The American Girl

by Monika Fagerholm

  It was the morning after when she saw clearly. As if the last piece of the puzzle lay where it lay and the picture was complete. The phenomenon had a special name, which Kenny could inform her about, in the theory of visual arts. That small piece of the image that could distort an entire painting. Make the entire image look different.

  A few days after that day Sandra left the apartment in the city by the sea—and herself.

  But first, it was also a decision, she would go to the house in the darker part in order to get the shoes.

  Kenny had come into her room that same morning and woken her by asking if she wanted to go to Paris. Not a trace of desperation from the night before could be seen on her face anymore.

  “We can go together. All three of us.”

  All three.

  “You, Rita, me.”

  And was that not what she had been longing after too? To belong? Yes. In a way.

  Sandra tried to feel how it felt. She felt nothing.

  “No. I’m going to go hunting. And there’s . . . my studies of course. I have a final exam in The Growth, Development, and Educational Possibilities of a Human Being. I have to study.”

  “Relax,” Kenny said when she had listened to Sandra’s breathless explanation. “You don’t have to lie. I know where you’re directing your thoughts. To the house in the darker part. Now you two want to go out and shoot. You and the Islander. The two of you are so alike.”

  Then she added, not with any undertone whatsoever, but like an open statement, in a Kenny way:

  “And I don’t really understand why it has the ability to hurt me.”

  “You do what you think is best,” Kenny finally said.

  “But it’s too bad. We could have had such a damned good time together.”

  And it sounded like a sentence out of a Hemingway novel. It was a line out of a Hemingway novel. The last line in The Sun Also Rises. And this last line was also Kenny’s last words directly to her.

  But it was not Kenny but Sandra who went away.

  A pair of hiking boots.

  She was not going to hunt.

  She was going to get them.

  And yet, out again, in the sun: hopelessness, yes. But yet, Doris, if now everything was so hopeless why was it then so damned beautiful? So warm and pleasant in the air?

  So sparkling?

  Such damned beautiful weather?

  From Doris’s last letter to Inget Herrman:

  . . . and they buried her under the house. There wasn’t a swimming pool at that time. It wasn’t finished, like it never really was. Not during the entire time they were there. When they moved into the house, mother, father, child, the basement was half finished, the most important thing was the house would be finished for her, Lorelei Lindberg’s, birthday. He wanted to do everything for her. He loved her.

  The pool in the basement was a hole in the ground. The intention was that it would be tiled as quickly as possible. But it didn’t happen, nothing happened, it took time. They had so many other things to do. Also getting used to living in the house in the darker part of the woods.

  And life, it fell apart so to speak. Withered just like the house. You know, what Bencku has always said. It’s true. That house is porous.

  She had a fabric store. Little Bombay. It went bankrupt. She became sad. Maybe there was something else too. Other men. Girlfriends. He—yes. He didn’t recognize her anymore. He became insecure. Jealous. They fought often. They had always fought, but their fights had been different before. They always contained a moment of reconciliation. But now it wasn’t there. One time he pushed her down the stairs, you know, the entire long staircase. She got stitches at the hospital for it, so it wasn’t a secret. EVERYONE in town knew it.

  He was terribly remorseful. And came home with a very expensive ring, which he gave her. One with a ruby the size of a tablespoon. She became happy at first but started fumbling, and suddenly she dropped that ring in the hole in the ground. There, where the pool is. Then everything left him again, all sense all reason anyway. He pushed her down into the hole and took away the ladder. And then he went and got the rifle. And the girl, she saw. That was Sandra. She had that bad habit of walking in her sleep. But she wasn’t walking in her sleep. She wanted to see, maybe she was anxious too, for real. All of it was so strange. Everything that had been happy games, maybe a bit too wild, had now gone over into something else. Something that was serious. For real.

  And Lorelei in the pool, while the Islander got the gun, appealed to her. “Sandra, come and help me. Help me out of here. Get the ladder!” And Sandra hesitated, but she still didn’t do anything. Not until it was too late, in any case. She just pretended she was walking in her sleep again. She’s good at pretending, Sandra, being inside her own fantasies. I know her like no one else. I know.

  Before anyone knew it the Islander was back, with the rifle. He was just going to scare her a bit. But, suddenly, before you really knew what was happening, the rifle had gone off. And she lay dead at the bottom.

  And then, well, they were alone, father and daughter. With that terrible thing in the pool. And there were things they could have done. Real things, gone to the police and things like that. But they didn’t.

  Instead they buried her in the hole for the pool, took up the old tile, and let new tiles be laid.

  And Sandra, she watched. She didn’t do anything. She watched.

  And both of them, father and daughter, had this terrible secret to carry.

  I have gone around and thought about it. I can’t get away from it. I always and forever come back to it. Her in the pool, Lorelei Lindberg. And that I was her. In that game we played that one time. We played quite a lot of games.

  So we’ve played. But now, now I don’t know if I want to play anymore.

  I went to Bencku later, in order to see something that was on the map he has. Perfectly visible above his bed. And there she was. I saw her there. She has been there the entire time.

