Imagine: Sandra Wärn after her friend’s death. Among all the fabric, in the waterless swimming pool. Colorful, shimmering lengths she wrapped herself in, and fell asleep. Slept and slept, in sorrow, inconsolable, wrapped in fabric. But from them, like from a cocoon, the Marsh Queen was born, the one who went out into the world, to the music. Never returned, but—forgot nothing. All of it, the house, the swimming pool, her and her friend’s world, all of the fabric, she took them with her to the music. Wrote songs about them, such as one called “Death’s Spell at a Young Age.”
She has talked about it in interviews. But smack, back to reality. At that point in the story the Marsh Queen stops herself, almost throws everything away, tears the silk fabric into pieces… “Oh, maybe it’s just a way of saying something else. Maybe I left because I wanted to be with people called Jack, Vanessa, Andy, and Cathe—”
“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille.”
And that is just about how it is, at the basement window in the house in the darker part, that day, one afternoon in November 2006, when Johanna suddenly hears a voice behind her, turns around fast as lightning, and stands face-to-face with Ulla Bäckström.
The same Ulla yet another one, different. Certainly older than two years ago in the field, wearing completely ordinary clothes now. Jeans, dark blue quilted jacket, a red hat pulled down over her ears, out of breath, as if she had been running. And she has something in her hand. A toy mask.
“Crehp, crehp, Lille. Through fabric, long strips. Curls down into a bucket. While she’s talking, talking, Djiissuss—you never get away.
“Maybe she’s crazy, Lille. You must know who I’m talking about. The Red One. What’s her name? Maalamaa.
“But Lille,” Ulla adds, looking around, confused and at a loss, “it’s as if you’ve put a ball in motion.” She grows quiet for a moment and then Johanna understands what it is about her that is different. Ulla Bäckström is afraid. An ordinary empty rotten day in the woods, cold, the first snow is about to start falling again.
But terrorstruck, the fear stinks, screams in her for a few seconds even though she immediately does everything in her power to fend it off.
“My God, Lille,” she calls. “I am so DAMNED tired of it. I’m not interested anymore, I never think about it.”
“About what?”
“The American girl. It was just one project among many. I’m doing new roles now, new manuscripts. The world is filled with manuscripts, Lille…”
“What are you talking about?”
Ulla Bäckström comes closer, the fear is suddenly blown away, her voice is steadier. “You know, Lille, it was like this, when I played the American girl, played her on stage. Or it becomes like that. If you do the same thing over and over again, play the same story in the same way, beginning middle and end, the same scenes, same same, over and over again…
“Are on the cliff and die of love, fall fall, every time the same way… that, well, it becomes a bit monotonous. And then it can happen that you start thinking about other things. Or just this repetition that makes you uncertain, you start asking yourself: was it really like this?
“You know, with that story. The American girl. You start thinking about other possibilities.
“Björn who killed himself. Her boyfriend, after she had died. But Bengt, the other boy, the one in the woods, who loved her too. Who was he?
“If it was him… And then, when you start thinking like that you sort of became unsure about everything.
“I gathered material. Sold flowers in the Winter Garden. But I didn’t get anywhere. Then you start asking around elsewhere, here and there. Putting balls in motion, Lille. Google, write some messages… and then, gradually, you come across someone”—Ulla pauses—“whose name is… Maalamaa.
“Well, there’s not so much to say about that. But now, Lille. The Red One, now she’s here. In the Winter Garden. And I’ve been there.
“And she talks about completely different things—
“Strange things. Like, well, that change everything.
“And suddenly, even though you don’t want to hear any more, you get hooked.
“She cuts rags for rugs, Lille. Heavy scissors, crehp crehp through the fabric, curling down into a bucket on the floor—”
“What does she talk about?” Johanna suddenly asks, loudly and eagerly.
Ulla Bäckström stops herself, stares so intensely into Johanna’s eyes that Johanna almost regrets asking.
“Well.” Ulla shrugs. “Just different stuff. She knew that boy, Bengt. Well, he wasn’t a boy then any longer, a grown man… the one who died here, burned in the house.
“But that—maybe there was another secret. About what happened. Also with the American girl. Where everything started. Three siblings, Lille, who were united by a secret that should have kept them together but instead it drove them apart and everyone turned against each other. Is it fam—”
“What three siblings?” Johanna interrupts her.
But then Ulla suddenly laughs and puts on the mask she has in her hand.
“You know, Lille,” she yells, with the mask on. “And her name is the Angel of Death Liz Maalamaa—and your moooootheeer HA HA HA!
“And SO, Lille, it becomes an entirely different story. About two people and a newsstand. Maybe you know it too? HA HA, Lille! Buhuu!”
And with these words Ulla turns around and walks away, November 2006, for the last time.
“Dark boring groupie,” she yells. “EVERYTHING can be stuffed into your head!”
But that same evening, though much later, almost night by that time, Ulla Bäckström is standing on the Glitter Scene, the glass door wide open. And she falls, flies out.
A shadow behind her, that mask. The Angel of Death. Liz Maalamaa.
To add to the Winter Garden. Ulla falling, the mask, Screaming Toys.
It howls through this experience, screams, Screaming Toys.
But Johanna, still during the day, has run home from the woods, the house in the darker part, to her room.
The American girl in a snow globe.
Bengt in the woods.
Three siblings united by a secret.
Solveig closing the curtains in the kitchen. Ritsch. To her the Winter Garden does not exist.
Rita’s Winter Garden. The Rita Strange Corporation.