Escape from Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘I borrowed Sillanpää’s The Misery of the Meek from the library last week, but even that did nothing to lift my spirits. My personal library has been packed up in Onni’s shipping containers and hauled . . . hauled off somewhere. It was a horrendous undertaking. My arms and back ached for days; I had to take pain medication morning and night. I even went to the doctor, but it was one of those outsourced ones, dark-skinned, and he didn’t understand a word of what I was saying when I explained to him the health risks resulting from the retrofit, even though I tried to use as many Latin terms as possible. And then he gave me pain medication, the kind you can buy without a prescription. It was an atrocious misuse of a doctor’s professional skills. I was downright ashamed for him.’

  ‘Admit it, Siiri, you love the way that actor with the dark eyes smiles. David Suchet. Did you notice, I remembered his name! Did you know he clenches a coin between his buttocks to create the waddle Christie described in her books?’

  ‘I see we weren’t able to enjoy many spoonfuls of soup before Irma steered the conversation to the glutei maximi,’ Anna-Liisa sighed, lowering her spoon. She looked pale and frail; sweat was streaming down her temples, and she was breathing heavily. Irma and Siiri couldn’t understand how the Ambassador could be recuperating at the villa surrounded by a bevy of women without giving a thought to his wife, who was wilting from retrofit-induced asthma or heatstroke like a delicate stalk of grass. As her last name Petäjä indicated, Anna-Liisa had always been as stout and strong as an old pine tree.

  ‘When is the Ambass— when is Onni coming back to town?’ Siiri asked, trying to sound casual.

  Anna-Liisa didn’t reply. Instead, she shook her head slowly and at length, coughed with some effort, and cast a disgusted eye over the French onion soup, which Siiri thought was delicious: topped with a perfect crust and heaps of melted cheese, which stretched and stretched and made eating a little messy. Of course Irma had to announce that onions gave her gas.

  ‘It doesn’t bother me, though; I’ve always got some flatulence brewing in my stomach. I’ve learned that if I press from the left here under my pancreas, it lets out a big, lovely fart. And if I lift the opposite cheek a little, it doesn’t make much noise, if any, and no one is the wiser.’

  ‘Someone made off with all my jewellery. Except this wedding ring Onni gave me,’ Anna-Liisa said, gazing at the diamond ring sparkling on her left hand.

  ‘I knew those men without neon vests were crooks!’ Irma cried, as if overjoyed by the news of Anna-Liisa’s latest troubles.

  Siiri and Irma had known that Anna-Liisa owned a considerable amount of valuable jewellery. She had kept it in a beautiful mahogany box on her bookshelf: gold necklaces, strings of pearls, a cameo brooch, a diamond pendant, several big bracelets, a silver medallion, and a few medals from the war. After the books and the other belongings had been carted off to the fields of Vantaa, the jewellery box had apparently stood enticingly on the shelf alone, and Anna-Liisa was vexed that she hadn’t hidden it in time. It had crossed her mind more than once to conceal her miniature treasure chest from greedy eyes. And, this morning, it was gone.

  ‘As you know, I don’t normally wear jewellery. And since we never have any formal events other than funerals, I didn’t miss the box or its contents – some of my jewellery is very valuable indeed. The robbery could have occurred at any point during the retrofit, although I only discovered it today.’

  ‘It’s been such a long time since we’ve had a funeral to attend. Who was the last one who died? For the life of me I can’t remember. Döden, döden, döden.’

  Irma was such an inquisitive and social soul that she loved funerals. She always enjoyed herself at them; they gave her a chance to meet people and listen to beautiful music. The refreshments were generally above par, too.

  ‘Is it improper to wear jewellery to a funeral? I always put on my long string of pearls. I think they look nice with the black without being too showy,’ Siiri said.

  ‘Oh but you can’t go to a funeral with no jewellery! I’d feel as naked as a jaybird without my diamonds.’

  ‘I’m talking about a theft, and you two are babbling on about funerals. Don’t you understand: I’ve been robbed! A chest full of valuables has been stolen from me, and you’re pondering appropriate funeral attire!’ Anna-Liisa shouted in an alarmingly loud voice, and her demeanour was so threatening that Siiri felt sorry for all the children who’d had Anna-Liisa as a teacher. Three men in suits at the neighbouring table turned to look at them, and the young woman sitting on their other side stopped breastfeeding long enough to cause her baby to start to shriek. But Anna-Liisa didn’t allow the curiosity of others to impinge on her outrage.