  The woman on the bottom of the pool. He saw it, he said so anyway. A man who aimed a rifle at someone in the pool.

  And the shot that went off.

  I hear that shot all the time.

  And now I’ve started doubting everything. Now I don’t know who she is, or him. I saw the red raincoat as well. The one that Eddie had on when she died. The one who never wore that kind of clothing.

  It was a loan. Now I also know where the coat came from. It was Lorelei Lindberg’s. She was wearing it in a photograph I saw.

  And now I wonder about everything. And it’s obvious. There are so many questions to ask, and so many answers.

  But I’m so tired now. I don’t want to ask. Because I’m afraid of what answers I will get.

  I don’t want to play anymore, I don’t want to live. Sandra. She’s the only one. So now, soon I won’t know anything anymore.

  Sandra Night/Doris Day, Doris Night/Sandra Day

  THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO CAN TELL JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING about themselves, as colorful as life itself and with a richness of words that can get anyone to be taken aback. Such a person was sometimes, in certain moments, Doris Flinkenberg.

  But there are also other storytellers, a special kind of mythomaniac who can serve versions of, above all, their own life stories, stories completely unlike each other, all just as false. And yet not lie. Such a person was, in certain moments, Sandra Wärn.

  Lie far and wide without lying.

  Lorelei Lindberg’s back, her smiles, singing voice, and Little Bombay, the fabric. The jet-setter’s life, the music, “I’m Waiting for the Man,” the banana record, “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

  None of the stories were really true, but in all of the stories there was a grain of truth. A detail, a tone, a recurring theme. And threads of truth shot out from these. Like fireworks, with colors, like a rainbow.

  And Sandra learned something about stories and storytelling.

  That the fireworks, that the flip side of the mythomania was emptiness.

  One,
or many, holes in the day, a hole in reality.

  And it was her.

  The girl turned toward the window

  “SO DORIS. WAIT NOW! THAT WAS ALSO JUST A GAME. EVERYTHING was a game. Don’t you understand?”

  That was how she should have said it. To Doris. While she was still alive. While there was time, and there were chances. You should have understood and the stupid thing was, actually, that you did understand. But that you just continued, anyway. Quite simply, in order to—well, you never could have imagined that she would . . .

  No, enough words now, explanations.

  This was how it was.

  It was the girl at the window in the house on Åland, and it was in those moments Doris died in the District. Exactly in those moments.

  The girl on Åland, she looked out over the sea that swelled toward her on the other side of the window. The girl, who in the moment Doris shot herself, was humming the Eddie-song. Really. She was.

  Look, Mom, what they did to my song.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the humming, she became afraid. The little harelip, Sandra-Pandra. She just could not stand there like that alone and look out over the sea anymore, she just had to turn around. She just had to turn toward “the aunt,” who was always there, behind. With her low-voiced talking, about Åland, the sea, all the rest. Also all the rest.

  Above all it was that which she had not been able to listen to, for a few years. It was above all that which had gotten her to turn toward the window and the sea over and over again—where it was also rather drafty, so that you got a cold and got all of the childhood diseases in the world.

  “Sandra!”

  She had shown patience, rare for her anyway, “the aunt.”

  But it started to drain off her now. One time during these days she suddenly impatiently grabbed hold of Sandra, shook her shoulder rather harshly, but certainly oh so familiar.

  “What’s wrong with you? You’re like a dead person? You should at least cry a little if you are so sad for once. Think! That it would be so that I would long for you to start crying. I who used to loathe your tantrums. Do you remember?”

  And yes. Sandra remembered. There was something sweet and sour about it. Bittersweet, suddenly. But still a while, a short while, Sandra held out. She shrugged herself free. But it was entirely easy. “The aunt” held her tightly, and suddenly she was not at all ready to let go.

  And now “the aunt” changed her tone of voice. It was as if all of the floodgates in her had broken.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Sandra. I’ve now had you here and I . . . well, you know, Sandra, how terrible it is to live without you. You know how much I would like you to want to visit me and be here with me. Not just now, but . . .”

  But it was as if the courage had left her as soon as she started. And the resignation stepped in. It was as if she had suddenly given up right then, “the aunt.” And quietly, slowly slowly, turned around. Turned away from Sandra, Sandra’s back. And gone back and sat down at the table in the living room at the eternal puzzle that she was always working on. The one with at least half a million pieces, which never got finished—the one called “Alpine Villa in Snow.”

  Sandra remained standing, facing the sea. Standing and staring and staring so that tears had gathered in her eyes. And at the same time the song had flown up inside her again, the Eddie-song, stronger and more alarming than ever. Look, Mom, they’ve destroyed my song.

  The song roared in her head. So that it almost burst. Was it exactly then, in that moment, that Doris raised the pistol to her temple and fired?

  But in the air, on Åland, in the house, the room with the veranda facing the sea, the room with the window and the girl facing it, “the aunt’s” words hung there, “the aunt’s” resignation.

