He walked along Runeberginkatu, leaving the city centre behind him. Here were unchanging streets, unchanging brick houses; so familiar. He arrived at Hesperia Park and spotted the restaurant where he was planning to enjoy a late lunch. The restaurant looked exactly the same as it did all those years ago: the large windows, above them the name of the restaurant in small neon letters, and in the windows the same name in almost a child’s handwriting – an E that looked like a set of buttocks and a tiny circle about the I.
The restaurant itself was half full, depending on how you looked at it. (How would he have answered the old water-in-the-glass test? He might have said that when he was younger the glass was always half empty, that he always thirsted for more. Today it was nice to think there was still something in that imaginary glass, and if it was half anything, it was undoubtedly half full. This was one of the good aspects of growing old: there was more than enough of everything. Everything, that is, except time.)
He left his coat in the cloakroom at the entrance. At this time of day there was nobody working the door. He didn’t imagine anyone would want to pinch his run-of-the-mill black, size forty-eight coat. He chose a table beneath the row of windows and knew instantly why he had come here: white tablecloths, artwork hanging on the walls, furniture with a certain gravitas, the small park on the other side of the windows. Now that everything was about to change again, it was important to find things that reminded him of how things used to be.
They had eaten dinner either at this table or at the next one along – nearer to the short bar by the other entrance. He remembered the roundness of Leena’s face, the fortified glow of red wine in her glass and on her cheeks, how unaccustomed they were to eating out. He remembered Leena’s dark, almost black hair, her beautiful, nervous hands, and how young they were.
He ordered a steak with onion gravy, a dish named after acting legend Tauno Palo, and a bottle of good old sparkling water.
A man and woman were eating at the northern end of the room. They clearly were not a couple, married or otherwise. Probably colleagues, office workers, low-level operatives in a large corporation, the foot soldiers of a sales and marketing department. Again he thought how differently life could have played out.
His dish arrived. He stuck his fork into the steak, piled onions and light-brown gravy on top of the meat and tasted it. Even better than he’d remembered.
Someone once said that our youth is a different country. For him, it was this country, this city. He had last seen Leena when they were both thirty years old.
After finishing his steak, he asked to see the dessert menu and made his decision in all of five seconds.
The waiter took away his plate and poured the remains of the sparkling water into his glass. Something about the last few drops trickling from the bottle reminded him of his last assignment. This happened more and more often: the most insignificant observation, the tiniest detail, and immediately his mind began to darken in a manner that he wasn’t used to.
The trickle of water, the portly man – burned white with electricity in his bathtub, crimson blood in his eyes.
Wherever he looked, his past came to life. He tried it again now as he waited for coffee and dessert. He raised his eyes, saw a bunch of white tulips displayed on the counter in an Alvar Aalto vase. He could sense their scent in his nostrils. The smell carried him back to Malaga.
A dazzling white house with a swimming pool set into a steep hillside. He is waiting in the garden, hidden in the shade of the trees. The smells of a still night: roses, cypresses, rosemary, pine. A pump-action shotgun, a Remington Express, propped against a tree, a Smith & Wesson M500 in his belt. Gangster guns, both of them, and he doesn’t like them one bit; but the nature of his work defines the tools of his trade. He has decided to make this look like a drugs-related killing. He hears the BMW jeep approaching, the sound of the motor rising and falling. The driver accelerates up the winding village road; the sound of the vehicle breaks the pristine night. He picks up the shotgun, shrugs it into position, positions himself on the steps between the house and the garage and knows he’s in a spot where the car’s headlights won’t wash over him. The jeep turns into the yard. It slows and comes to a stop. The driver switches off the motor; the lights go out. In a single movement he steps towards the car, raises the shotgun and fires. The windscreen shatters and the driver’s upper body is blown apart. He fires a second time, a third, throws the weapon to the ground, walks once round the car, removes the workman’s boots, which are far too big for his feet, and changes them for the trainers dangling from his belt, then stamps them into the mud, walks round to the passenger seat, takes the revolver and shoots the driver another five times in what is left of his torso. Two shooters. He picks up the shotgun, walks into the woods and disappears. That night the thousands of flowers around him smell more pungent than ever.
The waiter brings his crème brûlée.
3
Our arrival in the village of Suomalahti was at once gradual and sudden. At first it was impossible to think of the houses at the edge of the road as being linked to one another, but when we finally reached the heart of the village we realised we’d arrived some time ago, that the houses slowly getting closer together formed a chain leading us directly to the centre of ‘The Hidden Gem of Northern Finland’. The dots were missing from the ‘i’s. Perhaps the wind had mistaken them for snowflakes and had whipped them away with the same force as it battered the landscape around us.
I told Rantanen we’d take a short tour of the village, conduct a few interviews and take some photographs to lend the article a bit of local colour. Rantanen replied with a sigh. I drove slowly. A branch of the Cooperative Bank, a supermarket, Kaisa’s Hair and Massage Parlour. Petrol station, church, Hyvönen’s Motors & Snowmobiles. Funeral services, the optician, a hotel, and Happy Pizza, where today’s special appeared to be a faded ham-and-pineapple. Sports Retail Ltd, the local high school, and Maija’s Munchies.
