I love you over the plains, church bells? Nah, no. Rather, like this: a road like a path that hesitantly reveals itself in the woods, out of a fog that scatters, for a while. But it can disappear, the fog can thicken again, at any moment. So—hold on to it, the road, the image of a road, carve it into yourself like a map before it is gone.
A rose, your rose, which is thrown at you, your Winter Garden. Take the golden ribbons, Maiden, go into the dance—
And here, now, the birthday. The Manager has finally gotten everything on the table, clears his throat. Ceases with all other business as well, sits down, like her, on a chair, on his chair, on the other side of the dining table and neither of them says anything. They just sit there on their respective sides of the table: saucers, coffee cups, the Enormousbirthdaycake like a half coconut, turned upside down, swollen with a pink, wartlike bud on top. The Law Book, the red silk paper fallen under the table, the bow. Maj-Gun looks down between her legs, picks up the bow, the ribbon, winds it around her fingers, damp, shiny. “Just because you’re a count, Manager,” she starts, looks up, around her, in the room. Two hellish angels with golden stars, bodies made out of empty toilet paper rolls, standing on the television set, weak wings painted with water color, Sister Blue, Sister Red, or whatever it was, The Astronaut? The Nuclear Physicist? Guess which one is which? But HOW interesting, Manager, couldn’t care less. “Just because you’re a count, Manager,” she tries again but it does not work, suddenly the sentence has gotten stuck in her head, the words that were grinding inside her. But at the same time, in this attempt and that sentence which artificially starts running out of her mouth, from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” the newsstand, which goes on and goes on, because it is so long, Count, then it changes and is transformed into a seriousness that is—enormous. “Forget it, Manager,” she mumbles because she does not get any farther, “just forg—”
“Maj-Gun,” the Manager says then, almost pleading.
And Maj-Gun looks up at him lightning quick, meets his gaze, a bird in my hand? “Shall I tell you something?” she asks quickly, heatedly suddenly with an urgency that surprises even her.
The Manager brightens, another story, and you can see he is also relieved. “I like your stor—”
“Something I read, in the newsstand, once.” Maj-Gun cuts him off. “Magazines, informations, Manager, everything was there. About this and the other, quotes, ideas, this and that from here and from there. Something about reincarnation, Manager—
“About people who were convinced they had a life before this one. Famous people everyone had been prior to this life, princesses and the right-hand man of kings, Vincent van Gogh and the like.
“You know what, Manager?” Maj-Gun grows quiet for a moment before continuing, more carefully, hesitating. “I think… about myself… that I—was a relatively lonely person in my previous life.
“Someone who—was in the Lions Club and who liked spending time outdoors, for example. Picking rowanberries with the Nature Friends, collecting plants in a herbarium, catching butterflies. At least in theory, seen as an idea: you could never get away forever, not to mention that the days were long, and you were often tired. But someone who watched the news every evening, quarter past six, eight thirty, both broadcasts. And listened a lot to—music, opera music, for example.
“Had management as my great interest. On the side of course, in addition to the daily tasks during the day, at school.
“Later then… yes, he met someone. Someone who, let us say, might have been from… the Lions Club. Another lion, one of those newcomers. Certain people… other people I mean.” And when Maj-Gun speaks now she is not speaking in a rascal-like way, but hesitantly, her voice filled with seriousness. “Other people who don’t devote themselves to that sort of activity under the guise of friendship and charity, think that only they have interesting lives. They are the only ones who have creativity and personality and a thousand and one wines to taste before they die, a lot of quality in their daily lives and jogging… They, these people, are wrong, of course.
“And how do I know that, Manager?”
Maj-Gun pauses, a few seconds and then, NOW, she looks at him. Stares at him, her whole life in that moment, a bird in my hand, don’t give way now.
“I know that because I have been old my entire life.
“For ages, Manager.
“And sometimes it has been. Strange. Lonely, of course. At this age.
“I thought it would help to, for example, meet people the same age, go to the disco.
“There is so much we think, Manager. Which later, when reality forces its way in, turns out to be wrong.
“A bird in my hand, Manager.
“It is a rose, blossomed. It didn’t help.”
And the words that catch in her throat, but he gets up, he comes to her.
Maj-Gun in the bathroom later, brushing her teeth, looking at herself in the mirror.
Walks out, opens the door to his room. Walks in, crawls into the bed, he opens his arms to her. The Animal Child and the Animal Tobias meet, in the darkness, all walls come crashing down.
The nausea starts immediately the following morning. The Manager has gone to school in the middle of Christmas break to prepare his teaching for the spring semester; “fresh air,” “snuffle a bit at the everyday”… He said ahem, and the door shut after him and a Giantbirthdaycake has been left sitting on the table since yesterday, alongside The Law Book with its bordeaux red spine and the crumpled-up fire-red silk paper under the table as well as the red ribbon bow, curly and streamerlike at the ends. Invoking seasickness, all of it; the nausea has been intense: Maj-Gun rushed to the bathroom and threw up but despite her birthday and the other extenuating circumstances, no avoiding it, she knows immediately what it is. Quite right, it will turn out: the next morning and the next and the next the nausea is back. “What are you babbling about?” The Boy in the woods, in that house that room, with the men in the fields.
No immaculate conception in other words, Jesu Maria Annunciation, a funny word that can be looked up in The Nordic Family Book if you are in that kind of a mood, but Maj-Gun is not in that kind of a mood, will not be either, push it aside, do not think about it at all for a while. “Some bug,” she says to the Manager who is suddenly back that first morning while she is in the bathroom. He has been gone forty-five minutes at the most, stands and counts the minutes out loud in the hallway when she comes out, could not keep her thoughts collected. Out of breath, panting, thin hair wet from the rain, it has been raining hard out there but he has run the whole way and he comes to her.