‘Aava! Did you hear what’s happening in Helsinki?’
Eva, a worker for a Swedish refugee organisation, joins me and Gerard with her tray. In the brightly lit, non-air conditioned canteen she looks as effortlessly beautiful as Swedes always do, as if she had arrived here simply to see what it was like.
‘What’s happening?’ asks Gerard. My tongue swells in my mouth. Suddenly all my words are Finnish words, and no one here understands Finnish.
‘Someone is shooting people in the centre of Helsinki.’
‘What?’
‘There were shootings in other places at the same time, London and Paris at least. They’ve posted messages on the internet about the culling of humanity.’
‘The what?’
‘The culling of humanity. That there are too many of us, we’re using up too many natural resources, that kind of thing.’
‘No.’ The whimper of an animal with a broken leg. My voice. Gerard squeezes my hand hard.
‘Sick.’ Good-natured, shocked Gerard. He speaks four languages fluently, but the grammar of hate is unfamiliar to him.
‘It’s as sick as could be,’ says Eva. ‘They use real issues to justify this . . . slaughter.’
‘Where’s the news story?’ asks Gerard, leaning over Eva to look at her phone. Their heads are close together, their hands tanned and beautiful.
I get up. I stagger, jolting the table, and tea spills onto Gerard and Eva’s feet.
‘Anteeksi,’ I say in Finnish, using the hem of my skirt to mop up the lukewarm drink. Gerard takes my hand. I tear myself away so violently that I bang my back on the table opposite.
‘Darling. Are you OK?’
‘I need to talk to my mother.’ I say it in French, so Eva won’t understand.
‘Shall I come with you?’
Gerard gets up to follow me. I shake my head, walking past the long table and the people who are looking at me in confusion. My arms and legs are awkward and heavy. I remember the hippo that found its way onto a restaurant terrace in a Tanzanian nature reserve where Gerard and I were on holiday. Its feet made holes in the floor and every time it turned round it broke something. Time at the restaurant tables stood still; the restaurant guests paused, forks in mid-air, to stare at the creature, which was sweet when seen in the river from a distance but threatening in a small space. The children of the neighbouring village had been sailing toy boats at the point where the hippos accessed the water. One of them had been trampled by the herd of hippos. The waiters ushered the hippo out quietly as if they had whispered to it. Now I understand how terrified the creature must have been.
I open the door, step outside and see the guard walking round the garden, rifle in hand, the velvety black sky and the stars, which always shine more brightly here than at home.
10
My mother doesn’t answer. For a moment I imagine her at work, talking to an eager audience about things that I hated when I was a child; they always seemed more important than me. I imagine my mother’s greying hair and the clothes that she wore from one decade to the next. For a moment I am a child again, angry because she never saw me properly. I will never be like that, I thought, looking at her behind the computer, lost in her work, always ungroomed-looking, concentrating on saving the world, incapable of being happy. My wardrobe, even here, is full of white, well-cut shirts; I iron their collars before going to work. My mother does not even own an iron.
My fingers are cold, even though the wind that blows from the garden is warm. I wrap a fine scarf around my shoulders, pulling the ends so tightly that breathing is difficult; I tie it in a knot and walk towards the far wall, where I can hear the sea. I take a wrong step on the dark path and my leg slips painfully. I rub my ankle and go on.
The smell of burnt wood wafts through the air. From the bar on the other side of the garden comes talk in English and French. Gerard and Eva probably went there from the canteen. I imagine them drinking ginger beer, side by side on the narrow bench, their voices lowering as they talk about what is happening in Helsinki now.
‘What’s wrong with Aava?’ Eva will ask, and Gerard will shrug his shoulders.
‘Sometimes she’s just very . . . individual.’
At the end of the garden is the gardener’s family’s tiny house, in its garden a pink Hello Kitty scooter which a Japanese doctor brought the children. I go past the house to the wall, crouching at the roots of the hibiscus bushes at a spot where the children have built a den. Beside my feet are a doll’s blanket and some little porcelain coffee cups.
We were in the playroom, just the two of us. Aslak was wearing yellow-and-black-striped pyjamas that had shrunk in the wash; he looked like a little tiger cub. He asked me to help him make desert fox ears for his head, and paint dark fox eyes on his face, with sharp teeth at the corners of his mouth. Against my fingers, Aslak’s skin was as soft as whipped cream. I painted the animal features on top of his own. Something about it horrified me. Aslak was my laughing little brother who, after showering, stuck his tummy out against my tummy and wanted to play fat men. When he asked me to draw a fox’s features on his face, it felt as if my drawing exposed something that was hidden inside him.
‘Why can’t you be a prince?’ I asked.
‘I’m a desert fox princess,’ Aslak replied, and his gaze belonged both to him and to someone else. ‘I save anyone who is in distress.’
I nodded in annoyance, putting on a dress with a gold hem and setting a silver tiara with pink-and-turquoise stones on my head.
