by Tua Harno
“Maybe it has something to do with that. Your whole being repels it somehow.”
“I’m sorry,” Sanna said.
They glanced at each other, leaning against the chain-link fence, the corners of both their mouths twitching. Were they going to have to do it here, now? Both of them awkwardly leaned in to reach each other’s lips, a tentative kiss, but full. There was grit on their lips, and the kiss tasted of water and salt, heat and moist softness.
Tourists walked past, reading the information boards before turning to gawk at the crater, inevitably crying out when they saw the mine’s depth and posing for photographs in front of the fence. Sanna felt like she and Martti were vagabonds on a sidewalk, in everyone’s way, but no one said anything to them.
Martti kissed her again.
“This might be the strangest thing I’ve ever done,” Sanna said.
“You?” Martti chuckled. “Come on, I’m sure you’ve done all kinds of things on your adventures.”
“I don’t know how to do things like this,” Sanna said. “I mean, our being here together now and having a good time. But what if I never see you again? I’d fall apart. So right now I have to keep myself together. That’s why I came here. To become whole, so I’d be able to love it. I mean her. Or him.”
“You already know how to love, you don’t need some class in the outback to teach you,” Martti said, looking her dead in the eye.
Sanna wanted to believe him.
“What do you need?” she asked when the tips of their noses touched.
“Nothing. You.”
14
Sanna leaned her head against the bus window and her yellow shirt’s reflection. It was her last week at the mine. She gazed out at the embankments, the color of crusted blood. She thought about flaky rust, the kind that eats through the hulls of ocean tankers, that gets caught in the folds of your skin and is impossible to scrub out.
The curly-haired woman she had interviewed boarded the bus at the gate. She was smiling, but she was all business as she administered the Breathalyzer.
Sanna felt perpetually intoxicated in Martti’s presence. It made no sense.
On Saturday morning, they would be driving to Perth together; Martti was scheduled to fly from there to the mine next week. Sanna had no idea what would happen after that. She catalogued all that she had learned about Martti over the past month: he was forty-two; seemed incapable of commitment; lived his life according to a philosophy of picking up and starting over again somewhere new; had a distant, strained relationship with his daughter; had been to bordellos.
No matter how hard she tried to talk sense into herself, it had no impact on the feelings he aroused in her. Sanna kept expecting to be overcome by angst and guilt on one of their mornings together, but she never did. She caught herself laughing before she even brushed her teeth. It was wonderful sleeping next to each other, and it was just as wonderful waking up. And making love. At least she admitted her desire now. It was urgent and wound her into knots.
Sanna gently knocked her head against the bus window. She couldn’t fall in love like this. The feeling would fade. She knew it for what it was. This was what happened after a long relationship, right? She had said so to Martti, and he had nodded. Then he’d asked, “Sanna, does this feel like it’s going to pass?”
And she had examined her heart down to its murky depths. No, this isn’t going anywhere.
It was easy for her to be honest with Martti—there was something so calm and accepting about him. Sanna told him things she had been ashamed of, and he listened. When Martti’s eyes were concerned, it was because he was sad on Sanna’s behalf, and that’s when Sanna felt like telling him she wasn’t sad anymore, because of him.
But would it last?
She asked Martti about his past loves, the places he had lived. There were periods of his life that elicited an initial silence, but then he’d open up. Accidents he hadn’t been able to prevent.
“You’ll eventually grow tired of this,” he warned her when he got anxious at the sight of barefoot children on the escalator. “At first it’s endearing and then it’s exhausting, caring this way.”
“Will you start hating my skin? The baby that hasn’t been born yet? How easily I cry? Then, later?”
They both knew the answer was no, but they had no basis for this knowledge, and they found themselves skeptical enough to be irritated by certainty without proof.
Martti asked Sanna to come with him to Pilbara. He thought he could arrange a visitor’s pass for her.
“What about the trek?”
“We can go trekking together, there’s a nature preserve near there.”
Sanna felt like saying yes, but what about Ralda and spirituality and all her questions. Wasn’t she going to ask them after all?
The bus advanced through the gate into the mine. A flat patch of land filled with yellow dumpers opened up to the left. To the right, heaps of crushed rock rose like miniature pyramids, the cut faces of the reddish boulders gleaming in the rays of the sun.
The passengers disembarked in front of the canteen. Cooper was waiting for Sanna at the bus stop. He asked how she was, the same as he always did. He had stopped looking her in the eye. His visit to the bordello was none of her business, even though in Sanna’s mind prostitution—money, and the tensions between men and women—somehow tied in with the mine’s gender-equality program.
She found herself wanting to dig more deeply into the topic, maybe even do a dissertation on it. Dad and Ville would laugh their heads off when they heard her dream career was being a researcher. Sanna couldn’t help but smile in satisfaction. Having a calling of her own felt like ground she could stand on.
“You should go to one of them fly-in-fly-out camps, that’s where things are twisted,” Cooper said as he drove Sanna to the dongas. “You know what they are?”
“Temporary towns built next to mines, right?”
Martti was just headed to one in Pilbara.
“Folks there are at the breaking point. All’s you got are your coworkers and your bedroom, not the least bit of normal life. It’s different here, most people’s families live in Kalgoorlie.”
