The End of Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  Mika looked at Siiri with his sky-blue eyes. ‘Huh?’

  Suddenly Mika was sockless. The lad was going around barefoot in boots, in April, even though Helsinki was suffering from a late cold snap that struck so unexpectedly that the wagtails that had arrived in February nearly froze on the lawns. Mika wore a black band around his right ankle, the same kind some old people wore around their wrist.

  ‘So that’s what tells the prison where you are?’

  ‘Yup. I can’t go anywhere without the police knowing about it.’

  ‘Me neither. Or in my case it’s not the police following me, it’s some religious cult. I have instant coffee and two-day-old pound cake in the cupboard. Would you like some?’

  Mika grimaced and shook his head. It was a pity, as Siiri would have gladly had a drop of coffee herself, but didn’t dare serve herself in the presence of a guest who had declined so firmly.

  ‘Maybe you’d care for a glass of red wine? This box has been standing on my counter for over a month. But then again, doesn’t wine keep for decades and just get the better for it?’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t drink.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sorry. You’re a prisoner. How will they know if I offer you a glass of wine or not?’

  ‘They have breathalysers. But I’m not interested. I don’t drink at all.’

  ‘Never again? That’s sad.’

  Mika collapsed into Siiri’s armchair and started talking about rats. He had visited Sunset Grove regularly, supposedly killing rats and making sure none were seen skulking about the resident floors. But every time he’d seen a rodent, he’d lured it into a trap and ferried it to the basement. Now there were so many rats Mika felt they had to take action; otherwise they’d run into trouble.

  ‘So what is it we’re doing?’

  The big bald man looked at Siiri with such confidence he must have really believed the ninety-seven-year-old had a sensible plan for the drove of rodents. Siiri didn’t know what to say. Suddenly she remembered Albert Camus’ The Plague. Mika had never read it, so she had to explain that the story, set in the small town of Oran, was a metaphor for German-occupied France during the Second World War.

  ‘OK,’ Mika said, looking impatient.

  The plague spreading through the town was an allegory for any madness that drove the masses into ecstatic deliriums. Communism, Naziism, technological frenzy, extremist religion. The town was quarantined, the bacterial plague spread to people, and in the end people were dying at such a rate that funerals were no longer held; the bodies were tossed into mass graves and eventually burned due to lack of time and space.

  ‘The less privileged, like prisoners and old people, died first, and the others fended for themselves alone. Only in the face of widespread catastrophe do people really start helping each other.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘In other words, it takes extreme situations for people to understand that the common good is also the individual good.’

  ‘OK. Were you planning on releasing the rats onto the streets to spread the plague?’

  Siiri laughed. ‘Of course not. The rats just made me think of it. You should read it sometime. Of course The Plague also describes Sunset Grove, but I would need Anna-Liisa to explain how everything is interrelated. And Anna-Liisa’s not here any more. She was saved. Crawled into bed and read to death.’

  Mika started squirming uncomfortably. It was unfair to expect the young motorcycle enthusiast to identify with the ambience of the Second World War or a sequestered retirement home, let alone to grasp the inevitable emptiness that ensued when a loved one died. Even at the age of ninety-seven.

  ‘Maybe we can talk some more about Camus after you’ve read The Plague. Or The Stranger: in it, a young man kills another man by accident and is expelled from society, to prison.’

  Mika scratched his bald head and grunted.

  ‘So this is turning into a book club. What are we going to do with those rats?’

  But Siiri didn’t have a detailed plan yet. In some way, Mika’s rats had to be persuaded to gnaw the cable in two; Ritva had said that would make the system crash. But the cables ran along the ceiling in a plastic tube, and Mika had spoken about switches. They had to lure the rats into the Holy of Holies.

  ‘I think we can manage that.’

  ‘Yes! That’s what I was thinking, although I’m not sure how to do it.’ Mika helped Siiri formulate a plan. He took a piece of paper and drew a tall box in the cupboard at the end of the corridor and various cables running in and out of the building from this Holy of Holies. They divided up responsibilities and ensured Mika wasn’t at any risk of getting caught. He couldn’t come to Sunset Grove at night, as his anklet would give him away. But Mika believed that no one else ever went in the basement, which meant he could do his part during official visiting hours.

