He had forgotten to look at his phone or read his email for days. Both were filled with worried enquiries and reminders.
Olli apologized profusely for his forgetfulness, gave the manuscript to Maiju and delegated a large part of his other duties to her and Antero. He explained that unfortunately he had to dedicate some time to a personal matter, but would be into the office daily to check on things.
Antero smiled sourly. “Uh-huh,” he said, shooting Maiju a look which Olli took to mean Midlife crisis. Poor devil.
Maiju answered the look with a cold stare.
While Olli had been on holiday Maiju had traded her Felliniesque look and exaggeratedly feminine attire for the other extreme—now she was Catherine from Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, dressed as a man in an oversized checked cap, loose turtleneck, men’s trousers and leather walking shoes. She hadn’t, however, drawn a moustache on her lip.
“Olli, we’ve seen you with this ‘personal matter’ of yours,” Maiju said. She didn’t try to hide her admiration for the cinematic turn Olli’s life had taken. “You can see the park from the conference room. She’s beautiful. And so cinematic that it hurts to look at her. Who is she? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. You do what you have to do. It’s none of our business. Go and live your own story. We’ll keep the place standing and make sure the books get to market on time. And hey, Antero…”
Antero looked at her expectantly.
Maiju quoted Rhett Butler. “No, I don’t think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That’s what’s wrong with you. You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.”
Young Antero turned red.
The Chopin prelude ends.
“That was beautiful,” Olli says.
“Thank you.”
“This place is beautiful,” he says.
Greta, in half profile, turns to face him.
“Maybe you haven’t noticed,” she says, “or who knows, maybe you have—but this is the house we used to dream of in Tourula. Down to the last detail. There’s even a conservatory, and a Finnish cinnamon apple tree. I found it when I was researching my book, and I pulled some strings and managed to rent it for us.”
“Us?”
Greta closes her eyes, embarrassed. “From the very beginning I lived in the hope that eventually you would move in here with me,” she whispered. “But since I’m a sensible girl, I knew that would never happen.”
“Right,” Olli says. “Never.”
“You had your own life, a home, a wife and little boy—why would you up sticks and move in with me?”
“There was no way,” Olli says.
Greta begins to play a new, careful piece, then stops, spins around on the piano stool, and wraps her arms around him, laying her head against his stomach.
“Oh, Olli… You could have told me earlier that you were separated… Of course I’m sorry for the two of you, I pity your poor little boy, but at the same time I’m so immensely happy. Does that make me a bad person? It doesn’t matter. I don’t care if it does. I’ve been unhappy for so long that I just want to be happy, even if it means I have to start being an evil, twisted person…”
“You’re not evil,” Olli says, stroking her hair. “Just ever so slightly twisted.”
Greta laughs and looks at him with damp eyes. “You know me too well, Olli. Tell your twisted girl again when your wife and son are coming home from their holidays… And when you intend to tell your wife about us. Or no, you don’t have to. I know. You’ve told me many times. They’re coming back in October or November. And you’ll tell her about us when they’ve safely returned home, because you don’t want to spoil your son’s holidays by giving his mother a shock. I understand. I’m sorry I’m like this. Twisted and impatient. But I’ve waited so long already.”
They exchange a kiss.
Then Greta continues playing. She conjures Debussy’s Clair de lune from the keys.
Olli leans against the piano and lights a cigarette. The smoke and the music wreathe around the room in the clear light. To his surprise, Olli realizes that he’s having a pleasant time. He feels cosy with Greta. He’s at home. It feels like life is as it should be.
He doesn’t remember the last time he felt this way.
When his son was born?
No. It was an important event, of course, and it still moves him whenever he remembers it. There’s no question that the birth of his son gave him a deep, biological satisfaction. He was fulfilling the reproductive task programmed into his genes; but it was more like giving up on living his own life and avoiding the whole process than it was making cinematic meaning of his existence.
When he and Aino got married that, too, was more of a pleasant surrender, in the name of clarity and tranquillity. Of course he loved Aino, and their wedding day was beautiful. But he can see now that the main point of getting engaged and married was that it fit into the slowly progressing continuum that had been set in motion the moment they met. Olli hasn’t told Greta the whole truth about his family and the Blomrooses, but the most important part is true: he has decided to divorce Aino once the kidnapping is over.
Olli has finally recognized the truth. He and Aino have no chance of continuing their marriage after everything that has happened. If telling the truth doesn’t estrange them from each other, keeping it secret will.
If they were forced by attachment to the slow continuum to stay together, they might manage to be together for a few more years. But eventually the day would come for them to part. And while they waited for that day they would tear each other to pieces, and their son in the process.
Life is too short. Olli understands that there is no way he can content himself any more with an ordinary life slowly going sour, not now that he’s met someone and realizes he’s been pining for her for thirty years. His marriage with Aino might become just an interlude in a larger story, it seems. It’s sad, but without sadness there is no beauty.
