The Human Part

by Kari Hotakainen

  Spurred by these uplifting thoughts, Pekka moved his plan into its second phase, to the electric razors. The machines were connected with long, black wires to the wall. His brow furrowed, he rubbed his scruffy stubble thoughtfully. As did those who were seriously considering what to buy. Philips or Braun? Which is the more sensible purchase for you in particular? What are your requirements? Do you shave every day or is once a week enough? In order to make the decision easier, Pekka decided to try his different options. He noticed a fan on an adjacent shelf, which he turned on in hopes that its noise would cover the sound of the razor.

  The smooth, cold steel mesh felt good on his skin. The small, buzzing blades under the mesh removed the uneven layer of hair from his jaw and cheeks, making Pekka’s face brighter, as if for a moment he belonged there. He flipped up the trimmer using the switch on the side and used it to remove the fuzz from his ears. The last traces of the ape were thus removed.

  Pekka did not notice the home appliance salesperson who had appeared behind him, and who very kindly informed him that although the razor was plugged in, it was not meant to be used for shaving, particularly not for removing such significant tracts of stubble. Pekka apologized for his behavior, appealing to the appalling number of meetings he had been having at work, which often left him nearly out of his mind. A person cannot keep so much complex, interconnected information inside for so long without some ill effects.

  The salesperson listened empathetically and then asked what Pekka thought of the Braun in question. Pekka thought it was the market leader, unsurpassed in terms of its price to quality ratio. He said he had already made his purchase decision and asked the salesperson for a warranty certificate. As the salesperson left to fetch it, Pekka exited the area and walked toward the smell.

  Pyrhönen was at his station, introducing two tracksuited women to the myriad manifestations of meat. Pyrhönen noticed his new client and called for the gentleman to come closer. “These animals don’t bite anymore.”

  Pekka was so relieved by his successful metamorphosis that he ate greedily from each container without paying any attention to Pyrhönen’s speeches. He noticed a couple of empty paper trays in the rubbish bin. He picked them up with his left hand, raised his right hand and searched for the proper tone of voice.

  “Would there be any possibility of getting a few samples in these trays? You see, my family is waiting in the minivan because our youngest has an ear infection.”

  “Of course. That’s very good of you.”

  “Thank you very much. My wife and I always come to this counter in particular. It feels almost like the Jelpunens are friends of the family.”

  “That’s nice to hear.”

  Pekka waited until Pyrhönen turned to serve the ladies again and then filled his trays with product and walked to the fitting room. He retrieved his clothing from under the bench, redressed as himself and looked in the mirror. Everything had gone according to plan, even better than he had expected. His stomach had received the nourishment it needed, his mind had been enlightened and a new idea had sprung up among the sparse, slightly wilted thoughts he usually entertained. Pekka remembered what his father had said about new ideas: test them out in practice immediately. Pekka sent his regards to his father mentally as he popped a rolled-up piece of ham sausage into his mouth.

  Over the following days, Pekka ate well in six stores. Meat products were available, but he was also able to sample yogurts, soups, confections and breads. In one store there was no clothing department, but he was also prepared for this eventuality: he carried three different woolen hats in his backpack, which allowed him to adopt different guises. He chatted with the employees, determining their routes and schedules.

  Pekka devised a careful path, traversing approximately ten kilometers and five supermarkets, after the completion of which one could say he had eaten products from every food group excepting salads. He wrote a memorandum on the subject using a mechanical typewriter and then went to the library and made ten copies. He regretted having sold his computer and printer during a previous period of famine, because the copies cost twenty cents apiece. But he believed that before long he would be able to bill a healthy sum for his insight.

  The next day Pekka hurried to the Park of the Fallen to present his case. To his consternation, most of those present were so drunk or incoherent that there was no way to present them with any new information. They were spread all over the park, not forming a cohesive group, as if the Creator had sprinkled them here and there like pine nuts.

  The strong wind blowing in from the sea clinked empty bottles against each other, and tattered plastic bags flew here and there, hissing. The Fallen were sprawled on the grass, the walking paths and at the foot of trees. Now and then one of them turned over with a groan or tipped from his side onto his back.

  Stretch, who Pekka remembered had spent the last year living in a Nissan Cherry, had dragged his lanky body half onto a bench. His right leg lay on the ground, his left partially on the bench. His head lolled sideways, and in some way he had managed to pass out such that his backside was partially in contact with the grass and partially with the bench. Pekka knew that although Stretch looked unconscious, he could still register voices and smells. Stretch was famous for the ability to bounce upright from a deep coma if anything or anyone threatened his privacy. Stretch had been drinking for so long he wasn’t drunk anymore, but rather in a long, seemingly endless state, a sort of waking dream, which he maintained mechanically and chemically.

  Pekka stopped in front of Stretch, nudged him carefully with the toe of his shoe, introduced himself as Pekka and said he was here on business, that he had a new idea.

  Stretch opened one eye, judged the newcomer to be familiar and harmless and rose, not quite up, but into a better position, which meant that he folded himself onto the bench like a sheet. Then he opened his other eye as well, raised his right hand in the air and nodded in assent.

