Greta trembles as she tells the story of her flesh, lying on her side on the bed with her fists against her chest, bare and fragile, like a suffering child. Olli can’t touch her—this isn’t the time to console her, first she has to get the words out.
For seven years Dr Engel performed dozens, perhaps hundreds of plastic surgeries on Greta. Olli can’t keep count of them, but Greta remembers every one. For the first couple of years the doctor’s treatments were skilful and professional, done with careful consideration, honouring all the rules of aesthetic surgery, consulting with Greta about every operation and making sure she knew what he was going to do.
Gradually the flow of customers to the clinic dried up when a few dissatisfied patients made a fuss about Engel’s alcohol consumption and the quality of his work. He used his increased free time to examine and tinker with Greta. Little by little the “beautiful little hermaphrodite”, as he called her a few times when he had been drinking, became his obsession.
Eventually the phone nearly stopped ringing altogether.
Dr Engel drank, and felt sorry for himself.
Greta felt sorry for him, too.
She tried not to listen to the rumours, but the truth was that many of his treatments didn’t seem to have been very successful. There was one operation that required multiple corrective surgeries. When she awoke from the anaesthesia she might find that he’d done a lot of other things besides the ones he’d told her about beforehand.
Her body was now more womanly than she had ever dared dream, for which she was grateful. But she didn’t want any more surgery.
When she asked him to stop the operations, he said that she wasn’t finished yet. He ought to do at least one more operation, perhaps two. A plastic surgeon’s eye, after all, can see the truth. Surely Greta wanted to be sure that her secret love liked what he saw? Ach Greta, mein Herzchen, men can be so terribly picky about a woman’s body…
After every surgery, and before every new one, he put on his doctor’s coat and ordered Greta to stand naked in front of him. He examined her body from various angles, like an artist examining an unfinished work. Sometimes he made her undress, sit at the piano and play. He said that when she was in that position it was easier for him to see which parts were finished and which still needed work.
Before her scars even had time to heal properly the impatient doctor would want to perform another operation. Sometimes the scars became infected and she had to have an intravenous drip. When that happened, he would care for her with fatherly tenderness.
*
Eventually she’d had enough.
She packed her bag, marched up to Engel, thanked him for everything, resigned her post and told him she was going back to Finland.
Dr Engel ordered her to stay right where she was. He took off her clothes as if she were a doll and pored over his seven-year project with a furrowed brow. As he did this he talked to himself with studied calm, like a man soothing a skittish animal.
He could understand, of course, that Greta was tired and sometimes wanted to give up. But she didn’t understand, in the impatience of her youth, how wondrously beautiful she could be if she would only let him finish his work. He said he would sooner bury Greta in the garden than let her walk out of there half-finished.
Greta looked into his eyes and realized that he was serious.
She understood that there was nothing she could do. The doctor knew best, and he would be the one to decide.
Engel’s eyes shone as his unfinished masterpiece acceded to his fatherly wishes.
A couple of days later Greta was sitting naked at the piano, playing.
It was early evening. Dr Engel was sipping a whisky and walking around the piano. The setting sun outside the window blazed on the piano’s polished black surface. He fiddled with the tie she’d given him for Christmas, watched the movements of her body, and wondered aloud whether the line of her neck needed augmentation or whether it would be better to concentrate on the earlobes for a while—they still had a certain roughness about them. Or perhaps he could touch up the breasts…
Greta stopped playing. She had decided to view the situation with resigned positivity. The previous Christmas Dr Engel had given her a collection of Emily Dickinson poems and pointed out one in particular that she ought to think about. It began: The hallowing of pain, Like hallowing of Heaven, Obtains at a corporeal cost. The ending was particularly apt: But He who has achieved the Top—All is the price of All.
The sound of the piano filled the room as Greta pounded out Chopin études with precision and force.
At some point she became aware that her hands felt stiff.
She found herself struggling more and more to make her fingers strike the right keys. First her playing slowed. Then she started to make mistakes, and a few wrong notes escaped. When she finally lost the notes completely, she lifted her fingers from the keyboard.
She shook her head in horror. She couldn’t play any more.
“What’s wrong?” Dr Engel asked, annoyed at the interruption.
“I don’t know,” Greta gasped.
Oh. So it’s happened, she thought, only slightly afraid. I’m finally going to die!
She stood up and looked the doctor in the eye, and everything went dark.
Greta didn’t die. She woke up in her own room. She was lying in bed with a blanket over her, and was no longer naked. She was wearing a dress and shoes.
It was afternoon. Of the following day. She had been asleep for eighteen hours.
Next to the bed was a packed suitcase with a plane ticket to Paris laid on top, where she would be sure to see it upon awakening.
The plane was leaving in five hours.
She was thrilled, but she didn’t understand what it was about. Had Dr Engel finally got the message that what he was doing was wrong, or had he been hurt by his protégé’s impatience? And why Paris in particular?
In any case, it had apparently all been arranged while she slept so that she could leave immediately. And who else could have done this for her but Hans Engel? She had no one else.