  Irma was brimming with enthusiasm: ‘You have to report it to the police!’ She knew you could file a report on the Internet and so dug her green gadget out of her handbag right then and there. Siiri would have preferred to finish her meal in peace and to enjoy her French onion soup, now that it had finally cooled off and she could sever the strands of cheese neatly with her front teeth.

  ‘These are my own teeth. Just think: that’s something I ought to be grateful for. So many people at Sunset Grove have dentures, and some of them are so fancy that they look unnatural. You both still have your own teeth, too, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Siiri dear, my teeth are my own. Don’t distract me while I’m surfing. This won’t take a minute. You can slurp up your soup with your healthy teeth while we shoot off this report. Look, I’m already at the police station! “Report a misdemeanour electronically”; that sounds like what we want. Do you remember your social security number, Anna-Liisa?’

  Anna-Liisa didn’t. This was slightly perplexing.

  ‘When’s your birthday, Anna-Liisa?’ Now Siiri felt silly; she couldn’t remember the last time they’d celebrated Anna-Liisa’s birthday either. Was it in the wintertime? Wasn’t Anna-Liisa a little younger than she was? Born in 1919, perhaps? The more she thought about this utterly uncomplicated matter, the more garbled her memory of it grew. And Anna-Liisa’s mind was a complete blank. Siiri’s throat was dry and she felt an unpleasant ache in her chest.

  ‘Matriculation . . . preliminary examinations . . .’

  Was Anna-Liisa trying to remember the year she matriculated from high school? Siiri was so stunned that she couldn’t even remember what year she had graduated in. It was definitely before the wars, but when?

  ‘Argh, forget about birthdays and graduations. This is asking for some sort of dratted security confirmation. What on earth could that be? “Use mobile confirmation, a banking code, or security confirmation”. Whatever will they think of next, the idiots!’ Irma jabbed a finger at the picture of a phone and was pleasantly surprised: ‘My phone number, that will work! I just have to enter it in that little box. Oh dear, what was it again?’

  Siiri panicked when she realized that Anna-Liisa couldn’t remember her birthday and Irma couldn’t remember her phone number. She forced herself to drink down several gulps of water and finish her soup. The hammering in her head eased off a little; perhaps it had just been the hunger and the heat. It was particularly important to remember to drink lots of fluids on hot summer days. She filled their glasses – perhaps the others would take the hint and drink, too – and forced down one last glass of water while silently repeating her own birthday and phone number to herself. She had no trouble remembering either one. Just to be sure, she recited her bank account number, address, the names and birthdays of all her children as well as the dates of her sons’ and husband’s deaths. At least her memory was working, but that wasn’t going to do Irma and Anna-Liisa much good.

  ‘Maybe we’ll file a report later; my soup is getting cold. It says here you can also do it by phone. You can call the police as soon as you get back to your apartment, Anna-Liisa. Can’t you? Anna-Liisa?’

  Anna-Liisa had a ferocious coughing fit and stood up. She pounded her chest dully and hacked nastily. Just when they thought she was choking, the coughing sto
pped, and Anna-Liisa started looking around for her cane, which she already had in her hand.

  ‘I must go and correct my preliminary examinations. The students will want them before the weekend.’

  And then she strode off briskly and rather resolutely, without saying goodbye to her friends or paying her share of the bill. Irma and Siiri were shocked. Would Anna-Liisa be the next one to lose her marbles? Siiri looked at her now-cold onion soup, stunned, and felt both an unpleasant lurching in her stomach and a dreadful dizziness in her head.

  ‘We have to get in touch with the Ambassador,’ Irma said firmly. They didn’t have his phone number, but both of them were under the impression that he owned a mobile phone; he probably had it with him at the villa. Siiri thought Rinta-Paakku was such a rare surname that they’d have no trouble finding him in the phone book, and before she could squeal, Irma had pulled out her tablet and was asking it for the Ambassador’s phone number. But the contraption either didn’t know or wasn’t working; Irma claimed it was because she didn’t have the proper apps, and Siiri started feeling dizzy again. She drank one more glass of water, cursed the restaurant’s tiny water glasses, and stood to leave.

