The American Girl (6 page)

And then they disappeared into the house and the girl was alone. She looked around, and then, after a while, she started ringing the doorbell again.

She turned around and looked at him. He looked back.

He could not control it. This was reality.

A bit later, in the fall, Inget Herrman and Kenny de Wire came to the Glass House.

They were Eddie de Wire’s sisters, they came from America probably after being called about Eddie’s death. One of them, Kenny de Wire, stayed with the baroness after this. The other one also stayed in the country. Just became—

Bencku did not meet either of them, not then.

Only once when he was standing at the farthest end of one of the longest jetties did he see one of them.

She was on her way down the hill from the Glass House, toward the boathouse.

A second, but only a short one, he shivered, petrified.

She was so similar. It was almost her.

The American girl.

She waved at him. It was, he would come to know later, the oldest sister. Her with the strange name. The one who was called Inget Herrman.

Listen to the house, it is an organism
. Nevertheless he was back again at night, he heard a shot. He went closer.

Imaginary swimming, somewhat later
. Bencku at the house in the darker part. He had walked up and was standing and looking in through the window into the lower floor, through the vast panorama window that faced the marsh.

He saw the girl.

She was running up and down in the swimming pool with no water. Her hands gesticulating wildly like swim strokes in the air.

Back and forth, back and forth, eyes closed.

L
ORELEI LINDBERG WANTED TO HAVE A HOUSE. NOT JUST ANY
house, but an altogether specific one, which she had seen on an alpine slope at an Austrian ski resort during one of the many honeymoon trips she and the Islander had gone on during the twelve years their marriage lasted. A marriage that did not end in mature mutual understanding: there was nothing mature about Lorelei and the Islander’s passion, it was heated and regressive and impossible to live in, in the long run, except in the classical way, where one of them abandons the other, but who still, nevertheless after a certain time, would be remembered fondly.

Lorelei Lindberg was the woman in the Islander’s life. It was a fact that would remain. That is to say there would be other women: Yvonne and Marianne, Bombshell Pinky Pink, Anneka Munveg the famous journalist, Inget Herrman. And, of course, she who later became the Islander’s second wife: Kenny, born de Wire. But nothing would change the fact that Lorelei Lindberg was and remained the woman in the Islander’s life.

“It’s an Ålandic quality,” as the Islander used to say. “My stubbornness.”

“I want that house,” Lorelei Lindberg immediately yelled when she caught sight of the villa situated so beautifully on a snowy slope with trees with snow-covered branches that formed the perfect wide, clear Central European landscape. The house appeared
as it would on a serving tray, or like a puzzle, “Alpine Villa in Snow, 1,500 pieces.”

High mountains could be seen in the background and gray and blue Alps whose white tops stood out against the sky surrounding them in the sunshine.

Lorelei Lindberg, the Islander, and their little girl, and yes, she was harelipped, found themselves on a promenade about 150 feet from the house on the slope on the other side of a field. Dressed as they should be for jet-setters à la late sixties; and even, if you happened to be the little girl, even a bit fashion forward. She had a pair of real moon boots on her feet, at least five years before such boots became popular for a short time and were mass produced so they could be purchased for a reasonable price in regular stores too.

“Can be done,” the Islander answered calmly, put his arm around Lorelei Lindberg’s waist and squeezed, mildly but decidedly and filled with spirit, and a typical enthusiasm that sometimes bordered on madness but that he nevertheless could, in this moment, keep from running wild.

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 deaths 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 . . .”