The American Girl (61 page)

Sandra remained standing, facing the sea. Standing and staring and staring so that tears had gathered in her eyes. And at the
same time the song had flown up inside her again, the Eddie-song, stronger and more alarming than ever.
Look, Mom, they’ve destroyed my song
.

The song roared in her head. So that it almost burst. Was it exactly then, in that moment, that Doris raised the pistol to her temple and fired?

But in the air, on Åland, in the house, the room with the veranda facing the sea, the room with the window and the girl facing it, “the aunt’s” words hung there, “the aunt’s” resignation.

And then the following happened: Sandra at the window turned around. From the window, from the sea, in toward the room. In toward “the aunt” who had pulled back to her table where she was sitting puzzling and puzzling. And suddenly it was so cozy to see—especially after the gray and storming and great sea outside. So pleasant to see. Mom. So amazingly delightful wonderful. Tears in her eyes and in her throat, a crying that was hindering her from saying anything at all. But that now came.

“Mom,” said Sandra. “Mom,” she started. And that was what she should have said a long time ago, in any case to Doris Flinkenberg. Not “the aunt,” not Lorelei Lindberg—which she had been called in a game. A name that Doris had made up once, which had matched perfectly. Which had been so important then, which had really been needed. Not only in a game, but as protection against everything hard in the soul from which stories could not be woven. Still not then, maybe never.

“Mom.” Who had lived in the house in the darker part once but had left it and gone with the Black Sheep to Åland. “Managed to get over there,” as she said it herself at the time when you really did not want to have anything to do with her. Neither the Islander nor herself. She might as well have been in Austria, or in New York.

Sandra had turned away from the window and looked at her mother who was sitting alone at the table with her puzzle: in front of all of the thousand million pieces of which all of them were snow or clouds and did not look like they fit anywhere. And her mother looked up, a little surprised, carefully. Almost shyly.

“I’m going to tell you something,” Sandra continued. “About me and Doris Flinkenberg. We had a game once. We called you Lorelei Lindberg. Then we made up a man, Heintz-Gurt, who was a pilot and came from Austria where he lived and he came and got you with a helicopter. It landed on the roof of the house in the darker part . . .”

And so Sandra had told Lorelei Lindberg, “the aunt,” her mother, the story about her mother, as Doris and Sandra had played and told it to each other, over and over again. And her mother, she had really listened for once. Not interrupted with her own comments, which she had a habit of doing before. “I was also interested in movie stars . . .” And all of her own anecdotes that later followed and always in some way were so much bigger and more fantastic than what you had to say yourself.

She had listened.

When Sandra finished Lorelei Lindberg had been so moved that she almost cried.

“So it was so terrible for you too,” she said finally. “If only I had known.”

But then she opened her arms and Sandra, little Sandra, rushed right into them.

“I never thought we would be friends again,” she said. “I am so happy now, Sandra. And so sad. But now. Now everything will be good again. I promise.

“We’ve gone through so much, Sandra. We’re going to manage this as well. Dear beloved child, I promise.”

And the mother had rocked her little daughter in her arms.

And the small, soft silk dog, had wagged her tail.

“Everything will be okay again.”

•••

But of course it was not. Because it was exactly then, exactly in those moments, that—
PANG!
Doris Flinkenberg went up onto Lore Cliff with the pistol, fired.

And the world that had for a short moment opened itself, closed again.

HE CAME TO THE HOUSE IN THE DARKER PART OF THE WOODS
. Sandra did not really know when, but it must have been sometime during the night when she was lying in bed asleep. He was not there during dinner, the long dinner that followed after the long hunt. Sandra had not taken part in the hunt but stayed in the house where she spent the entire morning alone.

The “catering girls” came in the afternoon. For real that is, which was news now since the Islander had married his “young wife.”

And it was fascinating. Also the way the Islander spoke about Kenny in Kenny’s absence. “My young wife,” he said and sounded proud.

Otherwise the hunting league was the same. Men who in Sandra’s childhood had been old men now stuck out in a different way, started having their own qualities and outlines, which they had not had for her earlier. It was Baron von B., who was Magnus’s father whom Bencku was still like grease on bacon with, they lived in some kind of “bachelor pad” together in the city by the sea, you were told.

Then there were Lindströms from the District, Wahlmans from the Second Cape, and so on. And Tobias Forsström of course, like always. Who had now developed a truly sinister attitude toward the firearm and to the hunting in general. That was the main thing, not the party afterward. On that point the Islander and Tobias Forsström were in agreement. They spoke expertly about a lot of exciting things that had happened during the hunt, the one that had taken place earlier in the day, and other hunts. It got Sandra in the mood, in some way, to see the
two men’s understanding and suddenly the memory of Pinky in the Closet had also faded.

“How is it going with the university studies?” Tobias Forsström was also the only one who turned to Sandra especially and asked her anything.

And she lied so politely:

“Good.”

Tobias Forrström became in some way, you could see it on him, happy to hear it.

That moved Sandra. She came to think that maybe you did not have to love Tobias Forrström, but he had his good sides. Him too. When he was in his element, it was to his advantage.

She almost laughed when thinking like that. Also Doris-in-her laughed.

Not a sick laugh either, but a perfectly ordinary one.

The Islander raised his glass to Sandra and said cheers. Sandra raised her glass. They clinked glasses.

It was such a splendid mood that was ruling in the house when suddenly a car drove up.

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

Not just any car. It was a Jaguar, a white one. An antique Jaguar from the thirties, the kind that you nowadays got to drive only a few days a year.

He had a habit of coming over to the mainland and driving it sometimes. The Black Sheep that is. From Åland. Where he lived. And had lived all these years. With her, Lorelei Lindberg, who was now his wife.