He must have wanted her to leave without saying goodbye. But she decided to find him and thank him for everything one more time.
She found him in the living room.
He was lying on his back on the floor in front of the piano, obviously stinking drunk. He stared at Greta, his eyes wide, sticking his tongue out at her like a naughty child.
It was bewildering. Greta turned to leave.
But something made her hesitate for a moment.
In spite of his clowning, the doctor didn’t look like he was feeling very well; his face was an unhealthy blue and his eyes were more bloodshot than she’d ever seen them. Greta went to look closer.
Then her legs gave out.
While Greta slept, Dr Engel had strangled himself with his own tie.
A note was stuck to his chest with a scalpel. It was written in Brazilian Portuguese.
Over the previous seven years Greta had learnt enough of the language to know that it said something about unpaid debts which were “hereby paid in full”. The letter also mentioned Greta’s name and said sardonically, My little pet—mimada—it’s time you were on your way, because your host—mestre—is now morto.
Greta fetched the suitcase, ran out of the house, caught a taxi to the airport and flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
45
“WHAT DID YOU DO IN PARIS?” Olli asks warily.
Greta smiles. She’s relaxed now, lying on the bed and stroking her stomach like a cat. Her eyes twinkle. The bad part of the story is over now.
“All the things a twenty-six-year-old woman can do in Paris. I went places. Learnt about art. Met people. Read books. Started to plan to write a book of my own. Went to the movies. Lived. I had seven years of my life to get back, after all.
“Olli, it would be sweet to say that I saved myself for you, but neither one of us is stupid. I was scared, but I wanted to experience my new body and practise se
x. Often. I had many lovers, men and women. At first I did it in the dark, then in bright light. I tested myself and my ability to experience pleasure, conquest. I wanted to know if I could do it.”
Greta stretched, let out a joyous laugh and looked at Olli with a mischievous grin.
“You’re not jealous, are you? I hope you are, at least a little bit. You had gone on with your life and I was thinking of you. When I went to bed I always imagined what sorts of girls you might be lying with. I was tremendously jealous and I took my revenge on you for your presumed sexual adventures many times.
“I met a famous photographer couple at a party. They wanted to take pictures of me, and I let them. When I undressed in the studio, they looked at each other and I could tell that they liked what they saw. The man asked me about my scars and I said I’d been in a car accident. The woman said that I was beautiful and that the scars were beautiful, too, and she wanted to touch them. I let her. The three of us went to bed together.
“The pictures they took were wonderful; they were displayed at the Carrousel du Louvre. We had fun together. We went to concerts, to artists’ cafes, bicycling, on picnics in the countryside. Then I realized that both of them had fallen in love with me. They started to compete for my attention and bicker with each other, so I left them. It was too easy to do. I wasn’t able to genuinely connect as long as the thought of you was always with me in bed. Or maybe I was just afraid of intimacy and used you as an excuse. I don’t know.
“I found new friends. Life was interesting and pleasant. I missed you of course, but I learnt to live with that feeling. Several times I almost got in touch with you. I looked up your number and held the telephone in my hand, found your address and wrote letters. But I always put down the receiver and burned the letters—because I didn’t have the courage. I thought that you would surely have completely forgotten the girl in the pear-print dress who you loved for one short summer. I was sure that if I were to appear in front of you and tell you that I had been thinking about you all those years, you would look at me with pity and wonder. I couldn’t bear that.”
Greta describes how she lived in Paris for twenty years, making her living writing art reviews and articles for newspapers and travelling all around the world. Shortly after moving to Paris she officially changed her name from Greta Kultanen to Greta Kara to sever herself once and for all from Rio de Janeiro, Bombay and Jyväskylä. Every couple of years she returned to Jyväskylä to look around and think about her life.
“I walked down Puistokatu and even went to Tourula—or what was left of it—but I could never stay there for long; the magic of our summer always came too close to me eventually, and I started to change from Madame Doinel to the girl in the pear-print dress. Every time I came here it was harder to return to my family in Paris.”
Olli flinches. “Madame Doinel? Family?”
Greta rolls onto her stomach, swings her feet in the air and avoids Olli’s gaze. “Yeah. When I was thirty-one I met an engineer named Armand. He was twelve years older than me, a widower with a daughter. Simone was five at the time. We lived a very comfortable life as a middle-class family for six years. I didn’t ever actually marry Armand, although he wanted me to, but I used his last name and introduced myself as his wife. I didn’t love him, but I was faithful to him. When I felt temptation I thought, I’m practising being a faithful wife so I can live with you someday, if fate ever brings us together.”
“Then what happened?”
Greta sighs. “Armand wanted more children. He wanted a son. And of course I couldn’t give him a son. There were arguments. I finally moved out and after that lived on my own. I never really saw anyone. I travelled a little, went to a lot of movies, and spent many years writing a book, which came to be A Guide to the Cinematic Life. I sold it to a large French publisher. Everything was going beautifully. Sometimes I felt a bit depressed, but medication and therapy helped.”
Olli notices Greta growing more tense.
