She didn’t do anything to me, but I could see what she was doing to the person with me.
Yeah? What?
Her hands stopped. She looked at them, opened and closed her fists, which were smaller than my own.
Something I shouldn’t have seen. I just happened to come out of the toilets at that moment.
But what did she do?
You ask an awful lot of questions.
You asked me if I wanted to hear and I said yes.
The same feeling I had had before she left, that something bad was going to happen, has come back. A cold feeling in my stomach, even though it’s full of warm macaroni.
What are you going to do? I ask.
She’s in our narrow kitchen now, looking in the refrigerator.
Good, there’s still some casserole left. I’ll go and put on my home clothes and eat.
What are you going to do? I ask again.
She closes the refrigerator, turns, and looks out of the little kitchen window. There’s nothing to see but the end of the building next door, dark with rain and yellow from the bottom up to as high as the outside light can reach. My mother straightens her back and puts her hands on the table.
I’m tired of things left unexplained. I intend to get to the bottom of this. I’m going to tell this woman that I want to meet her and I’m going to ask her why she did what she did.
When?
Tomorrow. But not until the evening. And do you know why?
Why?
She turns away from the window and looks at me and smiles and seems like herself again, as if the indignation she felt has flown away with her gaze, slipped out into the rainy, sleeping darkness.
Because we’re going to be up so late tonight watching TV and eating popcorn.
It’s hard to smile because something cold is banging around in my stomach and it’s hard to swallow because my throat feels dry and tight. I try to smile, and when I try really hard, maybe I manage it. My mother puts her hand on my shoulder as she walks past into the bedroom to change her clothes.
I sit for a moment, then get up and go in the kitchen. I look out of the window like she just did.
I don’t see anything, but I’m sure that at this moment there’s something that I absolutely have to understand, or at least remember.
But I forget it for twenty years. My mother’s words.
I’m going to tell this woman that I want to meet her and I’m going to ask her why she did what she did.
OCTOBER 2013
THE HUMMING, RUSHING sound was coming from inside me. It wasn’t the wind in the trees, the gravel under my feet, or the sea far behind me. My steps were long and firm and the late evening was warm and calm considering the time of year.
The little house sat right next to the road, as if it were waiting to be picked up. It was half-lit – the porch and the windows on the right side of the house shone warmly and cast a soft halo over the evening dark. The left side of the house seemed to be asleep. It was completely dark, as if it were part of a different building. I stopped, took a deep breath, and felt in my pocket.
Twenty years.
I walked up the porch steps to the front door and pressed the white button on the frame. There was a high-pitched noise inside. I heard footsteps, and the door opened a crack. After a moment it opened all the way and the warm light flooded out into the October night.
‘Aleksi. I’ve been expecting you.’
Evening tea and light brown cookies were laid out beautifully on a little side table in the living room. There was also a lamp with a brass base and a dark green glass shade on the table that cast a slightly tinted softness over the room. The table was flanked by two leather armchairs with imposing horseshoe-curved backs and the floor was almost entirely covered by a Persian rug, which I was prepared to assume was genuine. The windowsills overflowed with leafy houseplants, there was a sleek stereo system on a bureau with black speakers on either side playing classical music – Wagner, I guessed. The antique lamp that hung from the ceiling wasn’t lit; the light in the room came from the table lamp and two floor lamps with fringed shades reminiscent of old photos or museum displays.
The room was small but pleasant.
I sat in the chair offered and waited for my tea. Steam rose from the cup as if it were struggling to get away. I waited for the other cup to be filled, for the teapot to be set down. I reached in my pocket for the bows, and placed them on the table.
‘One is from the year 1993,’ I said. ‘The other one is new.’
The bows were identical. They lay against the dark wood like the wings of an injured butterfly. I raised my eyes and looked across the table.
‘When did you notice?’
‘Half an hour ago. The slightly darker one,’ I said, pointing at it, ‘I’ve had for twenty years. This one I found on a jar of pâté earlier this evening.’
Enni had turned her head so that I saw her in profile. She held her teacup chest-high.
‘And that was enough?’
‘Of course not. But it made me remember. Things that happened twenty years ago. Things I’d seen and heard. What you said about Henrik. Where you were working. In a waterfront restaurant. The way you make your own foods and tie them up with bows. Like you did with some baked goods twenty years ago. You were already obsessed with Henrik back then, jealous, the way you still were, right up to the very end. I should have realised it the first time I met you, but I was focused on Henrik. I always suspected him, didn’t think to look beside him, or under his feet, where you were.’
My voice sounded so calm that it didn’t seem like my own. I wasn’t agitated. More tired than anything.
‘My mother was planning to meet you,’ I said. ‘She did what she said. She kept her word. My mother wasn’t perfect but she kept her word. I’m sure she got in touch with you. I can only guess why it wasn’t investigated – she must have called the restaurant and it was somehow misinterpreted. Then she left her office, got into your car, and something happened. It was October, and it was raining, and the whole investigation came too late. So you were able to just drive away, and no one knew where you went.’
‘Does anyone else know?’
Her voice was neutral, as if she were enquiring about the weather from someone who had a view out of the window.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to know what happened to my mother.’
