‘So, like, returns are cool,’ the salesgirl said, and they decided from her sunny smile that she had nothing against their suggestion.
Irma bought a pleated and only slightly shimmery party frock. The fabric was light and probably draped beautifully and didn’t wrinkle, no matter how much they bunched the material up in their fists. Anna-Liisa found a straightforward, streamlined dress in a wool blend, to her mind a more sensible choice for a winter funeral than Irma’s diaphanous gown. Siiri was so taken with a trouser suit the salesgirl showed her that she bought it, despite the steep price.
‘Margit said I would still have all of your funerals to attend,’ she said cheerfully as she claimed her loyal customer discount.
They rewarded themselves for their labours under the big cupola at the Fazer Cafe on Kluuvikatu, splurging on shrimp sandwiches because, as Irma noted, wasting a little money always did wonders for one’s mood. Irma still had a few fifty-euro bills in her wallet, and she waved them around merrily to show that squandering on delicacies wouldn’t break the bank.
‘Besides, I can always withdraw more from the wall,’ she continued. ‘If I can just remember that stupid code. But mine is easy, it’s . . . just a moment, I have it here somewhere, I wrote it on a big yellow Post-it . . .’
‘That’s enough, Irma,’ Anna-Liisa said, before the entirety of Irma’s earthly possessions were strewn across their table.
And so they ordered a glass of wine apiece, too. They were sitting directly across from a young couple in love, whose tender whispers echoed across the domed dining room to their table more audibly than into each other’s ears. But as Siiri and her companions knew the acoustics would, reciprocally, carry their sentiments to the other table, they exchanged glances without comment, despite the brazen woman’s lunchtime lack of propriety. They weren’t used to women taking the initiative.
‘I have no intention of tolerating those robot-drafted replies regarding the renovation at Sunset Grove,’ Anna-Liisa said, to mask the indelicate whispering. Siiri felt herself growing dizzy and had to lower her fork and knife to her plate. This made an unpleasant clank; the woman on the other side of the room wondered what the sudden sound was. Days, if not weeks, had passed without anyone having mentioned the retrofit at Sunset Grove. Siiri had started hoping that Anna-Liisa had forgotten the whole thing.
‘What else can we do? There’s no point fighting with robots,’ Irma said, looking genuinely unperturbed. ‘I’ve had it on more than one good authority that complaining about plumbing retrofits is futile. Why, one of my cousins, Kirsti, lived in exile nine months, had two rents to pay, and didn’t get a penny from the insurance company, even though she had paid through the nose for her policy. And when the renovation was complete, everything had been done wrong. In the end, she moved out and died. All of which was totally normal, of course.’
‘Dying?’
‘That, too, but especially the fact that there was a stupid shower stall where the bathtub should have been, and that they had forgotten to install an oven in the kitchen, and the water came out of the tap the wrong way.’
Anna-Liisa frowned. ‘What do you mean, the wrong way?’
‘Hot water from the cold tap and cold water from the hot tap. And a painting that was very valuable and had been in the family for generations got so dusty that it was ruined. Which was totally normal, of course, and my cousin Kirsti’s fault since she hadn’t had the sense to protect it properly. After Kirsti’s traumatic tale we’ve always said it’s impossible to make it through a plumbing retrofit in one piece. But here we are, alive and kicking! Skål!’
Siiri wasn’t sure if Irma was telling the truth, but she was grateful to her gallant friend who managed to drag Anna-Liisa along with her chatter and made her forget retrofit rapscallions. Irma continued jabbering and suddenly dropped a genuine bomb. She had gone to Munkkiniemi after water aerobics and witnessed a miracle: the plastic had been peeled away from Sunset Grove, and its walls had been painted a cheery yellow. According to Irma, the sight had been almost festive. She claimed to have taken a picture of the freshly painted walls with her flaptop, but Siiri and Anna-Liisa didn’t believe her.
