He listened intently as his mother expressed her anger against the minister who wanted to send Finnish icebreakers to the Arctic to look for oil.
‘Every literate person knows that if we want to preserve the world as at least somehow habitable for future generations, we have to stop states and businesses from using the greater part of the fossil fuels they already have. And these . . . these slimy, immoral, lizard-brained morons want to send government equipment to drill for oil in an area where it is catastrophic for the environment.’ Mum dropped her wine glass on the floor and bent down to pick up the shards with her bare hands. Her collarbone rose under the neck of her blouse as sharp as if someone had gnawed away the flesh around it; the hand that was gathering the glass trembled.
‘Sometimes I hope that the Black Death will come back and wipe us all out.’
He absorbed it all into himself, the frustrated rage that could have been his own. Dad went on reading from his tablet as if Mum were talking about some everyday incident. When the sinews in Mum’s neck tautened, he felt the tightness in his own limbs too, and when Mum walked up to Dad and tore the tablet away from him, he too wanted to tear something.
‘I’m talking to you!’ Mum shouted at Dad, brushing the pieces of glass from the floor into a dustpan and gesturing for him to stay away.
‘And I’m listening,’ Dad said, clenching his hands into fists.
‘How hard is it to ignore that screen for an instant?’
‘There’s no alternative any more, thanks very much.’
‘Why don’t you just piss off, then?’
‘Really. You’ve been at home for three minutes and you’re already suggesting we split up.’
‘I wasn’t talking about splitting up.’
And so they went on. Dad and Mum, who before the birth of himself and his big sister travelled around the world studying devastated places that could be made beautiful.
He withdrew into his room, went online and found people who read the same texts as he did, who felt the same passionate frustration. When he heard the argumentative voices of Mum and Dad on the other side of the door, he was on Mum’s side. He was always on Mum’s side. Mum was beautiful and brave, even if Dad could never see it.
He was also at Mum’s side when she had to go on a nature hike for a couple of days to sort out her thoughts.
He walked behind his mother through a forest where there was nothing to be heard but the beating of birds’ wings startled into flight and the soughing of pine branches. After the dense greenness the boulders continued as wide open as the sea and in the morning as they left the tent they could see a fox slipping behind the trees. He smelled the scent of damp trees warmed by the sun, sat on the boulders in the darkness of a cloudy evening. Here, the darkness seemed denser than in the city, an all-enveloping blackness in whose recesses anything at all might be creeping, but which did not seem threatening, but liberating, a resting place in which he, too, could curl up and hide.
They walked in single file with their rucksacks, their tents and their sleeping bags on their backs, talking about birds, trees and plants, and were quiet, boiling water on a campfire and mixing with it, in the morning, porridge flakes, at lunch soup powder, for supper pasta, in the afternoon instant coffee and sugar, with chocolate, raisins and nuts. His muscles hurt. His shoes were too hard and when he was walking downhill they pressed on his toes until a dark, bloody sludge gathered under his big toenails. He enjoyed the pain. He enjoyed the feeling that all of his body was in use, every muscle had its job, had a path to follow, and everything was clear and simple. When they stopped to eat, he was so hungry that the food made from packets of powder seemed a wonderful pleasure. And when they put up their tent and spread their sleeping bags on the ground, he was so tired that he fell asleep as soon as he had zipped up his sleeping bag.
If only I could live like this, he thought then.
If only I could just walk onwards, smell the scent of bark, twigs and fallen leaves and listen to sounds, not one of which is caused by human beings.
When they returned home, Mum and Dad decided to go to a yoga camp together. He felt stronger than ever, firm and connected to the ground. He decided to seek out people who experienced the power of nature in the same way as he did, who breathed more freely in the dark forest, who felt the same overwhelming rage about how people were flaying the world of all that was pure and beautiful.
As he stepped into the high-ceilinged main room of the old wood cabin, he immediately knew he had made a mistake. ‘Welcome Evening for New Members’ had been the message on the environmental organisation’s website. He abhorred people and avoided new situations. Nevertheless he had signed up for the evening. It must be Mum’s fault. Mum’s, and that stupid hike’s, his bloody toes and the deer that ran across the path with its fawn as if giving a sign. Animals running into the coppice, owls looking on from the branches of the spruces, the stream whose water could be drunk from your cupped hands, the darkness that hid mind and body – all this had fooled him.
He had imagined that somewhere there would be people bound together by that experience: a group of young people, at home in the shadows, for whom words were difficult and silence a relief, who feared people as much as they yearned for them and for whom darkness was a place of safety in a world which wanted to shine light on even the most sensitive matters. He had wanted to believe that somewhere there might be a tribe he could join, an army of soldiers with dark eyes and bad postures would come together to fight for something more beautiful than the culture created by humankind, for something eternal and holy.
