by Tua Harno
No therapist services of any sort had been offered at the Mermaids’ Lagoon mining community, and many of these men had been there, too. They reacted to Sarah as if the simple presence of a psychologist in the camp posed a danger.
Musing over these things, Martti had been staring at Sarah’s legs too long, long enough to compare them to Sanna’s. They had been like the map of a fragmented archipelago, whose shoals Martti had run his fingers across.
“It’s a pigmentation flaw,” Sanna had said.
“The most beautiful one I’ve ever seen.”
Sarah’s thighs were dappled with branches of knotted bluish veins. Her legs were closed tightly; her bikini bottom disappeared under folds of skin.
“Are you coming to the wet mess tonight?” Sarah asked, raising her sunglasses again, as if otherwise Martti might forget whom he was talking to.
Martti nodded and Sarah gave him a knowing look. He turned away and dried his ears with his towel. The sun had warmed the terry cloth. He had to go, or else Eva would show up at his donga with Lily. “Come eat dinner with us,” Eva would say, the ghostly child at her heels.
The second night he had spent at Eva’s, Lily had started crying. Martti tried whispering to Eva, asking if he should do something, but she just mumbled, from deep within her own dreams, “Not the baby, not the baby. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Why won’t she look at me. Lily, please.”
Martti had patted her shoulder and assured her Lily was safe. He then climbed out of bed and walked over to Lily’s cot. The sight of him startled the child into silence. The white helmet she took with her wherever she went was in the corner of the bed. Martti turned on the headlamp. Lily rolled over onto her side to stare at it.
Eva’s crying didn’t abate. Martti didn’t know what to say or do, so he stroked her back.
Marja had had the same sort of nightmares right after they brought Minttu home from the maternity ward. His wife would suddenly sit bolt upright in bed and ask where the baby was, or cry that the baby was dead, soaking her pillow. Martti would lift Minttu out of the crib and bring her over to Marja. “The baby is alive and breathing, the most perfect creature in the world,” he’d say. So small she fit in Martti’s palm.
Earlier that day, Eva had told Lily, “Martti is going to take you to see where Santa Claus lives. Maybe someday, right? Lots and lots of snow, way over on the other side of the world where everything’s upside down. You’ll take her, won’t you?”
Martti had looked at them helplessly. He didn’t even want to go there himself. He’d thought he had to go back for Minttu’s sake, but now there wasn’t even that.
By the time Martti arrived at the wet mess, Sarah was plastered. She had washed her hair, so the curls were more distinct and glossier than the matted shock of hair he’d seen at the pool. She was wearing high-waisted jeans and a navy-blue top, and when she hugged Martti he sensed not only the warm winey sweetness of her breath but the sweat under her perfume. Martti greeted the men sitting around the table, who also looked bemused.
Sarah walked up to the bar with him, ostensibly to help carry drinks.
“Is everything OK?” Martti asked.
Sarah studied the cash in her wallet, holding the bill compartment open like a book, and frowned at the contents.
“Don’t I ever get to be off duty?” Sarah shifted her weight from the balls of her feet to her heels, and tried handing Martti a wad of cash. Martti turned down the money and asked for a tray big enough to hold all the drinks.
Sarah had gotten bad news from home, that’s what this meant. Excessive drinking generally occurred when a spouse called and confessed to an affair, or the cheating came out some other way and the employee was eager to settle the score.
Martti watched Sarah take a seat. She raised one leg over the bench with surprising agility. She steadied herself against her seatmate, mostly to touch him and make it easier to cuddle up to him. Her seatmate was the foreman of the crushing crew, Kamil, with whom Martti had recently had an altercation.
Kamil spoke English with a Polish accent, was bald and big as a giant, and wore a gold cross at his neck. Sarah looked like a little muskrat at his side; her beady, wet eyes circled the table until Martti felt them rest on him.
Kamil glanced at the woman who had sprouted at his side as if realizing that his shirt seam had split at the shoulder, then took a swig from his bottle, leaving a foam mustache on his upper lip. Martti noticed Sarah couldn’t help pointing out the foam, not only by licking her own upper lip, but by eventually pulling out a handkerchief and wiping Kamil’s mouth.
Martti turned toward the darkened outback. What was he doing here?
“This one’s on me.” Sarah set a beer down in front of Martti.
“OK.” Martti moved his first bottle out of the way.
“You asked if everything’s OK. No, everything’s not OK, but I don’t want to talk about it here,” Sarah whispered. Or tried to whisper—her lack of sobriety made her misjudge the volume. The words collided with the sides of her mouth.
“Everyone gets bad news from home now and again,” Martti said, scooting away as Sarah leaned into him.
She closed her eyes tightly and nodded, then reached for Martti’s hand and patted it. “I thought you’d understand.”
Martti wanted to pull his hand away and tell Sarah that anyone who’d been at the mine for six months would know what she was going through. But he couldn’t compel himself to do either.
Kamil looked at him from the other side of the table. Martti gestured at Sarah and mouthed the words, “How did you get rid of her?”
Kamil broke into a broad smile and spread his arms, then delicately flicked the air as if ridding his finger of an annoying fly.
