Silence (8 page)

The other picture had been taken a few months, perhaps only a few weeks, before she was diagnosed with cancer. When everything was still fine. Sanna had just begun working as an architect. The photo showed her standing in front of her desk. Kimmo remembered that she had particularly wanted to have that picture taken and they had sent a print to her parents. Her face showed pride and satisfaction. And the certainty that everything would go on just as well in the future. Kimmo’s glance wandered from one picture to the other, then settled on the little girl knocking a biscuit out of her mother’s hand.

Sanna.

Sanna just a metre tall, running, red-cheeked.

He went into the bathroom, washed, then lay awake on his back for a long time, his eyes open.

7

T
imo Korvensuo heard Marjatta’s slow, regular breathing as she lay beside him. She had clutched the quilt firmly round her. What a nice evening that had been, she’d said just before dropping off to sleep.

For a while, Timo Korvensuo had listened to the soft giggling of his children through the open window. Aku and Laura were sleeping in their tent down by the lake. Now their voices, too, had died away and all he could hear was the whining of the gnats.

He still felt curiously light. Weightless. The guests had stayed a long time. They had enjoyed the evening: the warmth, the clear night, the children had played games. Arvi had told stories, Marjatta, Johanna and even Pekka had talked loudly, having a very good time.

Maybe the news item about the missing girl in Turku had actually contributed to their good mood; maybe, after a while, discussing it had made them all feel more acutely how well off they were, living in safety – something of that kind.

Timo Korvensuo felt a vague satisfaction in seeing through the others. But of course that was of no importance. He was digressing, wandering away from something he had not yet really confronted, although all the time he had been trying to concentrate exclusively on that one subject.

Of course it was important.

Something important had happened.

It was difficult for him to formulate it in his mind, to see exactly what it was.

He had drunk too much, he didn’t have a strong head, usually he never drank. He felt tired and at the same time wide awake; he could hardly keep his eyes open, yet he couldn’t close them either, because as soon as he did a torrent of vertigo streamed into his brain, instantly filling him with almost uncontrollable nausea.

He thought of going into the bathroom to throw up; he was sure he’d feel better afterwards. Above all he’d have a clear head again, and he needed a clear head.

He stayed lying there. He worked out how often he had thrown up in his life. Not many times. He couldn’t do it, never had been able to. He had truly vomited only once, as a child, bringing up everything until the carpet was covered with the contents of his stomach. He remembered all about it; a rice dish, rice and curry, which had tasted very good.

Oh, and a second time, he remembered that now. The memory had been buried until a second ago, but now it was before his eyes. He had been on a bicycle tour with some friends and one of them kept pouring cheap red wine into cardboard cups, and quite early in the evening he had lost consciousness, the only time in his life he had blacked out. So he hadn’t actually known what he was doing, but in the morning he had smelt the vomit on his sleeping bag and felt how wet it was.

That had never happened to him again, and it wasn’t going to happen now, because he would stay lying here, he wouldn’t move an inch. Wouldn’t move. A few gnats were whining.

Marjatta was sleeping peacefully, almost inaudibly; she had certainly drunk less than anyone else, just the amount that she could tolerate.

Korvensuo tried to concentrate, but it was impossible. His thoughts were going round in circles, and his brain was made of cotton wool.

He had a headache, a bad one, worse than he’d had in a long time. So now he would have to get up after all, he needed tablets, several all at once, to get rid of this pain that had suddenly begun digging into what seemed to him his fluffy, cotton-wool brain. Get up.

He felt himself staggering as he walked. Marjatta’s voice in the background, he couldn’t hear what she was saying, all he heard was himself grunting something. ‘Go back to sleep!’ probably. ‘Go back to sleep!’

He was standing in front of the fridge, holding the door open, propping himself on the work surface with his other arm and staring at the bottle full of ice-cold water that he was going to drink in one fast, endless draught. Just as soon as he found the strength to do it, and above all as soon as he found the tablets.

He turned away and rummaged in a drawer. The vertigo got worse again. His hands were shaking. He found a packet and spent some time trying, unsuccessfully, to get the tablets out.

