The Core of the Sun (22 page)

“What's that?” he says, pointing to the smaller paper package.

Suddenly I'm struck with a terrible feeling of insecurity. I'm about to let go of a score. I have no idea where I'm going to get my next fix.

For God's sake, there's
no way
they're going to search us at the airport! Why would anyone in her right mind be trying to smuggle something
out
of Finland?

“Oh, that? That's just a piece of cheese.”

“And how do I know it's just chili in those bags, with no sawdust or anything?”

“Mr. Paloheimo told me to say that you can open the bags and look at them and taste them, but he said I should tell you that, um, it would be, like, safer for you to carry it if you left the bags closed, so they look real.”

“Hmm. I suppose Mr. Paloheimo would hardly risk me checking the bags and catching him trying to cheat me. I would just cancel the deal. I believe the stuff is what you say it is. He has always been a very trustworthy supplier.”

“Mr. Paloheimo also told me to tell you that thirty thousand for the fresh stuff alone would be a steal. You could dry it or freeze it and it would give you years of really, really good cap-saicin.” I purposely stumble a bit over the word and notice Järvi's secret amusement. “May I ask why Mr. Paloheimo wants to give me such a good deal?”

“He's, like, going out of business.”

“I didn't think to bring such a large sum of money with me.”

OK, here it comes. The trip to the bank. If he's working with the Authority, if he's a decoy, the net's about to fall. I feign calm.

“I can wait here.”

I go back to the bench and sit down and Järvi heads to the bank. My mind darts from thought to thought—every masco walking by might be a plainclothes cop—and I remember the few grams I kept for myself. I quickly go back to the shelter of the bushes and remove the paper from the smaller plastic bag. I fold the paper wrapper and put it in my pocket. The plastic bag I stuff into my bra. There's another bulge on the other side of my bra.

Oh yeah. The Core of the Sun. I need to find a place to hide that, too.

One Core of the Sun is enough for at least a hundred good fixes, but for once I'm thinking further ahead than my next high. If I save the seeds, I could plant them in a box on a balcony or in a little garden bed at our place in Spain. It's more important to me now to preserve the Core of the Sun than it is to eat it. And the fruit itself is the best possible way to transport the seeds. Besides, I couldn't cut it up now anyway—in my hurry to leave it didn't occur to me to bring any gloves.

I have to think of a better hiding place, but there's no time now. I go back to the bench and I'm startled to see that the mark is already at the other end of the path, on his way back to where I'm sitting. A suspiciously quick visit to the bank. Should I run? But it's too late to think, because Järvi's standing in front of me, puffing.

“Let's go over there again and get to know each other better.”

When we're back under the branches, I lift my skirt and pull the tape away from my thighs. I put the bags of fresh peppers and the sugar and flour bag on the ground and straddle them with my legs. If he tries to bend over and take them without paying I can kick him right in the face.

“Now I want to see the cash.”

He smiles and takes three thick bundles of bills out of his breast pocket. They're wrapped in a paper strip that says
bank of finland
. He shows them to me, flips through the bills with his thumb. No newspaper tucked between them. I have no other way to verify that they're real, so I nod.

“We switch at the same time,” I say.

Järvi hands me the bills and I step back so he can pick up the bags and stuff them into his briefcase. I put the bills in the side pocket of the shopping bag, which has a clasp to close it.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you, Miss Paloheimo.”

“Thanks, you too.”

“I happen to have an extra thousand marks in my pocket. If you agree to anal intercourse here and now, it's yours.”

I must look confused, because he explains gently, “I'm sorry. Those are probably big words for you. I mean a fuck in the ass.”

I almost burst into hysterical laughter.

“Mr. Paloheimo told me to come straight back.”

I shove my way through the bushes. Järvi waits coyly for ten seconds before coming out behind me, and by then I'm long gone.

Jare is waiting in the car, which reeks of sweat and nervousness. I slide in beside him.

“What took you so long?”

