‘Come one, come all, come and get it!’ Siiri shouted in a loud voice; this was how she had called her family to the table for decades, all those years ago. Her ceaseless toil in the kitchen reminded her of when she’d been in the prime of her life and her hands never at rest. Nothing was as easy as it had been then. She had seen a programme on television where famous old Brits in various stages of decrepitude spent a week living the way they had in the seventies, when they were still hale and hearty. The wallpaper in their temporary home was awful, big patterns and gaudy colours, the rooms were filled with wall-to-wall carpeting and ugly furniture, but the main takeaway from this human experiment was that the old people really did perk up as they were forced to cook their own meals, climb the stairs, spend time in each other’s company, and think about what their normal lives had been like forty years earlier. Of course they’d been much younger than Siiri; in a similar experiment, she would have to remember back to the sixties, if not the fifties, and life before dishwashers, washing machines, and rotary irons. Oh dear.
As always, the Ambassador was the first one at the bar, nattily dressed and smelling nicely of aftershave. He boasted about how much fun he and Anneli had been having in the whirlpool tub.
‘I suppose you’ve taken it for a spin, too, or have you been too busy running the household to make the time?’
‘I might have had the time, but I’m not sure I understand what the point is in an oversized, bubbling bathtub.’
‘Oh, Siiri, you must try it. It’s like a massage! The warmth will do your stiff limbs good, and the alternating bursts of water and air massage away aches and pains. It’s splendid, even more wonderful than the sauna, which the doctor has completely forbidden me from using.’
‘Why on earth?’ Siiri asked. ‘Is your doctor afraid you’re going to die in the sauna? Is that such an unpleasant thought?’
‘Not at all, that would be wonderful. But my doctor is just a boy; as a matter of fact, he’s the grandson of my real doctor. The first two already died.’
They shared a good laugh over the dead doctors, and Irma immediately interjected, explaining how Sibelius had noted that every doctor who had forbidden him cigarettes had died before him, which was why he puffed away with a clear conscience well past the age of ninety.
‘I borrowed one of Tawaststjerna’s books on Sibelius from the Kallio library, they’re so cleverly written and amusing,’ she said. ‘Of course I can’t always be bothered to slog through his music analyses, but what he writes about Sibelius the man is terribly fascinating.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’ve forgotten everything since the last time you read it,’ Anna-Liisa said. She was still red-cheeked and spry after her joint spa session with her husband.
‘Where’s Margit?’ Siiri asked, and Irma said that a call had come to the apartment’s landline from the SquirrelsNest, reporting that Eino had a fever and an ambulance had come to collect him and take him to the hospital. Margit had turned the apartment upside down looking for Eino’s living will and then had gone off to rescue her husband from the clutches of the hospital’s doctors.
‘Eino doesn’t want anyone hysterically trying to heal him, but he probably isn’t going to be able to say so himself.’
The Ambassador took advantage of this opportunity to gently criticize Margit’s talk and behaviour. ‘Eino doesn’t want, or Margit doesn’t want?’
He wasn’t aware that Siiri had been on hand to witness the unsuccessful euthanasia attempt at the SquirrelsNest, but had nonetheless accurately intuited that something of the sort was in the pipeline. Siiri didn’t mention the tragicomic incident – that was up to Margit – and was well aware that the role of trusted friend had fallen to her, although she wasn’t sure why. Even now she should have been at the hospital, supporting Margit in her battle to keep Eino from being treated, and instead she was waiting on her healthy friends hand and foot.
‘Did Margit ever find the living will?’
‘No, but I wrote her one,’ Irma said casually. ‘I must say, I’ve never tasted a grander zander!’
Siiri couldn’t wrap her brain around Irma’s writing a living will for Eino. The document was supposed to express the patient’s will when he was still in full control of his faculties, not the wishes of loved ones when they were feeling desperate. And Irma wasn’t even a loved one, but a rather distant acquaintance who happened to be temporarily cohabiting with Eino’s wife.
