Fatal Headwind

by Leena Lehtolainen

  The plane banked to the south and the sunrise filled the sky like an enormous variegated dark-yellow and deep-violet fireworks display. The color leapt from the sky to the sea, turning the deathly gray to golden blue, deepening the ruddy granite of the islets to ruby. I could have gazed at it forever: the smooth transition of colors from one shade to another, the shadows chased by the sun on the restless surface of the water. But the main island of Åland was already glimmering before us, and the pilot announced that we would be descending to Mariehamn in five minutes.

  The car I had reserved was waiting at the airport. The drive to Svinö Harbor was twelve miles, and the ferry left at ten. I had time to swing through downtown Mariehamn, but I decided to take the scenic route instead. The road meandered through autumn-brown fields and yellow forests with the sea, now a blue-green, making occasional appearances. The fields were neatly plowed, though in the shadows they were still covered in frost.

  The cafe near the ferry was deserted; perhaps it was only open during summer. An abandoned barge floated at the dock, and a clump of defiant groundsel still bloomed. The wind was picking up, and I pulled my jacket tighter around myself. I got my fill of the bleak shoreline view because the Knipan was twenty minutes late. I drove the car on and then climbed to the upper-deck cabin. There were a few other people aboard, and based on their accents, they were local residents returning from shopping in Mariehamn.

  The ferry began chugging east past the little red-rock islands. Seeing a lighthouse island to the north, I could imagine the fall storms sweeping over its rocks and short alder trees. The south wind rocked the ferry unpleasantly, but the ferry wasn’t bothered and continued weaving through the wall of islands. Suddenly beyond them the village of Degerby appeared, and the ferry turned between the spar buoys toward the northeast. The lane was well marked. The water off the village seemed full of shoals. On one islet I picked out a pair of swans hugging the rocks, their wings gleaming in the sun.

  The village wound along the shore. Red ocher and pale-yellow houses, a light-gray shoreside restaurant. A few sailboats floated in the harbor, but otherwise the village seemed to have gone into hibernation. The ferry crew had to struggle before the south wind allowed the ferry to dock.

  Driving through Degerby took about a minute. The village had a local museum, a store, a post office, a library, and a minigolf course emptied by the fall weather. I also saw a sign for a restaurant. The church was farther on. Katrina Sjöberg had given precise driving directions, so I continued straight along the road leading east.

  “My house is difficult to find, but on Tuesday morning I’ll be at the Föglö church practicing the hymns for Sunday. The signs will take you there,” Katrina Sjöberg had said. A mile past the village I turned right, then went over a narrow bridge, past some terns floating on the sea.

  The church tower stood high above the sea, and it was a good landmark visible from miles around. I left the car in the parking lot and climbed the hill to the church. The fresh paint of the doors seemed strange against the ancient grayish-red stone of the building. I entered the churchyard through the gate. The first gravestone I saw said “Sjöberg.” Were Johan Erik Emanuel and Hilda Erika relatives of Katrina and Mikke?

  The graveyard was a small open area full of mossy stones and rusted crosses. Some of the stones were decorated with a picture of an anchor or a ship, each with a pilot or sea captain lying beneath. I walked to the yellow main door, but it was locked. I circled around to the wing on the same side as the parking lot, past a ten-foot-tall monument. Till minne av på havet omkomna—In memory of those who lost their lives at sea. The red granite was the same as the cliffs of Rödskär, and the sun cast streaks of blood on part of the rock.

  I opened the side door. The Church of Saint Mary Magdalene—it was almost like my namesake church. There was something peaceful and inviting about old stone churches. I was always happy to visit them, even though I didn’t even know what my own religious convictions were. I opened the inner door and entered the clean, arched whiteness.