  ‘What do you think, what do rats like to eat?’ Siiri asked Mika in concern.

  ‘No clue. Look it up online.’

  ‘Where else, of course,’ Siiri said and silently blessed Irma, as her green flaptop would finally be of use to them. She started talking to Mika about computers and how they rarely obeyed old people, who didn’t care about swiping screens or competing in trivia quizzes led by little trolls or playing bingo with a screen. Machines didn’t make their lives the least bit easier, just the opposite. The older one got, the more difficult it was to live without other people.

  ‘You see, in the end, another person’s touch is the most important thing in life,’ she said, taking Mika’s hand. ‘And its importance simply increases with age. When you’re young or middle-aged, you can still be so self-sufficient you supposedly don’t need anyone else around, but when there’s no one there any more, you remember what’s important.’ She patted Mika’s hairy paw, and he didn’t resist. ‘There’s not a machine in the world that can replace this. When I die, come and stroke my hand like this.’ Then she let go and returned to machines. She wanted Mika to grasp why it was so difficult living surrounded by technology. It wasn’t just that they didn’t know how to use the devices or weren’t used to them. Machines were simple; a two-year-old could master them. It wasn’t a question of intelligence, but of will. ‘We’re not interested in managing everyday life with a robot.’

  Mika seemed reflective and cast a serious look at Siiri’s bookshelf.

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone, even by accident,’ he finally said, looking Siiri right in the eye. The poor young fellow looked sad.

  ‘I never thought you did,’ Siiri said. ‘But I’ve been getting the impression that you’ve lost your way a little. You shouldn’t be doing community service in my room; you should be doing something fun and modern out there in the world with everyone else.’

  Mika was quiet for a moment. Then he explained that a couple of years in prison had given him some space from the wrong crowd, as he put it. And he didn’t have much anklet time left either. He said he was an optimist and had learned a lot from Siiri.

  ‘From me? What on earth can you have learned from an ancient old relic like me, a social outcast forgotten among machines?’

  ‘Optimism,’ Mika said. ‘And all sorts of things. That just like in that book The Plague, only people can help other people. Do you have it?’

  Siiri popped up and went over to the bookshelf. She had organized her books by language, and because there wasn’t much French literature and it was sandwiched between the Germans and the Italians, it didn’t take her long to find Camus.

  ‘Here. It’s a gift.’

  Mika looked pleased and asked Siiri to sign it. It took Siiri a minute to locate her reading glasses, and then a ballpoint pen that worked. She opened the book to its title page and realized it had been a birthday present from her husband in 1950. Oh, how many lovely emotions surged through her from the dusty pages of that volume! So it had been over sixty years since she had first read The Plague. She might be misremembering everything and was afraid the book would be a disappointment to Mika. The world was nothing like
what it had been after the war. She wrote in a frail hand beneath her husband’s firm one: ‘To my good friend Mika, not long before we freed the rats. Siiri Kettunen, optimist.’

  Chapter 36

  Yet again, Irma’s green flaptop proved of absolutely no use. No matter how they swiped and swatted, they couldn’t find any simple information on the dietary preferences of rats. They were informed that rats were omnivorous, which they remembered from their own lives and the compost piles that had attracted hordes of the creatures. But the thought of strewing their kitchen compost around the basement corridor didn’t feel quite right.

  ‘On the other hand, it might look like an accident then,’ Irma said.

  The ingeniousness of their plan was that no one but the rats could be called to account for the damage. But they were running out of time. Mika would be incredibly upset if they didn’t stick to the timetable and he was forced to keep the rodents corralled in the basement much longer. Irma read online that female rats were nearly always on heat and gave birth to a new brood every four weeks. They tried to calculate the speed at which Mika’s rats were reproducing in the basement cupboard. It was a complicated equation, and they arrived at a different result every time, always such a horrendously high figure that they decided to forget the whole Internet and marched down Munkkiniemi Allée to the pet store that now occupied the former hair accessories shop.

