The American Girl (24 page)

And then they had wandered through the woods to the house in the darker part, the women, the girls, Magnus von B., and Bengt.

And they had come to the house, where the Islander was standing at the top of the stairs like a captain.

And it was then that Bengt, who was behind Sandra, had said, “Sinking, sinking,” though very, very softly, so that just about only Sandra could hear. And she turned around and looked at him. And he, he looked at Sandra too.

And the high point of the party was reached.

At one point the Islander and Anneka Munveg were sitting on the stairs and they talked and talked. Anneka Munveg talked about her interesting job as a reporter, and everything in the world you could report on to everyone. The Islander nodded and caught on because Anneka Munveg was also so sexy, with her big light-colored Afro and her sober, black clothes. And Anneka Munveg told the Islander about “the working woman’s day” and all of that. And the Islander nodded, again, at the same time as his fingers hesitantly fingered the hair at the back of Anneka Munveg’s neck, these fingers were demonstrably there. Sandra saw, and she did not push them away, she acted like she did not care at all.

But then Inget Herrman was suddenly there asking the Islander to dance.

And the very last memory of that evening was how Inget Herrman and the Islander had danced something they called the “cowboy dance” at the bottom of the pool without water.

“Didn’t I say that she would seduce him?” Doris Flinkenberg whispered from somewhere in the background.

. . .

AND THEN EVERYTHING WAS OVER
.

SMACK
.

SUMMER BECAME FALL AND IT WAS HUNTING SEASON AGAIN
.

“THE FLESH IS WEAK” HAD BEEN ONE OF THE ISLANDER AND
Lorelei Lindberg’s mutual hits during the time when Lorelei Lindberg was still there. One of these many mutual hits, when it had been some time since the passion was over, admittedly remained in your head. But so to speak disconnected, like a ballad whose specific significance you no longer could grasp.

So when the Islander started humming it when it started becoming fall you understood accordingly, if you were Sandra, that it meant something, but not exactly what. You recognized it but at the same time you did not. It was old and at the same time new.

Variety is the spice of life. Maybe it was that simple.
Now Pelle has finished his dinner and is ready for dessert—an ice cream would taste pretty good
. That way of seeing things, that philosophy of life.

This was in other words a brief paraphrasing of the fact that when the fall came and the hunting season started the Islander became restless and started humming these old songs—and polishing his rifle.

And then one day Pinky was there.

“Hey, princess, are you sleeping?” She was suddenly standing at the end of the pool in the basement in a red Lurex jacket and with a pink heart-shaped bag, glittering so in silver shoes with four-inch heels.

And the Islander, in a phenomenal mood, was right behind her. “And where do you have the cocktail shaker?”

It was the sign that it was now fall and the hunting season had started. Another time. The memory of the summer and the women in the house on the First Cape: it faded.

. . .

That early Saturday evening when the Bombshell showed up in the house in the darker part of the woods again Sandra was lying sure enough at the bottom of the pool without water. But she was not asleep, though it might have looked that way. She was lying with her eyes closed, on her back, she was thinking. A lot of images flew through her head, new impressions. There was a man whose head was a glass ball filled with water in which a golden yellow aquarium fish was swimming, with long, multilobed fins. It was a slum in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, built in miniature like a toy village on a gray hillside. Small, small shacks in rows, people in poverty, people in real shit. It was more real than real.

Then the fishermen’s pub. Where she and Inget Herrman and Doris Flinkenberg had spent the rest of the day after the art exhibit. “An examination of what is going on in art around the world right now,” as Inget Herrman had stood and said on the steps of the art museum.

“Rather dreary, actually,” Inget Herrman said in the bitter wind. “Come on. Now I’m both hungry and thirsty. I’m going to show you a real fishermen’s pub.”

“Is this what it was like living as a jet-setter?” Doris had whispered to her best friend Sandra Wärn.

“Sleeping Beauty, are you sleeping?” Pinky continued. “In that case it’s time to wake up now!”

That was before the real hunting parties. But like a preparation for them.