  The first thing I saw was the votive ship hanging from the church ceiling. The organ thundered a tune I didn’t recognize. I didn’t want to interrupt Katrina’s playing, so I just kept looking. Above the altar a board had been hung with the text: Hjälp mig Gud och Maria att allt jag börjar får ett gott slut—Help me God and Mary that all I undertake will meet a good end. The oldest parts of the church were from the fourteenth century, the time before the Reformation, which was maybe why the prayer called so fervently upon the Virgin Mary. As a child I had disliked my name because it had seemed that only grandmothers and religious kids were named Maria. In middle school Virgin Maria became a taunt, even though my rough, tomboyish behavior was anything but maidenly. Often I had wondered why my agnostic parents had chosen such a staunchly Christian name. They said it was because both of their grandmothers had been named Maria.

  The interior of the church was dim. Near the altar was a candelabrum with a few thin, unlit candles. On the bench that ran along the wall sat a carton of candles and a box for donations. I pulled a coin from my pocket, took a candle, and struck a match. I wondered what Ström would think if he knew I was lighting a candle in his memory. He probably wouldn’t have liked it, but according to his own belief he was past knowing now. That thought came as a nearly physical pain, and for a moment I felt like putting my hand over the flame of the candle just to replace the first anguish with a different one.

  Then the organ stopped. I heard a bang in the loft and then Katrina Sjöberg’s voice.

  “Hi. So you made it.”

  After a few seconds she walked into the chapel and came to shake my hand. The grip of her veined hand was strong, and her skin still had some of the tan of summer. She was wearing a thick wool sweater, faded black corduroys, gray wool socks, and heavy boots. Over her arm she was carrying an oilcloth jacket.

  “Welcome to Föglö. Have you ever visited Åland before?”

  “On the main island, yes, but never out here. So are you the parish cantor in addition to your other jobs?”

  “The usual cantor is on sick leave, so I’m filling in. Shall we go? Unfortunately you’ll have to put out the candle. Fire safety regulations, you know.”

  Carefully I blew out the candle, leaving only a persistent curl of smoke. The church door banged shut behind us. I wondered what kind of god Katrina believed in. Did he give forgiveness for mortal sins like taking another person’s life?

  When I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I asked about the gravestones I had seen.

  “Yes, they’re some distant cousins, but our branch of the family is over on the other side of the cemetery. Would you like to see?”

  “Why not. Will Juha be buried here too?”

  “No, he’s being cremated. But Mikke and I have plots ready here.”

  Katrina led me to a shaded part of the graveyard near the stone wall. The largest Sjöberg marker was four by six feet, with a few smaller ones clustered around. One of these bore the names of the founder of Merivaara Nautical, Mikael Johan, and Martti Merivaara. The large stone was engraved with a sailboat and anchor, and beneath it were buried the sea captain Johan Sjöberg and the pilot Daniel Sjöberg.

  “Daniel was my grandfather, and Johan was Martti’s. Erland and Ida are my parents, and I’ll be laid to rest next to them. There’s still space on the stone,” Katrina said calmly. Fall roses bloomed in front of the largest gravestone, but soon the frost would blacken their leaves.

  “This is generations of stubborn men who never followed laws made by other people. I think we Sjöbergs stayed too long here in our own little island kingdom. Johan, the sea captain, smuggled weapons to Finland during the Russian oppression, and Daniel looked the other way when alcohol shipments came in during Prohibition. Where are your graves?”

  It had never even crossed my mind to think where I would be buried. The Kallios didn’t have a family plot, and the Sarkelas had fallen to the Soviets during World War II.

>   “I don’t imagine young people like you get that question much,” Katrina said. “For me it feels comforting to know where my bones will end up, especially since I’m not sure of the destination of my soul.” Katrina bent down and picked up a couple of maple leaves from the grass. “My home is a kilometer and a half from here. Will a bicycle fit in your car?”

  We managed to jam Katrina’s mountain bike into the trunk of my rented Volkswagen. First the road veered toward the center of the island, and then after two hundred yards, a narrow, rocky lane led off to the northwest. At the end of it stood a red, two-story wooden house built in the shelter of exposed bedrock and forest about a hundred yards from the shore. Winds from the sea wouldn’t be able to trouble it, even though the water glittered between the trees.

