Siiri hugged Margit, who trembled as she sobbed. Irma urgently searched for her lace handkerchief, and no one knew what to say. Was this what had been on Margit’s mind when she brought up euthanasia? That Eino would be better off dead? Perhaps she hadn’t been talking about herself or the rest of them; they still had their health and their marbles and had the gall to complain about a retrofit while others had no hope. Siiri was ashamed of her stupidity. And yet it still chagrined her that Margit had pilfered part of her deck. Would she ever get the missing cards back? Once again, Irma read her mind.
‘We can play cheat with an incomplete deck; you don’t need all the cards for that,’ she whispered as she gathered up the remaining cards. ‘All right, my chicks, where were you planning on eating lunch today? What if we all went to the Sunset Grove canteen in honour of the fact that it happens to be open? Or have you all ordered meal delivery? My darlings tell me that it’s scandalously expensive, but since they don’t have time to bring me food, they paid for it for me. Treated me, the loves. Which was very sweet of them; they didn’t need to do that, seeing as how I have quite a nice pension. My widow’s pension and the various funds Veikko set up for me with an eye to old age, the sweetheart. He was such a good man, of high ethical calibre. Oh dear, how I miss my Veikko! My sweetheart lying there in his grave, I mean in that miserable urn behind that marble slab. That’s where I’ll end up, too. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t mourn selfishly like this; Margit’s situation is much sadder, since her husband is still alive. But we could go to the French restaurant on Laajalahdentie for lunch one day, couldn’t we? We have to make sure we stay stimulated; we don’t want to rot away here like boneless chicken breasts from the Low Price Market. They’re vacuum-packed, aren’t they? Have you ever noticed the unpleasant smell that wafts out when you open the package? I’d already thrown several in the bin because I thought the meat was spoiled, until finally I had the nerve to take the package back to the store. I complained that they were selling spoiled meat, and that’s when I learned that it was the packaging gas, nitrogen or something, they say it’s harmless but keeps meat from rotting. Is that what they’re pumping in here too? Jerry explained that the dust won’t get everywhere, because they’re going to use a vacuum or something to underpressurize the entire building. Did you catch what he meant by “underpressurizing”?’
‘Unpressurization is a technique that creates an air-pressure difference between a sealed space and the surrounding environment,’ Anna-Liisa said, with a promising correction of posture. ‘An air pump directs the air out of the room under construction through a hose, or so-called sock, creating a difference in air pressure; this exiting air travels through a filter that collects impurities. This purified air is then blown outside the sealed space, in other words here, where we spend our days. Of course this doesn’t imply that we won’t suffer from dust at all. I’m not nearly as concerned about televisions and our other plastic-wrapped belongings as I am about risks to our health. Cement dust is exceptionally fine and exposure to it entails a substantial risk of contracting lifelong asthma.’
Irma perked up as if she were already writing a complaint to the Loving Care Foundation, which ran Sunset Grove: ‘Yes! Asbestos is life-threatening, and at the beginning of the retrofit Siilinpää said something about asbestos. What did he say?’
‘I just remember him talking about action items and drawing arrows,’ Siiri said.
Margit had stopped bawling and had pulled herself together. ‘Maybe I should bring Eino here. I wonder if life-threatening dust would be the simplest solution to everything?’
‘Lifelong asthma, is that what you said? I doubt anyone considers that much of a risk when the victims are over ninety. But can you die of asthma? Is that the opportunity Director Sundström and Jerry Siilinpää were lecturing about? Döden, döden, döden.’
‘Not everyone here is as old as we are,’ Siiri said. ‘That tattooed lady doctor lowers the average age quite a bit.’
‘Why does she have that ugly needlepoint all over her body? She’s a beautiful woman, but she has an anchor on her neck and snakes on her shoulder; it gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
‘Perhaps she likes anchors and snakes.’
‘Could we please finish discussing the dust?’ Anna-Liisa smacked both hands against the baize tabletop and looked at her friends, her dark eyes flashing. ‘Has anyone else had a constant cough and intermittent trouble breathing? Sometimes I cough so much at night that I can’t get any sleep. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s because of this retrofit, and that’s why I made myself an appointment at the health centre tomorrow. If they find asthma, I am going to hold Sunset Grove responsible.’
