“Different regimes,” she says hesitantly, “all over the world really.”
“A waste of stamps,” I say.
“I’m sorry, really,” Jorma says, lighting up his pipe for support, “but I can’t agree with you. Amnesty has a fine record — we won the Nobel Peace Prize, you know. We are simply —”
“Kidding yourselves. You can’t change the world.”
Jorma shakes out his match. “We can try.”
“It won’t do any good. Writing letters? Come on, man, use your head. You’re being laughed at.”
Jorma eyes Kristiina for further support. “We believe we are taken very seriously. I can show you the statistics —”
“I can show you statistics, too, fellow.”
I leave it at that, standing up and walking through the smoke and away from Kristiina’s uncertain call. I do not even turn. A hundred-Finnmark bill tossed at the bar, my coat lifted from the rack and I vanish into the night, leaving them to wonder how they can best deal with the island known as Batterinski.
Let them write. Let them see firsthand how useless it is to fool yourself like that. Imagine, believing their idiotic letters mean a fucking thing to someone like Idi Amin or the Russian pigs. The fools.
Outside, during the long walk back to the hotel, I imagine my letter to Tiger Williams:
Dear Tiger,
It was brought to my attention the last time we played that you don’t like me. Seven stitches and a fat lip, thanks to your repressive activities. This has got to stop, Tiger. I don’t care whether you’re right wing or left wing, I’m telling you right now that the Philadelphia Flyers will no longer tolerate this treatment. Putting Batterinski in the slammer solves nothing, surely you can appreciate that. Batterinski is merely expressing his right to play, his freedom to check as his conscience tells him. You’re not fooling anyone when you blab in your hometown press that Batterinski sharpens his butt end or kneed you in the face. Search yourself, Tiger. See that there is more to this life than cheap shots.
Someone else will be writing to you in Pig Latin in case plain English isn’t your first language.
Yours in hockey,
F. Batterinski
She wants to talk.
How many times have I been through this same idiocy? She wants to talk. Talk, in all the years of Batterinski’s experience, has yet to solve a single goddamn thing. Talk I can do without.
But she wants to talk. She says we have to talk.
Why can’t people just screw until they solve things?
It is Sunday and I am no longer Batterinski, I am Christ, walking on water. We are approaching Helsinki from the sea, walking; fortunately, the harbour has frozen solid. When I breathe in too fast my nostrils solder together and my lungs cringe. I love it.
The walk, that is, not the talk. We met at the market, walked up through the Kaivopuisto hills and down onto the ice off the island fortress, then on toward the harbour. The conversation seems to have raced ahead of us, all sorts of meaningless talk of Tsar Nicholas and hot baths and armed Russians at the city gates, but I have not even bothered to chase it. My mind is caught between leather and wool, aware only of the life in the small mitt I hold in my glove. Kristiina has a ski jacket so white she stands out startlingly even in the new snow. She has her Lapland toque on, reds and yellows like an electrical circuit, and carries a birch sucker with yellow and pink dyed ostrich plumes dancing from the tip, a purchase she forced on me in the market.
The mitten loosens in my hand. It is time, obviously. She pulls it free and pretends to adjust the ostrich plumes, an unnecessary act for the plumes but necessary for her tactic. She steps away just enough.
“I think you did not have any reason to embarrass me in front of one of my friends,” she says at a reasonable level.
“I thought I was your friend,” I say unreasonably.
“Jorma was very good about it I thought,” she says. “He behaved admirably where you did not. Why did you just jump up and leave?”
“I had a practice next morning.”
“You could have said good night.”
“I forgot.”
Her mouth curls into a frown. “He is a good friend of mine and I would appreciate you treating him this way. Do you understand?”
“How good a friend?”
“A good friend. Why — are you jealous?” She smiles.
“Should I be?”
“No. You should not be. My friends are my choice, not yours.”
“Ever sleep with him?”
She stops, turns. “What?”
“Did you ever sleep with him?”
“Why would you ask something like that?”
“I want to know.”
“It is not for you to know, I think.”
“So — then you have.”
“I did not say that. What if I have, as you say, ‘slept’ with him? What difference does that make?”
“A big difference.”
“What difference, please?”
If she were only in hockey uniform I would hit. But I am helpless here. Talk — always goddamn talk. She should know the difference without having to ask. She should feel the same things as me.
“Please, Bats, what difference would it make?” she laughs, but not with amusement. “You don’t own me, you know.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Well, then, what, do you mean? If I cannot have the friends I choose and I cannot make love to whom I choose, what are you doing then but possessing me?”
I feel a turn, in my favour: “That’s the point — I want you.”
She laughs: “You have had me.”
“But I want you for myself. Just the two of us.”
“You want to own me.”
“No. I want you to feel the same way I do. Just me for you and just you for me.”
“Isn’t that what they call ‘going steady’ in your country?” Again, the laugh.
“We’re a little old for that,” I say with heavy sarcasm.
“Then you want marriage,” she says.
I say nothing. I cannot say anything.
