The Winter War

by Philip Teir

  The springs were so worn out that anyone who sat down sank nearly half a metre. The sofa was also too small for the family. Christian occasionally oiled the leather with great care and effort, and he never allowed the children to eat anything when they sat there. He was afraid that might ruin the leather. As far as Helen was concerned, the leather upholstery could just crumble away, and the sooner the better.

  ‘It’s not even valuable,’ Helen complained. ‘Just because a piece of furniture has been in the family for two generations, that doesn’t automatically give it antique status.’

  ‘This sofa was in our summer cottage, starting in the early thirties. It was quite special in its day,’ said Christian, speaking with the authoritative tone of voice that he reserved for everything that had to do with the idiosyncrasies of his family.

  Helen had met Christian at a party for literature students in the early 2000s. This was at Vanha, and Christian had come with a friend who was a historian, although his own field of study was architecture.

  They had sex for the first time in the cramped little room he had lived in. They didn’t bother with a condom, since she thought it was a safe period in her menstrual cycle. Condoms made her think of the time when she was sixteen and went to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark with her friend Anne. Before they left, their mothers had made them sit down at the kitchen table and listen to a list of rules.

  ‘We’re happy that you’re going. You’ll have a great time. And you’ll probably meet some boys there.’

  Katriina had looked pleased, as if this was something she was actually encouraging.

  ‘Mum, we’re going there to hear …’

  ‘Okay, okay, you’re going there to hear some bands. I get it. But still, if you do happen to meet some boys – and that seems highly likely – then for God’s sake, please, please, please use a condom.’

  It wasn’t until Helen became a teenager that she realised not everyone behaved like her mother. Not all women were born with that sort of flipped-out candour; some struggled all their lives to achieve it but never even got close. For Katriina, it was a completely natural part of her personality. She could instantly take over a room – in fact, an entire flat or even a whole neighbourhood if she so desired. Her voice could be heard everywhere, and there wasn’t a single person she couldn’t handle. She was not afraid of anyone.

  But she could also go too far, and occasionally she failed to recognise situations when someone wanted to be left alone. She didn’t understand that certain individuals constructed emotional walls around themselves. That was not something she had ever done.

  Consequently, Katriina said whatever was on her mind; there were no taboo topics. Because why waste your life in silence when you could speak? This often presented problems, especially when Helen was young and Katriina would ask her friends all sorts of questions and tell them things most people considered private matters. For example, on the day Helen got her first menstrual period, her friend Frida was visiting, and Katriina immediately asked Frida if she’d also started menstruating. That was so embarrassing. At school Helen had noticed that she was bleeding, so she rushed home along Topeliusgatan. Katriina’s first instinct was to celebrate. She suggested that the whole family should go out for dinner, but Helen had refused. Eva, who was three years younger, had no idea what menstruation was. But Katriina thought every event in life was worthy of a party.

  On another occasion, she asked Helen’s cousin Jonas from Österbotten, who was Eva’s age, whether he thought Helen was sexy.

  ‘Doesn’t she look like a real bombshell?’ Katriina asked. During the spring Helen had rapidly developed breasts, clearly visible under her tight sweater. Jonas was very embarrassed, managing only to stammer a reply. ‘Er, yes, no, uh, I think I’d better be going home now.’

  But it was dangerous for children to have a mother who made them think the whole universe revolved around them, that they were entitled to take centre stage in any situation, and that there was never any need to apologise for their behaviour. Such children began to believe that they actually deserved to be privileged. They began to think that the world owed them something.

  Yet Katriina had never understood this. She didn’t realise that she was the one – by constantly offering her daughters encouragement and talking about how they should be this or that – who had moulded them into adults who would never be satisfied with what life actually offered.

  At least, that was how Helen saw it. And she wasn’t thinking so much about herself as about Eva. She thought that her sister would have a difficult time of it if she didn’t become successful.

  Eva was braver than Helen, even though she was younger. When they were kids, Eva would go alone to the supermarket on Töölö Square to shop for groceries. Helen never dared to do that until she was eleven.

  When Helen got her first job as a teacher, she was nervous about standing in front of the class. She was afraid that she’d lose her train of thought. And she’d never been the kind of person who wanted to be in the spotlight. But she soon discovered that she felt comfortable in the role of teacher. The pupils actually listened to her, no matter what she said; they even trusted her. There was something magical about that. Of course they often complained about the homework assignments, but she could deal with that. On the other hand, every Friday the full weight of the working week would descend upon her. All those noises and voices – the scraping chairs, the teenagers bursting with hormones – would echo in her ears long after she reached home.

  Helen had been embarrassed by her mother’s mention of condoms. Especially since she knew that Anne’s mother would never have discussed the topic so bluntly. But also because at that point the whole idea of having sex had not even occurred to Helen.

  Nor was she really thinking about it when she met Christian. She was simply very drunk. Two months later, she found out she was pregnant. But that wasn’t a disaster, since they quickly discovered that they enjoyed each other’s company. And so they got married before Amanda was born.

