The American Girl (15 page)

But afterward, when the Islander had been so sad he just cried and cried—and Sandra had never seen her father cry before; it was rather unpleasant. But then he had left and come back home again and had the ring with the tablespoon-sized ruby with him.

. . . When the sound that Sandra had been hearing in the back of her head for a long time became stronger, gradually completely deafening and a great shadow had sunk down over the bright summer day, Sandra threw herself behind the rock next to the house. She did not believe her eyes: it was a helicopter and it was flying so low that it almost grasped the treetops with its horrible insectlike legs creating an air pressure that pressed the grass and ferns and all remaining overgrowth, which there was of course a multitude of, down, down toward the ground. Sandra herself, mute from fear in the presence of the incomprehensible, but her eyes just as wide open in the presence of the same, just stared at how the silver-black helicopter sank down toward the house and landed on its wide, flat roof.

At the same time, in another place, but not far away (but probably far enough), on a highway: the Islander was driving at least a hundred miles an hour in order to make it home. Suspicion had grasped hold of him: if the worst happened, then! Then he had to hurry! Now! He must not come too late, just could not! And he had floored it.

But already, at the house in the darker part of the woods: Lorelei Lindberg had come out on the roof. She was dressed entirely in white, a white dress, white scarf around her head. She stood there and called to the man wearing a pilot’s cap with ear flaps and aviator glasses, leather jacket, boots, and light beige aviator pants,
calling out as if to outdo the rumble of the helicopter—she had looked around and discovered her daughter Sandra, who had now stepped out from behind the rock where she had been hiding. The fear had left her in a heartbeat. Now she was standing there next to the rock, in case Lorelei Lindberg had happened to forget, like a reminder.

“Das
Mädchen,”
Lorelei Lindberg called to the man, who was Heintz-Gurt, her secret lover, who had, in other words, come to take her away. “The girl,” Sandra Wärn translated for Doris Flinkenberg. “In German.” He was impatient to leave, he tried to push Lorelei toward the helicopter door—a scuffle almost arose up there on the roof of the house in the darker part.

“Das
Mädchen nicht! Nicht das Mädchen!”
he yelled back and looked at her as well. “Not the girl,” Sandra translated for Doris Flinkenberg. “Not the girl at all, in German.” For a moment both of them looked at the little girl, Lorelei Lindberg and Heintz-Gurt. The adults on the roof. The girl in the woods. A moment.

And then the moment was over. Lorelei climbed up into the helicopter and before disappearing inside completely, she turned around—of course, the classical—one last time and looked at the rock by the edge of the woods and then, in that microscopically short moment, it was only the two of them in the entire world.

In case she happened to forget . . .

She looked so helpless
.

And then, when everything was over and it was too late, Sandra lifted her hand—it was heavy like lead—to wave to Lorelei Lindberg one last time.

And the helicopter rose and was gone. Just a few seconds and the great silence and paralysis and the heat had settled, quivering and quiet over the house in the darker part again.

A car drove up, a door was slammed. The Islander, white in the face, came rushing toward his daughter who was sitting at the
very bottom of the stairway up to nothing, on the last gray and decomposing step.

And the Islander instantly understood that he had arrived too late. Everything had already happened, it was irrevocable. Father and daughter, on the bottom step, alone in the peculiar silence that had always surrounded the house in the darker part. They had gotten up and with arms around each other in an odd way, started walking up the steps back inside the house.

“I went down into the pool that night,” Sandra finished her story for Doris Flinkenberg behind the closed door in the kitchen in the darker part of the woods, just in time to hear an audible cleaning and poking about on the other side of the door.

It was the cousin’s mama of course, who was knocking on the door, and she shouted in a very friendly but also decided way, “Girls, girls! Now you’re really going to have to let me in girls! I want my coffee break too!”

