The American Girl (59 page)

Periodically it was an interesting job, but rather monotonous, especially if you did not have Inget Herrman’s main topic, what it later happened to be: “This is interdisciplinary in the most genuine sense of the word,” Inget Herrman herself had said and Sandra had nodded, though rather short. In some way Sandra was not very interested. She possibly lacked the enthusiasm that Inget Herrman used to say was the prerequisite for a successfully planned and carried-out research project. Sandra had in other words noticed that her thoughts and attentiveness had started to wander.

Instead of “have your thoughts purposefully concentrated on the task at hand,” which Inget Herrman said was the alpha and the omega for successfully planned and carried out research, Sandra noticed her thoughts started wandering around, as if under their own power, in their own directions in this little apartment that consisted of a cooking corner and a room whose walls were lined with bookshelves cluttered with folders and notebooks and books and paper paper paper paper. In the beginning she was not interested in these bookshelves. She had enough paper with
her sorting work. Every morning the desk was overflowing with paper, paper that was “the day’s job assignment” for her, Sandra, as Inget Herrman so purposefully expressed it.

Later, little by little, Sandra started getting up from the chair at the desk and walking around the room. And since there were not so many things in the room on which her wandering gaze could rest, it had still moved in the direction of the bookshelf and the folders and the texts, written in black and red ink, on the spines of the folders.

Moved her fingers over them, pulled, in places, lines in the dust.

“Diary, minutes,” and different years following.

There was, it seemed, just about not a single date in Inget Herrman’s life for which there was not a record.

She looked at different years and pulled out books here and there. San Francisco. Sven Herrman (that was Inget Herrman’s husband, a long time ago, “in another life,” as she Inget Herrman had a habit of saying).

Gradually it had maybe struck her that she had so little interest in anything that had happened in Inget Herrman’s life, who she was, where she came from, and so on. Considering how bewitched she had been by her sister, Eddie de Wire.

Maybe she was still bewitched. She could still evoke that voice inside her. The American girl’s voice.

“I’m a strange bird, Bengt. Are you too?”

“Nobody knew my rose of the world but me.”

Sandra had pulled out a few folders from that time, which had also been the Women’s time in the house on the First Cape. Started reading. Record from “Us and Our Men”—study group in relationships the fall in the year Doris died. Record keeper: Inget Herrman; record adjuster: Anneka Munveg; that sort of thing.

“The meeting was about our relationships with men. We agreed that we are sooner objects of too much attention than too little. There are too many men in our lives. Not too few.”

She had not been able to read any farther. But she continued rummaging in the apartment. And it was in the broom closet she found a few plastic bags that contained paper topsy-turvy. More “material.” And she poured the contents out on the hall floor and by chance so to speak her eyes fell on a large brown envelope labeled “Women in a State of Emergency. Thesis material,” and then the year when Doris died. In the envelope there was more paper, and another envelope. A thick letter, and it was unopened.

It read “To Inget Herrman” on the envelope. And a date, which was Doris’s date of death. It was Doris’s handwriting. She did not understand it right away. Then came the discomfort.

And the earth stopped spinning, for a while.

At the same time as it was not a surprise, not really.

“If you haven’t said what you had to say during life then there’s no point in getting verbal diarrhea just before your death.”

That was how Doris herself had explained it to Sandra once and several times when they talked about whether you should leave a message behind if you committed suicide, or not.

Doris had really sworn it so many times.

Oh, Doris. You said that
.

Still, it was a relief also, in some way. To see and understand that Doris was not so stubborn and consistent, so honest and so, which you had so to speak started seeing more and more after her death. Sandra, that is. Sandra created this image of Doris, who knew the truth, and also knew what Sandra had done.

This was namely nothing more than Doris Flinkenberg’s goodbye letter, written to Inget Herrman. An appallingly thick, unopened envelope and an actual bricklike novel inside.

