Little Siberia

by Antti Tuomainen

  ‘You’ll be fine without me. And you can’t put just anyone on watch at the museum. I have special training, remember. It’s only a few more nights.’

  Krista flicks her hair behind her shoulders. Her face is lit from the side. I can see the small, pretty crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘It just doesn’t feel nice,’ she says. ‘I’m a bit worried about you – in general I mean. You don’t seem very happy or enthusiastic, even though our lives are about to change so much.’

  ‘I am, of course I am,’ I assure her. ‘It’s just that yesterday … The break-in and everything. The lack of sleep.’

  ‘Surely the other men understand that people need to have time for their families. Tell them something has come up. Something unexpected.’

  That’s one way of putting it. So many times I’ve stood in front of people and said that there’s no way of knowing God’s greater plan. Right this minute, it feels as though not even He knows it. Perhaps the difference between providence and freefall isn’t as great as I’d once thought.

  ‘You know these guys,’ I say eventually. ‘It’s a done deal. Once you agree a plan, it’s best to stick to it or everything falls apart.’

  Krista doesn’t look particularly satisfied with this response. It’s as though she wants to say something else but stops herself. Eventually she sighs and leans over me. She kisses me on the mouth, between my eyes, on my forehead.

  ‘It might help,’ she says, ‘if you eat some breakfast.’

  She stands up, fetches her phone from the table and walks out of the room.

  I don’t want breakfast. Instead I decide to find out who owns that Nissan Micra.

  Typing the registration number into the app on my phone is easy enough. The results appear just as easily. It seems that the vehicle with this registration number has been deleted from the national register. Before that happened, it had a string of owners, the last of which seems to be a company named Eastern Finland Summer Camping Ltd. The vehicle itself is a red Ford Transit van, a Ford designed for professional use, the model dating from 2006. The description is a far cry from the light-blue Nissan Micra SUV that I saw last night.

  If I ever had doubts about whether the break-in was premeditated, this anomaly has swept them away in an instant.

  6

  I need more information. The snow crunches beneath my winter boots as I walk. The centre of the village of Hurmevaara looks smaller than usual this morning. Of course, this is because I’m looking at everything through a gauze of double suspicion: someone must have made Krista pregnant; someone wants to steal the meteorite. Hurmevaara has a total of 1,280 inhabitants. Both the intruder and the impregnator may be closer than I think – or than I know.

  Jealousy stops me eating. It’s impossible to feel hungry; my stomach is continuously full and knotted. In fact, my entire chest feels tense. Part of the reason for this jealousy is the uncertainty. The snake with two poisonous heads.

  I plan to identify the father of the child. It’s a matter of utmost necessity. I don’t yet know what I’ll do with that information, but I’ll do something. Knowledge will give me direction. In my case it won’t increase my agony, I think; if anything it might alleviate it.

  A few cars drive in both directions along the main street. It’s about twenty degrees below freezing, but the air is dry and there’s no wind. This is one of the things about this place that confused me at first. In Helsinki, by the sea, I was used to a different kind of sub-zero temperature. In Helsinki it could be as little as –4°C, but if there was enough wind and moisture in the air, just waiting for the bus felt cold enough to bring all your bodily functions to a halt, no matter how thick your eider jacket. Out here I could easily spend an hour and a half skiing in a thin ski suit in –15°C, opening my collar and wiping away the sweat as I went.

  Depending on the weather, it’s a ten or fifteen-minute walk to the church hall. I pass a bar and a clothes shop. Neither have opened yet. The kiosk, however, has already opened its doors, and in its window is a sign that makes me think of something that caught my attention earlier this morning.

  The kiosk owner is slightly older than me, a man yet to find his calling in life. He stands behind the counter like a prisoner. He constantly looks outside as though searching for an escape route and seems thrilled at every customer who walks in, as though they were bringing him a file he could use to saw through the bars of his cell. He greets me as though I was the first person in years to step foot on his desert island. This morning I feel as though I understand the man better than usual. I too feel as though I have lost a vital connection to something, and that I’ll have to do something decisive if I want to re-establish that connection.

  But this time we talk about a different kind of connection. The man with the thick beard seems over the moon to help me. I feel a strange sense of brotherhood with this man, this prisoner of his day-to-day routines, as I listen to him explain the various prepaid phone-card packages on offer. Not that I need any particular information or that I really care what kind of package I should get. There’s only one number I will be contacting with this phone, and I don’t think I’ll be needing talk time. In fact, talking is the very last thing I plan to do with this phone card.

  I know what I am about to do is wrong. Nonetheless it takes me a mere thousandth of a second to justify it to myself. This is a fact-finding operation, and I have a right to know. We agree on a package with free text messages, and I pull out my wallet.

  Midway through the purchase another customer walks into the kiosk. I know him the way you know someone you’ve read about in the papers and seen interviewed on television. Timo Tarvainen is a former rally driver who lives a few kilometres away, by the shores of Lake Hurmevaara. I know his career was cut short by an accident and by the various improprieties that followed it, of which I have only a blurry understanding.

