A little while later at the twins’ cottage I turn around and start walking. Hesitation again.
But the summer day, here, it is still coming toward me! Bule Marsh, Rita, Miss Andrews!
That is when I notice that I have a pistol in my hand. I try and put it inside the waistband of my pants, hide it. It doesn’t work, it’s too heavy. And otherwise too. I can’t carry a pistol with me, not anywhere.
I go back toward the cousin’s house, I need to take the pistol back.
The closer I get to the cousin’s house the more terrorstricken I become. Like a stain among everything that is beautiful, despite everything, in my head.
Björn, the barn, I go there. The barn is empty. Beer bottles.
Then I see, from the barn, the cousin’s mama. She is coming, walking from an outbuilding that is located at the edge of the woods to the left, a ways away from all of the other buildings. I don’t know it then. But she is walking quickly, she is pale, she almost doesn’t see me even though I run out and stand in front of her.
She says with a voice that makes me understand something about the outbuilding that of course I don’t understand then, but terrible, certainly enough, that I should go away, home and not to the outbuilding.
She’s angry too. She is panting. Fury. In any case, I give her the pistol. Suddenly I think something strange. The cousin’s house. “The idiot.”
It’s a strange thought. As luck would have it I don’t say what I am thinking out loud. It isn’t real either. It is a dream.
The pistol. The cousin’s mama looks at me. Then, in that moment, I see all of my idiocy. My landscape, where I am and have always been. In her eyes.
She hisses in anger that I should take it back.
To reality. I run into the house, the parlor, with all my might, I leave the pistol in the closet and run out, and away, away from here, up up to the hill on the First Cape, the house, the stone foundation, that is where I end up.
And there I am, back leaning against the foundation, the whole time, while I am waiting for Rita to come back. Or maybe I’m not waiting for Rita. Maybe I’m not waiting for anyone in particular. It’s the first time I’m completely alone.
It’s terrifying. I haven’t slept, I’m confused, what I experienced is atrocious. And it will continue, a long time. But in that loneliness there is also something else, something special. The summer day. Or, the winter day, or the day, the night—I’m here. My place.
And it is not the Winter Garden that we, some siblings, have been sitting here and “playing.” A game I don’t understand, I don’t have any imagination, I want to be here. I can be here, and alone. The summer day, glittering, here, which is spreading itself out, a panorama. The cousin’s house, the twins’ cottage, the woods, the outbuilding, the barn, the road. I see everything.
Yes. After this we’re going to sit here. Bengt, Rita, me. Three siblings, people look at us for a while in the District a bit strangely. It will pass. I am here.
And we’ll play the Winter Garden. Maybe even more intensely than before, for a while. Bengt when he has gotten over the shock, gets his speech back. But more hot tempered, so that the game falls apart for him, so to speak, despite dreams, buildings, don’t disappear anywhere. And Rita, who will “play” so that there will just be some quotes around it. She’s going to do something else. Maybe not that Winter Garden, Rita Strange, as it turns out. And not much will come of that either really. When the Winter Garden is there, for real. And I know that, the entire time. That it won’t be like that, because I know Rita, I know everything about her. She doesn’t really have—well, she lacks a certain perseverance. She grows tired. And besides, I know that too, you can’t make, build, for real, regardless of how much money and how many opportunities there are, out of opposition, like a revenge.
So in that way, even though I lack imagination, I know that I would have done it better. In a different way. The Winter Garden, on the Second Cape, I mean.
After this morning, this day, when the American girl dies in the woods at the marsh and Björn is also dead—there is already someone who knows, the cousin’s mama, with certainty, I just simply know: something terrible—being up here for a while. Rita and me, Bengt. Playing the Winter Garden.
It may look that way, on the outside. But it’s like this: and that loneliness which also gradually becomes a happiness, a confidence, it also starts here, exactly this morning, right here. I am not going to be there playing along. Even though it might look that way, I am sitting with them because it is easier. It is after all, me and Rita. I will sit there but my thoughts will be somewhere else. And later we will be grown up, a life will come later, and I will also have a lot, things that mean much more. And I will be here, continue to be here. But not my siblings. I am going to be able to leave the game, the Winter Garden, the stone foundation and everything. And then of course the most impossible: leave Rita. In my head.
Susette Packlén isn’t going to do anything to the cousin’s papa with the pistol even though it is lying out in the open. She is a colleague, but a friend as well, in some way: we knew each other, for a while. Are parallel so to speak, the same tenacity in both of us. Sun cats. Susette who is dancing on a floor, in one of those beautiful houses in Rosengården 2, in Rosengården, and on the avenues, stupid girl, but playful. She isn’t going to do that with the pistol to the cousin’s papa, which I regret that I had even thought. The cousin’s papa, what is that? That sort of thing passes too.
Bengt who inherits the house. It is a shock, I still thought it would be mine. That the cousin’s papa would have thought about me so much. But that passes too, almost right away—that resentment.
I will come back here, to the cousin’s house, one morning in November 1989. My brother Bengt will be lying in the parlor. Will have blown his head off. That is how it is. I know—he was washed up.
Then I will set fire to the house. There will have to be enough of tomorrows, consequences. It will have to be here and now. And it will come to me, and Johanna too. And Maj-Gun Maalamaa. I like her. Always have. In reality that feeling started early, I was just a child. It was during the time when Björn was gone and Doris was suddenly in the house and was taking up everything, had to have everything everything—was so happy and fulfilled, and you couldn’t deny her anything. At the same time, how you disappeared. And the cousin’s mama who disappeared completely. But you were simply, not a child. And yet, everyone saw it, of course, everyone felt it, Doris came with life, light, the future, and everything. As I said, we would have gone under otherwise, without Doris Flinkenberg.
But still. Doris. For example that first fall after everything, before you had really gotten used to everything new, found your place, that state between child that would gradually become a real youth, it would be a relief as well—but then, you got tired and irritated, even though you were supposed to be an adult, restrained, happy despite everything with Doris and for the cousin’s mama (which you were, of course!) but still, there was never really space for that happiness inside you. And Bengt who was gripped by the general giddiness of giving a lot of welcome gifts to Doris who, after all the grief and woe, was allowed to come to the cousin’s house and become a full member there, and the cousin’s papa who also hadn’t become “kind” but “bearable,” we were at a Christmas bazaar at the fellowship hall, the cousin’s mama and all the children, and Bengt won the big fruit basket that was the first prize for the Christmas lottery. And gave, because Doris had become delighted with all of the beautiful fruit, the basket to her immediately. But then there came a girl, the Pastor’s daughter, Maj-Gun Maalamaa in a creepy mask, and quite simply scratsch, stuck her hand through the cellophane that was covering the contents of the basket and took the largest, most beautiful green apple, right in front of Doris Flinkenberg’s nose. Who became angry of course and stamped on the ground and Maj-Gun Maalamaa had to say she was sorry several times, in the kitchen of the fellowship hall, and the Pastor himself furious at her. But we got, all of us children, candy that the Pastor offered us because he was kind, and Maj-Gun accepted the scolding but ha ha ha she finally shouted at last and just ran away, she didn’t regret it. Can’t be helped, but it felt good. And I’ve told Maj-Gun about it too, maybe I’ll tell it one more time, it will be part of this story. That certain things, scenes, at first glance meaningless get their claws into you from the beginning and make it so that you can never doubt them or hesitate about them, like in your heart, as the cousin’s mama would have said.