The American Girl (41 page)

You became happy with him, thought Doris. And it was true. Micke Friberg made you happy.

And in the eyes of others. Micke Friberg. Who would not want to be together with someone who could play Dazed and Confused back and forth and backward if you pestered him enough?

In other words, what had happened in the house in the darker part of the woods during the summer was confirmed when the fall term started. The ugly duckling became a swan, marsh kid marsh queen. The baby fat was gone. She was not skinny, but she was luxuriant, had so to speak become
proportioned
and her blond, shoulder-length hair shimmered a light red.

An apple that had fallen from the tree. Not a sea apple tree exactly.

A woman. Fully mature.

Sometimes when she saw herself in the mirror she burst out laughing.

Was that her?

The first time with Sandra in the schoolyard after the summer vacation.

“Look who wants something,” Sandra said apathetically. They were standing and hanging around the exit. “The idiot.” For this name,
the idiot
, had been what they called Micke Friberg in private, just the two them, the previous semester, before the summer.

It was Sandra who had come to Doris where she was waiting for Micke Friberg outside the school building at the end of the school day. It was in other words Micke Friberg she had agreed to meet, not Sandra, but Sandra had been gone—on Åland or
whatever it was, New York?—so as usual she did not know what had happened.

Doris had just opened her mouth to say something in response but she did not get any farther before Micke Friberg quickly skidded up to her and covered her half-open mouth with his own mouth and absorbed Doris Flinkenberg in a hug that left no room for doubt for any outsider as to what it was all about.

“This is Sandra,” Doris said to Micke Friberg. And to Sandra, “This is Micke Friberg. We’re together now.”

“Nice,” Micke Friberg said, uninterested. “Doris has told me so much about you. I’m really looking forward to getting to know you. But so long for now. We’re going to go and sing and play a bit.”

Sing and play a bit? That was news for sure, you could see it in Sandra’s expression.

“Doris has a good singing voice,” Micke Friberg advertised. “I have a band she sings in. It’s called Micke’s Folk Band.”

And somewhat later, during morning assembly.

“Hi. I’m Doris and this is Micke and we have a band together, Micke’s Folk Band. And now we’re going to sing some old well-known folk songs in new arrangements, they’re our own arrangements, they’re Micke’s arrangements. So, first
I walked out one evening, out into a grove so green.”

And Doris Flinkenberg started singing.

But sometimes, when Doris was singing, she still thought about everything, about Sandra, everything with Sandra, everything, and the tears started streaming down her cheeks. But it happened less and less now. And sometimes, rather often, though it was so, her tears could not be seen. She “cried inside” as it was called in one of the stupid pop songs that had once played on her radio cassette player but that she no longer listened to so much anymore because if there was something Doris Flinkenberg had
to herself in the whole world, it was her intolerable taste in music,
Lasting Love Songs for Moonstruck Lovers
, “Our Love Is a Continental Affair,” Lill Lindfors, and all of that. Not even Micke Friberg could put up with it.

As said, Doris’s tears ran “inside.” Also while she was singing. But it was, as said, increasingly seldom now.

Micke’s Folk Band. It was the music. But there were also many other sides to Micke Friberg. For example, what is called “the world of literature.” In other words Micke Friberg read books. Real novels. By Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the like. He had plowed through
Crime and Punishment
over the summer.

“You can divide your life between before and after Dostoyevsky,” Micke Friberg said to Doris Flinkenberg. “You have to read
Crime and Punishment
. I want to share it with you.”

“What’s it about, then?” Doris Flinkenberg asked.

“It’s about guilt and reconciliation. About the possibility of reconciliation. There is always a path and a possibility to reconciliation. That is what Dostoyevsky wants to tell us. It’s just a matter of the human being choosing it.”

“What?” Doris Flinkenberg said and for a moment she looked like one Doris question mark.

“I mean,” said Micke Friberg searching for words. “Suppose I killed someone, then you would get to be a Sonya who would save me and at the same time the whole world . . . You would be a good Sonya, Doris.”