  “Mattsboda, my mother’s home. She was a Sjöberg too. Our family intermarried too much.” Katrina pulled her bike out of the car. The angularity of her movements was the same as Mikke’s.

  We went inside to the living room, which was dominated by a hand loom, a baking oven, and a table that could have seated nearly twenty people. Nets and other fishing implements decorated the walls, as well as an anchor, five feet tall. A grandfather clock ticked as if its seconds were slower than normal. Although the room was large, Katrina seemed to fill it, even though her slender frame only stood at five foot two.

  “So what would you like to ask me?” she said once we had removed our coats and she had given me a thick pair of wool socks to replace my shoes. “This must be important for you to come all the way from Espoo.”

  “Do you mind if I record our conversation?”

  When Katrina did not object, I pulled my recorder and a couple of tapes out of my bag. Dictating the date and time of the interview felt unreal sitting in such a peaceful room in a house hundreds of years old.

  “I have several questions. First let’s go back to a year ago. Harri Immonen called here a little before his death, trying to reach Mikke. What did Harri say?”

  Katrina Sjöberg ran a hand through her gray hair, and I noticed her eyes were gray now too, like the morning sea in the autumn light.

  “So much has happened since then. I don’t remember exactly. He asked for Mikke to contact him as soon as possible.”

  “How did he sound?”

  “Very different from the calm, pleasant young man I had met before. Anxious. He kept repeating how important it was. And then stupid me forgot the whole thing!”

  Katrina sighed, and the wrinkles around her eyes tightened. “I blamed myself for forgetting to mention Harri’s call. That was why I waited so long to tell Mikke about his death. I was afraid of how he would react. Sometimes I’m a coward too. Mikke is the only person I really care about. If Harri killed himself, and if that could have been prevented if I’d given Mikke his message . . . it’s hard to bear.”

  “If it helps, I don’t believe Harri killed himself,” I said consolingly, without adding that passing on the message probably still could have prevented Harri’s death. “Did he tell you anything about what was going on? Try to remember. This is important.”

  The pot started boiling on the stove, giving off a delicious aroma of fish soup. Katrina stood up to move it off the heat. She stirred the soup a couple of times before answering.

  “It was about Juha. I can’t remember the exact words, but Harri wanted to talk to Mikke about Juha.”

  “You had known Juha Merivaara since he was ten years old. What kind of a person was he?”

  Katrina tasted the broth with a wooden spoon and burned her mouth. It took a little while before she could answer.

  “Self-indulgent and stubborn like his father. Martti was lazy, and that was why the business went the way it did. Juha was different in that regard. He loved money. When he was twelve years old, he told me how he intended to invest his inheritance from his mother once he became an adult. There’s enough entrepreneur in me too that I could see the sense in his plans. For a child he also understood brutally well why his inheritance was being managed by a caretaker rather than by his father. Juha was so much like Martti, but he lacked Martti’s uninhibited physicality, which was what I had fallen in love with.”

  Katrina sat back down at the table, and the light coming through the window wove a net of furrows across her face that moved like something alive. I moved the recorder closer, knowing that I should be focusing on events on Rödskär Island rather than listening to a family history, but for some reason I had the feeling that this was going to give me answers to questions I didn’t even know how to ask.

  “Mikke is the son who inherited Martti’s . . . I imagine your generation would say ‘sex appeal.’ They aren’t handsome but there’s something irresistible about them. Don’t ask me to explain what it is. But sex isn’t enough when what’s on the other side of the scale is completely abandoning your own dreams to play the good little wife. I’ve never been able to compromise, and I guess I raised Mikke to be a person who sails his own course too stubbornly too. I pay for that with how infrequently I see him, and with the knowledge that every time could be the last.”

