Little Siberia

by Antti Tuomainen

  14

  After a few star-lit nights, the lights of the sky have once again been switched off. Circles of light appear one lamppost at a time as I walk along the pavement towards the War Museum, pulling my hat tighter over my head. When I asked Krista through the bathroom door if she wanted me to stay home, the answer was a feeble no, there’s no need.

  Maybe giving her some space was the wisest thing to do right now. I couldn’t continue my confession, couldn’t tell her about the dead men and the car chases, the threatening letters and the explosions. I don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity to do so now. I have stepped into the unknown, and never again will I step…

  On familiar territory.

  The next time my feet press into the snowy surface of the pathway, I concentrate on listening. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t realise what I was hearing. My next steps only confirm what I heard but didn’t properly register. My steps have an echo. Only it isn’t an echo. I continue walking.

  The street is badly lit. The lampposts are quite a distance from one another, and between their circles of light are large unlit blackspots. It’s about a hundred metres to the next intersection, where I will turn right. As my ears grow more accustomed to the sound, I can hear the steps clearly. Someone is walking in time with me; of that I am certain. To make absolutely sure, I stop, take off a mitten, pull my phone from my pocket and raise it to my ear. I don’t call anyone – but I can’t hear any steps either.

  I set off again, and the two sets of steps again start to echo through the sub-zero night. Someone is following me. As the intersection draws closer, I pick up my pace, and for a few steps I hear a faint disparity in our rhythm, then the person behind adjusts their pace enough to keep up with me and once again we make our way forwards in stereo.

  Nearly at the intersection. I am about to turn right, to continue along the lit pathway leading to the War Museum. The other three paths are unlit. A house stands at each corner of the junction. The windows of the house I am nearest to are dark. In the yellowing glow of the streetlights they look like black holes covered in a thin layer of sheer ice. I turn the corner, and as soon as I pass the corner of the house I stop, spin round and peer back in the direction I came from.

  And there, there in the blind spot between two street lights, is a figure. The figure has stopped. That’s right, I think to myself, this person hears my steps just as well as I can hear theirs. It’s hard to say anything definitive about the figure; the distance is too great, the darkness consumes any detail.

  But perhaps it is possible to make an informed guess after all. Once I place the figure in the surroundings, a neighbouring house and a car reversing out of a snowdrift across the street help me make a judgement about size, and from that I conclude at least one thing: that the figure cannot be Leonid. This is no giant. My stalker appears to be of average build and wearing dark winter attire. I set off again. Before long I see the front lights of the War Museum through the trees. I hear the steps again, this time further behind me, but now they no longer try to keep up with me. I cross the main road, look in both directions. Once on the other side of the road I set off along the street and see the side street I have just left behind. My pursuer has fallen back slightly. I can still see the figure, though whoever this is is trying to use the darkened areas between the lights for cover.

  A few minutes later I unlock the War Museum door and say hello to the evening janitor in the staffroom. By day the man is a local farmer but he is a regular volunteer at the museum. When I ask him how it’s gone, he tells me he hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary all day and asks whether I have. I reply that I haven’t seen anything suspicious, or more suspicious than the events of the last few days. He yawns, collects the plastic tubs he has washed and left in the cupboard above the sink to dry, packs them one inside the other in order of size, pulls on his coat and leaves. Once I am alone, I return to the foyer, switch off the lights and look outside. I cannot see anyone.

  The time is approaching midnight when I hear something near the museum’s front door. When it happens, I am in the meteorite room. The nocturnal museum seems to carry sound like the surface of a lake. Even the quietest rustling or knocking sound shimmers to the other side of the building. This is it, I think as I rush to the front door. I arrive at the doorway separating the lobby from the gallery hall and stop.

  There is someone at the front door. I hear a banging sound, another. But something about this person says they’re not moving the way a burglar would move. At least not an experienced burglar. There’s far too much noise. Then I hear a metallic clank, and I am certain I recognise it. I walk into the lobby, make my way towards the front door. Now I can see the crutches that caused the clank, and I recognise Krista, though her face is in shadow.

  She has taken our car and driven out here. I open the museum door. The nausea has passed; she tells me she’s managed to eat something and that her ankle coped surprisingly well with driving. I can hear from her voice that isn’t the main reason for her visit; she hasn’t turned up here in the middle of the night to tell me she’s able to drive again. Moreover she doesn’t seem to need my help – either that or she doesn’t want it. She is quick on her feet with the crutches – she swings back and forth in front of me and comes to a stop in the middle of the room.

  ‘Is there anywhere we can talk?’

  ‘If you’re up to it, we can go into the gallery over there,’ I say and gesture towards the hall. ‘There’s a sofa at the far end.’

  Krista doesn’t stand around thinking about it. The sofa is in the meteorite room. It’s been positioned so that people can sit down and gaze at the meteorite in its glass cabinet. I don’t switch on the main lights, but instead turn on the spotlight aimed at the meteorite. This is also a precaution; with this lighting it’s impossible to see the whole gallery from outside. Krista sits down on the sofa. I sit next to her. Not right next to her; I instinctively leave a polite gap between us.

