The End of Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘She’s playing tennis,’ Anna-Liisa said, politely lowering her voice so as not to disturb the woman’s athletic interlude.

  ‘I don’t see a ball. Is it air tennis of some sort?’

  ‘Blockhead! The ball is there on the screen. Her opponent is there, too, that young man with a beautiful tan,’ Irma explained, as she grabbed another baton. She wanted to play tennis too, because she had been rather good at it when she was young, back when the rackets were wooden and tennis was played in July on private courts at seaside villas. Her cousin Kalervo had taught her before the war, and their shared pastime had continued passionately for years until they had abruptly been forced to quit by Kalervo’s vaguely unpleasant and very unathletic wife Ingalilli. ‘She was such a fine lady she couldn’t even hold the racket properly. But if you don’t care for tennis, Siiri, you can choose something else. There are all sorts of choices. They have badminton too; it’s a little less demanding than tennis. And you don’t have to be afraid that some gust of wind is going to carry off your ball. Or is it a ball, the thing you play badminton with . . . what is it?’

  ‘A shuttlecock, Irma.’

  ‘Yes, exactly, thank you, Anna-Liisa. But, Siiri, you could pick slalom and pretend you’re in Lapland or the Alps. Just imagine!’

  Irma whacked backhands and forehands like an old pro. Siiri still couldn’t see a ball anywhere and couldn’t see what Irma’s flailing and competitive whooping had to do with the images moving across the screen. Anna-Liisa looked on with interest and claimed the game was based on motion capture technology. ‘A little like burglar alarms or other home appliances.’ She boldly grabbed two batons and pretended to use a skipping rope. Nothing came of it, of course, because Anna-Liisa would have actually needed to skip, and she was incapable of doing so, so she just waved the batons about, confusing the screen. ‘Perhaps I should switch to something simpler. What else do they have here . . . boxing, zumba, meditative jogging, balance tests . . .’ She gazed at the screen in bafflement and selected the balance tests. It posed no problem for the seasoned seated-exercise enthusiast, and a flush of vigour coloured Anna-Liisa’s pale cheeks. ‘For goodness’ sake, Siiri, you try too!’

  Siiri stepped onto the mat in front of one of the machines, and her height and weight appeared for the whole world to see, after which the machine offered a plethora of options. Siiri pressed what she understood, but her hand didn’t always hit what she meant it to, and so at first she ended up in yoga class, which was relaxing and pleasant, not that she had any intention of lying on the floor, because she would have never got up, and then playing golf, which she didn’t know how to play and had no interest in learning. She accidentally swiped the screen with her elbow, and the machine selected something called fitnessbeat. At first she had to think of an alias for the figure on the screen (she chose ‘Siiri Kettunen’) and a country (‘Finland’), after which she apparently started walking around the world, because there were endless continents, mountain ranges and cities on offer.

  ‘Maybe I’ll go to the Great Wall of China,’ she said, by now rather excited. She started walking on the spot along the Wall in a stunning springtime landscape: ‘This is wonderful!’ After going quite some distance, she decided to learn a jiggling disco dance that was unbelievably comical and laughed so hard she wet herself. After getting the machine to stop, she cautiously looked around, as she had been so focused on her own world that she didn’t know what the others were doing. Perhaps they were all gaping at her, mortified on her behalf. But no, Anna-Liisa was throwing non-existent darts at the dartboard on the screen with a look of intense concentration, and Irma was whirling around on her mat, swaying her hips wildly.

  ‘I’m doing the hula hula! With a virtuosic hoop! Isn’t this more fun than you ever could have imagined?’

  ‘Can’t you two take anything seriously?’ Anna-Liisa asked, a tinge of disapproval in her voice as Siiri and Irma spun, swayed and laughed on either side of her dart game.

  ‘Oh, Anna-Liisa!’ Irma laughed, and then stopped rocking. ‘I’m so old I want to have a good time.’

  Anna-Liisa stopped throwing her invisible darts, looked at Irma, and gradually a merry, irresistibly beautiful smile spread across her face. ‘Actually, Irma, you’re very wise.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Irma said, then lowered her voice: ‘Döden, döden, döden.’ She knew Anna-Liisa found her habit of repeating funny phrases over and over the opposite of wise.

