The Human Part

by Kari Hotakainen

  Our goal is not to fear the problem, but for the problem to fear us.

  Ruusutie asked if Helena was ready. Helena nodded.

  If you had to describe your work day in one phrase, what would it be?

  Old people’s home.

  Can you be more specific?

  The people are young and dynamic, but they say the same things every day, just in a different order. They are in motion, but standing still. This is the common illusion we all share.

  Do you ever think in the morning that you would like to change your life?

  Every morning.

  Have you intended to do anything about it?

  I have, but I never accomplish anything.

  How much of your time at work is taken up by meetings?

  70 percent of all of my time.

  Do you feel like you can influence the course of each day?

  Everything slips out of my hands. I can’t remember anymore what I was saying or what I just said. I see white. I don’t mean right now, but in general.

  Where do you see white?

  Basically everywhere.

  Do you mean a meeting room or some other space?

  There isn’t any space. I mean, there isn’t any other space than meeting space. Everything is meeting, negotiating. When I answer the phone, I say I’m in a meeting. I’ve noticed that I never answer that I’m at work.

  Have I understood correctly that you find you can’t really concentrate in meetings?

  I can’t get hold of anyone anymore. Everyone loses their shape and disappears into that whiteness. They are black spots in the whiteness.

  Can you be more specific? In what whiteness?

  You can’t make whiteness more specific.

  Are you stressed?

  No. Or yes. No. Because if I answer yes, then someone will be called in here to write me up a sick leave order, even though I’m well-paid and privileged. So, no. I’m not stressed. I have never been stressed. I don’t count being pissed off as being stressed.

  Do you feel like you would like to use coarse language more often?

  I do, but then I don’t, because you can’t express anything with coarseness. Most expressions like that have lost all their meaning.

  Do you feel like you don’t have anything to give the company anymore?

  I don’t want to give anything to anyone. I want things to be given to me.

  Like what?

  Room to breathe. Oxygen. Air.

  If we think of the word “meeting,” what is there in that process that you would like to change?

  Meet. Meat. Blood.

  Now I don’t understand.

  Blood. Meet. Meat. Bloody meat. Or the verb “to meet.” Meet your doom. Or your maker. Maker. Baker. Faker.

  I mean the negotiations you find yourself in each week, if not daily.

  So do I. I wanted to break it up into pieces, the word that is, so I would know what it has inside it.

  O.K. We’re in no rush. Our company is just studying the work environment. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

  There was a field at my grandma’s house. A grain field. You could see it out the window. A view. I don’t have that.

  Exactly. You filled out a form that talked about your subordinates. I’ve gone through it. You didn’t comment on your subordinates in any way. In every space you ticked the option: “Don’t know.” I think you do know.

  Yes, I do, but I don’t want to say anything about them. The state I’m in isn’t their fault. Nothing has been anyone’s fault for a long time. No one is sitting on the defense side of the courtroom. Everyone is signing up to be judges, prosecutors and victims. Especially victims.

  But, for example, in similar interviews with Kähkönen, Laakso and Reinikka, I’ve got the impression that there are significant tensions and conflicts hiding there. It would be good to relieve those tensions.

  The only thing that can diffuse that bomb is the power of the market itself, but it doesn’t have time. It never has. It has to run from meeting to meeting. And then there are all of the children’s hobbies.

  You keep playing with words. Did you know that is a sign of anxiety? Trying to be clever all the time.

  I did.

  O.K. Let’s go back to the beginning. You said you wanted to change your life every morning. What have you thought to do about it?

  I would like to walk along a shoreline road on the edge of the city as it is just waking up, to sit down on the pavement and look for a moment at the ships and the birds and the other people, people to whom I wouldn’t need to sell myself or anything else, especially not ideas. After that I would like to walk to the market square, to sit down there next to the pigeons with a cup of coffee and chat with someone I don’t know, openly and amiably, without using any of the following words: “customer-oriented,” “pace-setter” and “challenging.” This stranger with whom I would speak could be a street sweeper, a midwife, an electrician, a taxi driver or maybe even a criminal, just so long as he doesn’t have anything to do with my profession. We would sit there a moment, say our goodbyes, and I would continue on my way to the Maternity Hospital. Not that I would have any business there, but because to me the building represents a place where there are no opinions, just emotion. Perfectly red, white and blue emotion. Besides an amusement park, it’s the only place where a person is just a person, and small to boot. The baby, the woman who gave birth to it and the dumbfounded man standing next to her. They are all small for that moment. Small before that small great thing. I would walk there and sit in the café where bulging-bellied wonderful women sit with worried, proud men. I would sit there with them all, even though I wouldn’t have any part or stake in anything happening there, but in a way I would feel like I was a part of it all. Perhaps I would feel like a mother, a baby or a husband, or like the guard who says in a kind but firm voice to the men in their leather jackets that they can go ahead and smoke, but they have to move a little further away from the main entrance. That’s the kind of life I would like for myself.

