The Mine

by Antti Tuomainen

  Once I’ve written up the story, I’ll fetch Ella from nursery, I decided. I’ll have plenty of time.

  10

  The snow fell in flakes that were light, bright, melting pleasantly on his face. He was walking along the southern shore of Töölö Bay. He wasn’t in a hurry but still couldn’t control the bounce in his step. Leena finished work at five o’clock – rather, she’d said she would leave at five, which was a different matter. They had agreed to meet in a café on Museokatu. According to Leena it was quiet and suitable for conversation, even in the evenings. Emil hadn’t told her he now lived in Töölö. Saying this out loud was suddenly difficult.

  What’s more, he didn’t know what to think of Janne’s story. His son might be in danger.

  His senses weren’t working the way they usually did. He was too near to the people he had always loved. Up close we cannot see clearly, he remembered someone saying. That’s right, the phrase was from a book Leena had once read him. He remembered the feel of the thick grass in Sibelius Park beneath his back, a summer’s day long ago, Leena’s smooth, young hands holding a book, the boughs of the trees disappearing into the depths of the sky.

  It was true.

  We don’t think rationally about the things we love.

  11

  The nursery teacher’s face betrayed first fright then annoyance. Of course, I realised I was the one that had made a mistake. She had simply explained the situation.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, and, after trying hard, managed to force a smile to my face. ‘That’s what we agreed. Pauliina was going to pick up Ella. That’s it.’

  Needless to say, Pauliina and I hadn’t agreed anything. I hadn’t been able to get hold of her. The phone had rung, but she hadn’t answered. I’d sent her a couple of messages, too, with the same result.

  ‘They left an hour ago,’ the teacher explained.

  She was visibly exhausted. Thirty-five years old, long, thick brown hair in a ponytail, two scarves against the cold; a monthly salary only just above the minimum wage, yet having to shoulder responsibility for the safety of the children and deal with the increasingly paranoid demands and special requirements of the children’s parents. A few more winters in jumpsuits, an eventual burnout, and then she would look for a new career. She would remember me as one of the hundreds of fathers for whom everything else was more important than their own children.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Too much work.’

  ‘That’s often the case.’

  ‘This time … Forget it. See you in the morning.’

  The woman said nothing. She walked away.

  I strode home, trying to swallow my disappointment. I’d wanted to pick up Ella. I’d thought it might make amends for my absence that morning. I looked at my phone. One minute to five.

  In the hallway I wiped the snow from my shoulders; the large flakes had caught on my coat like spiders, and shaking them off was difficult. Ella’s voice pealed from the kitchen. She didn’t run into the hallway to see me, though the door clicked shut, clothes hangers clattered on the railing and my bag thumped to the floor.

  I could tell from Pauliina’s expression that something had happened, something other than the fact that I’d been away all night without saying anything. I concentrated on Ella. The kitchen smelled of Pauliina’s risotto. At least in theory all the elements were present: father, mother, daughter, a warm stove, a fragrant meal. I sat at the table next to Ella, opposite Pauliina and took some food.

  ‘How was your day?’ I asked.

  Pauliina said nothing. I scooped up some salad, placed it next to the risotto and poured some water into a glass. Just as I gripped my fork and was about to take my first mouthful of food, Pauliina lifted something from the chair next to her and slid it across the table to me. An envelope. Addressed to both of us. Pauliina’s name was above mine. I glanced at Ella, who was concentrating on her food. Pauliina asked Ella if she wanted some more. Ella said something I couldn’t quite make out. I placed my fork on the plate, picked up the envelope and opened it.

  Two sheets of A4: a letter and a colour photograph. The photograph showed an image of a family, hanged – a man, a woman and a child, all stripped to their underwear and brutally maimed. My face had been Photoshopped on to the man’s body. The letter was brief and the message clear: if I carried on with the story, the kind of damage displayed in the photograph would happen to me and my family. Above all, to my family.

  I returned the pages to the envelope and placed it on the empty chair next to me. We ate our meal. Ella babbled to herself.

  12

  He arrived early, again. The street-level café comprised two rooms. At the back of the first room was a glass vitrine, displaying cakes and sandwiches, and the cash register. The back room, which lay behind a low, wide opening, was like a romantic salon, with table lamps and armchairs. He chose one of the two window tables, sat with his back to the wall and looked out at the continuing snowfall. The old snow was already covered in a fresh layer, several centimetres thick. It made the view seem unreal, smoothed the roughness, evened out the chaos of metal and asphalt.

  He told the waiter he would order when his … when the person he was waiting for arrived. His fumbling for words brought a friendly smile to the young waiter’s lips. He turned and looked outside again. His heart was racing. He was clearly nervous; he wasn’t himself. Uncertainty, faltering. Small things, of course, but he knew that every crack, every fissure begins as thin as a strand of hair.

  ‘Hello Emil.’

  He stood up, now even this gesture tainted with uncertainty. He didn’t know whether to greet her with a kiss on the cheek, a short hug or a polite handshake. It was clear neither of them knew what to do. The result was a mixture of everything: dry kisses sent into the warm air of the café, a single hand placed warily on the other’s shoulder and a handshake that was so short they only noticed the touch once they released their grip.