But, of course, Olli isn’t stupid: he knows that his attitude towards his new cinematic life is like that of a sinner who gets religion. Like it says in the Guide, the grandiloquence of a romantic scene also contains an ironic distance. A person has to know how to live out his greatest emotions while simultaneously laughing at them. Olli’s greatest emotions notwithstanding, it’s clear that divorce may not be easy. There might be problems and arguments and a lot of tears. Aino isn’t cinematic and she definitely won’t immediately see the situation as Olli sees it.
After all, Aino doesn’t really understand movies, not the way they’re meant to be understood.
38
OLLI NEEDED TO PICK UP some things from his house in Mäki-Matti.
As he had feared, the slow continuum struck as soon as he walked in the door. It was difficult to breathe. He wanted to go upstairs, crawl under the covers and wait there for his wife and child to come home, for everything to go back to the way it was before. Then he would make sure that everything would stay the same. Preferably forever, but at the very least until he died.
With trembling hands, Olli lit a cigarette and got enough cinematic energy from it to pack a suitcase with his most important personal items and return to the taxi waiting at the gate.
39
CONTRARY TO WHAT ONE MIGHT EXPECT, their first night together at Wivi Lönn’s house doesn’t culminate in a passionate love scene.
Before Olli follows Greta into the house, they sit in Lounais Park under the dome umbrella in the rain and Greta talks until midnight about memories that have troubled her all these years.
Several times as she speaks, she inadvertently comes close to that summer’s end. When she does, she turns pale and loses her words and only finds them again when, with Olli’s prompting, she returns to those carefree days long enough ago that the Blomrooses’ shadow hadn’t yet been thrown over them.
When they finally take a taxi to the manor house, pass through the Apple Gate, walk through the door and climb the stairs to the bedroom, as if by uns
poken agreement they perform the same ritual that they did many times in the secret room in Tourula: Greta undresses Olli, but not herself, in complete silence, lays him on his back on the bed, and caresses him with her hands and mouth until he comes.
Afterwards they lie intertwined, breathing each other’s breath, Olli naked and Greta in her dress, until they fall asleep. This is repeated for six nights in a row.
On the seventh, Olli stops her. He takes hold of her shoulders and looks into her eyes.
Greta avoids his gaze and nods. Olli closes his eyes and lets his hands move over her dress.
His touch delineates her slender neck, her soft but muscular arms, firm back and narrow waist, in both their minds. Then it finds the breasts like oranges, the curve of her hip, her supple rump.
All the while Greta is trembling, her breath catching. But she allows him to continue, just as the girl she was thirty years ago did the first time.
Olli, too, is terrified. He’s afraid he may break something that can’t be repaired, in both of them.
When he opens his eyes he sees that she has closed hers. He kisses her lightly on the lips, slips his fingers under the shoulder straps of her dress and lets them fall. When he starts to take off the dress, Greta panics, opens her eyes and grabs his hands.
“Wait. Olli, please close your eyes. You can open them when I say it’s all right.”
Olli can feel her get out of the bed. He hears the rustle of fabric as she takes off her dress, bra and underwear and puts them on the chair. Then she lies down on her back on the bed. “Give me your hand.”
Olli puts out his hand.
She takes hold of it and starts to move it slowly over her skin.
40
WHEN THE DRUNKEN BLOMROOS SIBLINGS break into their room on the last day of summer, Olli and Greta are naked and asleep.
Before Olli has time to wake up, Leo and Riku wrench the golden-haired girl out of the bed and out of Olli’s arms and drag her down the stairs like a goat to the slaughter.
Olli would like to go to help her.
But Anne is still in the doorway, freezing him with her mocking eyes. “Good morning, lover boy,” she laughs, and Olli covers his dick.
He hears shouts and banging from below.
Anne delays him for a moment longer, then beckons him down the stairs so he can get a look at the “freak” he’s been messing with.
Trembling, Olli pulls on his trousers and follows her. Downstairs the morning light is flooding in through the large windows, leaving everything naked and defenceless. Most naked and defenceless of all is Greta, pinned to the floor by the Blomroos brothers. They’re holding her arms and legs so that every inch of her body is bathed in light, as if she were a specimen, an object to be examined by strangers, down to its last detail.
If she struggled against her captors at first, she has given up by the time Olli bursts into the room. The damage is already done. Her green eyes peer out from under her hair, filled with shame.
Olli stands in the middle of the floor not knowing what to do. He’s helpless and scared.
Anne coughs behind him and says, “Thanks to brother Riku’s natural curiosity and voyeurism, we found some interesting papers in Aunt Anna’s bureau drawer, a drawer we’ve been wondering about because it was always locked.”
Anne’s voice oozes cold sarcasm. There’s a rustle of paper.
Riku sneers.
Leo is horribly drunk. He stares at his naked cousin, filled with disgust.
“What we have here, it seems, are doctors’ reports on a newborn baby,” Anne says, flipping through the documents. “Very interesting. And here are some similar reports from later doctor’s visits. There’s a urologist and a gynaecologist and a poor, frustrated surgeon who wasn’t allowed to operate because the child’s pig-headed mother refused to give her consent. A lot of papers full of fine medical terms like genitalia, developmental irregularities, hormone levels…”
Anne lets out a little giggle.