  Katrina fell silent for a moment, and then straightened her back. “The fish soup is ready, and I’m hungry. Will it be a breach of protocol if we eat while we talk?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. The soup was made with fish caught nearby early that morning, Katrina said proudly. It was hot and thick, and the svartbröd served with it tasted strangely sweet but still delicious to my eastern Finnish palate. The conversation naturally turned to bread baking, because I couldn’t help asking how the sweet black bread was made. I couldn’t imagine spending three days on the baking process, but maybe Antti would have the patience to try it.

  “Maybe when I married Martti I thought it was an easy way to a complete life—he already had one child, and I was carrying another. I saw myself in Riikka this summer. She was trying to get herself an older man and an established life so she didn’t have any need to create something for herself. First Juha took Riikka, and then Tapio Holma did. I felt like giving some grandmotherly advice, even though that hasn’t been my way.”

  “What advice would you give her?”

  “Before Juha’s death I would have told her to stop holding on to her father’s pant legs and go live on her own. You have to learn to live in the same room with yourself before you complicate your life with other people, with men and children. Of course I’m an old hermit now. No one could stand more than a week with me or I with them, not even Mikke anymore. Would you like some coffee?”

  Once we had finished one cup and were pouring our second, I said we needed to resume the questioning for the case.

  “In your first interview, you said that a boat visited Rödskär the night of Juha’s death. Can you tell me more about that, like the time and possible the direction it came from?”

  “That’s hard to say, since I slept so restlessly,” Katrina replied evasively.

  “But you’re sure there was a boat? No one else heard it.”

  “Didn’t they?” Katrina’s face was tired. “Maybe I was hearing things, then. Or dreaming. Maybe I just hoped I’d heard a boat, that there could be someone from outside we could blame for killing Juha.”

  “You were also heard going outside during the night, and talking with Mikke. You didn’t mention anything about that.”

  “Didn’t I? I said I slept restlessly.”

  From my bag I brought out a transcript of the previous interview.

  “Yes, you did, but you didn’t mention going outside, and Mikke didn’t either.”

  “I talked to you the day after Juha’s death. I was tired and in shock. Maybe I didn’t remember everything. Yes, I went outside, and yes, I bumped into Mikke. He was coming from the Leanda, probably checking the mooring lines. We talked about leaving early in the morning but we didn’t want to go without seeing Anne again. Mikke also wanted to say good-bye to Jiri and Seija.”

  Katrina Sjöberg had had time to think carefully about her answers to an
y question I could ask. It was unlikely I was going to get her to say anything she didn’t want to say. So I shifted the conversation back to Juha.

  “What would you say if I claimed that Juha killed Harri Immonen?”

  Katrina’s eyes narrowed.

  “I would ask what your basis was for that claim, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Harri had discovered that Juha was using the waters around Rödskär to dump damaged barrels of toxic paint. If it ever came out, Juha would have been charged with environmental crimes and Merivaara Nautical’s business would have been finished. It’s also seeming like Juha had been selling toxic Soviet paints as Finnish eco-paints, at least in Lithuania.”

  Katrina looked outside. The sun was starting to descend from its peak, and the light was the slightest bit slanted.

  “If you’re done with your coffee, let’s go out to the shore for a walk. Otherwise I start nodding off after I eat.”

  For a moment I hesitated. I didn’t feel like dragging the recorder with me, so whatever we said while we were walking wouldn’t have anyone or anything to back it up. Still I decided to go. Pulling on my coat, I wrapped my scarf around my ears. That was unnecessary, though, since the south wind didn’t reach the shore of Mattsboda, where a rock outcropping that projected toward the east protected it quite well.

  “The Sjöberg-Merivaara family has made its living from the sea for as long as the parish records go,” Katrina said as we walked along the rocky shoreline. “The sea is the same for us as the forest is for you inlanders. We protect it so it can provide for us, not because it is important in and of itself. The sea gives us nourishment, but it is also an enemy, and if you aren’t careful, it will swallow you. I never really believed in Juha’s environmentalism. Anne and the children are all too serious about it, but for Juha protecting the environment was just a marketing gimmick. When dangerous speedboats were all the rage, he sold products for those too.”