  They ordered. Leena took a cup of tea, Emil some coffee, and cinnamon buns for both.

  ‘Earlier today I was thinking of that summer’s day we spent in Sibelius Park,’ said Emil. ‘You read something to me.’

  And he saw that she too remembered it: a quick smile; and her eyes, which always said more than her mouth. But exactly what they said, Emil had never fully understood. Neither then nor now.

  ‘I was reminded of it today when I met Janne. We had lunch together.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  Emil tried to identify the emotion in her voice – resentment, anger, indifference – but couldn’t put his finger on anything.

  ‘To be honest I wasn’t surprised when I saw you,’ Leena said almost immediately.

  ‘I was just passing…’

  ‘I didn’t mean when we met right there at that specific moment. I mean that a lot of time has passed, and there is a time for everything.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘I was reminded a while back, when I received one of those pension statements. You know, the ones that document your work history, all the salary you’ve been paid and how much pension you are due.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Emil sincerely. He knew that such statements existed, but he’d never seen one.

  ‘I had to sit down when I received it. It felt suddenly so heavy – figuratively speaking, that is.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced something like that,’ said Leena, and it occurred to Emil that he could look at that small, slender face for the rest of his life. ‘Your whole life seems to flood into your arms. Everything you’ve ever done, everything you’ve ever been is right there in front of you – like a doll’s house where you can see into every room at once and there’s nowhere to hide.’

  Emil considered the memories he had; memories that even the smallest incident could trigger. The bewildered man he had shot in the forehead; his knife slicing through a neck stiff with fear; the bellowing as he hurled a man from a balcony.

 
‘Something like that,’ he said. ‘In fact that’s really why I’ve moved back to Helsinki.’

  ‘I knew it the moment I saw you.’

  Emil looked at Leena. They ate their cinnamon buns. Emil felt the urge to wet his forefinger and pick up the grains of sugar that had fallen on the plate and lick them with a smack of his lips.

  They spoke for some time about surprisingly mundane things, such as how Helsinki had outgrown itself, how it had become an international city, and reminisced about what the city had looked like when they’d first met. If Leena is experiencing even a tenth of the nostalgia that I am, thought Emil, her heart must surely be taking extra, wistful beats too.

  They sat quietly for a while. Both had turned to look out of the window, into the street where snow was falling, heavy and silent. Emil looked at the woman he had lost so long ago.

  ‘We’re not young any longer, Leena.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s a good thing,’ she said, her voice almost hushed.

  13

  The envelope lay on the coffee table in front of us. An American drama about a group of crime-scene investigators was on the television. The woman running the forensic laboratory looked like a supermodel. The characters all called her a pathologist. Her fulsome lips gleaming and her cleavage showing just enough, the pathologist-cum-supermodel explained that the killer had made a mistake after all. I switched off the television and looked at Pauliina. She pulled her legs to one side, took off her glasses, placed them on the sofa and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Pauliina,’ I said and nodded towards the envelope, ‘It’s harmless. It’s just … you know. A bit of mischief.’

  ‘How do you know that? One side of your head is still swollen. Ella’s hand is in a bandage.’

  ‘Those are two different things. And you don’t need to worry about me.’

  ‘It’s not you I’m worried about.’

  We sat in silence.

  ‘I’m not interested where you were last night,’ said Pauliina. ‘Truth or lies, I don’t want to hear it. Neither makes any difference; neither would solve anything. You have brought something so unpleasant into our home that I simply can’t accept it. And I don’t just mean that envelope.’

  ‘It’s important to bring things out into the open.’

  ‘Maybe, but those people don’t need you to do that. If you’d been a genuine environmental activist, you would have passed your information to someone looking for a big break and you’d be satisfied that the matter had been made public. You did this for your own reputation, your own glory. You wanted your name and photograph in the paper.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘That letter is a wake-up call,’ Pauliina continued. ‘It’s woken me up, makes me wonder what we’re doing here. Everything was so quick three years ago. I got pregnant straight away; we bought an apartment without getting to know each other. Ella was born, and since then there hasn’t been time to think about anything else.’

  I looked at the blank television. It seemed to stare back at me. A black hole ready to suck me into its depths.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. We live together, we know each other.’

  ‘What’s my shoe size?’

  ‘Thirty-eight.’

  ‘Thirty-nine. Where do I work?’

  ‘At the … consultancy firm … the communications office.’

  ‘Called?’

  ‘Korhonen &…’

  ‘That was my last job. When did I land my current job?’

  ‘Your new…? You didn’t say anything. I have asked though. Congratulations on your new job.’

  ‘What music do I like?’

  ‘Well, we went to at least three gigs before Ella was born…’

  ‘Right, listening to your favourite bands. What do I like?’

  ‘In general or something specific?’

  ‘What do I like?’

  ‘Ella.’

  Pauliina’s eyes were cold. ‘You and I have nothing in common.’

  I sighed. It didn’t matter what I said.