‘And you might die!’ Irma cried, coughing before she could laugh. Suddenly all their throats prickled. First Irma started coughing, then Margit, then Anna-Liisa, and eventually Siiri. They coughed so hard that their throats ached. This was, of course, rather amusing, and a moment later their choral coughing had devolved into giddy guffaws that perplexed the men marching past with the moving boxes.
‘These old bats aren’t playing with a full deck,’ the first one said.
‘So much the better for us,’ his companion muttered, picking up the pace.
Chapter 5
The city’s decision to change the number 3T tram into the number 2 and the number 3B into the number 3, or whichever way it went, was utterly absurd. It wasn’t going to make things the least bit easier for anyone. The routes remained as confusing as ever, and the drivers still had to change the numbers displayed on their trams at the Eläintarha and Kaivopuisto stops. Besides, like all long-term Helsinki residents, Siiri remembered that the number 2 once ran from Pasila to Kruununhaka and before that from Kallio to Töölö, but never, ever to Kaivopuisto. But that’s the way life was: perpetual change. Siiri had read in the paper that companies reorganized every year, too, and there had been a lot of talk on the radio about constant change and lifelong learning. Evidently, not being able to get used to anything or count on anything kept you on your toes. And it was true, too. Siiri might never have boarded the number 2 tram on Aleksanterinkatu if she had thought it was an old number 3T. But the numeral 2 had blazed so dazzlingly on the front of the tram that Siiri couldn’t resist hopping on.
It was empty and, thus, a little dull, as was often the case in trams during early summer, when the schoolchildren had started their vacations and the tourists hadn’t arrived in Helsinki yet, to scratch their heads as they asked where to find the architect Alvar Aalto’s office and the monument to the composer Jean Sibelius. Siiri felt sorry for travellers who’d been blown off course to her little town. There was nothing for them to do but gawk at an ugly church carved into a rock that didn’t contain a single painting or work of art, stand at the Sibelius Monument in the rain, and hunt for the world-renowned architect’s combined home and office. This last attraction was in bad shape and looked like a normal, poorly maintained home, actually rather small, because nowadays people lived in enormous glass fortresses. They wandered through them in solitude with all the lights burning, like terrarium lizards, not giving a hoot who saw what they were watching on TV in their sweatpants. There were such buildings in Siiri’s neighbourhood, too, and Margit knew that the shores of Espoo, the wealthy suburb right across the bay, were chock-full of them. If you went walking on the ice in the wintertime, you got a living exhibition of Espoo family life. Compared to them, Alvar Aalto’s office was modest indeed.
It was no wonder that most tourists didn’t even bother to spend the night in Helsinki. Siiri was happy to while away a moment or two chatting with Japanese and American visitors after pointing them in the direction of Alvar Aalto’s studio. One Philadelphia couple in sun visors and trainers had explained to her that nowadays they spent their lives crisscrossing the world. It was their second time in Helsinki, and also the second time they’d seen the rock church with the funny round copper roof. They called it ‘the wok’. Their cruise ship was like a retirement home; it had gyms
, swimming pools, spas, cleaning staff, hair salons, laundries, restaurants and medical services. They even played bingo and showed movies. Apparently, there weren’t enough assisted living centres for the elderly in the United States of America, and the few that existed were so expensive that the couple had solved their problem – old age, that is – by moving onto a cruise ship. Which couldn’t have been sensible or affordable. But then again, neither was life at Sunset Grove.
She decided not to change to a number 4 at the new opera house for the ride to Sunset Grove; instead, she continued on to Nordenskiöldinkatu and waited to see if some interesting outpatient would climb on at the Aurora Hospital stop. Occasionally, a more or less disturbing lunatic would board at the psychiatric hospital, but as a rule Siiri felt safe in the tram. There were always other passengers, and the driver could use the radio to call for help. Siiri had witnessed the efficiency of this system: one time a man had started arguing volubly with himself and been picked up by the police at the stop agreed on with the driver. It hadn’t taken more than a few words on the radio. Voila, it worked like a charm, as Irma would have said.