“There’s all kinds of interesting stuff in here. I guess we both made a serious mistake about our cute little freak of nature, Olli dear, although your mistake was obviously a little more serious than mine.”
Anne starts to read aloud. The words squirm into Olli’s ears and scratch around there like insects. He doesn’t want to listen, but he hears her nevertheless.
Eventually he manages to say that he’s going to kill them if they don’t let Greta go.
Leo shakes his head in disbelief and Riku breaks into a high-pitched laugh. Olli’s slim torso and thin arms don’t frighten them.
Olli growls like an animal and is about to throw himself at them when his legs unexpectedly give way beneath him and he falls on his face with a thud.
Then comes the pain.
The backs of his legs explode. He yells.
Or is it Greta who’s yelling?
Olli grinds his teeth, turns his head and sees Anne strike him right on the back of his knees with a crowbar.
“Mind your own business, Olli,” she mutters. “We don’t have anything against you…”
But Olli tries to get up. He’s concerned for Greta. The Blomrooses have gone mad; there’s no telling what they might do.
The crowbar swings again and for an instant its shadow darkens the room.
Olli opens his eyes and realizes he’s alone. The room is darker now. The sky has filled with clouds; there’s a drizzle of rain outside.
He tries to stand up. His legs don’t want to hold him, and he has to put his hands on the floor. There’s a stab of pain in the back of his head. His whole skull feels tender. He squints.
On the floor where Greta was lying is a large, dark spot. With other streaks around it. Large and small streaks. The Blomrooses seem to have made quite a mess.
Even the walls have dark handprints on them. To be more precise, red handprints.
There are similar stains on the tools, which have been neatly arranged in a row after use:
A screwdriver.
Pliers.
Pincers.
A hammer.
A chisel.
A drill.
A saw.
41
OLLI FOLLOWS THE BLOODSTAINS OUTSIDE.
He feels dizzy, wants to throw up. The back of his head is throbbing. His legs hurt, too.
He stumbles around, and then he finds the Blomrooses, at the edge of the ravine.
They’re standing in the drizzle, among the trees, blank-faced, spattered, staring at the ground. They see Olli, and Leo turns to look at him, like a wild animal. Leo can’t speak, just makes a sound, and finally grimaces.
Riku, looking pale, points at a hole in the ground with blood around it.
“She’s in there,” he whispers, his eyes shining. “She gave us the slip when Leo turned chicken. Ran out here and crawled in before we could catch her. Slipped right underground. Now if we just had the guts to go in after her…”
Olli didn’t know what to do or say. His brain wasn’t working. He turned to look at Anne.
The rain was gradually washing the blood off her pretty face.
Smiling sadly, she wiped her brow with a hand red to the elbow. Then she sighed and said quietly, in a carefree, pensive voice, “What a mess. Say what you will but I still think that somewhere under there is my sweet Karri…”
42
GRETA IS ALL WOMAN NOW.
But her whole body is covered in scars.
When Olli’s hand, with Greta’s guidance, has been everywhere, they lie down, holding each other, naked and quiet.
Finally Greta, noticing Olli’s ardour rising, whispers in his ear, “Darling, I will gladly give you this body, but first you should know its whole story. So listen…”
I was born in the secret passages, right before your eyes, born among the M-particles, out of love for you.
I’m sure you know the story of how Hermaphroditus, the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, met the amorous nymph Salmacis, and they merged with one another. This cr
eated a being that was both man and woman. That happened in mythical antiquity. Another story began in Finland in the 1960s, in Jyväskylä Central Hospital, when a young woman named Anna Kultanen happened to have a baby like that.
The father had really wanted a boy. He took one look at the baby, freaked out and left. The doctors examined the child, conferred for a while and decided they wanted to make it a girl.
But the mother refused to let them touch her baby. She named it Karri, and started raising it as a boy.
The first few years passed without any major problems. Then came the Tourula Five. And little by little, unknown to everyone, I started to develop, in the mind of the boy you knew as Karri Kultanen, at the same time that he was having one adventure after another roaming through the secret passages with the Tourula Five. I came to be because of his secret, hopeless devotion to a boy he knew he could never have. That was you, of course, Olli. You probably remember how I once told you that there would be no me if not for you. That was literally true. He started watching you. He learnt to sense what you liked. Then he imagined a girl you could love, and he found the necessary parts in himself—the parts that he didn’t need for being Karri.
In the darkness of the secret passages he recreated himself and hid the change under a dirty hoodie and silence.
Finally he decided that the time had come for him to step aside, and he let the girl he had created stand before you, a little nymph whose name was Greta. Her whole being was crystallized around one singular hope, the same hope that had brought her to life: that you could love her…
Now you’re smiling. Why? Are you laughing at the big emotions of the little girl in the pear-print dress? I suppose they are funny. But please be kind and don’t laugh. It’s a sad fact, but those feelings haven’t really changed in all these years. If you know me at all, you know that I am what I am. I may behave like a self-sufficient cat, but I have the heart of a faithful dog who can’t help but love you. That’s what I was created for. For you, Olli. You mustn’t forget that.
Secret Passages in a Hillside Town Page 22