  And then the following happened: Sandra at the window turned around. From the window, from the sea, in toward the room. In toward “the aunt” who had pulled back to her table where she was sitting puzzling and puzzling. And suddenly it was so cozy to see—especially after the gray and storming and great sea outside. So pleasant to see. Mom. So amazingly delightful wonderful. Tears in her eyes and in her throat, a crying that was hindering her from saying anything at all. But that now came.

  “Mom,” said Sandra. “Mom,” she started. And that was what she should have said a long time ago, in any case to Doris Flinkenberg. Not “the aunt,” not Lorelei Lindberg—which she had been called in a game. A name that Doris had made up once, which had matched perfectly. Which had been so important then, which had really been needed. Not only in a game, but as protection against everything hard in the soul from which stories could not be woven. Still not then, maybe never.

  “Mom.” Who had lived in the house in the darker part once but had left it and gone with the Black Sheep to Åland. “Managed to get over there,” as she said it herself at the time when you really did not want to have anything to do with her. Neither the Islander nor herself. She might as well have been in Austria, or in New York.

  Sandra had turned away from the window and looked at her mother who was sitting alone at the table with her puzzle: in front of all of the thousand million pieces of which all of them were snow or clouds and did not look like they fit anywhere. And her mother looked up, a little surprised, carefully. Almost shyly.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” Sandra continued. “About me and Doris Flinkenberg. We had a game once. We called you Lorelei Lindberg. Then we made up a man, Heintz-Gurt, who was a pilot and came from Austria where he lived and he came and got you with a helicopter. It landed on the roof of the house in the darker part . . .”

  And so Sandra had told Lorelei Lindberg, “the aunt,” her mother, the story about her mother, as Doris and Sandra had played and told it to each other, over and over again. And her mother, she had really listened for once. Not interrupted with her own comments, which she had a habit of doing before. “I was also interested in movie stars . . .” And all of her own anecdotes that later followed and always in some way were so much bigger and more fantastic than what you had to say yourself.

  She had listened.

  When Sandra finished Lorelei Lindberg had been so moved that she almost cried.

  “So it was so terrible for you too,” she said finally. “If only I had known.”

  But then she opened her arms and Sandra, little Sandra, rushed right into them.

  “I never thought we would be friends again,” she said. “I am so happy now, Sandra. And so sad. But now. Now everything will be good again. I promise.

  “We’ve gone through so much, Sandra. We’re going to manage this as well. Dear beloved child, I promise.”

  And the mother had rocked her little daughter in her arms.

  And the small, soft silk dog, had wagged her tail.

  “Everything will be okay again.”

  •••

  But of course it was not. Because it was exactly then, exactly in those moments, that—PANG! Doris Flinkenberg went up onto Lore Cliff with the pistol, fired.

  And the world that had for a short moment opened itself, closed again.

  The last hunt

  HE CAME TO THE HOUSE IN THE DARKER PART OF THE WOODS. Sandra did not really know when, but it must have been sometime during the night when she was lying in bed asleep. He was not there during dinner, the long dinner that followed after the long hunt. Sandra had not taken part in the hunt but stayed in the house where she spent the entire morning alone.

  The “catering girls” came in the afternoon. For real that is, which was news now since the Islander had married his “young wife.”

  And it was fascinating. Also the way the Islander spoke about Kenny in Kenny’s absence. “My young wife,” he said and sounded proud.

  Otherwise the hunting league was the same. Men who in Sandra’s childhood had been old men now stuck out in a different way, started having their own qualities and outlines, which they had not had for her earlier. It was Baron von B., who was M
agnus’s father whom Bencku was still like grease on bacon with, they lived in some kind of “bachelor pad” together in the city by the sea, you were told.

  Then there were Lindströms from the District, Wahlmans from the Second Cape, and so on. And Tobias Forsström of course, like always. Who had now developed a truly sinister attitude toward the firearm and to the hunting in general. That was the main thing, not the party afterward. On that point the Islander and Tobias Forsström were in agreement. They spoke expertly about a lot of exciting things that had happened during the hunt, the one that had taken place earlier in the day, and other hunts. It got Sandra in the mood, in some way, to see the two men’s understanding and suddenly the memory of Pinky in the Closet had also faded.

  “How is it going with the university studies?” Tobias Forsström was also the only one who turned to Sandra especially and asked her anything.

  And she lied so politely:

  “Good.”

  Tobias Forrström became in some way, you could see it on him, happy to hear it.

  That moved Sandra. She came to think that maybe you did not have to love Tobias Forrström, but he had his good sides. Him too. When he was in his element, it was to his advantage.

  She almost laughed when thinking like that. Also Doris-in-her laughed.

  Not a sick laugh either, but a perfectly ordinary one.

  The Islander raised his glass to Sandra and said cheers. Sandra raised her glass. They clinked glasses.

  It was such a splendid mood that was ruling in the house when suddenly a car drove up.

  “Our love was a continental affair, he came in a white Jaguar.”

  Not just any car. It was a Jaguar, a white one. An antique Jaguar from the thirties, the kind that you nowadays got to drive only a few days a year.

  He had a habit of coming over to the mainland and driving it sometimes. The Black Sheep that is. From Åland. Where he lived. And had lived all these years. With her, Lorelei Lindberg, who was now his wife.