  Christian’s parents lived in Kyrkslätt, and occasionally they would come over to visit, but they rarely stayed long. They would dutifully eat whatever food was served to them, all the while casting suspicious glances about, as if they couldn’t really believe that their son lived in a house like this – so modern and white, with children who were both so talkative and extroverted. His parents always seemed relieved when it was time for dessert. Christian’s mother would bring cakes or chocolate to eat with their coffee. It was never easy to get any sort of conversation started. They were happy to have their grandchildren visit, but not overnight, since Christian’s father complained that he couldn’t sleep if they were there.

  Right now Helen was trying to read The Unknown Soldier, but she kept dozing off. She glanced at her watch. It was already eight thirty, so she might as well get the kids to brush their teeth.

  When that was accomplished and Lukas and Amanda had been tucked into bed in their own rooms, Helen decided to retire for the night. She tried to read some more, but she must have fallen asleep because after a while – it could have been five minutes or an hour later – she felt the weight of Christian’s body sink down on the bed next to her. She noticed the smell of sawdust and winter as he tried to find a comfortable position. He put his arm around her, searching for her breast. His hands were cold, and she hesitated for a moment, not sure how she wanted to react.

  Apparently he wanted to make love, but she was already halfasleep and had been deep in a dream world. It would require some effort for her to get into the proper mood. But he still had his arms wrapped lightly around her. She knew that she needed to indicate with her body language whether she was interested, and at the moment both options seemed possible. They hadn’t had sex in … well, it must be two weeks, so she supposed there was a certain logic in having it now. But why couldn’t he have come to bed before she dozed off?

  ‘I don’t think I really feel like it tonight,’ she said.

  He s
ighed, removed his hands and turned over.

  Helen realised that now she was not going to be able to fall asleep. Did she regret her decision? As she lay there, silently weighing the pros and cons, the bedroom room opened and Lukas came in. He got into bed between them, moving quietly, like a little animal, and crept under the covers without saying a word. Then he reached up to touch her ear and fell asleep holding on to her earlobe.

  seventeen

  KATRIINA WENT TO THE PHILIPPINES in order to show her colleague, Heikki, who was in charge. When it was decided that they would start up a recruiting project for nurses in Manila, he had offered to supervise the entire operation, even though the responsibility was clearly Katriina’s domain. Besides, she knew that she had better contacts and was a more experienced negotiator than he was. So she did what she’d always done: she made the decision to take on the job herself.

  The day before her departure, a series of training sessions were held at the Scandic Hotel Continental in Helsinki, with colleagues from several different divisions within HNS. The day started with a lecture by a consultant, who used a metaphor about an ice floe in her speech. Everyone was supposed to imagine themselves as penguins helping each other from one ice floe to another. Then they had to walk around the room and picture what it was like to depend on the rest of the group; if one of them stepped outside of a specifically defined area, the entire collective would fall.

  It was three in the afternoon by the time that session ended, and dusk had already started to settle in. The hotel faced Töölö Bay, just a stone’s throw from where Katriina and Max lived. Katriina looked out of the window at the park. People were jogging around the frozen bay, as usual, even though there was a strong wind and the temperature had dropped to minus 10° Celsius. Several people were huddled together, waiting for the airport bus on the other side of Mannerheimvägen.

  The mood from the training session hovered like a grey mist over the whole place, reinforced by the hotel’s wall-to-wall carpeting, the young women in business suits dashing about, the group of people out in the car park smoking and gossiping, and all her other colleagues who were hunched over their coffee cups as they waited for the next item on the agenda.

  ‘Two weeks in Manila. You need to go around to the biggest hospitals and drum up interest,’ said Wivan. ‘Collect names and contact information. They pay their own travel expenses, and we pay for an intensive course in the Finnish language, plus help them to find housing. It should be simple. All those girls dream of getting a job abroad.’

  Katriina was supposed to make contact with the authorities and hospitals, and try to find nurses interested in coming to Finland to work.

  This project was Wivan’s baby, and she was the kind of boss who lacked all patience. She wanted everything to happen as fast as possible.

  Katriina offered some cautious objections. She had a feeling that Wivan had no idea about the logistics required to make this project a success.

  ‘There are thirteen million people living in Manila,’ she said. ‘We can’t just go over there and gather up a bunch of nurses as if they were mail-order brides. At the very least, I’ll need to set up some sort of liaison with the local authorities.’

  A year earlier they had tried a pilot project that had proven quite successful. Sixteen Filipina nurses had received their certificates from a professional college in Helsinki, and the media had portrayed the venture as providing a solution to the demographic disaster that Finland would face when the Baby Boomers retired. In the future there would be approximately ten retirees for every working-age Finn. But the pilot project had involved only sixteen nurses. Wivan was now talking about a hundred (‘or maybe more, if we can make a go of it’).

  ‘But there are companies already doing this sort of thing. Why can’t we let them handle the recruiting process?’ asked Katriina.

