‘When did you notice that?’ Siiri asked, nearly hoarse. She thought they were being asked in to help care for the Ambassador, but at the moment Anna-Liisa was more concerned about the jewellery box.
‘I found it today when I was looking for the money; you remember that bundle of fifteen thousand euros. My thinking was that if Onni was in a critical condition and we needed a doctor or something out of the ordinary, I could use this stash, because I don’t have access to my husband’s bank accounts, and I’m nearly penniless myself. But there’s neither hide nor hair of the bills, and instead . . . All this jewellery . . . And this isn’t my jewellery; I’ve never laid eyes on it.’
They looked at the ropes of diamonds, gold chains and other pieces in the box without recognizing a single one. It was only at the very bottom that they came across Anna-Liisa’s pearl necklace and cameo brooch. Siiri remembered the strange man she had let in the morning of Eino’s death before realizing how early it was, and she started feeling weak again. Irma shot a glance at Siiri and took the reins.
‘This is one devilish box, but jewellery is only an earthly concern, isn’t it? Right now it’s more important for us to concentrate on Onni.’ She bent down at the Ambassador’s side, placed a hand on his forehead, and waited for a moment. ‘He has a fever. Are you sure he doesn’t want to go to the hospital?’
Anna-Liisa was absolutely sure. She and Onni had last discussed these matters after Eino died and had sworn a sacred oath to each other that if one of them fell ill, the other would make sure the doctors weren’t allowed to interfere and they wouldn’t start some three-hospital circus.
‘Do you think . . . He was still in such good health just yesterday, do you think it’s possible that he could . . .’ Anna-Liisa had to search for the words, which was anything but typical.
‘He’s not going to die,’ Siiri said confidently. She had regrouped thanks to Irma’s energetic example; it wasn’t going to do any good to start fainting now. ‘Onni is a strong man, and this is just a touch of the winter flu. He needs to drink a lot, and he mustn’t get too hot. Take off that heavy blanket and go and get a cold towel from the spa for his brow. I’ll bring something to drink.’
They pulled together like seasoned nurses at a field hospital, and everyone rushed off to complete their assigned tasks with a brisk efficiency. Anna-Liisa pulled the big blanket off her husband, Irma popped into the bathroom, and Siiri made for her own realm, the kitchenette. As she poured apple juice into a tall glass, Margit appeared from her room, fresh from a siesta. Her hair was an untidy thatch and she wasn’t wearing a stitch, other than a pair of nude underpants that reached up over her bellybutton, and she belched away as she inserted her hearing aid, calm as could be.
‘Is that for me? Siiri, you’re such a sweetheart!’
Siiri snatched the glass from the bar before Margit’s greedy hand reached it and told Margit to pour her own juice. She explained that the Ambassador had a fever, but this intelligence was of no interest to her drowsy friend.
‘You always have so much energy,’ Margit sighed, and eyed the paper lying on the bar as if she didn’t remember that she had read it thoroughly just a couple of hours earlier.
Siiri left Margit pondering life’s mysteries in her underwear and brought the juice back to the round-bedded boudoir. Irma was already attending to the Ambassador; cold water trickled down his face from the wet towel on his forehead. Anna-Liisa had opened the window and folded the bedcover at the foot of the bed. The pallid Ambassador lay under the thin sheet, watching the three women bustle about him.
‘What is my harem up to now?’ he said in an uncharacteristically feeble voice, struggling to sound like his usual cheerful self.
‘Onni, dear, would you like to try to drink some juice?’ Anna-Liisa asked at a near-whisper, and the Ambassador nodded enthusiastically.
They helped the Ambassador sit, and Anna-Liisa held the big glass to his mouth. Siiri couldn’t help but be reminded of Margit feeding her husband at the SquirrelsNest a few weeks earlier. She started trembling and had to sit. Luckily, Anna-Liisa’s and the Ambassador’s bed was so insanely immense that there was room and to spare for multiple attendants to rest themselves if one started feeling weak.
‘Here they are,’ Margit said, in an unnecessarily loud voice, opening the door for a balding man who stepped into the room, looking quizzical. He was clearly a little alarmed from the reception he’d received, as Margit still hadn’t dressed.
