Lucifer's tears ikv-2

by James Thompson

  I find a parking space a couple blocks from our apartment on Vaasankatu and walk the rest of the distance home. The snow has stopped, the wind died down. The street is quiet. A white snowscape, lovely and hushed.

  Vaasankatu, here in the district of Kallio, is nicknamed Puukkobulevardi -Hunting Knife Boulevard. Years ago, this was a dangerous place, and it still has a bad reputation, although largely undeserved these days. The area has its bars and drunks, some Thai massage parlors, but many of them were recently shut down. Prostitution in itself isn’t a crime, but various moralistic lobbies raised a stink, so the police cited illegal residency by workers, pimping-which is a crime-whatever they could come up with, to get rid of the parlors and stop the debate. The street is fairly gentrified now, many residents are upscale professionals.

  Kate had misgivings about moving to Kallio, but it’s the only area in Helsinki that, to my mind, has a feeling of genuine community. And besides, even in this modest area, our nine-hundred-and ninety-square-foot apartment, which I have to admit is gorgeous, cost us a cool three hundred and fifty thousand euros. A similar place in another part of town could run a million and a half. As general manager of Kamp, Helsinki’s only five-star hotel, Kate earns good money, and for a cop, I make a fair wage as an inspector, but not enough for a seven-figure apartment. In the north, a million and a half would buy us a palace. Helsinki is one of the most expensive cities on the planet.

  I find Kate lying on the couch, reading a book about childrearing. I give her a kiss hello. She sits up, rubs her back. At this late stage of her pregnancy, she’s having a hard time staying comfortable. “I can’t wait to get this child out of me,” she says.

  I sit beside her, put an arm around her. She looks at me, scrutinizing. “I don’t know how you can function without sleep.”

  It’s not like I have a choice. “It doesn’t bother me much.”

  “How is your headache?” she asks.

  “It’s been worse.”

  “Your eyes wander when it’s bad,” she says, “and they’re doing it now. You need to go to the doctor again.”

  “There’s no point. The stuff she gave me makes me too dopey. I won’t take it.”

  “Then go see your brother. He’ll help you.”

  Jari is a neurologist here in Helsinki. I haven’t seen him since we moved. I guess it’s about time to pay him a visit, and anyway, Kate isn’t going to let me wriggle out of it. I hate doctors. They’ll put me through a series of tests. I don’t want to take them, just to find out they don’t know what’s wrong with me. “I’ll call Jari,” I say. “Have you given any more thought to staying home with the baby?”

  She snuggles up close, I think trying to soften her answer. “I’ve been on maternity leave for two weeks already, and I just don’t think it’s for me. And besides, I don’t think it’s fair to my employer.”

  This is a source of contention between us. “Kate, I’m sorry to put it this way, but fuck your employer. Nine months of leave after the baby is born is your right as a mother in Finland.”

  “When Hotel Kamp hired me, they entrusted me with a great deal of responsibility. If I stay home for nine months, I’ll feel like I’m betraying a trust.”

  It’s true that employers get pissed off when they lose workers to pregnancy, and sometimes don’t want to give young women jobs, because they’re considered investment risks. Pregnant women receive full salaries from employers for the first three months of leave.

  “You should realize,” I say, “that in this country, a lot of people feel that not spending that time at home is betraying a child’s trust.”

  I could dig deeper, explain the unwritten societal rules about what good mothers are expected to do. Good mothers breast-feed, or their competency as mothers will be called into question. Good mothers stay at home for two or three years, that time subsidized by the government. If they don’t do these things, whispers and innuendo about whether they deserve the gift of a child will come from other mothers, whose lives revolve around living up to these conventions. It’s ridiculous and unfair.

  She’s getting pissed off. “You want me to sit at home because of what people might think? Kari, I thought you had more substance than that.”

  “I don’t care what people think, but it pays to be aware of cultural perceptions. They also affect your career. I want you to stay home with our daughter because I believe it’s the best thing for her.”

  “So now I’m a bad mother.”