‘Don’t you two know that you can take a picture with nearly any gadget these days? The boy at Stockmann showed me, you just press a button, and click, there’s your photograph. I have five photos of that nice boy from Stockmann somewhere in the depths of my flaptop. I’d forgotten all about the camera until I was standing there, admiring the yellow wall at Sunset Grove, but then my brain shuffled and cut: I remembered it and took the picture. When I went in, I found Tauno amid the chaos; he was the same as ever, hauling that mattress around with his pack on his back, and he told me they might complete the renovation by February. I invited him to Eino’s funeral so he’d have something to look forward to, too.’
‘So only six months behind schedule,’ Anna-Liisa said.
‘Yes, that’s not so bad. My cousin Pentti’s plumbing retrofit in Töölö lasted eighteen months, can you imagine? And he’s like Tauno, a tough old bird who stuck it out in his place for the whole hellish renovation, even though the construction company did everything in its power to chase him out into the streets. They didn’t even give him a handy composting toilet; he had to do his business at libraries, swimming pools and restaurants.’
The lovebirds across the room had fallen silent and were gaping at Siiri’s table, but she and her friends paid no mind. The new completion date had not been announced to the residents of Sunset Grove, Irma was sure, because she’d been keeping an eye on the Sunset Grove website with her flaptop, which she now dug out and set on the table, much to Anna-Liisa’s distress.
‘Irma, we’re eating!’
Irma swept and swiped and suddenly brought up photographs of a freshly painted Sunset Grove. They barely recognized their dear old concrete bunker in all of its new yellow splendour. It looked lovely; the yellow brought it a pleasant lightness, and in one image it looked as if there were more balconies, those glass boxes that were pasted to the outside of old buildings these days. The tablet also contained a couple of pictures of a baffled-looking Irma. She claimed that the flaptop took pictures by itself and from both sides, which made her appearance on the screen understandable, even though the intent had been to photograph Sunset Grove. Irma’s Internet didn’t know when the renovation was supposed to be completed, and so they had to trust Tauno’s intelligence. They did understand that if someone said everything would be finished in February, they should add at least another month, because there was no such thing as a renovation without unpleasant surprises.
They took the number 7 tram home and sat in silence all the way. Siiri was thinking about Hakaniemi and realized she felt wistful. She had grown used to her new neighbourhood and almost preferred Hakaniemi’s bustling, exotic ambience to quiet Munkkiniemi. The thought of moving back to Sunset Grove felt unreal, but also oddly tempting. She was fed up with her status as slave, waiting on the others hand and foot, and her heavy housework; their life in exile was rather grating on her nerves. At Sunset Grove, she would have her privacy and eat when and where she wanted. And listen to music! That was completely missing from her present life. How wonderful it would be to lie in bed and listen to, say, Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony or Schubert’s String Quintet.
Maybe it would be nice to be back in her own home one day – not that Sunset Grove felt like home. So what was it, then?
‘A final repository,’ Irma said.
Chapter 37
The December Thursday that was the day of Eino’s funeral was rainy but warm. It was as dark as the bottom of a bag, of course, because there was no sun, or any snow to reflect the light. Even those who weren’t attending funerals were wearing black, and so the procession of Sunset Grove refugees trudging up Siltasaarenkatu to the church didn’t really stand out. Their gait was slower than that of the overstressed majority of the population, it was true, and they used canes, and their bearing was no longer erect and proud – except
Anna-Liisa’s, who got healthier and more rehabilitated the feebler her husband grew. The Ambassador would not be attending the funeral, but because he had slept soundly the previous night and eaten breakfast in bed, sitting up without any help, Anna-Liisa had dared to leave his side for a couple of hours. Just to be sure, Siiri had asked Muhis and Metukka to come over and clean while they were gone and she’d told them about the Ambassador’s illness. Muhis had promised to keep an eye on Onni and make sure he didn’t die during Anna-Liisa’s absence.
‘It’s just a flu,’ Irma had told Muhis, even though she didn’t really believe it herself. After all, she knew about telomeres and frailty syndrome. In the end, cell division turned against itself, the defence mechanism became an enfeebling operation, and the old person died of some random, harmless infection. But of course the Ambassador’s fever might go down, who knew?