‘Hello, I’m director of customer relations from the Carendo Company, and I’m here on behalf of the City of Helsinki Western Health-Care District In-Home Care,’ he said in a reedy voice that was straining to sound energetic. He was one of those young men whose age was hard to determine. Judging by waistline and hairline, he was no spring chicken, but on the other hand he was wearing jeans, and a blazer that was too tight.
‘Hello,’ Anna-Liisa said, standing up. ‘Don’t you have a name?’
‘Petri Ali-Möttölä, hello. Here’s my card. City of Helsinki Western Health—’
‘Anna-Liisa Petäjä, MA, Finnish teacher. I’m whom you’re looking for, I presume?’
Anna-Liisa behaved like a suspect defiantly confessing a crime when finally caught by a detective who’d been tailing her for ages; she had no idea that her friends were feverishly thinking about the authorities and crimes and Anna-Liisa’s husband, who now languished under the sheet.
‘I’m here to conduct a patient evaluation, as I received a ticket that the rehabilitatee has recovered and treatment is overscaled at present, but apparently the situation isn’t so rosy after all . . .’ Petri Ali-Möttölä looked inquisitively at the Ambassador and nodded sympathetically at the loved ones.
‘I have nothing to do with your home inspection; I’m just the spouse. The patient is my wife here, who is caring for me,’ the Ambassador said with a winning smile.
‘We shouldn’t tire him out,’ Anna-Liisa said, leading the awkward public-private director into the living room. Irma and Siiri followed like Bill and Bull, the two foolish helpers from the Peter No-Tail books, even though the matter didn’t concern them at all. When all of them were uncomfortably perched on the bar stools, Anna-Liisa explained the situation politely but firmly. She had been rehabilitated back to health, in spite of the in-home care she had received, and no longer required the city’s services. Speaking in unambiguous main clauses, she hoped that this would be the last time she would have anything to do with the wide range of services offered by City of Helsinki In-Home Care.
‘You can see for yourself, I’m perfectly well,’ she said, concluding her explication with a sharp rap of her knuckles.
‘And we’re here, too,’ Irma said. ‘Helping out, that is.’
‘And the Ambassador, I mean her husband, isn’t terribly ill. He just has a fever,’ Siiri added.
The man peered over his spectacles at them, allowed his gaze to meander over the stout pillars, dance pole, and home theatre and momentarily rest on Margit’s half-naked carcass, which was snoring on one of the sofas, its face covered by a Swedish women’s magazine. He twitched unconsciously several times, unglued his eyes from Margit, remembered he was in a client meeting, and pulled out his tablet. It was even smaller than Irma’s.
‘A few questions, and we’ll be able to update your client record. In addition, you can fill out this customer satisfaction form for a chance to win a fruit basket.’ The man handed Anna-Liisa a piece of paper he had pulled out of his briefcase, marked with traffic lights and a range of questions.
‘A fruit basket, of all the things!’ Anna-Liisa cried, as if she couldn’t think of anything more idiotic if she tried.
‘They’re very popular business gifts now at Christmastime . . .’ the man began, but immediately moved on to the client record. Anna-Liisa answered all of his questions quickly and fluently and finished by lying that she was very satisfied with the services and staff of the City of Helsinki Western Health-Care District In-Home Care.
‘So are we cl
ear now?’ Anna-Liisa asked. ‘I no longer need to pay your invoices, and you won’t send a single burnt-out, incompetent, hurried, harried, recalcitrant individual incapable of normal communication at any time of day or night to frighten myself and my friends?’
Petri Ali-Möttölä frowned and looked as if he didn’t quite follow. ‘Are you talking about our services? Our employees . . . ? What are you talking about?’
‘I mean to say that I no longer want your services. Is this so incomprehensibly difficult to grasp?’
‘Of course not, not at all. It’s just rare for the client’s need for assistance to decrease at this age,’ Petri Ali-Möttölä said, and cheered up enough to see the positive side of things. He called this a win-win situation, because Anna-Liisa felt like she was in good shape and one less person required in-home care. Then he remembered that Anna-Liisa’s rehabilitative services had been turned over to that function of Western Health-Care District In-Home Care that had been privatized and, after bidding, outsourced to the Carendo Company Ltd, which meant that Anna-Liisa’s miraculous healing would mean a financial loss for a publicly listed international corporation.