  ‘There it is,’ she says, nodding towards the meteorite. ‘A million euros.’

  ‘It might be worth that, yes.’

  ‘Many people think it is.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I say.

  ‘People can believe almost anything.’

  ‘That’s true too.’

  We sit in silence. Eventually Krista speaks. ‘Joel, I love you.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Wait,’ she immediately interrupts. ‘Let me speak.’

  She turns her eyes to the middle of the room.

  ‘You have been brave,’ she continues. ‘You’re the bravest person I know, Joel. You’re not afraid of anyone or anything.’

  ‘I spent over two years being afraid.’

  Krista shakes her head. ‘I don’t know if that’s true. But anyway, you stopped.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘I’m not that brave,’ she continues. ‘At least, it doesn’t feel that way. But I want to try.’

  Krista’s voice is quiet and serious. Besides, at night the museum is the quietest place on Earth.

  ‘I’ve loved you from the very first day and I love you now. To be honest, I love you more every day.’

  Again Krista has turned her eyes to the meteorite, but I don’t think she’s particularly looking at it. She gives a sigh, wipes the corner of her eye.

  ‘I’ve made one mistake, and it’s been weighing on my conscience, in a truly terrible way. I did something ugly. I acted against my better judgement. I betrayed you. I don’t know why.’

  I wait. It is almost exactly midnight.

  ‘But I must at least try…’ she continues. ‘To explain, I mean. You were in Helsinki on one of those professional development weekends. I was here. I’d been working all day. It was evening, I stopped working and the house was empty, so I thought I would go to the bar and have a bite to eat. But it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I didn’t fancy a hotdog or anything else that was on offer. I ordered a glass of red wine. I hadn’t eaten anything, so I guess it w
ent straight to my head. I had another glass, then I bumped into a lively bunch of people, a hunting group, men and women. They were already quite merry; they’d been out in the woods hunting for a week. I sang karaoke. I realised I was getting quite drunk, so I decided to go home…’

  Krista shakes her head. There are tears in her eyes.

  ‘This sounds like an excuse,’ she says. ‘I know that. But I can’t keep holding this back. I was about to walk home. It was cold and dark, and a freezing wind was coming in from the north. A man appeared next to me, said he lived out that way too. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have taken a ride from him but…’ She continues to gaze at the meteorite. ‘Then before I knew it, I was in the car. And the car was flying. I’ve never experienced anything like it. The car was like an aeroplane. Every jump felt like flying. It felt like I was somewhere else, in another world, somewhere up among the stars. I was swept up from the Earth. I recognise that now. It was all over in seconds. I felt ashamed.’

  I have to turn to look at her.

  ‘The following day was the worst of my life,’ she continues. ‘You came home in the evening and I just … loved you so much. I couldn’t talk about what had happened. Our life together continued. Then I realised I was pregnant, and I thought…’

  She swallows. I can hear it. All I can see is the meteorite.

  ‘I thought I’d been forgiven,’ she says, her voice hushed. ‘That the child was a sign of forgiveness.’

  There follows almost a full minute during which neither of us says anything. I realise that I too have been for a ride very much like the one Krista just described. In me it certainly didn’t awaken the desire to go forth and multiply. I think of death, in a variety of different ways. I mull over the next question for a moment, and it’s the last thing I want to ask, but it needs to be asked all the same.

  ‘The car flew?’

  I look at her again. She wipes her eyes.

  ‘Like a spaceship.’

  ‘There’s a former world-class rally driver in the village,’ I say.

  Krista dries her eyes with the sleeve of her white jumper.

  ‘Is he the father of the child?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes … I suppose … maybe,’ she replies, letting the words drop slowly, one after the other, almost whispering.

  ‘Krista,’ I say. ‘What do you mean, you suppose or maybe? Are there more candidates?’

  ‘What?’ she asks, turning to look at me. She looks shocked and shakes her head. ‘No. But, if you can’t…’

  ‘I cannot have children.’

  Again fresh tears well at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joel. I love you so much. I want to be good to you.’

  How’s that? By getting yourself pregnant by one of the other villagers? I don’t say it out loud. This – this is the boundary between light and dark. I can see that. I recall what I was thinking only a short time ago. This isn’t about me. Not everything is about me. I respond in a way that I know is every bit as honest as the anger I feel inside.

  ‘You are good to me.’

  She looks at me. Her eyes are moist from weeping, always that beautiful shade of green and grey. I must tell her everything.

  ‘There’s something else,’ I say. ‘I sent you some text messages. In his name.’

  She looks as though she has remembered something, as though one thing suddenly connects with another. She wipes her eyes.

  ‘I wondered about those messages,’ she says. ‘They were so… unexpected.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure how poetic or…’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ she says quietly. ‘I mean, I’m not sure he remembers anything about it. I don’t think he so much as registered the event. I got the impression the only things that matter to him are his car and the bottle.’

  We sit for a moment in silence. I can hear her breath, sense her presence next to me.