  O.K. This is how I see things: you aren’t going to be living that life, at least not in the near future. You’re going to be living this life. We have to play the cards we have.

  I can’t see any cards anywhere, even though everyone keeps talking about them. And even if I did have cards, I wouldn’t be able to play anymore. I’m not interested in winners or losers anymore, and especially not in the game. Mum sends postcards. Lately I haven’t felt like reading them.

  You should step back and look at your situation as part of a larger whole. In a way, I see you as having painted yourself into a corner. Do you feel that way yourself?

  If I did feel that way, I would be happy. But now I don’t feel anything. And I don’t see any whole. If our company were to go bankrupt right now, it wouldn’t hurt anything. This is the only feeling I have left.

  So you don’t see business as having any purpose or significance?

  No. I mean this company. I’m not talking about companies in general, but rather this company in particular.

  Have you expressed these feelings within the company?

  No.

  Do you have any forum, besides this session, where you could unload your feelings?

  The toilet.

  There must be some other forum?

  Christmas parties.

  O.K. We are clearly in a situation where you don’t see any peer group with which you can discuss this difficult situation. You’re holding so many things inside that soon your system won’t be able to take it. You clearly aren’t committed to the goals of the firm. You aren’t in step with the firm. Do you remember the moment you joined the firm? Did you feel like the goals of the firm were your own?

  What were those goals?

  You’re the one who should know them.

  To make money. Ethically, but aggressively. Leading market share. But in an ethically sustainable way. Something like that. Then it got lost somehow … the …

  What?


  Something.

  Meaning?

  No. That was money. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But then you have to connect some sort of …

  Now I don’t follow you.

  After the money they always tack on some sort of fluff.

  Meaning?

  Yes, but it wasn’t Finnish. Or it was … but not really …

  Should we perhaps call this good for today?

  Now I remember. It went something like this: “The purpose of the company is to take leadership in the market in an ethically sustainable, but sufficiently aggressive way, but nevertheless not in such a way as to give people the impression that all we are doing is making money, but rather that in addition to the bottom line there should also be the feeling that we care about the customer …” Something like that …

  Yes. It sounds … Yes … That sounds …

  Like the N.A.T.O. option.

  No, but in a certain way it captures …

  Don’t start trying to translate it into real Finnish. I’m the patient here.

  I wouldn’t use that term. We’re trying to map out the pain spots together and work out if we have a way out …

  Do you see that dead tree?

  Where?

  There, in the wallpaper.

  Yes. What about it?

  It’s dead, but it’s still standing. Everyone knows that it’s dead, but it is treated as if it were alive, sometimes even better than alive. I remember well how whenever we were on a lingonberry expedition with Dad he would always stop in front of trees like that and say, “It isn’t dead—it’s resting.” A person who has died standing up can’t rest.

  Why not?

  They immediately give her a new name.

  Would you like to be that dead tree? To rest namelessly?

  I would like to rest as Helena.

  Do you feel resistant to change?

  Excuse me?

  Resistant to change. Do you like to resist change?

  I like to resist stupidity.

  Exactly. But the management at your company has given me a paper written up by a consultancy that mentions, not by name of course, powers that are resistant to change. Do you feel like you belong to that group?

  If I say I do, will you tick the box on the paper that says, “To be removed from the building right after Elvis”?

  Not at all. I don’t make decisions and I don’t even have a box like that. I’m just mapping things out.

  You’re mapping things out. This is touching. I don’t resist change. I don’t resist conformity and freezing in place, if it’s used to make a profit. I don’t resist anything or support anything before I know what the plan entails. The content is what matters. Have you been to the jam shelves in the shops? They have all sorts of jars. There are expensive jams and then the cheap jams for everyone else. Do you know what? The jam in those cheaper jars is the same jam as in the more expensive ones. The jar is just different. The cheap one says Rainbow, the expensive one something claiming the jam was made by Granny Tyräkäinen. I’m one of the Rainbow people—the content is what matters.

  Is there something in the way the company does business that you would like to change?

  Last week I had twenty-five meetings. Five a day. That makes six liters of coffee and eighteen bread rolls and one thousand minutes of speech. This is calculated assuming that each meeting lasts approximately forty minutes. One thousand minutes of speech, of which ten minutes were important, and not even that if Kähkönen was around. I’m wasting precious time out of the only life I have going over trivial things with trivial adults, and I’ve already turned into a trivial talking box who clearly pisses you off, but luckily your billing is one hundred and fifty euros per hour plus tax.

  I’m sensing that we should continue another day.

  You have a bald spot, Ruusutie. The clock is ticking. We’re down to the final hairs on our heads.

  Yes.