  ‘Why don’t we take a break? I have a little whisky in my bag, if anyone wants a nip.’

  They sat along the back wall, where Jerry Siilinpää or some other expert in cosiness had placed a rustic bench: an ugly old object one could rest on when the console-led exertions proved too fatiguing and one felt faint. The old woman playing tennis was still swatting in exactly the same way as when they had entered. Her face was alarmingly pale, and sweat was dripping down her cheeks.

  ‘Do you suppose that’s still healthy?’ Siiri asked Anna-Liisa. They all panted rather heavily, squeezed right up against each other on the hard bench, which was not only uncomfortable but cramped. Irma took a swig from her tiny whisky bottle, and when Anna-Liisa also wet her whistle, Siiri decided she would partake of the post-athletic medication too. But the marathon tennis player continued at her game. They watched the old woman with increasing concern but didn’t comment. In the end, she sensed their gazes on her back and called to them without turning round:

  ‘How do I get out of this? I can’t get this to stop!’

  She swatted and swatted, gasped, staggered and swatted, as if the virtual balls were bombs she needed to repel to stay alive. Siiri rose and went over to the woman, took her by the elbow and felt her trembling from the physical strain, and perhaps fear and anxiety. Her arm was cold and clammy, streams of sweat percolated down her deathly white cheeks and her heaving breathing wheezed and rattled alarmingly. Siiri led her off the red mat and turned the woman’s petrified face in her direction.

  ‘That’s how. That’s how you get out of it. It’s a machine you control, not the other way around,’ Siiri said, even though she was no longer so sure. As she wrenched the woman out of the machine’s sphere of influence, the game ended, and an aphorism appeared on the screen as a reward for the woman’s athletic exploits.

  ‘But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people: and walk ye in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well unto you! Jerem. 7:23.’

  The woman looked at Siiri without seeing her, went limp and collapsed, dragging Siiri down with her. Siiri felt the woman’s frail bird-bones beneath her and was afraid she would crush them despite her slight weight, which had just been broadcast on the screen: 56 kilograms. She didn’t hurt herself in the fall, because the tennis player gallantly offered herself as a human shield. But the crash was substantial, and she couldn’t tell if an eye-blink or an hour had passed before things started happening again. She was lying on her back next to the dainty woman, whom she couldn’t hear breathing. Her own breath was steady, but her heart was pounding wildly. Irma and Anna-Liisa were studying them from somewhere in the stratosphere, and Siiri couldn’t make out what they were saying. Irma looked horrified; Anna-Liisa inquisitive. Slowly Siiri understood that someone new, possibly one of the volunteer staff members, had entered the room and was crouching down next to the old woman sprawled on the floor – the other one, that is – anxiously probing her throat and wrist for a pulse. Evidently they unanimously agreed Siiri was alive, as they allowed her to lie there in peace.

  ‘Lord have mercy, Holy Spirit hear my prayer,’ the volunteer staff member babbled, without the slightest idea how to do anything sensible. Siiri didn’t remember ever having seen this woman before. She had grey hair and a face so furrowed that she had to be a retiree. Or a fellow Sunset Grove resident.

  ‘Is that garment she’s wearing under her dress a pair of smartoveralls?’ Anna-Liisa asked, articulating clearly. The volunteer looked at t
he old people, more addled than ever.

  ‘If it is a smart garment, her physical condition has been archived in the catacombs of the health centre. It’s possible the alarm was sounded automatically and we’ll be seeing some young medics appear before we know it.’

  ‘Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy. Holy Spirit, hear my prayer.’

  Irma opened the door and yoo-hooed out into the corridor in her high falsetto. ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo! Are there any young medics out there? We need help down here! In the Console Cemetery!’ And would you know it, two young men were wandering around the lobby of Sunset Grove with a trolley, and they were greatly relieved to have Irma’s crowing direct them to the right place. Siiri tried to pick herself up from the floor so she wouldn’t end up in the ambulance by accident, but doing so was difficult. Anna-Liisa tried to lend a hand, in vain. It was only when the volunteer interrupted her prayer and came over to contribute to the tugging that Siiri finally rose. Her head momentarily went dark, but she relied calmly on Anna-Liisa’s iron grip and her vision gradually returned and the thrum faded.