Sarah leaned against Martti with her eyes shut, still tightly grasping his hand, and muttered something between her lips. She looked like a child saying her bedtime prayers.
“I’ve been so alone here. No one touches me. Do you know what that feels like, week in, week out? I’m used to being touched. I have two sons, they climb all over me like little monkeys,” Sarah mumbled. Luckily the words were barely audible, even to Martti.
Martti was torn between reaching out to wrap a comforting arm around Sarah and knocking her to the artificial turf and telling her to get a grip. Did she have any idea what a fool she was making of herself, how much harder she was going to find it to achieve her goals? Sarah wanted to win over the team leaders, get them to see the benefits of the therapy services she offered. Her whiny desperation for affection took the bottom out of any credibility she might have possessed in terms of advancing her project. She was supposed to be the one who kept men from turning into drunken shambles.
As if she could hear what Martti was thinking, Sarah lifted her head, narrowed her eyes, and smiled at the men sitting across the table. She steadied herself against Martti’s thigh to push herself up; her pinky and ring finger brushed too close to his groin for the touch to have been innocent.
“It’s time to call home. I always do it at the same time every night without fail, I call my kids to tell them good night.”
The men sitting around the table nodded.
“I’m going to steal Martti from you for a second. He gets to walk me home,” Sarah announced, and the men’s cautious reactions changed to smiles.
Martti was losing his patience. He glanced at the men and then looked at Sarah, who had decided to put on lipstick for the walk home.
“I’m pretty sure you can find your way, can’t you?”
Sarah’s lips remained puckered, a more primitive alarm replacing the usual concern in her eyes.
“I really do get lost here sometimes. What if I trip on the stairs? Please. It would mean a lot to me,” Sarah said and then tried to whisper again. “I need to talk to you about something else, too. It’s about your friend, it’s very important.”
Martti stood, thinking it would be easier to give in than engage in this negotiation. Plus, he wasn’t interested in subjecting
Sarah to any further ridicule, and forcing her to walk home alone would humiliate her even more. Martti steered Sarah between the tables and toward the patio stairs.
Suddenly Eva appeared in front of them. Her eyes widened and then narrowed. Martti could almost hear everyone at the tables registering what was going on.
“I’m going to walk Sarah to her room, she’s not feeling well,” Martti said to Eva.
“I’m so lonely, that’s why,” Sarah said, and Eva gave Martti a wounded look.
Martti tried to tell her with his eyes that he’d explain later, that all he wanted now was to get rid of this psychologist. But Eva was already making her way toward the other tables. Martti wanted to tell her he’d be back, that he wasn’t going to stay in Sarah’s room, but he couldn’t very well shout that out across the patio.
Martti took Sarah by the hand and started pulling her toward the dongas. “What number do you live in?”
“S18, but you can also take me to your place if it’s easier to find,” Sarah said.
Martti turned to look at her.
“I like you,” she said.
Martti said nothing and kept dragging Sarah. It would have been easier to find the right door if he didn’t have to move at her pace. But he didn’t want to leave her squatting at the edge of the concrete footpath. Tomorrow was Monday. How was she planning on passing the Breathalyzer? On the other hand, it was only about nine thirty. Sarah had learned the ways of the camp. When you started early, the intoxication had time to wear off.
Sarah resisted when Martti tried to pull her along more briskly. “Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I don’t feel like spending all night out here.”
“Even though the stars are so beautiful.” Sarah stopped and looked up, craning her neck.
Martti sighed angrily. He wasn’t even so much as going to glance upward; he wasn’t going to identify a single planet with this woman. Sarah shambled along behind him, admiring the sky and amazed by how cold the night was, while Martti tried to remember the logic of the camp’s alphabetical addresses. It was impossible to see the letters on the doors in the darkness.
“Which way to your room?” Martti asked to Sarah’s delight.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m the one who should be leading the way.” Sarah walked past him and marched straight ahead. Martti was relieved. He had already started picturing them ending up at the wrong door or spending an hour walking in circles.
Martti wondered what sort of news she had received from home. At the memorial service for the dead girl, Sarah had spoken about how people here didn’t have the safety nets they had in town. No spouse, no family, not necessarily even anyone close who would catch the situation in time. “We need to shoulder, at the least, a modicum of responsibility for each other. So we won’t have to think after the fact, I just was a bystander who did nothing while another human being was in pain.”
Sarah stopped in her tracks. “Here it is.”
“OK, good night. You might want to drink some water before you go to bed. And I don’t know if you should call home tonight. Why don’t you just text them?” Martti said, feeling a bit more generous, now that his tribulation had come to an end.
Sarah looked at him sincerely. “Do they hate me?”
Martti didn’t know who she was talking about. The men on the patio? Her children?
“No one hates you,” he assured her.
“I don’t want to be alone.” Sarah burst into tears, letting her wallet dangle. Coins and her key tumbled to the ground and vanished into the darkness beyond the yellow ring of the streetlamp.
Sarah covered her eyes and sobbed. Martti used the glow of his phone’s screen to try and find the key. Sarah dropped to a crouch to gather up her belongings, but her fingers ran across the concrete slowly and playfully, and she muttered into her knees, like a child stroking a patch of clover, looking for one with four leaves.