  I came home to spend some time with Kate and I’m wrecking it. Sometimes it’s hard to think, because of the headache, and it causes me to make blunders. I’ve hurt her feelings. It shows on her face. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. You’re going to be a wonderful mother.”

  She goes quiet for a moment. I wonder if she’s thinking about our dead twins right now. “Maybe you should take fatherhood leave and stay home with the baby yourself. You have all of the same so-called rights as me. And I don’t think you like your job anyway.”

  She’s said this before, and she’s right, I’m less than enamored with my job at the moment. The truth is that I would like to stay home with our child, but my migraines have gotten so bad that I’m afraid I’m not capable of being her full-time caregiver. I don’t want Kate to know this. It would only worry her. I change the subject. “I’m looking forward to meeting your brother and sister tonight.”

  This is a half-truth. I don’t want to be saddled with them for weeks. I’d like to meet them, but under different circumstances. Maybe for dinner and a chat, and then we go our separate ways. But Kate needs this. She and her siblings had it rough growing up. It made them closer than most brothers and sisters, and they’ve been apart for too long.

  What began for Kate as a normal middle-class upbringing in Aspen, Colorado, came to a halt in 1993, when she was thirteen, when her mother, Diane, was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time, her brother, John, was seven. Her sister, Mary, was eight. Her father, Randy, was unable to cope. Faced with the death of his wife, he went into a depression that left him increasingly incapable of functioning as a husband and father. As Kate’s mother grew sicker from chemo and radiation treatments, Kate was forced to become de facto head of the household and to grow up almost overnight.

  Kate cared for her mother while she watched her die slow. She spoon-fed her, changed her sheets, cleaned up her vomit-and at the same time cared for her two younger siblings. When Diane finally died, her death broke Randy and he became an alcoholic. He managed to hold down his job, but was blitzed every minute he wasn’t working. He paid the rent and basic bills, then spent most of the remainder of his paycheck in bars. He gave the pittance left over to Kate, to clothe and feed herself, John and Mary.

  Randy was a mechanic, maintained the lifts at a ski resort, and he got Kate free skiing lessons and lift passes. She has never said it, but I think seeing her mother’s helplessness while she battled cancer turned Kate into a control freak. She excelled at everything, got perfect grades at school. She let go of her pent-up anger and frustration on the slopes and became a fantastic downhill skier.

  By age fifteen, Kate was winning all of the junior events she entered. She began competing as an adult at age sixteen. She kept winning. She made up her mind that she would compete in the Olympics. When she was seventeen, she was in a race and going nearly a hundred miles an hour. She took a fall, broke her hip, and spent her eighteenth birthday in traction. End of dream. She still walks with a limp because of it.

  Kate told me that during her weeks in the hospital, she took stock of her life. She had no close friends-had never had a boyfriend-had devoted her teenage years to raising John and Mary, to her studies and to skiing. It had never entered her mind that she might not become a world-class ski champion. For her, falling had been a mistake, a kind of failure. Kate didn’t allow herself failure. She swore to herself that she would rebuild her life and never fail again.

  When Kate completed high school, her perfect grades, high scores on a
ptitude tests and dismal financial situation guaranteed her college scholarships. She first studied at the Aspen community college extension of Colorado Mountain College, where she earned an associate’s degree in ski-area operations. Then she worked at a ski resort for two years, where she gained lower-level management experience.

  By that time, in 2002, Kate was twenty-two, Mary seventeen and John sixteen. Kate wanted to continue her education. Randy was still a useless drunk, but Mary agreed to look after John until he graduated from high school. Kate got a scholarship from Princeton University. Randy died of liver failure about the time she completed her bachelor’s degree in economics. I think his death was a relief to Kate in a way, and that relief brought her guilt.

  When Randy died, Kate had been in a steady relationship for two years and engaged for six months. She broke it off. She said something about her father’s death made her unable to commit. Kate graduated from Princeton with her master’s in economics. She returned to Aspen, this time as upper management at a ski resort, and after a year and a half was running the place. Profits doubled.

