Ella stiffened. “Why what’s come here?”
Winter had fallen asleep again.
Ella gathered up four blankets from the neighbouring rooms and covered him with them. She was about to leave when he reached his empty hand towards her, as if it held something fragile and valuable, and whispered, “His name is on the first page. Look. Such lovely, neat handwriting. ‘Oskar’, it says. ‘Oskar Södergran’.”
Ella went downstairs into the piano room. She opened the terrace door and was about to step outside. She heard the barks and growls of the pack of dogs on the other side of the wall and decided to stay inside.
She shut the door and pressed her face against the window. Not a single light was burning in the garden.
She wondered if there was anyone in Rabbit Back who could install garden lights at this hour of night. Sorry, I know it’s late, but we need light immediately in Martti Winter’s garden, where the statues dance their frozen dances and the trees spread their branches like squids in some historical nightmare—can you come right away?
While she was wading through the snow in the garden she had been overcome by the feeling that a malevolent creature was lurking nearby.
And somewhere in the garden was the notebook of Oskar Södergran, who died when he was still a boy.
Ella felt herself growing angry at the turn things were taking. Secret members, stolen notebooks, pilfered writing ideas—it was all so ridiculous!
She touched her nose to the window glass, focused on her own reflection, and thought that if she kept this up her research was bound to uncover Laura White’s body and a mass grave filled with other bodies and a bomb left over from the war and several buried treasures and a selection of secret tunnels that led to amazing, unknown places.
She tugged the curtains over the window and began looking through the antique bookcase which held all of Martti Winter’s works behind a pair of glass doors. There were twenty-four of them. She opened the doors, took out Mr Butterfly, and looked at the photo on the jacket flap for a long time.
After a moment’s search she found a pen, wrote something in the book, and left the book and the pen on the piano.
When she walked out the front door, the dogs went quiet.
There were dogs everywhere—they had even surrounded the Triumph. Most of them were at the side of the house, right near the wall. They looked like they were keeping an eye on all the doors and windows. They watched her pass with black eyes, ears stiff.
Ella knew one of the dogs. He was her neighbour’s old beagle, recognizable from the star-shaped spot on his side. She had often given him a pat.
“Tiplu,” she said, “your mama’s going to be very worried about you.”
The beagle turned his head away.
The other dogs pricked up their ears, alert. A large German Shepherd under a garden light got to its feet and took a couple of steps towards her.
Ella felt not just cross now, but also stupid. That would really complete her evening, to feed herself to a pack of dogs!
She opened the door of her dead father’s Triumph, got in the car, and closed the door behind her. The window was nearly frozen over, but she could stop and clean it once she’d got away from Winter’s occupying canine army.
Ella Milana had always thought of Martti Winter as a genius.
Now it seemed the ideas in his novels had been stolen from the notebook of a child prodigy. The same shadow had been cast over the work of the other writers in the Society. Even Ingrid Katz might have read the dead boy’s notebook before her comrades got to it.
“Shit. It’s all shit,” she said several times, as Ingrid had taught her the night of Laura White’s disappearance.
Ella sat at her desk and thought about what she’d learned and about what would happen when she published the results of her research. She drew a chart on a piece of paper. She had to organize her thoughts.
The revelation was sure to cause a scandal. As Ella understood it, however, it wouldn’t diminish the value of the works themselves—they were what they were, whether they were created by the person mentioned on the cover or by somebody else. But it would send a shockwave through the history of literature.
Ella wrote: REVISION OF LITERARY HISTORY. WORKS RETAIN THEIR VALUE. SCANDAL! INCREASED SALES?
The rules of The Game stated: Secrets revealed during The Game are confidential. They can be used as the raw material for literature, but they cannot be published in any other form or be made known to anyone outside the Society. Any member who knowingly breaches this confidentiality will be punished by permanent expulsion from the Society.
Ella would have to betray Winter, and the whole Rabbit Back Literature Society, which now included herself. In fact she would throw the writers of the Society into such darkness that they would never get back into the light. The idea theft would inevitably destroy their credibility. The media would rip them to shreds.
With stiff fingers she scratched onto the paper: ME: NO LONGER A PLAYER—INFORMATION SUPPLY CUT OFF! NO SHARE IN WHITE’S INHERITANCE. RELATIONS WITH WRITERS BROKEN. SOCIETY DESTROYED. TRAITOR.
Then something disturbing started to creep in at the edges of Ella’s consciousness. She tried to chase the thought away before it became too clear, but her hand started to move across the paper of its own accord, and the following appeared:
HOW DID OSKAR SÖDERGRAN DIE?
Ella blinked. What if someone in the Society was responsible for Oskar Södergran’s death?
She clenched her cold fingers and wondered just how much the other children of the Society had hated and envied Oskar Södergran. Enough to steal his ideas, at any rate, and use them to build their own careers, that was clear. But enough to cause his death? Competition strong enough to drive someone to murder?
Ella felt a tingling in her gut.
For her own peace of mind she had to assume that the members of the Society were innocent of the boy’s death—at least until she was forced to conclude otherwise.
She looked at what she’d written. It brought tears to her eyes.