When he saw the people gathered round the long table, he wanted to run away. Sweat formed into droplets on his temples and his breath wheezed; a stench rose from his armpits and his hair, despite its morning wash, stuck to his forehead in greasy lumps. He took a step backwards and almost stumbled on the threshold, grabbing the doorpost for support. At that moment a vigorous, cool, sweatless hand grasped his. A fine-featured man, perhaps a couple of years older than he was, who looked as if everything was effortless for him, as if he ran to work and cycled all year round, as if he was able to smile genially and always find the right words in conversation, pulled him up with a strong grip.
‘Welcome!’ the man said, guiding him to a free chair among other equally energetic, equally clean, equally intolerably dynamic-looking people. He felt the beating of his heart and the heat of his cheeks, wiped his sweaty palm on his jeans, which had looked good in the shop but looked awful on. ‘Hi!’ he said to the girl sitting beside him, who had long, blond hair and wore no make-up. In her perfectly fitting jeans and simple sweater, the girl looked so natural and self-confident that she could just as well be attending a presidential dinner. On his other side sat a dark-haired girl in a close-fitting checked shirt, her voice husky and her speech rapid and opposite them effortlessly elegant girls and boys who talked as if they had always known each other. On their cheeks was the glow of outdoor life and exuberance, and their muscles were so toned that you could imagine them climbing the sheerest cliffs, happy smiles on their faces.
No one responded to his greeting. He summoned his courage and muttered again: ‘Hi.’ His voice rose, ringing out loudly in the midst of the group, which had suddenly fallen silent, and making everyone around the table turn to stare at him.
‘Well, hi!’ said the man who had helped him up, and suddenly everyone began to laugh, everyone but him. He pressed his nails into the palms of his hands and smiled, with such determination that he must have looked like a halfwit; he smiled half-wittedly all evening while a young man spoke passionately about the state of the environment, the work of the organisation and the importance of inspiring others.
‘We must be the change that we wish to see in the world,’ the man said, and everyone around him began to clap.
He hung his head and looked at his thighs in their badly fitting jeans, and the palms which rested on them, bloated by medicines and damp with sweat. There was nothing in him whic
h anyone, least of all himself, would want to see in the world.
34
Laura
I love them.’ I am not sure whether I say this to the police or to myself. I am not sure whether I say it at all or just imagine it, but the words are somewhere, and after them rise more words, a deluge of words. I love my children more than anything else. I was not always a good mother. I’m not sure if I was ever a good mother. Is it possible to be sometimes good, sometimes bad? If you are bad enough, does it invalidate all the good?
My words break. I break. The policeman brings me a glass of water and the woman squeezes my hand. Her hand is warm and dry; unpolished nails, on the back of her left hand a liver spot, on her fourth finger a white gold ring.
The woman is my age or a little younger. Her shift must end sometime. After this evening, her life will go on as before; she will be able to keep her friends and her dreams and her interests, decide whether to spend Christmas abroad or to invite the children for dinner at home. She will be able to go to concerts and the theatre, to retire and say she is having the time of her life.
‘Four people are wounded,’ she says.
‘They have been taken to hospital. They are in a critical condition. The situation is calm at the moment.’ I nod as I nodded at school when the teacher talked about Aslak, lowering her voice; I nod in the way that I nodded at the health centre and at the child psychiatrist’s. I am ready to accept everything that is to come.
‘We hope that you can give us information about your son that will help us resolve the situation,’ the policewoman says.
For a moment I am sure they are mistaken. My son can have nothing to do with what is happening now. My son is a little child. My son is a child, I think, and an iron fist squeezes my heart and my lungs into a bony ball. My son is a child!
My son sits in his stroller, a toy aeroplane in his hand, smiling at everything he sees. He has soft wrists and dimples in his knees and he often sits quietly for a long time, his eyebrows wrinkled and his lower lip pushed out. He likes trains, tractors and princess dresses, and wants, when we read him stories, to check who’s a goody and who’s a baddy. He can sing in tune, but doesn’t score goals at football; when he listens to music he starts to dance. When he grows up, he wants to be a guitarist and an astronaut. He goes to church with his nursery and one evening announces that he believes in God. He always wants to play with his big sister and she only lets him sometimes; but then sometimes he doesn’t want to play even when his big sister asks him to. He smiles at everyone and everyone loves him for that reason. He can put his toes in his mouth and make his lips splutter. For his third birthday he chooses sweets and he learns to say his Ss at the shop till. He calls me from the shopping centre loo on Eerik’s phone and says:
‘Thweets, thweets, Mum, I can say eth!’ and I laugh and ask him to say it again, ‘eat thweets only thometimes, thing thome thilly thongs, thix thox thit in a think.’
My son is a child. He smiles at everyone who looks at him. He won’t hurt anyone and no one is allowed to hurt him.
The policeman starts the tape recorder.
‘Are you ready?’
‘I am,’ I reply. I am not.
‘A young man is on the roof of the Glass Palace with a gun. He has shot four people, who are seriously injured. On the basis of a message left on the internet the police suspect that the gunman is your son, Lauri Aslak Anttila.’
I nod. I am a fly on the roof, tiny, a creature that eats rubbish and excrement, which can be killed with one well-aimed blow.