Irma laughed heartily at this. ‘I’m not stupid enough to have written my own will on it!’ She told them she had drafted an entirely new document in Eino’s name. She and Margit had forbidden any and all involuntary treatment, even antibiotics administered through a drip, which, with the help of her trusty flaptop, Irma had found the proper medical term for on the Internet.
‘IV antibiotics, that’s what they call it,’ she remembered. ‘With capital letters, so it looks like a Roman four, even though it’s not.’
At first Irma had written the wrong date – today’s – on the paper, and they had to start all over again. Margit had carefully calculated when Eino would still have been capable of writing the living will himself, and in the end the document had been signed at Sunset Grove, with Margit and Irma witnessing, on some pleasant day approximately a year and a half ago.
‘The date was the last day they had sex. Margit had it marked in her calendar. She claims that Eino was very good in bed.’
‘Yes, we’re well aware of that,’ Anna-Liisa said.
‘Have you also –? You haven’t –?’
‘Silence! Don’t you remember how much racket they used to make every afternoon at Sunset Grove? I don’t suppose such sounds could be produced by anything but good sex.’
‘I wouldn’t consider that such an important criterion,’ the Ambassador said, suddenly attentive.
‘I suppose most of us have had to fool around quietly in the dark,’ Irma mused, and the Ambassador began recounting a rather unusual story from the height of his diplomatic career in Romania. Something complicated involving the chauffeur, the embassy’s cook, and a midday rumpus in the kitchen.
‘Anyway, then I scribbled out Eino’s signature on the living will on his behalf, since Margit wasn’t up to it. It turned out rather well, quite manly, like Veikko’s used to be,’ Irma said.
‘What was Veikko like in bed?’ the Ambassador asked, and Irma started to praise her husband.
Siiri stood, gathered up the plates, and walked them around to the sink.
‘I must say, this is one of Helsinki’s finest restaurants,’ the Ambassador remarked.
‘You would know, wouldn’t you?’ Anna-Liisa said a little sourly, without looking at her husband, although he had just treated her to a buffet brunch.
‘Isn’t life rather comfortable here in Hakaniemi, all in all?’ the Ambassador asked his harem, directing a heartfelt smile at each of them.
The women didn’t respond. Anna-Liisa was thoughtful; she must have wanted more time alone with her husband, who instead spent most of his days gallivanting around town. Siiri didn’t know how long she would be able to take her daily drudgery, and there were many things Irma missed.
‘Most of all I miss my music,’ she said, sighing deeply. ‘I’d give quite a lot to be able to listen to Mozart’s clarinet concerto from start to finish.’
The workings of the apartment’s complicated sound system had remained a mystery. They had found no sign of a radio or record player, so apparently the idea was to look up music on the Internet and, by some magic trick, make it play from all the ugly speakers sticking out everywhere you looked.
‘And then I’d like to listen to that lovely piece for violin and viola, and the slow bit that’s so deliciously erotic.’
‘Sinfonia concertante. I thought the clarinet concerto was what you wanted to listen to while you were dying,’ Siiri said.
‘Yes, but I never grow tired of it. And in the evenings, when I’m lying in bed freshly bathed and lotioned and waiting for sleep to arrive a
nd it won’t and I’m tired of reading Tawaststjerna, at those moments I’d love to listen to even a moment of Bach. “Wohltemperiertes Klavier”, say, performed by Andras Schiff. I don’t understand why I didn’t bring my CD player. Now it’s been stolen and sold. I wonder if those thieves stole my records, too? Do you suppose they understand the value of Mozart and Bach?’
‘If you’re lucky, you can get a couple of euros for them,’ Anna-Liisa said, as if she knew all about the fencing of stolen goods. ‘I miss my playing cards and the rhythm of life at Sunset Grove. Tuesdays, stick-exercise class, Wednesdays, handicrafts, it lends a nice rhythm to the days, even if the activities themselves are tomfoolery. This in-home care is very disruptive and tiring, not to mention irregular. They show up whenever they please, and some don’t even have time to say hello.’
The Ambassador looked stunned. ‘Are you saying you want to go back to Sunset Grove?’
