TH03 - To Steal Her Love (11 page)

‘Mother Gold started having one of her turns,’ explained Ritu, a pale, humourless woman who always kept a jealous eye on Lasse. ‘We thought we’d have a little rest here on the way back.’

‘Haven’t you got your nitrates?’ asked Reino. ‘I’ll get Asko to fetch them.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing really.’ Mother Gold tried to play it down, but her head hung in sorrowful resignation.

She stepped inside and sat down in Lasse’s chair. Tweety slowly backed off. He loved Mother Gold just as everyone loves their mother, perhaps more so, as he was always filled with a childish sense of helpless anxiety whenever something was the matter with her. That’s how he felt now, but there was something else, too, and it frightened him, made him feel ashamed and guilty. There was somebody else inside him, somebody whose thoughts were cold and sharp:
Of course she was having a turn because she knows we’re up to something. She always has a turn when she feels left out and wants to punish us.

‘No matter,’ she sighed. ‘I suppose I’d better be off. Don’t want to trouble you any more than…’

‘Mum,’ said Lasse abruptly. ‘Don’t start that again, eh.’

‘It’s the truth. I tell you, I’ve always hoped I’d see the day you lot did something worthwhile with yourselves.’
Now she’s starting to scold us, the way she always does. She knows it works, especially with Reino. Maybe she wants him to speak up for himself and, in doing so, accidentally let the cat out of the bag. Soon she’ll start on about how good things were when Dad was around – and that’ll make Reino even angrier.

‘Oh, come on,’ Reino tried to placate her, his voice still harsh. ‘We’ve tried all sorts of things, but with the bank and the taxman on our backs all the time there’s nothing we can do… We’ve got one or two projects on the go. Who knows, we could soon be exporting these machines to Estonia.’

‘Oh Reino, Reino,’ sighed Mother Gold, and now her voice was full of loving sympathy. ‘I know all about your wheeling and dealing. There it is, rusted junk littered all over the place. A thousand things on the go at once and none of them ever come to any good. You can say what you like, but your father was a decent man. We didn’t have to eke out a living back then…’

She’s so good at that… Her voice is like honey but her words are full of poison
.

‘Here we go,’ Reino growled, his thick neck bright red. He made as if to leave the room but growled again and stayed where he was. Mother Gold had a strange power over them all.

A thin sweat covered Tweety’s brow. He wiped it discreetly and hoped that the wicked voice within him would fall silent, and he looked at Mother Gold and tried to see her simply as his mother. She was the same as she’d always been: tall, somewhat dry and arthritic. Her nose was
disproportionately
large, like a lump of lifeless wax, and her eyes were very dark and didn’t really suit her. Rather, they seemed out of character given her chest pains as, ever vigilant, they scanned the room looking for something to latch on to.

Tweety gulped. He knew the thought that had just occurred to him was impossible, but still he expected her to go over to the bench at any moment, wrench the sack away, and once she’d seen everything to calmly take out her mobile phone and remark: ‘Now Mum’s going to have to call the police.’

‘And you can believe it or not,’ she began. ‘But I’ve got a strange feeling that something terrible is about to happen. Very soon. Something really terrible. Lasse, you haven’t got yourself into any more… difficulties, have you? I had such a terrifying dream. You went to prison for what someone else had done.’

‘Not bloody likely,’ Lasse muttered and fidgeted awkwardly before looking almost helplessly at Reino. ‘It’s this August weather that’s made you…’

‘No. I know it. Just like I knew the time your father went off on that fishing trip. I tried to stop him, you know…’

Tweety held his hand in front of his mouth as though he were about to throw up. He remembered all too well what had happened. The previous week, after fixing the Paavolas’ plumbing, their father had been lounging on the sofa drinking lager and Mother Gold had nagged him all day that she wanted some fish, salmon, and that Dad was supposed to go down to the market to get some. Later that afternoon, as if it had been prearranged, Heikki Ahola had turned up, Dad started getting his fishing gear on, then she’d shouted: ‘Don’t think you’re going anywhere tonight.’

