Aslak let me grasp his hand. His hand was thin, but the skin was still soft and childlike; he did not squeeze my hand back, but neither did he pull it away.
‘You are a lovely, clever and sensitive boy.’
‘Mum. Please don’t.’
‘It was nice that you came with me. Will you come again?’
‘Maybe.’
‘You can come whenever you want.’
19
I was sitting in the corridor of the parliament building, waiting for the door to open and for it to be my turn to go inside. I was on my way to talk about reducing emissions to the members of parliament, some of whom always looked as if they were not in the least interested in the matter, while others asked pointed questions which had nothing to do with what I was talking about. Even though I had been doing this for a long time, I always felt uncomfortable in these situations. I was wearing my one and only suit and a pair of black boots whose worn tips revealed that I did not look after my shoes regularly, if at all. I have never understood how people who look after their shoes, their skin, their body, their hair, their woollens or their household appliances according to the rules ever have time to do anything interesting, such as work, read books or meet friends. Even though I had reached the age when one is addressed formally in restaurants, in official situations I always felt like a young person dressed up as an adult, a black-haired girl living in squats who had charmed a boy with beautiful eyes by pushing a safety pin through her cheek when drunk.
I gazed at the austere walls of the parliament building, mentally running through the most important things I wanted to say to the members of parliament.
‘The scientific community has long been, for all practical purposes, unanimous that emissions caused by the human race are changing the climate.’
‘It is no longer the time to talk about whether this is happening. We need to talk about what to do about it.
‘If we do not begin reducing emissions now, everything will be much more difficult in future.’
Alongside these sentences, phrases of a different kind moved through my mind:
‘We cannot go on like this.’
‘You are perfect in every way, but we cannot go on meeting like this.’
‘I can’t bear it for a moment longer. I will say I am on a business trip and come to you.’
He was half Danish and half Egyptian. He had wiry hair and cheeks red from cycling, and he was much younger than me. I met him for the first time at the Montreal climate conference. After that he came to a couple of seminars to listen to my lectures, and a little later to my room for the night.
I had never thought I could cheat on Eerik. Even though we were often tired, frustrated and bored with each other, Eerik was the first person with whom I felt at home. When he touched me, Eerik was, even after years of living together, polite and a little clumsy. I often thought about other kinds of men, faceless and powerful, whose hands would not ask but would decide what to do, undo the buttons of my blouse and turn me towards the wall. At the same time I loved Eerik for the very fact that his hands moved softly, struggling with shame.
Eerik and I had been distant from one another for the entire time that Aava and Aslak were little. At that time I felt that another life existed alongside my own life, the one which ended when I was pregnant with Aava. In that life I loved other men and women besides Eerik, travelled around the world, read books endlessly and was an outsider everywhere in a way that wasn’t distressing but liberating. Very often, as I encouraged the children to get dressed in the morning or brush their teeth in the evening, as I sat in parent–teacher meetings, answered messages from teachers or folded laundry in the evenings, it felt as if someone were watching me.
That someone was a woman who had not met Eerik or given in to his wish to have children. Much as I loved the children, I would hardly have become a mother if Eerik hadn’t had such a strong desire to be a father. The decisions we make are hardly ever clear or unconditional. Rather, we drift into them, making decisions that will turn our lives upside down or change their direction completely. How often are decisions to get married or divorced, to try to have children or not to try, to leave a job, change or end one’s life, made in the grip of absolute certainty, without a tremor of doubt that it might be possible to act another way?
Eerik does not think like this. He believes his choices are always clear; he weighs things up and then makes his decision, and once he has done so, he does not doubt it. For Eerik, becoming a father was a dream come true; for me, becoming a mother was a choice which I never completely ceased to question. I never completely shook off the feeling that a me who had made a different choice was watching my life. Often there was something condescending in that gaze, something deeply pitying.
When the wiry-haired man grasped my hand under the table in that Montreal bar, everything that had until then seemed inevitable changed. I woke up. The body which had for decades made do with getting enough sleep and exercise, and some gentle tenderness, began to demand decisive, long-lasting caresses which would make me forget everything else. When the man came with me to the door of my room, it was clear that I would let him in.
My phone vibrated in my handbag. Aslak.
‘Mum. Can Taika come round?’
‘Who is Taika?’
‘A new friend.’
I forgot the man. I forgot the members of parliament waiting on the other side of the sturdy door, who would soon be asking me in. I forgot the November rain beyond the window, and the darkness, which each year became longer, deeper and harder to bear. The usually shady corridor was now full of light, my uncomfortable suit, soft as a cloud.
Aslak was in fifth year at school and this was the first time he had wanted to ask a friend home. Aava went to friends’ houses after school or brought them home; when I arrived after work there could be many pairs of silver or glittery shoes in the hallway, many brightly coloured coats. Aava’s door would be closed and from her room would come the sound of music, giggling and girlish voices as they stood in front of the mirror singing their favourite pieces, microphones in hand, or taking pictures of each other in which they looked up sideways, their hair mussed and their cheeks sucked in. No one came to see Aslak. He did fencing for a while, and played the cello for many years, going to rehearsals alone by tram, with his instrument in its black case on his back, his eyes hidden by his hair, which he wished would cover his entire face.