  ‘It feels as though all this was a mistake … a misunderstanding,’ she said.

  I looked at her. ‘A mistake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A misunderstanding?’

  ‘Yes. I should have seen that work is what’s most important to you. At first there was something almost alluring about it – that someone could be so dedicated, so determined, that you knew what you wanted. But when work started coming first time after time, I should have realised. Everything else just disappears. Even a passing interest in the person you live with.’

  ‘You can’t say I’m not interested in Ella.’

  ‘You still haven’t paid the nursery bill.’

  ‘I forgot about it when I was at the motel up north and … I just forgot about it.’

  ‘I’ve already paid it.’

  ‘I’ll transfer the money into your account.’

  ‘It’s not about the money.’

  ‘It’s just a nursery bill.’

  ‘It’s not just one nursery bill. It’s everything. Your whole life.’

  My phone beeped on the table. I leaned over to see who the message had come from.

  ‘This is exactly what I mean,’ said Pauliina.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the middle of our conversation. You can’t help yourself. Do you want to know why I haven’t asked anything about your father? Because I already know. He’s exactly the same as you. Back then he thought and acted just like you’re doing now.’

  ‘I don’t think so. He seems…’

  ‘Different? So did you. Now he regrets it and wants to form a relationship with you again. Am I right?’

  ‘It seems that way,’ I admitted.

  Pauliina shook her head. ‘I don’t know what to say. Except that things can’t go on like this.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Exactly what I said. This can’t go on.’

  Pauliina leaned over to the table, snatched the envelope and threw the photograph in my lap. The image looked all the more sickening: a dead family, a hanged child.

  ‘Pauliina, things like this don’t happen. To us. It’s just intimidation.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. But it’s come to this. And I’m not just talking about that photograph. I mean everything. You could easily ask to be transferred to the food-and-drink section or the film reviews, anything at all, and decide to be a father to your daughter.’

  ‘I can’t leave this story up in the air…’

  Pauliina’s face seemed utterly expressionless. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t upset, as I might have expected.

  ‘I don’t…’ I began, but didn’t know how to continue.

  Pauliina swung her legs to the floor and was about to use her arms to propel herself up from the sofa.

  ‘I’ll look,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll look for alternatives.’

  Pauliina thought for a moment.

  ‘I hope so,’ she said quietly, stood up and walked out of the room.

  14

  The tallest building in Finland rose up between a metro station and a shopping mall in the district of Vuosaari in the east of Helsinki. Emil knew the building was almost ninety metres high. In addition to the ventilation room and the helicopter landing pad at the top of the tower, there were twenty-four storeys of apartments, two floors below ground and a ground floor reserved for retail outlets and an entrance hall. The twenty-sixth storey featured a sauna and a rooftop terrace giving panoramic views across the city. That’s where Emil was heading, for the sauna slot beginning at eight p.m.

  If Helsinki had changed in the intervening thirty years, the changes in Vuosaari had been more rapid and more radical. Built up during the 1960s and now called Old Vuosaari, the furthest and most easterly neighbourhood in the area had been reduced to a small enclave surrounded by enormous residential buildings. New Vuosaari had been built in the 1990s and the building work was still under way.

  Emil walked and listened. Immigrants.
Languages he couldn’t understand. Aurinkolahti: a district within a district. Apartment blocks constructed along the seashore – expensive condominiums, their balconies facing out to sea. If he disregarded the temperature, now ten degrees below freezing, it was as though he had walked a few thousand kilometres south.

  The calm, chilled winter’s evening. The fresh, sharp air. He walked for a long time. He knew he was walking in a circle, but he needed it. His hour and a half with Leena had turned out to be far more pleasant than he’d dared to imagine. Yes, they’d spoken about shared memories, but, more than that, they had talked about the present: what they thought about different matters, what life and the world looked like.

  Sparse, lazy flakes of snow fluttered to the ground. He walked onwards. In his mind he ran through everything again, one last time. It was his way of getting into his work, it was like a mantra with which he banished from his mind everything not related to the task at hand. Eventually it was always effective. In any line of work, what was most important was focus and preparation. There were no shortcuts. If you tried to look for one or took a diversion of any sort, you made mistakes.

  He looked out at the sea, the darkness of the horizon, took a deep breath and turned back. He guessed he must have walked around a kilometre and a half. It was only a guess and he couldn’t check on his phone. Naturally, his phone was in Töölö. Not because someone might have known the phone belonged to him, but because you could never be too careful. Phones reveal everything about us, particularly where we have been and when.

  The building was like a square column, almost a hundred metres high and with white walls, like fifteen enormous sugar cubes piled on top of one another.

  Emil’s first attempt to get in the door failed.

  He had timed his own steps perfectly, but when he was five metres from the door a man dropped something and crouched down to look for it in the snow and gravel. Emil was forced to walk past the door, to continue on his way and cross the street. At walking pace he circled a small roundabout, watching to make sure the man had found what he was looking for and had disappeared inside the building. Emil took slow steps, as though he was waiting for someone. Eventually he spotted what he was looking for.