  There was a strange smell in the shop. It carried a whiff of the flavour of the cat snacks, but also the aromas of plastic toys and cat sand. The salesgirl was a very young woman, still a schoolgirl. She had completely shaved the right side of her head and dyed the scraggly curtain falling to the left violet. Her face was full of spikes and her arms plastered with tattooed symbols of death. Her lace shirt was cropped just short of her breasts, heavy charms circled her navel, and she was wearing a choke collar around her neck. The girl looked at them, batting her eyes when they said that they’d come to buy delicacies for rats.

  ‘There are about twenty rats, give or take,’ Siiri said.

  ‘Twenty pet rats?’

  Siiri nodded. ‘Exactly. Unless they’ve reproduced again.’

  ‘They’re always on heat,’ Irma interjected.

  The salesperson looked horrified and wanted to know what they’d been feeding them, until Irma had a shuffle and cut moment and lied that the rats were recent acquisitions.

  ‘We were offered this opportunity, so we came here to learn what we should be feeding them.’

  The girl instantly applied herself. In her view, twenty rats was too great a burden for anyone, and Siiri and Irma should only take a few to begin with; one would be too lonely, because rats were herd animals. In the end she suggested two females. Females were lively and affectionate, unlike males, which just lay there. ‘So they’re not as much fun.’

  ‘Interesting. Rats are like humans in so many ways,’ Siiri said with a smile. ‘What sort of rat food do you have?’

  They followed the salesgirl to a rack that had been dedicated solely to rat-care. It contained bathing supplies, sunglasses, toothbrushes, toys and other time-killers, sleeping nooks, combing supplies and hammocks. As well as, of course, various treats that looked like snacks. Irma picked up a round blue object and sniffed it curiously. It was a bathtub. Then she looked at the swings and fingered the tiny scrap of fabric.

  ‘I never had a hammock,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘Of course, you’re a female,’ Siiri remarked, and the half-bald pet salesperson tittered.

  ‘What on earth is this?’ Irma asked, pointing at an object resembling a pencil case in Burberry-print fabric.

  The object was a lounger. The girl’s enthusiasm grew as she showed them trapezes, slightly larger bundles and three different inventions to facilitate the lounging of rats in a range of colours, flipped them over under a lamp to demonstrate their ingenious designs, and looked at them, eyes gleaming.

  ‘Adorbs, huh? Have you guys owned rodents before?’

  ‘No. Not even a cat or a dog,’ Irma said curtly.

  ‘But we love animals; it’s never too late to learn something new,’ Siiri continued, as the salesperson mustn’t get the impression they didn’t care for pets.

  The girl nodded solemnly and politely reminded them that a snake or a stick insect might be easier to care for than a horde of rats. She tiptoed forward a few steps and showed them a glass box with a fat green snake slithering in it. When Irma realized it wasn’t a garden hose, she shrieked so loudly that the salesperson jumped and returned to the dietary alternatives for rats. And there were plenty. The rack was bursting with any manner of nuggets rather like the cat snacks they’d fed to Sirkka the Saver of Souls.

  ‘Can we taste them?’ Irma asked, and the girl tittered again.

  ‘Gross! I’ve never heard of anyone eating these. Except rats.’

  Protein was vital for rats, which was why she added dog food to the pellets she fed her own rats, named Principal and Vice Principal. Apparently rats put on weight and got bored easily, so one had to monitor exercise and food intake closely. Sunflower seeds and nuts should be avoided. Rats loved puzzles, even challenging ones, and agility competitions were very popular. Just the previous week, Principal and Vice Principal had performed very well, probably partially because they were fed nothing but low-fat organic seed mixes. Irma started to get bored by the girl’s nutritional diatribe, and she moved on to examine what else the shop had to offer. She oohed and aahed over the dog neckties and fur dryers and then started lifting random unidentifiable lumps out of a bucket.

