Kähkönen walked out the door. Helena felt like a large group had just left, leaving her alone.
She waited a moment and then turned off her computer and looked at her calendar: Sini’s music lesson. She walked quickly to the elevator. She looked left at the front door. On the corner a man was walking slowly against the red light. Kähkönen. The cars honked. Kähkönen didn’t even spare them a glance, just continuing forward mechanically, shuffling a little, as if he had aged ten years in fifteen minutes.
Sini was waiting in the hall with her violin case. Helena clasped her in her arms. Sini asked her mother to stay in the room to listen this time. She had taken Sini to her music lesson every single time and always had to return to work for the hour, but this time she agreed.
Their route went through the park. The old maple stood doggedly in the same place. Trees stood their ground. Helena had had a habit of sitting under the maple long ago when the line between work and free time had been clear. For the last ten years Helena had been walking through the park to get a baguette sandwich before the next meeting, for which she was already six minutes late.
Sini took her hand. The violin swung gaily in her other hand. Sometimes in her weaker moments Helena envied her daughter’s complete, unsullied lack of concern.
Sini went ahead into the music room. The teacher, Sinikka Tammilehto, shook hands with Sini and Helena, and asked Sini to take her violin out of its case. Sini removed it slowly, with an air of dignity. Ms. Sinikka drew her attention to the position of the violin between her neck and jaw. If this position could be made relaxed and natural, the player could concentrate on drawing out from the instrument what the maker and the composer had hidden in its inner recesses.
Helena admired Sinikka’s way of speaking to her small students. She took them seriously, wanting to show them the path toward the pain and beauty of the music. When words aren’t enough to express something, we take out the violin, Sinikka had a habit of saying when talking about the power of instrumental music. The violin teaches us everything about patience and concentration. When you learn the basics of playing the violin, you will become strong in the face of life.
When Sini began to play, everything else disappeared. Helena did not remember Kähkönen, nor the irritating man whom she had been stuck talking to at the party or the volatile, unstable feeling at work as the new C.E.O. laid off workhorses and hired tigers. Everything disappeared in the music. Helena closed her eyes, hearing the mistakes, the screeching sounds, the long, perfect notes, the small girl’s sighs, the teacher’s calm voice. Soon Helena could no longer differentiate the individual sounds. Everything melted together into one and the same humming, as if the sea had withdrawn from the shore and was roaring out there somewhere.
Helena awoke with a start to Sinikka’s calm voice.
“I’ll take your falling asleep as a sign of praise.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Work has been a bit of this, that and the other.”
“The power of music is inexplicable. It can put someone to sleep or wake them up. It lifts and it lowers. It soothes and it jostles. You don’t ever have to say ‘I don’t understand.’ Isn’t it lovely? My husband, who is the most rational, intellectual animal I know, never demands everything from music he does from literature: intelligence, emotion, structure, significance. He never accosts Magnus Lindberg to demand an explanation. He doesn’t like all music, but he never says, ‘I don’t understand.’ Everything else he subordinates to understanding. But now we’re wasting lesson time. You go ahead and sleep. Sini and I will continue.”
Helena was both ashamed and amused. She remembered what her mother Salme had drilled into her children: always sleep when you can. Gather strength like your father gathers firewood.
Sini played one two-minute piece from start to finish, concentrating hard. Sinikka stood next to her humming. When the violin had gone still, Sinikka said, “Thank you.”
Sini looked at Sinikka and Helena seriously and then smiled. She put the violin in its case carefully and nodded to Helena. Helena shook hands with Sinikka.
They walked the first little way without speaking, but at the park Helena stopped and asked Sini to sit for a while under the maple.
Sini sat down, wondering why her mother wanted to sit just here. You didn’t always know what Mum was about. Sometimes she had odd things in her head. But sure, we can sit here. Mum began to say something about changing jobs. She said there wasn’t anything wrong with the job—there was something wrong with her. It felt strange, but then when she put her hand on my shoulder, it didn’t anymore. There wasn’t anything wrong with Mum. If there was, I would notice. I notice everything. Mum doesn’t know. I even notice invisible things.
Helena thought, I can’t say things like this to a child, but I already did. It isn’t appropriate to go on. I have to regulate how much of what I have jammed inside I let out at one time. If a child is given too much to carry, she can become an adult too quickly. I think I did. A leaden-shouldered worrier. Like me.
The violin music had stuck in Helena’s head. She watched how Sini swung her legs, kicking the leaves. Nine years old. Carefree. But when she puts the violin under her chin and plays, she grows into something else. Or maybe she doesn’t grow. She is carried away by the music, which makes me happy and sad all at the same time. She’s already playing her own life into existence.
“What do you like about playing the violin? Does it feel hard or easy?” Helena asked.
“I want to play forever,” Sini answered.
THE HUMAN PART
POSTCARD, LAKE SCENE
Hey there, Helena!