  ‘Would you like some whisky?’ Irma whispered, turning her back on the volunteer and the medics, who were securing the tennis player to the stretcher with cable ties. Siiri grabbed the flask and took a big swig. The alcohol flowed through her numb body. She could feel her mind growing clearer and the blood starting to circulate in her calcified veins.

  ‘Thank you, Irma. That did me good.’

  The medics raised the stretcher onto the trolley, looking ready to leave. Now the volunteer grew alert; apparently she felt her moment had come. It was her turn to participate in administering first aid.

  ‘You are the Lord’s little lamb,’ she said to the patient, who was white as a ghost. ‘And that is enough. It is enough for thee, who have suffered the agonies of thy paltry life. The shepherd will carry his lamb across the great stream to the green pastures of paradise. All sinners, even the worst blasphemers among us, make this journey on the shoulders of the good shepherd. It’s that simple.’

  The medics observed the woman’s blathering in disbelief, unsure whether she was a patient, a resident or a disturbed bystander.

  ‘We have to get going,’ the fellow at the back said, pushing the trolley so hard that his partner at the front stumbled into the corridor and onto the path laid out by the good shepherd.

  Chapter 15

  ‘Friends, may I present Oiva!’

  Tauno was standing in front of the card table, clearly a little nervous, fanning his hands and gazing brightly and happily at the rather short man standing at his side, who truly did have lush whiskers and the same sort of glasses as President Paasikivi. Siiri, Irma and Anna-Liisa studied Oiva curiously, feeling like favourite aunts, so proudly was Tauno introducing his friend to them. Siiri was the first to rise to greet Oiva, whose handshake was a little squishy, his eyes enlarged by his high-strength spectacles.

  ‘And I’m Mrs Anna-Liisa Petäjä, MA.’

  ‘My name is Irma Lännenleimu and I’m just a grandmother. I have six children and over fifteen grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, even though I’ve only met some of them, these great-grandchildren, as my darlings are too busy to come and visit me, which I understand perfectly well, as what’s there to see in a silly old fuddy-duddy like me, and besides, they have much more important things to be doing. They live all over the globe. My granddaughter, whom we’d all written off as an old maid years ago, just got married in Peru, imagine, as if she couldn’t have found a man any nearer. One of my darlings is gay, and he has registered both his dog and his relationship, and they are all adorable—’

  Irma’s nervous babbling stopped as abruptly as if she had hit a brick wall. An awkward silence ensued, as suddenly she and everyone else understood what was going on and why Oiva and Tauno hadn’t been allowed a shared unit at Sunset Grove. Gay couples were not permitted in retirement homes. Even cohabitation was forbidden; that was why the Ambassador and Anna-Liisa had rushed to get married, in order to be able to live together in the flat they owned.

  ‘Why don’t you . . . please, join us,’ Anna-Liisa said listlessly, after the silence had continued far too long and Irma was still buried in the bottom of her handbag, cheeks burning.

  ‘What was I looking for again . . . was it my pastilles or my spare nylons . . .’

  ‘Would you like to play cards?’ Siiri suggested, but Oiva and Tauno didn’t even know what canasta was. Siiri suggested Russian whist, bridge and Liverpool rummy, but the boys weren’t familiar with these diversions either.

  ‘All I know how to play is shit your shorts,’ Oiva finally said, with a hearty laugh.

  ‘But that’s perfect for a retirement home!’ Irma said, shuffling the pack. ‘How many packs? Just one? And five cards a player, I see, so that’s how we soil ourselves.’

  As she dealt, she began to reminisce how they had all laughed when Sunset Grove had shown the American film Baby Geniuses at movie night. ‘But that was when we still had an activity director.’

  They had a grand time, even though Anna-Liisa and Siiri felt that the game they were playing was childish and too simple. But it was a superb way of breaking the ice. By the time they had played several rounds and Irma had been condemned the potty-pants in every one, the conversation had imperceptibly grown comfortable and natural. Only Anna-Liisa had fallen silent as she slumped, pale-faced, in her chair. Siiri and Irma asked about Oiva’s retirement home, and it turned out to be very old-fashioned, as they had several caregivers for every ten residents and permanent kitchen staff, too.