When he straightened up his nausea returned. He stared at the tap. He pulled and tore at the packet until at last there were three tablets in his hands. He let them dissolve slightly in his mouth before picking up the bottle and pouring cold water down his throat. He felt as if his head were about to burst.

‘Feeling bad?’ he heard Marjatta’s voice asking behind his back.

He turned and saw her standing in the doorway, hair untidy, eyes tired.

‘Bit of a headache,’ he said.

‘Pour me a glass of water too, will you?’ asked Marjatta.

‘Sure.’

He took a glass out of the cupboard and tried hard to control his hands as he poured the water, but they were shaking worse than ever.

‘You’re drunk, darling,’ said Marjatta.

He saw her smile and nodded. ‘Yes, probably,’ he said.

‘Is it very bad?’

He shook his head. ‘No … you go back to bed.’

‘Very bad, then,’ said Marjatta.

‘Please go back to bed.’ He let himself drop on to one of the wooden chairs, and with blurred eyes saw Marjatta coming over to the table, pulling out a chair and sitting down beside him. He felt her hand on his, and stared at the tabletop.

‘But you – you don’t have any worries, do you?’

There were letters scratched into the tabletop. Words. He’d never noticed before.
Laura loves Saku
they said, and a little stick man beside them was laughing his head off. Probably Aku’s handiwork.

‘Have you …’

‘Timo, I asked you a question.’

‘Have you seen this written on the table?’ he asked.

Marjatta lowered her eyes. ‘Yes, Aku did it. He doesn’t like it when Laura looks at other men.’

‘I see,’ he said and saw Marjatta smile again.

‘Everything went smoothly, then?’ she asked.

‘Hm?’

‘The flats in Helsinki. You said they were off your hands.’

‘Yes … yes, they are. That’s great … the week couldn’t have ended better.’

‘Then everything’s all right?’

‘Yes, of course. I probably celebrated a bit too much. Really, it’s not so bad … I’m feeling better already.’

He felt her hand on his. ‘Too much to drink doesn’t agree with me, that’s all,’ he said. ‘Go back to bed. I’ll join you soon.’

Marjatta stroked his hand for a while, and then, at last, she stood up and left the kitchen.

‘I’m feeling better,’ he said again.

‘Then come back to bed soon, and if I’m still awake I can massage your head.’

He nodded and heard her echoing footsteps growing fainter as she walked away over the wooden floorboards.

He actually was feeling a little better. The sense of vertigo was wearing off. The pain still throbbed behind his forehead, but the mists were beginning to clear slightly. Soon he would have the strength to think about it calmly.

Think about it calmly.

He looked at the words that Aku had scratched into the table. The little stick man looked comical. Aku and Laura. Aku and Laura were sleeping outside in the tent. Aku eight and Laura thirteen years old. Marjatta would soon be asleep again as well, perhaps she was asleep now, if not at this moment then she would be in a few minutes’ time. Marjatta usually fell asleep quickly, soon after getting into bed she was asleep, and he would lie beside her hearing her quiet breathing.

His headache had eased. That was how it had always been; given a large enough dose, the tablets acted like a sponge sucking up everything, leaving a pleasantly woozy sensation where the pain had been.

The others were asleep and he would soon be able to think. To make connections.

He must have had some kind of shock, it couldn’t be anything else. A state of shock was normal. Nothing for him to worry about.

He remembered the perfect sun beyond the windows of the house that he had shown a potential buyer that afternoon. A nice woman, she had been friendly, they’d had a pleasant conversation between equals, people talking to one another, understanding each other. That was how these things worked. It had been late in the afternoon. The woman had said a friendly goodbye, said she liked the house and he had driven to the lake, jumped into the water and swum right out, as far as his strength would take him, and he’d felt very strong.

He controlled the pain behind his eyes by holding his breath, by concentrating entirely on not breathing.

The other man’s name had been Pärssinen.

Pärssinen. A surname. He didn’t know the man’s first name. He never had known his first name.

Pärssinen.

