Escape from Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘How will you sleep in that?’ Irma cried. It was a given that the biggest bedroom would go to Anna-Liisa and Onni. ‘You’re going to get seasick rolling around on that.’

  There was no sign of a bookshelf. The living room was sparsely furnished, with only two low sofas better suited to lying than sitting, a gigantic television screen and large speakers dotted about. The overall effect was rather shiny. The bathroom was immense, more like a spa, actually. There were massaging showers, recessed lighting fixtures, a sauna and a big whirlpool tub, all of which the Ambassador pointed out enthusiastically.

  ‘This remote controls the Jacuzzi, I imagine. It also appears to have a radio and speakers. And this one is for the lights. There’s a starry sky in the sauna ceiling, rather atmospheric, wouldn’t you say?’ The Ambassador waved the remote around and twisted the knobs next to the sauna door; the starry sky started twinkling in and out rapidly. Suddenly the whirlpool tub’s speakers burst out blaring awful rock music.

  ‘Do something!’ Irma shouted, grabbing the remote from the Ambassador. She jabbed at it hysterically as if it were a matter of life or death, until the music died. ‘For goodness’ sake. Are you trying to kill us?’

  ‘Let’s not get too dramatic,’ the Ambassador said, with a winning smile.

  ‘It’s perfectly possible to die from fright. Or shock. It happens all the time in operas. Lucia di Lammermoor and Elsa from Tannhäuser, for instance, drop to the ground, dead as doornails.’

  ‘None of you ladies are ever going to die,’ the Ambassador continued breezily, demonstrating how to dim the shower’s recessed lighting scandalously low.

  ‘Knock me over with a feather,’ Margit blurted. ‘Is this where you’re going to . . . for goodness’ sake . . .’ Evidently incapable of producing intelligible speech, she spun around in circles in the middle of the room.

  ‘There’s no washing machine,’ Siiri said.

  ‘But there are two bidets,’ Irma noted mischievously. ‘We can sit and spray ourselves side by side.’

  ‘The laundry room is in here,’ the Ambassador’s voice echoed. He had stepped through the door next to the sauna into a chamber containing an immense steel washing machine and an even bigger dryer, as well as acres of room to hang laundry.

  ‘Why, this is an institutional laundry,’ Siiri said in surprise.

  ‘We’ll be able to wash our unmentionables in no time,’ Irma laughed, and she tested to see how her soprano would resonate in the room. ‘“Siribiribim, siribiribim” – do you remember that song?’

  There was no kitchen per se, just a corner of the living room with a small sink, a stove of sorts, and two big grey refrigerators, one with a contraption in the door which they eyed in perplexity.

  ‘An ice machine, perhaps,’ the Ambassador said. ‘Unless it’s a soda water dispenser. I’m not so familiar with the latest refrigerators.’

  ‘Whatever will they come up with next?’ Siiri said, examining the stove, a black surface with only one identifiable burner to the side, for gas. She opened the gleaming cupboard doors and found a tiny dishwasher behind one of them. How would they ever wash four people’s dishes in that? This corner of the room seemed more like a bar than a kitchen. There wasn’t even a dining table, just a narrow countertop surrounded by tall stools.

  ‘Who’s been living here?’ Siiri asked finally.

  The Ambassador didn’t immediately respond. He looked at the stack of papers and keys that had been left on the counter and walked back towards the entryway, forehead furrowed.

  ‘Hmm . . . well. I’m not exactly sure. I don’t know much about the previous tenants. My understanding is that the apartment has been used for . . . entertaining. Embassies, import/export companies, and the like. All sorts of clients. As you know, I have many contacts at the Foreign Ministry.’

  They all wanted to go to Hakaniemi Hall, the market hall right across the street. There was a well-known cafe on the second floor where former president Tarja Halonen, Finland’s first female head of state, had a dedicated table. They seated themselves at the president’s table, and the Ambassador carried over two trays loaded with sweet rolls and coffee. The coffee was served in mugs without saucers, and you had to stir in your sugar with a little wooden stick.

  ‘At least you don’t have to slurp your coffee out of a soup bowl, the way you do at the tram museum,’ Siiri laughed.