“Who’s Sonya?” Doris asked. “Sonya who?” and Micke started explaining to Doris Flinkenberg that Sonya in Dostoyevsky’s novel was an erhm, working girl, or prostitute, “or quite simply a whore,” a woman “from the street,” Micke Friberg continued to add, “who was the only one who believed there was light in Raskolnikov’s dark soul, and it was Sonya’s belief, this Sonya’s love that was a love of action, not words, that saved Raskolnikov . . .”

And then Doris started laughing. Laughing and laughing so that tears sprayed from her eyes.

Ahem . . .

Laughed also because everything fit and at the same time nothing did.

“Hey, now I don’t recognize you,” Micke Friberg whispered nervously. And he put his arms around her and so Doris Flinkenberg and Micke Friberg hugged and kissed some more.

“No one can love like us,” Micke Friberg had whispered reassuringly to Doris Flinkenberg after her crying spell.

And. Oh no. Micke, he was not stupid. He was so sympathetic and kind. Stupid. It would have been so much easier if he had been.

He made you happy. It really was so.

“GIVE ME THAT BOOK, THEN,” Doris Flinkenberg said in the middle of the embrace.

And they started reading Dostoyevsky together.

The idiot Micke Friberg started with
The Idiot
.

“It’s about goodness,” said Micke Friberg. “That there is a possibility of being good.”

“Doris,” said Micke Friberg, “you are so . . . good.”

But what was happening?

The bonds we tied, no one can undo
.

“Hi. I’m Doris, this is Micke, we have a band, it’s Micke’s Folk Band. And now we’re going to sing some old folk songs in our own arrangements, Micke’s arrangements.”

Micke Friberg, the first time, after talk.

Doris said to Micke, suddenly, afterward, “There are a lot of ideas in my head, from here and from there.”

“What kind?”

“Bits. From songs, magazines, what people have said. This and that. Can’t get hold of it. Like a melody. It falls short all the time. A song that someone wants to sabotage.”

And she had ALMOST started humming the Eddie-song, the American girl’s song. She almost thought about telling—everything. It was the first and only time she had thought about it and been close to doing it with Micke Friberg. If only she had done so!

“You with your sabotages,” Micke said lovingly and enveloped Doris in his arms. They had in other words been lying in his parents’ bed in his parents’ bedroom after the first time—it was the weekend and Micke’s parents were at the summer cottage.
The first time
.

“I can’t explain it any better,” Doris Flinkenberg mumbled.

“You don’t need to,” Micke whispered. “I like you the way you are. Idiot. You don’t seem to understand what a fantastic and sweet and sexy young woman you are. Though that’s part of your charm. Your unawareness. Child of nature.” And then he whispered, “My woman.” And, “I’m so happy that I was the one who discovered you first.”

“Woman.” Doris Flinkenberg, christened child of nature, tasted the word in Micke’s parents’ bedroom.

“And this,” she explained loudly, as if it was news, which it was not, they had planned ahead of time, she and Micke, to be sure the first time would be unforgettable, “was the first time.”

And continued:

“Now I’m not a VIRGIN anymore.” “Was it good?”

“Yes.” Doris answered that question yet again, though maybe a bit too impatiently already then. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” Micke Friberg was so eager about being a good lover with a woman whom he loved and who loved him. And it was fun but could they for goodness’ sake talk about something e-l-s-e now?
“Do you want to hear something funny?” Doris whispered to Micke. “One time Bencku was going to order books from a mail-order firm that sold the kind of weird books he’s interested in. He found a book he really wanted to have. It was called
Architecture and Crime
. He was terribly disappointed though he tried not to show it when he got the book because it wasn’t crime like in criminal cases but crime as in spaces. Spaces between the ornaments. Do you get it?”

“No.” Micke Friberg shook his head in the dark and impatiently fingered the coral necklace he had gotten from Doris a few days ago when they had celebrated their being together for a month and a half.

“Bencku, he sure is crazy . . .”

But Doris had not gotten any farther before her open mouth was covered by Micke’s mouth, Micke’s teeth, Micke’s tongue . . . and one thing led to another, whereupon—lightning and thunder—they did
it
for the second time.

