by Helena Halme
‘Who?’ Sirkka said.
‘Marja, of course. First she takes my stuff, and then wears my jumper in front of me. Can you believe that!’
Sirkka sighed, ‘Well, she’s very tight with money.’
‘And then that comment about Peter and our marriage. Where did she get the idea that I’d left him?’
Sirkka looked out of the window. Kaisa stared at the back of her sister’s head.
‘Sirkka?’
Her sister looked at Kaisa. ‘What should I have told them? You’ve been living with me for over a month. Marja asked me how long you’d been in Helsinki, and I told her, so she must have put one and one together.’
Kaisa examined her sister’s face. Was she lying? But why?
‘You didn’t say anything about me leaving Peter, did you?’
‘No,’ Sirkka exclaimed loudly. The bus stopped at a set of traffic lights. Hearing Sirkka’s raised voice, the driver gave the two young women a cursory glance through the rear-view mirror.
Trying to keep her voice low, Kaisa said, ‘So what did you tell her exactly?’
‘That you’ve been here for over a month. She asked me when are you going back to England and I said I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, Sirkka!’
Her sister straightened herself up in the seat. ‘You wanted me to lie to her?’
Kaisa looked at her sister, but didn’t reply. She was still angry, but she realised how difficult her situation was for Sirkka too.
‘Look, I didn’t know what to say. You know how Marja is, she is so bloody nosy. I was only phoning them to say you were here, since you hadn’t done that yourself. You know Helsinki isn’t such a big place. What would have happened if you’d bumped into one of them in town? I didn’t expect her to give me the third degree on the phone!’ Sirkka looked upset. Her eyes were pleading with Kaisa.
Kaisa took hold of her sister’s hand, and said, ‘Sorry, I’m being a bitch, aren’t I?’
Sirkka squeezed Kaisa’s fingers. ‘No, I know it’s difficult for you, but it’s not easy for me either. The amount of times even people at work ask how long you’re going to stay, what your plans are …’
‘I know, I know. And I will sort myself out, I promise,’ Kaisa said, interrupting her sister. ‘I’m going to phone Mr Heinola tomorrow to see if they’ve got anything for me in the KOP bank. And if he doesn’t have anything, I’ll go around to Stockmann’s. You never know, they might have something for me. Then I can start looking for a flat for myself.’
‘That’s not what I mean. You can stay with me as long as you like,’ Sirkka said, holding Kaisa’s hand as if she was ill.
Kaisa smiled at her sister. ‘I know, you’ve been incredibly kind and patient. It’s time I moved on with my life.’
Fourteen
Kaisa had been in Helsinki for six weeks, and still didn’t have a job. Every day, including Sundays, when Helsingin Sanomat was full of job advertisements, she’d look through the pages and think about applying for something. Despite her promise to Sirkka, another week had passed without her plucking up the courage to phone Mr Heinola at the bank. She kept putting it off, thinking she shouldn’t appear too keen. But none of the jobs advertised in the paper seemed right for her either. On a Sunday in late March, when the snow had all but melted from the little patch of grass at the edge of the block of flats, Kaisa was sitting alone in the kitchen, nursing a hot cup of coffee. When the announcement caught her eye, she dropped her cup on the floor. Absentmindedly, as if it was happening to someone else, she saw the black-brown liquid spread in mid-air then fall to the tiled floor, followed by the shards of the broken china cup. She felt the coffee burn her toes and the lower part of her right calf, and yet she was numb; her senses seemed to be suspended.
* * *
Beloved
Matti Johannes Rinne
B 10.02.1953
D 20.03.1985
Taken away from us too soon.
Service and burial 27 March 1985
at Hietaniemi Chapel.
* * *
Sirkka rushed into the kitchen, her short blonde hair standing up, and her eyes large and wide.
‘What are you doing?’
Kaisa looked at her sister but she seemed to have lost the ability to speak. She was still holding the newspaper in her hands, open on the first page, where the death notices were prominently displayed. What had made her look at them, she wondered? She felt as if she wasn’t really in the room. Even her sister’s dishevelled form, with her dressing gown open and her hair looking as though she was in a wind tunnel, seemed to be far away. She moved her eyes back to the notice, and with great difficulty, because her limbs seemed to have lost their ability to move, lifted one heavy hand and pointed at Matti’s name.
‘Oh, my God,’ Sirkka said. She put her arm around Kaisa, and gently took the paper from Kaisa’s hands to reread the notice.