  His hair is pure white – so white it could be bleached – and he wears a jacket bearing, at a quick glance, the logos of at least thirty corporate sponsors. The jacket is not new. He is sporting a pair of sunglasses too. He nods both at me and the assistant. At least that’s what it looks like. His sunglasses are the darkest shade imaginable, so it’s hard to say exactly where the former hot-shot driver’s eyes are focussed. He places a twelve-pack of beer on the counter just as I slip the phone card into my pocket. I bid the owner a pleasant day, though I can see in his eyes that his daily sentence is far from over.

  At the door I stop, pull on my woolly hat and mittens, and step out into the bright, frozen day. I manage only a few steps before I hear a voice behind me.

  ‘What the hell does God think he’s playing at?’

  I turn around. The rally driver is standing with his back to the low, glaring sun, the twelve-pack tucked under his arm. I look around and assume he must have intended his words for me. I can’t see anyone else nearby. Or further off, for that matter. I guess the question must stem from genuine theological concern.

  ‘I don’t know,’ is my honest answer.

  The rally driver rips open the plastic packaging and grabs one of the cans. He takes a few steps towards me and places the rest of the pack on the hood of his car. There’s a similarity between the car and the jacket: both are covered in stickers; neither are the newest models on the market.

  ‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard,’ Tarvainen begins, snapping open his can, ‘but that meteorite fell on my car.’

  I tell him I was aware of that. Tarvainen gulps his beer. It’s a long gulp, at a guess almost long enough to down the entire contents of the can.

  ‘My old man used to say the Lord works in mysterious ways, but nothing ever happens by chance,’ he says, and I catch the smell not only of fresh beer but of a prolonged bout of drinking. ‘And it’s got me thinking. You know, that thing comes shooting out of nowhere and finds me. Then along comes some bloke from the museum who says it belongs to him. What does it mean? That the Lord gives and the Lord takes right away again?’
>
  ‘The probability of a meteor strike is—’

  ‘The probability is so small that it almost doesn’t exist. I’ve read a bit about astronomy, watched a video about it on YouTube. The universe and all that shit. Made me really angry, it did.’

  There’s nothing I can say to this. In me, astronomy prompts quite the opposite emotions. That said, I’m beginning to understand feelings of anger, bitterness and disappointment, of how claustrophobic the universe can feel.

  ‘You know what God’s up to, right?’ Tarvainen asks with a belch. ‘For a moment everything looked great. I contacted an old mate, said we should start a new rally team, world class. I’ll drive, he can take care of the business side of things. You see, for a moment it looked like we were sitting pretty on a million euros that just fell from the sky. Then before you know it, it turns out it’s not just any old lump of rock, it’s something freakishly rare that needs to be researched. My old mate turns up at the house, at my invitation, and I have to tell him the rock is under lock and key at the museum.’

  Tarvainen drains his can. I’m listening with increased interest.

  ‘A mate?’ I ask.

  Tarvainen wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then waves his hand through the air.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘All I’m asking is, what does God think about all this?’

  I decide not to tell him there has been some degree of uncertainty about what God thinks for a few thousand years. I want to continue the conversation.

  ‘You were going to start up a new rally team, you say?’ I ask.

  Tarvainen looks at me more closely. At least, his sunglasses seem to focus on my face. For a moment he is silent.

  ‘Does that meteorite mean something or not?’ he asks eventually. ‘It’s a simple question.’

  It’s clear this man wants to get his hands on the meteorite. But I’m not sure he’s burglar material, and there’s nothing to suggest he is the man who was lying in the snowdrift outside the cottage. The mate he mentioned, on the other hand … This business associate sounds interesting.

  ‘I’m not sure it is such a simple question,’ I reply. ‘If you take it slightly further, it becomes the fundamental question of whether the universe is a tightly, carefully organised system, like a gigantic Swiss clock, or whether it is a random, collapsing cluster of junk – in other words, chaos.’

  ‘I was asking for God’s opinion,’ says Tarvainen. ‘You’re paid to know this stuff.’

  Despite what people who make this statement think, they are not the first people to put this thought into words. I must have heard at least a few thousand versions of this particular adage.

  ‘I’m paid to serve the community,’ I say. ‘Is it a problem that the meteorite is being held at the museum?’

  The rally driver’s hand stops, the can in mid-air. His head shifts position ever so slightly. The reaction is like a sudden realisation of something. Then he appears to notice the empty beer can in his hand. Tarvainen returns to his car, pulls another can from the plastic packaging. He cracks it open; in the frozen morning air the sound is like a branch snapping in two. He takes a gulp and opens the car door, then stops and looks up towards me.

  ‘I guess God is on my side after all,’ he says.

  I look on as Tarvainen reverses, turns the car and ambles out of the parking lot and into the street. He’s clearly over the limit. I could always make another call to the police in Joensuu. They would be here in an hour.

  7

  ‘Ash, a metre thick.’

  The man doesn’t appear to want to make eye contact. His pained blue eyes stare at the floor as though the layer of cinders were right there in front of him. I glance outside. It is a bright, sunny day. The snowdrift, a metre and a half deep, ripples towards the edge of the forest. I don’t understand how the man has managed to get an appointment for today. But I remember: he’s always checking the diary for cancellations, always calling the office at the church hall. He was sitting opposite me only yesterday, and now he’s the first arrival of the day.