But the ring. “I looked and looked.” Sandra lowered her voice, they were in the room now, her room, had climbed up into the bed that was still called the marital bed even though there was only a wan girl who slept in it alone and it was so big it took up almost the entire room. “Later. At the bottom of the pool. And—I found it. Though it really wasn’t easy to see. In other words. Tablespoon-sized. In that case it really was a rather small tablespoon that had been the model for it. And I . . .

“. . . I took it and hid it and never told the Islander.”

“I want to see it,” Doris Flinkenberg hissed.

“Shh.” Sandra hushed. “I said it was top secret. We have to wait until we’re alone again.”

And in the pool, later: Sandra took out the plastic die from her bag, the small one with the silver confetti inside, and there it was, at the very bottom. The ring. With the ruby. Well. It was not like a real tablespoon, not quite so big.

Doris squeezed the small plastic die in her sweaty hand.

“Here comes happiness,” Sandra said softly and with meaning and reached out for Doris’s hand, and Sandra slid the ring on Doris’s finger.

“I would very much like to marry you, Heintz-Gurt,” Doris Flinkenberg said and looked Sandra Wärn sincerely in the eye.

“That’s very good,” Sandra Wärn said in German, “because I think that’s a rather good idea too.”

“And then,” Doris sighed happily with the ring on her finger, “they lived happily every after. In the Alps. In Austria.

“But,” she added fatefully, “what happened to the little girl? The one who was left behind, alone?”

“Well,” Sandra said dully and seriously, “it was probably so. That she was left behind, alone.”

“Shall we,” Doris said then in another tone and quite eagerly, “have the wedding kiss later?”

“What’s going on here?” Suddenly, in the middle of the most intense game of games, Bombshell Pinky Pink was standing there at the edge of the pool in her bright pink clothes, the miniskirt made out of plastic-coated fabric and the light red blouse made out of polyester, which was low cut and so tight that there was not enough room inside and the contents were being pushed up toward her neckline.

And immediately she, Pinky with her X-ray eyes, caught sight of the ring. “What a rock!” she shouted. “That’s what I call a diamond.”

And she was already on her way down into the pool because as said, which she had said in other situations, “I have an instinct for rocks, especially ones that are shiny and glittery,” and help, what were the girls supposed to do now? Pinky must not get a closer look at the ring. No. It must not happen. “Erhm,” Doris interrupted her then, got up and stood in her way, but with the indisputable professional authority of someone who is dealing with a very serious matter. “Could I ask a favor? An interview?”

And then Doris explained as seriously and irresistibly as only Doris could when she pulled out all the stops, that it would be an honor if Bombshell Pinky Pink would assist with “a valuable firsthand testimony” for the research for her group project Profession: striptease dancer in school, a rather solitary group because Doris Flinkenberg had always been so peculiar that no one really wanted to be “a group” with her.

“It would be a great honor,” Doris Flinkenberg finished and Pinky had forgotten all the diamonds in the world for a moment on the glitter scene and immediately said yes.

But the ring, Doris kept it on her finger. But only during grand occasions in the pool without water, and of course, only when Sandra Wärn was there.

Lorelei Lindberg and Heintz-Gurt. It was a story that took off then. Heintz-Gurt became a person, and Doris Flinkenberg, she would be such a perfect Lorelei Lindberg.

It was madness.

But one more thing. Lorelei Lindberg. That was Doris’s name for her. Doris’s invention. Lorelei, that was namely the most beautiful name Doris knew.

Lindberg. That was what you were called, there in the District.

La vie emmerdante/The cursed life
. Sandra’s last essay at the French School, rendered in print.

The famous movie star Lupe Velez was tired of life. She wanted to die. The man whose child she was carrying had left her. It was not Tarzan who had been her greatest love. To top it all off it was another love, one that had been secondary.

The famous movie star had partied with Tarzan in Paris, London, Mexico, and in her home in Hollywood, and in the end their tremendous passion had drained both of them of their strength. Both of them had pulled away, millions of miles from each other,
like two wounded animals. And once you have burned a bridge it is not a matter of building it up again just like that.

This man now, who had left her, he was secondary.