“Yours doesn’t.”
“Nope,” Cooper said.
Sanna waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Before she got out of the car, she mentioned she hadn’t interviewed him yet.
“Maybe we should just leave it that way.”
“You were in my sample. I’ll need someone else who does the same kind of work.”
“I’ll think of someone.”
It was four thirty in the morning. Martti took her backpack. He’d wait in the car while Sanna dropped off her key.
There was no one at reception. A lone man was sitting at the bar. Sanna noticed that he had extremely long eyelashes as she assessed his state of intoxication. There was a bell on the desk, but it felt stupid to ring it if the owner had just popped into the back for a second. Sanna seated herself at the bar, leaving a stool between her and the man. She was about to ask where the staff was when the man handed her his phone. The screen showed a photograph of a little girl in pigtails.
Sanna smiled politely and told him he had a pretty daughter, concluding he was so inebriated no further conversation was necessary. He had bright-blue eyes behind his thick lashes. He’s drunk away a handsome face, Sanna thought before catching a flash of the hotel owner through the swinging doors to the kitchen.
The owner nodded in acknowledgement of her presence, rolled his eyes at the clock on the wall, and indicated that he’d be with her in a moment. Sanna slowly swiveled her stool around and eyed the room, the brown wall panels and the dark-green wall-to-wall carpet. The place looked like a giant pool table.
“What’s your earliest memory?” the man asked, still staring at his phone’s screen, spreading and pinching his fingers, zooming in and zooming out.
“What? I don’t know.”
“Come on, you must have some first memory.” He didn’
t sound the least bit drunk. “How old were you?”
The mood grew vaguely threatening. Sanna glanced at the front door. The man with thick lashes stared at her, challenging her.
“Let me think.” Sanna figured she’d just make up something, but it would be just as hard to come up with a lie off the cuff. What was her earliest memory? It would be from when they still lived in the townhouse, before her parents divorced. Images of a kid’s room came to her: stripes from a rag rug, the bed frames plastered with stickers.
“When I was four, we got a playhouse,” she finally said, truthfully. “I remember the crane lowering it over the fence into the backyard. Our yard was tiny, but when the playhouse was in place the yard didn’t feel like it had gotten any smaller. The playhouse belonged there.”
“You were four?”
“Yes.”
“My daughter was kidnapped when she was two. There’s no way she’ll ever remember me. If she’s alive, she’ll grow up not knowing she has a father.”
“I’m so sorry!”
The guy wasn’t swaying or slurring his words. Sanna saw now that his face was distorted in grief. She had the urge to touch him, lower her hand to his, offer him something human. She patted his shoulder, tentatively, awkwardly, light as a sigh.
“I’m sorry.”
The man didn’t react; his eyes were focused on the picture of his daughter.
“It’s been over a year. She might be forming her first memory about now. I’m betting it’s not a playhouse.”
Sanna started when the owner emerged from the kitchen. She straightened herself and stood, touched the man on the back again, wondered if it was permissible for her to say that maybe he’d get his daughter back. But the girl had been missing for a year.
Sanna handed over her keys and the owner gave her a receipt to sign. Tenderness and awkwardness overlapped in the moment.
“If you ever have a child, guard her with your life,” said the man. “Don’t let anyone bad near her, even if it means you’ll be alone. Because no one can ever take the place of a child.”
Sanna nodded, sought some explanation from the hotel owner’s eyes. Maybe everyone in town knew the guy’s story. But the owner’s face was deadpan. Stashing her credit card and her receipt in her purse and just leaving felt unfair. The man would remain in that room, and it seemed to Sanna he would never escape. Behind the counter, the owner turned off the lights. The handles of the beer taps continued to glow, and the screen of the man’s phone burnt brighter.
It was still dark outside, and Sanna looked in both directions before she spotted Martti’s car. She tried to make out if he was in the driver’s seat, but it was too dark. Suddenly it felt like the world was closing in on her, and she ran for the car.
As Sanna opened the passenger door, she heard a sound behind her that caught her attention. A repetitive, rhythmic tapping. The Aboriginal man was sitting somewhere nearby in the darkness. Sanna pulled the door shut, the taps ringing in her ears.
Martti lowered a hand to Sanna’s thigh, and she felt the firm heat of his palm through her jeans. Sanna looked at him, and couldn’t remember ever having seen a happier face. Her breath came in gasps.
“You were the only good thing about this place.”
15
After the dust and dilapidation of Kalgoorlie, Perth looked flourishing, verdant, and clean. Sanna gazed out the window of the skyscraper at the blue bend in the Swan River, named for the black swans that frequented it, with red bills and eyes like glass beads.
The swans of Hades, Sanna mused.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the man with the long lashes. Kalgoorlie seemed to have some stubborn hold on her she couldn’t shake. The clock was ticking, and the town at the desert’s edge awaited destruction, demanded resolution before its time came to an end.
Sanna hadn’t informed Ralda of her return yet, and a knot formed in her stomach when the thought crossed her mind. She knew how disappointed Ralda would be if she heard Sanna was with a man from the mines in a luxury hotel suite, paid for by the company.