He’d heard so much griping about the way things were run at Sunset Grove and had been privileged to observe their brave battle against the criminal activity and non-existent services at the retirement centre that he never thought he’d live to see this day. He genuinely believed he’d arranged things in the most satisfactory way possible and in accordance with everyone’s wishes when he had acquired the apartment in Hakaniemi for their use.
‘I said I missed Mozart and Bach, not Sunset Grove in particular,’ Irma said.
‘Perhaps I was referring to the lifestyle. This is rather unusual, after all,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘And you’re away most of the time. We used to spend much more time together.’
The Ambassador gazed at his wife with his blue eyes and patted her hand. He thanked Anna-Liisa for her having reminded him of the names of Helsinki’s old townships during their shared bath.
‘To be perfectly frank, I’m not much of a nurse. Your illness wasn’t easy for me to take. And then with all these half-mute, overworked wisps of girls traipsing about, these in-home caregivers, I’ve thought that it’s best to be out from underfoot. But now you seem like yourself again, Anneli. Do you need the caregivers any more?’
Anna-Liisa didn’t know how to cancel in-home care. She had asked a few of the nurses, but one said that in-home care generally ended with the client’s death and another one didn’t know what the process was, because she just worked at In-Home Care. Irma was certain that a simple phone call to the offices of the City of Helsinki Western Health-Care District In-Home Care would produce the desired result. In-Home Care was horrendously understaffed, and if some crazy old bat thought she had suddenly been healed of her old age and no longer needed their help, it would be like a gift from heaven.
‘Better than death! Maybe they could resource nine minutes per client if they didn’t have to come all the way here to roll you over. Did everyone notice how fluently I used the word “resource”?’ Irma said, rising into a tinkling falsetto again. ‘Now what did you make us for dessert, Siiri?’
Siiri didn’t have any dessert.
‘Oh, so you lords and ladies would like dessert, too!’ she snapped, perhaps too feistily. When no one replied, she got up and peeked in the refrigerator, to see if it might contain a dab of two-day-old fruit soup or the butt end of pound cake. But there was nothing that would serve as dessert. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with your modest meal. Or do you suppose we’ll witness a miracle tonight, like one of you actually fixing dessert?’
Irma looked glum, but the Ambassador came up with a solution that pleased everyone. He assumed his usual spot on the kitchenette side of the bar and asked the ladies what he could fix them to drink. Irma ordered red wine, Anna-Liisa was in such a boisterous mood that she took a gin-and-tonic in Margit’s stead, pronouncing the gin as if it were English and the tonic as if it were Swedish. Siiri didn’t know what she wanted. Irma pondered, and then exclaimed.
‘Why, we’ll make mojitos for everyone! What do you say, Siiri?’
Siiri had completely forgotten that Muhis and Metukka had insisted they buy mint leaves and limes for a cocktail that was awfully delicious. Miraculously, Irma managed to remember the recipe, and she wasted no time bustling about in the kitchenette. You started with crushed ice, which the Ambassador knew how to make using the magical machine in the fridge door, then poured a bit of rum into the bottom of the glass, a lot of sugar, slices of lime, and mint leaves, and mixed and mashed furiously, like pepper in a mortar, until the limes and mint were crushed and the flavours mingled.
‘Didn’t the recipe call for a little soda water, too?’ Siiri asked.
‘I believe so, now that you mention it. Let’s add a splash. There are those little drink stirrers around here somewhere, too, I know I’ve seen them. Do you remember the Three Robbers’ looking song, when they can’t find their pants or shirts? “Where are my trousers, where is my shirt, where is my lala lallallaa and at the end I’m sure I just saw them yesterday”.’ She sang and played the roles of the robbers and laughed merrily without finding the drink stirrers. But she did find some straws.
‘Straws are what I should have been looking for anyway, not sticks!’
‘They’ve been here this whole time,’ Anna-Liisa said from the end of the bar. And, sure enough, there on the countertop, right under their noses, was a cup with a cluster of colourful plastic sticks poking out.
‘There they are! This is going to be so much fun. Help yourselves! It’s scrumptious, even though it looks like poison.’