The famous movie star Lupe Velez gathered all the tablets she had in her home. There were quite a lot, enough for a truly fatal dose. Then she called her friends and invited them to a farewell dinner. Though she did not tell them this directly. She ordered her favorite meal from catering. Chili con carne. Strong.

They ate and drank champagne and spoke badly about men, love, and life. They reminisced about bad days, in order to get in the right mood.

The guests went home and the movie star was alone. She took one last bath, washed herself clean. After the bath she put on her very finest nightgown of silk, the one Tarzan had given her once. The bed was made with the finest linens, silk these as well. She did her evening ablutions, did not forget to brush her hair with fifty hard pulls.

And she took out the tablets. Poured them out over the nightstand, sat on the edge of the bed, started popping them in her mouth and swallowing them with champagne. When she had taken all of them she lay down on the bed, adjusted her body in a suitable position, just right, not exaggerated, elegant. And then she closed her eyes and waited for sleep and death to come.

She woke up and knew right away that it was not heaven. Her stomach was churning, she dragged herself to the bathroom. The chili. She barely had time to get the toilet lid up before it came out. But at the same time she slipped and lost her balance and hit her head on the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl. She lost consciousness, all dams burst. And her head ended up in the toilet bowl. That was how the famous movie star Lupe Velez would be remembered. As the one who drowned in the toilet bowl in her own home.

Passion, it is just devilry.

La passion. C’est vraiment un emmerdement
.

. . .

Sandra turned in the essay, packed up her things, and stopped attending the French School. Then she headed straight to the ordinary junior high school in the town center, in the District, and was admitted as a student in the same grade as Doris Flinkenberg. Not in the same class, as said, but in the classroom next door, in the parallel class.

Lorelei Lindberg above the small washbasin in the back room in Little Bombay, had grasped the fluorescent lamp above the mirror with both hands and
FSSSST
for a few seconds the current flooded through her in one great shock. One second, only Sandra saw it, Lorelei Lindberg blinked yellow, hissing, electrical. The world stood still
FSST
and in one’s memory that second became an eternity
.

No, you’re wrong, she had said to the Black Sheep
.

But I’m afraid
.

Of him
.

There is something strange about the house
.

And the boy, there is a boy wandering around
.

And yet I know that it’s abnormal. That boy, he’s just a child
.

There are rumors—that he’s done something terrible. You don’t know
.

The Black Sheep:

“That it isn’t things you choose for yourself. The mouse doesn’t choose to be a mouse.”

“I understood what you meant,” she said bitterly
.

And silk georgette
.

And chiffon with polyester
.

My God it’s melting
.

This wasn’t real either
.

But later she was happy again. Silk georgette. Organza. And shantung
.

Shamo silk—it’s too wonderful
.

And chiff—

. . .

Then

Suddenly

Everything

Was

Over

The store had gone bankrupt
.

The Islander and Sandra emptied it
.

Loaded fabrics into the car and drove them to the house in the darker part of the woods
.

Little Bombay, all the fabrics
.

“We’re leaving because nothing’s happening here,” she muttered and she wasn’t the silk dog any longer. To herself. No. It couldn’t be said like that
.

It wasn’t like that
.

“Let us call her Lorelei Lindberg,” Doris had said at the beginning of the game. “Everyone in the next county over is called Lindberg and since she wasn’t from here you can assume she was from there.”

Doris’s way of reasoning. But it had helped
.

She could hide other stories in her heart—no stories
.

There were holes in the garden of stories—a well, dark like a cavity in the earth to stare into
.

Belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which nothing could be woven
.

Viscose rayon pulp and nothing
.

Little Bombay, all the fabrics—

And the puzzle, 1,500 pieces, “Alpine Villa in Snow,” half finished, it was still lying on the table
.

“It’s so empty. I shoot flies with an air rifle.” The Islander shot empty rounds with his rifle in the rec room. Drank whiskey. Maybe it was his attempt at building up the courage to load the rifle with ammunition
and just make an end to everything. To himself, everything, the little girl in the pool
.