The American Girl (7 page)

But now, this afternoon at the Austrian ski resort in front of an unlikely house, which was a dream that would be realized (there
was no reason to doubt it, Sandra knew that more than enough from experience), Sandra suddenly became worried and afraid in a completely new way.

This isn’t something I read about or see in magazines, she suddenly understood. This isn’t a story. This is for real. This is happening to Mom, Dad, and me. It’s happening to us.

And she looked at her parents. They were, to say the least, unmoved. They had continued their snowball fight in the snow on the field, which was deep enough to play in and which spread out in front of the house. Laughing and noisily chasing each other and catching up with each other, chasing each other and getting hold of each other, over and over again and with even intervals, in other words, pretty much the entire time. They tumbled together in a heap, tumbled around each other in the soft snow on the ground. Then up on their feet again, moving on. There was some type of unconscious system in it.
Because they got closer to the house the whole time
.

The little girl watched it all like a movie, and very consciously. It also was not the first time, and definitely not a new perspective, that of the outside observer. But suddenly, and this had never happened before, all of the comforting and self-righteousness in a customary on-the-side perspective was blown away. Suddenly it was actually the perspective itself that was the source of the discomfort and the anxiety growing inside her these last senseless sunny minutes before the landscape grew dark all at once and the snowstorm blew in over them. The source of the angst and the fear battling with all common sense just welled up within her.

It was a thought she had no words for yet, she was so young. Now it was above all a feeling and it struck down in her with a deafening force. If she was an outside observer, who said that she was the only one? Who said that no one else had seen? Any others? And IF someone else or some other people had seen,
who had then said that his or her or their gazes would automatically be kind? Even uninterested? Who had said that there was not anyone else in the background, someone with an intention?

For example the evil eye, if that was what was watching?

The evil eye
was a concept the small harelipped girl had experimented with in her thoughts for long periods of stigmatized, harelipped loneliness. But, and exactly in this moment she understood this, yet not in words, mostly as an abstract idea. Like Santa Claus whom you no longer believed in but was still a concept you gladly held on to. Or like a game. An imaginary game.

Now she understood that it could be real. That the evil eye might exist and completely independently of her own thoughts about this or that. And right now just in this moment it was more than a little alarming when she knew that her and her entire family’s future was being decided.

It was, quite frankly, as if someone had thrown a disgusting wet towel in the little girl’s pale, cloven face.

And she was seized by an overwhelming love, a tenderness that exceeded her common sense. Still, it was so obvious, regardless of how ridiculous her parents were: she still loved them. Of course loved them. Those stupid laughs, the stupid snowball fight,
it was so stupid, but couldn’t they just be allowed to be that way?
Two who loved each other, and three. Could they not just be allowed to be that way, forever?

And she started praying to God, there where she was standing, to make the evil eye disappear. Or, at least to move it. She did not know which. It is also possible that she only asked for protection.

My God my God my God keep them away from the plight that will befall them. Protect them from. Pain.

But her parents in the distance had almost reached the fateful house, still being noisy and imitating each other, still completely ignorant in the matter of the big battle between good and evil
forces playing out around them. And the little girl was seized by something similar to panic, there where she was standing with her terribly hot boots, in the midst of her own powerlessness. When not even God seemed to hear, after all nothing was happening. And in order to do something herself she ran out into the snow, a task that, in other words, was not entirely easy in the enormous boots, threw herself on her back on the ground with an energy uncommon for her. Gesticulated wildly with her arms for dear life, up and down, up and down, in order to bring about an angel to scare away the evil eye. Or at least move it.

An angel’s stare is terrible
.

An angel is so beautiful, gentle, the universe sings when you look at it
.

Or, quite simply: tit for tat, eye to eye. The girl pressed herself against the ground even harder and made her most terrifying harelipped face up toward the dark sky above her. It became an angry and bold stare lasting several minutes without blinking, and in turn produced for the most part a lot of tears that in the storm just froze in the corners of her eyes so that her field of vision just diminished even more and her eyelids were frozen.