‘I think I can decide that for myself.’

‘But I’ve said you’re not going anywhere.’

‘And I’ve said I am,’ he’d replied and left – he’d had no choice, what with Ahola listening to the whole exchange. In Tweety’s mind, Mother Gold had in effect killed him that night.

‘And what about you, Asko?’ she said suddenly and looked at Tweety. ‘You haven’t got a weak bladder, have you? Always creeping out to the yard at the strangest hours of the night… You’ll fall off that ladder one day and spend the rest of your life a cripple.’

‘Oh… it’s nothing…’

‘Come on, Mum,’ said Bamse. She’d finally come inside after seeing Reino gesticulating at her frantically in the doorway. ‘Let’s get back to the cottage and you can take your tablets. Then it’s off to bed.’

Mother Gold stood up, looked at them all once again and left. A moment later came the sound of Ritu talking with her about something.

The workshop fell silent. The brothers all tried to avoid looking at one another. It was as though something had been killed. Lasse stirred, took his revolver out from under the table, opened the barrel, then shut it again, opened it, shut it… He sometimes did this for half an hour at a time.

‘Stop bloody fidgeting,’ Reino eventually snapped. He was full of ill humour and anger and looked at Tweety, his expression taut. ‘Where
do
you go at night? We all noticed ages ago how you sneak off all the time. We hear the scooter all right.’

‘I don’t really… I can’t get to sleep up there sometimes, with the heat and that.’

‘Just mind you don’t do anything that’ll land you in the nick. And let me tell you, lads: we might be brothers, but if anyone fucks up the Chancellor, I’ll personally beat the living shit out of them.’

Tweety went outside; the wind had brought in clouds and he could no longer see the stars.

He understood all too well that he shouldn’t go anywhere that night, but knew nonetheless that he would.

The slaughterman had shown Raija twice before but she couldn’t for the life of her remember how to do it. Her fingers wouldn’t obey her; she couldn’t make them into an O shape, and she had to do so in order to tear the ears off the ogres, and she had to tear their ears off to make them relent and retreat back beneath the moss. They enjoyed eating all the soft parts of the body: the breasts, thighs and face. The path suddenly began to subside, even though it had been asphalted, and it was only then that she realised she was naked. She felt even more unsafe and wanted to turn back, but there were far too many crows behind her and all she could do was start running – then something grabbed at her thigh. The hand was hard and knobbly, full of something rough, covered in gnarls or scales that oozed burning glue on to her skin. She quickly made an O shape and bent down. The ogre was a man with blue skin, who resembled a chimpanzee; he was completely bald and she managed to grab hold of his ears. But they weren’t normal ears; they were pointed like a pig’s and extraordinarily slippery – holding them was like trying to extract a bream caught in a fishing net – but still they cracked easily like crispbread and the hand disappeared from her thigh. A car drove past; its light painted a twisting triangle on the ceiling, and gradually she returned to where she was, on her back on her familiar bed. The alarm clock ticked beside her.

She lay there and stared up at the chandelier. In the dark it looked like an angel, her skirt billowing beneath her. She was afraid her dream would continue if she fell asleep straight away. She knew where ogres came from; she’d found an old book at her grandparents’ summer cottage and read it
through again. As a child she’d loved this story because it scared her so. Ogres lived beneath the ground. Raija had looked just like the little girl in the story. But even as a girl she’d been annoyed that the girl in the story could be so silly. A scientist had arrived in a time machine, and as a present she had given him a beautiful white flower. The flower had shone with light – there were lots of them growing along the edge of the path – and although she knew it was dangerous to venture into the woods, she wanted one of these flowers as she thought it would protect her. She stepped on to the moss and reached out her hand, but then the birds started squawking once again, she heard the sound of flapping wings, and at that moment the purulent hand of another ogre grabbed her thigh.

