But she thought it would pass, and she was not there all the time, with him in the apartment. Had her job with Solveig, which she of course naturally had not said anything about her brother hanging out in her apartment. She could however remember something that Solveig said about her brother: “a dreamer who goes out of control.” And agree. Her personally, Susette, like Solveig, they were parallel, as it were, neither of them in a dream, “a wood.”
And Tom Maalamaa, an old love, had started calling too. Life was moving slowly, somewhere. On the avenues. Being nothing, and new.
So, the Boy in the woods. It had been like that. And blood. She could not remember for the life of her what it was like, would never be able to, that was true. The cousin’s house, blood. The fragments. “His eyes.” “Once I was in a wood.”
All of what she was not in his eyes, all of what she was not, which she could not be. Someone who came like an old promise that suddenly had to be fulfilled, “We can build here, it is mine, settle down.” Good Lord. That in him—but later too, the great sorrowfulness, unavoidable. “Are you thinking about leaving?” Maybe the question had not even been asked, but it was so obvious, so hurtful. In his eyes, are you leaving me or the cat? But she was not something lost, or found, for him a thread to sort out. The mascot. It was he who she had been. Otherwise: a rag. Like one of them, an old layer of fabric hanging over a loom, which she sees one last time, flaming inside her eyes now, 2006, here in the woods at the house in the darker part.
“Sinking sinking like a Venice.” Remember this now too, about the house in the darker part. Bengt who had said it, about the house, once. Fluttering through her head. How true.
The blood, the sea, the cliffs, the terrace of the boathouse. “All walls coming down.” The morning in her head, the impossibility. Maj-Gun in the boathouse. Maj-Gun Maalamaa!
Who had beaten her to life. And when she had woken she had been alive, to life, and away from here! The sea, the cliffs, nevermore there. She had left, dragged herself over the cliffs, through the pine grove in the snow, back to the cousin’s house, into the room where he was lying on the floor in his own blood in pools but only to the hallway where the telephone was, she had phoned from there. First Solveig, that was true. But Solveig in Torpesonia had not been home, it had been some Allison on the phone. She would be in touch with Solveig first the following morning, but then from somewhere else. About the cousin’s house. “I think something terrible has happened.”
But then she, Susette, had personally already been in another place. Saved to life—because after she tried to get hold of Solveig in the cousin’s house she reflected and started crying and called the only person she knew who would be able to save her, that was Tom Maalamaa. And asked him to come even though she could not explain where she was. But she had walked on that road later, forward forward in the snow, and he eventually found his way to it.
That was how it had been, these shreds of something else—“Liz. Mama. I like you so much.” This, pulsating, quiet, and everything else, all rags, like blood in their bodies, in the bed, Portugal, between them.
Rug rags. Could not be made clearer. Because clearer than this it does not get.
And immediately in the next moment: true? Was all of this true? “Liz, is it true?” But Liz Maalamaa had caressed her head.
“Little child, little child. Only I would be able to protect.”
And the tears had come, started for real there.
But also: a cry of jubilation. Because then, there, with Liz Maalamaa, always there: she had not needed to think, ask about the loom, the rug rags. Nothing, at all.
“If you later come to wander in the valley of the shadow of death no harm will befall you, my little Susette. I want to give you the silver shoes, the finest I have.”
And that night she had passed away, Liz Maalamaa. It had been a calm and dignified end. And the funeral—everything. Calm, dignified, an end.
A heart attack in her sleep, Liz Maalamaa’s doctor, who came and determined the cause of death, had said. The doctor filled out the death certificate, no autopsy was needed.
So it is clear that life had not bounded away in happiness. The Sorrow, “a life-long depression,” it was still there. “But you can live with this.”
But no one would need to be left behind anymore, be alone.
Loom, against a background of flames, 2006. At the house in the darker part, the Boundary Woods, the basement, a window, but the flames in her eyes have gone out now. She has seen the loom. She cannot get there. She is so small, frozen in the woods. Sirens, ambulances, fire trucks, alarms, Spanish wolfhounds howling in the background.
And the loom, magnificent, covered in old silk fabric, rags, scraps that had never been cut but remained lying there. In an old swimming pool, a house that was decomposing, sinking sinking like a Venice regardless of how she, little Susette, standing in other parts of the world, all parts of the world, on heavy floors, admiring views, views everywhere.
The loom. Disappeared. The darkness. She no longer sees it.
Kiss kiss kiss.
Because it was something else, the whole time, kiss kiss kiss, something white and soft.
And now she remembers everything. “Kiss kiss kiss,” something Maj-Gun should have said. Earlier in the day. Because she was the only one who could have seen. But Maj-Gun, that Maj-Gun, no longer existed. After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible. Had become one of those, like all the rest.
“Janos isn’t dead, Susette. I’ve met him—”
But information, what the hell was she doing, Susette now, with all the information? And Maj-Gun had also stopped, stood there with the silver shoes in the middle of everything.
Been cut off. The conversation. All connections.
Rug rags. They did not exist, do not exist anymore.
But Maj-Gun, it was not Maj-Gun’s fault. Like at a disco a long time ago. Lambada, in the middle of the dance floor, smoke, among rags. Alone.
And always, alone. She sees that now, and everything, all forgetfulness, everything everything. Standing on the Glitter Scene, a girl who is chasing her, running around her, “the Angel of Death the Angel of Death.” Could not put up with listening to it, silence her. But it was true of course. It is true, what she is and was.
The Glitter Scene, the girl who fell, the mask, Bengt and blood, the girl who fell and Portugal and her mother, Liz Maalamaa, “never again alone,” medication.
The absurdity. But undivided. Maj-Gun, Majjunn Majjunn, was not there. Where she was, had always been, is alone.
Because there was something else, something white and soft.