‘At Carendo, we are committed to caring for every client, which is why it is my responsibility to confirm that you’re in full control of your faculties. So a couple of follow-up questions, Anna-Liisa. What day is it today?’
‘My good man, you are not a sensible person,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘Are you claiming with a straight face that I’ve turned into some sort of key client, when not too long ago I was an under-resourced HSS problem contributing to the sustainability deficit? At what point did this pendulum swing the other way?’
This outburst disconcerted the poor fellow, who started twitching oddly again. Margit coughed on the couch three times, which nearly sent Ali-Möttölä’s thoughts permanently off the rails. But then he pulled himself together with admirable determination and swiped his miniature tablet a couple of times, as if rebooting himself.
‘So . . . that is to say . . . this is nothing more than a simple market-economy phenomenon. When public-sector problems become private-sector enterprise, then what was a cost yesterday is a source of income today. It’s no more mysterious than that; as a matter of fact, it’s rather fantastic, don’t you think? Old people are taken care of and shareholders get a return on their investment. What day is it today?’
‘It will be your last, if you don’t stop this foolishness.’ Anna-Liisa stood and knocked her cane against the parquet so fiercely that Petri Ali-Möttölä fell off his bar stool and staggered to his feet. Anna-Liisa had genuinely gone berserk, and was even frightening Siiri now. Cheeks flaming and dark eyes glowing with rage, she pointed her cane in the direction of the front door. ‘Please leave. You will rehabilitate me over my dead body, and in this context you will allow me this cliché, because it is to be understood literally.’
The director of client relationships twitched for a moment, clicked his tablet’s protective sleeve shut, grabbed his leather satchel, and turned to leave. As he passed Margit, he hesitated, took a few determined steps but then turned back around and said: ‘I consider the client relationship ended. If you change your mind, you have my contact information. I’ll leave my card here on the . . . on the coffee table. You’ll receive an end-of-service agreement via email. You need to print it, sign it, scan it and send it back to me.’
‘Madman,’ Anna-Liisa huffed. ‘As if I had email and a printer and whatever the third gadget was. What more is there to be said?’
They exchanged glances, and this time even Anna-Liisa joined in the chorus: ‘Döden, döden, döden.’
Chapter 34
Irma had penned a note in her ornate hand that politely declined advertisements, free newspapers and other junk mail in both of Finland’s official languages and fixed it to the door. Margit hadn’t wanted her to post it there, because she enjoyed browsing through the special offers and other postal debris that drifted in through the mail slot, but in this instance the majority opinion was so clear that Margit had to settle for grousing occasionally that she didn’t have anything to read, which generally came to an abrupt halt when Anna-Liisa thrust Joel Lehtonen’s Hogweed Hollow or some other equally stimulating reading material into her hands.
Not that there was much in the way of mail proper. Their bills travelled along the invisible paths of the Internet, and no one wrote letters or even postcards any more, despite the fact that Irma’s darlings were constantly travelling the world for work as well as vacation to recuperate from work. So it was unexpected indeed when two letters addressed to Anna-Liisa Petäjä, MA dropped to the doormat on 7 December, the day after Finnish Independence Day. The sender of the first was the Loving Care Foundation, that of the second Fix ’n’ Finish Renovations and Odd Jobs Ltd. Siiri looked at the letters in horror and instantly decided to ask Irma for advice. She knocked softly, so Anna-Liisa wouldn’t hear, and opened Irma’s door.
‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’
Irma was lounging on her bed in a state of dishabille, unable to rise, as she had just lotioned herself from head to toe and had to wait absolutely still for the oils to be absorbed. By some miracle, Irma had made the mauve room unmistakably hers: rose-patterned throw pillows from Sanderson were strewn about; the table was drowning in perfume bottles, pictures of her darlings and make-up; a box of wine and a purple orchid stood on the windowsill; and a faint sweetness permeated the space. She had fixed her husband’s picture to the wall with masking tape; it was from the 1970s, when Veikko had been a spry, whiskered pipe-smoker.