  ‘Not a single robot?’ Siiri asked in surprise, and Oiva assured them that they didn’t even have a drinking fountain.

  At that moment, they heard a tenor voice cry out: ‘Emergency! Sodomites in the vicinity!’

  Swinging his walking stick, Aatos Jännes strode briskly past their table and stopped a short distance away. ‘Who let that psychologically disturbed hermaphrodite in here?’ he demanded, pointing his stick theatrically at Oiva, who had turned his back.

  Anna-Liisa’s wrath was magnificent. There was no sign of frailty as she blazed bright red and sprang up more nimbly than Siiri had seen in many moons.

  ‘Stop right there! Aatos Jännes, you are . . . a barbaric . . . barbaric bushman . . . a base . . . grand inquisitor!’

  ‘Verdi’s Don Carlos!’ Irma cried, but her attempt at lightening the mood came to an abrupt end, as Anna-Liisa was more than serious. She rapped her cane dully against the floor, and now that she had worked herself up shouted so stridently that her coiffure started to come undone. Her dark eyes flashed mercilessly, and she let fly a seemingly endless flow of insults directed at Aatos, announced he was Carl von Linné’s short-skulled prince regent, the forefather of eugenics, a useless flatfooted proto-Indo-European, philosophically obnoxious and less human than a robot. ‘What makes you think you have any say in who does or doesn’t visit here? Do you, perhaps, consider yourself some pseudo-schooled practitioner of advanced phrenology?’

  Aatos Jännes gazed at Anna-Liisa, his eyes glowing with admiration. Siiri knew the type, the sort of man who believed he could extinguish a woman’s outrage by making things erotic, as if a little feminine fury just added to a woman’s charms. But Anna-Liisa paid no heed; she continued her browbeating in a quivering voice until Aatos grabbed her by both hands.

  ‘My dear Anna-Liisa, calm down. You are adorable, and I will leave you to enjoy the company of these eunuchs. But you’d come to your senses if you only felt what I have standing in my trousers.’

  He kissed Anna-Liisa on the cheek so loudly that the smack echoed through the room, then looked at Oiva and Tauno and said: ‘This loveliness is wasted on you Uranians!’ Then he spun on his heels and made his escape via the elevator.

  ‘Doors. Closing. Going. Up.’

  They were extremely shocked. They had never experienced anything of the sort. Anna-Liisa was so upset that her hands were shaking and tears were streaming from her eyes. She franticall
y tried to rub her cheek, as if it were permanently tainted by Aatos’s brazen smooch. Irma’s lace handkerchief came to the rescue yet again. Siiri couldn’t really hear anything, not even the fifth-octave A, the thrumming and rushing in her head were so loud. Only Oiva and Tauno remained tranquil. They thanked Anna-Liisa profusely for her idiosyncratic harangue and said Aatos’s behaviour was downright polite compared to the things they’d been forced to experience during their long lives.

  ‘When you take into account, ladies, that at the age of fifty we were still considered criminals and it wasn’t until we were retirees that we were no longer classified as mentally ill. Attitudes have been slower to change than statutes.’

  ‘And then AIDS came, too,’ Oiva said.

  ‘AIDS? Isn’t that some memory test?’ Irma said.

  ‘The human immunodeficiency virus causes a disease known as AIDS,’ Anna-Liisa said wearily. ‘It’s an abbreviation for . . . something.’

  ‘Yes! There are all sorts of viruses going around Sunset Grove, too. You catch them from these gadgets you’re supposed to pet and paw at.’

  ‘Petting and pawing can indeed prove fatal,’ Oiva chuckled.

  Chapter 16

  Siiri could see the AGV, a perpetual presence in Sunset Grove’s corridors, approach from a distance. It was a trolley originally designed for industrial use, a large, gleaming unmanned cabinet that independently traversed the hallways, distributing medicine to residents. Siiri didn’t take any pills, not a single one, so she willingly made room for the dosing device as it ploughed down the deserted corridor towards its next patient. The AGV knew to stop at the correct door, which would open with a mutual exchange of flashing lights, and then enter to administer the appropriate medication. A similar trolley, slightly larger, wandered around gathering laundry and distributing clean clothes for those residents prepared to pay for this service. Irma called the trolleys ICan’tSees and always gave them an even wider berth than Siiri.