  ‘I didn’t plan things this way,’ she says eventually. ‘Life, the move out here. All this.’

  ‘I doubt I would have scripted it quite like this either.’

  ‘But there you are,’ she says, moving a fraction closer. She takes me by the hand. Her hand is warm.

  ‘Thank you, Joel.’

  She presses herself against me, rests her head against my shoulder. I can feel her scalp against my cheek, the roughness of her hair, the warmth of her skin. I close my eyes, open them again, and I can’t help thinking the same thing I thought on my first night here in the museum. That meteorite has crossed billions of kilometres over billions of years, only to end up right there in front of me.

  ‘I think it’s a boy,’ she says after a while.

  15

  Morning air is always different from that at night. Regardless of whether the temperature is just as low or the dark just as impenetrable, the morning carries with it a renewed freshness, a sense of hope. The air is purer, lighter. That’s what it feels like as I finally step out of the museum once the morning staff arrive. For a moment I stand in front of the building, draw the thin, chilled air into my lungs and look around.

  Nobody appears to be waiting for me. Whoever was following me last night is either very well hidden or has had enough either of me or of traipsing around after me. Hopefully both. I set off. I feel surprisingly awake, especially given I only slept three and a half hours on the museum sofa between two and six a.m.

  Hurmevaara is quietly waiting for a new day to dawn. The streets stand empty, each leading its respective way; the lights in the shop windows look almost bored. I notice my thoughts spinning between my two selves.

  My wife loves me. Nobody tried to steal the meteorite.

  On the other hand…

  My wife is pregnant by the rally driver. The meteorite will be in the museum one more night.

  It feels as though every piece of good news in my life also contains some bad news: for every silver lining there’s also a cloud. But there are moments in which I am able to push myself and my own needs to one side. And as my horizons widen and I examine things from the right angle, I even feel something approaching a sense of gratitude. Things might not be ideal right now, but they’re as good as they can be. From experience, I know that everything could be so much worse.

  I seem to perk up the closer I get to home. I see the lit-up windows, villagers waking to a new day: one sweeping snow from the front steps, another peering at the thermometer through the window, a third climbing on the back of a snowmobile.

  Things just might turn out for the good, I think; it’s entirely possible.

  In any case, the grand scheme of things remains a mystery to us. The only thing that’s clear is that such a scheme, a plan, really does exist. Either it is based on chance and is shaped by it, a grand cosmic game of roulette, or there is a predefined beginning and an end, and everything in between is simply movement towards that end, and in that movement everything has its own place and meaning. Either by chance or by design, what will be will be.

  I realise the extent of my fatigue. It conjures up thoughts like this. Maybe it doesn’t matter, I think, and take a deep breath, what’s important is that Krista and I have been given another chance.

  I brush the snow from the front steps before going inside. It’s a cosmetic procedure more than anything, but one that feels important. A fresh start. I pull off my outdoor clothes in the porch, walk through the inner door into the hallway, and stop still.

  So many things catch my attention at once.

  The lights in the kitchen are still on, and in Krista’s office too – that small, cosy space filled with books. The bathroom door is open, the lights are on and the tap is running. I listen for a moment for any other sounds. All I can hear is the gentle trickling of water. I walk into the bathroom.

  Krista’s toothbrush is at the bottom of the sink. The water is rinsing the brush, on which there’s only a small fleck of bright-blue toothpaste. Seeing the toothbrush is like a chilled knife cutting through my stomach, allowing an icy lump to form there. I begin to fe
el my pulse, to hear the dull thump of my heartbeat in my ear.

  ‘Krista,’ I call out. ‘I’m home.’

  I say it again, this time slightly louder.

  I don’t like what it sounds like.

  A fresh bout of nausea, perhaps, and there’s something very frightening in quite how consoling that thought now seems. I leap up the stairs to our bedroom. The bed is still neatly made; nobody has slept there. I look into the guest room, but it too is untouched. I return to the bathroom downstairs, turn off the tap and back out of the room.

  I cross the living room and head towards the door to Krista’s office. Spinning across the computer screen is a spiral pulling colours into its black depths one at a time: blue, green, red, blue, green…

  Next to the computer is the book she is translating, propped up on a stand. Beside the keyboard is her teacup, still half full of tea.

  I know Krista; I know her evening routines. She has supper, brushes her teeth, washes her face, then returns to switch off the computer and the lights. And there’s a reason for this specific order of events. Krista often says that a translation problem that’s been bugging her will sort itself out while she’s having supper or brushing her teeth, just before bed. That’s why she leaves switching off the computer till last.

  Here everything has been left unfinished.

  I switch off the lights in the office and retrace my steps to the kitchen, listening all the while. The lamp above the dining table is reflected in both the surface of the table and the window. Even from a distance I can see there’s something on the table. A sheet of A4, text on it. Apart from that the table is clear, which only underlines the placement of the paper right in the middle, making the text written in block lettering seem all the more threatening. I reach the edge of the table, the cold sensation in my stomach spreads to the rest of my body and my hands begin to tremble.