At the Aurora Hospital stop, a young woman with green hair boarded and sat next to Siiri. The girl had covered herself in tattoos of flames and roses and was wearing an undershirt with an unsewn hem. Threads from the fraying fabric fell onto the girl’s black trousers; an orange bra blazed beneath her undershirt.
‘Nah, two,’ the girl said, apparently into her phone, although Siiri could see no sign of the gadget, only a pair of earphones in her ears. But here she was, talking to herself as if she were talking to someone. This wasn’t a sign of insanity these days; a lot of people did it. ‘Totally fucking lame. One was like a one-bedroom, the location was OK, but the fucking kitchen was so fucking shitty. Brown fucking cabinets and just two fucking burners and the tiles were, I dunno, like fucking turquoise or something. I mean, please, fucking turquoise, like from the fucking nineties or something. I was like, this can’t be fucking real. Fucking old-lady tiles. The owner says they’re not going to do any fucking remodelling, so we’d have to fucking pay for it. Dad’s never going to fucking go for it.’
Siiri pricked up her ears. Apparently, the girl was looking for an apartment and was having trouble finding one she liked. Did it really come down to the splashback tiles? Perhaps the rent was also too high but the girl didn’t want to let on to her friend, which was why she talked about the ugly colours in the kitchen. The second apartment was too small, only thirty-eight square metres and too far, somewhere in Munkkivuori, not much more than a mile from downtown. Perhaps the girl didn’t know Helsinki that well? Perhaps she was a student and just moving to the city. Siiri’s mother had always had girl students renting out her extra rooms. It had been a mutually beneficial relationship: the girls gave her mother a hand and kept her company in the evenings and her mother didn’t have to move into an old folks’ home to suffer from loneliness.
‘Isn’t subletting done any more?’ Siiri asked the green-haired girl, after she ended her call. The girl didn’t know what subletting meant. She was from Nurmijärvi and had got into the practical nursing programme and there was no way she was going to travel twenty miles on a bus to college.
‘I’d have to wake up at, like, fucking six in the morning every fucking day,’ the girl said, smiling prettily. She had a metal hoop in her cheek and three bits of tin in each eyebrow. Siiri reflected that if she were still alive in a couple of years when the girl finished her schooling, the girl might well end up being her nurse at Sunset Grove.
‘Umm, I . . . was planning on fucking specializing in, like . . . kids . . .’
‘We have to wake up at six every morning,’ Siiri said.
The girl looked horrified. ‘What the fuck for?’
‘We’re having a plumbing retrofit. The workers fire up their drills at six in the morning, and once they do, you’re wide awake, no matter what sort of sleeping aids you take.’
‘Why don’t you guys fucking move the fuck out of there?’ the girl asked sensibly, eyes wide. She had drawn thick black lines that framed her eyes rather adorably, actually; she looked like a cute cartoon character. Siiri explained that moving wasn’t easy. They would have to find a temporary place to stay and those were horribly expensive. And at her age, just the thought of moving felt exhausting – even more exhausting than a plumbing retrofit.
‘But how can students such as yourself afford to live in Helsinki these days? Rents are so high. Don’t you have dormitories?’
‘The fucking lines for them are fucking insane. I want to fucking move to Helsinki now, not in like fucking October or something,’ the girl explained. ‘Some friends and I might move into a fucking kimppakämppä together.’
‘I’m sorry? What’s that?’
‘It’s like a fucking commune. We rent some big fucking random apartment downtown and live there. It’s a lot fucking cheaper than everyone living in some fucking studio apartment out in Munkkivuori.’
‘That sounds like a good solution. And I’m sure it’s more fun living with your friends than alone . . . out in the suburbs somewhere.’
