This year I have something kicking in my stomach.
“You think you’re so important with all of your secrets. Your damned songs. But shall I sing a folk song for you?” The girl at the cemetery, the lass with the folk song, Doris Flinkenberg, the last time she was there. But it was not Doris who was singing that time, that song, it was Maj-Gun herself, with the mask on. The Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa: Maj-Gun who wanted to tease her, get back at her, angry because Doris had not wanted to talk to her during the summer and had gone and tattled on her to the church caretaker who, furthermore, had gone to papa Pastor and told him everything.
“Last year I walked with the boys in the field. This year I have something kicking in my stomach!” Maj-Gun had sung, she had not wanted to hear any of the girl’s secrets at all at that point. “What do you do if you know something terrible, something everyone has known, all of your cousins, everyone but you?”
Doris, who had been so depressed and spoken so strangely, had, in other words, not gotten any response from Maj-Gun at that point, just a ridiculous song that of course did not exactly make her any happier in any way. But all of her fear of Maj-Gun had, in that moment, fallen away from her anyway; she had just wanted to turn away bam, run away, you could see that, but Maj-Gun had been standing in the way, singing and preventing free passage in the solitary glow of a cemetery lantern in the otherwise compact October darkness.
Until Doris Flinkenberg herself in the middle of Maj-Gun’s stupid song hissed, angrily, almost disgusted: “What the hell do you want from me you damned idiot?”
Then Maj-Gun lost all interest and Doris Flinkenberg left and that was the last Maj-Gun had seen of her because Doris killed herself a few days later. But from there, when Maj-Gun had known that and had all the time in the world to think about Doris and what had been said between them—most of all, everything that had not been said but insinuated in passing,—from there, in any case, a crazy story was born. The Boy in the woods, which here, now in the middle of the square with Solveig, ends.
Like all stories end.
Here again, in absolute reality, realism.
Though the song does not stop because of that; Maj-Gun’s own little folk song, it keeps playing in her head and her body, like a mockery.
And Maj-Gun, on the square, fingers like ice cubes: all of the things she is carrying that slip from her hands, fall down on the ground. “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” the shirt, the carton of cigarettes, the opened pack of cigarettes among others. Because suddenly she has known, an insight that becomes formulated clearly first somewhat later but it comes to her exactly here and now. She cannot keep the child. She cannot. It was never hers.
“Here, the cigarettes.” Solveig helps her pick things up off the ground.
“And good luck with school!”
They go their separate ways, Maj-Gun and Solveig, each in her own direction on the square.
“You look fresh. Pale. But fresh. Have you also started dieting?”
“After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible. Strong character and discipline. Starting anything is difficult. Then it becomes a habit.”
And just a few minutes later Maj-Gun is sitting at the table in the cozy kitchen in the Sumatra house, where she lived as a renter for several years up until the beginning of November, stuffing down Danishes that her former landlady Gunilla had purchased expressly for this afternoon when she has a free period from school and Maj-Gun, as agreed, arrived to settle business. Pay the outstanding rent, empty the room, say good-bye. “Oh, sweet Maj-Gun we’re going to miss you, and the kids will miss you too! They’re at school now. Look at what they drew for you as a farewell present!”
A drawing representing a large monster sitting in a recliner: “Good-bye Terrible Animal Child!” it reads under the drawing in straggling middle school handwriting followed by a red heart, and it cannot be helped, Maj-Gun is moved to tears; she likes those kids so much, the kids who would often stand at the door to her room with the desk and the Thinking Chair upstairs despite the fact that their parents, “Gunilla,” “Göran,” often rebuked them with shhhh, the genius is working, don’t disturb! “Grrr, Terrible Animal Child, come out and play!” The Animal Child, that was Maj-Gun’s own name she used with the kids, she had come up with it herself.
“And how was it at the rectory?” Maj-Gun replies “fine.” As usual she cannot hide how much Gunilla also always appreciated that Maj-Gun Maalamaa, that she in particular, their renter, was the daughter of the former, very well-liked vicar. In the beginning, to the point it was almost uncomfortable.
Not to mention, what a transition. From the other rental place, Java, the rug rags, Susette Packlén, to Sumatra, here. Suddenly being someone. How Gunilla, otherwise a robust woman, a math teacher at the junior high school and the high school, rather round as Maj-Gun herself had gradually become here at the house, but partially due to other reasons, without space, it was true too—that Gunilla was almost embarrassed in front of the old pastor’s daughter about everything that perhaps was not “proper” enough in this house. Not only that the classics were missing and all sorts of good literature on the bookshelves, bookshelves were missing altogether in that sense, instead filled with other knickknacks and record collections, but everything with the furnishings was always turning out wrong wrong… probably had something to do with her senses of color and taste not being as they should be, in a fundamental way, so to speak. Regardless of how she approached the business of furnishing the home, buying wallpaper, paint samples, different types of knickknacks, and other things to place tastefully here and there.
“Maj-Gun, do you think this is nice?” she had a habit of asking anxiously, as if Maj-Gun, just because she was who she was and not to mention was sitting upstairs in her room, “with the Literature,” which Maj-Gun already at that time, in other words, was writing that Book. “The Manuscript,” which Maj-Gun later, with a growing irritation that was not dependent on Gunilla though Gunilla thought so, had corrected her.
“Maj-Gun, do you think this looks nice?” Maj-Gun had replied: “‘1,001 Castles to Furnish Before You Die,’ Gunilla, I don’t know anything about home furnishings.” As was the case but it was also an amusing line from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” at least she thought so herself, but Gunilla had not understood the verve in the quote, had only become sadder. Sighing, uncertain: “Well, maybe one should find another hobby.” And flipped through to a new page in the magazines Maj-Gun tended to bring home from the newsstand and of course she did not have to flip through for very long before, quite right, a new possibility had revealed itself. Inga and Petrus have wine tasting as their hobby. “Maybe that could be something?” But then quickly changed her mind again: “Yes, of course, I know you don’t drink, if you’re going to create something then you need to do it with a sober mind, right?”
And Maj-Gun had smiled mysteriously, like a real sphinx, because at that point she had of course quite simply started hating that word, “create,” but could not show it, she liked Gunilla, after all, did not want to make her sad. “Yes, for a while now I’ve been in the working and editing phase in close contact with the Book Editor, then what is known as the finalspurt remains.”
“And may I ask how it’s going with the Bo—” Had, like always with Gunilla, come back to the same thing.
And Maj-Gun’s angry shrug of the shoulders, which had given rise to even more misunderstandings. “Yes, sorry, I’m walking along like an elephant in a china factory.”