She had told the therapist about that “fight” with her friend, as said. But there it has, as it were, been “diminished,” in some way. Become, which maybe it also actually was, of course (there was a lot of jealousy and other frustrations there too), a violent encounter between two friends who were tired of each other and needed to free themselves. “Friendships between women are often like that. You become the other person. A lot of mirroring. And becoming an adult is to free yourself from these reflections. Dare to stand on your own, on your own two feet.”
And it was true, of course. Sounded plausible. But stilclass="underline" all she needed to do was remember the frenzy inside Maj-Gun, Maj-Gun’s blows, yes, she was going to kill, and her own complete lack of will, her total passivity in the situation, in order to become completely perplexed. Going out into the sea was a gentle way of dying; being beaten to death hurt, damn it.
On the other hand, Maj-Gun, of course you could not tell anybody about her in a way that it would be right. Better said: you did not want to. Maj-Gun at the newsstand, what she had been like there. “We are two Angels of Death, Susette, an eternity.” That she had said that, and all those stories she told, which were about all sorts of things, but inside a message about something else the entire time.
Maj-Gun at the rag-cutting bucket. Rug rags. Her dearest, most devout connection. “The loom, Mama, where is it?” A completely unintelligible question in reality, because there was no answer—but Maj-Gun, if you had said that, would have understood it, intuitively.
On the other hand. That Maj-Gun. Did not exist. Anywhere. A figure in your head only, Majjunn Majjunn, a sound from your childhood, in your mouth.
Had been clear the entire time afterward. At the cemetery after Liz Maalamaa’s funeral. Maj-Gun had been so different, so stiff, so ordinary. And today, earlier this day, when everything happened, she had been on the Glitter Scene, a girl lying dead in the woods, they found her now, the entire family, but Susette does not know about that because she is at the house in the darker part of the woods now, she has forgotten everything else.
Thinks, at the loom that is rising up inside the basement before her eyes, only her eyes, no one else’s eyes: Maj-Gun during the day, that same day. How she should have said something, about something, which Susette had forgotten. But she had stood there and been ordinary, red, slender, and like all of the other people in the world. Had not spoken kiss kiss kiss as she once had at the newsstand, about the silver shoes for example.
We are the Angels of Death, Maj-Gun. I am alone. We are nothing.
Helpless in the presence of her story. “A life-long depression. You can live with depression. And then there is medication—”
Liz Maalamaa, the stories, the medication. Liz Maalamaa had already been ill when they came to Portugal, she and Tom, in December 1989. Had been going on for some time, heart failure, dizziness. She had been walking about then, but already the next day she had not gotten out of bed. And then Susette immediately started spending time with her in the bedroom while Tom enjoyed the sunshine on the patio. But he did not dislike it, just the opposite, said that it was so nice that she wanted to devote herself to the aunt.
And Liz Maalamaa, while she still had the energy to speak, told Susette about her life. No anecdotes that made you sleepy listening to them, those people who have it on their minds to talk and talk about themselves, about their business, who assume that only they can explain vividly enough, so that you will sit there in silence and be transformed with joy too, all ears because it is so wonderful to just listen. But—if you did not want to, did not have the energy, to listen? In what way does this affect me? If you thought like that. And did not come up with a single connection; then that person who was just babbling and babbling was transformed into just babble. But quiet now. Stop screaming.
Maj-Gun, at the time she was Maj-Gun at the newsstand, had caught sight of it. Because everything that Maj-Gun had told her had, as it were, been something else, at the same time. Another message, so to speak. A signal. The rug rags. A bucket. Mama. “Don’t be afraid.” “She didn’t give way, your mama.” At the same time both of them had been unaware if it too, what it was that pulled them together.
Young and insecure and fragile. There was that something in each other they wanted to reach, rug rags, but could not figure out how. So it had turned out wrong, that too. “The loom, where is it?”
“It’s so nice that you’re together with Tom,” Liz Maalamaa had said in the bedroom.
“I know Maj-Gun too. We’ve been good friends.”
“Do you? That makes me so happy. Maj-Gun is a special girl.”
And Liz Maalamaa had brightened up considerably and despite the fact that they had not spoken about Maj-Gun or Tom, Susette’s fiancé, anymore, whom Susette would live happily ever after with, the fact that Maj-Gun had been mentioned, both of them felt, brought them closer together.
But otherwise, in the bedroom, which was transformed into a sickroom and to a death room, but soft, normal, when Liz Maalamaa had spoken about her life it, had, in other words, been brief. In occasional images, scenes, some episode from here or from there. The transience, like from an album, come and see my gallery, so beautiful.
A dog, Handsome. Two swans, Dick and Duck. Young man against a backdrop of flames; an image on a wall in a hotel which, for a few terrible moments, looked that way but which later, afterward, had still been something else, just an armful of roses, in a bowl. “You know, Susette, hotel room art, it can be very anonymous.” And the silver shoes, which she liked dancing in and her husband too. “Life with him wasn’t easy, never easy, but I miss the dancing.” And the movie stars she had loved in her youth, Ingrid Bergman, and China where she had never been but traveled to so much in her fantasies that it had almost become real, “that wall, it is LONG, you know, long walk, I think that sometimes, and God and me and reality… There is a kind of loneliness too, in God, that loneliness is intangible.”
“I’m staying here. I’m not leaving,” Susette had repeated several times and gotten medicine, food, made the bed with clean, fresh sheets.
Toward the end, when Liz Maalamaa no longer had the energy to speak, Susette just sat there and held her hand. And the very end, the final days, mama Liz mama, I’m not leaving you, never again alone, she had crawled up into the bed next to Liz Maalamaa and laid down next to her. “My girl.” Liz’s arms around her, pulling her closer.
And there, in the bed, two bodies pressed against each other, something that could have been called Susette’s story could have been told, that which was not her mother, but the other, which had also happened. Though without words, words are unnecessary, a story that had pulsated between them like blood in their bodies. And from her to the older woman. From Susette Packlén to Liz Maalamaa.