Martti felt sorry for her, even though a much more painful image thrust into his mind. His mother had crouched down equally heedlessly on the Arctic Ocean Highway. Martti hadn’t seen anyone around, but he felt like the closed curtains had been spying on them, and the urine’s stubborn stink clung to the bottom of his sneakers.
“Leave it,” Martti said.
Sarah sniffled and said something Martti couldn’t make out. She rocked back and forth in her crouch before crashing to her knees. Martti took Sarah’s wallet. To his relief, he felt a ring in the coin purse, her key ring, he thought, but when he stepped closer to the light, the metal hoop turned out to be her wedding ring.
“Sarah, if you’re looking for your ring, here it is,” Martti said.
“Thanks,” Sarah said, but she didn’t stand to accept it.
Martti put it back in the coin purse and carefully zipped it shut. He jammed the wallet in his back pocket and lifted Sarah by the armpits.
“You can go sleep in my room,” he said.
“But where will you sleep then? I’m so sorry about my keys.”
Martti thought it was a good sign Sarah wasn’t imagining they’d be sleeping in the same place.
“I can stay at Eva’s.”
It occurred to Martti it was the first time he’d revealed anything personal about himself to this woman.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. How should I put this?”
“Why don’t you tell me some other time?” Martti wasn’t interested in hearing about how detrimental a workplace romance could be at the moment, or about Eva’s age or her fragile state, or about what happened to the canteen girl.
Sarah meekly leaned against Martti’s arm and followed him down the path and up the stairs. When they arrived at Martti’s place, he opened the door and turned on the lights. The bed was an unmade tangle of sheets. Martti straightened it out as Sarah stood, swaying, in the middle of the room.
“Are you supposed to be on the morning bus?” Martti asked. “I can come wake you up.”
Sarah frowned, trying to remember.
“Do you have any early appointments tomorrow?”
Sarah shook her head.
“You don’t remember or you don’t have any?”
Sarah shook her head again.
No one would have any reason to see Sarah during morning team meetings. Sarah would probably be fine if she were at the mine by seven. Someone would have to make a special trip by car to pick her up, but Martti thought he’d be able to swing it.
Sarah had started undressing, fully concentrating on herself and her belt. Martti scanned the room from corner to corner, thought vaguely for a moment whether he needed anything. Leaving Sarah there felt strange, as if there were something embarrassing in the room he should hide before he left.
“Good night then,” he said from the doorway.
Sarah had slipped into bed and was sitting under the covers, knees bent.
“I thought you might like to sleep with me,” Sarah said, without raising her head. “Or that someone might, but no one did. They all turned me down, passed me around like they were playing catch.”
Martti didn’t know what to say.
“Playing catch,” Sarah reiterated, making it sound like she was taking pleasure in the torture—like it was a concentration camp game, like tossing a baby over the mother’s head.
And yet there was something ridiculous about it. Wasn’t every woman around here desirable, wasn’t that the law of this place? Now Sarah had learned she was the exception to the rule, which filled her with an unnerving sense of shame and self-pity.
Martti closed the door—the gazes of the curious had no business here. He knew he needed to head back as soon as possible; time had ticked significantly since he had left the patio to escort Sarah home. But he couldn’t leave her in this state.
“I don’t know what sort of news you got from home, but everything’s going to be all right.”
“It’s all over.”
“No matter what it is, you’ll survive,” Martti said. “That’s life.”
>
Sarah’s howls grew louder. She tried to hold them in by clenching her teeth, which only served to intensify their violence.
The sight was too much for Martti, and he lowered his hands to her shoulders. Sarah leaned forward, into his stomach. She wrapped one of her arms around Martti’s legs. The position was awkward, but she quivered and blubbered there, and the sexual suggestiveness hovering over everything made the situation absurd and even sadder. Martti would have much preferred screwing her over comforting her. It was less complicated.
“Please come lie next to me until I fall asleep. I promise I’ll behave,” Sarah said.
Martti looked at her face, threaded with sorrow, and reached down to take off his shoes. He lay down under the covers, back rigid, and Sarah curled up against his ribs like a mollusk. He could feel Sarah’s bare thighs against his jeans, reflected that he’d seen them in the bright light of day, that they felt soft this way. Sarah’s hand ran down Martti’s chest and stomach. It was the same movement she had used to look for her ring outside. A light, unconcerned caress, yet still searching for something.
Martti grabbed her hand, drew it to his mouth, and pressed his lips to her fingers. The arm stiffened from his touch and remained there, waiting for what would happen next. Sarah raised her face toward Martti’s. Her expression was open.
He rolled over to kiss her. She tasted of skin and wine and her mouth was dry, but Martti wanted to ram himself through her. He had to put an end to her sadness.
Surprised, Sarah kissed him back, and started tugging at his shirt. Martti stopped her and shoved his hand into underpants, remembering the faded bikini and Sarah’s body, that slowly slouching femininity, the breasts that didn’t so much sag as reach toward the ribs, how lifeless that lack of spirit was, how necessary to find something inside her that lived and breathed.