‘Thank you for coming,’ he began. ‘I wasn’t sure whether this would be appropriate. This place, so soon.’
Leena smiled; it lit up her whole face.
‘I was happy to accept your invitation. I think I said at our first meeting that…’ Leena interrupted herself, raised her dark eyebrows then continued. ‘…at our first meeting for thirty years … that it’s probably for the best that we’re not young any more. I know an elderly woman – she prefers to use the word old, because she thinks it better describes the true state of things – who says that the good thing about each passing year is that there are fewer things about which you need to give a damn. Excuse my language. I agree with her. When I was younger I might have thought coming here with you would be needlessly nostalgic, that I should have more self-respect, and that you should try harder. That I should decline your invitation at least once, make sure I seemed to hesitate, something like that.’
Emil could have listened to Leena all evening. He couldn’t understand men who complained about their wives’ endless chatter. Why didn’t those men choose women whose talk they wanted to hear?
‘As we get older,’ Emil began. ‘I think we have a better idea of what we really want.’
Leena put her glass on the table.
‘And we know what we don’t want.’
They looked at each other. Leena’s face was at once serious and somehow at peace with everything that had happened. Emil noticed he was no longer hungry.
‘I understand why you left,’ said Leena. ‘I understand why you didn’t keep in contact. But we don’t have to talk about that. You did what … you had to do.’
Again they looked at each other. The iceberg inside Emil was beginning to melt. The conversation with his son; telling the truth; Leena’s words.
‘And besides, it’s done now and it happened a long time ago,’ she said. ‘What happened all those years ago…’
Risto Hukkinen phones Leena twenty times a day, calls her a whore and threatens to attack her, to rape and violate her; to cause her financial difficulties. Time and again, day after day.
Leena changes her telephone number. Risto finds out the new one in a matter of days. Risto appears outside Leena’s workplace, outside the front door to the house. Risto sits down in the tram and stares at her without saying a word. Risto follows her home in the dark. Risto suddenly appears on the running track, at the cinema, the library. Risto sends her letters in which he talks as if they are still a couple.
The harassment has been going on for about a year. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day.
Risto and Leena had dated each other for three impossible years. Leena soon realised she’d made a mistake. In fact, from Leena’s perspective, most of the three years had been spent trying to end the relationship, trying to get away.
Risto is a manipulative liar, a pig whose true character is only revealed once it is too late. She can do nothing about him. Nobody can do anything about him. The police shrug their shoulders; friends and relatives listen for a while then lose interest.
Leena meets Emil. They fall in love, and before long Leena is pregnant. Emil quickly realises that hanging above them is a dark cloud casting a constant shadow on Leena’s face. Emil tries to answer the telephone, tries to walk alongside Leena as much as possible. But it’s never enough. When Emil answers the phone, there is nobody at the other end. When Emil walks with Leena, they don’t see anyone following them or standing across the street. And yet the phone at Leena’s workplace rings incessantly, and she continues to see Risto whenever she walks anywhere by herself.
Leena and Emil get on with life as best they can. They have a son. Risto disappears. Emil can see that Leena is bursting with joy. Their life is full of love. At least it might have been, had Risto not returned, now even worse than before. In his eyes, having a child with another man is the final deceit. One dark November evening Emil answers the telephone. Risto’s voice. The whore and the child deserve to die.
Emil puts down the receiver and tells Leena he is going to the shop. Leena has told him where Risto Hukkinen lives. Emil takes the bus to the Munkkivuori neighbourhood. There is no snow yet; the ground is wet and bare. The asphalt gleams, black and oily. Emil looks out into the freezing rain, which so resembles his spirit. He steps off the bus at the Munkkivuori shopping mall. He walks round the shops – the shoe repairer, the bookstore. The rain numbs his face, trickles down inside his jacket collar.
In the lightless evening the rows of tall houses along Ulvilantie look like space rockets. The front door is open. Emil looks at the list of residents in the hallway. Sixth floor. The lift is small and slow, and Emil can see his face in the mirror on the wall. It is a face he has never seen before.