  In spite of their puzzlement at the flat’s quirks, they were thrilled about the idea of moving. There were enough bedrooms, and the common spaces were much grander than anything they could have ever imagined. Margit sat in silence as they planned their new communal existence.

  ‘Margit, what’s wrong?’ Siiri asked finally, but Margit didn’t answer. She felt sorry for poor Margit, who had grown rather listless since her husband fell ill. ‘Would you like to come and live in our commune, too? I suppose Onni and Anna-Liisa have no objection?’ She gave the Ambassador a meaningful look and ignored Irma’s below-the-table kick.

  ‘Yes, well, why not, it’s all still up in the air,’ replied the Ambassador, who didn’t appear to have anything against his flat having attained such popularity. ‘We’d rather have you than Tauno.’

  ‘So the harem is complete, and without the unpleasant Osmin!’ Irma trilled. ‘Isn’t it a bit odd that in Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio the harem guard Osmin is a bass, even though he’s supposed to be a eunuch? Onni, you don’t have to do any singing; Pasha Selim is a speaking role.’

  Margit looked at them as if she couldn’t believe her ears. Her deeply etched face revealed her age, but she still dyed her hair jet black. She must have been exceptionally beautiful as a young woman; she had fine features, good bone structure, and strong colouring.

  ‘What are your views on euthanasia?’ she asked. ‘I’m at a loss when it comes to what I should do. The one thing I’m hoping for is that Eino has a beautiful death. Don’t you think it would be merciful if someone in Eino’s condition were given a pill to set him free? Or an injection? I haven’t looked into it enough to know how it’s done. In Holland or Switzerland, Eino would be dead and happy already, and the funeral would be over.’

  Their enthusiasm instantly deflated into an awkward silence. No one had a solution for Margit’s angst or any words of consolation for her. Occasionally, they had discussed euthanasia without arriving at any consensus. Siiri approved of assisted death; the Ambassador put his trust in effective palliative care; Anna-Liisa felt that euthanasia was murder; and Irma’s views changed by the week, based on what she’d heard on the radio or from her darlings over the phone. None of Irma’s darlings visited her any more, now that Sunset Grove had been wrapped up for the retrofit. They found it such a bother picking their way through the cement sacks, getting their clothes grubby, and plugging their ears during the drilling. Irma’s sole intentionally conceived child, Tuula, also had a plumbing retrofit underway in her building, and because there was no way Tuula could live in such chaos, she had moved to the family’s summer cottage, which meant there wasn’t room for Irma there.

  ‘She needs her space; otherwise she won’t have the energy to go to work,’ Irma explained.

  ‘How would you ladies like to divvy up the bedrooms?’ the Ambassador asked brightly, to lift their spirits. He pulled the papers out of his worn leather satchel and found a floorplan of the apartment, which they spread across the president’s table to begin planning their new life. Irma assigned the bedrooms, giving Margit the second biggest one, with the green walls, and herself the mauve one. Siiri was left the tiny blue one. They accepted Irma’s proposal without complaint and started meandering about, oohing over the market hall, its butcher shops, fishmongers, vegetable stands, shelves of exotic spices, button sellers and handicraft shops. But they didn’t buy anything. The group was brimming with the spirit of adventure as they crossed the square to the tram stop – even Irma, although she found the Metalworkers’ Union building an atrocity and Oleg Kiryuhin’s bronze statue World Peace an unpleasant rem
inder of the Soviet Union and the era of Finlandization.

  ‘Giving us that ugly old albatross must have been one of the last things the Soviet Union did before Communism’s house of cards finally came tumbling down.’

  This even brought a smile to Margit’s face and allowed her momentary respite from brooding over how best to murder her husband.

  Chapter 11

  In the end, everything happened so quickly that Siiri and Irma had a hard time believing it. The Ambassador’s extraneous apartment had opened up as if by some miracle, and Anna-Liisa required no coaxing to get on board. The Ambassador told them he’d spoken with his wife about the plan on a couple of occasions while she was in the hospital, and the sole bone of contention had been Margit’s inclusion.