  In spring 2007, Levi Center, Finland’s largest ski resort, located a hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle, asked Kate to interview for the position of general manager. John had moved to New York to attend New York University. Mary had dropped out of college to marry a doctor and settled in Elkins, West Virginia. Kate had no reason to stay in Aspen and decided it was time for a change.

  In June of 2007, Kate traveled to Finland. The owners wanted Kate’s help in expanding the resort into a massive operation. The Arctic seemed exotic. They offered her a six-figure income. She took the job. She met me at a midsummer barbecue party. We were married nine months later. She got pregnant a few months after that, discovered she was carrying twins, but miscarried. I believe, for Kate, losing the twins was another kind of failure, something unacceptable to her. She wanted a clean start, to put all the sorrow and misery behind us, so we moved here to Helsinki.

  But I had left Helsinki years ago for a reason. I was never happy when I lived here as a younger man. Helsinki reminds me of my failed first marriage and of a man I killed in the line of duty. Helsinki isn’t a clean start for me. Just old bad blood.

  I don’t like big-city life. I don’t like the memories. I don’t like the so-called international atmosphere. Kaamos, the dark time, is short-lived. The light coming and going so fast depresses me. I miss the long Arctic darkness. Already now, in January, we have daylight from around nine a.m. until four p.m. This winter is nice, but most years it’s not cold enough in Helsinki, the snow doesn’t stick. Makes it like sloshing around in a bucket of shit all winter. I’m homesick for the North.

  Kate’s eyes meet mine for a moment. She understands I’m trying to stop the argument and lets me. “I’m a little nervous about seeing them because it’s been so long,” she says. “The last time I saw John was in 2006. The last time I saw Mary was 2005. They’re grown up now, and I wonder how they’ve changed. Still, who would have thought that three poor kids like us would have done so well. I’m running the best hotel in the city and John is becoming a university history teacher. Mary is a doctor’s wife. I more or less raised them. It makes me proud.”

  “You have a right to be proud,” I say, “and I’m proud of you.” I check the time, it’s a little after three. My therapy session begins at four. I’ve been attending counseling for eight months now, and dread it more and more as time goes by.

  I hesitate. Apologies are difficult for me. “Kate, I meant what I said. You’re going to be a great mother. I was out of line and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. It just came out wrong.”

  She squeezes my hand. “I know.”

  8

  I limp through the snow toward my Saab. It’s parked near the taxi stand on Helsinginkatu. The street is nicknamed Raate Road, after the scene of a decisive and bloody battle in the Winter War, for the same reason that Vaasankatu is called Hunting Knife Boulevard. It has a bad reputation from bygone days, but not much real wickedness goes on here anymore. It’s true that Kallio has its fair share of the permanently unemployed that live on welfare and spend their days in rakalat -snot bars, as they’re called-drinking cheap beer, but most towns in Finland have their welfare drunks and dives for them to booze in.

  I hear shouting down the street. As I close in, I see a man in front of Ebeneser School, a special-needs place for kids with dysphasia. The students there have speech disorders of one kind or another, difficulties with language comprehension or production, most often the result of varying degrees of brain damage. Some can speak but not write, others write but don’t speak. Very occasionally, a child will be able to sing but not speak.

  The school is a beautiful off-peach Art Nouveau building constructed around the turn of the twentieth century, fronted by a chain-link fence interlaced with a growth of decades-old ivy, now wreathed in frost. I get closer and see that the screaming comes from a young man waving a half-empty bottle of Finlandia vodka. His rant is biblical and apocryphal in nature, and he has a bad speech impediment.

  “Thpawns of Thatan, damned at biddth, you have fawen fwom da Towew of Babel. Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!”

  I get up close to him and look through the fence. Four little bundled-up children stand on the other side of it, terror-stricken but fascinated. I see no supervising adult. It pisses me off. “Listen kids,” I say to them, “I’m a policeman. Would you please go inside.”

  The guy bellows an incoherent howl and screams again. “Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!”