‘Of course, sweetie!’ I answered. I would have liked to go home straight away. I would have liked to see how my little boy behaved with his new friend. What was he like, this first friend whom my Aslak wanted to invite home? What was Aslak like in his company, what were they together? I wanted to go home via the shop, to buy food that all children liked, to make pancakes for supper and do it as if it were absolutely ordinary, as if Aslak had a friend over every day and I cooked their favourite foods, as if I really were that kind of mother.
The heavy door opened. A short, constantly smiling member of parliament in a well-cut suit stood on the threshold.
‘Laura Anttila?’
‘Pleased to meet you.’ The words flew from my mouth, light and airy, like butterflies spreading their transparent wings.
I rose to my feet and shook the member of parliament by the hand. As I stepped into the large room, the sun shone even though the sky was covered in clouds.
20
Mum, look what we did!’ Aslak’s hair was tousled and his cheeks were rosy with enthusiasm. He had grown, and his legs looked too long and thin for the rest of his body, his nose and ears too big for his head. Taika stood behind him, examining me furtively. Ever since Aslak had asked her home for the first time, they had been together every day. All the same, Taika was still shy in my presence, as if she were constantly afraid she would make a mistake. Taika’s father was Finnish and her mother Japanese. Her hair, which reached beyond her chin, was as black and shiny as a grand piano, her cheekbones sharp as wings, and her dark eyes narrowed to streaks
when she laughed. She had lived in Kyoto for three years and entered Aslak’s class in the middle of the year, walked up to Aslak in the playground and asked: ‘Where can I find the best books?’
Aslak had taken Taika to the school library, and after school to our library and to the second-hand bookshops whose smell, ceiling-high bookshelves and sharp-eyed booksellers, who knew everything about books, he had loved from the time when I had taken him and Aava there to listen to stories. Aslak and Taika had borrowed comics, children’s novels about sorcerers and alternative worlds and non-fiction books about outer space, coming home to eat avocado sandwiches which I had left for them in the fridge, and spent the entire afternoon lying on Aslak’s bed, reading books and comics side by side, laughing when one read their book aloud.
Taika arrived in our lives so naturally that it felt as if she had always been there. When I bought tickets for the family for the theatre or the winter circus, I bought one for Taika too. In the morning as I set out for work I left a sandwich in the fridge for her too, and after work I made supper for five. Taika was a vegetarian, like Aslak, me and Eerik. I bought silken tofu from the Japanese shop for her; I filled maki rolls with avocado and cucumber and made soup from tomatoes, chickpeas and saffron. Aslak and Taika sat side by side to eat. They talked with me and Eerik at the table but I was sure that they were simultaneously engaged in another conversation, communicating with each other wordlessly about things we were not allowed to know.
At that time Aava was always quiet at table. She looked at the food I had prepared, turning up her nose, so clearly that I definitely saw it, but so fleetingly that I could imagine I was mistaken. She was in ninth year and ashamed of all of us. She wanted a mother with shiny high heels and a carefully made-up face and a father who wore a suit instead of worn-out jumpers. She wanted a brother who played football or went skateboarding and not one whose only friend at school was a nervously giggling girl. She wanted to go to her after-school classes by car, to holiday in the Canary Islands and eat meat for supper.
I felt that Aava’s sulkiness was justified. Her periods had started and her breasts had grown a little. She used deodorant which she had bought herself and covered her spots in concealer every morning. She shut herself in her room for hours and did not meet her friends as often as before. It was her age, I told myself. I had always thought of Aava like this. She might shout, slam doors and cry, but there was something strong and clear about her. She had friends and hobbies, she laughed her head off at her own jokes and spoke up bravely against me, Eerik and her teachers. Everything about her was strong and understandable. She would rebel, hate us and might even reject us for a while, but her difficult phases would pass without breaking her; she would change, grow and manage without us.
I had always been worried about Aslak. You could see straight away from Aava’s eyes what mood she was in; Aslak’s eyes showed nothing. Aslak was like a dense bolt of gossamer-fine fabric that would disintegrate if you tried to open it. He had many layers, one within the next, the outer one a withdrawn boy who had learned to be well-behaved, and beneath it something that no one could see.
When the children were small, I thought it would be possible to keep them close. Eerik and I talked a lot about the importance of always remembering to listen to the children. We should know them so well that we would recognise the gestures with which they tried to hide their sorrows. In those days I thought that everything depended on how sensitive we were able to be, how open to their needs, how close to them. As Aava and Aslak grew, they became independent from us in completely different ways. Aava was often openly angry, slamming the door of her room shut, spending a lot of time away from home and wanting to be different from me in every way. Aslak was polite to us, and heartrendingly good. He didn’t go anywhere, but submerged himself in his own world. It was as if an enormous blue expanse opened up within him; when he dived into it, he could see neither the surface nor the sea bottom.