  ‘Seismologists and volcanologists all agree on the matter,’ the man prattles on. ‘The supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park – the caldera – erupts regularly. The next catastrophic eruption is only a matter of time. The last time it erupted, the ash cloud caused waves of extinction and climatic changes. The volcano is fifty kilometres by seventy kilometres in size. Half of North America would be instantly covered in a layer of ash a metre thick. The ash cloud would block out the sun. This would cause a nuclear winter – a new ice age. After the last eruption, the ensuing winter, complete with acid rain, lasted a thousand years. And there was no prior warning. You can’t predict when a supervolcano will erupt. The lights across the world would go out in an hour, two at most. You’ll probably say it won’t erupt in our lifetime.’

  I’m not about to say anything at all. Not now. If things in Yellowstone are quietly simmering, inside me they’ve already reached boiling point. I think about Krista, last night, the grenade, the meteorite, the explosion, the pair of criminals. Less than twenty-four hours have passed, and nothing in my life will be the same again.

  ‘The surface of the caldera rises and falls all the time,’ he continues. ‘There are hundreds of subterranean earthquakes measured every year. Then there’s the fundamental question: do you think they’d tell us if they thought the supervolcano was going to erupt in the next four or five years? Of course they wouldn’t. If people learned that the world was going to end in three years’ time, there would be anarchy. Nothing would matter anymore.’

  I don’t hear the question in the man’s monologue, but he stares at me as though he expects at least some sort of comment.

  ‘Life can sometimes feel quite unpredictable,’ I say.

  The man puffs out air, agitatedly shifts position in his chair. The chair legs creak, the white brick walls respond with an echo.

  ‘You know what?’ he says. ‘I know everybody in this village. Judging by what you and I have talked about over the last two years, I would say every single one of them, even the most fervent communist atheists, seems to have more faith than you do.’

  I look at the man and see him more clearly than at any time before. Those anguished eyes, his stubble rough like a bear’s tongue. The top button of his flannel shirt is done up. It must be hot beneath his cardigan. I hear his words again.

  ‘You know everyone in the village?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he says with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I’ve lived here all my life – that’s forty-nine years. I’ve gone to school here, worked here. My ex-wife is from here. Both our extended families. I’m involved in all kinds of community activities. The sports club, fixing people’s motors, the deer-hunting club. There’s nobody here I don’t know.’

  I think about this for a moment.

  ‘In a small village, word gets round quickly,’ I say.

  ‘It certainly does,’ the man nods, relieved. ‘Which brings me to why I think an eruption is imminent. Nobody has mentioned this subject in the last few years. What happened before that? The papers were full of articles, there was exploratory drilling going on down to a depth of several kilometres inside the supervolcano. At first they told us about the results; now there’s silence. What do you think that means?’

  I wait for a few seconds, then say, ‘If someone did something that might be considered, let’s say, inappropriate, word would get round the village quite quickly, yes?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with the Yellowstone caldera?’ he asks.

  ‘It would be an eruption of sorts,’ I say, and gauge from the man’s expression that I need to get straight to the point. ‘It’s to do with what you said earlier. If someone in the village had … dalliances … then people would know about it, right?’

  ‘Dalliances?’

  ‘If they, say, coveted their neighbour’s property.’

  ‘You mean stealing?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say. ‘S
omething that would get tongues wagging, that people would talk about in whispers.’

  The man turns his head; I follow the movement. A tall, gleaming snowdrift always looks more durable than it really is.

  ‘This is a nice place,’ he says. ‘Honest people. We’re fair to one another. We uphold law and order…’

  I wait.

  He turns to look at me. ‘You’ve taken a vow of confidentiality?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man leans forwards in his chair.

  ‘People brew their own moonshine. They bring cigarettes across the border. Rattle their fists at people – maybe even take out a knife. Not that they’d kill anybody, mind. Not straight away. They might stab the arm or the thigh first, the chest only if it’s a more serious matter. You rarely see axes. Or chainsaws. There was this one time. Rami Kärkönen took a few too many of those steroids he’d brought from Russia. The chainsaw felt so light, and it cut like a knife through butter. It was an accident, sort of. Rami works at the florist these days. People drive around drunk – otherwise they’d never get home. That’s about it.’

  There’s nothing in his words that I didn’t know already. Despite what the average Joe seems to think, pastors don’t live outside the real world. We are not unaware of people’s capacity to do anything imaginable, and plenty of things you couldn’t begin to imagine until you heard about it. Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate why anyone would cause such injuries to themselves or others.

  ‘Like I said, it’s a nice place,’ he adds. ‘Decent, upright folk.’

  We sit in silence. I haven’t discovered any new information with regards to Krista. And then I see another way of approaching the subject: the meteorite. My encounter with the rally driver is still fresh in my mind, as are the events of the previous night. The thought, which I slightly adapt to the situation, is a bit nonconformist. Perhaps it goes against the fundamental idea of the pastoral care I’m supposed to be providing, but this is an exceptional situation in every respect.