  ‘It was your idea,’ Irma accused Siiri, as the number 9 tram drove past their future refugee asylum towards Porthaninkatu.

  ‘I didn’t remember at the time that Anna-Liisa doesn’t care for Margit. Maybe she’ll learn to like her; after all, we don’t know her that well. Maybe she’s a very sweet person.’

  ‘Even I’m not that optimistic,’ Irma laughed, and then The Bear at the Anthill, the sculpture that gave Karhupuisto Park its name, caught her eye. She started pondering who the sculptor might be. ‘It must be Jussi Mäntynen, because all the animal statues in Helsinki are his. He got his start as a conservator’s assistant at the university, which is why he can achieve such realistic representations in granite. Although I must say, that poor bear has an awful hump on his neck. Isn’t it odd that this park has so few trees and benches? Are the fussbudgets in the parks department afraid that benches will attract drunks? Or senior citizens? Look, those loafers are playing that traditional game. Throwing sticks of firewood at each other.’

  ‘It’s called kubb,’ Siiri said.

  They weren’t headed anywhere in particular. They had simply gone out for a ride to avoid the onerous business of packing; it was so hard to know what to bring along during their temporary flight. Siiri had come up with the idea of the number 9, and it was a wholly new adventure for Irma, despite the fact that the number 9 had been running through Hakaniemi and Kallio for a couple of years now. Siiri was particularly anticipating the bit from Fleminginkatu to Aleksis Kiven katu and on to Teollisuuskatu. That was sure to be new terrain for Irma, who had always given the city’s old industrial areas a wide berth.

  ‘It wasn’t safe for a lady back then,’ Irma retorted, and, of course, she was right. Siiri didn’t feel completely at home in this part of town, either, but the area had been seen as a construction boom and had been cleaned up considerably since the turn of the millennium. Manufacturing was no longer profitable in Finland, and there was such an urgent need for housing that, despite packing every inch of shoreline with homes, vacated factories were being converted into residential flats, too. People preferred living alone to living together; that’s what it said in the newspaper. Helsinki was full of lonely people, while families moved out to the sprouting suburbs in former farmlands and fields.

  ‘Just because they live alone doesn’t mean they’re lonely. My darlings were explaining that it’s a modern lifestyle choice. A lot of people prefer to live alone instead of . . . of . . . Yes, well, I suppose they really ought to find a spouse and raise children. But young women don’t want to have children any more, because children get in the way of their careers. Oh, how folks fought over it in the Sixties, women entering the workforce. No one guessed it would lead to the decline of the entire nation.’

  ‘We live alone and we’re not lonely.’

  ‘And we can kiss that bit of heaven goodbye, too. We’ll have to put up with each other for God knows how long. What do you think, how long will the renovation at Sunset Grove last?’

  They surmised that they might easily be spending six months at their asylum in Hakaniemi. Siiri didn’t find the thought the least bit unpleasant, although she understood what Irma meant by kissing heaven goodbye and losing their freedom. Initially, she’d been sad when her children moved out one by one, leaving the house feeling increasingly deserted. Then she and her husband had bought a nice two-bedroom apartment in Meilahti, and when her husband died, the thought of living alone had felt confining and impossible. But gradually she had come to enjoy doing exactly as she pleased whenever she pleased, for the first time in her life, without having to worry about anyone else.

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ Irma said, admiring Aleksis Kiven katu, which was, with its tram tracks running between two columns of lindens, nearly as beautiful as Munkkiniemi Allée. The former industrial area truly had taken on a new identity. By some magic, the old Serlachius cardboard factory had been transformed into a gorgeous apartment building; it must be a marvellous place to live, with those big arched windows. The former Pasila machine-and-metalworks stood opposite, scheduled to become a little neighbourhood of its own.

  ‘The only thing I can’t fathom is why they couldn’t come up with a better name than The Machineworks. Just imagine having to tell people you live at The Machineworks.’