On the way up, his life races through his mind. He thinks of his parents, now long since dead: his violent, alcoholic father and his mother, beaten and frightened into submission. He thinks of the jobs he has done: chauffeur, builder, butcher. He thinks of people that have given him something better: the boxing instructor who encouraged him outside the ring, too; the librarian who gave him both love and books – a combination that can save lives, as Emil knew only too well. And then, the greatest of all gifts: Leena and Janne, his family.
Emil rings the doorbell and waits. He rings again. He opens the letterbox and sees a few, dimly lit square feet of the hallway floor. Shoes. Both men’s and women’s. So Risto Hukkinen lives with one woman and spends his time threatening another.
Emil recalls everything Leena has told him. Risto Hukkinen is a motoring enthusiast; he has an old Ford Mustang with which he is constantly tinkering. Emil returns to the yard, finds a row of garages between the tall houses. One of the doors is open, and a warm yellow strip of light cuts across the wet asphalt. Emil walks towards the door, pulls it open further. The beautiful, sleek bonnet of the white Mustang is propped up and Risto Hukkinen is bent over, his head leaning into the motor. Emil stands in the doorway for a moment then steps inside. Hukkinen notices that someone has appeared and stands up straight. It takes him only a fraction of second to recognise who it is.
Risto Hukkinen smiles. He has nothing to be afraid of. Emil is thirteen centimetres shorter than him and twenty-two kilos lighter.
Hukkinen is a big man, tall and stocky. He is wearing a T-shirt. His arms are the same girth as Emil’s thighs. Emil cannot help himself thinking of Leena taking punches from a man fifty kilos heavier than her. The air in the garage is warm.
Hukkinen is a structural engineer, an expert when it comes to strength calculations; a man of steel and concrete. Hukkinen adds, subtracts, multiplies. He looks at Emil and sees a man in his thirties – a thin, sinewy figure whose face betrays the fact that there’s little fat on his body. Hukkinen sees him as nothing but a punching bag.
‘Tell me,’ Emil begins. ‘Tell me what will make you stop?’
Hukkinen’s smile narrows somewhat. His bright-blue eyes look directly at Emil.
‘Stop? Stop what?’
‘The harassment. The phone calls, the stalking, the threats, the scare tactics. Everything.’
‘You believe all of that?’
Emil says nothing. He stares at Hukkinen.
Hukkinen laughs.
‘A man under the thumb,’ he says.
They size each other up.
‘Leena enjoys it,’ he continues. ‘Besides, what the fuck has it got to do with you?’
The light from the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling is bright, but still much of the space remains unlit. Hukkinen reaches a hand down under the bonnet.
‘Do you beat your new girlfriend, too?’ asks Emil.
‘Whores always get what’s coming to them. And I could have you charged with breach of the peace, with defamation. I’ll call the police.’
‘Do it.’
Hukkinen stands still, all except for his right hand, hidden beneath the bonnet. That moves. The beard and moustache around his mouth glisten, making Hukkinen look like a bear that has just eaten.
>
‘Leena is nothing but a whore,’ he says. ‘You can’t trust her. The kid is someone else’s. It’s a bastard.’
‘You’re all the same,’ Emil says, and again feels the frozen rain whirling inside him.
Hukkinen stares at him fixedly.
‘Men that beat their wives are full of excuses,’ Emil continues. ‘I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anybody. When I was six years old I watched as my father battered my mother’s head against the wall, yanked her right arm so hard it dislocated, and kicked her in the groin while she was lying on the floor. Later on I listened as he told his relatives she’d fallen off her bike. And I listened as he explained to my mother that he’d had to do what he did because she’d betrayed his trust. There’s an explanation for everything. Every time.’
The garage is so quiet that the buzz of the fluorescent lamps rings in their ears.
‘Boo-hoo,’ says Hukkinen eventually.
Emil shakes his head.
‘You don’t get it. That’s not why I told you.’
‘So why did you?’