  ‘We can’t afford to do that. They’re starting to stir up trouble within the profession, and it’ll take for ever to work out all the details. It’s better for us to establish our own programme with the Filipina nurses. That way we skip the middleman.’

  Katriina tried to explain that there were a lot of puzzle pieces that would have to fall into place first. For instance, where would all the nurses live once they got to Finland?

  ‘We’ll solve that issue later. I think this is the way forward. You and I need to have someone who will take care of us fifteen years from now. And it’s not going to be our children, I can tell you that. Do you really think your daughters will want to work as care-givers?’ Wivan asked rhetorically.

  When Katriina finally went home around five o’clock, she found Max sitting in front of the computer in his study.

  ‘So, have you decided?’ she asked.

  Max had told his wife that his publisher wanted Laura Lampela to read his manuscript. Katriina thought it was almost touching to see how Max struggled to make up his mind. It was obviously difficult for his sixty-year-old male ego to accept the fact that a younger woman might be able to help him with his writing. Katriina also realised that Max was tempted by the idea. He was the type of man – maybe all men were this type – who would go to great lengths simply to win the admiration of a younger woman. His book was presumably just a small part of this effort.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think? Maybe it’s a stupid idea,’ he said. A big pile of research notes was on the desk next to him.

  ‘She seems very bright,’ said Katriina.

  ‘Uh-huh. She’s no dummy, that’s for sure. But I’ve got so much material,’ he said, pointing to the stack of pages.

  ‘Well, don’t go and do anything crazy. If you’re thinking of working with someone else, the other person has to agree. And I hope you’re smart enough to realise that if she starts flirting with you, it’s not directed at you personally. She’s young, and she’s got nothing to lose.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ said Max.

  Katriina went over to him and put her arm around his shoulders. He took her hand. She leaned down and pressed her cheek against Max’s unshaven face.

  ‘Do you have a lot to do still?’ she asked him.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How about coming to bed with me?’

  Max looked from her to his manuscript, and then at her again. He kissed her hand.

  ‘I’ll be right there.’

  On her way to the bedroom, Katriina passed Eva’s old room, where they had placed the hamster cage on the desk. Katriina had fed the hamsters almost every morning and evening since Christmas, and also given them water. If she happened to forget a day, she compensated by giving them extra food the next time. They didn’t seem to eat much, hiding most of the food in one corner or another of the cage.

  Blixten and Skorpan always woke up around nine p.m. and then spent all night running in their exercise wheel, until they finally went to sleep about the same time that Max and Katriina were getting up in the morning. The cage had started out in the hallway, but Katriina couldn’t sleep because of all the noise, so they’d moved it into Eva’s old room.

  When Katriina bent down to open the cage door, she saw that it hadn’t been properly latched.

  She looked inside, moved the sawdust around and also opened the little houses that the hamsters slept in. Max was about to walk past when he noticed her in the room.

  ‘Are you coming?’ he said.

  ‘I can’t find them,’ said Katriina.

  ‘I’m sure they’re just hiding in a corner.’

  Katriina gave Max a worried look. ‘They’re not here. They’re not inside the houses or under the bridge. I shook the cage, but they didn’t come out from anywhere. Was it you who left the cage door open?’

  ‘Let me have a look.’

  Max came into the room and peered inside the cage. Nothing moved, and he stretched out his hand to turn over the little plastic houses. He moved aside the straw-like bedding on top of the sawdust to see if the hamsters were underneath. They were normal-size golden hamsters, and it shouldn’t
have been easy for them to hide. So they really had disappeared.

  ‘Max, I found the cage open. Did you touch the cage door today?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘I’m not saying you did. I’m just asking.’

  ‘No, I did not touch the hamster cage. I haven’t touched it at all since it’s been here.’

  Katriina thought to herself that this was the last thing she needed to deal with right now. Could it have been Edvard? But how could a dog have unlatched the cage door? And why would he even be interested? He wasn’t a predator. Not like a cat.

  ‘What if they’ve run away?’

  Katriina looked around the room.

  ‘Don’t make a sound.’

  They stood there in silence, feeling ridiculous. Katriina tried to focus on listening for the hamsters, to see if they were still in the room. It couldn’t have been easy for them to escape. The door was at least fifteen centimetres above the bottom of the cage, so they would have had to climb up on something. And then they would have been forced to get down from the desk, which meant they would have fallen about a metre to the floor, maybe a little more if they hadn’t had the sense to hop down via the bed.

  ‘Can we move on to the bedroom now?’ said Max.

  Katriina looked at him.

  ‘You can’t be serious. We need to find the hamsters before Helen and the children come over to get them. And I’m going to Manila tomorrow. If we don’t find them tonight, you’ll have to solve the problem somehow.’

  ‘Can’t we just buy new ones?

  ‘Buy new ones? Don’t you think they’d notice?’

  ‘I’m not so sure they would. Isn’t Helen always saying that the kids have hardly paid any attention to the hamsters since they got them? Besides, don’t they all look alike?’