She became completely powerless right in the middle, all the energy left her at once. The sun disappeared at about the same time and the sky filled with black, violet clouds. The snow started falling, a snow that was transformed into a tight whirl in the wind that blew to storm strength, this also happened in just a few moments. Sandra was lying in the snow, now petrified. Unable to move. Her body did not want to. The evil eye had nailed her there on the spot. Her head was spinning, and now she understood she was going to die. She could do nothing about it, she would be buried in snow.

“Help!”

No, it could not be like this. She did not want to die! Did not want to! And she became scared again and started calling for
help for everything she was worth. She did not know whom she was calling to, she just lay there and screamed, screamed while the whirling snow tightened around her.

“Help!” Once she had started screaming she could not stop, simply could not. And that was suddenly the most terrible thing of all.

Then Lorelei Lindberg was there, next to her. Frightened and agitated she popped up in the storm, she had lost her leather cap, heavy clumps of snow hung in her flaxen hair and her eye makeup had run down her cheeks in long green streaks. Lorelei Lindberg had an ability to forget everything when she was playing, to really lose herself in the game.

“Little child.” Lorelei Lindberg’s face wrinkled with concern and sympathy. “What happened?”

But little Sandra could not answer. Could not get a word out, still could not move. How would she explain? How in the world would she get anyone else to understand? It was not possible. So she just lay there, face turned toward the sky, which could no longer be seen, like a stuck pig and screamed.

“My God! Stop it now!”

If there was something that irritated Lorelei Lindberg it was her daughter’s crying spells, the quite-often-occurring ones. She had truly avoided becoming familiar with them, being able to tell the difference between the one kind of crying versus the other kind, and one thing was certain, she could not be bothered to listen to them for very long.

And now her patience ran out once again. With a determined and energetic anger she took a hold of her daughter and tore her up out of the snow. These were no gentle grips: she was forced to use all her strength since Sandra herself was so heavy and without a will of her own, completely numb in all of her limbs, like a rag doll. And as usual, which she had a habit
of doing when her mother treated her a bit roughly, Sandra disconnected herself mentally, was present but at the same time was not. But this time she did not do it to keep away, or because she in some way should have felt sorry for herself. Just the opposite. She had gotten out of the snow. To be brutally plucked from the snow might have been the only way. The spell was gone. She was content and quite relieved.

But suddenly Lorelei Lindberg stopped in the middle of her angry outburst. She let go of her daughter—yes, she had regained her ability to move, she could stand on her own—and she stared at the tracks left behind on the ground.

“But what a beautiful angel! Have you made that all by yourself?” The pride in Lorelei Lindberg’s voice could not be mistaken, it was as if her anger had vanished into thin air, and her enthusiasm was just as real and honest as her intense frustration had just been. Lorelei Lindberg looked from her daughter to the angel in the snow, from the angel to her daughter and back, and she sparkled with excitement. As if it were something unheard-of. And then she turned around and called out into the snowstorm, which had already had time to transform the beautiful landscape into a foggy and gray soup where you could barely see where you were going.

“Humptey! Come and see what Sandra has made! All by herself!”

And shortly thereafter he appeared out of the whirling snow, out of the whining of the wind that obliterated all other sounds. He was the gorilla in high spirits, slightly bent forward, forehead wrinkled in creases, and hands dangling listlessly in front of him, almost dragging the ground when he walked forward quickly. And with his sights set on Lorelei.

“Here comes the snow gorilla to get you!” the Islander roared. “Ugh! This is an attack! The ape is back!”

“Stoppp! Tjuuuh!” Lorelei Lindberg shrieked but it was too late. Before anyone knew what was happening the Islander had thrown himself at her and both of them had lost their balance and fallen over on the ground where they rolled back and forth, back and forth, wrestling, snickering, over the angel in the snow which, of course, was destroyed beneath them.

