized a lot of alarming things as you do sometimes when you’re really desperate. He understood that it was now a matter of finding Björn, where was Björn?

And he went to the cousin’s house and saw that Björn still hadn’t come home, and then he ran, filled with suspicions, toward the outbuilding.

But we, we were at the marsh, Solveig and I, like two idiots. First Miss Andrews came. Still to this day I don’t know what in the hell she was doing at the marsh just this morning, but you can imagine she might not have wanted to be present when Eddie was taken away, or when everything was so horrible there would in any case be something that was like before, somewhat normal.

She came and tried to be like always. Though we saw immediately that something was wrong, but now there would be a game anyway, swim and splash and God knows what, and Solveig and I, we didn’t exactly go into the show hook, line, and sinker, but
we didn’t do anything else either. We acted like nothing had happened. Strained in order to act that way too.

Now we were going to swim, according to Miss Andrews, really. She threw off her bathrobe. “Come now, Solveig, come now, Rita. Hop in the water.” And out into the water with her. And out into the water with us.

And we carried on like that for a while, though nothing was normal. And then, suddenly, we saw her again. Eddie. The American girl. She was standing on Lore Cliff and what was special about her was that she had on a red plastic raincoat, a lady’s raincoat, and she had only her underwear on under the coat (it was visible because she was standing and gesticulating wildly with her arms). For an absurd moment we might have thought she was going to jump in now, in her underwear. But no.

She stood there and was furious. Completely terrible, pitifully flying mad yelling at Miss Andrews. But actually also triumphant so to speak. What had happened? You didn’t know. But it seemed as though Eddie, little Eddie, cunning Eddie, had managed to escape out of the car anyway. And she was wearing something she had found in the car.

In some way she had managed to trick the Black Sheep into stopping the car and then she had escaped, run into the woods. And come to the marsh, and found Miss Andrews there.

The Black Sheep couldn’t be seen anywhere and why would he have been, actually? He had completed his task as best he could, that was it.

“Wait!”

When Miss Andrews caught sight of Eddie on Lore Cliff, she snapped so you could see it. “Wait!” That was how she had called to Eddie, but with an entirely different voice, a deep one, one with authority. And the strange thing was that Eddie waited.

Maybe she also understood in some way that she had gone too far. With everything. For her all of this was for the most part some kind, if not a game, then advanced hobby in any case.

Miss Andrews got out of the water. We did as well, wrapped ourselves in our bathrobes and stood there as if petrified for what felt like a million hundred years, an eternity. Miss Andrews put on her bathrobe and her wooden clogs. She said, “Wait!” to us as well, and then she started walking around the marsh up to Eddie on Lore Cliff.

And then the following happened. We stood there both of us, Solveig and I, as I said, and watched. Watched the whole thing like a play, Lore Cliff right in front of us. But there wasn’t any safety in that theater, none at all. We were scared already then. Senseless, just about.

We were nailed in place, whether we wanted to be or not. We just were.

Miss Andrews had come up on the cliff. It started like an argument. An ordinary one, with two people who stand and yell at each other. It went on for a while, in English in Swedish in dialect in all languages.

Then it became a scuffle. It was Miss Andrews who started. And what you saw immediately—that was why we were so frightened also, maybe, Solveig and I, because we already understood something without so to speak really being aware of it—what you in other words immediately saw in Miss Andrews was that she now had a mission. Get Eddie in the water.

They fought. And the baroness, she was strong. And before we knew it, or, that was the worst, that was exactly what we knew would happen, Eddie was in the water.

“Note carefully,” Miss Andrews had said and quoted Pico della Mirandola. “He says
nobly
. One must live one’s life with style.”

And blubb blubb blubb blubb immediately in the next scene, which wasn’t any scene rather a really terrible awful reality, Eddie sank, “a disappointment,” before our eyes in the marsh.

And we stood there and the years passed. Time passed.

Rita, the swimmer, Solveig, the lifeguard. And did, for the most part, nothing.

•••

“Wait!” Miss Andrews yelled from Lore Cliff. “In a moment she’ll come back up. I see her!”

She had in fact sunk immediately, Eddie. Like a rock.

But the current is swift in the middle of Bule Marsh. It is.

And we waited. Stood there and waited. But Eddie, she didn’t come up again.

In some way it was something we had known the whole time.

And suddenly, we didn’t really know how it had happened either, we were alone at the marsh.

Alone from Miss Andrews anyway.

Miss Andrews had left us. Without saying good-bye, which it so nicely is called.

And now it was for good.

But we would see her later, in the house on the Second Cape, the Glass House. We would see her in the Winter Garden, in its aesthetic and light secludedness. In the middle of its fantastic architecture she would, despite the minimal geographic distance, be far away from us. Unreachable.

She wouldn’t see us. Never again. One time, it was on the way to the cousin’s house when she was coming to get Bencku, she would walk past us on the cousin’s property and hiss:

“Poor children. Poor wicked children. May God have mercy on you. This will have to be something between you and me and God.”

“That I promise,” said the baroness/Miss Andrews. “Life afterward is in itself a sufficient punishment to bear.”

That was the last thing she ever said to us, Miss Andrews.

But maybe she was talking about herself.

She was so broken in some way. There was no energy left in her anymore.

We were alone at the marsh. Everything had happened. It was so surreal. Miss Andrews had left.

And it might as well not have happened. It could just as well have been so that Eddie, the American girl, had suddenly just been obliterated from the face of the earth. Or like in that pop song Doris played and played.

“Our love is a continental affair, he came in a white Jaguar.”

That the Black Sheep had actually gotten her to stay in the car and taken her away.

But no.

Still, Kenny. Pico della Mirandola, all of that. In some way I missed her. Miss. Not her, the baroness. But that person. Miss Andrews. And it’s strange, it’s as if it still means something in some way. I don’t really know what I mean by that. But that you
can
do something, so to speak.

Solveig. She would just inhibit me. In everything. When I wanted something. Something else. And she was capable of quite a lot. Setting fire to the woods. She was the one who did that. That terrible day when the American girl floated up again, in the marsh.

Then she set fire to the woods by the house on the First Cape where the Backmanssons lived. So that I wouldn’t go away with the Backmanssons. Never ever away from there. From her, that is. It would be me and her in all time’s eternity, together together, with our own terrible secret.

“Oh,” Rita finally said to Kenny. “What do you have to say now? When you know?”

“I have certainly known,” said Kenny, “quite a lot. But not everything. And I’ve wanted to know of course. And I’ve also suspected—but—”

“So that is why you came,” said Rita. “I mean. Started calling me and so. Because you heard something and wanted to know how things really were.”

“Yes, maybe,” Kenny said softly. “But it’s over now, all of that, Rita. And that’s not why I’m here now.

“But I’m certainly terribly sad about Eddie. She was so young, so stupid. It never passes. But it’s no one’s fault. Or everyone’s. Or however it is.”

And Sandra, in the hall, among all of the shoes, she listened.

“Is that why you came?” Rita had asked.

“Yes,” Kenny had replied. “Maybe. But that’s not why I’m here.”

And thought that it could have been that way for her, as well. With Doris. But it was not like that now. She would never be able to change anymore.

But now, looking it in the eye: it was the following that could not be kept quiet anymore. It had started in the fall, in Inget Herrman’s work lair. During the time Sandra had been alone with all the material that would be sorted for Inget Herrman’s thesis, material that definitely did not shrink with sorting.