The Summer House

by Philip Teir

  He was a good father and a good husband.

  He was optimistic and happy.

  He still had his best years ahead of him.

  He was in good physical shape.

  He was happy.

  He was good at his job.

  No one was better at his job.

  He wondered if there was anyone he could call, someone on his phone list who might be helpful. The more he thought about this, the clearer it became that he was going to have to ring Martin.

  He’d thought about doing that many times over the years. Martin owed him, and in spite of everything, they had a shared history. But until now there had never been any reason for Erik to get in touch with him.

  He stood up with the water lapping at his shoes. The light from his phone lit up the room. He pulled up Martin’s name and considered calling him, but then he stuck the phone back in his pocket.

  Julia drove him to the train station. Erik had managed to avoid Anders, which wasn’t that difficult. Anders had apparently moved in with Kati, and there was nothing Erik could do about it. As far as he could recall, his brother had never had a relationship that lasted long enough for his family to know about it. Anders had spent a year at the community college after finishing secondary school, then studied philosophy and something equally vague at the university in Helsinki. But if Erik were to be completely honest, he’d never been especially interested in what Anders did.

  For a few years when they were kids, Erik and Anders had been best friends. Erik thought back to one of the family trips to Spain. He was ten, Anders was eight. He pictured Anders holding a lizard in his hand. Anders high up on a boulder. Anders spending hours out in the water with a snorkel. Their paternal grandparents were there too. Grandma floating in the sea in the daytime, or at least that’s how Erik remembered her – floating easily because it was saltwater. He pictured the gold chain around Grandpa’s tanned neck, his shirt unbuttoned. He recalled the calamari and ketchup – Erik and Anders ate the same thing every night.

  They stayed in two flats: his family in one, his grandparents in the other. And even though Anders was younger, he used to climb over the balconies between the two flats, completely unafraid, until one day the hotel owner saw him. The man stood on the ground below and shook his fist as he shouted. From then on they all called him the ‘no-more-balcony-climbing man.’ When their grandfather heard about it, he flew at Anders in a rage, chasing him down the hotel corridor while Erik stood outside their door, terrified. The gold chain clinked when Grandpa took off after Anders, but Erik couldn’t see even a trace of fear in his brother’s eyes. All he saw was a glint of awe at the sequence of events he’d caused. Erik, on the other hand, was so scared that he rushed to the door of their flat, and when he tried to open it, he turned the key so fast that it broke off in the lock. He almost pissed himself. The fact that he’d broken the key was suddenly much worse than climbing from one balcony to the other, and his grandfather grabbed Erik by the ear – at least this was how he remembered it – and dragged him out of the hotel down to the pool where the others were sitting. It hurt terribly, and the pain in his ear lasted for several days afterwards.

  The family directed their fury at Erik for the rest of the day. Anders gave him a nod and said ‘thanks’ when they were having dinner in the hotel restaurant, eating calamari of course.

  Erik thought about all this as he sat in the train drinking the beer he had ordered. Anders had never had any sense of responsibility; he’d always taken the world for granted, always treated life as a joke.

  Erik got out his mobile and rang Martin. A female voice told him the phone number was no longer in use. He opened his laptop and looked through his email until he found Martin’s name. He typed a few lines and hoped for the best.

  4

  ALICE AND LEO HAD agreed to meet in the woods that morning, in the same place where they’d found the dead moose. They’d decided it was now their place, filled with a mystique and significance that only they understood.

  Neither of them had slept the previous night, since they’d spent the whole time chatting online. Leo wrote that his parents had changed their minds. They no longer wanted to stay in Mjölkviken, as they’d initially planned. He wrote in a mixture of English and Swedish, exactly the way so many of Alice’s friends did. And even though they didn’t write about anything important, just sent each other various gifs and YouTube videos, Alice felt close to Leo, as if they were communicating in the same language, with the same humour and the same sarcasm. It was Leo who finally made the suggestion:

  Leo: Have you thought about something

  Alice: What

  Leo: That we could meet instead of lying here with our phones

  Alice: True

  Alice: Where should we meet?

  Leo: The moose?

  Alice: Do you remember where it was?

  Leo: Yup

  Alice: Now?

  Leo: Ten minutes

  Alice: OK

  It started to rain after Alice left. It was so quiet in the woods she could hear the first raindrops falling; it felt as if the trees were coming to life all around her.

  She had to wait a while for Leo. She sought shelter under a spruce, sitting on the warm moss and leaning against the tree trunk. Soon the rain surrounded her like a symphony. It was still hot, with a low pressure system. Heat rose from the ground, steam issuing from the moss.

  Alice wasn’t stupid. She was well aware that this whole situation was temporary, that she should be grateful that the summer had provided her something that would make her stand out. She and Leo might have very little contact with each other when their schools began, and gradually they would lose even that contact. That was just fine.

  Yet, as she waited for him, it felt like there was something more to this. Something in the air, as if she were catching a glimpse of how it might feel to be in love for real, to be happy to see someone.

  And there he was, walking towards her in the rain, wearing rubber boots and a raincoat. She felt her cheeks tighten as she gave him her biggest smile.