  ‘We have to go after her. How did we let her fly off like that on her own to correct compositions? What if she gets lost?’

  ‘Nonsense; it’s a two-block walk straight down Perustie.’

  They hurried to the corner and could see from a distance that an ambulance was parked in front of Sunset Grove, next to the construction-waste container, rubbish compactor and cement mixer. The ambulance’s doors slammed shut and it drove off towards Huopalahdentie. Siiri and Irma stood there amid the detritus of Sunset Grove, beside themselves with worry; there wasn’t a soul in sight they could ask about the emergency vehicle’s passenger and destination. They made their way to the apartment Anna-Liisa and the Ambassador shared on the fourth floor of C wing, rang the doorbell, and stepped in, as all doors were kept open during the retrofit.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ Irma crowed.

  An angry-looking, helmeted head appeared at the bedroom doorway. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. He was carrying a measuring tape and a large gym bag.

  ‘Wonderful – you speak Finnish. We’re looking for Anna-Liisa Petäjä. She lives in this unit, but we’re not sure about her health. Someone was just driven off in an ambulance, and we started getting worried that it might have been Anna-Liisa. Do you happen to know where she is?’

  The man didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He began to shoo Siiri and Irma out of the apartment, because private premises were off-limits to outsiders. He wasn’t wearing construction coveralls or the name tag all employees were supposed to wear, just a neon vest over his grey suit, and he explained that he was a project architect conducting a routine inspection. He stared, dumbfounded, as Irma wondered why construction workers had to wear helmets while wandering through Sunset Grove, but residents didn’t have to protect themselves from danger.

  ‘Are you afraid the ceiling’s going to come crashing down, seeing as how you’re wearing that funny helmet indoors? It did happen, you know, in Tauno’s apartment, and he said that it was more frightening than the grenades exploding at the Battle of Ihantala. Perhaps you’ve met Tauno? He’s a bit hunched and waves his arms, like this, to keep from falling over.’

  The project architect was a man of few words; he refused to comment on Tauno’s collapsed ceiling. He was oddly agitated and demanded that Siiri and Irma leave. As he pushed them out into the corridor, Siiri spotted a beautiful mahogany container on the kitchen table; it had to be Anna-Liisa’s missing jewellery box. She picked it up for safekeeping, but when she did, the project architect cursed and tried to snatch it out of Siiri’s hands.

  ‘How dare you, you impudent scoundrel, let go of me! You are not going to butt into my affairs, you . . . you inspection expert,’ Siiri shouted, clenching the jewellery box to her chest. ‘This is my dear friend Anna-Liisa’s prized jewellery box, and she’s afraid one of you is going to steal it.’

  Irma encouraged Siiri: ‘Yes, better us than you!’

  The project architect let them leave, taking the jewellery box with them, and went back to his measurements in Anna-Liisa’s and the Ambassador’s apartment. They didn’t understand why he was carrying such a large bag if all he was doing was inspecting the place.

  ‘Anna-Liisa was right, that man is the thief,’ Irma said. ‘He was going to take the jewellery box, and that’s why he got so upset.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, we’re the thieves here,’ Siiri laughed, as they scurried to the elevator.

  The common room was eerily still. Its lone occupant, the tattooed doctor, was fanning herself in the corner where they used to read newspapers and magazines. Subscriptions had been cancelled for the duration of the retrofit as a cost-cutting measure, Director Sundström had explained. It was as if she were trying to smoke out the last of Sunset Grove’s tenacious tenants.

  ‘Damn, it’s hot,’ the tattooed doctor said. Siiri noticed that she had a picture of a skull on her left breast. It showed through her flimsy summer blouse, which looked like an undershirt.

  ‘Have you been sitting here long? Did you happen to see who just rode off in the ambulance?’

  ‘It was that sour old lovebird, your friend, the know-it-all who looks like a skeleton. What’s her name?’

  ‘Anna-Liisa! Poor Anna-Liisa!’ Siiri cried, lifting a hand to her forehead. She gasped for breath and felt a shooting pain on the right side of her head. She had seated herself next to this unpleasant new neighbour and lowered Anna-Liisa’s jewellery box to the empty magazine rack. She listened in alarm to see if her heart had stopped. She couldn’t hear anything under her breathing and felt her wrist for a pulse. Her heart was beating far too rapidly, but at a good rhythm, steadily. Her decrepit circulatory channels were doing their best.