Helena, about your shoulder pains. You sit hunched over at your computer. And you’re letting your rear end sag with too many meetings. Once a day spread your legs apart sitting on your chair and lower your arms, outstretched, slowly toward the floor. The tail bone. That is where all the tightness comes from. All of the webs and nerves and other important wires start at the tail bone. Believe me. And if you don’t, ask Ritva. She’s one of the masseuses over in the next parish. She even has your father reaching for crumbs on the floor nowadays.
Your mother
THE EYEWITNESS
Kimmo Hienlahti drove around the city, unable to get the woman out of his mind.
It was 8:00. He had left home just after 6:00. He drove up a ramp into the car park of a late-night service station that had been built over the ring road, and parked between two Japanese models, even though he knew that his German one wouldn’t like it.
His bloodless, flaccid legs took a moment to get used to the ground. He flexed them and heard a crack just like the one he had heard from his father’s legs so long ago in the yard of the ugly house he grew up in. He remembered deciding that he would never be as old or as anything as his father.
The large, glass door of the service station opened automatically. Inside sat a bunch of people dressed in ugly clothes.
He got in line and flowed along with it to the coffee cups, taking one and setting it under the dispenser. He accidentally pressed cocoa and then tried to cancel, but the machine wouldn’t stop. Kimmo shifted his cup to the side and half of the hot chocolate ran into the grate.
Kimmo pushed his demi-cocoa in front of the cashier, paid with a tenner and was just about to say “Keep the change” when at the last moment he remembered he was out among the rabble, where a gesture like that would be taken for arrogance.
He tried to act as normal as possible, as if nothing had happened. He looked around, trying to read from people’s expressions and glances whether they were seeing through him. Kimmo was sure it was obvious by looking at him that he had never had any of the things they had—no woman, no children, no nothing.
A couple was sitting at a corner table. The man was looking outside, the woman at the wall. Before them they had two halves of a sandwich and large Cokes. Kimmo felt like walking over to them and saying, “I haven’t got what you have, b
ut do you know what? I’m happy and relieved, because in you I can see where love ends, how the cream is going rancid and the flies are starting to swarm above your heads.”
The ring road ran along below, outside a large window. The cars zipped by in both directions. They were clearly in a hurry to get to their destinations—to Grandma’s house, to the cottage, to a lover, to somewhere where everything stops for a moment and all you can hear is the soughing of the wind in the trees along the shoreline. Kimmo felt like he wouldn’t find peace at the end of any road.
The cocoa had grown cold. It tasted like chocolate water. Light-colored splotches had formed on its surface, reminding him of the frost-bitten cheeks from his childhood up in the cold North.
Kimmo stood up and walked over to the slot machines. He fed four euros into the machine and chose the largest bet, one euro. He hated oranges. From experience years ago he knew that if one of them stopped in the window, the game was over. They were putrid, the same ones he had seen in front of the filthy shops on the sidewalk on the one and only tourist vacation he had ever taken. He remembered how he had kicked one of the rotten fruits, and part of its yellow-green muck had stuck to his shoe.
Two strawberries stopped on the payline. He covered the third space with his hand and played a game: if a third strawberry stopped there, the woman would be his. He heard a click and opened his fingers: orange. He kicked the machine and glanced at the cashier. He felt like saying to her, “I could buy this whole service station and all of its employees and you and your scabby two-bedroom apartment and still have money left over to buy every strawberry patch in this whole country!”
Kimmo was ashamed of his thoughts and walked out. The remote control opened the car door. He sat down and turned the key in the ignition. The car jerked awake like a cold deer.
He decided to drive to the woman’s apartment and say immediately at the door, “You are mine, even though I hated you at first. And I still hate you, but I hate myself even more. Would you mind fucking me? You heard me right. Fuck me. I have brains and money. You can fuck them out of me right up front. And then let’s see what’s left. I don’t use vocabulary like this. Usually. Now I do. Life is not short—it’s so long that I can’t see to the end of it. Life is boring. I’m short sighted, so I’m rich. I didn’t have the patience to wait. I was brutal and fast. And now the time is ripe. In large part everything resulted from luck and constant talking. I have never been quiet in a place where there were people. People are always clients—not immediately, but before long. Do you think this is boring? If you do, say so, and I’ll disappear. No, you won’t say so, because you can’t get a word in edgeways. I control the airspace, and there isn’t any other space here. If you control the airspace, you control everything.”
Kimmo drove for half an hour before he came to, realizing he had been mumbling to himself.
He looked at the G.P.S. He was getting closer to where the woman lived, even though he had been driving carelessly, this way and that. Something drew him there. She was the end of the road.
Now carefully.
Right here.
Then left.
Clint Eastwood’s voice, which he had ordered for the G.P.S., said he was approaching his destination.
Be careful.