The other thing that was clear and maybe even more powerful, almost dreadful, was that the envelope was still unopened, the letter inside unread. Doris had put it in a place where she had been sure Inget Herrman would find it. And where else than among the material for Inget Herrman’s thesis?

How Doris had gotten it there (though that was not the most difficult thing to understand; as said, Doris had, you had seen that, her head full of her own tricks).

Sandra and the letter
. She had carried it to the desk and laid it on the table. Pushed away Inget Herrman’s remaining “material” so that the letter would have room on the desk, lie there alone on the desk’s empty surface.

Still unopened.

Then she sat down at the desk and pulled out the top desk drawer as far as possible. At the back, the very back, almost hidden, there was a small flat and unopened quarter-liter vodka bottle. She had discovered it a long time ago.

Now she took the bottle and screwed off the top and took a slug. Then she sat down to wait. She waited and waited.

When she was not able to wait for Inget any longer she stopped caring about any of it and opened the envelope, unfolded the letter, and started reading.

And there it said what she somehow the whole time had known would be there.

And some other stuff. Not much, but some.

What did Sandra do then?

She sat there as though petrified and tried to take in what she had read and relate to it and what she should do now. Should she stay, should she wait, should she leave? She finished the vodka and waited until it started growing dark.

Inget Herrman did not come. She put the empty bottle farthest back in the desk drawer, took the letter and put it in her bag, and left Inget Herrman’s apartment.

The moment of opening was over.

The next day she had been in Inget Herrman’s work lair as if nothing had happened.

Then Inget Herrman showed up in the middle of the second
shift and immediately took a small unopened bottle of vodka from her bag and placed it on the desk between them.

“As a little tip. If you pinch from other people’s bottles you should preferably tell them. It can save another person’s life.”

Then she started laughing and screwed off the cap and took a gulp from the bottle.

Sandra said that she had a headache and needed to go home.

And later, the whole fall she had on the tip of her tongue—

But she had not returned the following days and when she had gone to see Inget Herrman again Inget Herrman had disappeared.

I
HAVE TRIED SO MUCH,” KENNY SAID TO THE ISLANDER AND
Sandra listened. Their voices were low but could be heard well out in the hall where Sandra, another time shortly afterward, was sitting in her pajamas on the floor next to the telephone table, under coats, among the shoes in the middle of the night, listening.

“But it’s like sand has run through my fingers,” Kenny continued in the bedroom.

Kenny cried, a child’s tears. Inget Herrman’s words: “She hasn’t had any childhood. She has a lot to make up.”

The Islander consoled Kenny. Clumsily and with great benevolence. Fatherly. But it was not him, you could hear that. In any case Sandra heard it so clearly. Did Kenny hear it?

“It’ll be okay, Kenny. Calm down.”

With a voice that certainly wanted. Wanted to be someone who stood behind his word, every letter, an Islander, who still could not . . . the voice broke. And suddenly, in the middle of Kenny’s exhaustion and tears, the Islander started sneezing.

“I love . . .” the Islander started as if he was also playing a part in a bad TV series. And
achoo
, he sneezed, as if to what, buy time?

“I’ve tried,” Kenny sobbed in the bedroom. And no one could deny that. To the best of her ability Kenny had even tried to take care of Sandra. And the object in question understood that
it was an undertaking, if she was in the mood to think along those lines. She had not been bad at it either, Kenny, not even after they had moved to the city by the sea and Rita had shown up—the trips to the Film Archive, the parties, “Sandra, come along,” “Don’t sit at home and stare in front of you,” “What do you want to do today, Sandra?” “Should we do something really fun today just the two of us?” And she who had just shrugged her shoulders. “No. I have a lecture. I should study for an exam.” And the attending to life’s practical details, to manage them was almost automatic for her. This feat, of keeping everything afloat without anyone noticing. “A man’s woman,” as Inget Herrman had said.

“I don’t know.” Kenny sobbed now, sobbed and sobbed, in there in the bedroom, in the Islander’s arms.