The two brothers, the two brothers.

The Islander might have stiffened for a microscopic moment at the dinner table. But not longer than that.

And he recovered immediately. Cast a glance out the window.

“I think we have company,” he said. “It’s my brother.”

And then the doorbell rang. The Islander disappeared for a
while, might have been gone longer than usual, while Sandra and the other dinner guests remained sitting at the table.

There they came later, into the living room, both brothers. Not with their arms around each other now, but almost. And both of them were in a brilliant mood.

There you see it Doris Flinkenberg. Everything passes.

The Islander got another chair and set a place for the Black Sheep at the table.

And so they sat there, the Islander and the Black Sheep, like very good friends, ate and drank and talked about nothing.

They even talked about Åland.

Maybe the Islander would even travel to Åland again sometime. Now when the old stuff did not seem to mean anything anymore.

“Maybe I could steer the boat there sometime,” the Islander said.

He did not say “with Kenny, my new wife.” Because it did not belong there either.

And Sandra, little Sandra, she hid everything in her heart, and contemplated.

Little Bombay. A small unsuccessful store, with fine silk fabrics. Which no one wanted to buy
.

While the days passed they were there, in the store, the little girl and her mother, and listened to music and just talked
.

Sometimes the phone rang
.

Sometimes they waited for the Islander
.

“What time do you think he’ll come today?”

And they guessed right. And they guessed wrong. But he always came, the Islander, when the day was over and took them home
.

That was how it was, a long time. In the middle, as it’s called, of passion’s whirlwind
.

In the middle of the beautiful, soft, like silk, really fine habotai, or silk georgette. Silk georgette, which when you were older you understood
it wasn’t such an expensive fabric—but the girl, the little silk dog, thought the name was so beautiful
.

Silk georgette
.

The love. The passion. Whatever it should be called. Silk georgette. The beautiful, soft ground
.

So one day, the Black Sheep came. It would be wrong to say it was a surprise. He showed up again, but had of course always been there somewhere in the background
.

“MMMMMMMMMMMM,” he said when he stepped into the store. “It smells like MOUSE here.”

And at first it was an unpleasant trespassing. It was. And maybe for a long time afterward. But there were also other things that changed
.

Lorelei Lindberg who took hold of the lamp over the sink and shocks like lightning went through her
, FSST.
She turned around, completely unhurt
.

“Brr. I must have gotten a shock,” she said. Not happily, but rather anxious. It was unpleasant after all. Like an omen. “I could have died.”

Because things had also started happening in the house in the darker part. Small shifts. Arguments that didn’t always end with reconciliation as they usually did. Arguments that were fought without any thought of reconciliation. And the Islander, he wasn’t a brooder, he was a doer
.

Maybe he went too far
.

It was like this: she couldn’t live with the house. She couldn’t be there, Lorelei Lindberg
.

You didn’t really know why. Maybe she didn’t either because it should have been so good. It should have been
.

And she loved the Islander, she did
.

But it was as though a dissonance had come in somewhere, a poison. Maybe it was the Black Sheep
.

“I was going to show you what your dreams look like. Not particularly good.”

“A matchstick house for matchstick people. By the beach.”

The last, “at the beach,” he sighed with all the ironic authority that only someone from the sea and Åland can mobilize at the mere thought of a similar marsh environment
.

He was an islander too. Lived in a nice lighthouse by the sea. On Åland. Where the relatives were
.

He was the Older Brother
.

And not a sympathetic person at all
.

He hadn’t completed a single project in his life, not least his architecture studies, which began chaotically
.

But he would succeed in this game, he had decided that
.

“We were two brothers,” the Black Sheep said to Lorelei Lindberg in Little Bombay. “We had two cats. One cat and the other cat. But there was only one mouse.”

And it really was, in some way, so sick what he was thinking
.

And what the mouse was, at that stage in life—

It doesn’t need to be said. It was so obvious
.

Lorelei Lindberg didn’t care about any of that, in the beginning. But gradually, when it started becoming so strangely lonely in the house in the darker part of the woods, with all of those dreams that now were realized that you were supposed to live up to, then everything changed. Slowly. Slowly
.

That terrible staircase. “A staircase up to heaven,” the Islander had said. But he did not see it himself, that which was so obvious, that it was a staircase up into nothing
.

“I’m going to show you what your dreams look like.”

He had not only drawn the house, the Black Sheep. He had also found the lot; told his brother the Islander about it
.

The Islander, he was no thinker
.

He had forgotten about that game a long time ago, the one with his brother. Now, with Lorelei Lindberg and their little daughter, it was so obvious that you played other games
.

The Black Sheep had “contacts” in that part of the District. He had lived as a boarder with the baroness, a relative of Baron von B. who had once owned almost the entire District, while he was studying to become an architect in the city by the sea
.

It was the baroness who had told the Black Sheep that there might be a lot to buy. And the Black Sheep, he knew what the District was. He had driven around on the small roads there in his old cars
.

The baroness was his friend. But they were not close in any way. She was a relatively lonely person, and she helped him and he helped her, also when he no longer lived with her. Also with Eddie de Wire, the niece. When the baroness was at her most desperate. With that girl who sucked life and soul out of her
.

Who stole, who swindled, who could not be trusted. Who was everything else other than what you expected of her
.

The American girl
.

“Come and take her away away away away,” the baroness had screamed on the telephone to the Black Sheep that last night. “I have her in a room here! I’ve locked her up! And taken her clothes to get her to stay here for the time being! Now she’s going!”

The Black Sheep had come. He happened to have a raincoat, which had been left behind in the car at some point. Lorelei Lindberg’s red raincoat
.