  Pekka began to present his memorandum, which he said he would sell for two euros a copy. With the help of the memorandum, the customer could eat a varied, flavorful diet in different parts of the city; admittedly, several of the free food spots were located on the outskirts.

  Stretch was a master of business administration by training and known for his computational abilities. He had worked in import companies, as a purchasing agent for the Stockmann men’s department and for a short time as a marketing manager for the Silja Line cruise company.

  He nodded. Pekka could continue. If Stretch had closed his eyes, it would have meant that the proposal was uninteresting and that it should be cut off immediately.

  Pekka focused his sales pitch on the advantages for the consumer. With an investment of two euros, the purchaser would be introduced to the flora and fauna of the culinary world, and for this small amount of money the purchaser would not only receive a full belly but also an indispensable storehouse of information about the offerings of the city center and outlying areas. The purchaser would benefit from this storehouse when times became more favorable again and the purchaser climbed back onto the wagon he had fallen off, naturally through no fault of his own. When good times arrived and roles reversed, the owner of the sampling memorandum might, depending on his moral disposition, either sell or donate the memorandum to another.

  At the end of his presentation, Pekka extended one copy of the memorandum to Stretch, who thanked him and began turning his head back and forth, evaluating the content of the sales pitch. He closed his eyes, which at this stage was a good thing, because as he did so, Stretch dived into the inner recesses of his head, there considering each aspect of the overall proposal, shielded from prying eyes.

  Pekka waited. He knew that Stretch never, even in the most profound state of confusion or malnourishment, uttered anything precipitously. One could expect only carefully weighed opinions, relevant far beyond the matter at hand or the current situation.

  Stretch opened his eyes. He looked Pekka in the eyes and cleared his throat
. This was a mistake which Stretch made from time to time. The act awakened his throat and the clumps of mucus slumbering there. A hacking, rattling cough began, one which buffeted the lanky man like a marionette, forcing him to lean over on his knees, and there he coughed and hawked and spat nearly twenty-centimeter-long globules which clung to the corners of his mouth, and which, as they fell to the grass, formed strange shapes like molten tin dropped hissing into cold water on New Year’s Eve. There was no need for augury in interpreting the globules this time. It was clear from them what rolled cigarettes, sweet wine, and beer did to an organism. Finally Stretch managed to clear his throat and begged Pekka’s pardon for the scene, which according to him resulted from the poor air quality in the city.

  According to Stretch, the basic idea of the memorandum on offer was tenable, but he saw certain problems with its resale value.

  “First of all, the clientele is physically limited in places, as most of them do not have the wherewithal to travel long distances without tiring or losing their way, which suggests the possibility that the distances between the free samples may be too long. Second, some of those belonging to the target audience may have trouble disguising themselves—they may have insufficient brain cells remaining for such an activity. It requires, you must admit, a certain stoutness of heart and spryness to find one’s way to a dubiously small dressing room in a clothing department, the likes of which the client may have last visited in the 1990s, if ever. That is, the market for this memorandum is, and I say this without any desire to offend my brothers and sisters in tribulation, made up of the most lucid and fit among us. Thirdly, the memorandum does not contain, at least not based on my quick perusal, sufficient carbohydrates, which we humans need for activities of extended duration.”

  Pekka understood the issues Stretch had raised, except the last mentioned, which he considered irrelevant, because of course Pekka had no influence over the selection of products being offered. Pekka also felt like commenting on the issue of carbohydrates in general, the overconsumption of which made one fat and lazy. A good balance between protein and fluids was the foundation of well being, a support upon which you could lean to find fulfillment in life.

  Stretch noticed Pekka’s slight melancholy and quickly added, “All in all the idea is splendid and worthy of further refinement. I consider its greatest merit to be that you have seen beyond the ordinary and found an opportunity in a thing in which many see only a prosaic event. That’s no mean feat, especially since I know you have been operating in a state of severe hunger and without any of the start-up capital or moral support offered by the state to other small enterprises.”

  Pekka thanked Stretch for his support, but was curious to hear what sorts of further opportunities he saw in this still-nascent idea. From his experience of work, Pekka knew that anyone could spout ideas, but that their further development and implementation required tenacity.

  Stretch asked for time to think and closed his eyes. He opened them quickly and asked whether Pekka happened to have any samples of the nourishment in question left over. Pekka offered Stretch a paper tray of aspic and ham sausage. Stretch upended the tray into his mouth, ruminating loudly and greedily. Between slurps and smacks he managed to report that a day and a half had passed since his last meal. Stretch washed the mass down by knocking back a large bottle of water. In conclusion he cursed about how water didn’t agree with his stomach, which had become used to other sorts of beverages.