What joy is there in research, anyway? someone had once asked in one of her methodology courses. The teaching assistant’s answer had made an impression on Ella at the time: Research brings order to the world. It makes things clearer, helps us to understand things. Could there be any more joy than that? Did you ever put together puzzles as a child? The universe is a puzzle with billions of pieces. Putting it together is society’s highest shared responsibility, our right and our joy—and not only that, it is what separates us from the whole rest of creation, with a few possible exceptions.
Ella buried her face in her hands and let out an exasperated sigh.
In her dream, Ella Milana was climbing the water tower hill.
The cement steps were steep and narrow, so she was going carefully. To fall would be fatal. She wondered whether she would get there in time, whether the green notebook would already be buried in Martti Winter’s garden. She had to get there to make notes for her research. She needed to write down everything she could, because anything that wasn’t written down would be lost forever.
A red streak on the horizon foretold the approach of sunrise, but Rabbit Back was still in shadow, the people asleep.
She heard a creak and turned around. The steel door of the cement booth was ajar.
She peeked inside. There was a little table in the room. Around it were ten small chairs of different shapes and sizes, truly bizarre little chairs, and Ella couldn’t fit into any of them.
There was a book on the table. It wasn’t the green notebook, it was a printed novel. The cover said THE RETURN OF EMPEROR RAT, BY LAURA WHITE. UNFINISHED, UNPROOFED COPY.
Ella reached for the book, then jumped when someone behind her said:
It’s coming, and she’s leaving.
In the corner was a hat rack. On top of it sat a green parrot, eyeing her. Ella started to say something to it, but then there was a loud noise outside.
When she looked out
the door, she saw Laura White’s body loping down the hillside like a skittish white rabbit.
It’s coming, the parrot said.
What is? Ella asked. What’s coming?
Emperor Rat. It’s coming, and she’s leaving.
Two days after The Game, Professor Korpimäki called Ella Milana and asked how her information gathering was coming along.
“Very well,” Ella exclaimed in a voice oozing with enthusiasm. “Rolling along like a freight train. In fact, I was just on my way to the post office to send you something.”
When the call ended, she finished the television show she’d been watching, then went upstairs to her room, dutifully wrote out some descriptions of Laura White and the activities of the Society, and sent them to her professor.
She didn’t include the information she’d collected playing The Game. The crumbs she’d gathered chatting with Winter would be enough to thrill him.
Ella had another dream:
She was lying naked in her bed and hundreds of literature professors were standing around her room, Professor Korpimäki among them. He leaned over her, plucked absent-mindedly at her pubic hair, and whispered, We’re very worried. You understand, don’t you? We have to have that notebook.
I understand, Ella said, trying to pull the blanket up and cover herself. The blanket was the size of a handkerchief and filled with notes she’d written in secret that she didn’t want the professor to see.
I believe you, really I do, but the others aren’t as confident that you’re up to the task, the professor said, taking a pistol out of his breast pocket and aiming it at her head, then passing it to her, handle first.
Take this. Don’t hesitate to use it if the situation demands it.
Ella woke up, and lay awake the rest of the night.
When morning came, she had come to some kind of compromise.
Of course she could do more research. She could use The Game for good. There was no better tool imaginable for research on the Society. She didn’t have to make any final decisions one way or the other. She wouldn’t reveal any shocking or sensitive information to her professor just yet. And she wouldn’t reveal what she was doing to the other members of the Society.
*
Ella called Martti Winter, started by babbling trivialities about the weather, then burst out with, “We have to talk about the notebook in your garden.”
Winter asked Ella in a shocked tone what she knew about the notebook.
Ella explained what he had said when he’d continued to spill in his sleep. “Maybe even as a child you knew instinctively that some things are too valuable to destroy, even to protect the Rabbit Back Literature Society. And now we have to dig it up. If it’s the source of all the members’ works, it’s an extremely valuable literary-historical document.”
Winter pointed out that the notebook had been buried for thirty years and must surely have decomposed. Ella reminded him that he’d told her he’d wrapped it in oilcloth. “We should dig it up as soon as possible.”
Winter didn’t give up. “Some things are better left buried. Ask me again some other time. I have to think about it.”
Ella said she would call back tomorrow.
“Tomorrow? Let’s see… No, I can’t do it tomorrow. Tomorrow I plan to have a little nibble of something and relish the fact that I’m still considered a real author. Ask me in thirty years, or perhaps a little later, preferably a couple of days after my funeral.”
The silence lasted an entire minute.
Then Ella said, “Just so you know, Mr Winter, I know who the tenth member of the Society was. I have his name.”
“Where did you get this alleged name, since even I don’t know what it is?” Winter yelled.
Ella told him she’d got the name the same way she got the memory of the notebook. When he asked her, as she had expected, to tell him the name, she laughed. “Just because the great Martti Winter gave it to me doesn’t mean I have to give it back.”
“Fine,” Winter said. “Now that I think about it, I don’t want to know. Please don’t tell me. Don’t ever tell me or I’ll… um… I’ll have you killed. I have money, and money can buy a contract killing. Look, nobody’s thought about that boy or his notebook in years. And I intend to forget about the whole thing. So please be so kind as never to speak to me of it again.”