I spread Granny’s old lace scarf on the little table and set on it porcelain cups and a wooden cake with pieces, attached with stickers, that you could cut with a little knife. Aslak grabbed a flashing light sabre and invited Mum and Dad to the cake party. For once they came, hand in hand and laughing, putting on crowns and cloaks and saying they were the kings of the neighbouring land. Sitting on the floor, they drank coffee from the porcelain cups.
Aslak soon got tired of the game and began to run round the room, howling like a desert fox. I ran too and Dad and Mum chased us, grabbing us with a hug and tickling us under the arms and on the tummy, and Aslak and I laughed bubbles of laughter which tinkled in the room even after we had gone to sleep.
From: Aslak
To: Aava
I know you’re not really interested, but there isn’t anyone else I can tell. I’m part of something. Can you look after Mum and Dad? I don’t want any of you to come to any harm. This is my own private thing.
That was a message I received from Aslak two weeks ago. I replied straight away.
From: Aava
To: Aslak
What are you talking about? Of course I’m interested! Call me!
From: Aava
To: Aslak
Hi. Could you send me a message? I’m really worried.
From: Aava
To: Aslak
Hi. I really hope you’re not doing anything stupid.
I love you.
From: Aava
To: Aslak
We need to talk. I can get some leave and come to you.
ANSWER ME!!!
I thought about the message all the time. I thought about it at work and in the evening with Gerard, talking in the neatly swept clay hut with the local nurses and measuring the arms of the quietly waiting children in the sun with the faded tape measure that I brought here from home.
I wanted to tell someone. I wanted to shift the burden away from myself, to tell someone who would know what to do. But what would I have said? And to whom? Aslak has sent the same kind of message before, many times. I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill anyone at all.
At first I kept the messages. I rang the police and the psychiatric hospital, the therapist whom Aslak used to see a long time ago. I explained the situation and asked what I should do.
‘Nothing,’ they said.
‘If there isn’t anything else.’
‘If he doesn’t want help himself.’
‘There’s nothing we can do in this situation.’
In the end Aslak always answered. He behaved as if he hadn’t ever sent the message, as if everything was completely normal. He wanted to talk about music or politics, which he always followed. And everything from before turned into a dream, into my own imagining, which was real only to me.
Every time it happened, I decided to let go. I decided to disengage from Aslak, whose distorted reality also distorted my reality, in whose presence I always became once more a little child, fearful for her little brother.
I woke before sunrise and ran around the garden by the walls for so long that the sky was pale and the air too hot to get out of breath. I worked, watched movies, did press-ups and abdominal muscle exercises in the evenings and tried to love Gerard more than I did. I thought about Aslak. I didn’t think about him. Dad or Mum asked if I could contact him and I said I was busy, although I wanted to say fuck you. And in the end at some stage one of us contacted the other and it all began again.
I was certain Aslak would reply this time too. At some point he would reply again.
Days and weeks went by. Aslak did not reply.
I press my face against the cool wall. Behind it I can hear the sea’s comforting roar. Just a little way away from here sail the heavily armed boats of former fishermen, young men who once threw stones on the shore and are now accustomed to kidnapping, torturing and killing other people.
PART
TWO
The woman said: now I’m going to tell you a grown-up story.
I’m going to tell it because I’m a child, and in pain.
I am going to tell it for me and for you.
SAILA SUSILUOTO
Siivekkäät ja Hännäkkäät
(‘The Winged and the Tailed’)
11
Much earlier
Laura
Could we?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’
‘It would be lovely.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Why not?’
I began to cry. Vexation strained Eerik’s face. I cried quite a lot in those days; Eerik never.
‘Your crying is the soundtrack of our relationship,’ Eerik said when he got cross with me. ‘As if it were a party and someone was putting on the same piece over and over again, and no one wanted to hear it.’
Eerik drew away, pulled the sheet over himself and pulled on his underpants, as if I had never seen him naked.
‘Why don’t you want to have children?’ he asked.
‘Does everyone have to want them?’
‘No. But I do.’
Eerik had warm hands and sharp eyes. Against his body I fell asleep more quickly and woke more refreshed than I had ever been. Eerik wanted a child. I did not. I did not want to lose Eerik. Erik said he didn’t want to lose me. I didn’t want Eerik to be unhappy. Eerik said he wasn’t, but he looked as if he was.
He touched me tentatively on the shoulder. I let his hand rest there although I wanted to push it away. Eerik drew a picture on my back. It was a long time before I realised that it was not a picture, but a poem, one that we both loved very much:
I carry inside my heart,
As in a chest too full to shut,
All the places where I have been,
All the ports at which I have called,
All the sights I’ve seen through windows and portholes
And from quarterdecks, dreaming,
And all of this, which is so much, is nothing next to what I want.
‘Do you mean I’m this easy?’