  Yes, indeed. Have you ever counted how many Easters you have left? How many Christmases, how many summers? I have thought about it. Guess where. In those meetings. While people are speaking there’s time. That’s my quality time. When I hear Kähkönen or Kallio starting up, I know I will have a minimum of six minutes to consider my own personal end times. Don’t look at me that way. You’re looking at me and thinking, here we go again, another shiny humanities graduate who lost her way in the big, bad corporate jungle and is whining about the conditions now. Another walking dead sociology dropout bitching about the credit on her social security card running out.

  Not me.

  Yes, you. You think I’m tired of capitalism and its laws, its cold logic. You are mistaken. I’m not at all fed up with making deals or adding value or billing or profits and losses or the jungle or all the biting dung beetles it offers into the bargain. I am tired of every new boss hauling his command staff and army in here and jamming everyone’s calendar full of meetings and committees and memoranda and seminar retreats and strategy working groups and every new mid-level circus clown pulling a new PowerPoint rabbit out of his hat, droning on in American English, singing the same old refrains to new words. Every little crisis or hiccup wakes up the rats in the sewer and they climb up the drains into the executive team’s offices.

  I think this is all for now.

  It is. Can you change the wallpaper for next time? I’m cut off from nature.

  POSTCARD, LAKE SCENE

  My little Maija!

  Once we were walking with you in the field. There was some cow parsley growing. You wanted to pick it. The hollow tube made a snapping sound. When a person breaks, there isn’t any sound. You need to keep your ears open out there in the business world. You also have to hear what people don’t say. We picked a lot of apples. Your father made jam. Biko is welcome too.

  Your mother

  THE THIEF

  Maija Malmikunnas sat in the interrogation room of the police station watching the thundering grief at the death of the princess on the television bolted to the wall.

  Maija wondered why the television was on and whether the program in question was commemorating the tenth anniversary of the departure of Princess Diana or whether it was just a normal rerun. Hysterical people cried and talked at length, incoherently and in fits and starts, about what the princess had meant to them.

  The policeman asked Maija what her attitude would be about stealing after being caught this first time. Maija stared at Elton John, who had appeared on the screen dressed in a pink jacket and yellow trousers. Elton talked about how to him Diana had meant light, solace, brightness and love. Maija snapped out of it and answered that getting caught wouldn’t change her attitude to stealing itself, but rather introduce a new perspective on it. Elton John said that humanity had lost its conscience with Diana, a candle the flame of which had now been forever extinguished. The policeman observed that if a young woman like her intended to continue her life with that attitude, it would ultimately be the responsibility of society to intervene in her activities with a prison sentence. Elton John was no longer able to speak—his voice faltered and he broke down sobbing. An assistant brought him a large handkerchief embroidered with his initials. The policeman said that this time Maija would get off with a fine, but that the next time the authorities would have to consider other solutions.

  After Elton John, the microphone was shoved in front of the regional director of the Red Cross. She wasn’t able to say anything because Elton John was blubbering behind her. The regional director attempted with her uncomfortable expression to show that she would like someone to please move the fat troubadour a little further away to continue his whimpering. According to the policeman, Maija shouldn’t be playing with her life, because a criminal record follows a person throughout her years. Three men dressed in mink coats and satin trousers escorted Elton John to a white car approximately seven meters long that had a boomerang-shaped antenna decorated with mother-of-pearl attached to the roof. According to the regional director, Diana had always had enough time fo
r the poor and unfortunate of the world, and that she had often visited refugee camps to see their harsh conditions.

  The policeman extended the ticket to Maija and expressed his hope that she would look upon it as more of a caring than a punitive gesture. Maija thanked him for the piece of paper and remained staring at the television where Diana was shaking hands with a starving child. The child’s arm looked like a bony magical talisman that was attached to the shoulder with a screw. When Diana let go, the arm fell, swinging listlessly for a moment and then hanging next to the frail body.

  The policeman noticed Maija’s intense gaze and asked whether the princess’s story was familiar to her. Maija shook her head. The policeman told her that he had taped the recording himself and liked to play it at work sometimes. According to him the princess’s legacy for those of us left behind was hope and light. Every one of us can do a good turn for our neighbors—it’s a question of choice and willpower. In a room where so many fallen people had confessed their deeds, it was good to have the humane spirit of the princess floating in the air after the vile and filthy words were done.

  Maija realized she had breached a large dam, because the policeman dug out of his desk a book that had Diana’s picture on the cover. He looked as if he was preparing for a long presentation. In these cases it was good to know a person’s name, so Maija looked at the fabric patch sewn above the policeman’s breast pocket. Sami Niittymäki, Komisario.

  Maija told Niittymäki that she had read the book and that unfortunately right now she was in a bit of a hurry because she needed to pick her child up from the nursery. According to Niittymäki, it would be good for Maija to think carefully about her behavior, particularly with her child in mind, and the spiritual legacy that Diana left to all of us. Maija asked what that spiritual legacy was.