Later, he had kept meeting people with the same surname. Only a few months ago he’d sold a property belonging to a Pärssinen, a nice house in Vantaa, very close to Helsinki airport, but there was no problem with air traffic noise. A wonderful house, and the name Pärssinen had been nothing but a marginal note in his files.

Marjatta. Laura and Aku. They were close to him, it would take him only seconds to be with them, and it was good to know that; the knowledge calmed him slightly.

The name had been Pärssinen.

He couldn’t remember what the man looked like; in the following days and weeks he had spent a lot of time trying to erase Pärssinen from his memory in a way that would leave no trace behind. It had been clear to him right at the start that Pärssinen was the key, for once that man seemed never to have existed, none of the rest of it was real. That had worked. It had worked because he had wanted it to work. Because he had realized there was no other option.

Once the link was broken, none of it was real. If you made up your mind, if you really made it up, there was nothing left. He had known that ever since; he knew it better than anyone else.

It had worked, and now it wouldn’t work any more. As simple as that. It could all be reduced to that so simply, and for a moment he felt a kind of satisfaction, because he had finally managed it, because he was alone at last and able to think.

He closed his eyes and felt Pärssinen coming back to life in his mind. Everything that Pärssinen had been. He let it happen, because there was no avoiding it. He leaned back and let it happen.

Pärssinen. A stocky, powerful man with a round face and sparse hair. He had been living in the grey block of flats on the outskirts of the city for several months when Pärssinen came to act as caretaker, and moved into the flat on the ground floor.

For some time they had said hello in passing; it was summer and university vacation. He used to sit on his balcony with his books, reading a little, watching the children playing a little, and Pärssinen had clipped hedges and mowed the lawn round the block of flats.

Then, on one of those summer days, Pärssinen had spoken to him. He said he had been watching him, he had an eye for certain things that other people didn’t notice. He remembered. He remembered perfectly; it was all coming back now. He felt it flood into him. Not just the memory of that conversation, but also the memory of what he had felt like. Pärssinen hadn’t needed to say any more, because he had understood at once. He had seen himself reflected in Pärssinen’s eyes, had seen what no one knew, what no one could know, not Pärssinen and least of all himself, and he had understood that, against all logic, Pärssinen had simply seen it, and he had felt the moment of understanding and the moment directly after it as a huge and deeply alarming relief.

Pärssinen had smiled in a calm, even friendly way, and invited him into his flat.

That was how it had begun, and now the memory came back, now everything came back. He looked at what his son had scratched into the wood of the table, and once again he saw the flickering projector, the Venetian blinds pulled down, the dappled sunlight on the floor, the films … Pärssinen taking the rolls of film off a shelving unit, that particular film, the one he had wanted to watch again and again, his favourite scene in that film, his hand on his thighs, and Pärssinen laughed when he saw that; then he had laughed too and felt free for the first time in his life, entirely free, and Pärssinen had wound the film back until the girl was sitting on the edge of the bed again with her head bowed, her hand moving up and down a fat penis; then the girl had raised her head to look at the camera and he had seen a strange, beautiful face; he had straightened up slightly, his trousers fully open now, let out a soft cry and ejaculated on Pärssinen’s floor.

Pärssinen had laughed.

He heard himself groan. He was sweating. He felt dizzy.

‘Papa, I feel sick. It was the ice cream,’ said Aku.

He opened his eyes. Aku was standing in the doorway.

‘I …’

He saw Aku at the door. He wanted to stand up and go over to him, but it was no use. He felt himself staring at his son, he saw pain and something like fear in the boy’s face, he wanted to say something, he wanted …

‘Did the ice cream make you feel sick too?’ asked Aku.

9 J
UNE

1

I
n the morning Kimmo Joentaa went to see Ketola. He had thought about calling first to say he was coming, but then he simply set out. He had never been to Ketola’s place before, but he knew the address: number 18 Oravankatu.

The house was on a rise, in a well-tended, quiet residential area at the other side of Turku. The path up to the house was carefully raked, with flowers in bloom to right and left of it. Kimmo was surprised, without knowing what he had really expected.