The Healer (12 page)

“Oh, do they still teach that? I was under the impression that they'd practically discontinued that kind of instruction. It's good to hear that children are still being properly educated.”

He leaned over the counter and raised his hand. A retractable baton clicked out to its full length. I backed away. Thrown out of the same bar for the second time in twenty-four hours, I backed up all the way to the door and stopped.

“Tell him hello from me,” I said.

He came around the bar after me. I was already in the street and walked quickly toward the center of town, satisfied with my visit. It was a sure thing that word would get around and eventually reach the right ears. If I couldn't find Tarkiainen, I'd let him find me.

 

15

The mouse-gray, drizzly day was half over when I stepped off a tram full of damp clothes, violent coughs, and worried looks at the stop in front of Stockmann department store. Downtown Helsinki was doing its best to remind us that tomorrow was Christmas Eve. Here and there a lone string of Christmas lights twinkled desperately, looking in their feeble glimmer like they missed not just their finer days but also their lost comrades.

A few drops of rain fell on my face, all the colder for their paucity. I wiped them away, slipped into the flow of people, and didn't notice until I was halfway across the street that I was walking into the middle of traffic. I heard a choir singing “Silent Night” from somewhere up ahead.

There was a large decorated spruce tree at Three Smiths Square. Its red and yellow lights glowed in the drizzle like thousands of little traffic signals escaped from their poles. Next to the tree an armored police car was parked. There were a lot of police on foot, too, as well as private security guards. The security guards walked in pairs wearing black or gray coveralls, a few of them crossing in front of traffic, and as many on the sidewalks as there were Christmas shoppers. I counted six security guards under the clock in front of the entrance to Stockmann. And there were more inside the store, of course, in plain clothes.

Charities collecting donations lined the square. Everybody could use some cash. The recipients were mostly people in Finland and nearby countries: schools, hospitals, children's services. The Salvation Army's traditional kettle stood in the middle of the square. A Salvation Army choir stood around it—four women and three men singing “Silent Night.”

I dug a bill out of my pocket and dropped it in the kettle. I thought about how I was eating up our savings—the money I'd spent over the past day and a half was more than I'd spent in the previous six months put together. The savings were supposed to be for emergencies. If Johanna's disappearance wasn't an emergency, then what would be? I dropped another few coins into the pot and continued east on Aleksanterinkatu.

I passed windows that promised discounts of up to 95 percent. The jewelry stores were advertising brand-name watches at prices that would have caused a stampede a year earlier, but now the gold and platinum timepieces sat in their glass cases measuring a time that no longer existed.

The fast food places had all closed. The shoe stores and clothing stores were toughing it out with the help of Christmas shoppers. The tavern on the corner of Mikonkatu and Aleksanterinkatu had a sign advertising cheap beer and lunch, with lunch crossed out.

I turned left on Mikonkatu, continued right on Yliopistonkatu, and found myself in the middle of a fight.

The large, broad-shouldered, bald man who looked like a native Finn was wearing a short leather jacket. He seemed an overwhelming opponent for the other man, a slim young Asian in a hooded sweatshirt who was little more than a boy. The bald man was trying to get the younger one in front of his hefty fists, and the young one was dodging them nimbly. After evading a few right jabs, he let his left foot do the talking.

The kick surprised everyone, but especially the bald fellow. The thump and the crunch of the bone in his nose could be heard from meters away. He staggered and tried one last punch, throwing all his weight behind it. The young man dodged him again and answered with a high, quick right-legged kick that struck the bald one somewhere in the vicinity of his ear and looked and sounded like it hurt.

The older man's arms dropped to his sides, and the young man moved in front of him. He busted the older man's lip with two swift smacks, like opening a packet of ketchup, and ended with three blows to his chin, which seemed to give way under the lightning-quick punches.

The man fell to the ground, first onto his ass, where he sat with empty eyes and a bloody face, then onto his side on the asphalt as if lying down in bed for a nap. The younger man turned and walked to where a friend was standing, took his coat from him, and looked back. There was no triumph on his face, or any feeling at all. The whole episode had lasted less than thirty seconds. The two men walked off toward the railway station.

I continued on to the university. The small plaza in front of Porthania Hall was silent and deserted, which wasn't surprising considering it was Christmas Eve and drizzling. The revolving door was still revolving, however, and I went inside.

I had called Laura, who had, of course, been surprised that I got in touch with her. Under the polite distance in her voice there had been a touch of alarm, perhaps even fear. I didn't talk for long. As soon as she said that she was at her office at the university, and that there was a porter and a few professors working in spite of the holidays, for the physical and spiritual support of the students and for sheer scholarly tenaciousness, I said I wanted to come see her. All right, she said, after a moment's silence.

Laura Vuola, the love of my life—twenty years ago.

I remembered clearly the first time we met, at the political science department Christmas party, on the fifth floor of the New Student House, Laura in her long-necked, wine-red sweater and dark lipstick, my amazement and triumph when she agreed to leave with me, the walk through downtown in the snow to her apartment—Laivurinkatu 37.

And I remembered the times I walked back to my place in Töölö after one of our arguments, the desolate, black winter wind tearing through the city. Laura had seen the truth quickly: I wasn't ambitious, determined, or career oriented at all. If someone had told me that opposites attract, I would have told them the story of Laura and me.

I walked through the metal detector in the lobby, taking off my belt and shoes, like I did nearly everywhere I went, it seemed. A red-eyed woman handed them back to me and flicked her bleached hair away from her face without saying a word, then sat down in her chair and went back to playing a first-person shooter on her phone.

