Things that Fall from the Sky

by Selja Ahava

  ‘I didn’t know there was a ball like that,’ I say, taking a closer look at the picture. Everything has its place, even under the skin. I think of my shoulder, then of my elbows, fingers, knees, thighs, toes and the point where the head joins the skeleton. Was it really the case that any one of them could pop out of its place at any time, if your gait’s a bit off, that you could just collapse like a clothes horse? I never realized a human being was so fragile.

  It’s lucky I’m covered by skin! What would hold all the hands, fingers and other things together otherwise? They could just break and fall out. Without skin, everything could disintegrate. A broken arm, stomach, even the heart or liver!

  ‘So, Saara,’ the hairy doctor says, taking hold of my arm. ‘Now, I’ve got an important question. Tell me your favourite thought.’

  Every now and then, you meet grown-ups who take children seriously. They ask interesting questions and listen to your answers. You can be straight with grown-ups like that. You can ask them things and they give proper answers, and they also tell you if they don’t know. I decide to test this doctor.

  ‘I like to think about time,’ I answer.

  Just then, the doctor yanks my arm with terrible force. My shoulder lets out a cracking sound and my mouth lets out a cry. The doctor looks on with his calm eyes.

  ‘Time? That’s a splendid answer. Try and twist your hand now.’

  ‘Saara? Saara?’ Dad’s shouting behind the door, rattling the door handle.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ I tell him.

  The rattling stops.

  My shoulder moves normally in its socket. The pain has gone, too. I wonder for a moment if I should be angry, or thump the doctor on the nose, but this time thing interests me enough for me to decide to let it go.

  ‘What is it about time that you find particularly interesting?’ the doctor asks.

  I wait for a moment, to see if he’s planning to grab anything again, but as he’s not touching me, I decide it’s a genuine question.

  ‘That time moves backwards, like this.’ I show him with my arm, which is now back in its place. ‘Here is now, and here are the things that happened a long time ago. And it moves like this.’

  The doctor nods his curly head.

  ‘But sometimes, pieces come loose and they don’t move with time but instead stay here, always,’ I go on. ‘Everything else moves backwards, but those pieces stay here. You can forget them, but when you remember them again, they’re just as close as they were at the beginning.’

  ‘Right,’ the doctor says.

  ‘Have you got pieces like that?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ the doctor replies.

  I wait, and he goes: ‘One could be when I first held my daughter.’

  ‘Any others?’

  ‘Another one could be when my son started cycling without stabilizers, and I let go.’

  I try to imagine the hairy doctor letting go of the bike and watching the boy cycling off. Then I say, ‘I’ve got pieces of my mum. They’re clear but they’re loose.’

  ‘I don’t think it matters,’ the doctor says.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think you can let the pieces be as they are.’

  ‘OK,’ I answer. ‘I’ve also got a medical question. It’s about blood.’

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ the hairy doctor says.

  ‘Why does blood look blue through the skin but red when it comes out?’

  ‘That’s a very good question! Blood running through systemic veins is blue as long as it remains inside the vein. When it flows out and gets oxygenated, it becomes red. And in the same way, the heart makes the blood red because it adds oxygen to the blood.’

  ‘Wow,’ I answer. ‘I’ve got another one: can an eye pop out of its socket if you don’t blink often enough?’

  The doctor looks at me, and, perhaps because of my question, blinks his dark eyes several times.

  ‘Not really. But I specialize in X-rays – I’m not an eye expert.’

  ‘There are no bones in the eye,’ I say, nodding.

  ‘Exactly,’ the doctor replies.

  ‘What if you sneeze hard? Can the eye come out then?’

  ‘You can’t sneeze with your eyes open,’ the doctor answers.

  ‘I know! I’ve tried.’

  I show the doctor how I’ve tried to use my finger to make my eyes stay open.

  ‘And did it work?’

  ‘It didn’t,’ I answer.

  The doctor winks at me.

  Before I go, the doctor gives me the X-ray to take home. My popped-out shoulder glows there, blue and clear.