“The bank, just as we expected. Thirty grand. We can keep the five thousand extra for ourselves.” I take the bills out of the shopping bag and lay them in his lap. He puts some of them in his wallet, then opens the suitcase of money and puts the rest in there. It's so full that it's difficult to get it closed.

“I'll go straight to the ministry. It might take a while. A lot of papers and forms and signatures and all that.”

“If I'm not in the car I'll be walking somewhere near here. I can't sit still. I'm sure I'll be back before you're done. I'll keep the shopping bag with me so I look as though I'm on some errand.”

“There shouldn't be any hurry for at least an hour.”

“It would be nice if we had one of those amazing telephones, like the ones in the decadent democracies. You could call me in the middle of the street as soon as you were on your way back to the car.”

“We'll have one of those telephones soon enough.”

Jare looks at me and the smell of rosemary and lavender and apple surrounds him such that I'm practically looking through a cloud of it to see him.

“Come back soon.”

“I will.”

One hour.

One of our last hours in Finland.

There's something I haven't told Jare about. It completely escaped me in all the chaos and confusion. When I remembered it, just before we left Neulapää, I broke out in a sweat from pure shame. How could I forget?

It's August. The beginning of August.

All those times I betrayed Manna, and now I'm leaving on her birthday.

There's still time to visit Kalevankangas cemetery and say good-bye to my sister. It's the least I can do. Up the hill from the station, a short walk down Kalevantie, and I'm there. I'm sure it won't take more than an hour.

I have a present for her. It's been in the other pocket of my shopping bag the whole time. Manna loves presents.

Once I'm at the cemetery I can also figure out what to do with the Core of the Sun and the little packet of flake. It'll be safer to make adjustments under the shade of the trees at the cemetery than in the restroom at a department store or a refreshments bar.

The Core of the Sun is the most important thing to hide. It would be smartest to destroy the flake that I kept for myself. One clever way to do that would be to soak some of the dried flakes in water in the women's room at the cemetery and chew them up. Otherwise my visit to Manna's grave might shove me back into the Cellar, and I don't want to be in the Cellar on what may be the most important trip of my life. Once I've had a farewell dose I can flush the rest of it down the toilet. Perfect.

I smile at the thought of being ready to throw away that much chili. Before the Gaians came it would have lasted me half a year.

I find the restroom at the cemetery, go into a stall, and take the bag of flake out of my bra. But what about the Core of the Sun?

I can't let anyone find it, for a lot of reasons. And I have to bring it with me.

There's only one solution.

I lift my skirt, pull down my panties, and push the Core of the Sun into my vagina, tip first. It slides smoothly inside me, much easier than a cotton tampon ever did. The stem is left slightly protruding, just enough that I can pull it out again, like the string on a tampon. Perfect.

I quickly prepare a fix from the flake. I'm about to pour the rest of it into the toilet when my hand stops. What if I need a bumper dose before I get on the plane?

I put the bag back in my bra. It feels like a completely sensible decision. I'll visit the restroom at the airport before check-in, take one more dose, and only then destroy the rest.

I step out into the sunshine. There's a pleasant burn in my mouth, a light sweat breaking out on my temples. I feel alert and free.

Just the right mood to say my final good-byes to my sister.

I guess I should have brought some wildflowers from Neulapää so the visit would look even more natural. But I would have had to explain them to Jare. I could have bought some cut flowers from the kiosk, of course, but Jare has all the money—all I have in my purse are a few coins.

But the flowers aren't important. The main thing is to ritually cut the umbilical cord that still ties me to Finland.

The main thing is to remember Manna.

I go to borrow a little trowel from the caretaker's booth. I crouch at the grave and start to dig. I've brought a few perennials to the grave since moving back to Neulapää because I wasn't able to come here as often as I would have liked. The geraniums and lobelia seem to be doing well, but I need to pull up the chickweed and dandelion sprouts.

I turn the soil and toss the weeds into a little pile, but in the process I'm secretly digging a small hole. I slip a flat metal cookie tin out of the zipper pocket in the shopping bag and put it in the hole. Manna loved the picture of a kitten on the lid. Inside are my letters to her and a collection of other papers and clippings, even some pages torn from books—what does it matter now, since I'm leaving and can't take my books with me? I've wrapped the box tightly in plastic, too, for good measure.

