I left.
I closed the door carefully behind me, pressing it into its frame.
A fury of shrieks could be heard all the way to the street. I was sure I could hear it even as I sped into the traffic on the shore road.
NOVEMBER 2013
‘MIIA NIEMELÄ.’
A voice on the telephone, two words, and I was back where we’d been two months before, when we met in the aisle at the supermarket, me in my ill-fitting, bloody, dirty clothes.
‘Hi. It’s Aleksi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Did I call at a bad time?’
‘Sort of. What did you want?’
Noise in the background, people, music.
‘I wanted to apologise,’ I said. ‘To explain.’
‘You don’t need to explain.’
‘I disagree. And I know you’re still angry at me. That’s OK.’
‘I’m not angry. I don’t think about you.’
‘I think about you. I’ve thought about you all the time.’
The background noise took on a form: a bar, girlfriends, Marvin Gaye, ‘Sexual Healing’. I could picture it all, in fragments: a girls’ night out, made-up faces sparkling, dark eyeliner, glossed lips, glasses of wine, tall cocktails, loud talk, laughter, flirtatious glances.
‘Wait a minute, all right?’
The noise receded. She was walking. The sound of her heels on the floor reached my ears.
‘OK,’ I heard her say. ‘I’m out in the lobby. I wanted to tell you that I don’t want you to call me.’
‘I understand. But you once asked me to tell you about myself …’
‘That was then. Things are different now.’
‘Do you mean Olli?’ I asked, before I could think about it.
‘Jesus. You’ve got a lot of nerve to be jealous six months after leaving me.’
I thought I had carefully prepared myself, thought my mind was calm, that I’d got in touch for one reason. I thought I would be altruistic. No matter what happened. No matter what Miia said.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘I just wanted to tell you what happened and why I had to do what I did.’
‘The secret agent.’
‘What?’
‘You sound just like you did back then.’
‘But I can talk about it now.’
‘So talk.’
‘I’m sure it would be better if we could actually meet …’
I heard more high heels on the floor, more voices of revellers competing with my anguish.
‘It all started when my mother was murdered, twenty years ago,’ I said, and realised how poorly I had actually prepared. My mind was jumbled with everything I’d been thinking, everything that had happened to me. I knew I should be careful with my words. Luckily neither one of us spoke for a moment.
‘Aleksi, I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask.’ Miia’s voice was different now, more wary. ‘Are you serious? I mean, is it true, what you’re saying?’
Was it true?
At the very least, it was true.
It was my whole life, up until now.
‘Yes. I didn’t know how to talk about it. I still don’t know. I want you to know how all this happened. Twenty years ago my mother disappeared, and a little while later I found out who killed her.’
‘Oh Aleksi.’
‘This is a really long story …’
‘It’s not that.’
I waited, didn’t rush her. I could hear my heart pounding, the phone line buzzing. A few seconds passed.
‘I’ve just got engaged. Yesterday. I’m out celebrating with friends.’
For a moment I didn’t know what to say.
I said, ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. Aleksi, I’m sorry about what happened to you, to your mother. I’d like to … or … maybe not right now, since we really … But sometime …’
I heard a happy shout, music. All of it happening in the same city I was in.
‘Maybe sometime,’ I said, and heard in my mind what I was really saying: I was a prisoner of my obsession. I did what I had to do, and it tore us apart.
‘Yes, let’s,’ Miia said quietly. ‘Sometime.’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, it’s all right. I was wrong. I’m sorry.’
‘You have nothing to apologise for. Nothing. See you sometime.’
‘Yes. Sometime.’
NOVEMBER 2013
If you
(kick)
Only knew
(kick)
What I’ve done
(kick)
For you
(kick)
NOVEMBER 2013
ELIAS AHLBERG CALLED as I was unpacking boxes. The call was brief: I was to come to his office near Diana Park as soon as possible. I looked around, saw that I only had a few more things left to unpack, stack, move, arrange. How about in half an hour? I asked. Come on over, he said.