  ‘You could frame it,’ the hairy doctor says.

  In the manor house, Auntie Annu puts the image in a golden frame, and I hang it up in my room. Not many girls have a picture showing their own skeleton.

  22

  In Sawdust House, Dad was always afraid that there was water running inside the walls. Or that there was a hole in the roof, or the drains were blocked, or a water pipe would burst. So many things could go wrong in a wooden house, and Dad had to worry about all of them.

  Sometimes, when it was raining hard, Dad stood next to the wardrobe and stroked the wall.

  ‘Do you think this is damp?’ Dad asked Mum. ‘Why is this so cold?’

  Dad had this constant feeling that a problem would creep in stealthily – through the roof, through cracks in the walls, through the flue of the fireplace or the vents in the cellar. He felt he should spot it but might miss it, and then it’d all be too late and Sawdust House would be rotten. Or we would contract cancer from exposure to radon. Or a flue would catch fire. Or water would drip in through the roof, through the holes where nails had been hammered in, which had become enlarged, and the decayed roof would collapse on us. Or carbon monoxide would come in through loose tiles on the stove and poison us. And it would all be Dad’s fault.

  ‘Chipboard is dangerous,’ Dad explained to Mum and me. ‘It emits formaldehyde. We should tear open all these walls and go over to plasterboard. It would be safer from the fire-safety point of view; chipboard houses like these go up like torches. But it costs money to replace all the walls with new ones. While we’re at it, we’d have to dismantle all the kitchen cabinets, and the bathroom. Chipboard’s the worst possible option; God knows what kind of fungi might be breeding there…’

  ‘Pekka, for two years we’ve had smoke alarms waiting in the cleaning cupboard for someone to fix them to the ceiling. Let’s not get stressed about chipboard right now,’ Mum said. She stroked Dad’s neck.

  When Mum stroked him like that, Dad growled for a bit like an unhappy dog, but settled down in the end.

  ‘The sound of the alarms is so infuriating,’ Dad muttered.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Mum replied.

  In the manor house, it doesn’t matter if it rains hard. Dad and I sit by the window and stare at the grey, rushing curtain. Just when it seems it couldn’t rain any harder, the rain falls more heavily still. I feel cosy and damp. The grey curtain rushes, the drainpipe gurgles, the roof booms and the odd drip-drip sounds from the stove as water trickles in through the chimney. There’s frost and lichen between the windowpanes, and the guttering on the roof is overflowing. Raindrops beat the ground and splatter mud, and in no time at all, a large puddle forms on the sandy road.

  But Dad’s not worried. This chimney isn’t Dad’s, and Dad doesn’t say, ‘I should install chimney caps. This damp will make the whole chimney crumble, and where’s the money to repair it?’

  This is not our roof. These walls are not filled with sawdust. There’s no cellar under the house for water to run into. Nothing’s mouldy. Or rather, everything’s already damp and mouldy anyway.

  Dad tried to protect us, but in the end, it wasn’t enough. He thought too much about the walls and forgot the sky.

  Now Dad just listens to the drip-drip-drip in the flue.

  23

  After a fortnight of rain, Auntie Annu suggests we go and clean the
guttering of Sawdust House. Dad growls and snaps at us: he wants to take a look at the wonky ceiling in Auntie’s barn.

  ‘You could sell the place,’ Auntie Annu says. ‘But it’s not a good idea to just leave it lying empty. It’ll go to rack and ruin.’

  ‘I was thinking of starting to dismantle that ceiling today,’ Dad grunts.

  Auntie Annu stares at him wordlessly.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a big deal, fixing it. Then you could use the garage side, too. At the moment there’s always the worry that a beam or a plank will fall on the car.’

  ‘It’s a wooden house – it needs to be lived in,’ Auntie Annu says. ‘Otherwise it’ll start getting damp – you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘No,’ says Dad.

  ‘You can live in the manor house, no problem.’

  ‘We’re not going to stay here for good.’

  ‘Can’t we just go and clean the guttering?’