Kaisa looked down at the floor. Seeing the mess of the broken coffee cup, she thought she ought to get up and clear it away. She tried to move, but couldn’t. Instead she felt something wet on her cheeks, and realised she was making muffled noises.
‘Oh, Kaisa, I’m so sorry.’ Sirkka pulled Kaisa towards her and suddenly Kaisa felt a piercing pain reach inside her chest. She leaned against her sister’s shoulder, trying to breathe, so that the pressure would go away. Sirkka rocked her back and forth, making soothing sounds, but nothing, nothing stopped her sensation of being suffocated.
* * *
‘I’m coming with you,’ Sirkka said.
‘Really?’ Kaisa glanced at her sister. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen wearing a pair of black trousers and a black shirt. ‘I thought you were at work today.’
‘I’ve taken the day off.’ Sirkka stepped inside the kitchen and put a hand on Kaisa’s shoulder. ‘I don’t think you should go on your own. You never know what that mad old cow will get up to.’
‘Please, Sirkka, don’t say that. She’s just lost her only son.’ Kaisa bit the inside of her cheeks and took a slow breath in and out. She didn’t want to start crying again.
It was two days after Kaisa had found out about Matti’s death. After crying for so long that she no longer could, she’d decided she would be brave and phone Matti’s mother. She remembered their last conversation vividly. Mrs Rinne had accused her of being a common whore because she had left her son and fallen in love with the Englishman. Kaisa had been upset at the time, but now she understood. Kaisa had broken a promise made to her son and Mrs Rinne had only been protecting him. Besides, none of that mattered now. But instead of Mrs Rinne, the telephone had been answered by a young-sounding girl.
‘Just a moment,’ she’d said and then Kaisa recognised the voice of Aunt Bea, Mrs Rinne’s sister.
‘Ah, Kaisa,’ she’d said and her voice had sounded deep, and serious, but normal under the circumstances.
After Kaisa had expressed her condolences, Aunt Bea told Kaisa that Matti had been killed in a hunting accident. She said that Mrs Rinne wasn’t taking any calls.
‘Of course,’ Kaisa had replied.
‘Are you coming to the funeral?’ she had then asked, taking Kaisa by surprise. ‘Yes, of course I am,’ Kaisa said.
Now, getting ready, she was regretting her rash promise.
‘Thank you,’ she said to her sister and hugged her. ‘I thought I’d be OK to go on my own, but I don’t think I am.’
The day of Matti’s funeral was bitterly cold, but sunny. Sirkka and Kaisa walked slowly inside the walls of Hietaniemi cemetery, where bare trees flanked the paths between the headstones. The ground under their feet was sanded, but it was hard and Kaisa could still spot traces of snow here and there in front of the headstones. Some of the graves either side of the main thoroughfare leading up to a chapel were large, important-looking plots, separated from the others by chains. Some had just a small stone at the head of the plot. They passed a beautiful statue of an angel, set on a tall plinth, and Kaisa glanced away, trying to
keep her mind on getting through the day. Against another large headstone, there was a statue of a mother and a child. The child had her head on the mother’s lap, while the mother caressed the child’s head. Kaisa swallowed hard; she must control herself and not cry. She took a handkerchief out of the pocket of a black overcoat her mother had lent her, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes.
‘Are you OK,’ Sirkka whispered, and squeezed Kaisa’s arm.
She nodded. When they approached the pale yellow chapel built on a small hill, they saw a group of people, all dressed in black talking in hushed tones, outside the large wooden doors. Kaisa took hold of Sirkka’s arm, and as they got closer she saw there was a woman with white hair, looking frail, but wearing bright pink lipstick, in the middle of the group. She was sitting in a wheelchair. Kaisa looked at Sirkka and said, ‘I have to go and say hello.’
Sirkka nodded and let go of her sister. She remained still, standing a little away from the group, while Kaisa moved forward. She recognised Matti’s Aunt Bea straight away, but she didn’t know any of the other mourners standing around Mrs Rinne. She nodded to Bea, and went up to Mrs Rinne. She’d decided to just say, ‘My condolences,’ and then step back and wait for Sirkka to accompany her inside the chapel. But when she got up to the wheelchair, Mrs Rinne lifted her eyes towards Kaisa.
‘You!’ she said. Her eyes were dark and surprisingly clear.