“Come here,” Martti said, stretching an arm across the white expanse of bed.
“In a minute.”
Sanna continued gazing out at the river. King’s Park rose on a hill on the far side. Sanna asked if Martti would go there with her.
“You want to go look for bodies?”
Sanna walked to the edge of the bed and sat down next to him. “No. I just can’t stand being here, inside, the whole time.”
Martti sighed.
Sanna remembered going hiking with Janne’s parents, how Janne had stayed back at the cabin with his game console. She’d sat at the campfire, wishing she could be their adopted daughter. For a moment Sanna missed that summertime spot, the stillness of the lake. The sudden, haunting cries of the water birds, the sweet cooing of the wood pigeons at the forest’s edge, the way the light filtered through the needles, its gold-dust haze.
For years she lived for the chance to go to the cabin when winter ended. But over the years, her thoughts gradually slunk from her summer paradise, and she grew numb as the soft nights descended over the silken lake. The owl cried, but she sat on the creaking dock; the red buoy bobbed in the waves and the water lapped at the pontoons, and all she thought was: No way am I going inside. She couldn’t, no matter how cold and thick with mosquitos the air around her grew.
Sanna smiled mournfully.
Martti took her by the hand. “Tell me.”
“This is critical. I can’t stay cooped up indoors. If you can’t deal with it, tough luck.”
Sanna expected Martti to be irritated, but his face was curious and glad.
“I was hoping you’d say that, that you were that kind of person.”
King’s Park was Perth’s answer to New York’s Central Park. A memorial to the veterans of the world wars stood there, surrounded by a crowd with cameras, photographing the vista opening up from the hill.
Martti and Sanna meandered down to the edge of the park, which had the best view across the highway to the river and the city beyond. Their hands sought out each other’s hips and backs; they had to kiss midsentence. They were hopelessly giddy.
“Sanna?”
Sanna turned toward the voice, bewildered; she had been leaning back into Martti’s chest. There, on the path behind them, stood Ralda.
“Hi!” Sanna wriggled out from under Martti’s arms.
“You’re back,” Ralda said.
“We got here this morning. I mean, yesterday morning,” Sanna said. “This is Martti.”
Martti extended a hand to Ralda, who slowly accepted it.
“Martti and I met in Kalgoorlie.”
Ralda nodded; she looked like a robin perched on a garden branch, her eyes alert and curious.
“So I’ll see you tomorrow—or I mean, will I? Does that work for you?” Sanna asked.
Ralda shrugged and stroked the grass with the tips of her shoes.
“Sanna was telling me you two are going on a trek. Where are you headed?”
Ralda looked at Sanna as if their secret had been betrayed to a stranger.
“Sanna?” Martti asked when Ralda didn’t answer.
“I’m not sure, actually,” Sanna said, attempting to smile on everyone’s behalf.
“We’re going to follow one of the old songlines into the outback.”
“There’s outback everywhere here. Whereabouts?”
Ralda squinted. “Northeast of here.”
“How long will you be trekking?”
“That’s up to Sanna. And the conditions,” Ralda said. “Sanna can explain as much as she wants. Nice meeting you, Martti.”
“Likewise.”
“So I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Sanna said.
Ralda didn’t turn to nod, which left Sanna feeling restless.
“She’s an odd one,” Martti said, reaching for Sanna’s hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, flustered, pulling her hand away.
&n
bsp; “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you two would like each other.”
Martti looked amused. “Is she going to be a permanent part of our lives?”
Sanna’s anxiety didn’t dissipate, and she sighed. “I don’t know.”
She cuddled up against him. She didn’t know what or who Ralda was to her. Her savior? Her friend? Her therapist? She didn’t know why she’d found Ralda’s presence somehow off-putting, like that of a former lover.
They bought overpriced sandwiches and french fries at the café in the middle of the park. The patio tables were all taken, and Martti suggested they sit on the lawn. They took their lunches and wandered until they found a pleasant shady spot under a eucalyptus tree.
When she finished eating, Sanna started plucking at the blades of grass. “What were you doing when you were thirty?”
Martti closed his eyes as he counted the years. “I was in Canada. At a gold mine, actually. I brought Minttu a nugget for her birthday. Marja threw it, smashed a window as I recall.”
“Why did you two break up?”
“Marja thought she would get used to me always being gone. But she never did.”
“I won’t get used to it, either,” Sanna said.
“I just asked you to join me, and I was starting to hope that you would, but it sounds like the medicine woman beat me to the punch.”
Sanna jabbed Martti. “What would I do out there, seriously? They say those camps are awful.”
Martti shrugged. “We would be there together. How awful could it be?”
Sanna shoved Martti again and laughed. “Ralda’s helping me.”
“With what?”
“With situations like this. Now I’m totally stressed out that I didn’t let her know I was back.”
“Are you ashamed of me?”
Sanna looked at Martti. “Part of me wants to show you to everyone, but then I’m also afraid that this is so typical, this sort of sudden . . .” Sanna wasn’t able to say the word love.
“Not for me. What I feel for you is something I’ve never felt for anyone before.”
“Come on, you used to love Marja, didn’t you?”