  “There is something altogether coarse and unseemly in water these days. Too much piss in the Päijänne. But where else is the city supposed to get water? But back to your innovation. If I were you, I would look elsewhere for your target audience, which is not to belittle those fallen and slumbering about us, but only to suggest there is want and distress and people on the edge in other social classes as well. On the edge. That’s a good phrase. About to fall off. On the borderline. They are not yet what they are becoming. And the best thing is they don’t know it. We didn’t know it either. Ignorance is not only bliss, it is freedom from prejudice. I might suggest retirees, for example. They might be an excellent audience, some of them in even better condition than we ever were. And besides, they will know immediately what this is all about. They have been to the events in question. Pekka Malmikunnas, I say to you: go to them—make your accounting. With these words I bid you on your way, for more than this I cannot say at this time without a deterioration in quality.”

  Stretch extended his right hand horizontally and made a shooing motion with his fingers. Pekka thanked him and promised to get Stretch more food samples at the first opportunity.

  Pekka walked toward his apartment in the darkening evening. On a side street he noticed an abandoned American van with its side windows smashed out. Pekka peeked in through one window and established that the van was serviceable, although cigarettes had been put out on the red seats and there was a little water in the footwell. Pekka thought that if he ended up having to give up his rented apartment for financial reasons, he could perhaps turn this van into a decent place to live. He opened the front door, which was already cracked. The door squeaked and a bird burst out from under the front seat. That was a good sign. Pekka remembered reading that birds choose their nesting sites carefully. The bird had tested the van and found that it was good for itself and therefore also for a human.

  At home Pekka turned on a small nightlight and drank four decilitres of room temperature water to stave off his hunger until morning. Then he curled up under a blanket and pondered in his heart Stretch’s wise words.

  THE RIOTER

  On that morning Kimmo Hienlahti turned forty-nine years old and knew that he did not necessarily ever have to work again in his life. His was the opportunity to simply stay in his leather easy chair from the designer with the name that was difficult to pronounce. If he wanted to he could sauna and potter about in his bathrobe for the rest of the day. He could get out of his chair, but even that was not imperative because he could order food, drink and people to his home with the telephone that lay on the armrest. But he did not feel like any of those things. He felt hollow, and as a person of verbal precision, he was irritated that only one sound separated hollow from wallow.

  Kimmo pushed off with the big toe of his left foot and rocked.

  He began to think about wealth and money. What did it mean in practice? If you discounted everything visible: the house, the stocks, the cars, the second house and all the other junk? What was wealth? What do you need to be prepared for if you plan to be wealthy? What do you have to give up? What do you get? What do you lose? And is there anything left to hope for or to look forward to? Was this everything? Had the line been drawn? And who had drawn it? And what did you get if you wanted?

  When a person becomes wealthy, he unwittingly also becomes lonely, independent, an island. He is at sea—everyone else is on land. A wealthy person can’t guess how much else will come along with the wealth. And that everything else comes first with responsibility. First responsibility, then freedom. And the more wealthy you are, the less freedom there is. The price you pay for wealth can be surprisingly high.

  Rich is different from wealthy. A rich person is rich for a little while, a wealthy person for the rest of his life. The history of riches is short, colorful and embarrassing. During the first economic boom in the 1980s, a tradition of imitating riches was born. People pretended to be rich using borrowed money. I’ll be this—you be that. A familiar pattern from the playground, with adults playing the parts.

  A rich person is tasteless because he wants to taste everything. No sense of taste develops. There isn’t time. A rich person flaunts it—a wealthy person conceals it. Every truly wealthy person expends a great deal of time and energy concealing his wealth. The history of wealth is a history of camouflage. The most wealthy person is the one who can buy distance. Distance is unquestionably the best thing that money can buy. Income disparity is distance.

  Kimmo realized he was thinking himself into a frenzy.
He could have said all of this to a seminar audience, but he didn’t feel like speaking anymore.

  Kimmo was wealthy, but because his wealth was neither old nor inherited, he wasn’t on a first name basis with it yet. When he was moving among people, he watched and censored himself, finding himself keeping such a low profile that it hurt his back. He envied the nouveau-riche who rushed about, cavorting, squandering their resources, blustering, smelling of sweet perfumes, and just generally running amok through life as if it were a town square paved just for them. The nouveau-riche spent without any regard for business cycles or the laws of economics, which at any second could splash sleet on their silk shirts and horse shit on their patent leather shoes. They didn’t care if they were mocked as social climbers. They didn’t pay any attention to the hoots and jeers. They looked neither to the left nor to the right. They just went straight to the sales counter and bought everything useless and shiny. The nouveau-riche and those living on borrowed money took their cues from the Russians, who have always known how to display their riches. Especially now, after finally getting rid of their seventy-year social experiment, the Russkis were flooding into Finland and showing the amateurs how money was really burned. The Russkis were teaching the Finns a new proverb the hard way: holding your cap in your hand makes you feel like buying a hat for your head.

  Kimmo was watching all this from the sidelines. He controlled himself and behaved properly and cast about enviously in every direction. The nouveau-riche were running amok, the rabble shouted. When he glided in his car through a bad part of town, he saw the bread line that snaked around the block, and only a couple of kilometers away the nouveau-rich were peeling out in their German luxury cars. He felt isolated between these two tribes. The old world had disappeared, and he couldn’t figure out the new one. Kimmo felt like he had been born at the wrong time.