I moved away from my mother’s house when I was fifteen, but I thought that I was an exception. I thought children only left bad parents, that good parents could keep them close. When I struggled with the children over getting dressed, brushing their teeth or going to bed, I dreamed of a time when we could make food with them, light the candles and talk about anything and everything. I saw visions of two energetic young people who had grown taller than me, who would bring their friends round to our house and go to the cinema or to listen to music with me and Eerik. I thought of me and Eerik, our hair grown grey, talking over a caffè latte or a glass of port about our grown-up children whose joys we could still share and whose problems we would be able to solve.
When Aava and Aslak fled from me, each in their own direction, I was taken aback and numb. I could not speak of my grief even to Eerik. Eerik went on long trips and buried himself in his work. He chatted to the children about school and about his work. Sometimes after a sleepless night I waited for a moment when I could tell Eerik what I was thinking, ask him to come to me and smile until everything was all right. He never came.
‘Don’t start again,’ he said when he saw my eyes, begging like those of an anxious child. ‘Everything is fine with Aava and Aslak. They’re not you. You’re not your mother. Give them space to live.’
And gradually, although I did not think of it in that way at the time, I gave up. I let them go. I accepted the distance that had become permanent, and concentrated on what I did best – work.
Aslak still had faded scars under his shoulders, a memory of the day when he went to look at the fire engine with his fairy wings on his back. Despite endless entreaties from me and Eerik, Aslak never told us what happened on that day. He hid it inside himself like everything else; sometimes when I looked at him, I could almost see a black hole in his chest from which nothing could escape.
I was embarrassingly enthusiastic about Aslak and Taika’s friendship.
‘Aslak is in a completely new phase,’ I explained to my friends, whom I had earlier told about my concerns about him, always in an artificially light tone.
‘Time has done its work, just as you said,’ I explained.
‘Of course I should have trusted that everything would work out. But when you’re in the middle of it all, and when it’s your own child, you only see the worst outcomes.’ In fact I was constantly on my toes. My lonely boy’s sudden, intense friendship felt as if a rare flower had been brought into our home, one which I must keep alive.
‘Lighten up,’ Eerik said. ‘Leave them be.’
Now Aslak and Taika were standing in front of me, glowing with enthusiasm. In Aslak’s hand was the video camera Eerik’s parents had given him as a Christmas present.
‘Look!’
Aslak gave the camera to me.
‘It’s at the beginning, you can watch it.’
I opened up the little screen and pressed the play button. A light shining onto the wall of Aslak’s darkened room cast an unearthly glow on the face of a person standing in the middle of the room. That person was Aslak. He was dressed in black trousers and a tight black shirt; he had painted his face white and drawn clown-like lines around his eyes, a clown’s tear on his illuminated face.
‘Hi, I’m Niko,’ he said, drawing out his vowels in a way that brought to mind one of his classmates, a boy who was taller than all the rest.
‘I play footie and I’m wicked at it, I always get the ball into the goal when no one is guarding it. It’s just a pity that once the ball hit me on the forehead and destroyed what little brain was left. And now . . . and now . . . and now . . . zzxxbbaaghszgh . . .’ In the video Aslak fell onto the floor and remained motionless. The camera zoomed in to the tear drawn on his cheek, whose outlines had blurred a little.
Aslak took the camera from me. His hands were warm.
‘That is our first movie,’ he said almost in a whisper.
‘We’re going to make movies like that about everyone in our class.’
Taika said nothing. She looked at me, t
he same enquiring expression on her face as always, as if she had seen the horror spreading within me.
‘It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s . . .’ I said. Expectation quivered on Aslak’s face. The wrong words would crush him. ‘You’re really good at using the camera.’
I smiled as naturally as I could. I turned to empty the dishwasher so as not to have to look at them.
21
The relationship with the man with wiry hair continued for two years. When I was with him, the part of me which I had shut away when I chose Eerik, motherhood and family awakened. The skin that the man’s hands touched did not belong to Eerik’s wife and Aava and Aslak’s mother, but to the independent woman whose eyes had followed me for years. That woman met the man at the stations of Berlin, Rome and Madrid, kissed the man in unknown streets, drank wine in bars where everyone else was younger than her, lay naked with the man in the early hours of the morning and made love once more as the rising sun cast its tender light into the hotel room.
With that man I did not think about Eerik or the children. I had left the door ajar to another world, an alternative reality and another kind of life. The man stood on the other side of the door, ready to take me to him.
When I was with Eerik and the children, I thought about that man. There were always two women with him. One belonged in their lives; the other had continued her life without them. I knew that what I was doing was wrong. I was distant with the children and irritable with Eerik. When we got married, we had agreed that we would be honest with one another.
‘I will understand if at some stage you fall in love with someone else,’ Eerik said, ‘but I want to be the first to know.’
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