The American Girl

by Monika Fagerholm

  And it was a well-thought-out gesture, one of the Islander’s many small displays with Lorelei Lindberg whom he loved recklessly—“like a bull a she-bull . . . what is that kind called? . . . it can’t just be a cow, an ordinary Lindberg-cow?” And that sort of thing could happen, that they carried on like that and said those things to each other forever and it was quite unpleasant for an outsider to have to listen to . . . And Lorelei Lindberg, she knew her Islander’s movements, phrases, and gestures. She knew his expressions of love so well, and of course usually would not be late in reciprocating them. She loved him too, there was no doubt about that.

  Can be done. Now, for example, precisely in just this moment in the middle of Central Europe, Lorelei Lindberg knew that meant she would get it. And it mattered to Lorelei Lindberg that what she said she wanted, she got. And it was not only selfishness and there was certainly no calculation behind everything, it was just the way this love story was and would continue to be all the way until it ended. You gave and took, took and gave. With real, concrete things.

  Can be done. With these words the Islander wanted yet again to show Lorelei Lindberg what he was made of. An Islander, a real one, from Åland made of the right stuff. Someone who could do the impossible. Turn dreams into reality. All dreams, especially hers. Someone for whom no contradiction existed between big words and big feelings. Someone who spoke AND acted.

  “An Islander lives in our love.” That was another thing he was in the habit of saying over and over again. And, to really give power to his words, he added an almost defiant, “I’m not joking.”

  Lorelei Lindberg had a relatively vague understanding of what an Islander from Åland was all about. In reality she had met only two in her life, they were brothers, but quite different. She had not even been to Åland. Even her and the Islander’s wedding had taken place on the mainland and without any close relatives present. I’ve never set foot on Åland. That was how she used to talk, in the beginning, a bit happy and a bit childishly triumphant in order to tease the Islander. Little by little, above all later, when the marriage was singing its last tunes, with rising and open agitation: “So what’s so special about Åland anyway?”

  That would be during the time when even the Islander no longer had the desire to talk about anything in detail at all. He would be in the recreation room, keeping quiet, polishing his rifle. Sticking long, Easter-yellow pipe cleaners into the muzzle of the gun, swishing in and out. But that would be in the future, when what was between the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg would not longer have room for words.

  “My own orangutan.” Lorelei Lindberg cheered happily and gratefully, those many years earlier, among the Alps in Austria. She was not as verbal as the Islander but there was really nothing wrong with her ability to, for example, come up with stupid nicknames for her husband.

  The little girl, her in the moon boots, did not have very many nicknames, almost none at all. It was a fact that she had the habit of devoting a lot of time to her so-called sulking, which she was preoccupied with despite the fact that she was not more than nine years old at this time.

  The Islander, in the snow, laughed. And Lorelei Lindberg laughed. And no, it was not easy to reproduce all of these scenes and conversations loaded with apparent meaninglessness while the powers that be were at work.

  Despite everything Lorelei WANTED a lot of things, despite everything the Islander WAS a man with a strong tendency to make good on his word. And that was not meaningless. It was, and it would show itself to be, fated.

  And all of this was something she should have suspected, the ugly little harelip.

  The girl in the snow. Thus far, the virile twosome the Islander–Lorelei Lindberg had reproduced only one child (and there would be no more either). The only child in more than one sense: senses that the girl herself, with a sometimes feverish intensity, would devote herself to naming and dissecting into elements in the stubborn, persistent loneliness that characterized her early childhood before she met Doris Flinkenberg.

  A small cross and harelipped girl, gray mouse deformity. The knowledge that a certain degree of timidity and uncertainty is often entirely normal in children whose parents are part of the international jet-setter lifestyle could not comfort the girl. Especially not—though it was something she definitely kept to herself before Doris Flinkenberg—the knowledge that she was in some way normal.

  For many reasons. Most of all because she did not want to be. Did not want to be comforted. She found a highly perverse but intense pleasure in this: being inconsolable. A Sandra Stammerer, a paltry I. But then, let us settle for that, an I in big, capital letters. A parenthesis. Or even better (as she loved to call herself when she got started), a postscript. PS PS PS PS was written about her; but also this was written with very large letters.

  PS PS PS PS. Her name was Sandra.

  This sunny day at the Austrian ski resort where Lorelei Lindberg discovered the house that would become hers and the fate of the entire small family unit, Sandra, true to habit, was standing a bit off to the side in these enormous boots that she had, moreover, whined over when she happened to see them in the window of an expensive designer boutique that sold exclusive forward fashion, whined until she got them. They had looked ridiculous, she just had to have them and she had pulled on her mother’s jacket arm and remained standing there . . . When the mother just continued walking up the street she produced one of her great and notorious crying spells. Then Lorelei Lindberg had turned around and followed her into the boutique and bought the boots for her. You could say that they really were not a foot-friendly model, most of all because your feet boiled when you had them on because they were made of a strange artificial material on the inside as well as the outside (this warmth was also to the detriment of the girl, who had a certain predilection for thinking of herself as being frostbitten). But consequently she was standing there now, the girl, thoughtfully studying the building.

