“WHERE IS EVERYONE? I WANT TO PLAAY!” Doris out in the yard again, had become a bit bored with just the cousin’s mama and the crosswords in the kitchen. And the music: I go up to the mountains with my lonely heart—a pop song of the day as good as any other, which she hums where she is standing there on the steps, looking around with a hardtack sandwich in hand.
“WHERE?” Doris yells. Deadly silence. No one answers Doris. But then Doris catches sight of Rita and Solveig and Bengt on the hill on the First Cape.
“I’m comiiing!” And Doris heads off in the direction of the path that leads up to the hill. But no one stays there and waits for her. Bengt disappears and Rita and Solveig make their way down on the other side, leaving the garden and the house that will soon be occupied by others: let’s get out of here as they say in the District.
Enough of that. But also, enough of the twin-unity. What happens happens there even though no one notices until it is impossible to hide it any longer. A crack that becomes a sore that is widened until it can be seen by day, red and gaping. Doris starts running up the hill.
Rita and Solveig walk down, as said. You can see them strolling down the hill, out of Doris’s sight, leaving the garden and the house that will soon be inhabited by other people, let’s get out of here.
Lose yourself. Because what you are, have been together, is not good enough.
And you have started hating what you are.
The game. The Winter Garden, on the hill. Can be determined. Silly. Realized. The utopia. More fantasy was needed than what they possessed in order to make the game, which was really never a game but an own world, real—a possibility. Well, been there done that and no one there is interested in witnessing the development of the fall, from A to B in that way.
And: what remains. The astronaut. The nuclear physicist. A damned many years until college, university.
But at the same time—these are just movements that can be sensed under the surface.
And are never spoken about, almost no fights, reconciliations.
An old Lifeguard’s Medal that Solveig still sleeps with under her pillow. A sign of luck. Talisman. Pathetic. But it disappears, as Rita starts saying: “You are, Solveig, a pathetic.”
But Doris comes to the twins’ cottage that same night. “Today I got, tomorrow I will get and get.” Doris warbling her own little song, a few hours after she raced up the hill on the First Cape only to discover that the siblings had escaped.
Doris in the twins’ cottage, jumping around there too: clumsy dance steps on the floor, tippytoe, today… tomorrow… GET! Doris everywhere, at the table where Solveig and Tobias are trying to focus on her math homework… but mathematics, sigh, Doris does not want that one, yawns theatrically, you become bored after all. So Doris continues on, to the bookshelf, takes out the Swedish Academy’s word list that was Tobias’s Christmas present to the twins and that Solveig used to take with her to the cousin’s kitchen as an aid for the cousin’s mama with all of the crosswords she was solving before all of the terrible things happened and Doris Flinkenberg came to the cousin’s house. Some strange, funny word that Doris can find and take away from there; and Doris flips, flips until she realizes, which she says too, with delight, “I am so little, I can’t read!” And moves on to picking up different things at random, whereupon she stretches out on her stomach on Solveig’s bed, “get and get,” but drowsy now, and then of course after a moment of motionlessness as if she were sleeping, so to speak, she sticks her hand under the pillow.
“Damn it, Doris!” Solveig’s voice suddenly surprises all of them, resounds loud and wild in the cottage. “You put my medal back!” And everything stops, is frozen. Doris above all. Doris sits up, so small pitiful afraid—as if all of the terrible things she has been through bubble up inside her, gather in her eyes in an unbearable way. Opens her hand, it is empty, but says, stammering, “Sorry, sorry…” bottom lip quivering, like a preparation for crying.
“Now, now, girls,” Tobias says but Solveig gets up and walks out, slamming the door behind her.
And later, that night, Solveig goes to the outbuilding farthest away on the cousin’s property alone and she has newspaper and matches with her.
The place where Björn was found when he was dead. It is definitely burning, but just a little, nothing dangerous. The outbuilding itself will fall down under its own weight during a storm, but not until the following year, in the spring.
But suddenly Bengt is there, with the water bucket, and puts it out.
And everyone sees: Solveig standing and crying by the outbuilding. Rita coming, taking her hand, leading her home. They walk, Solveig crying, Rita putting her arm around her. Past the cousin’s mama who is standing on the steps of the cousin’s house, and Doris, heavy with sleep in her pajamas and big boots, just below. Rubbing her eyes, but then, shoots into the cousin’s house and as fast as lightning she is back with a blanket and runs after Rita and Solveig on the field and “if you are freezing, here,” and wants to put the blanket over Solveig’s shoulders. And Solveig stops, turns around, says a soft but very emotional “thank you” to Doris Flinkenberg.
And it is—all of the small things that happen that evening, that night, the only release.
But later, gradually, everything evens out. In the District too: life goes on, everything acute and inflammatory comes to rest, the whispering as well. Is pushed aside by new happenings, bad, good, everything imaginable from day to day, big and small, which draws attention to itself. And Rita, Solveig—they are of course on the other hand completely ordinary youths in the District, students at the school, the coed school and the high school up in the town center. And that is finally what wins over everything that does not exist, that is not left: like the American girl and the baroness and the other summer residents. And the winter comes, the spring, the summer, several summers falls winters seasons.
And at the cousin’s property, in the cousin’s house, there is something about Doris Flinkenberg for real. Her mood, her joy, her light. Which infects everything and brings about a change. Something about Doris, so smart, wonderful—she gradually wins everyone’s heart. With the exception of the cousin’s papa’s of course, but he does not count. He has withdrawn to his room next to the kitchen, closed the door. Sits there and boozes by himself, sometimes does not even come out at mealtimes.
The effect Doris has, Doris-light. Doris who, despite everything, comes and makes everything normal again. And when after that scene with Solveig in the twins’ cottage Doris’s own present-getter zeal becomes weaker, it becomes more fun for the twins and for Bengt to be around her. So that you notice that you WANT to give Doris a lot of things—especially when she is not there in person begging for them.
Doris came like the first orange after the war. The cousin’s mama says many times when she becomes herself again. And Doris laughs, nods and agrees. WANTS to be an orange, but also banana and pear and large green apples of the kind that can be bought at the real store—the whole fruit basket.
“Look, it’s me!” The fruit basket standing on the prize table at the Christmas bazaar at the fellowship hall in the middle of December: all of those wonderful fruits under the crackly cellophane and the red silk bow around the handle. First prize, of course, and Doris points at it, laughs. And Rita and Solveig and Bengt and Tobias and the cousin’s mama laugh too, it is funny of course and Bengt, who has inexplicable good luck with games, buys a few lottery tickets and wins that basket too, which he then, in full view of everyone, hands over to little Doris Flinkenberg.