  ‘Steers’ knees and goose feet!’ she read from the price tags, then began laughing uncontrollably. ‘Did you hear that, Siiri?’ The next bucket contained big black slabs she claimed were dried cow stomachs. ‘This is madness! Oh dear, oh dear, now I’ve wet myself!’

  Siiri stayed with the salesperson and tried to steer her attention back to their query proper.

  ‘If we just want to pamper our little lovelies a little, what would we give them? What sort of treat would inspire a sinful gluttony in them?’

  The girl looked at Siiri doubtfully and toyed with the spikes in her left cheek with one hand, the charms dangling from her navel with the other one. She tried to keep one eye on Irma’s voice, and when she turned her head sharply, the choke collar made a funny clinking sound. No doubt she had good cause to be concerned about her restlessly probing customer.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake! So you’re supposed to slip this fake fur over a purebred cat when it’s freezing outside? And here I was thinking it was a muff!’

  Siiri ordered Irma back to the rat department so the salesperson could concentrate again. She warned her customers about teaching rats bad habits. It was important to avoid fat, salt and sugar. In addition, they needed to be aware that allergies, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol levels were common among rodents. She couldn’t in good conscience recommend they feed rodents treats.

  ‘Oh my. And here I was thinking rats and cockroaches can survive anything. But a modern lifestyle is life-threatening to them, too,’ Irma said. She was losing her temper with this child who wouldn’t let them baby their rats.

  But the salesperson was no slouch; she had an eye for divining a demanding client’s temperament and could bend to their wishes when push came to shove. Mumbling slightly, she finally revealed that rats liked baby food.

  ‘The kind that comes in those little jars. And then the best thing ever are mealworms.’

  ‘Mealworms? I’ve tasted them, too. Wonderful! Where’s your worm department?’ Irma looked around impatiently and bumped into a stack of pizza boxes. ‘Look, Siiri, we could have pizza tonight, too!’

  ‘Those are dog pizzas,’ the girl said, and then told them that mealworm larvae were sold in little bags and you could buy them flavoured or plain. She would just give the rat a few at a time, as a reward for performing some task, but Irma didn’t listen and grabbed all of the bags from the rack.

  ‘We’ll take these. And
we’ll get baby food from the upper Low Price Market.’

  The girl was still concerned about their capacity to take care of rats. The charms in her forehead spikes tinkling, she spoke about bedding and climbing equipment and warned them about sensitivity to dust and dryness. The rats’ sensitivity. They should get a humidifier, too. Alder chips, linen and hemp were the best, because they didn’t give off dust that irritated the rats.

  ‘Fiddlesticks! Rats like dirt and filth, and we don’t have humidifiers or climbing gyms ourselves at Sunset Grove. The worms will do.’

  The girl flashed the bags of mealworms at the machine in dejection, and it sucked the sum out of Siiri’s fob. Irma dumped the worms in her bag, and they both thanked the salesperson for her expert advice. She smiled cheerfully again and reminded them that if they had difficulties clipping the rats’ claws, a hygiene therapist visited the pet store on Wednesdays.

  ‘I’ll bring my own toes, she can clip them too,’ Irma called.

  ‘Nice serve!’ the girl tittered.

  Chapter 37

  Today was the day when the pilot project in monitored caregiving would come crashing down for good. Siiri and Irma had charged Ritva, Margit, Aatos and the Finnish-Somali woman with the task of spreading the word among the residents. They were to go round to their assigned zones explaining what was about to happen so no one died of fright.

  At precisely the agreed moment, Siiri and Irma entered the basement. As the bolder of the two, Irma led the way again, and Siiri followed carrying the bottles of baby food and bags of mealworms. They no longer enhanced the suspense with a torch and a knife; they simply switched on the lights at the top of the stairs. Without saying a word, they walked down the stairs, opened another door, and turned on the lights in the long corridor that led to the Holy of Holies. They passed the abandoned robots, walkers and electric wheelchairs and arrived at a blue steel door that read: ‘Building Control Centre’.

  ‘That’s a nice Words in a Word word,’ Irma noted, pushing the door open. But it didn’t budge.