‘Because I don’t respect you. What is a man who doesn’t command respect? Nothing. You’re nothing.’
‘And who the fuck are you to decide?’
‘I don’t decide anything. It’s the truth.’
‘The truth,’ scoffs Hukkinen.
‘You’re nothing,’ Emil says again. ‘And you’ve only got yourself to blame. I don’t know what it feels like, but I doubt it’s a very comforting thought.’
Hukkinen looks at Emil. His eyes are full of hate, of burning rage.
‘Do you think I’m afraid of you?’
‘I don’t care one way or the other. What you think doesn’t matter.’
Hukkinen’s right hand has found what it was fumbling for. Emil can see it in his posture, which has begun to tighten and move in the opposite direction.
‘And I thought you’d come here to tell me what to do.’
‘So did I. But I’ve changed my mind.’
‘So you’re not asking me to stop doing whatever that slut says I’ve been doing?’
‘I’m not asking you for anything,’ says Emil. ‘The time for that is over. I understand that now.’
‘Then you’ll understand you can get the hell out of here, too.’
‘I can’t do that.’
Hukkinen shifts his weight to his left leg, the thigh pressing against the Mustang’s fender.
‘Why not?’
‘For Leena’s sake; for my son’s sake,’ says Emil.
Again Hukkinen smirks at him. ‘What will they say when you go back with your tail between your legs, whimpering about what a bad world it is out there?’
‘I’m not…’ Emil begins, ‘… I’m not going back.’
‘You know what?’ Hukkinen says, more a statement than a question. ‘Before I beat the living daylights out of the snivelling cunt that sent you here, I’m going to teach you a little lesson.’
‘Leena didn’t send me. She knows nothing about this. Nobody knows.’
Hukkinen is thinking about this. It’s in his eyes, in the angle of his head. He’s weighing up his next move. Something about his calculations seems to please him.
‘Well then,’ he says. ‘It’s just you and me.’
‘That’s right,’ says Emil.
The sound of rain can be heard on the garage roof. Emil looks Hukkinen in the eye. Hukkinen lunges at him, pulling his right hand out from beneath the bonnet of the car. His punch comes surprisingly quickly. Emil manages to raise his left arm to stop the blow, the wrench strikes his elbow, his arm goes limp. Pain swirls round his body in an intoxicating rush.
For a thickset man, Hukkinen is fast and nimble. The heavy wrench swings in all directions. They are at the side of the Mustang. The wrench shatters the passenger-seat window. From the look on Hukkinen’s face, Emil knows this is the final straw. To Hukkinen’s mind, the smashing of the car window is Emil’s fault. Hukkinen is dripping with rage, says he is going to kill Emil. Again the wrench flies through the air. Emil tries to dodge it but doesn’t get out of the way in time. The corner of the wrench scrapes across his cheek. Emil feels his skin ripping, blood spurting from his face. He ducks, and dashes past Hukkinen to the front of the car, where there’s more space.
Again Hukkinen lunges for him. Emil’s left arm still won’t work. Hukkinen is on top of him, and the two of them fly towards the wall of tools. The blow knocks the air from Emil’s lungs. Hukkinen presses him against the wall, the metal tools digging into his back. Some of them press painfully, others seem to burst their way through his skin and flesh.
Hukkinen’s face is right next to his. His left hand grips Emil by the throat and squeezes. Emil can feel his windpipe is about to snap; breathing is impossible. The pain is indescribable. With his right hand Emil manages to grip the hand holding the wrench. He squeezes the wrist with all the force he can muster, pressing it on the inside. His thumb sinks between the bones of Hukkinen’s forearm. If it goes any further, it’ll come out the other side, he thinks. He presses his fingers hard and twists. The wrench falls from Hukkinen’s clutch. Emil releases his grip, clenches his hand into a fist and punches Hukkinen square in the face. Hukkinen’s nose breaks on impact and his hand falls from round Emil’s throat. Hukkinen takes two or three steps backwards. The punch, which would have knocked out any average man, only dazes Hukkinen for a second. Blood is pouring from his nose. It comes in spurts, soaking his beard and moustache.