Enni blew on her tea. I couldn’t tell if she was smiling or if it was just what her lips did when she blew. The steam trembled.
‘Henrik told me,’ she said, ‘that you were the missing woman’s son.’
I didn’t say anything. Enni sipped her tea. The muscles of her face twitched. The tea was too hot. The cup went back to its saucer with a clink.
‘What do you think of this place?’ she asked.
‘I’m sorry?’
She turned her head just enough that I could see her whole face. Most of the light was coming from below, and it brought out the recent changes in her appearance. She looked old, her cheeks slightly sunken, the wrinkles around her lips dark and distinct. The biggest change was in her eyes. They were as full of sadness as eyes without tears can be.
‘This place,’ she said, waving a hand.
‘Homely.’
‘Homely,’ she said. ‘Twenty-three years, and this is all I get.’
I didn’t say anything.
‘I don’t think it’s fair. I told Henrik it wasn’t fair. I told him again two weeks ago when he came to ask for help, the way he always does when he gets into trouble with other women. And he did get into trouble, for twenty-three years. And I always took him in, comforted him, gave him what he wanted, because he promised. Even now I talk sweetly to him, but like always, he doesn’t listen.’
We sat in silence for a moment. Enni kept her eyes fixed on me. The teacups steamed between us.
‘What happened to my mother?’ I said.
Enni leaned back in her chair. She looked in front of her, perhaps at the bureau with its
speaker sentinels. Wagner thundered and proclaimed.
‘Henrik and I were together for some time. We were happy. Or I was, at least. Henrik said he was. I still don’t know if it was true. We met when he bought a restaurant on the waterfront where I was working. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about our relationship. He was always so secretive, you could never talk to anyone about anything. Then along came this woman, your mother.’
Enni didn’t quite look at me but she turned her head in my direction.
‘Henrik grew cold towards me. I couldn’t make any contact with him. Do you know how that feels? Of course you do. Amanda must have already done the same thing to you.’
She looked at me. The difference, of course, was that I hadn’t fallen in love with Amanda. I had just … well, what?
‘Then they came to have dinner at the very restaurant that had been our place,’ Enni said. ‘My heart was broken. Two weeks ago, when Henrik walked in here delirious, his shirt bloody, I realised that I’d buried my resentment for twenty years, but I hadn’t forgotten, or forgiven, anything. I told him that. I told him it was over.’
She laid her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath in. Then out.
‘That evening, twenty years ago, when the woman went to the toilets, I went over to Henrik and told him what he was. Then I slapped him and poured a glass of wine in his lap. I knew that when the woman came back they would leave and Henrik would have to explain what had happened. Your next question will naturally be, why, after all that, Henrik still kept me close to him, or why I wanted to be close to him.’
She looked at me, didn’t wait for me to ask.
‘That’s the way love is sometimes. That’s how it is when you know things about a person that he doesn’t want anyone else to know. Shall I show you?’
Before I could say anything she had taken two quick steps to the bureau, bent down, taken a folder out of the bottom drawer, and handed it to me. I took it, but didn’t open it.
‘I’m going to ask you again,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘What happened?’
‘This pertains to it.’
She stood in the middle of the room. I opened the folder. A photo album. Many photos of Enni when she was younger, as well as Henrik Saarinen. Other people. I easily recognised Enni, Henrik, Amanda, Markus Harmala, at different times, in different clothes, hairstyles, sunglasses. A few group photos. Nothing extraordinary about them, nothing perverse – no leather, or rubber, no animals or eating of faeces. Nothing that you could blackmail someone with. Just people at Kalmela, under the chandeliers, in the summer sunshine, in the boat, eating dinner.
I closed the album and put it on the table.
‘I’ve waited twenty years,’ I said. ‘You picked my mother up at work. Then what happened?’
Enni’s eyes were averted. She looked like a woman who’d had something taken from her for ever. I knew how that felt.
‘We agreed to meet. I drove to her office. She got in the car. We tried to talk. I tried to explain that Henrik belonged to me, but she refused to understand. I raised my hand, maybe too suddenly. Maybe she thought I was going to hit her. She tried to hit me. And I … I had a knife with me. For self-defence … I brought it from work. I acted instinctively. I don’t remember anything. Or not very much. I realised something bad had happened. I panicked. I started the car and drove away.’
Enni was a broad-shouldered woman. Compared to her my mother was a featherweight, much too delicate, hopelessly fragile.
‘I was acting on instinct,’ Enni said. ‘I had been here with Henrik before. I found myself turning onto this road. I’d driven all the way from Helsinki with this woman in the car beside me. It wasn’t until I got here that I realised I hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t considered whether there was anyone here. But the place was deserted and I went to work. I dug a big hole in the woods and buried her. I drove back to Helsinki. I never said a word to anyone about what happened that day. No one asked me. To Henrik I was a wall to talk to, a mattress to have sex on. The police were briefly interested in him, and that was all.’
The feeling that was growing inside me wasn’t the deep satisfaction of finding out a secret and it wasn’t vengeful rage for the wrong done. It was mostly sadness, and a bottomless feeling of loneliness. Enni had taken two or three steps backwards and was leaning against the bureau.