She picks up on it, giggling. “You do want that!”
I feel like I am in a movie, the lines beyond my control. “I care a great deal for you, Kristiina, you know that.”
Laugh. “How much?”
“Lots.”
“Well, how much is lots?”
I am being played with here. I feel almost giddy with finally talking about it. Again, it is like a movie, the two lovers oblivious to the world going on around them. But I am not. The harbour is the reverse of summer: no white sails wedging through the colours, but colours cutting everywhere through the white. Skiers are passing us. A young family has a youngster on a toboggan, the rope around his waist and the second rope trailing from the toboggan to a ribbed sled, where a baby sleeps.
“I love you!” I shout. I imagine everyone coming to a dead halt, applauding while the young lovers fall into each other’s arms, but they merely look at me as if I’m mad and the father of the children says something in Finnish to his wife, making her laugh.
Kristiina is also laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“They do not understand what it is you have said. He told her he thought you were calling for help. He believed the ice was breaking.”
“To hell with them! I — love — you!!!”
God, it feels good to shout this. Kristiina dips down for some snow, pushes it into my face and walks away laughing. I hurry to catch her and my feet slip in the glaze of the ski track. When I catch her is as much for support as explanation, but when I get my balance I see she is still only amused, not moved.
“What do you feel about me?” I ask. I hate to beg but am forced: again, talk has set my own ambush. It is too late to act as I should have, by shutting up. The solution is talk, but the problem is also talk. I have yet to learn that the only reliable answer is not to begin.
Kristiina leans forward and ki
sses my cheek. Her lips are cold, making me suddenly aware of how much blood has flooded my face.
“I care for you very much, Bats,” she says.
“But you don’t love me?”
“I’m thirty-two years old. I’m not sure what love is.”
For Christ’s sake — we’re starting to sound like a movie again. “Well, I’m sure,” I say. “I love you and that’s that.”
“How do you know?”
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus — what the fuck is going on here. What did Ali McGraw say to Ryan O’Neal? Why didn’t I pay attention then?
“I don’t know,” I say, trying to sound philosophical, as if I’ve given it a lot of thought. “It’s just something you feel inside. You know it’s there.”
“Then I must not feel it,” she says, turning away, “because I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to feel.”
Talk! Goddamn piss-cutting shit asshole talk! If they want to play with me let them put on skates! Batterinski was not made to talk but to act! Don’t they see that? Do I have to beat her head against the ice to get my point across?
I stomp away, moving faster so she must run to catch up. I hear her slip and fall but do not turn to help; nor, however, do I take the advantage. I slow down near the summer ferry docks and let her catch me. She grabs my arm from behind and pulls back, shouting:
“Bats! What is wrong with you?”
I turn and simply stare, making my first point properly, wordlessly.
“I have hurt you, yes?” she says.
I say nothing, saying everything.
“But I do like you, very much. Please understand that.”
I cannot do as I should; I talk: “Why?”
“I like being with you.”
“Why?” I repeat.
“You’re fun.”
“Amusing, you mean.”
“Fun.”
“You laugh at me.”
“Of course not.”
“You think it’s a great joke being around the Canadian animal, don’t you?”
“Don’t be silly, Bats.”
“I’m not being silly. Look at you. You’re a goddamn architect. I’m a washed-up player who hasn’t got enough schooling to pump gas. You have all these highbrow friends like that Jorma asshole and you sit around and write your fucking letters to this International thing, whatever it’s called, and I wouldn’t even know what postage to put on, let alone what to say. We don’t talk. We just screw. When we do talk we just get worse off. So what is it, eh? What?”
“You’re different.”
“Different — well, that’s just fine. Like something from the zoo, is that it?” I feel anger akin to hockey anger rising and it frightens me. Her I must not hit, no matter what. But is that what it is? I’m different — like something she might collect. Is that all that attracts her: surely to God....
“No, silly. Different in a nice way. The men I know here in Helsinki are all so predictable. Like Jorma. There are no surprises in him. I know what he thinks, what he will say, I know what books he reads, where he has been, even precisely when he will start rooting around in that foolish pipe he smokes. You should not worry about Jorma — he’s nothing to me. But you mean a great deal. I care very much for you, Batterinski.”
A reprieve! I have never come so far in such a conversation and saved anything. I look down at her and there are tears in her eyes, clear beads hanging but not dropping from the blue; her pupils are as smalls and stabbing as pins, and they have caught me completely.
She sees what I am looking at.
“The wind,” she says, brushing the tears away with her mitt.
I say nothing. This I cannot destroy with more words. I take her mitt and we walk away, back toward the hotel. I feel her hand in mine, no longer accepting but taking, and the tightening grip feels as fine as any victory I have ever known. I must hang on to it with silence.
“Are you still mad at me?” she asks in a small voice, as we board the tram for the ride back.
I shake my head, no, and she misinterprets my silence to mean I am in fact still angry. And perhaps she is right. Not angry, but hurt by the fact that I have fully committed myself while she has not. A cardinal sin in hockey and, I fear, as bad or worse in love.