Ella thought for a moment and said, “What room are you in?”
Winter said he was in the piano room.
“There’s a book on top of the piano. Open it and tell me what’s written on the first page.”
“I think I know what’s in my own book,” Winter said wearily. “What have we here? Why, it’s an old photo of me. Then two blank pages. Page four is a list of my works. Impressive. I have been industrious. Page five, the title: Mr Butterfly, and the author’s name, Martti Winter. C’est moi. And then there’s something written in pen here—what the devil?…”
“I wrote the dead boy’s name under yours,” Ella said. “I thought it belonged there.”
31
THERE WAS A LONG SILENCE.
Ella thought the call had been cut off. Then Martti Winter spoke.
“Hey, I have a cherry cake here. And coffee. Come and see me. But you should go home before ten, for both our sakes. The Game isn’t good for us. We’ll just drink some coffee and talk. Or we could watch Balanced Accounts. It’s a good show. I have the whole series on disc.”
Ella hung up, went into the living room and turned on the television.
For the next several days Ella marvelled at the interesting shows on TV these days. She particularly enjoyed two Finnish series, The Last Sixty Years of Our Lives, and the show Winter had recommended, Balanced Accounts, to which she quickly developed an addiction.
As she was taking out the garbage one grey morning, Ella found footprints in the snow. Someone, probably Aura Jokinen, had been snooping around the house. Whoever it was hadn’t been able to climb the ladder to Ella’s room, however, because Ella had removed the ladder a few days earlier. She had in fact arranged things so that she could have some time to strategize before she had to submit to playing The Game again.
In the evenings she locked the doors and closed the drapes, and didn’t answer the telephone for any caller but her professor or her mother. During the day she went to cafés, flea markets, art exhibits, kiosks and shops. She sought out conversations with the ordinary people of Rabbit Back that she met, especially if they were old enough to remember things that had happened thirty years ago. Almost all the local people were willing to talk about things, provided the conversation was started in the right way.
“That Petri Schäfer, the director of Balanced Accounts, is such a trickster…”
Ella was able to gather some new anecdotes about the Society and about Laura White, which would make her professor happy.
She asked people nonchalantly whether they happened to remember a boy named Oskar Södergran, from the early 1970s. No one did. There were no Södergrans living in Rabbit Back now, and no one remembered anyone by that name ever having lived there.
Ella stopped to tie her shoe near a round wooden booth in the centre of town that served as a board for posting announcements. A sign posted by the Rabbit Back Writers’ Association read:
TOIVO HOLM, PRINCIPAL WRITER FOR THE POPULAR TELEVISION SERIES BALANCED ACCOUNTS AND THE LAST SIXTY YEARS OF OUR LIVES TO SPEAK AT THE SCHOOL AUDI TORIUM ON WRITING FOR TELEVISION
The dates and times were at the bottom. Two lectures had already taken place. The last one was that evening.
When she got home, Ella programmed her video player to record the next episode of Balanced Accounts and a couple of other shows and spent a few hours writing down the anecdotes she’d gathered.
That evening she drove to the school in the Triumph, went up to the third floor and stepped into the auditorium, which was buzzing with voices. She would have sat in the back, but the only remaining empty seats were in the front row. The room was stuffy. Someone was explai
ning to an acquaintance that mould had been found at the school, and the library had been declared off limits, and if they couldn’t fix it the whole school would have to be demolished.
Toivo Holm strode onto the stage, noticed Ella and nodded in greeting.
The talk was interesting. It was supposed to end at nine, but Holm kept talking. Ella felt uneasy and glanced around. If anyone else left she would follow in their wake. But Holm’s stories of television actors and plot changes were so colourful that no one seemed to mind that the talk was going overtime.
The audience stirred when Holm revealed that he was working on a Finnish version of a popular American series about the sex lives of young women. “Of course, I’ll have to study up on the subject extensively before I can write about it,” he said.
When the clock on the wall said ten, Toivo Holm hopped off the stage in the middle of a sentence, leaned towards Ella, put his lips to her ear and whispered a challenge.
32
Toivo Holm Spills
E LLA SPILLS FOR FOUR HOURS.
Toivo Holm is interested in her erotic dreams and fantasies and everything she’s ever done that could be called sexual, and she talks about them as the rules of The Game demand, until she’s left with her mouth hanging open like a netted fish. Holm looks closely at her and sees that she’s been scraped hollow, emptied out, and he declares himself satisfied with her answer.
Ella takes off the blindfold like she’s removing the bandage from a seeping wound. The light burns her eyes. She feels dizzy and nauseated.
“You spill well,” Holm says, lighting a cigarette. “I got a lot of useful material for the new series.”
They’re sitting upstairs at the Rabbit Bar. Holm has had the room reserved for four days. It’s a cramped little nook, the walls hung with dirty wallpaper. The Hakkarainen Hostel would have been more pleasant, but, as always, it’s full of Japanese tourists come to look for Laura White’s body and admire her home town.
The Rabbit Back Literature Society Page 21