The village came to an end.
I glanced in the mirror. The road was empty in both directions. I spun the car with a handbrake turn and pulled up in front of the snowmobile rental firm.
The shop floor smelled of new motors. A moment later a folding door opened in the wall and a man of about my own age stepped towards us. Close-cropped hair, thick arms, and a stocky chest beneath his hoodie; the crest of the Finnish lion round his neck, a round face and blue eyes. He introduced himself as Hyvönen. I explained we were researching an article about the mine.
‘It’s brought the village nothing but good,’ Hyvönen said without hesitation.
I continued with a few follow-up questions. Hyvönen agreed to be photographed, as long as his snowmobiles appeared in the background.
We heard a largely similar story at the salon. The mine was a good thing.
We returned to the car. Rantanen informed me that it was time for lunch. We drove a few hundred metres and I pulled up in front of a detached house. Maija’s Munchies on the ground floor, the family home upstairs.
The place was as deserted as the forty-minute drive from the mine into the village. We’d seen nothing but snow and forest, hills and straight roads. The wind had kept us company all the way. As we took the steps up to the door I looked behind: a metre of snow, and plenty more in the sky.
We stepped into the restaurant. A bell jingled above the door. All four tables were empty. We decided to sit by the window. Rantanen placed his camera on the table and pulled a collection of memory cards from his pocket. I could hear someone coming down the wooden staircase and into the kitchen. A moment later a woman walked into the restaurant; I guessed this must be Maija. We exchanged a few quick words about the wind, the snow and the game pie, and with that Maija retreated into the kitchen.
Rantanen was flicking through photographs on the camera’s small screen.
‘We’ve got a few decent ones,’ he said. ‘That should do.’
I tried to see whether he was telling the truth or whether he sim
ply wanted to get back on the road. There were a few good shots. The article would probably feature a lot of graphics and only one photograph – maybe the one with the three company flags fluttering in the blizzard. Behind them the mining complex glowed like a sickly sun.
Maija – I still assumed this woman was Maija – brought us our game pies and mashed potatoes. The brown gravy was piping hot and there was plenty of it. Rantanen had unzipped his jacket. His old woollen jumper was already tight around the stomach, and flashes of his green vest showed between the loose stitches. We ate heartily and agreed that I’d give Rantanen a lift to the airport.
‘You’re really going to stay on?’ Rantanen asked, bemused, even though we’d already discussed the matter.
‘I want to look around.’
‘You won’t get into the mining complex.’
‘But the mine is here. Believe me, if there’s anything to see, it’s right here in front of us.’
‘What does it matter?’ Rantanen asked. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘There’s always something to see, even in the middle of nowhere. And here in particular. This place has got something there’s a shortage of everywhere else: clean, untouched nature.’
Rantanen took a mouthful of mineral water, puffed out his cheeks as though to burp.
‘You’ve got an agenda.’
‘No, I haven’t. I want to write an article.’
‘You’re an eco-warrior.’
‘I am not.’
‘So what’s going on?’
I explained what I’d found out with just a few quick phone calls and a little reading. The mine at Suomalahti was a nickel mine. One of the main uses of nickel is in the production of steel, which is then made into supporting girders for bridges and other, smaller components. The mine was owned by a company called Finn Mining Ltd, which also owned another three mines. Finn Mining Ltd had bought the rights to the Suomalahti site for only two euros. The public explanation for this low sale price was that, at the time of the purchase, undertaking mining operations here was only a theoretical possibility. Getting started depended on a variety of factors: the quantities of ore in the ground, the results of exploratory digging, the projected environmental effects, securing sufficient funding, among dozens of others. Still … two euros. The project quickly garnered cross-party political support: on the one hand from those who on a national level backed policies based on flagrant vested interests, policies that were incredibly detrimental to the national economy; and on the other from those for whom any project that might employ a handful of people in a remote community – no matter how many millions of euros that project would swallow up, or how great an impact it would have on the environment or the health of local residents – was a fantastic, unrivalled investment oozing innovation. Of the two hundred MPs in the Finnish Parliament, roughly one hundred and ninety-eight fitted into these two categories. The remaining two would doubtless have supported it too, had they bothered to read the final report on the project, which was brimming with misleading superlatives cooked up by a bunch of bribed lobbyists.
But that was getting off topic, I told Rantanen, and returned to the subject of Suomalahti.
Only seven or eight years ago it seemed that the only projects left in the world were building projects. The nickel mine should have been a goldmine.
Rantanen didn’t laugh at my lame pun. He dipped a piece of bread in his gravy and munched on the soggy mess.
Critical voices, of which there were very few, claimed that the ore body near Suomalahti was highly depleted, with a low nickel concentration. Those in favour of the project said this didn’t matter because the mine would be using a process known as bioleaching, whereby oxidising bacteria are injected into the ore body in a jet of water, where they break down the rock and enable the extraction of the metal. While this method was profitable, it was also deemed highly environmentally friendly. And that wasn’t all that was going on at Suomalahti, I told Rantanen.