  ‘Hi,’ he said.

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. You just look so cute.’

  Leo rolled his eyes and sat down.

  ‘Cosy place you’ve found here,’ he said.

  ‘I know. Right?’ said Alice, smiling. She was bubbling over inside.

  ‘Do you remember when you were little playing hide-and-seek and you always had your own special place that nobody else knew about?’

  ‘I don’t know. We never played hide-and-seek in Helsinki. Maybe once at school.’

  Leo laughed. ‘You’ve never played hide-and-seek?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Well, then you’ve missed out on a lot. Want to play now?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘You can hide first.’

  ‘For real?’ asked Alice.

  ‘It might be fun.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, then I’ll hide. You have to count to a hundred.’

  Leo stood up before Alice could object. She stayed seated under the spruce, half-heartedly closing her eyes since she wasn’t sure whether Leo was serious. She didn’t want to start counting and then feel stupid when he said he was just kidding.

  But she heard him moving further away, with twigs snapping under his feet. Alice sat there in the rain, staring straight ahead. She felt as though she was in a movie, as if the rain were leaving scratches on an old type of film because it was falling so evenly. She thought about something she’d read in school, that the ground water was formed when water seeps into the ground, that it takes place so slowly that all bacteria and pollutants were filtered out, and that’s why it was possible to drink it. The water could be close to a thousand years old. Somehow that seemed so wonderful. She was thirsty just thinking about it. She leaned forward from under the spruce and stuck out her tongue. The rain tasted so good.


  She was all alone in the woods now. Leo was no longer anywhere in sight. She was suddenly aware of her solitude, and it felt a bit eerie. She stood up to see where he might have gone, guessing he would have headed towards the sea, so she followed the path that led down to the road.

  She walked ten metres or so but then hesitated. Could he really have gone this far? It seemed like a silly game, and she could see why she’d never played hide-and-seek before. She couldn’t see him anywhere, nor was there any place he could be hiding. The pines were set far apart and quite slender, so he couldn’t hide behind them. She went over to a small boulder and peeked behind it, but he wasn’t there. She paused and leaned against the rocks as she got out her mobile to check for coverage.

  She had only a little battery left.

  Alice: This is a stupid game

  Leo didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to have noticed her text. She sat down on the rock and began using up the rest of her battery surfing on the internet.

  ‘Leo?’ she called timidly.

  ‘Leo!’ she shouted.

  She considered going back home. If Leo thought this was fun, he could stay out here and have fun by himself. She wasn’t interested.

  All of a sudden a text appeared on her mobile.

  Leo: Look behind you

  Alice turned around. There he stood, his golden hair completely soaked, with a big smile on his face and a black cloth bag in his hand. She read what it said on the bag: FEMINIST.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Leo. ‘It was supposed to be a surprise. I ran home to fetch some breakfast for us. I thought we could find a good place to sit. You don’t have to go home, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Alice. She didn’t need to go home.

  They went to the root cellar by the tennis courts and ate their food in the light of the bare bulb. It didn’t matter that the cellar was damp and smelled of mould, it was still romantic. Afterwards, they kissed for a long time. Alice had never felt anything like this before. She’d never done any serious kissing. Now she ran the tip of her tongue over his lips and tasted him.

  He wanted her to touch him down there, so she did, but she didn’t want him to do the same thing to her; it felt too private. Yet she felt safe with him, as if there was nothing to worry about. He asked if he could touch her breasts, and she let him do that. She wanted him to, it felt good, it tickled when his fingertips touched her nipples.

  Afterwards Leo told her that he thought his family would be leaving soon.

  ‘Already? But the summer isn’t over yet. We still have several weeks left,’ said Alice.

  ‘It’s always like this. My parents start arguing, and it’s usually about some of Pappa’s friends, and then I know what will happen. The next step is they leave for some new place where they gradually gather new people around them in new chapters,’ he said. ‘I’m so fucking tired of all that.’

  Alice wondered if this meant that Leo always met girls at different places, and then he had to say goodbye to them.

  ‘Do you think we’ll ever see each other again?’ she asked.

  ‘Fuck if I know. This morning Mamma said we’re going to sell this place. A few days ago, they said we were moving here. I can’t make any sense out of them.’

  ‘We need to stay in contact,’ said Alice.

  ‘Let’s forget about all that for now. What would you like to do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth, lightly but so slowly that she tasted the salt on his lips.

  ‘You know what we should do?’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We should run away. At least temporarily. Just for one night.’

  ‘Where would we go?’ asked Alice. She had already decided to say yes. She couldn’t think of anything else she would rather do. To get away from the subdued anger of the summer house, to do something besides lying on the rocks, staring at her phone and listening to music and waiting for something to happen in her life.

  ‘There are lots of places around here. There’s a campsite not far away, maybe a couple of kilometres. Maybe we could break into a cabin. Or we could just sleep on the beach.’

  ‘In the rain?’

  ‘Why not?’

  5

  ‘HEY MAN, SIT DOWN. Do you want a beer?’