Raija started but, comfortingly, the chandelier angel was still where it had been. She lay perfectly still and listened: she sensed that something was not as it ought to be. She felt a sudden chill – maybe it was because of the dream; that’s why she’d slept so fitfully – and realised she had kicked the sheet into a crumpled ball at the end of the bed. She sat up just enough to pull it back over herself and glanced at the clock: it was already five past three. It didn’t matter, because they both had the next day off and she didn’t even feel drunk any more, not that she’d drunk much that evening anyway.

She stared again at the angel and listened to Juha’s breathing; she could barely hear it though he was lying right next to her and that fact suddenly made her remember everything else. Their relationship was coming to an end, and the sadness she felt at this thought was like a pool of cloudy water in which she only just managed to stay afloat.

The worst of it was that, once again, she felt that it was somehow all her fault, though she realised that the truth of the matter couldn’t be so
black-and
-white. She rolled on to her side, keeping her back to Juha – at that moment she couldn’t bear to look at him – and their home lay around her, full of dark furniture-shadows, and only then did she work out what was bothering her: a faint light was shining in from the hallway. The bathroom door stood ajar. Juha must have got up and left the light on.

She considered whether to get up and switch it off but decided to leave it. Perhaps the ogres were still lurking in the back of her mind, and she was still thinking about Juha. His behaviour had begun to change just as Markku’s had before. At first he’d been head-over-heels in love with her. Men seemed to fall in love with her easily; sometimes she felt like
Camille Oaks in
The Wayward Bus
. He hadn’t once noted her initial
reservation
, but after two months of dating he’d all but insisted that she sell her flat and move in with him. And when she’d refused, he’d taken offence.

After that he’d started gradually wearing her down. It was at its most obvious whenever they had sex: all the tenderness had disappeared, all the slow foreplay and gentle build-up – precisely what made her feel alive – until there was nothing but the act which in itself was often so brutal that it made her feel kicked to the ground every time. And naturally it was always her fault that it brought neither of them any satisfaction: she was so frigid that nothing could warm her up.

The bathroom light was still tormenting her. It was like a white pillar amidst the darkness. Still she didn’t get up, she couldn’t be bothered, and in any case it might just have been one of Juha’s mind games: deliberately leaving the light on so that she’d have to get up and switch it off. Other similar things happened all the time: Juha would always leave the morning paper sprawled all over the table and never rinsed his shaving foam down the sink. At the beginning everything had been different; he’d taken care of her, even washed up and made the beds.

That evening something had finally snapped. They’d booked a table at Lehtovaara and had spent the evening talking in mock politeness about the weather. When they got into the lift back home Juha had started groping her and she’d frozen. She’d tried to talk things through with him but he just sulked, drank half a bottle of whisky in the space of an hour before almost passing out, and she couldn’t bring herself to throw him out in that state. But in the morning when he woke up, it would be
Adios
! Of that, she was suddenly dead certain.

She gave a sigh, pulled the sheet away, swung her feet on to the floor and walked towards the hallway. She just couldn’t leave the light on, it annoyed her so much. Her bare feet pattered on the cork flooring and she thought of what one of her bosses, who had been after her for a long time, had once said: ‘The fact of the matter is you’re just too stunning. And you’re sure of yourself. Men are afraid of you. Deep down they’re convinced they don’t have a chance of being with you, and when one way or another this is confirmed, the only way to regain their self-esteem is to put you down.’

She switched the light off and turned back. Maybe her boss had been right. It was just so hard to believe, especially as she knew only too well
quite how unsure of herself she was, how the most ridiculous things frightened her, dreams and imaginary creatures, ogres. She was afraid of them now too, and made sure not to touch anything so as not to brush against their bald heads. Was she really stunning? She was beautiful, she knew that, but there were obvious wrinkles on her face and her bottom was getting flabbier, and if she forgot to hold her head and neck straight the beginnings of a double chin were there for everyone to see.