‘Did you have knowledge of your son’s plans?’
I shake my head. I nod.
‘No. Or yes. It depends how you look at it.’
‘Can you be more specific?’
‘He has . . . Aslak has had thoughts which . . . because of which it is not a complete surprise that . . .’
‘What sort of thoughts?’
I press my hands to my face.
‘I never believed that he would really . . .’
‘Are you able to continue?’
‘I am.’
‘What kind of thoughts?’
‘About mass murder.’
‘Yes?’
‘I remember a conversation, many years ago. At the dinner table. At lunch, or was it dinner. I think we had Indian food.’
‘Yes?’
‘It was after some school murder. We read the news and he . . . he said that it couldn’t simply be condemned.’
‘What couldn’t?’
‘Killing classmates. That if . . . He said that phys-ical violence should not be the only thing to be condemned. That . . . violence always happens in relation to something else. That it can also be seen as a reaction to another kind of violence. For example, if a person is treated as if he is invisible.’
‘Did he speak often about the same subject?’
‘It developed into an argument between him and my husband. But somehow . . . when he read news of such deeds, he was always . . . it seemed as if he was fascinated by them.’
‘Did he have any kind of psychiatric diagnosis?’
‘In secondary school he was diagnosed with severe depression.’
‘Did he go to therapy?’
‘He was prescribed medicines. But he only took them for a short while. He tried therapy, but . . . he didn’t like his first therapist. We couldn’t find anyone he would agree to see.’
The room around me changes. Aslak is sitting opposite me, his head in his hands. A teenage Aslak with bad posture, who sits with his head in his hands and doesn’t notice that I am looking at him.
‘We tried to find help for you,’ I say to Aslak. I do not cry.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I meant for him. We tried to find help for him. But it . . . we never really knew what it should be. It felt as if we were completely alone with him.’
The policewoman gives me a glass of water. When Aava whinged as a child, I also gave her water. When I was tired and did not know what else to do, I poured a glass of cold water and made her drink it. Aslak almost never whinged. I never needed to calm him.
‘Who else knew about these thoughts of his?’
‘Myself and my husband. And my daughter, I’m sure. But the thoughts weren’t clear. You must understand that. He never came home and said he intended to kill someone. He . . . he is the world’s sweetest boy.’
‘Did he talk about these matters later, as an adult?’
‘No. Or sometimes. At the beginning of university.’
‘He is still registered at Helsinki University?’
‘Yes. In the philosophy faculty. With a minor in environmental science. He got in with top marks. But he didn’t . . . he didn’t really feel at home there.’
‘And at the beginning, at university, he . . .?’
‘For a moment he had a group of friends. I was extraordinarily happy at the beginning. They were smart, well-behaved, well-dressed young people. But there was something . . . at some point it . . . in what he said there began to be . . .’
‘What?’
‘It was a good time. I want to stress that. The beginning was great, a good time. Eerik and I thought, at last, he is finding his own place, his own group of friends. At that time we met up very seldom, but when we did meet . . . he was apt to make extraordinarily negative comments about people.’
‘Who, for example?’
‘Homeless people. Alcoholics. The unemployed. Anyone who couldn’t cope with life. There was something chilling about it. Many people think like that, of course. But all the values we had tried to teach at home . . .’
‘What did he say?’
‘He called them subhuman. Weaker elements. And sometimes he said . . . they should be got rid of.’
‘Was he still in contact with his friends?’
‘No. As far as I know. I think not. The next thing that happened was that . . . he was suspended.’
‘Did you know anything about it?’
‘The police went through his flat and his computer.’
‘My grandmother’s flat?’
‘The one he lives in.’
My grandfather never came back from the war. My grandmother brought my mother up alone, working at the factory and as a maid to a rich but lonely gentleman in a large country house. During the day my grandmother cooked fishcakes and herring in tomato sauce for the gentleman; at night she listened to the gentleman drowsily swilling cognac telling stories about how there was no one around him who really understood him, no one to laugh at his jokes or notice when he was sad. When the gentleman began to nod in the old armchair in my grandmother’s room, she put the nightcap back on his head, led him to his bed and had time for a couple of hours’ sleep before it was time to wake up to knead the morning’s bread. My grandmother had a quiet voice and hard hands whose strength she used when my mother was in the way, or when she complained that she was afraid in her room at night when my grandmother was listening to the gentleman’s endless tale of loneliness.
My mother did her homework in the little servant’s room in the big house, watching as visiting children, the gentleman’s relatives, set the table with rose-patterned porcelain crockery in the pale-blue Wendy house whose door she was not allowed to open, and dreaming that one day she would find the Wendy house’s keys and would, while the others slept, creep in to make the dolls tea out of rainwater and cake out of daisies.
Granny set aside a little from every pay packet in order to have something that no one could take from her. After she retired, she bought a flat, one room plus a kitchen alcove; she dabbed rouge on her cheeks and her lips, put a green felt hat on her head and a flowered scarf round her neck and took me to Fazer’s café to eat ice cream.
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