And then, since this is over on her part, experience some sort of superiority in relation to all of this. In relation to the new stuck-up shop assistant who did not want to have anything to do with her, and also, in some way, in relation to herself. The one she once was but is no longer. NOW when so much had happened and a new page had been turned in her story: new life in her stomach, The Law Book under her arm (figuratively speaking, hell, no one goes around lugging that tome around out here on a cold day like this!). A change had arisen, which could, for example here and now, also be seen in that she had actually managed to keep her mouth shut when necessary. Despite the fact that her tongue had undeniably been itching to speak, she refrained from beginning any form of sarcastic dialogue filled with ambiguity with the new one here; but of course you have seen that, one of those girl shop assistants who can be knocked over with subtleties in three seconds flat—all of which Maj-Gun was once so good at.
But, then, had not felt anything at all. Just looked out over the square, that possibility, and suddenly completely unrelated to everything Maj-Gun understood that she could easily be here again. Stay in the newsstand, continue being here. Would not need many days, not even one, not more than a few hours and everything would in some way be the same again, that timelessness. Going back. Difficult to explain maybe but not mystical, not a bit. Just calmly established so to speak, as it was, is.
“You can say just about anything here.” All of the tips, coupons, and games. “Everything about…” all the magazines. Be happy every day and “Are You Borderline? Test Yourself!” Sticky lip gloss under the counter, a hundred miniature plastic containers originally prepackaged in small crackling transparent plastic bags glued to magazine covers but carefully pried off with the use of a paper knife, when I wanted some! Various hues, Blue Anemone and Pearl Rain and Champagne—
But at the same time, at exactly that moment, Maj-Gun understood something else as well. Whether it was with the life after this one or whatever it was, for example all of the phenomenal views in it—and she will have them… from the window at the law firm in the dapper southern area of the capital city’s center, from the Municipal Legal Assistance Bureau in the northern part of the country (a square again, but rather small), even by the sea, the wild sea as it will appear from a patio in Portugal from a house she will inherit from her aunt. At the top of a mountain that falls right down into the sea. Yes yes, fantastic, three thousand feet below: breakers, the foam, the salt, the birds, and the horizon, all of the nuances in it… still all of this, all of these views, in the end rather interchangeable after all. In any case that is how it was with the future, law, all of the houses she is going to live in and own, all of the properties—she knows NOW that it is this view in particular, the view from behind the counter at the newsstand, or from the newsstand’s door where she had a habit of standing and smoking, the same square, this square, in the District, the town center she has stared at the most in her life, that will come to live inside her the most. Be her most, regardless of whether or not it means anything.
“Where are my things?” The girl has stopped humming, shuffles lazily toward the back room but hesitates immediately, because she does not want to drag a former shop assistant in there either really, not to mention a complete stranger. On the other hand she also wishes Maj-Gun Maalamaa would leave and in other words quickly disappears behind the curtain to the back room and is back a few seconds later with the stupid plastic bag that she pushes over onto the other side of the counter. Maj-Gun takes the bag, peeks inside: sweaty tiger blouse, half a carton of cigarettes of an unusual brand, “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.”
Today is the first day of the rest of your life. The card? The girl shakes her head, shrugs her shoulders, but the card has undeniably been removed from the cash register; there are not even any tape marks left on the aluminum, that girl really has scrubbed and polished and had many things to do. “Forget it.” Maj-Gun takes the plastic bag, goes on her way—it was not really that important anyway, the card, it was not even hers; had been there from the beginning when she had started, but certainly thought she would like to have it with her as a memento, in some way.
“Wait!” the girl yells when Maj-Gun is already almost out on the street. “THE POISON STICKS from here! I don’t smoke!” The girl with her fingers like a clothespin over her nose and…
“Yes yes yes.” Maj-Gun Maalamaa lumbers back up the three steps. An opened pack of cigarettes from some corner on the shelf under the counter, cigarettes into the bag and Maj-Gun hurries out, never returning to that newsstand in her life! Across the square, toward the boarding place in the house “Sumatra” in the lush neighborhood to the right with the plastic bag that ripped at the bottom after only a few feet, the contents spilling onto the ground. Picks up “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” shirt, carton of cigarettes, and with more or less all of this in her hands continues and then there comes Solveig Torpeson walking toward her.
They meet in the middle of the square, as if they had arranged to meet in that exact spot. Of course they have not, they barely know each other. “My deepest condolences,” Maj-Gun says in rectory language, a language that resides in her bone marrow but she despises how it automatically pours out of her in that moment.
Because what she sees: “a wild pain.” In that face, in those eyes, in some way the entire posture. Winter jacket is buttoned halfway, no hat in the bitter cold, scarf wound too tightly so that glimpses of thin white skin shine through the knitting—indefensible. No. No façade here, no rosy nights or birthdays, nothing. But—accidents. The folk song. Has many verses. Same thing in every one. Pearls on a necklace. An eternal repetition. Over and over again.
“Such a different way of looking at time.” An old cassette tape in an old room, the renter’s room, played and played, a few months back in time. Maj-Gun suddenly hears it NOW, in her head, and so clearly: a whole story rolled out, again.
The Boy in the woods. Susette in the hangout. And again: “What are you babbling about?” Freeze that picture now. It does not help.
“I love you because you killed for love.”
“What are you babbling about?”
The Boy in the woods. A stranger. She did not know him. Except as someone in a story, her story. No idea who he really was. But he, who he was later: in the room, the cousin’s house, before she had gone to the Second Cape and the boathouse and before a hellish snowstorm had started outside while she was lying, sleeping in the boathouse, dreaming about the hayseeds who were shooting on the square, and before she was awoken by a shadow outside the window, on the veranda.
But her in that house. “What are you babbling about?” She had already wished then that she said what she was first inclined to say, aside from all of the stories, everything: “But dear friend. Regardless of who you are, you can’t stay here in this shithole, the cold, come away now. I’ll lend you money, we’ll buy you a bus card!” But she had not said that. Instead, that other thing.
“What are you babbling about?” He did not say it once but two–three–four times and he was already cuckoo drunk. And she was smoking cigarettes, smoking cigarettes and then, case in point… dot dot dot what had happened had happened, not much else to say about it.