The women in the house on the First Cape were certainly still there. A few of them stayed over the winter, but they were the more sinister and less striking ones. The ones who had planted sprouts that had, of course, already withered away at the beginning of October just a few weeks after they had been planted, dyed
paper and fabric with paint made from plants that they had boiled themselves and then called it “my art” this and “my art” that and talked about it and analyzed it in various expert ways.

They also talked about getting hens and goats but were so hopelessly impractical and slow with everything that they did not even have the energy . . . just talking about it tired them out. Sometimes even Bencku pretended he was not home when one of them came down the hill and knocked on the door to the barn or on his small dirty windowpane.

“Bencku might have too much bite,” Doris had determined laconically in the cousin’s kitchen and the cousin’s mama was just about to reproach her “now, now, now” when Doris had already opened the kitchen window of her own accord, stuck her head out the opening, and helpfully yelled:

“He’s probably there. Just knock hard. Sometimes he doesn’t hear well.”

But the other women, the real ones, they were somewhere else. The more unforgettable ones anyway. For example Laura B-H who had finished writing her women’s novel and had gone on tour with it; Saskia Stiernhielm who was back in the Blue Being, you wrote to her and had your letters returned (if you were Bengt, that is, but only Doris happened to know that).

And Inget Herrman then, who had to stay in the city due to the extensive work of gathering material for her thesis. The work was really advancing, it had received a new title.

“The material is still alive,” Inget Herrman said in the fishermen’s pub. And then she started telling them about the new title, which was a working title, and it was interesting but . . . the girls still did not listen to it.

“Is this what it was like as a jet-setter?” Doris then whispered to Sandra Wärn so softly that only Sandra would hear, but Inget Herrman snapped it up and wanted to know more. When Doris could no longer keep quiet she started telling Inget Herrman about the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg and Heintz-Gurt and
the whole story . . . and she probably would have blurted out everything if Sandra had not started jabbing her under the table, shut your mouth.

Inget Herrman had looked at Sandra, amused, but said nothing more about it.

“But the Islander then,” said Inget Herrman. “Dad. How’s Dad?”

It was awkwardly clear that Inget Herrman still had the Islander on her mind somehow even though the summer had been over a long time ago and she was engrossed in gathering material for her thesis. Doris was also attentive, and when Inget Herrman went to the bathroom she whispered worriedly, “She hasn’t thought about seducing him has she? Again?” And when Sandra had not answered because what did she know about it, Doris had said, “But Pinky . . . Bombshell Pinky Pink?”

“How’s your dad?” Inget Herrman asked accordingly several times during the girls’ study visits to the city by the sea even before she started showing up again at the house in the darker part of the woods.

It was somewhat later in the fall and late Saturday nights and she sometimes arrived in a taxi in the middle of the hunting party after she had sat in the fishermen’s pub and drunk some wine in order to build up some courage.

“Good,” Sandra replied.

“Doesn’t he feel a bit lonely in the house?”

“No, maybe,” Sandra answered truthfully right then because the day Inget Herrman asked the question was also the same day Bombshell Pinky Pink showed up for the first time. In the evening, after Sandra and Doris’s visit to the city by the sea.

The summer, the women in the house on the First Cape. That party had culminated.

All of that was so far away now.

. . .

Anneka Munveg, the famous news reporter. You could see her on TV during the newscasts and different programs dealing with topics of current interest. Once a bit later in the fall when the Bombshell was already feeling quite at home in the house in the darker part on the weekends, both before, during, and sometimes also a while after the parties (except during the week when it was a regular weekday and no Pinky anywhere) and all three of them had lain on the bottom of the pool and watched TV, Sandra and Doris and Bombshell Pinky Pink. They had dragged the television from the rec room to the edge of the pool and it was rather fun to lie there and relax to your heart’s content among the soft cushions from the sofas in the rec room and among the fabrics from Little Bombay, among the magazines and music cassettes—Anneka Munveg had suddenly been there reading the news in the newsroom and then Doris and Sandra yelled at the same time, “We know her!” not to mention that they gushed with pride.

“I see,” the Bombshell said trying to appear unaffected. “Is she . . . nice then?” The last part had come a bit hesitantly too with a very frail and whiny voice that was completely different from the Bombshell’s normal hoarse, grating, and deep one.