  Unbelievable, she could immediately determine that. Later, when it became important to pinpoint this feeling, she would swear that she had thought that at exactly the point in time when she saw the miserable alpine villa on the other side of a snow-covered field for the first time.

  It was some kind of weekend cottage. Quite square, with a straight, brown roof. This brown was a wide copper band that, without reason, appeared to frame the entire building, just below the more or less insufferably flat roof. Different kinds of green vines were crawling on the outside walls so it was not possible to see what color the walls under there actually were. On the other hand, you could just guess about it: gray, plastered, disgusting, decomposing.

  But still: it actually did not matter what was on the front of the building because what you saw, and the only thing you actually saw, so that it etched itself in your mind, was a staircase. One with long, wide steps leading up to what looked like the main entrance of the house on the second floor. Although it could not be seen all that well from where the little girl was standing and thinking her gloomy thoughts.

  From the spot where the little girl was standing it looked more than anything like a staircase leading to nothing.

  The girl started counting the steps. She really had time to do this because when the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg played together they were not in a hurry to go anywhere. Now for example they were Göran, the King of the Apes, and Gertrud, the Queen of the Chimpanzees, in the snow on the field in front of the house.

  Forty-two. That is what she came to. But at the same time, while she was standing there off to the side counting, terrifying premonitions about woe and death welled up in front of her. These kinds of premonitions were, in and of themselves, not alien to her. Just the opposite. They were the kind of feelings she had a habit of wallowing in under normal circumstances, almost like a hobby. In the small backpack that Sandra carried with her everywhere (it was in the hotel room right now), she had a special scrapbook with clippings for that purpose; she glued pictures and articles in it that were about violent death
s and horrible accidents.

  There, stories were often from the jet-setter’s life: stories about men and women who, despite their success and all their riches, had met tragic fates. Stories about men and women in whose shoes, regardless of how high-heeled and glittery they could seem when seen at a distance, no one could pay you millions to be in. Fateful meetings with deadly outcomes. Stories with bloody endings.

  Lupe Velez drowned in the toilet in her own home.

  Patricia in the Blood Woods.

  Jayne Mansfield’s dead dog (a blurred photograph of a small white terrier who was lying dead among blood and shards of glass from crushed windshields and whiskey bottles after a car accident).

  Over the course of time there would be many more stories and, in combination with Doris Flinkenberg’s stories and True Crimes, more than just a bit interesting.

  “I was also fascinated by movie stars when I was your age,” Lorelei Lindberg had said once in her usual fleeting way when she had happened to glance in her daughter Sandra’s scrapbook. It was something Lorelei Lindberg was a master at in relation to her daughter: fleeting glances, flightiness on the whole, a judgment that arose from Sandra’s, the object of the judgment, own sharp-sighted but moody attention. Flightiness in addition to some well-chosen words for the situation itself, words whose main purpose was still to function as a shortcut to the most interesting conversation topic in the whole world, that is to say, herself.

  “There wasn’t a lot of time to spend on frivolous things when I was growing up,” she had continued accordingly. “The circumstances were difficult when I was growing up. Poverty and destitution and winter eleven hundred months of the year. The wolves howled . . .”

  But now, this afternoon at the Austrian ski resort in front of an unlikely house, which was a dream that would be realized (there was no reason to doubt it, Sandra knew that more than enough from experience), Sandra suddenly became worried and afraid in a completely new way.

  This isn’t something I read about or see in magazines, she suddenly understood. This isn’t a story. This is for real. This is happening to Mom, Dad, and me. It’s happening to us.

  And she looked at her parents. They were, to say the least, unmoved. They had continued their snowball fight in the snow on the field, which was deep enough to play in and which spread out in front of the house. Laughing and noisily chasing each other and catching up with each other, chasing each other and getting hold of each other, over and over again and with even intervals, in other words, pretty much the entire time. They tumbled together in a heap, tumbled around each other in the soft snow on the ground. Then up on their feet again, moving on. There was some type of unconscious system in it. Because they got closer to the house the whole time.

  The little girl watched it all like a movie, and very consciously. It also was not the first time, and definitely not a new perspective, that of the outside observer. But suddenly, and this had never happened before, all of the comforting and self-righteousness in a customary on-the-side perspective was blown away. Suddenly it was actually the perspective itself that was the source of the discomfort and the anxiety growing inside her these last senseless sunny minutes before the landscape grew dark all at once and the snowstorm blew in over them. The source of the angst and the fear battling with all common sense just welled up within her.

  It was a thought she had no words for yet, she was so young. Now it was above all a feeling and it struck down in her with a deafening force. If she was an outside observer, who said that she was the only one? Who said that no one else had seen? Any others? And IF someone else or some other people had seen, who had then said that his or her or their gazes would automatically be kind? Even uninterested? Who had said that there was not anyone else in the background, someone with an intention?

  For example the evil eye, if that was what was watching?

  The evil eye was a concept the small harelipped girl had experimented with in her thoughts for long periods of stigmatized, harelipped loneliness. But, and exactly in this moment she understood this, yet not in words, mostly as an abstract idea. Like Santa Claus whom you no longer believed in but was still a concept you gladly held on to. Or like a game. An imaginary game.