They decided to gather around the television to drink their mojitos, and after a skirmish of sorts, the Ambassador managed to turn it on. There was nothing bizarre on this time; just the good old nightly news. They were all enamoured of their drinks, which tasted tart and sweet at the same time, and clouds of blithe banter floated across the room.
There was no news to speak of. At first the tired-looking boy of a prime minister spoke in responsible tones about budget cuts, then a heavyset opposition politician spouted a couple of populist idiocies, after which the anchors reported that the Finnish school system was the best in Europe but no longer the world now that Asians were being included in the comparison tests, too. A dejected expert explained that these measurements shone an unfortunately bright light on Finland’s gradual chipping away at basic education. They chuckled at the story, because they couldn’t understand why having the best schools in Europe wasn’t good enough for the expert.
‘Everything is so fancy at schools these days,’ said Irma, who used to hear about school from her darlings when they still came to visit her. None of her darlings had had the time to pop by Hakaniemi, since they were so busy working and vacationing. ‘And on top of everything else, my daughter Tuula is having a plumbing retrofit in her apartment building. Can you imagine! The poor thing.’
‘We certainly can. You’ve told us quite a few times,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘And a plumbing retrofit is the reason we’re here, too, killing time on a swaybacked sofa in a soundproofed, pillared hall. We’re retrofit refugees. Have you already forgotten? What about your daughter’s plumbing retrofit is so much worse than what we’re experiencing at Sunset Grove, where they’re gutting the place from floor to ceiling?’
‘I have no way of knowing. But in any case, she has so much going on at the moment that I understand perfectly well why she doesn’t have time to come and see me. Working life is very demanding these days. Why, even being on vacation is stressful, or so I understand. And what’s there to see in me, an old woman!’ Irma burst into such merry gales of laughter that they could all see the mint leaves stuck in her teeth. Her glass had been sucked dry, and now she was trying to scrape the dregs of the sugar into her mouth with her straw.
After reports on crises abroad, the news shifted back to Finland. The anchorman, who was crammed into a jacket that was too small for him, started reporting on a retirement home where a renovation project had been mismanaged. He asserted that numerous retirement homes ended up in trouble when building repairs were required. Then they showed pictures of walls that h
ad been torn out, floors that had been jackhammered up, ceiling plaster that had come crashing down, and a yard mounded with toilets and bathtubs. A female voice recited a litany of horror stories about old people who’d been abandoned, whose rents and service fees had gone up even though their homes were uninhabitable. Most had cut their losses and decamped for parts unknown.
‘St Pete’s pants!’ Irma exclaimed.
‘Silence!’ Anna-Liisa bellowed, rapping her knuckles against the coffee table. She was leaning forward, back straight, and listening attentively.
‘Why, that’s Sirkka! The woman who moved into a tiny closet on Riihitie before the retrofit began!’ Siiri squeaked. Sirkka was explaining on television that she had run out of money and was queuing for public housing or a nursing home. More images of the renovation’s aftermath were shown: close-ups of debris and piles of junk and wiring dangling perilously from walls. The female voice announced that many of the remodels involved illicit business, with work being farmed out illegally, making it impossible to monitor the chain of subcontractors. In addition, the work was unprofessional, so that in this particular retirement home, the new floors had to be ripped right back out due to moisture damage incurred during the remodel.
‘Who’s looking out for the interests of the elderly?’ Sirkka wailed from the flat-screen TV, looking somehow comical.
At the end of the story, the female voice reported that it had found a brave veteran in the ruins of the retirement home who had refused to move out of his apartment, because he was paying thousands of euros a month in rent and other fees. It was Tauno standing there on the screen, next to his mattress, pack on his back and cap pulled down tightly on his head, squinting angrily in the lamp-light like a mole unused to daylight. The mattress had been propped up against the wall so that it would figure prominently in the shot. Tauno talked about the Winter War and white-collar criminals and deserters, swore he would fight to the end, and claimed that an international criminal league masterminded by a Finn was behind everything. After Tauno’s dramatic outburst, the male newscaster came back on and said that the weather would continue to be exceptionally rainy for the time of year.
Escape from Sunset Grove Page 22