‘I’m sure it’s not,’ he said, a glob of brown sauce in the corner of his mouth.
Finn Mining Ltd, which now owned the complex at Suomalahti, used to be called the Finnish Mining Corporation, a company founded in 1922. It had been run by the Mali family for generations. In the interviews I’d read, Matti Mali, the current CEO, had talked about how much the company meant to him; how important it was that the family business and the mines they owned were governed responsibly; that their vision extended into the long term; and how he wanted to take all the important decisions personally. These interviews gave the impression of the septuagenarian Mali as an old-school industrial leader, a man of principle and honour, a man for whom the continuation of his ancestors’ traditions meant everything.
‘Well?’ was all Rantanen said after I’d finished my commentary.
‘I don’t know yet. That was just the background. It’s our job to call a spade a spade, to tell people what’s really going on. If there’s anything going on at all, that is.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Tell people the truth.’
Rantanen wiped his mouth. ‘You’re after a scoop – another feather in your cap.’
I glanced outside. Snow. I decided not to tell Rantanen that he sounded like my wife.
‘Just drop me off at the airport,’ he said.
We drove for half an hour through the dark, lunar landscape and arrived at the airport – a well-lit building the size of a local corner shop. It had been built to serve the needs of the ski resort forty kilometres away. And it was now packed: people, ski bags, the thirst for beer in the air. The bar was overflowing with customers. Rantanen headed straight for the counter.
Driving by myself, the steering wheel felt colder in my hands and the road back to the village seemed all the longer. Darkness wrapped its fist round the car and I found myself involuntarily thinking of my last argument with Pauliina. The car lurched to one side as I reached under the seatbelt and rummaged in my jacket and trouser pockets for my phone. I scrolled down the log of calls to find Pauliina’s number. She answered almost instantly. After the standard greetings, the line fell silent. Both of us were waiting for the other to take the initiative, to cross the icy chasm between us. I was already surrounded by frozen weather and decided I might as well take the leap into the unknown place our relationship had become during the last twelve months.
‘How are you doing?’ I asked and realised that my tone of voice sounded as though I was talking to a distant acquaintance.
‘I’m at work,’ said Pauliina. ‘It’ll soon be time to pick up Ella.’
The silences between us felt unavoidable. The beams of my headlights ate up the snow-covered road.
‘I’m in Suomalahti,’ I said. ‘We paid a visit to the mine.’
‘Have you paid Ella’s nursery fees?’
I stared at the landscape ahead. ‘I’ll do it when I get to the hotel.’
‘They were due last week.’
As if I didn’t know.
‘I’ll take care of it.’
‘Like you took care of the shopping before you left town?’
I could visualise the almost empty fridge, the forgotten shopping list on the kitchen table. There were eight hundred kilometres between me and them, yet they stood before me now, as tall as mountains. I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to the buzz of the PR office in the background.
‘It’s nice to know we’re important to you,’ said Pauliina.
‘Come on.’
‘It’s not me. You bring this on yourself.’
‘This trip came up suddenly.’
‘They always do.’
‘I’m working.’
‘Emphasis on the word I.’
‘At least I haven’t sold out to corporate giants.’
Pauliina sighed. Then silence again. Or not quite. I could hear the disappointment humming across the universe.
‘Well, I think I’ll get back to selling myself then,’ she said. ‘So we can afford to pay the nur
sery fees and put food in the fridge. Your idealism doesn’t seem to make that happen.’
I couldn’t remember when things had become this bad. We’d met three years ago, and Ella was born a year later. Now we’d reached the point where we could barely agree on anything. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d laughed together or shared a joke. Pauliina accused me of concentrating solely on my work and said I neglected everything else, particularly my family. I accused her of abandoning journalism and moving to the dark side, which was what we at the newspaper’s editorial office called consultants, and communications and PR officers. We had good reason. Most of Pauliina’s work involved making black look white. It wasn’t out-and-out lying, but it meant using your journalistic skills to manipulate the facts and distract your audience. When we argued, I asked her when she was going to tell our daughter that her mother was up for sale. Pauliina replied by saying she’d tell her as soon as her father managed to pull his head out of his sanctimonious arse and realise that seeking out the truth didn’t mean masturbating at the thought of my imagined superiority, and that everything I’d ever done I’d done for myself and not for a single noble cause. Our arguments, which at first had always ended with torrid make-up sex, were now like black mud into which we sank a little further each time.
I arrived back in the village of Suomalahti. I drove past the supermarket, the hairdresser-cum-massage-parlour and a pub called The Pit. From the windows on the upper floor of the two-storey prefabricated hotel building you could see over the stone wall running round the church and into the old cemetery. Perhaps this was to comfort the guests: if you stayed here long enough, there was always a final resting place.
I hadn’t booked a room in advance. It turned out I should have done so; all eight rooms were taken.
I returned to the car and sat with the engine running. The heater beneath the seat was pretty ineffective. While my toes were tingling from the cold, my backside was burning. The dial showed I was almost out of petrol and snow spinning from the sky built up on the bonnet.
The Mine Page 2