  The number 9 snaked charmingly through this peculiar district, which was a rather neatly executed combination of old brick warehouses and machine shops and new buildings in brick instead of the typical glass and concrete. The doorways were adorned with pictures of trains, and even the odd tree had been squeezed in. Siiri had read in the newspaper that a large park was being planned near the old paint shop, right at the heart of the new development.

  ‘I simply can’t understand why they kept Anna-Liisa at the hospital for three weeks, pumping her full of drugs, having her run up and down from the lab, when a course of antibiotics would have solved all her problems,’ Irma suddenly said, dabbing the perspiration from her brow with her lace handkerchief. The heatwave had lasted all summer, and it didn’t seem as if August would bring any relief. Everyone was revelling in the warmth and the sunshine – everyone, that is, except ninety-somethings trapped in the middle of a plumbing retrofit.

  Siiri had also been baffled by the story the Ambassador had related about the run-around Anna-Liisa had got at the hospital. Things might have gone seriously wrong.

  ‘Just imagine how much of the city’s sparse resources and the staff’s precious time could have been saved by applying a smidgen of common sense,’ she sighed, ‘and how little it takes for an old person to be labelled a dementia patient for the rest of their lives. If it weren’t for that psychogeriatrician who happened to turn up, Anna-Liisa would be in line for some SquirrelsNest now. And we’d be thinking she just happened to be the next in line, that that’s how it goes when you live too long.’

  ‘The Ambassador handled that business rather deftly,’ Irma said. Now that Anna-Liisa had been rescued and the flat in Hakaniemi conjured up out of thin air, she had stopped slandering the Ambassador for his other women and infidelities and joined Siiri in forgiving him everything.

  When the tram turned onto Jämsänkatu, the landscape instantly changed. After the romance of The Machineworks, the depressing bunker architecture of the seventies felt so mean that it left a bad taste in Siiri’s mouth; sour and acidic.

  ‘Where did you put Anna-Liisa’s jewellery box after you absconded from her apartment with it?’

  Irma’s question pierced Siiri’s head like a pick: she felt a dreadful, stabbing pain and almost slumped from the force of the blow. The jewellery box! She remembered having been a little disoriented when she entered her own apartment with it, and had decided she’d stash the box in such a clever place that the construction crooks wouldn’t be able to find it, no matter how much they poked about with their tape measures. But where had she hidden it? For the life of her, she couldn’t remember. Irma wasn’t worried in the least, though.

  ‘You’ll come across it while you’re packing. Do you suppose the Ambassador will make all the arrangements for the move, like he promised? He seems to have contacts just about everywhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ Siiri said, still woozy, and she gazed up at the dreary concrete bridge
that gave their present stop its name, Kellosilta, the bell bridge. What a desperate attempt to make this grim landscape sound beautiful, she thought, before being distracted by the sight of a woman wrestling with her stroller at the stop. No one helped her.

  ‘Siiri, wake up!’ Irma squawked. ‘Did you hear what I said? One day I saw the Ambassador talking with two bearded men in helmets, as pleased as punch. Chatting away as if they knew each other. Now why would he do that?’

  ‘Maybe he did know them,’ Siiri replied lazily. The woman at the tram stop gave up the struggle and didn’t board the tram after all; she just stood at the stop, looking as if she would burst into tears. The tram was fuller than one could have thought possible; there were already two strollers on board, and a large group of Asian tourists was packed into the aisles. They were all wearing dust masks, despite the fact that Helsinki’s sole draw as a travel destination was the fresh sea air. ‘Or not. That’s just the way he is, friendly with everyone. Listen, do you know, I don’t think I ever told Anna-Liisa that we stole her jewellery box for safekeeping . . .’

  ‘You stole, you mean,’ Irma corrected her, and she laughed out loud at the sight of the Expo and Convention Centre; she thought it was such an amusing colossus. ‘So that’s where everyone goes to worship on Sundays: the food, travel and fitness masses. Don’t they all have their own conventions? You can tell Anna-Liisa after you’ve found the box and returned it to her. And after she’s released from the hospital.’

  Which wouldn’t be long now. The Ambassador had told them that Anna-Liisa would be moving straight from the hospital into their new home, at about the same time as them, on the first weekday in August. And that was the day after tomorrow.