‘Did you tell Henrik?’ I asked.
‘Most of it. I didn’t have time …’
I lost someone I loved, but I had nothing to do with it.
‘That was why he attacked you, wasn’t it?’
‘I told him I did it for him. He didn’t understand.’
‘Of course he didn’t,’ I said, and finally felt the rage rise inside me. Soon it would fill my head, take over my mind. ‘You did it for yourself. You were jealous and envious. It wasn’t some act of kindness. You took a little boy’s mother away from him.’
I was standing now. I remembered two things I’d seen that now came together: Enni’s skilful use of a knife in the kitchen, and Henrik Saarinen’s cause of death. Enni’s right hand slipped behind her, into the top drawer of the bureau. I took a step towards her. The hand behind her back darted towards me.
The long knife with its shining blade didn’t rise, didn’t make any unnecessary motions. It flicked efficiently and purposefully towards my heart. She took a step closer. I did the same. I narrowly avoided getting the knife in my chest but didn’t dodge it altogether.
The gleaming blade sank into my left arm near the shoulder, went through my coat and polo shirt as if it was bursting a balloon. Enni quickly drew it out again. I looked at her face. Determined. Cold eyes.
I lunged forward. She thrust the knife at me. I took hold of her, forced my left arm to wrap around her throat. The knife slashed the air in front of my face. She yelled. I was half behind her. I reached with my right hand for her right hand.
The knife stabbed at my arms, slicing my sleeves open, tearing the flesh. Enni was a professional cook. She sharpened her knives herself. I squeezed her wrist. I was surprised by the strength of her arms, her torso. She felt for my left hand on her throat, found a pain point, and squeezed. It felt as if she was tearing my hand off.
I yelled.
Enni struggled.
She turned and jabbed the knife straight at me. I lifted my hand to block it. The blade went through my hand. Enni did what she’d done before – she withdrew the knife. It was a brief movement, but long enough. I leapt forward, aiming for the middle of her body. She swerved sideways and I only half struck her. I got hold of the knife hand and pulled.
We staggered. I wrenched at her hand with all my might. I couldn’t get the knife loose. My strength was insufficient, the pain in my left shoulder and right hand seemed to paralyse me.
But Enni fell.
I held onto her wrist with both hands.
A twist.
The knife turned, pointed upward, at the moment we hit the floor, me on my side, Enni on her stomach. The blade sank into her throat.
Enni made a rasping sound.
I got up on my knees. The tip of the knife was poking out of the back of her neck. She thrashed and wheezed, each sound weaker than the last. The knife had gone through the centre of her throat. She stopped moving and lay on the floor, her hair spread out around her head.
On the back of her neck I could see old scars, like long scratches left by fingernails that had tried to tear her neck open.
Wagner thundered on.
I stood up, dripping warm blood on the rug.
OCTOBER–NOVEMBER 2013
THE FOREST WAS quiet and shadowed, exuding expectation of winter. I held Ketomaa under the arm as we made our way over a tangle of roots. The old man moved slowly and was having particular difficulty with the uneven terrain. The sun peeked out from between the clouds and branches now and then like a kindling fire, and at other times the woods went nearly dark. Our eyes had to try to adjust to the alternating light and shade.
Ketomaa’s
neck and left cheek were entirely covered in bandages and dressings. The nails had left holes in him. It would take a while for them to scar over. He was pale and weak from his long period of unconsciousness and his stay in the hospital. We were approaching the area the police had excavated.
We hadn’t really said anything on the way. Coming to Kalmela had been a joint decision but more instinctive than carefully considered. When he’d woken from the coma I had told him everything I knew, everything I understood. He listened. Then he told me how Henrik Saarinen had tricked him into coming to the abandoned house and wrestled him into submission. When I asked why Saarinen had done it, Ketomaa said he wasn’t sure. One reason might be a family relationship that Ketomaa had discovered, one that had begun to dawn on me once my desperate search had come to its end. I’d been blind, but it was understandable.
Ketomaa had been sent home from hospital a few days later. He got in touch with me and said that we should take a little trip if I didn’t have any work to do that day. I told him that since a carpenter who’d been recently stabbed not just once but twice wasn’t doing much in the way of work, we could go whenever he liked.
Instead of driving into Kalmela, we pulled off a little before the turn and took a narrow dirt road into the forest. It had always looked like just another road winding through the woods and fields around the estate. Now it was impossible to miss; it was like a giant tunnel into an open mouth. The road was filled with the tracks of heavy machinery, an excavator and dumper truck – and of course police cars.
We’d left the car where most of the tyre tracks ended. Ahead there were only the ruts left by the digging equipment.
Ketomaa’s breathing was laboured. He stopped. We were close. We would soon reach what we came to see, over the next rise from the look of it.
‘Have you been there?’ Ketomaa asked. His speech was hard to decipher. He still couldn’t move his jaw or cheeks.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Do you want to stop here?’
‘No.’
He didn’t say any more, and carried on walking. I walked beside him. We came over the rise. We were both panting. If I was sweaty and winded, I could only guess how he must feel. In spite of the wind I loosened my scarf, opened my coat.
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