Kaisa took her gloves off and reached out her hand: ‘My condolences.’
Mrs Rinne took Kaisa’s hand. Her bare fingers felt fragile; thin and bony. Kaisa squeezed her hand gently, and then went to pull away, but Mrs Rinne, her dark eyes boring into Kaisa, kept a firm grip on her. The old woman’s nails dug into Kaisa’s hand, hurting her. Kaisa tried to pull away again, but in vain.
‘You bitch,’ Mrs Rinne said under her breath and pushed her nails deeper into Kaisa’s flesh. Then, as suddenly as she’d set her eyes on Kaisa, she let go of her hand, and turned her dark gaze away from her.
A young girl with long, straw-blonde hair took hold of the wheelchair. Whispering something to Mrs Rinne while glancing disapprovingly at Kaisa, she pushed her into the chapel. The rest of the mourners, without so much as a look in Kaisa’s direction, followed Mrs Rinne and the girl inside.
Sirkka appeared at Kaisa’s side.
‘Are we going in?’ she said, looking at Kaisa’s face.
‘Yes, we must.’ Kaisa replied. As they walked into the dark and cold interior of the church, Kaisa glanced down at her hand. Mrs Rinne had drawn blood from her palm.
* * *
Inside, the chapel was half full. Kaisa followed Sirkka, who chose an empty pew at the back. Kaisa was glad. They were two rows behind the others mourners, so if she needed to cry, she could do so unnoticed. The service was short; only three hymns, and apart from the pastor only the young girl with blonde hair spoke. To Kaisa, she didn’t look any older than sixteen, and until she began reading from the single sheet, her small, thin hands trembling, and her hair covering half her face, Kaisa had no idea who she was. She presumed it was one of Matti’s cousins, one of Aunt Bea’s daughters.
‘I wanted to say a few words,’ the girl began.
Before continuing, she lifted her head and looked straight at Kaisa. Her pale blue eyes had such coldness in them that Kaisa forgot the burning sensation in her right palm. Kaisa quickly lowered her eyes. It had been a mistake to come to the funeral.
‘Matti and I were engaged to be married,’ the girl said.
Kaisa lifted her head and stared at the girl. So Matti hadn’t been lying; he had found someone else. Another young woman to control. Involuntarily, Kaisa’s hands formed into fists, but she winced when she noticed the pain in her right palm.
While the girl spoke, saying how little time they’d had together, and how Matti had ‘been taken away far too soon’, Sirkka held firmly onto Kaisa’s left hand. Kaisa wanted to get up and tell the girl how wrong this was, how a 32-year-old man, tragically dead or not, shouldn’t be engaged to a 16-year-old girl. But as the blonde girl stepped down from the pew and sat next to Mrs Rinne, Kaisa thought it really didn’t matter any more. Matti was gone, gone with the help of his own gun. The guns, which Kaisa had always felt uneasy about, and even afraid of, had been his own undoing in the end. For the umpteenth time Kaisa wondered how he could have accidentally shot himself. After Kaisa had got over the initial shock of his death, she had stayed awake wondering how it had happened. Of course, there was no one she could ask, and really, it had nothing to do with her.
Still, the night before, Kaisa had had the awful realisation that Matti had deliberately shot himself. That he’d committed suicide and that it was Kaisa’s sudden appearance in Helsinki that was the reason. Or the confrontation about the negatives, about their relationship and how she’d been only 15 when he’d seduced her. Had he believed her when she threatened him with the police? In the morning, getting ready for the funeral, she’d chided herself for being too melodramatic, for imagining she was the centre of everyone’s universe. After all, Matti and Kaisa had met just twice since she’d returned to Helsinki, and to Kaisa her old fiancé had seemed perfectly happy, perfectly normal, perfectly himself. Kaisa wanting some old photographs back couldn’t have upset him that much, could it? She’d decided not to breathe a word of her mad theory to anyone, not Sirkka, not her mother, not even Tuuli.
And now? With all that hostility shown to her by Matti’s new girlfriend, and Matti’s mother? Kaisa shook her head, and whispered to Sirkka, ‘I can’t go to the grave.’
Sirkka nodded and when the pallbearers had taken the coffin out of the chapel, followed by the family, with Mrs Rinne, Aunt Bea and the girl in the lead, Sirkka and Kaisa, the last to leave the church, walked in the opposite direction to the other mourners. Passing the beautiful headstones, they walked quickly out of the cemetery, towards the tram stop.