“Then the Facebook craze started spreading everywhere, starting in 2008, a little while after Cinematic Life came out,” she says quietly. “I was among the first to join, out of curiosity. And besides, now that I was a writer, there were people I needed to keep in touch with. One evening I noticed that the Blomrooses had found me.”
Greta grimaces, covers her face with her hands, and shouts, “Tabarnak! Merde! By that time I had to all intents and purposes forgotten about them. I fell apart for a little while, couldn’t sleep… Oh God… can you imagine? First they tear me to pieces as if I wasn’t even a person, and then the next time our paths cross they want to be friends on Facebook…”
Olli takes Greta in his arms and strokes her golden hair until she stops trembling.
“That must have been awful,” he whispers.
Greta nods. “I started to have nightmares about them. That horrible morning in Tourula felt so near that I couldn’t see anything else. I thought I was going crazy. I read what I wrote in my book about cinematic revenge over and over, and I decided to kill the Blomrooses.”
In March of 2008 she decided to dedicate herself to revenge, and she accepted the Blomroos siblings as Facebook friends so that she could kill them.
“I thought it was meant to be. Why else would fate have thrown them in my path like that?”
She started gathering information. She found it on the Blomrooses’ profiles, and from the Blomrooses themselves, of course. Although Anne had sought Greta out as a Facebook friend, she had apparently been too busy to answer Greta’s brief greeting or the posts on her brothers’ or Greta’s walls. Riku and Leo were more eager to exchange thoughts with her. They didn’t really discuss the Tourula days. Both men concentrated on talking nonsense and—once they had seen her photo—flirting with her.
Wow, I would totally do you, was Riku Blomroos’s comment on her photo.
Leo, on the other hand, wrote:
I recall there was something weird about you in the Tourula days, and if I remember correctly, I think I even hated you for some reason, but hey, you certainly look OK now!
Greta was pleased. She could kill them now without any qualms.
She didn’t need any added confirmation to kill Anne Blomroos. She saw Anne’s leering face and bloody drill bit every night in her dreams.
Greta continued to keep in touch, and at some point Riku mentioned in a chat that the siblings were planning to get together at Anne’s summer house. Anne, it seemed, didn’t really stay in touch with her brothers, but now she had invited them to her place, which made Riku excited and slightly nervous.
This visit intrigued her. She found out as much as she could from Richard Blomroos and, in addition to the date, found out that the summer house in question—Anne had several—was in the south of France, in Trans-en-Provence, to be precise.
But the visit was just a week away. Greta began feverish preparations.
First she needed a gun. An old acquaintance of hers who was now a Facebook friend collected guns and had in fact tried to give her a pink designer pistol that he’d got at an auction. Greta had turned it down, because she didn’t like guns. Now she called him and said that she would accept the gift after all. He was pleased, invited her over, served her dinner, and showed her how to carry and shoot the gun.
Then she rented a car to drive from slushy Paris to the other side of France.
Greta stops talking.
Olli is thoughtful for a moment and then works up the courage to ask, “Well, did you shoot them?”
Greta gives him a blank look.
“I guess you could say I did. I drove to Trans-en-Provence, found Anne’s house, and walked in with the gun in my handbag. It was a cool, cloudy afternoon. I hoped there wouldn’t be any security guards or dogs. Executives of large companies rarely go anywhere without bodyguards, but on this occasion Anne apparently wanted to meet her brothers without any outsiders present. She had no way of knowing that an extra guest was coming, and that it was someone she herself had summoned through Facebo
ok.”
Greta continues.
I found them in the dining room. They were sitting at the table, just the three of them, drinking red wine.
I had expected to find them having a rollicking time. But Anne was pale, thin and weak. Leo and Riku were red-faced and overweight, but they were as silent as their sister. It felt like I was walking in on a family drama, and the pistol in my bag seemed stupid. Riku and Leo looked as if Anne had just given them some bad news that they were trying to absorb. They didn’t notice me even though I stood there for several minutes.
I felt a tinge of curiosity, but then I reminded myself that I was there to get revenge.
I released the safety on the pistol and walked closer to the table. They finally noticed I was there. I took aim at each of them in turn. I was trying to decide who to shoot first.
The brothers looked at me and didn’t know who I was.
Anne recognized me immediately. She said my name. “Greta,” she said softly.
She seemed to be expecting me. I aimed the gun at her forehead. She laughed drily, poured herself more wine, and took a drink. Unlike her brothers, she wasn’t afraid.
Riku and Leo were terrified, like two Oliver Hardys, and if I hadn’t hated them so much I’m sure I would have thought them endearingly silly and forgiven everything.
They asked pathetically what harm they had ever done to me, assured me that if they had somehow offended me in the past they were terribly sorry about it. They kept saying that they were sure they could make it up to me, couldn’t they? Weren’t we all old friends?…
Then Anne told them to shut up and they went quiet.
Anne said something like, “If you two idiots could so easily forget a thing like that then you deserve to die. I deserve to die, too, but at least I’ll die knowing why.”
Then she stood up, smiled with a peculiar sort of innocence and gave a little speech.
Secret Passages in a Hillside Town Page 24