  They don’t move. I make shooing motions with my hands. “Run along now,” I say.

  They scramble toward the front door. The guy isn’t making any noise now, but he flails his arms, makes frantic gestures, waves the bottle and claws at his face.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “My name is Weejun. Away fwom me, thpawn of hell.”

  “Well, Mr. Legion, why were you scaring those kids?”

  He gulps a drink from the bottle, wraps his arms around himself, rolls his head back and forth and shakes. He’s coming apart at the seams. He shrieks like a hurt animal, then manages a shrill, understandable utterance. “To save deir souws! Dey awe damned unwess I thave dem!”

  I’m tempted to ask him why, if his name is Legion, aka Satan, he wants to save the children rather than see them spend eternity in hell. Then I decide I’m not interested in the logic of the insane. My head throbs-hate boils up in me.

  I grab Legion by the neck, smack his face against the snowcovered fence. It gives me a modicum of satisfaction, so I do it again. He’s a skinny little bastard, maybe a hundred and thirty-five pounds. I’ve been working out hard for most of the past year, since we moved to Helsinki. It takes my mind off the headaches. I bench-press more than twice his weight. He starts to cry, his knees start to give way. I grab him by the neck with one hand, hold him up by his head so that his feet barely graze the ground and look close at him. He’s in his mid-twenties and has a bad, close-cropped haircut that looks like a home job. His longish beard is unkempt. His coat, pants and shoes are neat and clean though. I’m guessing his parents take care of him.

  His left eyebrow is cut, blood runs into his eye. His nose bleeds. My satisfaction from banging his face off the fence dissipates. He’s crazy as a shithouse rat. I ask myself what to do with him. A final lesson and punishment for his treatment of defenseless children seems appropriate. “You like vodka,” I say. “Enjoy yourself to the max.”

  He doesn’t get it. His eyes radiate alarm and bewilderment.

  “Bottle to lips, drink until empty,” I say.

  He’s done screaming now. Frightening learning-disabled children comes easier to him than dealing with able-bodied adults. He gets the point. “I don’t want to. Don’t make me. It’th too much.”

  I pull out an old Finnish proverb that teaches the virtue of patience. “Karsi karsi, kirkkaamman kruunun saat” -“Suffering suffering, makes the crown glow brighter.”
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  He shakes his head no.

  I let go of his neck. “Did I offer you a fucking choice?”

  He understands now. Drink, or I’ll keep beating him. He’s in a bad situation. The booze is his best chance for escape. He lifts the bottle, sucks it down as fast as he can. I wait thirty seconds. Alcohol poisoning starts to hit. The bottle drops from his hand and shatters on the icy sidewalk. Another ninety seconds pass. He drops to his knees and looks at me with uncertain eyes. Another minute goes by, he falls backward. Head hits frozen pavement. Scalp splits. Blood runs in a thin trickle onto the ice.

  I reach under him, into his back pocket, and find his wallet. His ID reads Vesa Korhonen, age twenty-three. I put the ID card back into his wallet and throw it onto his chest, then call for a police van to cart him off to the drunk tank. I leave him there on the sidewalk, don’t wait for them to arrive. Good afternoon and good night, Vesa Korhonen, alias Legion.

  9

  I’m seeing a psychiatrist named Torsten Holmqvist. I didn’t choose him. The police department assigned me to him. His office is in his home, in the fashionable district of Eira, near embassy row. The house, which he told me he inherited, looks out over the sea and must be worth at least a couple million euros. We sit in big leather chairs, on opposite sides of a glass coffee table. I’ve eschewed his couch.

  Torsten is a wealthy Swedish-speaking Finn, and certain mannerisms betray his roots. A casual yet confident way of sitting, an affable comportment and easy laugh that I think feigned. A yellow pullover sweater is draped over his shoulders and loosely knotted in front of his pink button-down shirt. He’s in his fifties, his thick hair combed up and back and hair-sprayed, politician-style, a dignified gray at the temples. He smokes a briar pipe. His aromatic tobacco is apple-scented.