Sandra barely had her moment of triumph, then it was over. The angel had only just been made (and to what effect? that was something you could really ask yourself) and it was obliterated from the face of the earth.

Then Sandra was beside herself again. But this time in the usual way, in the way she had been beside herself in her parents’ company so many times before.

“You’ve messed it up!” she cried and burst into tears. The tears sprayed out of her eyes, she squatted in the snow and just roared. Of course the moon boots did not tolerate this kind of shifting of body weight, so she just tumbled down on her back and ended up in an odd position half sitting on the ground; it was really uncomfortable and did its part in making sure the crying would not stop.

Finally her parents paid attention. They finally stopped with their games. Lorelei Lindberg ran up to Sandra and tried to put her arms around her but Sandra just flailed wildly and became even more hysterical.

“My goodness, sweetheart,” Lorelei Lindberg tried. “Calm down. It was just a game.”

But Sandra did not calm down, nothing helped now, certainly not what someone tried to say. Everything was already destroyed, Sandra was inconsolable. And the Islander and Lorelei Lindberg stood powerless beside her; and now they had to accept standing there, discouraged and bewildered in the cruel storm, like two fools.

But not for very long of course. If there was, as said, something Lorelei Lindberg was not blessed with it was an angel’s
patience and, above all, this applied to her only daughter’s cries and howls, which were, as said, frequently occurring.

“My goodness, child!” she finally yelled. “Get it together! I said that it was only a game! I’m not thinking of standing here and staring at you one more second!”

And Lorelei Lindberg turned around and started with great determination to trudge back through the snow toward the promenade that led to the village from which they had come, the village with all of the hotels, restaurants, and the nightclub the Running Kangaroo, which was the gathering place for the international jet-setters. And with all of the people. Once Lorelei Lindberg had gotten started she went straight ahead without so much as a glance over her shoulder. And quickly, very quickly, she was swallowed up by the storm and the fog—just like the house, the woods, the Alps, and the entire magnificent puzzle game had just been swallowed up.

Everything that was wide open becomes a closed world again
.

Now there was just snow, and there in the middle father and daughter. Sandra, who was really trying to calm herself down now and gradually managed to do so, and the Islander, who was so often standing on both sides of the fence. His daughter on one side, his wife on the other. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

No. Getting there using reason was not possible. And that was a good thing indeed because that kind of musing would not have gotten him anywhere. He would just have remained standing in the snow, stiff and frozen in place just like his angel daughter was a moment ago.

No, as luck would have it the Islander was, in contrast to his daughter, someone who WAS NOT endowed with a complicated inner life. One second’s thinking was enough, then he had turned toward her again:

“Listen up, little Miss Sourpuss! It can’t have been that bad! Look at Dad!”

. . .

And he had thrown himself on his back in the snow and started waving his arms up and down, up and down, a few quick strokes and presto he had created a new angel next to the old one, Sandra’s angel, the one that no longer existed.

“SIMSALABIM! Who’s been here? No one other than director Houdini!”

He jumped up and brushed off the snow, made a stupid theater bow at the same time as he once more, carefully, almost in secret, glanced in the direction where Lorelei had walked into a wall of snow, where she could no longer be seen. He pretended not to be bothered by it, but as was so often the case when the Islander was pretending, what he was trying to hide became that much more obvious. He put his arm around his daughter and pulled her a little, just a little bit, again almost unnoticeable but the message was clear. Now he wanted to leave.

“You don’t understand anything!” Sandra hissed and tore herself out of her father’s grip. She was calm again but truly angry. Now it was enough! With all of it! Everything!

And she started running. Ran out into the snow, ran and ran, even if it was toward the road because if you did not hurry now it would be difficult to find your way back to the village at all (in the Alps the snow could block off roads in a second, she had read about that in the hotel’s brochure just the day before).