But were you careful when you kicked the saloon door open, biting your cigar and shooting everything that moved? Who are you to say that to me or especially to this car, which our Turkish friend built to drive faster than its fellow creatures?
Suddenly something flashed in front of him from the left.
He hit the brakes and closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes, he saw everything. Slowed down. Sped up. But not rewound.
Something green flew through the air and thudded to the ground somewhere over there.
Where?
On the grass.
Alive.
Surely.
I can see it with my own eyes.
There isn’t any water coming from them.
My eyes, I mean.
The Estonian taxi driver had a glass eye.
You end up with one of those if you cry for the old system.
I had a green light.
I did.
And I do.
It was crossing on a red, the thing that flew.
I was moving.
Not too fast, but fast enough.
A car with two exhaust pipes can’t be driven at a crawl.
It’s a law of nature. Anyone who says differently doesn’t know nature.
Joggers don’t expect a soft paw from a bear.
The woman lives here somewhere.
I can smell it. I chose her by smell up there on the terrace.
Even though I tried to convince myself it was about intelligence and beauty.
We are animals inside and humans outside. I want to get inside a human.
I will never meet that woman again.
We will never become a couple. I will never become a father.
I will never become anything ever again. I have already had everything.
No one gets to come into my car.
Someone is trying.
Someone crazy.
Or wise.
You can’t tell them apart anymore. They are one and the same. Like the political parties.
If I ever meet that woman again, I won’t say anything crude like I was just planning to.
I will be different.
I promise.
I don’t have any other option.
Anymore.
I used to.
What got into me? Why did I speed up?
Nothing. It was already in me.
Everything is in us, in us humans.
The question is just what we put into use.
The crazy person is kicking my car.
There is blood coming from my forehead.
I hate red.
It reminds me of communism.
What if the woman is a humanist type?
She must be.
It’s good that I’m not going to see her.
I’m not going to see anyone.
Anymore.
Now I have to speak well.
Not a lot, but well.
THE CLEANERS
Kerttu Rinkinen sat down, afraid. She had never sat in the back of a police car and spoken to a police officer before. It felt strange, as if she were being accused of something. Komisario Niittymäki said that Kerttu could relax.
“We’re just interviewing you as an eyewitness. We’ll take your statement and then you’ll be interviewed again because of the seriousness of the case. Can you tell me as precisely as possible what you saw?”
Kerttu felt like saying that she was just a cleaning lady—just let me go to work and do what I know how to do.
“Yeah.”
Kerttu began. She immediately wanted to stop. There are things you can talk about and things you can’t. This was something Kerttu had learned as a cleaning lady. She had been working as a cleaning lady on the executive floor for fourteen years. You hear a lot there. Even if you aren’t listening.
“I was standing there, and the traffic lights were green. For the cars. The girl was there next to me. I don’t have my own children. I would have liked to, and so I always keep a close eye on any children around me. Like this one. Quick eyes. Hair in braids.”
The president of the company had once told Kerttu that leadership meant keeping almost everything inside. Saying only what you had to say. Saying what no one else dared. I’m paid a lot of money for saying hard things, the president of the company had said to Kerttu.
He spoke to me because talking to a cleaning lady is easy. It’s the same as talking to the mop or to the floor scrubber I push along the hallways. A mop never spreads rumors. There is another reason. The president of the company is from Pihtipudas, just like me, and feels at home with me.
“Then the lights changed. Green for us that is. The little green man was there on the post. I remember it clearly. I never go when
the little red man is there. We had green, no matter what the driver says. The girl and I started across in single file, and then the girl disappeared from in front of me. She flew in the air. She was up there for a long time. In the air.”
The president of the company said once that his salary included a one-hundred-thousand-euro shield bonus. I asked him what on earth that could be. He said that he had to stand as a shield for all the shit from the fan to spatter on. I said that you’re using dirty words with the wrong person now, since I have to clean up shit all day long. He wanted to tell me more and invited me to sit down. He said that part of the job of the president of a company was to accept everything that came his way. From outside the company, from management, from the staff, from everywhere. He had to accept it all and endure it all. That if Kerttu ever wondered about their salaries, they always include a shield bonus.
“I won’t try to guess the car’s speed, but he was certainly speeding, and not just a little. I kicked the car at least ten times. I admit that, and even if I go to jail, I’m not going to pay a red cent for the dents. I couldn’t get the car door open. He must have locked it. I would have dragged him out and punched him. I have strong arms after carrying and dragging cleaning tools and lifting and moving furniture year after year. And people like me who have never hit anyone, we’re the ones who hit the hardest. And don’t know when to stop. Thankfully the door didn’t open. And thankfully he’s sitting over there in the other car now.”
Komisario Niittymäki listened to the elderly woman, looking at the other car where a middle-aged man sat hunched over. Niittymäki tried to control his emotions. There were so many that shepherding them was work. The sound of the ambulance departing the scene still reached them from far off.
The Human Part Page 17