“She is.” Doris Flinkenberg had taken a deep breath and looked around so that you would understand she was about to say something incredible. “Fantastic. Indescribable. Delightful.” But at the same time she noticed Pinky’s increasingly uncertain and sad expression, and that had almost been the worst of it, that it in some way seemed like Pinky had expected to hear just these things, and that it also made her even sadder. Then Doris Flinkenberg stopped herself, let her shoulders slump listlessly, and added rather nonchalantly, “Oh. She’s okay. I guess.” And then she turned toward Pinky all over again and studied her with admiration. “Can I touch your hair, Pinky? What kind of hair spray do you use? Can’t you do the same hairstyle on me?”

Then Pinky brightened and cheered up again.

“No. It’s not possible. It’s a hairstyle that is unique to just me.”

“A unique striptease dancer hairstyle,” Doris Flinkenberg clarified loud and clear in an unmistakable Doris way, whereupon she got up and walked over to the television at the edge of the pool and positioned herself under the screen on which Anneka Munveg’s magnified serious face was talking. Then Doris took a few dance steps of the kind the Bombshell had a habit of doing on those occasions when she was seriously demonstrating for the girls what she called the striptease dancer’s trade secrets,
what every striptease dancer should know
, and so on. And the girls, especially not Doris Flinkenberg, had never done anything in these situations to conceal their great thirst for knowledge on this subject.

“Please, Pinky,” Doris begged while acting like a striptease dancer in front of the television screen. “Can’t you please do one
almost
the same for me?”

Said and done. Pinky had not been able to resist such a Dorisplea. And the television was turned off completely shortly thereafter and the girls, with whom Pinky was included on these long Saturday afternoons, were thoroughly occupied with dressing up Doris Flinkenberg as the ultimate “erhm, working girl,” and it was this playful activity and its visible results in the basement of the house in the darker part that would later lead to Doris Flinkenberg being forbidden from entering the house on all Saturdays, starting in the late afternoon, throughout the entire hunting season. This is because just as Doris on
the big glitter scene
, which consequently for this purpose was the edge of the pool, was performing her “erhm, working girl’s” striptease dance show with her own “especially daring” choreography, the cousin’s mama in her brand-new Four Mops and a Dustpan cleaning overalls happened to come into the house via the door to the basement, which for the most part was used only in the fall
in connection with the hunting league’s meetings since it was a convenient entrance/exit for the cleaning and catering personnel. “But cousin’s mama!!” Doris yelled beside herself. “It was just for fun.” But nothing helped. Doris Flinkenberg’s fate was sealed. “Now you see to it that you get home immediately!”

That is how Doris and Sandra came to take over the cleaning in the house after the hunting parties. Doris was not allowed to be there, but she was so curious. So every Sunday morning after there had been a hunting party, Doris came to the house in the darker part of the woods and Sandra and Doris put on their Four Mops and a Dustpan overalls, the new ones, specially designed for the new business.

“It really smells like a brothel in here,” Doris Flinkenberg whispered delightedly.

The flesh is weak
. In other words it was now that the notorious hunting parties were launched in the house in the darker part of the woods: Saturday evenings, Saturday nights, and sometimes even up until early Sunday morning. Then the house in the darker part was invaded by the hunters from the hunting league. Not by all of them of course, but quite a few, above all the ones who, after a long and wild day out in the countryside, were in the mood for a long night filled with pleasures just as wild.

With the striptease dancers, or “erhm, the working girls,” or whatever it was they were supposed to be called. “The catering,” the Islander said, but obscurely.

“Erhm, the working girls.” This
erhm
originated by the way from Tobias Forsström, one of the teachers at the school up in the town center. He was the one who, in connection with a certain essay that Doris Flinkenberg had written a hundred years ago, the one called “Profession: Striptease Dancer,” had stirred tremendous commotion and made it impossible for Doris Flinkenberg
and Sandra Wärn to be in the same homeroom in the future, had taken Doris Flinkenberg aside and kindly explained that you were not supposed to say striptease dancer
but call the phenomenon by its proper name
.