The Glitter Scene
Also by Monika Fagerholm
The American Girl
Wonderful Women by the Sea
Copyright © 2009 Monika Fagerholm
Originally published in Swedish as
Glitterscenen
by
Söderströms, Finland, in 2009. Published in English by
agreement with Salomonsson Agency.
Translation Copyright © 2010 Katarina E. Tucker
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from FILI
Production Editor:
Yvonne E. Cárdenas
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site:
www.otherpress.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Fagerholm, Monika, 1961-
[Glitterscenen. English]
The glitter scene : a novel / Monika Fagerholm ; translated by
Katarina E. Tucker.
p. cm.
Originally published in Swedish as Glitterscenen by Albert Bonniers
Forlag, Stockholm, c2009.
eISBN: 978-1-59051-420-7
1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Cities and towns—Finland—Fiction. 5. Psychological fiction. I. Tucker, Katarina Emilie. II. Title.
PT9876.16.A4514G5513 2010
839.73′74—dc22
2011013072
v3.1
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force—a wild pain and decay—also accompanies everything
.
DAVID LYNCH:
Lynch on Lynch
Orpheus was going to fetch his Eurydice from the underworld. He loved her so much that the gods who had taken her there took pity on him. Go down to her and she will follow you, but do not look back, do not turn around until you have come up again. Hold her hand, she will follow you
.
JOHANNA’S PROJECT EARTH
THE AMERICAN GIRL IN A SNOW GLOBE
THE MASK, THE ROSE, THE SILVER SHOESTHE OLD SONGS (From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1, Where did the music start?): The Summer of Love, a bench in the park. The Marsh Queen:
I don’t know about music, if what I mean with music, is music.
1967, the Summer of Love, a new hour of creation, we are the Woodstock Nation
. And so it was Jimi Hendrix who was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” He played it like a scream, just the guitar, no words. Without wrath, without the slightest hint of being bothered or as if he wanted to beg for some kind of sympathy. He played the national anthem like it had never been played before, so that there was room for
all
meanings, nuances.
And DeeDee on a bench in the park, 1967, 1969?
It was the summer of hate in any case, the summer of hate, and for me it wasn’t just about going and watching Jefferson Airplane in Central Park and enjoying LSD. It was about sitting on a bench in the park, drinking wine and doing double hits of heroin.
And I wondered if there was some systematic plan somewhere with the purpose of fucking up people in this country, deliberately letting all of the drugs in the country fuck up idiots like me whom they saw as a burden. Everyone knew that the CIA was on the opium smugglers’ side so that the countries they ruled over wouldn’t be sold to Communist China and become red. And because it was so profitable, drugs are money, and where did all of those orange methadone crackers come from? Was it just part of the deal?
IN ANY CASE IT IS DAMNED DISCOURAGING BEING SIXTEEN YEARS OLD SITTING ON A PARK BENCH KNOWING THAT NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING IS GOING TO CHANGE.
THE AMERICAN GIRL IN A SNOW GLOBE(
Johanna and the Winter Garden, 2004–2006
)
The Winter Garden exists, does not exist.
On the Second Cape, a place.
At the same time. A dream, a utopia.
An island that grows inside your head
.
THE CHILD, FLUORESCENT
. Johanna. In the room of dreams, time, history. Pins
The Child, fluorescent
on the wall. The woman on the meadow with the child in her arms, a black-and-white photo, in a thunderstorm, lightning. The child of light/in the light.
An explosion, transcendence.
She is the Child, fluorescent.
Johanna in the room, looks out the window.
The meadow, which reveals itself on the other side of the windowpane in the light of the Winter Garden, dusk is now falling. A corner of the woods farther away, Tobias’s greenhouse on the side of the road, like a quivering yellow spot in the rain.
Lille
. Breathes on the windowpane, an island of mist spreads over the glass, erasing the view. Breathes over and over again, so that the island becomes very large and then writes LILLE in the mist in large, clear letters with her index finger.
Several times over, faster and faster, until the name is obliterated and the window is clear and transparent again.
The road, on the side, the Piss Factory.
From The Return of the Marsh Queen, Chapter 1. Where did the music start?
Patti and the factory, the Piss Factory
. Somewhere, where there really was not anything, not the friendly middle-class family you grew up in. But poverty, the
factory, ugly, fat ladies in the factory. During your lunch break you snuck out to the bookstore to buy your Rimbaud, and then you sat by the conveyor belt and tried to concentrate, your Rimbaud in your head: Rimbaud who was supposed to save your life but you could not know that yet. You thought you were stuck there, forever, in the factory.