“But, Susette: this is where I wanted to get to. Her reaction was not in proportion to how scary it actually was. It was silly of course, she wasn’t a child anymore, sixteen years old already and it was in the middle of the day.
“Later in the fall, then she was in and of itself so far gone in everything that if you had touched her with your pinkie then fjutt she would have sunk down to the ground. I didn’t, of course, just asked a few questions about all sorts of things, the cousin’s house, the American girl—which I had been going around, pondering about.
“But it was crazy, Susette. I just didn’t understand the extent of it all. The gravity. It was only when I heard about the suicide that I understood.
“That she knew something about all of that, which made it so she didn’t want to live any longer. And that was where the fear was coming from, its specific origin, so to speak. Maybe something she had always known but kept hidden, also from herself. But her friend, it had been just the two of them together, those two against the world and that had been a protection against it as well. And when it was gone then there was nothing.
“And the folk song. Came pouring into her.”
“What everything did she know about?”
“Well, of course, the American girl. What really happened. She knew who killed her. And she couldn’t live with the knowledge—
“Because it was someone close to her, a cousin.
“All of them were from there, of course. ‘Cousins’ from the cousin’s house.”
“What are you saying actually happened? There wasn’t anything mysterious about that, was there?”
“Yes, Susette: that’s where the problem lies. When the American girl died people said it was her boyfriend, who was jealous, who pushed her into the water from a cliff at Bule Marsh, and when he realized what he had done he became desperate and went and hanged himself.
“That boy. Also a ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house. There were several there. The three siblings, the three cursed ones. Rita, Solveig, the oldest brother Bencku, the Boy in the woods, in other words. And then Björn, who had come to the house together with the new mother. And when Björn was gone: Doris Flinkenberg.
“But, Susette, there was also someone else who loved her. And she, yes, she loved him too. Maybe even more than her real boyfriend. Despite the fact that it was impossible. The age difference alone. She was nineteen, the Boy in the woods was only thirteen. She had promised him something, but then later, she was leaving.”
“Did she TELL you all of that? Doris Flinkenberg?”
Maj-Gun squirms a little. “Something like that, Susette. But, Susette, I know… Nobody knew my rose of the world but me. That is like the melody to the story. The rose in the wound. Which no one, no one suspects.
“And when I started the conversation about that then, you could see, she felt terror.
“The Boy in the woods. He was also her ‘cousin’ in the cousin’s house you know. And brother to the other ‘cousins.’
“Pure fantasies, Susette. I see what you’re thinking.
“But she spoke about three siblings who shared a dreadful secret. She said that. And that everything was spinning, she didn’t know what she should think or believe about anything. So just sang, folk songs.
“Yes. And then—” Maj-Gun hesitated a little. “Then she died. And when I heard about it… that was when I really fell in love with the Boy in the woods.
“I put two and two together and then it hit me. My love. Was cemented.”
“But, Maj-Gun,” Susette starts. “If you now know all of that for certain, shouldn’t you go—to the police? Or should have gone, a long time ago?”
THEN Maj-Gun pays attention. Then Maj-Gun looks at Susette again, like at a ghost.
“The police? What, the long arm of the law?
“The law’s long fucking arm I say. Don’t you get anything? Djeessus. I’m planning on fucking.
“I love him, Susette. That kind of love. Like a fate you don’t choose yourself.
“I want it to take possession of me. Want and want, moreover. Just as if love… were my will.
“Love him because he died for the sake of love. It’s for real. Something that has happened. And the only salvation.”
“Yes, you’ve said that.”
“But don’t you understand, Susette? Love like a conversion. Like when the princess kisses the frog, the spell that is broken. Or the white cat in the folk song that says to the prince ‘cut my throat’ and I will become your princess and the prince does and she becomes one.
“You have to be careful. You have to come to love. New.”
“You’ve said that too—”
And silence, when it zooms through Susette’s head of course that fundamental silliness in everything Maj-Gun is saying about the Boy in the woods, again: in other words, one Bencku in a barn where people partied and Bencku partied the most and for a while in his youth that made an impression, plus the fact that he was good-looking and the girls in the District had taken their bikes out there just in order to sit, lined up along the walls of the barn in the darkness, slowly becoming DRUNK too while waiting to be seen and some were cuter than others and then they were seen more often and so on. Starling darling kiss ready for the evening entertainment. It must be Maj-Gun Maalamaa in order to get something meaningful out of that.
But at the same time, on the other hand. Something that effectively obscures all desire to laugh for example. The three siblings. The cursed ones. Bencku, Rita—and Solveig. And Doris Flinkenberg, with the folk song. Not because Susette had not known, but she had, so to speak, not thought about Solveig that way. Solveig in the company car, Doris Flinkenberg on a cassette tape. Nah, Susette does not know anything about Doris, that fall when she killed herself, Susette had not been in the District any longer. And the cousin’s house, where Susette had cleaned, cleaned, the old man, the cousin’s papa. Who had died—and not that long ago either. And there, in the cousin’s house, after the ambulance had left she walked around with death in her hands.
And so, still, how all of that is also suddenly obliterated because of another image, another scene.
Just: a terrified girl at the cemetery, Maj-Gun with the mask, the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa.
“Damn it, Maj-Gun! You scared her! With your damned mask! And do you HAVE to say the Boy in the woods all the time? He’s probably a hundred years old and his name is Bengt!”
Damp. Down on the ground, reality. Maj-Gun grows quiet, does not say anything, looks down—at her hands, her nails.
“My bladder is about to explode,” she says then and gets up. “I have to go pee.”
And she walks out into the hall and into the bathroom. Susette gets up off the couch too, opens the window slightly and fresh air pours into the room. Starts picking up empty coffee cups, empty ice cream bowls and carries them into the kitchen and turns on the hot water and puts the dishes to soak in the sink.
A relief, as if something had let go, no fury, nothing is pounding now. No “What does Maj-Gun want from me? What is she doing in my apartment?” No feeling of connections, rags, fungus.
But just ordinary, normal. The cat is purring at her legs now, begging for food because it is hungry. Susette takes a can of cat food out of the cabinet, looks for the can opener but as usual does not find it, takes the old pair of scissors instead, uses the tip to make a gash in the lid of the can and bends it up, ladles the food out onto a plate and sets it on the floor in front of the cat who starts eating.