And then Susette was there again, a big-eyed one, who was a connection, because among all the stories she had in her head, everything she had dragged out of herself, all of the this and that and the Literature, the Critics, with the new landlords, Gunilla, Göran, art was suddenly happening here, in this house like starry-eyed listeners in the house, so that was what she gradually started telling Susette, the rag cutter woman’s daughter, which was the only real thing—and yet that realness did not exist in what was told. Strange? Yes? Because she would become angry at Susette later, and kill her.
Out of love, another story, which suddenly, even though it was not real, also was. All the feelings, everything that flew past, just sitting… Because it was also like that with all of these stories, even though they were a façade for what was real, it was there, so they started, like the story about the Girl from Borneo from Java to Sumatra, to affect her too.
Anyway, confused. Anyway, she got on very well in Sumatra. Better than anywhere else, after the rectory—she loved the children, and Göran and Gunilla. That is what it was like—well. Maybe this should not be investigated further here, it just was like that. Strange. But in the end, a confusing fall, it is this fall 1989, led up to the horrible, the horrible thing that has now happened and that is irrevocable, thus she has been sitting there in Göran and Gunilla’s kitchen serving them stories about the Girl from Borneo as if on a silver platter, and they have been enjoying it so. How beautiful, the seaman, the seaman’s chest…
And of course how beautiful. But what would she do with that story now? And everything else, which she has, as it were, gotten herself mixed up in? Nothing worked. Yes, except maybe. Follow the story line to the end, in order to find the beginning of another story, her own, if afterward—a story that is about losing everything and winning everything but then not knowing what you should do with any of it. Complicated? Metaphysical? Maybe. “We aren’t much for the metaphysical,” as her brother Tom will tell her later in life when they, after a great deal of shilly-shallying, renew their brother-sister bond for real, and then Maj-Gun is able to start a future, become a lawyer, the Red One, become skinny, after the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible, and have her own life, with her own independent rooms to live in.
Well, follow the story line to its end. And then this is not the least bit metaphysical. Just the Girl from Borneo, the Happy Harlot, or the Seaman (and she threw that amulet away somewhere a long time ago of course—does not exist). Because in the final chapter of that story the following now happens: the shipwreck.
And if you have been shipwrecked then you have been shipwrecked, you have come from nowhere to nowhere, are no one—someone who is clinging to a nearby piece of driftwood and lets go.
THE SHIPWRECK
Experiences from the apartment. She becomes the Animal Child. Peering into the darkness. In that apartment, an apartment complex on the hills above the town center. November 1989. Three–four days maybe, does not keep track of the time when she is there. The Animal Child is timelessness, notime.
She is alone there. The pictures on the walls.
“The Winter Garden.” That “exhibition.” At one point in time this was a lovers’ nest, abandoned now, has not been taken down. She does not see the pictures. Was in a story once. The Boy in the woods. There are no stories here, nothing and notime.
She has turned off all of the lights. She is in the dark. The Animal Child’s peering eyes. Dark dots in a darkness. Waiting, different kinds of waiting, rumbling in the pipes in the building, the building is an organism.
Snowfall, slush, rain, snowfall, rain, decay.
Tear apart, “I’m fascinated by the Death in her,” “the manuscript of a life.” Tear, rip into pieces, and “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.”
The wolf, the folk song. A cassette tape from another room. From room to room to room.
Tearing to pieces. Time. Cat food. Sirens, ambulances, police cars, blue lights, waiting, different types of waiting.
Later she is in another apartment. Music surges there in the evenings: Carmen. Ratata. Lucia di Lammermoor’s aria of craziness, it is eight minutes long. At a low volume, in the background, but the walls in the apartment are thin, all noises can easily be heard. The Manager—it is his apartment—has carried his stereo into the room next door: a simple gadget, a small portable record player, two plastic boxes for speakers. He is the one on the other side of the door, which is closed in the evenings, reading, working. Using his small nightstand as a workspace since the desk is in the other room, or his bed, a lot of papers, books, spread around him. She has glanced in.
There is also a dining table in the room she is in, a television, and a sofa bed where she sleeps in a sleeping bag at night, on top of clean sheets. A bookshelf with many books. History and Progress, We Are the Future, Architecture and Crime, a lot of titles fly by. Nordic Family Book, an encyclopedia, several volumes, “half French,” a funny term that pops into her head, from the rectory, another context. Pushes it away, or pushes, does not push—however it is, not consciously. Gardening books, books about butterflies, insects, birds, a herbarium for collecting plants.
They eat their evening meals in this apartment at the dining table at five thirty in the evening when the Manager has come home from work. Watch the news. At quarter past six and eight thirty, both newscasts.
Sometimes the Manager is on the telephone out in the hall, the door is closed, the music in his room is playing. He speaks softly, she cannot make out what he is saying.
Sleeps. A lot. She falls asleep as soon as she rests her head on the pillow with its fresh pillowcase. To the music, Carmen, Lucia, faint in the background. Sleeps calmly without dreaming, long nights, like a child.
The Manager moves carefully around the apartment, does not want to disturb her. “Have a good rest.” She rests.
But the waiting. On the television police cars can be heard, sirens—ambulances. Susette’s empty eyes. When are you coming to get her? Justice. The law. She has no plans to escape.
She does not ask because she is mute, but the Manager just says in general that she does not need to explain if she does not want to.
The waiting. Time is passing. Nothing happens. You get used to it. The waiting. Becomes more abstract with time.
She is alone in the apartment during the day. After a while she discovers that it resembles the other apartment, the one she was in for several days. Rather quite the same, but where you had a wall in the other one here there is a door that leads to a room where she is now allowed to stay. The very biggest room, with the bookshelf and the sofa and the television. And a balcony facing the town center.
The building is located on a high hill, the apartment is on the fourth floor, you can see quite a ways.
When she gets more energy, she huddles on the balcony, wrapped in blankets, smoking. Cigarettes the Manager gives her: he has a pack, Marlboro, which he bought on a cruise to give to guests, he explains, he does not smoke.
“And now it is coming in handy.”
Smokes, looks through the railing on the balcony on the side, the church with the rectory, the cemetery, the old side and the new side, a ways away.
And straight ahead, as said, maybe a third of a mile, the town center. The jumble of buildings, houses, shops. The square in the middle, a square, well lit.