Cannot be seen, but it is there.
And she does not look toward the town center, sits, as said, on the floor of the balcony, keen on not being seen, not seeing, wrapped in blankets, smoking, huddled.
But the square. It is there after all. The square that is empty for the most part, sometimes a car drives up on it. Hayseeds, “the pistol awakening,” in their vehicles, farmers’ Mercedes-Benzes, all of the fathers’ rusty Toyotas and the like. Driving around around on the square, in wide circles, or tighter ones.
And at the newsstand then. Her personally, on the stool behind the counter in the middle of her busy business. Among the lottery tickets, magazines, and games: not many customers came, especially not during the “wintertime” which included all but three months during the summer.
And then: Ciiiiigarette break! Took the pack of cigarettes from the shelf under the counter where she kept her own things: “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” makeup bag, wallet. Three steps down to the entrance, pushed the door open, lit up.
Hayseeds, if they were still at the square, honking, giving the finger. And she, if she was in that kind of a mood, flipped them off too. Windows rolled down, impertinences, and she, sometimes, yelled back.
The cars disappeared, the sounds of the engines died out; though sometimes, a while later, they were back.
Someone who came walking across the square. A girl from the high school, in fashionable clothes and who, when the cars were suddenly there again circling around her in wide circles, around around, came to a standstill, like Madonna, think about what Madonna has done for fashion Like a Virgin heavy crosses around her neck, in the middle. Nose in the air, eyes looking up. As if: above all of this, toward life, the future whatever, which was around the corner anyway if you just finished grade school, high school, and got out of this hole.
Someone else. Her with the big eyes. The globes. Susette Packlén. Not that young either, your own age. Still, at a distance, so small, minimal. Jeans, cowboy boots—boots.
Surrounded by the cars too. Stood and pretended nothing was happening so to speak. But frozen, not invincible.
And Maj-Gun, suddenly gripped by a feeling of recognition, liked what was inside her so much. And remembered: they knew each other, youth. Rug rags.
Susette who was looking ahead and straight at her. Maj-Gun who waved, “Come.” Or did she wave? In any case, the cars left, Susette came. The one did not follow the other, that the cars would have left just because of that, like cause-effect, but in some way, that was what it felt like.
“I reeled in the fear.” Reeled in Susette. And the quotes pouring out of her mouth.
“A small poor child I am, in cowboy boots, boots. Wow, Susette. The way you look. Do you have any idea what kind of signals you’re sending out?”
A big smile, neither of them could keep from laughing. And how the quote had just plopped out of her, cracked lips, dry mouth, as if she had not spoken for a long time, maybe she had not. And all of the rest suddenly, the stories, were brought to life.
Susette’s round eyes, lifeless in the middle of the laughter. Or empty: you had to fill them in yourself, quite a lot. Those globes. A whole world.
But then, on the balcony. The next memory that rushes in here exactly now, nothing else in between. Susette in the boathouse on the Second Cape. The American girl’s hangout. The same eyes that just stared at Maj-Gun. Stared and stared, surprised but so to speak confirming. As she, Maj-Gun, hit and hit. And Susette who fell and fell and fell.
And snow. Whirling. Her there later, slipping on the cliffs. And beyond, out into the whiteness.
It was from there, from the Second Cape, that she had come to the first apartment. Opened the door with a key she had begged off the Manager somewhat earlier. From this Manager. Perhaps several days beforehand in real time, but still an eon. Spoken about a friend who was away and Maj-Gun had promised to water the plants. Stood outside the Manager’s door in the Manager’s building, this complex where the apartment she is in now is located, and showed off like she had a habit of showing off to him at the newsstand, she knew that he liked it. “Just because you’re a count doesn’t mean…” Dot dot dot. Or whatever she had said, picked a page at random from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.” “Susette! Look here!” and the old man with his lottery tickets had been delighted. He had also known they were friends too of course, she and Susette Packlén from the apartment complex where he was the Manager. He had seen them together at the newsstand.
But then that evening, when she arrived at the other apartment straight from the boathouse, it was, as said, another time. No time, not even the Animal Child’s, because it began to be born there again, later, in the darkness. There, in the apartment, where she had waited. First waited in one way, later in another, but both ways had effectively kept her from making a reality out of all the wild plans she had. The “Getawaybag” she had packed in her rented room before heading off, killer rabbit on a killer journey (that was how she had felt, but not at all amusing). A few blouses, makeup stuff, two pairs of underwear, and the Gombrowicz journals that a book editor thought she should read at some point, “how you can use self-pity productively, carry it to the extreme,” but what was this now really, travel reading?
What was in her bag was forgotten. The bag was forgotten. Rug rags. Discovers a multipurpose knife in this bag later, a knife with many uses, for example as a can opener. Useful.
When she was there, in that apartment, the telephone had rung a few times. She only answered once. That was the first evening, or maybe it was already night.
Susette’s employer, Solveig Torpeson.
She had said loud and clear to Solveig that Susette was sick. Angina. Throat was swollen, could not come to the telephone herself but her friend Maj-Gun was there taking care of her so there was nothing to worry about, “she’s sleeping now,” and they had an appointment at the clinic first thing in the morning so that Susette would get medicine for the streptococcus and a doctor’s note to present to her employer regarding her statutory sick leave.
She had also said that Susette would call when she was feeling better.
It surprised her how the words were formed into lies and how the lies carried her. Carried her voice also, how, from speaking, it became that much higher and more definite, climbing to a story. Statutory sick leave. In another situation she would have laughed but now there was nothing to laugh about.
She never wanted to hear that voice again.
Scenes to add to the Winter Garden: Susette lying on the floor in the boathouse. Blood running from the corner of her mouth.
“If you weren’t so curled up in your own suffering, Susette.”
She had hung up the phone and stood in the darkness in the apartment for a while and looked out the window. The snow had turned to rain and she suddenly understood exactly what it was she had understood in the moment she told Solveig on the telephone that Susette was “sleeping now.” Hey. Impossible. Susette.
She would not be coming back.
She had turned on all of the lights in the apartment. The Winter Garden. That Winter Garden, “the exhibitions” on the walls.
The hacienda must be built. Kapu kai, the forbidden seas, a blue girl on a cliff, a scream. But she had not looked at it. The Boy in the woods. My great love, pure and clean, et cetera. Not that either. Turned on a lamp, turned it off, on off, blink blink blink.
Finally, she turned off all the lights and did not turn them on again the rest of the time she was in the apartment.