by snaps » Thu Oct 28, 2010 10:17 pm
I'm just toying with with a few ideas, like no-one has turned FA/SML into a novel as yet.
This is just a preliminary which goes beyond the film. Let me know (honestly) what you think.
PROLOG
It was a bright cold day in April.
In Sweden.
This story is not about the Sweden you or I may imagine, on hearing the word ‘’Sweden’’.
We conjure up images, however much or little we know. As with anywhere else on the planet.
Whether or not you have been there, it would maybe include the glitz of ABBA, the imagined thrill of owning a Volvo? Peace, no wars, a laidback place, friendly people, prosperity, social democracy and the welfare state? Sexually liberated?
How much do we really know about this place? Cosily embraced between Norway, Finland, and Denmark. A little twee perhaps? Neutral? Maybe .. errr a little aseptic? Dull nights, dark days? A penchant for suicide perhaps?
This is a story about Sweden and Swedish people, beyond the bright lights of a capital city where one in five of its population live. A little known township called Amal, in the South-West. A place you would pass through, rather than visit. Maybe like your own home town?
It is also a story about now. Or at least ‘’now’’ as point of time in the ‘’fin de siecle’’. How you and I might have lived then. It is a story, if not about you and I, then about people like you and I. And how we get through life, with all its ups and downs, its challenges and how we resolve them.
It was a bright cold day in Apri, in Amal Sweden.
The clocks were NOT striking thirteen.
BUT a revolution was about to take place.
Real revolutions are made, not in political upheavals, but in the hearts and minds of individual people. The choices we make, the options we exercise, the emotional wrangling, the life-altering thinking, and the consequences we accept.
Amal was about to appear on the World map of Revolution, of the Heart.
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Thursday 26th April.
Agnes Ahlberg aged fifteen, three hundred and sixty five days stared into the ‘’Salmon Pool’’ outside the municipal building in Amal. It was dark but only just turned four PM. She saw the three stranded bronze statues of the ‘’salmon’’ stranded forever in time, although giving the appearance of ‘’leaping free’’. It seemed as she often thought, a metaphor for her own life, stranded in time.
Agnes, studious, serious, but a burning bruisingly passionate private person shook her head. Unlike most of her peers, her life was different. The younger ones headed home to watch TV. The ‘’in-crowd’’ headed down to the plaza for pizza, burgers, coffee, and whatever illicit booze they could lay their hands on. Agnes was on route from Karlbergsgymnasiet to her own Mecca. She had long since outstripped the Gymnasiebiblioteket. This was her ritual pilgrimage to the Åmåls Bibliotek on Kungsgatan. Here she would complete her homework projects and be the last to leave the building.
Tonight she had decided wanted more from life. Or to end it all.
She stood on the bridge over the river. No-one would notice if she quietly flipped over the side. The water was cold and the winding river welcoming like a crooked witches finger in the night. She would feel little. She had read up at the library of the effects. Within a minute hypothermia would set in. Her body would be dragged relentlessly into the Lake, unconscious. A drowning Ophelia without the Shakepearian drama. No note. An unfortunate accident. These things happen. No embarassment to her parents. An announcement over the school tannoy the next day: ‘’With regret we announce … .’’ The School Lunch Hall: ‘’Agnes who? ..”
Agnes reverie was disturbed by the screech of car brakes.
A girl had launched herself out into the zebra crossing with little regard for her own or anyone else’s safety.
Agnes eyes focussed.
Elin Olsson ran wildly without any particular sense of direction, giving the bird to the driver who had almost ended her short life.
Agnes felt dumbstruck without the icy water to aid her numbness.
‘’Elin?’’ she silently mouthed.
Elin Olsson, a year Agnes junior, and the object of her bizzare romantic daydreams ran towards the Salmon Pool. She grabbed the nearest flagpole and embraced it in a passionate drunken clasp.
Agnes felt torn as the situation evolved. Should she? Could she?
Elin exclaimed and her crakey voice split the night ‘He told me he was Italiannen!’
Her voice resounded off the walls of the municipal building but was drowned in the flow of homeward traffic.
Agnes stood transfixed. Her mind raced. Could THIS Elin this really be the girl whose world she adored?
Elin shouted out into the nightsky ‘Show Me Love, or I will die’ Then descended into deep sobs.
Agnes hovered. A kingdom was lost for want of a nail. Her mind consulted dull textbooks. Her heart impelled her towards another in need. Agnes prevaricated. Her body froze. Her heart was in her frozen boots. Like lead.
A cilp clop clatter and Jessica, Elin’s sister, propelled herself over the crossing. Agnes by this time had dragged herself like in a dream where you wear leaden boots. In slow motion time she ran towards Elin. She pulled sort. By this time quicksilver Jessica had embraced Elin.
This was a private moment as Elin sobbed.
Agnes slunk back into the night like a ghost. In her head she fantasisied that she had made it there before Jessica. Her mind turned evil and darker. She, Agnes had plunged into the dark water and pulled Elin from the edge of darkness.
Tomorrow in School everyone would applaud as Agnes, turned up nonchalant. Tomorrow night they would all drag her down to the piazza to celebrate her birthday. Tomorrow night, Elin would embrace Agnes. Beyond all the boozy celebrating, Elin would turn to Agnes and say ‘You have saved my life. I am yours now, forever.’’
Tonight.
Agnes made her way to the library unnoticed by Elin and Jessica. She smiled to herself, at her own peculiarity. She would record these things on her computer journal when she got home. She mouthed to herself ‘No Elin you are wrong. Tonight you have saved my life. I am yours now, forever.’’