Actually, Tom Maalamaa thinks in the car in Rosengården about his wife Susette, that there is a lot he does not know about her. But that is okay, as it should be. There are mysteries, air between people, especially the ones who are closest to you. He has a habit of saying that to his wife sometimes. She agrees, nods, smiles, looks at him, her beautiful eyes. Which he cannot “read”; her look. Still, even though it was many, many years ago, he can remember the time she came to him in his tiny bachelor pad in the center of the city by the sea. It was that year, 1989, when they met again after having been together for a short period as teenagers when they were both living in the District. That fall, somewhat earlier, he had, after many years, run into her anew at a disco in the city by the sea. Actually that time he had only seen her at a distance but it stirred something old in him to life. Strongly.
He called her a few times that fall and they had seen each other, fleetingly, at a café. She had been evasive, distant, and he already had time to think: disappointment. But then in November, that same fall, November 1989, one night, a telephone call from her: “You have to come.” And he had come, he had found her, picked her up. So still, because she was the one who had called, because of that attraction in her, in the end it was still she who had come to him.
Moving. Those eyes, of course. But also something else. There was, in other words, in all of her something appealing, in general. Had been there from the beginning, as a teenager. And at the same time, when you thought about it, with that word, determined it in that way in your head, it still turned out wrong. It was still something else.
Which maybe was something that could not be expressed in words, and it had always existed between them.
She and he, Susette and Tom: what had really started as a game during childhood, and not even an innocent game, one she really had not wanted to get involved in. But a game he had played with his sister Maj-Gun, in the rectory. A restless childhood, not on the outside, but maybe exactly for that reason, in peace and quiet, a certain frustration. They were two children who had, in some way, not really done themselves justice; there were growing pains of course, because it passed later. But there are children who are not in step, not with other children or with their childhood in general. In step with their childhood the way they expect it to be: often intelligent children, sensible—because only intelligent and sensitive children clearly sense such expectations from their surroundings. Especially unspoken expectations, and they can, these children, if they are keen, receptive, be petrified by them. Not difficult children, but calm ones: children without all that energetic spring inside them that would make it possible for them to rush away from all thoughts, feelings, revelations.
“That old age in us,” as his sister Maj-Gun said on the telephone later, when they had gotten back in touch with each other a bit. No intensive socializing, but sometimes telephone calls, sporadic. “Old age.” Hm. His sister Maj-Gun had, in and of herself, always been the older of the two of them, and far more dramatically minded. In that childhood, youth, she also had a way of going whole hog, trucking on until the bitter end. For example, a chapter, which the siblings had not touched with a single word afterward, also belonged to that time. The Day of Desire. The Happy Harlot. Hamba hamba. How his sister danced for him in his room in the rectory, hot summer days, inside, where it had been quiet and pleasant and cool alongside the hot, taxing summer day. Been the Happy Harlot from the docklands in Borneo. “There aren’t any docklands in Borneo, it’s just jungle,” he had of course soberly, precociously pointed out to his sister then already but still played along: clapped his hands in the dance, whistled, “like a sailor,” hamba hamba.
As a game it is silly, especially described in this way, in hindsight. But on the other hand, children, even siblings, sometimes play lightly erotic games with each other, that is normal. But he had, of course, felt ashamed afterward even back then, during his childhood, youth. And actually sometimes already while the game was going on thought it felt good to leave it behind and get out into the summer day—even if he later did not really know what he should help himself to there. Consequently, since an adult had literally chased both obstinate siblings from the room out into the fresh air: their mother, sometimes Aunt Liz who was often visiting at the rectory during that time despite the fact that she was married and living with her husband in another city. But her husband was violent, had drinking problems, and the aunt sometimes needed to get away and “rest.” The mother or the aunt would tear open the door to his room where he and his sister Maj-Gun were spending their time: “and now children out into the fresh air!” Well, as said, the irresoluteness continued out there in the yard but it still was not entirely stupid leaving the game and he had even been able to enjoy carrying out some punishment tasks he was allotted if he snuck in again, which he often did. Back to his room, alone, with a book. Closed the door, even for his sister then. Wanted to be alone, read Gustav Mahler’s biography. Cuckoo. He had not understood a bit of it of course: Mahler’s music says more about the nature of emotion than all philosophers.
But the aunt had often caught him red-handed and as a punishment for his disobedience he was forced to scrub the sink in the bathroom with a dish brush and detergent. Small, horrid paper edging to glue on the tiles above the same sink. “Remember to wash the washbasin after every use!!! That goes for Tom too!” That strip was taken down when the aunt went home again; Mama Inga-Britta had not wanted to hurt the aunt’s feelings while the aunt was there but she thought the paper edgings made the furnishings look terrible. And yes, maybe they did.
But the Day of Desire, the Happy Harlot. For Maj-Gun, his sister, the game had not remained in the room, at the rectory. She had to take it with her. To the Cemetery. And how Tom, her brother, had been ashamed, disgusted, been angry, angry at her—because at that time they had not even been children anymore, teenagers. His shame, his fury, had naturally just egged on his sister even more, though he truly understood that only afterward, as an adult. And how everything had become even worse for a while, combined with his sister’s jealousy when he got his first girlfriend and she, the sister, who in and of herself was always at loggerheads with him otherwise too, still had, as it were, become more alone and kept to herself. Had been a peculiar one among the teenagers in the District, a rather quiet one of course, nothing that reached the ears of the adults. How Maj-Gun Maalamaa “held court” at the cemetery. But inside her, no shame. It had been her idea from the beginning, she had held to that when he, her brother, in various ways, tried to explain to her the disgust he felt.
In any case. Gone. And they, he and Maj-Gun, as said, have set it aside, a long time ago. Nothing to talk about. And she is someone else now, a lawyer like him, and he can, for example, admire her because she left at the beginning of a brilliant career; quit her job at one of those awful family law firms, one of those with “a good reputation” that tend to be the very worst, and started working with law and justice for real, as the director of a legal assistance bureau in the northern region of the country. His sister, Maj-Gun. Another, but still the same. Because the Disgust. No. When he thought about it later sometimes, as an adult, he realized that it had for the most part been about him when they were young. That he had been ashamed and irritated on his own behalf. Because still, always, his sister: such a purity in her.