The house in the darker part of the woods for example. It was through Kenny that it had been made somewhat cozy despite the fact that Kenny, as she said, was not interested in home furnishing and the like. It had also been Kenny’s idea to leave the house for the winter months. It would be more comfortable in regard to Sandra’s studies, which was of course true. Though already in the house in the darker part the phrase “Sandra’s studies” had evoked a smile in Sandra herself. Sandra’s studies, was that not one of the silliest things you ever heard?

But it had impressed both the Islander and Kenny that Sandra had of her own accord applied for the entrance interview for the major aesthetics and philosophy with the Department of Philosophy at the university in the city by the sea. She was not exactly full of initiative, Sandra, and with Kenny who was so active and mobile and so honest and straightforward all of the strangeness and slowness in Sandra stood out.

Kenny had found and bought the apartment in the city by the sea, which was of course amazingly light, amazingly beautiful, and with a gorgeous location near the sea. Naturally you
needed a lot of money to live like that. And of course for the Islander, which he still in various ways gladly explained, money was a minor problem. But now so to speak moderated in a way that embarrassed Sandra more than his impressiveness before. Quite simply because it was not him at all.

But you also need a nose and luck and an eye; the apartment was in a bad state at first, and Kenny put a lot of energy into planning the renovation. Nose, luck, and eye: Kenny had THAT.

“It is your project,” the Islander had said to Kenny.

What he had meant by that, Sandra if anyone knew, was also that he personally was going to continue sailing boats abroad and therefore be gone most of the winter. And, yes again, there was such a contrast to the Islander who one day in the history of the world had stood in front of the alpine villa in the Central European Alps and spoken those magical, fateful, but yet so effective words: “Can be done!”

“You do as you think best,” the Islander had said to Kenny. They were still living in the house in the darker part of the woods then and Kenny’s two dogs had died. She had gotten two golden retrievers, and two months later they were dead. It had turned out they suffered from a hereditary illness. First one of the dogs got an attack, which lasted half a day, it had lain frothing and cramping on the bottom of the pool among the tropical plants that withered away one by one despite the lamps and being carefully watered—it was in any case too dark and the wrong kind of damp or whatever it was. The veterinarian advised Kenny to have it put to sleep. Kenny decided to put the other to sleep as well, even though it had not gotten sick yet.

“I’m not going to sit here and wait for him to get sick as well,” she said.

And shortly thereafter she had gotten in touch with the real estate agent and headed out to see apartments in the city by the sea.

It was actually the only time, with the dogs, that Kenny had been discouraged.

In the fall Kenny and Sandra had moved to the city by the sea, the Islander had headed out to sea. He was not running away of course, or anything. He loved Kenny. No question about it. Could not do anything else. He said that, even to Sandra, one time when he had too much to drink and called from wherever he was in the world.

“You can’t do anything but love her,” he said.

He said it in an unfamiliar way. And furthermore, why would he say that to her, Sandra? And, Sandra had also thought: it was, as said, not at all his way of talking either. The Islander’s way was not the humorless, serious way that had started spreading around above all on television and formed itself so that the words lost their meaning.

Loved and loved. Anyway. It was powerless. Meant nothing.

The embrace of powerlessness
. One time Sandra surprised Kenny and the Islander in an intimate moment in the house in the darker part of the woods. She had been embarrassed, also because she had a hard time getting used to the Islander touching Kenny in that way, Kenny who was not much older than herself. But that was a small matter. It was something that could be lived with. It was not so bad. But this: they had stood at the window and embraced. By the little, little window and you could see a foggy day outside, you could see the jetty and the reeds; it was the time of year when the house in the darker part was at its best. Just before the snow fell, when all the vegetation had withered. Kenny had not been crying then, but her face was pale. The Islander buried his face in Kenny’s shoulder and he was leaning toward her with what looked like all of his weight. They had clung to each other.