Hukkinen lashes out with both hands. Emil only has the use of his right and he can’t breathe properly. He can still feel Hukkinen’s grip on his throat. Perhaps his windpipe will be permanently damaged. Emil dodges the blows. Hukkinen is unable to find his target. He suddenly sees the wall of tools behind him and snatches up a knife. Emil realises there isn’t much time. He can’t breathe, and Hukkinen is brandishing a sharp, glinting blade.
Emil dodges Hukkinen’s blows and takes a risk by diving behind his attacker. This takes Hukkinen by surprise, and, at this, Emil wins a few crucial fractions of a second. He manages to snatch the wrench from the garage floor. Again Hukkinen lunges towards him. Emil moves to one side. The last remnants of air in his lungs are gone.
Emil leaps forward, turns the wrench in his hand so that the jaws are in his fist. Hukkinen lurches forwards, and Emil slams the handle right into his open mouth. Hukkinen’s face twists towards the ceiling, and at that he falls to his knees. The force of his lunge is such that the fall is powerful. Emil stands up as Hukkinen comes crashing down. Hukkinen’s knees strike the floor, and Emil stands upright above him. Emil thrusts the wrench handle all the way down Hukkinen’s gullet. The sturdy handle of chromium-vanadium steel smashes everything in its path. Emil releases his grip. The jaws of the wrench are protruding from Hukkinen’s mouth like a set of unnatural dentures. Hukkinen slumps to the ground, thrashes for a moment, then lies motionless on the concrete floor.
Emil is on his hands and knees. Entire minutes pass before he is able to breathe enough to stand up again. A pool of blood has formed round Hukkinen’s mouth.
I’m not going back.
That’s what he’d said.
‘Where did you drift off to?’
Emil noticed the peppered steak on the plate in front of him, the hum of conversation in the restaurant, Leena’s quizzical, friendly eyes. How long had he been daydreaming? Perhaps only thirty seconds. He smiled at Leena.
‘I was remembering something,’ said Emil. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ said Leena.
2
‘Why are you calling?’ she asked.
‘Why do you think?’ I said.
I switched off my phone, read through my text again and saw all the holes – the gaps and flaws that I hadn’t noticed while I was writing them. There on the screen they laughed at me, mocked me. Here we are, right in front of you, and you still can’t see us. I closed the file. Most of the text was beyond salvation.
/> Someone had tried to kill Matti Mali – at the same time as I’d been having that unforgettable breakfast with my father. According to Marjo Harjukangas’s account, Matti Mali had been on his way to work when an as yet unidentified person had accosted him outside his house. There was no information as to whether the assailant had used a knife, or whether Mali had been shot at. He can’t have been too badly hurt, because he was now recovering at home, as Harjukangas put it.
I couldn’t get any more information out of her. She asked me to stop mentioning my insider source in my articles, and told me not to contact her again. She was clearly in shock and couldn’t explain why she was calling me in the first place. I don’t know, she said and hung up.
I called Pauliina, just so I could hear Ella’s voice. They had gone to Pauliina’s parents’ house. I imagined only too well everything Pauliina must have told them about me – about us, our plans to separate, about what had driven her over the edge.
Ella was only able to concentrate for a few seconds before the phone was passed back to Pauliina. All we said to each other was goodbye.
The dim, empty office slowly began to wake up, the silence filled with sounds and words, movement in the shadows. When I could no longer force myself to concentrate on my writing, all the things I had pushed from my mind began flooding back. People, conversations, things I had done. I threw on my coat and left.
Maarit arrived in Juttutupa half an hour after me. I saw her in the doorway the moment she stepped inside; something lurched in my stomach. My heart didn’t know how to beat. Maarit kicked the loose snow from her boots, looked around and spotted me.
I was sitting at a table in the corner with a pint of beer – the second of the evening. The bar was busy as usual, but tonight there was nobody on the stage. It felt like an eternity since the last time I’d met Maarit in this same place.
The Mine Page 19