I cover Manna's history with dirt and pat the earth firmly over it.

I'm cutting the thread of my own history.

I stand up and look at the gravestone.

Manna Nissilä

(née Neulapää)

2001–2016

And, as if the mere sight of Manna's legal name could create an uncannily realistic illusion, a figure steps out of the shadows.

Harri Nissilä.

He steps right in front of me. He has a gun in his hand and it's pointed at me. The barrel is almost touching my stomach.

From a distance it must look as though a masco is talking with an eloi and the conversation has turned intimate.

“Predictable. Just like an eloi.” Nissilä laughs, and his amusement chills me. “It's not hard to guess where to find you on your sister's birthday. I took a chance that you'd come without your darling snitch of a husband .”

He jerks his head toward the men's room, which is just a few dozen meters away. “If you yell or try to call for help in any way or try to escape, I won't hesitate to shoot you. I already have a killer's papers—one more body won't make much difference.”

I can smell that he's deadly serious. The empty shopping bag and the trowel are lying on the stone border of the grave. I don't know what else to do but walk in front of him as he follows close behind with the gun pressed against the small of my back. I quickly consider shoving him, kicking him, somehow distracting him and running away, but of course I'm wearing eloi shoes with stiletto heels. I wouldn't get anywhere before he shot me in the back or caught up to me in a couple of strides.

The open door of the brick men's restroom looms in front of me like a tomb. Nissilä shoves me inside and closes the door behind us. There are no stalls, just a porcelain urinal and a washbasin. With the gun's muzzle, he waves me over to stand between them. There's a toilet in the corner by the door and he stands next to it.
Oh no. It's a restroom for one person at a time. He can lock the door.

And that's what he does.
Click.

“We probably don't want any visitors, do we?”

I don't say anything. I keep my body language passive as an eloi, looking at the floor so he can't see my expression. My thoughts are racing in circles.
What does he know?
He smells like suspicion and deep hatred, but also a little uncertain.

“There's something really weird about you,” he says. “Something that doesn't smell right. That story about the toy train. I asked Manna about it again a couple of days later and she said that she didn't know anything about your grandmother's fiancé. She'd probably never heard of him. I know elois have short memories, but if she knew all about it one day and nothing at all the next, then who fed her that story, and why?”

Nissilä tastes these words. He's not really asking me, just mulling over his own thoughts. I wonder whether I could knock the gun out of his hand if I made a surprise attack—something he would never expect from an eloi—but I would have to get the gun from him. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to get out the door before he picked it up again. And just as if he's read my thoughts he gives the gun a little jerk as if to say,
Stay right where you are.

“I didn't kill her, by the way.”

I flinch visibly and Nissilä loves that he's gotten a reaction out of me.

“I think I know what it is that's wrong with you. You're obviously smarter than an eloi should be. But that's the hand that gets dealt sometimes. And I'm sure you wouldn't want such a thing to be known. Jare Valkinen must really be under your thumb. What other reason could he have for sticking his nose into Manna's case? You talked him into it. He should have minded his own business! That's always been the code of the mascos—stay out of other guys' eloi troubles. If a bitch is barren, everybody knows you shouldn't have to settle for second-rate merchandise. But let's get to the point, shall we?”

JARE SPEAKS

August 2017

The trip to the Trade Ministry took only forty-five minutes. I got all the papers I needed in what must have been record time. My contact was obviously more interested in my suitcase full of money than he was in bureaucratic red tape. I go back to the car to wait. There's still plenty of time to make the flight, and the drive to the Tampere airport is quick, since it's not far from downtown.

I wait five minutes. No sign of her.

Ten minutes pass.

I start to get nervous, but I don't want to go looking for her because we might miss each other.

Fifteen minutes. Twenty. Twenty-five.

The agreed-upon hour has passed.

The time ticks by.

This is when one of those decadent state wonder phones would really come in handy.