  ‘Hello, I’m Irma Lännenleimu, I don’t believe we’ve ever introduced ourselves; generally, no one does around here. People come and go, and no one knows anyone’s name. My friend here is Siiri Kettunen; I believe we’re Sunset Grove’s longest-term residents now.’

  ‘Ritva Lahtinen.’ The doctor didn’t extend a hand, she just kept fanning herself. ‘You wanna join me for a pint at the Ukko-Munkki?’

  ‘Not today, thanks,’ Irma said with a friendly smile, as if she were in the habit of drinking enormous pints of beer at the local pub, but the idea didn’t strike her fancy at the moment. ‘Do you happen to know where we might find Anna-Liisa?’

  The woman stood and slipped the fan into the back pocket of her jeans. Siiri mused that Ritva Lahtinen must be the first resident of Sunset Grove who wore jeans. Siiri had never owned a pair herself. They must have been hot in summer weather like this; no wonder the sweat was dripping from Ritva Lahtinen’s face. Her hair looked wet, too, as if she had just stepped out of the shower, which was an impossibility, because the water had been cut off since last night. The throbbing in Siiri’s head had subsided and her heart had steadied, but her throat was prickling unpleasantly. Could it be an asthmatic reaction to all the asbestos dust? Perhaps Ritva could tell them more about asthma symptoms; after all, she was a doctor, jeans or no. Siiri looked on tiredly as Irma followed the tattooed doctor for a few paces without getting the tiniest assistance in tracking down Anna-Liisa. Instead, Ritva lambasted the health-care system in a few sharp, vulgarity-punctuated sentences, said she’d been a medical examiner because the best patient was a dead patient, and headed out for her pint.

  Chapter 7

  Siiri had spent several days riding trams aimlessly, racking her brains trying to think of ways to escape the purgatory of the retrofit. They still didn’t know what had happened to Anna-Liisa, and Margit didn’t seem to be dealing well with the abnormal conditions, either. Nor was there any counting on the Ambassador; if the worst came to the worst, he would never return to Anna-Liisa.

  ‘For all we know, he’s not even at the villa. Maybe he has a new mistress!’ Irma said, as they
were eating liver casserole which tasted a bit suspect and drinking cheap red wine.

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ Siiri asked in disbelief.

  Irma laughed gaily and drained her glass. ‘Do you know what the best thing about a plumbing retrofit is? You absolutely have to drink red wine, because there’s no water in the taps,’ she said, and she reached over to pour herself another glass from the wine box. ‘This tap never goes dry.’

  A thought had been growing on Siiri ever since her encounter with the green-haired girl, and now she decided to test the waters: ‘What if we moved into a commune?’

  ‘What are you babbling about?’ Irma said. It was a relatively quiet moment; all they could hear was a faint pounding from upstairs and an unidentifiable buzzing from the other side of the wall. It was stifling indoors, and they were sitting in nothing but their nightshirts. Irma had unbuttoned hers. ‘You’re suggesting we become communists? Workers at a cabbage kombinat, goat herds at some kolkhoz?’

  ‘No, Irma,’ Siiri said gently, because she felt confident that her idea was a good one. ‘A commune means we live in the same apartment.’

  ‘Nonsense. Anna-Liisa and the Ambassador live together; you’re saying their home is a commune?’

  ‘They’re a married couple. But if – single widows like you and me or, say, Margit, who, for all intents and purposes is a widow, although Eino is curled up in some nest somewhere – if we rented an apartment together, that would be a commune.’

  ‘I suppose we already live in a commune, since a hole the size of grown man is connecting our apartments now. They could knock a hole in this outer wall, too; this heat is draining. Whew. You’re not losing your appetite, are you, with my nightshirt unbuttoned all the way?’

  Siiri told Irma that the girl in the tram had said life was fun and cheap when solitary people lived together, and that there were a lot of big apartments available for rent downtown. Unlike Irma, Siiri always read the real estate classifieds, because she was interested in architecture, and lately she’d noticed that nice units were available for rent nearly every day.