  It was only noon, but Erik realised that over the course of the summer he’d become a person who drank beer even at lunch. He’d awakened this morning, back home in their Helsinki flat, and decided to do whatever he felt like doing today.

  But as soon as he’d finished breakfast, he’d received an email from Martin, and they’d agreed to meet in the city.

  They hadn’t seen each other in a long time. Maybe two or three years. Erik – like most Finns – had seen Martin in interviews in various business magazines. A month ago a reporter for Ilta-Sanomat had phoned to ask Erik about the years he and Martin had studied together because he was writing an article about pioneers within the Finnish mobile phone industry.

  ‘So what’s happening on the career front for you? Have you made your first million yet?’ asked Martin now.

  He’d grown a beard, like every man over the past few years. But Martin always went one step further; he had a long, thick Jesus beard that somehow actually suited him.

  ‘No, no million yet,’ said Erik as he sat down.

  ‘But you’re the real winner,’ said Martin.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your kids are nearly teenagers. And you’ve got a beautiful wife.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I suppose that’s something,’ said Erik.

  Martin smiled. It was the same smile he’d had when they first met. Back then it had been the charming, idealistic smile of a fellow student. Now it had been transformed into the grin of a successful businessman.

  Erik remembered how he’d loved the damp weather of Helsinki during that first autumn when he’d started at the University of Technology. He’d enjoyed hearing lecturers talk about the future, and how their school was a ‘springboard for innovation’, along with everything else that was discussed at the university in the early years of the twenty-first century. The main building – part of the campus designed by the famed Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in the 1950s – was a red brick structure surrounded by slender pines, with a boldly curved auditorium in the centre.

  There were student associations, unlicensed booze shops and traditions that everyone was expected to follow after only a couple of weeks.

  Like most of his fellow students, Erik lived in a tiny dorm room and shared a kitchen, which always smelled of greasy pizza boxes or some type of simmering meat dish. A boy from Nigeria named Obe lived on Erik’s corridor, and he was always making big pots of stew that he would then freeze. The worktop was often covered with dirty casserole dishes.

  It was obvious that the University of Technology was primarily a school for men.

  ‘The only girls here are studying architecture,’ Martin had said during a picnic in the rain in Gamla Kyrkan park. They’d partied the night before at an unlicensed booze shop near the Hanken School of Economics, sitting outdoors in the freezing cold. A group of ten or fifteen students, and not a single female.

  Boozy picnics were a tradition. They drank schnapps and cooked sausages on a portable grill. The important thing was that nobody complained about the cold.

  ‘Without the parties at Hanken, none of us would ever see any chicks at all. It’d be like a long, sad episode of Star Trek, with uglier suits,’ said Martin.

  That was true. The main reason for organising parties with the students at the School of Economics was to increase the female ‘number count’.

  That all seemed so far away now. In front of Erik sat a thirty-five-year-old millionaire who was famous all over Finland. A man who seized every opportunity to talk about how important the Finnish school system had been for his career, and who said he was more than happy to pay taxes. He also frequently talked about how he’d been raised by a single mother. H
e had created an entire narrative about himself, and the media loved to repeat it. Erik would not be surprised if one day somebody made a film about Martin’s life. But who would play Erik, the failed sidekick who could have become a millionaire too, if only he hadn’t been so cowardly and conservative?

  ‘Can I offer you anything to drink?’ asked Martin.

  ‘What are you having?’ asked Erik.

  ‘Some sort of IPA. To be honest, it tastes like lukewarm piss. I’m thinking of ordering a Karhu beer. It’s crazy what people are willing to drink just because it’s called a microbrew.’

  ‘I’ll get a Karhu for both of us,’ said Erik.

  He couldn’t say that he’d arranged to meet with Martin in order to ask for a job. At least not yet. He was hoping the subject would naturally come up in the conversation. Maybe Martin would ask him how things were going at the department store and that could segue into Martin mentioning that he needed someone reliable at his company.

  Erik took a sip of his beer and looked out at the city. It was a Tuesday, so the streets were relatively quiet. Most Helsinki residents were still on holiday out in the country.

  ‘So how’s it going with … Liisa? Wasn’t that her name?’ he asked now.

  Erik pretended not to recall her name, though of course he did. She had been Martin’s girlfriend when they last saw each other several years ago. A beautiful, friendly, and intelligent woman. Yet another reason for him to be jealous. What was he really doing here? Hadn’t he left that whole chapter behind?

  ‘Oh, fuck. We broke up after a few months. And actually …’ said Martin, raising his left hand to show off the smooth gold band on his ring finger.

  ‘Oh, I see. Congratulations,’ said Erik. ‘Do I know her?’

  ‘No, you don’t. She’s not from Finland.’

  ‘Where did you two meet?’

  ‘In Moscow, as a matter of fact. She’s Russian. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. But it’s not like that.’

  ‘What do you think I’m thinking?’ asked Erik.

  ‘You’re thinking the same thing all Finns do. Finnish man, Russian mail-order wife. But she’s an attorney, her family has money, and she didn’t have to marry me. And besides, that’s not the point.’