  ‘I don’t want to go there. For God’s sake, is it so hard to grasp?’ Dad suddenly starts to shout at the top of his voice. Even Auntie Annu is startled. ‘I don’t want to see that house, I don’t want to see that garden. I can’t look at the garden, because I can still picture my wife there without her head, OK? What is so hard to understand about that? What? What is so hard?’

  One, two, three.

  Time passes; Mum moves backwards.

  The clock on the manor-house wall.

  Mum’s head. Mum without a head.

  What is so hard?

  My thoughts lose their grip. I can’t stop them; they start fizzing like a peppermint when you drop it in Coca-Cola. We did that experiment with Dad once, and all the Coke fizzed out of the bottle. Dad protected me and dropped a tyre on me.

  I slide out of my chair and slip upstairs. I bet Dad will start falling apart and trembling again, and soon the stove will howl. I worry that someone will come after me; I don’t want anyone right now. So I go and hide in the library. I shut the door and jump up on to the windowsill and sit down behind the curtains.

  Outside, it rains and rains and rains. I press my forehead against the window and close my eyes. I keep drawing a white line, round and round.

  There are no books left in the library at the manor house. An old wooden desk stands in front of the window. Three armchairs and a sofa form a circle in the middle of the room. Gentlemen can sit in them, reading newspapers and smoking. There are overflowing ashtrays on both the coffee table and the desk. I get a whiff of tobacco from the windowsill. The thick velvet curtains have been absorbing it for years.

  If a murder were ever committed at Extra Great Manor, this is the room where the detective would invite the guests to take a seat, as he always does at the end of the episode.

  ‘Calm down, mademoiselle, there is no need to worry,’ he says, drawing the velvet curtain aside. He pats my hand and points at one of the armchairs.

  I shake my head and back into the corner of the windowsill.

  ‘Mum hasn’t got a head!’ I cry.

  ‘Mon Dieu! Everything is bound to have an explanation,’ he says. ‘And there’s a time for everything. And now the time has come to reveal the truth.’

  I don’t understand. Have we reached the final scene? He arranges the armchairs of the library suitably. He plans to pace back and forth in front of the fireplace, so he wants the chairs in a semicircle. That way, everyone can see him walking and thinking.

  ‘Are you going to solve our situation?’ I ask. I open the curtains a crack.

  The detective bows lightly. He takes off his dark overcoat and places it carefully on the back of a chair. Then he adjusts his sleeves and straightens his bow tie. He must feel hot in that outfit. He’s even got spats on over his shoes, and it’s summer now.

  ‘Dear child. All will be clear once we’ve got our facts in order,’ he assures me. He raises his fat index finger. He looks chubbier in real life than on TV.

  ‘So. Was there frost in the night before the fatality?’

  ‘No way! It was the start of the summer holidays!’

  ‘But there was ice on the ground?’

  ‘Dad said it was glass.’

  ‘But it was ice, n’est-ce pas? You felt it with your hand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Très intéressant…An intriguing case!’

  The Belgian swivels round and walks in front of the chairs. Then he stops before me and wags his finger.

  ‘You like skiing, don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re good at skiing? You were second in a children’s skiing race. You used to ski on an icy lake with your mother?’

  Sweat gleams on his forehead, but he doesn’t stop to wipe it off now, not in the middle of an important scene. I haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about. It’s summer at the moment; wasps are buzzing among the leaves of the creeper and he’s just standing there in his spats, gaping.

  ‘Ice fell from the sky! It turned Mum’s head into pulp! You know nothing about this!’

  ‘My dear child…’

  ‘Your detective stories don’t even have children in them!’ I shout. ‘They’re all grown-ups! You’re wrong – you know nothing about this!’

  He goes quiet.

  ‘This is a deed committed by an evil man,’ he mutters slowly, stroking his moustache. ‘We haven’t got much time. If my suspicion is correct, we have to get you to a place of safety – and fast. Hastings!’ He looks around, but Hastings hasn’t yet found his way to the library. ‘To the post office! Have the Christmas cards been sent?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘You made the cards by hand, n’est-ce pas? A snowflake, an elf, an angel, oui? I need the addresses – all the addresses! Quite right – you’ve guessed: the angels! Those cruel messengers. And if it is as I think it is, what I seek is among those addresses!’