Raija lay down on her back. She knew straight away that she
wouldn’t
get to sleep but decided to try all the same. Slow, peaceful breaths; she’d read somewhere that this calms the body as well as the mind. And because she’d been so certain that she wouldn’t fall asleep, the lamp angel began to appear hazier, the hem of its skirt shimmered, and a moment later she was queuing in front of the candyfloss stall and a willow warbler chirped… But she didn’t get further than this before waking again.

She woke to the feel of Juha’s hand on her upper thigh. She lay motionless and tried to continue breathing as though she hadn’t noticed a thing.
He’s up to his old tricks
, she thought.
If he’d really wanted something he’d have moved up close to her first and started kissing her, but now all he wanted was a fuck
.

She raised her hand purposefully and placed it on the back of Juha’s hand; he clearly gave a start but didn’t make to pull his paw away, and all of a sudden Raija’s thoughts stopped dead. Her entire body stopped. In a surreal way, she felt as though she were a colossal combined eye and ear straining to see and hear. Juha lay breathing on her left, snoring away, but the hand on her bare thigh and which she was now holding wasn’t coming from Juha’s side of the bed. It came from the right. Where there was nobody. Where there was nothing but darkness.

She gulped quickly, again and again, and tried to convince herself that she was asleep, yet all the while she knew it wasn’t true, just as she knew ogres weren’t real – and yet at that moment she was holding one by the hand. She yanked her hand away and rolled over, almost on top of Juha, and screamed, and through her screams came the sound of rustling from the floor. It wasn’t human, it was so short – it was like an enormous
tarantula
or a chimpanzee. It even moved like a monkey, hobbling on its hands and feet before disappearing into the hallway.

‘What the…?’ Juha snapped and pulled back the blankets. He was still fairly drunk and his face gleamed with sweat.

‘It went into the hallway! Juha, the hallway!’

‘What went into the hallway? And don’t steal the…’

‘An ogre!’

‘What…? What are you on about? Have you been drinking?’

From the hall came the sound of the lock clicking shut and Juha fell silent. A moment later he was filled with energy: he threw off the
remaining
blankets and staggered naked to the floor, hesitated for a moment then grabbed the bedside lamp and pulled it hard, ripping the cable out of it. A moment later he was running towards the hallway like a black ghost.

‘Don’t go out there!’ shouted Raija. ‘It’ll kill you! It’ll bite!’

She crouched on her knees, her whole body shaking and her lips moving as if in prayer. She heard the door open and Juha angrily hiss something, there came a clatter from the stairwell, then suddenly
everything
was quiet, and only the door stood ajar.

Raija repeated to herself that she had to get up, get up and see what had happened, switch the lights on at least, and somehow she managed to muster the courage to wrap the sheet around herself and tiptoe over to the switch and turn the lights on.

Just then the outside door rattled again and Raija froze to the spot. She had no way of knowing which one of them was coming in, so for safety’s sake she lowered her eyes and stared at the skirting board, but then she heard Juha calling her, and the sense of relief was so powerful that she felt almost faint. Only then did she notice that Juha’s voice sounded strange, nothing but a moan.

‘Raija…’

She went into the hallway. Juha was leaning against the doorpost. The lamp in his hands was cracked and twisted. He was holding his other hand up to his face. Blood trickled like red porridge between his fingers, and ran in shining snakes down his chest and darker smudges on his arms.

‘Oh my God, what happened?’ Raija asked, though she already knew the answer: the ogre had bitten him, it had tried to eat him! Then she began repeating to herself, over and over: What’s the emergency number? What’s the emergency number? I mustn’t say anything about the ogres!

‘The cable,’ Juha stammered. ‘I tripped on it… fell down half a flight of stairs on my stomach and slammed my face into the wall. Drunk as well… Help me.’