The interior of the Kallio Church was too expansive and lofty for such an intimate affair; the pews could have accommodated a crowd of over a thousand. But Siiri found it beautiful, soothing somehow, and after the imposing entrance and granite exterior its whiteness and brightness did the soul good. Paavo Tynell’s 1930s chandeliers and Hannes Autere’s simple wood-relief altarpiece represented the brand of spare beauty that appealed to Siiri. Anna-Liisa gave a brief lecture on how the residents of the surrounding neighbourhood had served as models for the relief during the 1950s.
A surprisingly large crowd filed in, even though the death notice hadn’t extended a warm welcome to anyone. Margit had listed herself as the sole mourner without a single one of Eino’s children, who, nevertheless, formed quite a herd as they entered the church. Some looked exactly like Eino, two tall boys in particular, and according to Margit, one of them was the older bastard. She had somehow managed to communicate this in a rather soft voice as they stood outside the door, waiting to see if anyone would show up. Now Margit sat bravely in the front row, to the right of the aisle. Siiri, Irma and Anna-Liisa sat a couple of rows back on the left, as they weren’t family. Row upon row of cheerful people of various ages gathered behind Margit, not all of whom knew each other. Irma guessed that the bastards hadn’t been accepted as part of the clan, as she thought they sat a little apart from the others and weren’t smiling as broadly.
The cantor commenced by pedalling a very nice rendition of the Bach chorale ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, which prompted immediate sniffles from the relatives’ pews, even though none of the mourners there had ever been to visit Eino at Sunset Grove, let alone the SquirrelsNest. The power of music was miraculous, especially during ceremonies like theirs, so unfamiliar to so many. But having passed the milestone of ninety, Siiri and her friends had become funeral professionals, seasoned ceremony participants on whom the exoticism of the event had little effect. Even Irma didn’t pull her lace handkerchief out of her little black handbag during Bach’s endless melody, and Margit sat in solitude, still and stately as a statue.
For the hymn, Margit had selected ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’, which was a clever fit for Christmastime. Many knew it only as a Christmas song, even though Siiri had heard it played at funerals dozens of times. She didn’t sing, because the organist took the tune too high, but Irma belted out her soprano blissfully and was, indeed, practically the sole singer, as all that could be heard from Eino’s descendants were murmurs and uncertain groping for the tune. Siiri thought about which hymn she would like played at her own funeral, briefly considered Hilja Haahti’s gorgeous lyrics to ‘Abide with Me, Lord Jesus’, then remembered that she didn’t even belong to the Church, and started seriously wondering whether she ought to rejoin. Burying her would be such a bother for those responsible if they couldn’t fall back on the rituals of the Church.
The young, long-haired female pastor spoke softly but with commendable brevity. During her visit to the Hakaniemi apartment, the pastor, who purported to be a vicar despite being far too young for the task, had been very shy. She had been accompanied by an elderly fellow who looked like he’d seen a thing or two and whom they had mistakenly assumed was the vicar, but the girl had introduced him as the substitute cantor. The young pastor had declined coffee and didn’t bat an eyebrow when Margit told her to just recite the mandatory gibberish. And so today the pastor didn’t start remembering a man she’d never met, as was customary. She simply wished a mournful welcome to all those who had come to bid farewell to Eino Juhani Partanen, prattled a couple of Bible verses, and then moved on to the blessing.
As part of her uncongenial invitation, Margit had forbidden flowers, and so they were spared the ritual where one spoke a few words and laid one’s floral contribution across the casket. Margit had wanted to do away with the closing hymn, too, but the pastor and the cantor had exerted so much pressure that after the blessing Irma was able to trill again, this time the familiar notes of ‘Spirit of Truth’.
In conclusion, the cantor did a masterful job playing Widor’s Toccata, a stumbling block for organists if there ever was one. The representatives from the parish had been somewhat perplexed by Margit’s choice of music, as the Toccata was known as a wedding recessional and in its exuberance was not, in their opinion, fitting for the occasion. But Margit had stuck to her guns, and it had been for the best. The irrepressible Toccata brought a unique ambience to the funeral, and when Siiri thought about everything Margit had reported about the love she and Eino had shared, and looked at the flame-red roses Margit had laid across the coffin in Eino’s memory, and remembered the afternoon squeals that had reverberated in the corridors of Sunset Grove just a year ago, she understood that the only appropriate music for Eino’s funeral was Widor’s Toccata.