‘Exactly. Fuck.’ The girl flashed a pretty smile, stood and bounded from the tram without saying goodbye. She vanished into the hubbub of the parking lot at the Linnanmäki theme park, where families from the countryside hunted for parking meters while trying to keep their herds of children under control. Siiri gazed across the street at the Alppila parish centre. The streamlined white functionalist building was right where it was supposed to be, more beautiful and serene than ever after a recent paint job. Unfortunately, someone had immediately added a troll face to the wall; not half-bad actually, with masterful use of colours and meticulous shading. Siiri knew that such trolls weren’t vandalism, they were graffiti.
The tram stood at the amusement park stop for a long time, because swarms of passengers were boarding, including parents trying to squeeze strollers into the spots intended for them. A group of Somali women with three strollers filled the middle platform in the first tram car. A flushed, overweight Finnish father refused to wait for the next tram. He forced his stroller into the aisle, despite the driver’s announcements that this was not allowed: the aisles had to be kept clear. The flushed man started shouting vulgarities about immigrants and infidels. Siiri was mortified, and she was afraid the man’s child would be scared by his father’s sudden tantrum, but the boy was so calm and content, coolly shovelling candyfloss into his face with sticky hands, that this couldn’t be the first time his father had caused a public scene. The Somali families apologetically climbed off the tram with their strollers while the man beamed victoriously. His too-tight T-shirt was emblazoned with a lion brandishing a sword, a variation of Finland’s coat of arms. Siiri looked at the women in headscarves and at their children, whom there was no room for in a half-empty tram on a beautiful summer day. She felt like hurrying off, because a pall had fallen over the tram, but the driver sped off before he even closed the doors.
A lot of other passengers disembarked at the Brahenkenttä stop with Siiri. She walked to the number 8 stop on Helsinginkatu and changed to a number 4 at the new opera house. She felt badly about what she had witnessed and above all that she couldn’t stop thinking about this incident she had played no part in. Should she have intervened? How come no one stood up for the Somali women? Suddenly, Siiri realized she was partially responsible for the horrible way the refugees had been treated. Everyone who allowed such foolishness was complicit in it. How had she grown so passive and lazy? Could it be because of the plumbing retrofit? It wasn’t easy living in an apartment where there was a hole in one’s bathroom wall big enough for a full-grown man to walk through from her neighbour’s apartment, even when that neighbour was her dear friend Irma.
And then there was Anna-Liisa with her weak nerves. The remodel seemed to be hitting her the hardest, and on top of everything the Ambassador had the nerve to abandon her to the chaos while he went off to be pampered by other
women. Siiri thought about the sweet, green-haired girl with the filthy mouth who was looking for a commune downtown. Could that be the solution to their problems, too? Perhaps she should put an end to her aimless, exhausted drifting along tram routes, stop being ineffectual, and take action. That was it: she was going to find a home in one of Helsinki’s lovely old buildings for all of them to share!
Chapter 6
Siiri and Irma had brought Anna-Liisa to the French restaurant on Laajalahdentie to take her mind off things. The place always had a lot of customers speaking French or Swedish, and the cuisine was unfussy and delicious. On warm days like today, the big windows were thrown open and people were eating al fresco. For Siiri and Irma and Anna-Liisa, it was as atmospheric as being in a real metropolis, such as the foreign cities they’d got a taste of on television back before their televisions at Sunset Grove had been shrink-wrapped in plastic.
‘I do miss my Hercule Poirot,’ Siiri sighed.
‘You can always read the stories instead,’ Anna-Liisa pointed out.
‘Oh, it’s not at all the same. They’re rather childish books, but when they show those lovely cars and clothes and houses from the thirties – oh, I just love it. Anyway, I haven’t read in weeks, not since I packed my books into boxes like Weasel Ears told us to. Those Latvian fellows stacked the boxes into a tower in the middle of my bedroom. There’s no way I could dig a book out, no matter how badly I felt like reading. I don’t dare touch the teetering thing, I’m terrified it will topple over.’
The chaos of the renovation had prevented Anna-Liisa from reading her favourite books, too. A pervasive, anxious emptiness washed over her. She pressed her clenched fists to her chest so that Siiri and Irma would understand just how acute the sensation was.
Escape from Sunset Grove Page 5