  The Belgian detective puffs out his chest and pats his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what this is all about,’ I say from behind the curtain.

  ‘Never underestimate –’

  ‘So what’s it all about, then?’

  He paces back and forth in front of the fireplace again. He wishes he had a bigger audience, you can tell, but we haven’t got any guests right now. This is a rubbish final scene. And there’s no murder.

  ‘Let’s go over the facts: crushed ice on the grass. A skiing race. A mother who disappears. A father who disappears, partially. A child who disappears into a secret room…’

  ‘Even you can’t solve this,’ I say.

  He looks at me for a moment, pinching his moustache.

  ‘There will be a sequel,’ he suggests. ‘You cannot always cram a mystery into one instalment. The guests don’t always fit into one library. Then you need a sequel.’

  ‘No.’

  He looks at me. ‘Pourquoi pas?’

  ‘You’re useless in this case.’

  ‘D’accord,’ he says, offended. Then he picks up the coat from the chair, puts it on and again pats his forehead dry with the handkerchief.

  ‘I understand when I am not wanted.’ The detective raises his hat a little and walks out.

  I hear his footsteps fading in the stairwell.

  24

  And then, one morning, we find Auntie Annu at the kitchen table. She’s been sitting there all night, a piece of paper in her hand, glasses on her forehead. Even the kitchen is tired from staying awake all night, what with the burning of lamps and the human breathing. The freezer keeps sighing. It looks as if Auntie’s slept part of the night resting on her arm because her cheek’s imprinted with the pattern of her jumper.

  Dad glances at Auntie but keeps quiet until he’s poured out a coffee for himself and some Rice Krispies into a bowl for me. Then he sits down and says, ‘Well?’

  Auntie Annu glances at Dad, moves the piece of paper she’s holding and blinks. When a person is really tired, even her blinking slows down. Then you can really see the blinking happening: the eyes closing and
opening again.

  Annu passes the piece of paper to Dad and says, ‘I won the lottery.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I mean, I won again.’

  Auntie scratches her head, finds the glasses on her forehead and pushes them up into her hair.

  ‘2.8 million, cash.’

  Dad puts his mug down.

  My Rice Krispies crackle in the bowl.

  ‘Why are you still doing the lottery?’

  ‘I’ve been doing the lottery since I was a student.’

  ‘But you’ve already won!’

  ‘I can still take part if I want to!’ Auntie protests.

  ‘What on earth are you trying to prove?!’ Dad shouts, and it’s only now I realize this is an argument, though I’m not sure what it’s about.

  ‘Exactly! Nothing! You’re the one trying to prove some conspiracy theory all the time, staring up at the sky like that, all moody!’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  Dad slams down his mug of coffee and stands up with a clatter. He strides to the tired fridge, takes out the fruit juice and sloshes it into a glass, which he slams on the table, shouting all the while.

  ‘It’s not going to make it go away, you carrying on doing the lottery and hunting for bargains in shops! Your account is full of money!’

  Now Auntie Annu gets up with a clatter, too. She also wants to throw something somewhere, so she grabs the glasses out of her hair and flings them on top of a pile of papers.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything? You’re not going to make it go away by lying in bed all summer wearing sunglasses!’

  Then Annu and Dad stand in silence for a long time. Annu twists the piece of paper with her fingers.

  ‘Was it the jackpot?’ Dad asks in the end.

  Auntie Annu nods.

  ‘I didn’t know that someone could win twice,’ Dad says.

  ‘Well, nor did I, for feck’s sake.’

  I slurp milk from the bowl and wipe my mouth on my sleeve, but Dad doesn’t say anything, even though usually I’m not allowed, because old milk stinks.

  ‘I’ve got to think about this for a bit,’ Auntie Annu says.