“I was afraid of Eddie, Tobias. She wasn’t honest. In the end I didn’t know who she was. And maybe I don’t know now either. But this: it is just terrible. I’m sorry, Tobias, I didn’t want it to turn out like this—”
And the baroness on the veranda of the Glass House, so alone, pitiful.
And how she appealed to him about an old friendship, fellowship, solidarity.
“Blood is thicker than water, Tobias. But it isn’t everything.”
But still, Tobias left. She is no longer “Karin” to him. Just… nothing.
Because she said other things as well. About the twins, not directly, but paraphrasing, which in some way was even worse.
“I don’t know if it’s right, Tobias. And please don’t ask me to explain. But I want to stay out of this, Tobias. Completely. Everything. God knows I have enough problems of my own now. Of course I don’t mean you, Tobias. But—I’m asking you to respect my decision.”
So that is how it went when the baroness abandoned the twins, when she refused to have anything to do with them anymore.
And for Tobias, who cannot believe his ears yet in some way it is not exactly a surprise either. “Karin.” What “Karin”? A silly dream.
And Tobias leaves the baroness and he never comes back again either.
And that is how it is. The baroness disappears, ceases to exist—for Tobias, and for the twins. And shortly thereafter, as said, she has other people around her, new youths. Blood is thicker than water: her own relatives, a pair of sisters to Eddie de Wire, they come from America—and Kenny, the younger sister, comes to live with the baroness permanently.
In some way she might look a little bit like her sister Eddie, but still, so completely different. Essentially different, so light, Kenny de Wire in white clothes. But a delightful person and above all nothing mystical or mysterious about her.
But in some way it is, will be, in another time, in another world.
Because already during the winter after the American girl’s disappearance the baroness is diagnosed with cancer and that is what she dies of six years later after a course of illness that had been lengthy and painful. The baroness loses the ability to move, has reduced vision and hearing, treatment and medicine make her bloated.
Sometimes you can see her at a distance, from the high hill on the First Cape. The baroness next to her house on the veranda where a winter garden was going to be constructed but it never materializes because of her illness. See her, an ungainly bundle in a wheelchair, wrapped in blankets in the middle of a warm summer day, but turned facing the sea, in large, dark sunglasses.
With her then, the new girl, Kenny de Wire. A calm voice that echoes for a long time in the warm, still summer evenings. A pleasing, soft laugh—that charm, that affability.
None of the alienation that once hovered over her sister Eddie de Wire, with Bengt, on the terrace of the boathouse.
“But Tobias!” Johanna interrupts him impatiently in the greenhouse. “What happened? At the marsh? The baroness never said anything?”
“But she wasn’t there, Johanna,” Tobias says and adds, after a short pause. “No, no, Johanna. I spoke with her as I said. I have a feeling that everything she told me was true. I know, Johanna. I knew her—”
“But Rita then? Who went to the baroness? What did she say?”
Tobias shrugs—“What she saw—”
“But Tobias,” Johanna starts again. “Rita and Solveig then? Did they have anything to do with that… at Bule Marsh? Was that what the baroness meant?”
And, for a second, Tobias looks at Johanna blankly, completely perplexed. As if: my God, no.
“It was just that she abandoned them. Because she had so much else going on. Her own relatives. And it was already so terrible, everything, for her, she thought. But the twins became very lonely, of course.”
Yes, of course. Life goes on, everything passes gradually. But it takes time. The one who killed for the sake of love: Björn who caused his girlfriend’s death at Bule Marsh. Also before that story—which is also a bit beautiful, the young love, so shimmering but unconditional—can come out.
The gloom rests heavily over the District, over the cousin’s house. The poor cousin’s mama who lost Björn, and is beside herself, inconsolable.
But something good happens to her during this time too, which at least makes the sadness a bit more manageable, she gets something new to live for. That girl, Doris Flinkenberg, the knocked-about trash kid, whom the cousin’s mama who loves children, wants all the children to come to her, has also been attached to earlier, gets to come and live with the cousin’s mama in the cousin’s house. It is arranged so that Doris gets a new home in the cousin’s house and Doris, who is beside herself with joy in the middle of all the grief, moves into Björn and Bengt’s old room on the top floor of the cousin’s house.
Small, remarkable Doris, the mistreated one from the Outer Marsh who, after all of the terrible things she has experienced in her early childhood, finally gets some peace around her. And someone like the cousin’s mama loves her one hundred percent and wants what is best for her.
And how they have such a good time together, the cousin’s mama and Doris Flinkenberg. In the kitchen, in the cousin’s house, with crosswords, the music streaming from the radio, the family magazines, True Crimes…
Doris, despite her terrible past, is still in some way so bright. And it soon infects everyone who comes in contact with her, Doris-light.
But, as said: it takes time. Some weeks, months later everything is still open, raw. Maybe also because Eddie de Wire’s body was not found right away makes it difficult to move on. The body floats up out of the marsh where it has been lying, wedged into the mud on the bottom, six years later, at the end of an unusually dry and hot summer in 1975. And then: what is left of the body is just a skeleton, in a red plastic raincoat—plastic is an eternal material. It is Doris Flinkenberg who makes the macabre discovery.
And the other shock: that something like that can happen here.
A period of tittle-tattle, creepiness, feeling ill at ease and a lot of thoughts, other thoughts, about what happened at Bule Marsh when the American girl drowned. Thoughts that do not really belong anywhere, but they still do not leave you alone during this strange time.
You think for example about the baroness—though these thoughts really start coming when the baroness and Eddie de Wire’s sisters, who came from America, have traveled back to the baroness’s winter home in the city by the sea.
You knew of course, everyone in the District had known, that the baroness and Eddie de Wire had not gotten along. “That girl is such a disappointment to me”: how the baroness herself had gone around saying it, increasingly irritated toward the end of the summer as well. And how even then rumors were spreading that the fact the baroness and Eddie de Wire were at each other’s throats was more than just the usual grudges that can arise between an adult and a teenager. But more serious things: for example that Eddie de Wire was said to have stolen things and money from the baroness, forged her signature on proxies, the like. And it had already been going on during the winter in the apartment in the city and the baroness had tried to send Eddie de Wire away during the winter in the city by the sea. But Eddie de Wire had quite simply refused, as if she was dead set on staying. “Where am I supposed to go then?” Played innocent and stupid when the baroness had driven her into a corner, tried to force her to leave.