It was later, at home in her own bed, that Doris Flinkenberg had the chance to think clearly again.

What was happening? Was she starting to go crazy?

“You’re filled with surprises,” Micke Friberg had said. “With you it’s never boring.”

Micke. Micke’s voice. Just thinking about it helped. Imagining Micke and nothing else. Making him so big in her head in her heart in her body that everything else drifted into the background.

“Can we agree on something?” Micke had asked. “That we keep Bencku and Sandra et cetera outside of this? Our relationship is something separate.”

“You’re jealous,” Doris had clucked.

“Of course,” Micke had replied. “Is that strange? I want to have all of you. I love you! Do you love me?”

“Yes,” Doris had replied frankly. A large calm had welled up inside her. They embraced each other again and in that embrace
Doris had been one hundred percent present. That was how she explained it to herself afterward. But I did like it. I was “one hundred percent” present.

So what, may you ask, was happening then?

“What do you see in him?” Sandra asked jealously on the schoolyard one of the few times they spoke to each other during that time.

Stupid question, they both knew. Anyone would be overjoyed to be together with Micke Friberg. Half of the school’s girls thought so anyway.

Still Doris Flinkenberg stood there in the schoolyard and hawked in the presence of Sandra Wärn and did not know what to say.

“You sing so beautifully,” Sandra had said with something in her voice that got Doris Flinkenberg to just leave, leave the schoolyard and run away.

Sometimes Doris Flinkenberg went out in the woods on her own.

Also before things ended with Micke Friberg.

Must be alone. But a lot of songs and words and rhymes and everything from here and there starting popping up now and multiplying in her head.

Doris, during the morning assembly.

“Hi. I’m Micke, this is Doris, we have a band, Micke’s Folk Band. We sing old folk songs . . . Oh!” Doris stopped abruptly, everyone laughed, she started again. “Hi. I’m Doris, this is Micke,
we have a band . . . oh God, now we’re going to sing, it’s an old folk song and it goes like this.”

Toward the middle of the month of October, around the time when Doris Flinkenberg started understanding for the first time in earnest the impossibility of everything about her relationship with Micke Friberg, she and Micke Friberg were reading Dostoyevsky together. She was reading
Crime and Punishment
, he was reading
The Idiot
.

“I should kill someone so that you could be Sonya. You would be a good Sonya. One who saves the world with her goodness. You are so good.”

He could not get away from it, Micke. He just could not leave it. And suddenly it was not funny at all.

Doris felt ill. Doris became seasick. Doris had to vomit.

She ran to the toilet, and vomited, vomited.

“It’s that boating accident—it’s just terrible.”

“No
one can love like us,”
said Micke Friberg, but suddenly he did not sound very convinced anymore either.

“I think that you make everything difficult,” Micke Friberg philosophized when Doris Flinkenberg was feeling better. “It’s a sign that you aren’t like other people. You are unique and strange.

“And I,” Micke continued, “love you. Just because you’re you and no one else.”

“Oh shut up now.” Doris realized that she had been lying and thinking. Why does he have to carry on like that. And disturb? Does he have to carry on gluing the word “love” on everything before he has properly checked what it is he has in front of him?

And what was it he had in front of him, then, Doris?

That was the question.

Only death, only death can loosen these bonds bonds bonds.

But in other words, what was it that really happened?

• • •

“Should we keep reading?” Doris said to Micke instead. “I’m already on. And I have to say that it’s really starting to get interesting.”

Micke laughed, his well-read laugh that belonged to someone who had a certain lead and knew how to carry a conversation about a major novel and a major writer, a real classic.

“You’re certainly special, aren’t you?” he said again. “That’s why I lo—”

“Be quiet now,” Doris Flinkenberg whispered devoutly. “Let’s read now.”

Micke and Doris. On Lore Cliff, she and Micke stood there and felt cold above Bule Marsh, Doris shivered and said, “She’s standing there spying on us. In the bushes. Sister Night. Can’t let go.”