We arrive back at the Inter-Continental with me still silent, talking only through the pressure of my fingers. There is a message shoved in under the door for me to call some radio show called “As It Happens” back in Toronto, and I immediately crumple it and throw it in the waste can. Let them get someone else to tell the world how a crooked agent can dupe dumb hockey players.
I go into the bathroom for no more than a minute and when I come out Kristiina is lying on the bed, naked. There is something pathetic about all of this, but I cannot help myself: my sulk has become a magic wand. I do not smile or even speak. I lie down on the bed with my hands behind my head and stare at the ceiling while lovely Kristiina unbuttons my shirt and then my belt and pulls down my zipper. It is like I have become separated from my own body, my head lying there sad, feeling sorry for itself, sulking, while below my body leaps up like a volunteering soldier, a keener. My assignment, sir? Yes sir! Right away, sir!
There is something sick about this. Only Batterinski could lie in bed with a naked, incredibly, exquisitely beautiful Scandinavian blonde and still feel like the most hard-done-by creature on God’s earth.
But so be it. I have never before had all things working in synch, so why now?
I can’t be that stupid. Anyway, I know that I think on a higher level than most hockey players simply because I can prove I have had some thoughts. Even one would put you in hockey’s Mensa, Torchy used to say. I was much too hard on myself out there on the harbour ice. Besides, by dawn when she got up to head back to her apartment to get ready for work, we were carrying on as always, as if there had been neither hurt nor healing, as if there was nothing but what had always been: pure raw passion.
The phone is ringing. The line is distant, crackling, the voice slightly echoed.
“Felix Batterinski, please.”
“Yes, speaking.”
“Mr. Batterinski — is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Could you speak up, please?”
“It is me, yes.”
“Good, great. My name is Matt Keening, Mr. Batterinski. I’m with the Canada Magazine.”
“A reporter?” Not bad news, please.
“I’m sports editor.” The connection fades, then clicks into a higher range. “… the magazine insert, you know, the one that comes out with the papers. We’ve got the largest circulation in Canada.”
“Oh, yeah. What’s up?”
“I guess you know your picture turned up over here.”
“No. What picture?”
A giggle. “You and the Swedish fan.”
“Oh, no — how?”
“Reuters picked it up. The Globe ran it front page — with an editorial. I won’t read that to you. Montreal had it. Ottawa. Others probably. It’s big talk over here. ‘As It Happens’ did a number on you last night. They said they were going to get you on but never did. Harold Ballard was the only guy who defended you —”
“Ballard? Good on him. The Swede spit first, you know. Anybody report that?”
“No. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Nobody got your side of the story.”
“Well, tell them that, then. The Swede spit first. It was self-defence.”
“And put the score in too. We won 6–5; they had us 3–0 at the end of the first.”
“Much more than that too. I think there’s a much larger story here. We’re talking at Canada Magazine about a full cover takeout, with you having your full say inside. The works, eh?”
“He spit first. I spit back. That’s all there is to it.”
“But people don’t see it that simply. They can’t see it the way it was. You’ve become a symbol overnight for what’s wrong with Canadian hockey. Some New Democrat even tried to push a motion of
censure through Parliament, did you know that?”
“Did he?”
“It got shouted down. But you were debated in Question Period. It’s a bit unfair, I’d say, you not having a chance to explain —”
“You’re goddamn right it’s unfair!”
“That’s why I think we should do something about it. We’re the best forum, by far.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“A full-length article. We take the picture and all the crap it’s raised and then I do a full-length sympathetic treatment of just who Felix Batterinski is and what he’s about and by the time I’m done they’ll be standing up in Parliament to award you the Order of Canada, mark my words. Now what do you say?”
“To what?”
“Me getting together with you.”
“How?”
“I’ll come over. Hang in with you. You know, do it right.”
“It costs a fortune.”
“Don’t sweat it. Magazine pays. We’ll have a few top meals. Expenses, eh? I’d even like to take in a road trip.”
I recoil instinctively. “I don’t know.”
“Listen, Bats, I’m a fan. You gotta have your say or they’ll lynch you, you understand?”
“Yeah, well. I still don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t regret it. I promise you that. You set the ground rules. I come when you say, listen when you say, get lost when you say. You want to go off the record, that’s fine, anything — it’s your show.”
“Well. I can’t say right now.”
“Take a couple of days. Think it over. I’ll call back on, say, Wednesday, okay?”
“I guess.”
“Good. Remember, this is your chance to stick those bastards back, eh? It’s perfect.”
“Ummm.”
“Okay, Bats. I’ll call Wednesday. Take care now.”
“Yeah.”
There is a letter from Poppa at the front desk, a letter so thick they couldn’t fit it in my slot. I take it, pleased he has written before hearing about the spitting incident. Most of Pomerania would be proud; Poppa, I know without asking, would be disgusted. Perhaps I should let this guy do the story on me, for Poppa’s sake.
January 5, 1982
The Last Season Page 22