And Tom’s rose: dazzling, huge like a sunflower, dark red, becoming in the way it matches his cashmere scarf. Pjutt, drops it, an unnatural gesture, which is exactly why it cannot, with that movement, avoid etching itself onto the retinas of the audience.
But it does not help. My child my child, I am going to make you so happy. The dead one, Aunt Maalamaa, gulping on a ship with her goddaughter a long time ago, a will. It has not been fun, as it will turn out.
Because Maj-Gun Maalamaa inherits everything, the entire estate—“the whole kingdom,” including a winter home in Portugal. In her brother Tom Maalamaa’s face who had the entire coffinhell to deal with personally in Portugal, which he, in the moment he grows pale beneath his sunburn, hisses at the lawyer’s office when the will is opened and read aloud which, according to the wishes of the deceased, takes place first thing after the funeral—these, the aunt’s final requests, which have been quite a few and had mostly to do with the funeral and the shape of it, meticulous instructions, right down to the china that should be used during the reception, a fine china, were neatly written down in a notebook in the nightstand drawer next to the aunt’s bed in Portugal. And Tom and Susette have followed these to a T, with the exception of the seating of the family doctor because, in regard to him, there has in Liz Maalamaa’s notes not been a single mention.
Coffinhell. Tom Maalamaa has given the show away, but only for a few moments, then he pulls his act together again—and forever.
Maj-Gun gets everything, right in front of the noses of the husband’s side of the family too, who have been putting on a show for the aunt since she became a widow. Dick and Duck, amusing maybe, because against the good advice of his relatives’ and his family’s lawyers her husband had refused to sign a prenuptial agreement so everything he owned went to his wife. Properties, stocks, and what in inheritance language is called “loose money,” cash in other words.
The significance of this inheritance for Maj-Gun should not be underestimated. Not due to any malicious pleasure in the presence of the relatives or her brother who had hidden his greediness well with his smooth walking and talking: things like this pass, are evened out. And besides, those differences of opinion they had during childhood, they really were not that bad: mutual frustration and irritation as said, like dogs and cats, which Mama Inga-Britta always used to say.
Not to mention that Maj-Gun is going to give her brother a portion of this “loose money,” including a share of the revenue from the aunt’s home in Portugal when she sells it a few years later.
But Maj-Gun Maalamaa is going to become respectable. A word she quickly learns to master during her law studies, which she starts a year and a half after her aunt’s passing and finishes brilliantly and quickly, with family law, inheritance law, and the like as her areas of specialization. And she finds daily use for it during those years after graduation when she works as a family lawyer at a distinguished law firm in the city by the sea.
But financially independent, djeessuss. It will provide her with a certain freedom—and space. She will have many rooms, rooms upon rooms upon rooms. Will not have to live in an apartment, never live in an apartment again.
“Susette, wait!”
But, still, at the cemetery, the buriaclass="underline" the wooden lid and the flowers, the wreaths, a sea, the ribbons: “wonderful is short,” “a final farewell.” One thing, the most important.
Maj-Gun in a red coat, like a stoplight alone by the grave, she has stayed behind. A few others, a couple, also dawdling on the gravel path. Susette and Tom.
“Wait! Susette!”
Susette obeys, turns around, hesitates.
Tom Maalamaa one step ahead of his fiancée, scarf flapping in the wind, also stops, looks back. Susette says something to him, speaks softly, he shrugs, waves to Maj-Gun “so long”; they are going to see each other at the reception. Removes himself with determined steps, perhaps a bit relieved.
Maj-Gun and Susette. Susette on the gravel path, Maj-Gun who walks up to her. And again: how long ago. The newsstand, all the stories, an apartment, a cat. Susette, to life—an invitation, shoulder pad wearing, in smoke, at a disco. Susette now: her big eyes, eyelashes covered with mascara, but only a bit, and on her full lips, a little lipstick, coral colored, “discreet.” In nice clothes. Gray winter coat, ankle boots, dark gray suede, heels just the right height, elegant.
Rug rags, silk velvet rag—something unexplainable that bound them together. And the District, the marshiness. Maybe it can still, faintly, be discerned, like from under layer upon layer upon layer: the smell of a winter day. Rain that became whirling snow, her wet mittens, fingers frozen anyway, blocks of ice. Wind and tight jeans. That thing inside Susette which made it look like she was always cold. And cowboy boots, boots.
The defenselessness. And: Susette in the hangout. One moment, gone. And nevermore.
Because now Maj-Gun says: sorry. A few times. And, well, she knows it does not make things better by saying it but is there something she can do now?
Susette is silent, picks at the ground with the toe of her boot, globs of snow, earth. Starts, “It turned out… wrong…”
Looks up again, as an introduction to something else, so to speak, longer. Maybe that she, so many years later when they meet again by chance, is going to mention, in passing. How depressed she was, had been. For many years, the Sorrow: over and after her mother—the words she does not have now but will have later. Has had the common sense to get therapy.
Or maybe she, Susette, actually thought about saying something else.
But she has grown silent again, lowered her gaze again, toward the ground and then says softly but clearly, audible and determined: “Maj-Gun. Now you have to promise me something. That you, we, will NEVER talk about this again.”
And before Maj-Gun has a chance to answer, say that she promises because she does of course (she promises something else at the same time in silence: that they, she and Susette, will never ever again under any circumstances whatsoever hang out in any way shape or form), Susette has looked up again and pointed at her stomach. Smiling, in the midst of everything, brought her finger to her mouth: “Sshhhhhh…”
And Maj-Gun, who idiotically, but almost as a reflex, thinks in that moment about pointing at her own stomach as well.
Oh no, still not. Remains an idea and then Susette says, “It is more than a month now. Tom and I. We’re going to get married and have a baby.”
Tom. That rascal—
But at the same time. Maj-Gun remembers. Solveig on the square. In Solveig’s eyes. “A wild pain.”
“Djess… Wow, Susette,” Maj-Gun quickly corrects herself, now you can say whatever you want, came pouring out like from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings,” almost grotesque but still. “Moving fast. At least he shaved off those awful cones on his cheeks, what were they—sideburns?”
Susette laughs. Yes yes, her suggestion, terrible, she has to admit.
And then in the middle of everything, an even bigger smile on her face, and it comes suddenly, almost like an exhalation.