‘Wait, Kaisa!’
Kaisa and Sirkka stopped when they saw a woman, heavily pregnant and wearing a black fur hat and a short swing coat, running towards them.
As the figure moved closer, Kaisa saw who it was. ‘Vappu?’ she said.
The woman was out of breath when she reached them. Kaisa supported her arm with her hand, ‘Are you OK?’
‘Yes,’ Vappu said between pants, ‘I just didn’t want to miss you! I thought I saw you come into the church but only knew for sure it was you just now.’
Kaisa regarded her old friend for a while, ‘Congratulations!’
Vappu smiled up at Kaisa, ‘Thank you.’ Then her eyes moved back toward the slow-moving cortège on the other side of the church. ‘I have to go, but ring me. I want to see you before you disappear again.’
Vappu pressed a piece of paper firmly into Kaisa’s palm, ‘Promise to call me.’ Vappu’s pale blue eyes were serious, and although the pressure of the hand made Kaisa wince, she closed her fingers around the piece of paper and nodded, ‘I promise.’
Vappu turned on her heels. Not looking back, she began walking at a fast pace towards the far end of the cemetery.
‘What was that all about?’ Sirkka asked as they began making their way toward the tram stop again.
‘Don’t you remember my old friend from Lauttasaari?’ Kaisa said. ‘I didn’t think she’d be at the funeral, but of course she would. It was at her family home that I first met Matti.’
‘Of course. I’d forgotten all about that.’
Both Sirkka and Kaisa were quiet as they walked along the hard sanded path towards the entrance of the cemetery. Kaisa was thinking back to when she was 14, and a new girl at Lauttasaari school. She’d made friends with Vappu on her first day and had spent more time in her large house than she did at home.
‘What really happened to him?’ Sirkka said once they were sitting inside the tram and moving north towards Linnankoskenkatu.
Kaisa shook her head. She was too upset to speak. The tears that she’d managed to hold back inside the chapel, were now flowing freely.
‘Oh Kaisa,�
�� Sirkka said and put her arm around her sister’s shoulders.
Fifteen
For nearly two weeks after the funeral Kaisa hardly went out. She saw Tuuli for lunch at Stockmann’s but refused to go on a night out. She wore black, or dark clothes, as if she was in mourning for a close relative. Sirkka didn’t comment on her outfits, neither did her mother, even though Kaisa could see they both glanced at her black jeans and T-shirt, when, two Sundays after the funeral, they sat down for a traditional Easter lunch in Pirjo’s smartly decorated flat.
‘They have no right to be angry with you,’ Pirjo said and patted Kaisa’s arm.
Kaisa fought tears; she’d done so much crying, not knowing for whom or for what.
‘I know,’ she said. In her mind, she was aware that she wasn’t to blame for Matti’s death. And she knew how impulsive and vindictive Matti’s mother could be. Besides, Mrs Rinne had looked ill, and losing an only son must be completely devastating. Whether she deserved her wrath or not, Kaisa didn’t blame Mrs Rinne for any of her feelings of hostility, or her actions. Instead, Matti’s death, and the awful funeral with the young girl in tears and Mrs Rinne scratching Kaisa’s hand, had made her realise how much damage she had inflicted on the people around her. In a way, she was mourning her own life so far.
Even before the funeral, she’d felt helpless and insignificant after Scotland, her failed marriage, and her infidelity. Now that Peter had found a new life without her, and Matti had gone, Kaisa thought she might as well be dead herself.
This was partly why she hadn’t phoned Vappu even though she had promised. The crumpled piece of paper was still in her handbag, where she had placed it after the funeral. How could she see her old friend, whom she had more or less abandoned after she’d got together with Matti? Besides, Kaisa couldn’t even remember when she’d last seen Vappu before the funeral. Seeing her open face, the same vibrancy in her pale blue eyes that she remembered from their school days, had made her long to talk to Vappu, but what would she say? How would she be able to explain why she was back in Finland? Kaisa assumed Vappu had heard all about her affair with the Englishman from Matti, or from her brother Petteri, whose best friend Matti had been. Kaisa wondered if the whole family had been at the funeral and seen her skulk away. How ashamed of her behaviour she now was! She should have faced up to them all, and gone to the graveside to do her duty as Matti’s long-term girlfriend and former fiancé. Suddenly she felt a great urgency to leave Helsinki again. There were too many skeletons here.