  Now she understood that it could be real. That the evil eye might exist and completely independently of her own thoughts about this or that. And right now just in this moment it was more than a little alarming when she knew that her and her entire family’s future was being decided.

  It was, quite frankly, as if someone had thrown a disgusting wet towel in the little girl’s pale, cloven face.

  And she was seized by an overwhelming love, a tenderness that exceeded her common sense. Still, it was so obvious, regardless of how ridiculous her parents were: she still loved them. Of course loved them. Those stupid laughs, the stupid snowball fight, it was so stupid, but couldn’t they just be allowed to be that way? Two who loved each other, and three. Could they not just be allowed to be that way, forever?

  And she started praying to God, there where she was standing, to make the evil eye disappear. Or, at least to move it. She did not know which. It is also possible that she only asked for protection.

  My God my God my God keep them away from the plight that will befall them. Protect them from. Pain.

  But her parents in the distance had almost reached the fateful house, still being noisy and imitating each other, still completely ignorant in the matter of the big battle between good and evil forces playing out around them. And the little girl was seized by something similar to panic, there where she was standing with her terribly hot boots, in the midst of her own powerlessness. When not even God seemed to hear, after all nothing was happening. And in order to do something herself she ran out into the snow, a task that, in other words, was not entirely easy in the enormous boots, threw herself on her back on the ground with an energy uncommon for her. Gesticulated wildly with her arms for dear life, up and down, up and down, in order to bring about an angel to scare away the evil eye. Or at least move it.

  An angel’s stare is terrible.

  An angel is so beautiful, gentle, the universe sings when you look at it.

  Or, quite simply: tit for tat, eye to eye. The girl pressed herself against the ground even harder and made her most terrifying harelipped face up toward the dark sky above her. It became an angry and bold stare lasting several minutes without blinking, and in turn produced for the most part a lot of tears that in the storm just froze in the corners of her eyes so that her field of vision just diminished even more and her eyelids were frozen.

  She became completely powerless right in the middle, all the energy left her at once. The sun disappeared at about the same time and the sky filled with black, violet clouds. The snow started falling, a snow that was transformed into a tight whirl in the wind that blew to storm strength, this also happened in just a few moments. Sandra was lying in the snow, now petrified. Unable to move. Her body did not want to. The evil eye had nailed her there on the spot. Her head was spinning, and now she understood she was going to die. She could do nothing about it, she would be buried in snow.

  “Help!”

  No, it could not be like this. She did not want to die! Did not want to! And she became scared again and started calling for help for everything she was worth. She did not know whom she was calling to, she just lay there and screamed, screamed while the whirling snow tightened around her.

  “Help!” Once she had started screaming she could not stop, simply could not. And that was suddenly the most terrible thing of all.

  Then Lorelei Lindberg was there, next to her. Frightened and agitated she popped up in the storm, she had lost her leather cap, heavy clumps of snow hung in her flaxen hair and her eye makeup had run down her cheeks in long green streaks. Lorelei Lindberg had an ability to forget everything when she was playing, to really lose herself in the game.

  “Little child.” Lorelei Lindberg’s face wrinkled with concern and sympathy. “What happened?”

/>   But little Sandra could not answer. Could not get a word out, still could not move. How would she explain? How in the world would she get anyone else to understand? It was not possible. So she just lay there, face turned toward the sky, which could no longer be seen, like a stuck pig and screamed.

  “My God! Stop it now!”

  If there was something that irritated Lorelei Lindberg it was her daughter’s crying spells, the quite-often-occurring ones. She had truly avoided becoming familiar with them, being able to tell the difference between the one kind of crying versus the other kind, and one thing was certain, she could not be bothered to listen to them for very long.

  And now her patience ran out once again. With a determined and energetic anger she took a hold of her daughter and tore her up out of the snow. These were no gentle grips: she was forced to use all her strength since Sandra herself was so heavy and without a will of her own, completely numb in all of her limbs, like a rag doll. And as usual, which she had a habit of doing when her mother treated her a bit roughly, Sandra disconnected herself mentally, was present but at the same time was not. But this time she did not do it to keep away, or because she in some way should have felt sorry for herself. Just the opposite. She had gotten out of the snow. To be brutally plucked from the snow might have been the only way. The spell was gone. She was content and quite relieved.

  But suddenly Lorelei Lindberg stopped in the middle of her angry outburst. She let go of her daughter—yes, she had regained her ability to move, she could stand on her own—and she stared at the tracks left behind on the ground.

  “But what a beautiful angel! Have you made that all by yourself?” The pride in Lorelei Lindberg’s voice could not be mistaken, it was as if her anger had vanished into thin air, and her enthusiasm was just as real and honest as her intense frustration had just been. Lorelei Lindberg looked from her daughter to the angel in the snow, from the angel to her daughter and back, and she sparkled with excitement. As if it were something unheard-of. And then she turned around and called out into the snowstorm, which had already had time to transform the beautiful landscape into a foggy and gray soup where you could barely see where you were going.