Henrik Saarinen’s lawyer and former right-hand man had an office on the fourth floor in a hundred-year-old stone building. The meeting room was high-ceilinged and positioned precisely at the level of the treetops. Looking out of the window I felt as if the thin, black, sharp tips of the branches would come through the floor and tickle the soles of my feet like cold, probing fingers. I didn’t have long to enjoy the thought before Ahlberg came into the room.
I’d last seen him six months earlier. He was about sixty, greying, in a dark suit that cost about what a small car does. He seemed to be taking my measure again, and still not telling me what it was he was looking for. His merciless blue eyes stared straight at me yet managed to avoid seeming intrusive. You only get good at that after years of practice.
‘Coffee, tea, juice?’ he said, nodding at the thermos, soft drinks, glasses and cups on the table. ‘Shall we sit down?’
He laid a folder on the table, poured two cups of coffee, and did it all so smoothly that you felt compelled to watch him, even after the coffee was steaming in the cups and one was set in front of me.
‘Henrik Saarinen’s will,’ he said, sitting down across from me. ‘Its final version. You’re probably not at all aware of it?’
I shook my head.
‘No.’
He looked at me a moment longer. The look was neither positive nor negative.
‘Henrik changed his will numerous times,’ Ahlberg said. He opened the folder and looked at the papers, although it was clear that he knew their contents very well. ‘The most recent change was made just a few days before his death.’
That look again, which I returned. I remembered it from my job interview. He was clearly one of those lawyers who also believed in what was between the lines, what was left unsaid.
‘This small addition pertains to you. As you know, Henrik Saarinen was a wealthy man. His largest personal holding was of course the investment company that bears his name, Saarinen Capital. Are you familiar with the activity and assets of the company?’
I know everything about them, I thought.
‘To some extent, of course,’ I said, ‘but I was hired as a caretaker, not a treasurer.’
‘Quite.’
‘I mean, I don’t know much, but I’m somewhat familiar with it.’
‘Quite.’
The look. A pause.
‘The will specifies that upon Henrik Saarinen’s death the investment company shall be sold and divided up in the manner designated. In this division of the property you have been allotted a share that is almost exactly 5 per cent.’
The look.
‘That percentage perhaps sounds small.’
A hand stroking smooth paper.
The windows filled with pitch-black, autumn-stripped branches growing up from below.
‘The sale is being arranged presently,’ he continued. ‘It won’t be instantaneous. Some of the holdings are large enough that a buyer has yet to be found. At this point the plan is that the sale should be completed within six months. At that time it will be certain what your portion of the
final value will be, but if you wish I can provide an estimate of the value immediately. I remind you, however, that this would only be an estimate, based on the present value of the holdings. Anything could happen, as I’m sure you are aware.’
Anything at all definitely could happen.
‘May I ask something?’
Ahlberg lowered his right hand with his pen in it onto the table like a surgeon’s knife. He leaned slightly back in his chair.
‘Naturally. I am at your disposal.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘According to the will. I’m at your disposal for the duration of the execution of the will.’
My turn to look, read between the lines.
‘Did Henrik leave anything else?’
‘A great deal,’ Ahlberg said. ‘The Kalmela estate, of course. Other residences. Some art.’
‘I mean something like a letter or some kind of message. Something that would tell us more.’
Ahlberg shook his head. It was the first movement of its kind of the whole meeting. The first that wasn’t absolutely smooth.
‘Not to my knowledge,’ he said.
‘Did he say why I was included in the will?’
Head shake. The second of its kind.
‘No.’
I thought for a moment.
‘All right. Who are the other inheritors?’
He found his scalpel again. The pen rose upright, but it didn’t make any cuts.
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Even though you’re at my disposal.’
‘Quite.’
He turned his head, looked towards the window, perhaps out of the window.
‘A certain portion of the inheritance is already under dispute,’ he said. ‘There were some small surprises.’
Amanda Saarinen. Markus Harmala.
Lovers. Sister and brother.
Their dispute wouldn’t be a short one.
‘It doesn’t affect your portion in any way,’ Ahlberg continued. ‘Your share is precisely defined and unambiguous.’