‘I was being romantic.’
‘You mean I should swap my pessary for Pessoa?’
Eerik laughed. I laughed. We made love, and that time we didn’t argue about contraception. When, later, we lay side by side, my head on his collarbone, his hand caressed the warmth into my arm. Then I told him things that I had not told other people.
‘When I was a child, my most important skill was to watch out for Mum,’ I said to Eerik, and the movement of his finger brought warm ripples to the small of my back.
When I was a child, Mum was sometimes the most fun of all. She told me stories about the fairies who lived in the rose bushes in the back garden, made profiteroles with chocolate sauce for pudding, and let me try on the muff and golden shoes that she had worn when she was young. But everything could change very quickly. When Mum hid in her own world, a heavy curtain came down.
I learned to go to the shops and make food when Mum lay for long days in a darkened room listening to the music she had listened to when she was young. I learned to watch Mum’s eyes. When they clouded over to dark olive, I learned to become invisible and to slip out, to steal sweets from the shops and give them to my friends so that they would invite me home for supper.
When I was in year nine, a new girl came to school. She had blue hair, a ring in her nose, and on the back of her leather jacket a peace symbol she had painted herself. The girl’s name was Nancy. In the first break three girls from another class in our year, who wore foundation that was too dark and stolen lipstick and who threatened everyone who was dressed in the wrong brand of jeans, beat her up in the loo.
I listened through the door of my cubicle as the girls pulled Nancy’s hair. I lifted my feet up so that no one could see the toes of my shoes. I needed to sneeze, and I pressed my fingers to my nostrils so that there wouldn’t be an explosion. There was a burning in my stomach. The same girls had once threatened to beat me up too, when my only Levis were dirty and I came to school in a skirt. Nancy had friendly eyes and badges on her jacket that said, Animals Have Rights and War Against Apathy.
It would be nice to talk to her, I thought when I saw Nancy for the first time. She was walking past the staff-room window and lit a cigarette. Now three girls were kicking her on the other side of the thin door, and I didn’t go to help even though I could have done.
When the girls finally left, I pushed the loo door open cautiously. Nancy was adjusting her make-up in the mirror. Her nose was bleeding and one cheek was reddened, but she concentrated on outlining her eyes in black, smoothing her lips with cotton wool buds and drawing accurate line with lip liner.
‘Nice, nice girls,’ Nancy said in the mirror as she saw me come out of the loo.
‘Yeah right,’ I replied, and Nancy asked if I would like to borrow her eyeliner. I outlined my eyes to look like hers and we began to chat.
We talked about animal testing and the ozone layer and the unfair activities of multinational companies in the poorest countries. Nancy knew a lot, and I wanted to learn everything. We talked about how something in your chest tightens when you see the ships that sail to Germany or Poland and you think of getting on one of them, sailing across the sea to an unknown city and from there by train to somewhere you would never need to come back from. We talked about mothers and fathers and Sid and Nancy and punk rock artists like Pelle Miljoona, and Eppu Normaali and bands with names like Sunday School and Barren Virgin. Nancy was sure I would love them and promised to copy their records onto a cassette. When we talked, the air I breathed became lighter. It felt as if I had lived in a bubble until then and that Nancy had burst it with the point of her eyeliner pen. We bunked off school for the rest of the day and went to Nancy’s to listen to music.
We lay side by side on the floor. A group called Treblinka played fast and loud; against my hand I felt the warmth of Nancy’s arm. I imagined us hitch-hiking round Europe, playing in the streets of London, Paris and Amsterdam and doing Something that would make everyone end this consumer party that’s destroying the world!, as I wrote in my dairy that evening, filling the margins with peace signs.
Through Nancy, I finally found a home. Nancy’s friends became my family, and Mum didn’t even notice when I left her to sleep with my new family in squats, to organise demonstrations against animal testing, nuclear power and the exploitation of developing countries and to hitch-hike to other
towns to listen to bands at whose gigs we jumped hand in hand with people we didn’t know.
After I got to know Nancy and her friends, my life was filled with an growing certainty that something must be done. Driven by that certainty, I left Mum and built a life in which I used all my time to make sure that something in the world would change. The idea of having a child did not belong in that life.
Why would anyone have a child in a world that is on the brink of destruction? I always thought when one of my friends told me she was pregnant.
‘I daren’t take responsibility for a creature that will be completely dependent on me,’ I told Eerik. He had stopped drawing on my back and was listening to me quietly, his temple resting on his knuckles. ‘What if I were to turn into my mother in the presence of a child? And what if the child couldn’t get away from me?’
12
The first child was a girl. We gave her the names Aava Hilda Amanda. Hilda and Amanda, my maternal grandmother and Eerik’s paternal grandmother, two women who worked from morning till night but never stopped smiling. And Aava for the open sea, which I loved and which I also taught Eerik to love.
When Time Runs Out Page 4