‘But you go ahead and read the letters, and I’ll listen.’
‘Irma! These are addressed to Anna-Liisa; we can’t open them.’
‘Of course we can. They concern all of us; we sent in those stupid complaints together. Considering the Ambassador’s . . . shall we say status, it might be best if we never say a peep to Anna-Liisa about these letters.’
But they knew how pedantic and precise Anna-Liisa was. She would be sure to notice if no one ever responded to their complaints. If the letters never arrived, she would start digging into the dirty details of the Sunset Grove retrofit with intensified vigour. In the end, Siiri agreed to open the letters. She fetched a sharp knife from the kitchen and deftly slit the envelopes, as she knew Anna-Liisa would not look kindly on letters addressed to her being barbarically ripped open.
‘Which one first?’ Siiri asked Irma.
‘Fix ’n’ Finish. I’m dying of curiosity to hear what lies those louts have come up with to try and trick us. And if the blockheads know who they’re sending their lies to.’
The letter was brief and completely incomprehensible. The main gist was to inform the recipients that their complaint had been received and processed and required no further investigation, because what had happened was normal. But the language was so funny that Siiri couldn’t read the letter with a straight face. She had to constantly stop to collect herself and start over.
‘Dear customer, thank you for the letter that we have investigated the information inside. We can sincerely guarantee that every process remodel in the year Sunset Grove has been completed in normal practices accordance with. There is nothing required to be worried. You will be informed when the project is complete in approximately all details your property and other questions mentioned to the letter. Sincerely, Yuri Ahkmatov, Lead Contractor.’
‘How splendidly nonsensical! Read it over again from the beginning!’ Irma squealed and squirmed in such delight that the anti-aging cream spread all over the floral bedspread she had hauled to Hakaniemi from Sunset Grove. Siiri obeyed; this time she did a superb job of maintaining her composure and recited the gibberish in its entirety from start to finish as if it were prose deserving of serious consideration.
‘It must have been written by a robot,’ Irma said, once Siiri finished. ‘Or Google.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Google is . . . well, it’s a kind of robot.’
‘Oh. I thought it�
�’
‘Listen, I know these Internet robots. I have an artificial brain here in my flaptop that tells me what an English-language word means if I’m not familiar with it. I just place my finger on the word, and blip, the translation appears. What about the other letter, is it as hilarious?’
Siiri glanced at the letter from the Loving Care Foundation, proprietors of Sunset Grove. It had been penned by Director Sinikka Sundström, who apparently still had a seat on the foundation’s board, thus overseeing herself, although this arrangement had spawned complaints reaching as far as the parliamentary ombudsman.
‘Dear Anna-Liisa, Irma and Siiri,’ the letter began.
Irma interrupted: ‘Blech, how revolting. Belittling and treating us like some little pets of hers instead of paying clients and independent citizens exercising our legal rights.’
The letter was unadulterated drivel. Director Sundström was terribly sorry about everything, yet she semi-maniacally went on and on about how normal the procedures and practices had been throughout the various stages of the remodel. Massive water damage turned into minor incidents of dampness; the theft of their personal property into attentive responsibility for residents’ belongings. Director Sundström was so crushed by the renovation delays that she was nearly overcome with depression, and yet they were completely normal, as was the fact that the residents were responsible for both the costs of the renovation as well as their rent and any damage to their apartments that occurred during construction.
‘Merry Christmas, one and all! Hope to see you soon. Hugs, Sinikka.’
‘How convenient!’ Irma said. ‘Now she was saved the expense of sending Christmas cards, too.’
Upon closer reflection, Director Sundström’s letter was rather disturbing. She insisted that everything that had taken place during the renovation was normal, even though their property had been destroyed and stolen and no one knew the full extent of the costs that were racking up.
Irma stood and slowly started to dress. Siiri helped her with her blouse and made sure her hair looked nice from behind, now that Irma’s arms were too stiff to reach the back. Irma started telling Siiri about a cousin who was always in tip-top form: who was well groomed and even wore make-up.
Escape from Sunset Grove Page 27