His eyes returned to mine.
‘I want to express my condolences for your mother. It’s hard to believe such a thing could happen.’
I didn’t want to talk about it. For twenty years it had driven me. It almost killed me.
‘You’ll probably get in touch to let me know. About the sale and so on.’
‘Naturally.’
I got up. Ahlberg did the same. Everything was smooth again, businesslike. I came around the table. Ahlberg held out his hand.
‘Thank you for your service, Aleksi. I’m sure that Henrik would have said the same.’
I took his hand, looked into his eyes. I was ready to leave. Ahlberg, however, didn’t let go of my hand. His grip got tighter, or rather warmer, part of that predatory smoothness.
‘Aren’t you interested in knowing the value of your share?’
I wanted to get away. He sensed this, and let go of my hand.
‘If sold at today’s prices,’ he said with a smile – careful, barely perceptible – the first of the meeting – ‘Almost exactly four million euros.’
NOVEMBER 2013
ON THE RED brick wall hung Jesus, on the snow-white coffin glowed a bouquet of red roses. The minister went through the things I’d told him, the organist sat down heavily on his bench.
Thank you for every moment of my life. Thank you for the sunlight and the darkness.
I sat alone in the first row and was a little cold. The wistful light of a November Sunday fell against the brick-covered wall without warming anyone or anything and made it look older.
I didn’t know if my mother liked this hymn. We never talked about hymns or funerals. We just lived, we were alive, until suddenly we weren’t.
Contrary to what I’d sometimes read or heard, I didn’t feel one phase closing and another beginning. It wasn’t the end of the old or the start of the new.
Just the opposite.
Everything continued. Life continued.
I would live. I would remember.
I didn’t feel any particular satisfaction in the fact that the person responsible for my mother’s death was dead. The dead don’t know anything about their punishment. Only the living can carry a thing with them.
I remembered and I always would remember.
Maybe that’s what memory is for. To give us a life when it’s been taken away from us.
My mother would exist as long as I remembered her in thousands of images, moments, words that weren’t images or moments or words as the world would understand them.
For twenty years I had tried to adjust to the idea that my mother was dead and gone.
Only to realise that she existed as long as I did, in every day of my life, one of which would be my last.
I no longer wondered what she would have said to me if she’d known that her time was up, if she’d known what would happen when she went down those stairs, opened that door and got into that car.
Everything had been said.
Everything was clear.
She had given me my life, she had done her best, she had made a mistake. That’s how a person’s life is. We don’t achieve what we reach for. We get dirty, get broken, drown. If we don’t bury someone else with us, we can be content.
My mother once said that I could be anything I wanted to be.
It wasn’t true. Not then, and not now.
But it was important that she said it. That tells me everything – how much she loved me, believed in me, believed I could change the course of fate.
Rays of sunlight struck my mother’s coffin.
Life hurts, and is over in an instant.
As the hymn played, something made me turn my head and look behind me.
Ketomaa should have been the only other mourner here, but far behind him, in the very last row next to the door sat a dark-haired man whose face I couldn’t quite make out. He looked outwardly as if he’d come to the right place – black suit, dark blue or black tie, white shirt. He didn’t seem to notice anyone looking at him. He didn’t move at all, and I could only assume that he was gazing straight ahead.
I didn’t recognise him but there was something familiar about him. I searched out Ketomaa’s eyes and tried to get him to turn and look. He didn’t, and I let it go.
The hymn ended. The service was over. I got up and turned around. The man had disappeared. Ketomaa gave me a questioning look. My face must have showed my bafflement. The chapel hummed with emptiness. I shrugged.
I didn’t know why I felt the way I did.
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Copyright © Antti Tuomainen 2013
English translation copyright © Lola Rogers 2015
Antti Tuomainen has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published with the title SYNKKÄ NIIN KUIN SYDÄMENI in Finland by Like in 2013
First published in Great Britain by Harvill Secker in 2015
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This book has been published with the financial assistance of FILI – Finnish Literature Exchange
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Dark As My Heart Page 21