Six of Eino’s descendants, apparently grandchildren, marched timidly up to the coffin in time to the music. The coffin looked unusually dignified, and the sight of the young men standing around it moved Siiri to tears, Irma to blast her nose into her lace handkerchief, and Anna-Liisa to rap her cane against the floor, as Irma should have exercised greater restraint at such a delicate moment. The young men glanced at each other, and when the boldest reached for the handle of the casket and placed the carrying straps over his shoulder, the others started searching for their fabric scraps. Carrying a casket was no piece of cake, and these fellows were clearly doing it for the first time. One of them put the strap on incorrectly and almost found himself permanently entangled, until he crumpled it up under his arm and made do with the handle alone. Eventually, the bold boy gave the signal, and they started off at a shuffle, lugging the black coffin of their estranged forefather down the long aisle of the Kallio Church as Widor’s fireworks echoed in the grand, nearly vacant space. The guests trailed behind, with Margit at the fore. Once the casket, after much loud huffing, was safely loaded into the rear of the funeral home’s hearse, its doors were shut, and the vehicle glided along the long allée to Castréninkatu, where it slipped in among the mundane rush-hour traffic. Siiri had to dab at her eyes; there was something quite arresting about the sight. She could make out the red roses from surprisingly far off, right until the vehicle disappeared from view.
‘That’s that,’ Margit said, and she turned towards them with an endearing smile, and Siiri was reminded yet again of how striking Margit must have been as a young woman. No wonder Eino had fallen for her. Eino’s relatives stood off in the distance; some were smoking, and none came over to greet the widow. Irma was outraged by such boorish behaviour, but Siiri and Anna-Liisa managed to calm her enough to keep her from rushing over and giving a piece of her mind to these country bumpkins.
‘No, they’re from Helsinki,’ Margit said, still smiling blissfully. ‘Let’s go. They’ll come if they come.’
And so they walked back down to the Arena building in the gloom, and not a single one of Eino’s grieving descendants followed in the hopes of caramel cake. Irma wanted to know how Margit intended on arranging an estate inventory with such miscreants, and Margit said she’d turned the task over to an attorney recommended by the funeral home.
&
nbsp; ‘You should never use them!’ Anna-Liisa cried. ‘Funeral-home attorneys are . . . they’re vultures and thoroughly untrustworthy, absolutely undistinguished. You should have asked us; Onni makes use of several very capable and highly regarded lawyers.’
‘I’m sure he does,’ Irma let slip. ‘He’d better.’
Anna-Liisa stopped and trained her steely eyes on Irma: ‘What are you implying?’
Irma started rummaging around in her handbag in agitation. When she couldn’t think of what she was supposedly looking for, she pointed at the display window they were standing in front of.
‘Look, what a funny store. They sell clothes for giants.’
‘For big and tall men, and there’s nothing funny about it. What did you mean when you said Onni had better have good lawyers?’
‘Oh, I just blurt out whatever pops into my head. You know that,’ Irma said, managing a rather sincere laugh. ‘I suppose I was thinking about Onni’s property; you’ve said yourself he’s a wealthy man. Do we get to eat everything, now that Eino’s bastards aren’t coming to the feast? This is going to be a fun party! It’s too bad Tauno hasn’t made it. There’s no way I’d have had the energy to earn my cakesies by talking with compete strangers. Oh, I must remember to take a couple of Amaryllie pillies. I have this touch of diabetes, you know.’
They opened their front door to the sight of Muhis and Metukka bustling about. The big rug from the entryway had been carried out to air, along with the Oriental rug from the living room that they never would have been strong enough to budge on their own. Metukka was swaying, shirtless, around the living room with the vacuum cleaner, and Muhis was clattering around in the spa. The sight of her friends cheered Siiri; she reflected that it had been an excellent idea to hire the boys as domestics. It was such fun sitting on a bar stool and watching the two dark-skinned men sing and work. But Margit’s blissful smile had evaporated.
Escape from Sunset Grove Page 30