And it was not here. Not here. But there.
“Once I was in a wood.” Always in a wood, the same wood.
If you later come to wander in the valley of the shadow of death.
It is not possible.
And then here, it is possible, for Susette Maalamaa born Packlén in the end. That she leaves the house in the darker part and goes back to the path. Completely dark now, but her eyes see well in the darkness, here in the Boundary Woods. She has been here before, knows where to go.
A bit in on the path, there it is, down to the right. Toward the marsh, the place, what she had forgotten. Off to the side of the path, soft moss, mortality.
And she sees it, confirmed, she goes down to the water.
It is like this, was: that stardust stardust from one place to another place the home the scissors the sofa where she once sat and cut again, alone.
And that image when it rushes toward her here, at the marsh.
GOD LIKES, said her mother, THE SMALL-TIMID BLESSED
IT WAS QUIET IN THE NIGHT
SHE TOOK THE CAT AND STRANGLED IT AND THE LIFE RAN OUT OF THE STILL ONE. IT WAS TERRIBLE AND SHE STRUCK WITH THE SCISSORS AND THEN SHE STARTED CRYING.
The Winter Garden is burning, sirens, Spanish wolfhounds howling loudly in the night.
Flames in the sky, reflecting in the still water in a special way.
Susette is not afraid, never afraid, does not falter.
Bule Marsh, the darkness, the flames. November 2006.
Takes off the silver shoes.
Steps out into the water.
Kitty mine, oh please come back.
DEATH IN PORTUGAL
(Child in a field, 2006)
MAJ-GUN IN THE WINTER GARDEN. Who is she? The Red One. Lawyer: after graduating from the university she worked as a lawyer, in family law, for a few years, in the private sector. Quit her job and for the last eight years she worked as the manager of the Municipal Legal Assistance Bureau in the northern region of the country, in a small city where she lives in a big, beautiful house on the outskirts of town.
Has, for a long time now, been able to sand down the “offensive” in herself that she received criticism for during her studies.
“After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible.” That is also true. She is slender and red, solvent, controlled, “well preserved” for her age, and so on. “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings.” Yes. She still has it. A relic, a memory only, of something, past, old, different now.
The newsstand. But here now, 2006, in the Winter Garden, the Red One, cutting rags. Red rags, long strips. Just an occupation, a loneliness. Evening now, in the Winter Garden.
But who is she? It is difficult to get a grip on it herself. She does not look at herself in the window of the newsstand, where she once was; the window provides no reflection. Nah. Nothing. So: the square. Sees the square, cuts rags, she sees it one more time.
Cars drove up onto it sometimes, Hayseeds, from “the pistol awakening,” “the revolver revival.” Drove around and around—disappeared.
And if someone was on the square, she was then enclosed in the ring. Some girl, of course, to the hayseeds, girls, they were, are, more amusing that way.
Some girl from the junior high, the high school, chin raised, from here in her gaze, Madonna-like.
Or someone else, with big eyes. Older, almost thirty, but still so small. Big eyed, stationary. Susette Packlén. “Djeessuss, Susette,” how it whistled out of Maj-Gun’s mouth. “The way you look. Don’t you get what kind of signals you’re sending out? A small poor child I am. In cowboy boots, boots.”
And Maj-Gun who reeled her in. “I stood here and reeled in the fear,” or whatever she had said, does not remember that clearly. That is the truth. She had said so much. The fear? The truth was also that she had become happy. And Susette had become happy. Which she also said, earlier today, 2006, November, during the day. “I liked you more in the newsstand. There was so much life inside you.”
But at the same time, with Susette, on the square, in the newsstand as well. Rug rags. Remarkable connections, as if they wanted something from each other, were drawn to each other because of that. Had cut rags together for a while in a kitchen in a house that was Susette’s childhood home, after her mother’s death. And Maj-Gun, already then, had told her stories.
The Angels of Death, in a timelessness. But all of that is gone now. No longer exists.
Still—not everything can be kept hidden away. The silver shoes. “Death in Portugal.” No. It is not possible. Cannot be like that.
And yet: first hours later, she started calling her brother. Not been able to get hold of him, he has not had his telephone on. All of those things she should have said to him. On the other hand, it is so big, so difficult. That she possibly still would not have been able to say it over the phone. “We need to meet. Soon. It’s important.”
About Susette, his wife. And death. “The Angel of Death.” Susette with the big eyes, and all the death, everything strange around her. “They called her the Angel of Death at the nursing home.”
A white cat that was suddenly gone. “It got run over.” Susette in an apartment, a long time ago, shifting gaze.
And Janos, a Lithuanian, and someone who was called the Boy in the woods—Bengt.
“What the hell, are you playing private detective? I don’t know you anymore. You’re so different now, Maj-Gun. After the Scarsdale Diet, anything is possible.
“I liked you much more in the newsstand. Why don’t you say those other things, like in the newsstand? Kiss kiss kiss—?”
Who is Maj-Gun? In the Winter Garden, 2006? She does not know. Cutting rags again. Just a preoccupation. Maybe, for her, it was never anything more than that. Susette at the window.
This day, in the middle of the day, it is evening now, dark—
“This reminds me of Portugal. Death in my hands—”
And it had been then, when Susette started talking like that, that Maj-Gun slowly realized everything. Which she in some way had known earlier, had come like breezes earlier in life, many times, but kept it hidden, because of all of the other things with Susette. She who had almost beaten Susette to death once, blood on her hands. And all the rest. The big eyes. The jealousy. A bad conscience. Own guilt.
Susette at the window, that day, earlier, in the middle of the day. High above everything, beautiful house. There are neighborhoods in the world, they all look the same. Tom Maalamaa lives with his family in neighborhoods like that: wife, three children, aupairgirl Gertrude.
But this has been the homeland, “home now.” The mess in the house, things everywhere, paper boxes and bags, clothes, and so on.
And Susette who had been standing there with her back toward her and suddenly starting speaking strangely, about Death in Portugal, her therapy, her life.
“I was terribly depressed. Sometimes I still am. Because of Mama, everything. And I’ve been afraid of becoming crazy, like her.
“And what happened between us, Maj-Gun, in the end, was the culmination of an acute depression. In a way. No matter how strange it sounds. In the boathouse. I don’t think about it often, but sometimes. It shook me. You helped me live. Beat me back to life. And then suddenly, I came here.
“Maybe it was like that. I don’t always remember—forget quite a lot. What was it we were fighting about?”
And she has remembered too.
“The Boy in the woods, you called him that. Do you know what it was like with Bengt? Like being in a wood. I didn’t understand what he was saying. Like with Janos, ‘the Pole,’ or the Lithuanian, which he actually was. From the strawberry-picking fields. Just talked and talked and I didn’t understand anything. That’s how that story goes—”