I climbed the spiral staircase past the cafeteria where, in another life long ago, I used to sit and talk, sometimes for hours, over a single cup of coffee.

The glass doors on the third floor were locked. There was a buzzer on the wall with a sign over it that said
JUST PRESS IT ONCE—WE CAN HEAR YOU
. I pressed the button once and hoped I would be heard.

 

16

Sometimes you do remember correctly.

Laura's hair was still long, dark, and slightly curly, parted evenly in the middle and combed to either side of her fair, almost pale face. Her high cheekbones and slightly fuller than ordinary lips gave her face a sort of Mediterranean look, as did her brown eyes and long dark eyelashes.

Laura still seemed to be a proud riddle. I remembered very well how I used to want to solve that riddle.

“I don't need to tell you that this is quite a surprise.”

Her voice was still low, echoing through the quiet stairwell.

“I'm not really sure what you need to tell me.”

“Should we start arguing right here at the door, or would you like to come in first?”

I had to smile.

“I didn't come to argue,” I said. “Thanks for agreeing to meet me.”

Now Laura smiled. Her smile was wary, probing.

“Anyway, nice to see you.”

She showed me in and made sure the door was locked behind me.

She was dressed in the same timeless way that she used to be: an elegant gray sweater with a copious collar whose numerous folds hung in layers down her front, a long tweed skirt, and light brown high-heeled leather boots, which made her taller than I was.

She had an office at the end of the hall, its walls lined with shelves full of books, journals, and stacks of paper. There was a narrow window on one side that showed a slice of the wall of the building opposite. It was hard to believe that even an ambitious professor of literature could get anything out of a view like that.

Laura sat at her desk, her chair yielding to her as if taking her in its arms. I backed into the other seat in the office, an upholstered sofa that was the shortest I'd ever seen. Although we were as far away from each other as the office space allowed, the distance between us was a meter and a half, at most. She looked at me, her brown eyes open and curious.

“You're a poet now.”

I didn't answer right away. I looked at her and remembered how easy it was to just sit and stare at her, waiting for her to reveal the smallest opening into her secrets. Maybe there never were any secrets, except in my imagination.

“And you're a literature professor. Just as you should be. You were always a wee bit more ambitious than I was.”

“You haven't lost your sarcasm,” Laura said.

There didn't seem to be any help for it. Her quick answers still left me at a loss. And there was something else. Looking at my long-lost love, I understood how much I yearned for my present one.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I meant that I'm happy for you. Honest.”

“Thanks.”

She looked away.

“The youngest professor of literature they've ever had,” she said. “And a woman. It wasn't easy.”

“I'm sure it wasn't,” I said.

“You've got to have strong elbows,” she said. “But I'm sure you remember that. Strong, sharp elbows. Literally.”

I showed with my smile that I did remember, not letting my face show even a trace of how painfully. I had already noticed the diamond ring on her left hand. I nodded toward it.

“You're married.”

She didn't look at the ring.

“Samuli died a year ago. Tuberculosis.”

“I'm sorry.”

“We have a son, Otto. He's thirteen.”

“That's wonderful. Congratulations.”

Were all meetings after a break of twenty years this tense, this full of traps and land mines? Laura looked at me again.

“So you really became a poet,” she said.

“After some setbacks.”

“Unfortunately, I haven't…”

“That's all right,” I said. “Neither has anyone else. They only came out with a couple hundred copies. The kinds of books that have a small audience. And it was before all this.”

We sat quietly for a moment.

“Have you ever thought about what it would have been like if things had been different?” she asked, taking me completely by surprise. I shrugged.

“Different how?” I asked. “Between us, or in general?”

“In all ways,” she said. “Completely different. If everything had had a happy ending.”

I looked at her. Was I understanding her correctly? Was she doubting the choices she'd made? If she was, then this was a Laura I'd never met before.

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe this is the happy ending.”

“Maybe it is.”

“Laura,” I said when I saw that she was sinking deep into her thoughts, “I have something important I want to talk with you about. My wife has disappeared. You may be able to help me. I'm looking for a man named Pasi Tarkiainen.”

A pair of furrows appeared on her brow and her full lips turned down. It was an expression I remembered.

“I don't quite understand,” she said, as I had expected she would. “Has your wife gone somewhere with Tarkiainen?”

I shook my head and realized that I was doing it much more patiently than I would have twenty years earlier.

“If she did, she didn't go voluntarily. You remember him, then?”

“Who doesn't?” she said, and immediately sounded uneasy. “Everybody remembers Pasi Tarkiainen. He was a charismatic young student and environmental activist. Extremely opinionated and, I have to admit, extremely attractive. In retrospect, he was right about the seriousness of the situation, but his methods…”

“I've heard about his methods,” I said. “And they may have to do with why my wife got lost looking for him.”

“Has Pasi, I mean Tarkiainen,” she looked me in the eye, searching for the right words, “has he done something?”

“Maybe. I don't know. To be honest, Laura, I'm at my wit's end. I'm desperate. The only thing I know for sure is that my wife has disappeared. Everything else is speculation. I'm hunting for anything that's even remotely connected.”

“How long has she been missing?”

I instinctively looked at my watch before I knew what I was doing and stopped myself.

“A day and a half. Almost two.”

“Have you told the poli—”

“Laura,” I interrupted, so quickly and bluntly that I startled even myself. “It was the police who gave me the tip about Tarkiainen. Since I have nothing else to look for, I'm looking for him. The police won't do anything. They can't do anything.”

My voice had risen, its tone turned sharp and hard. I realized that. The look on Laura's face was familiar from the past.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That's all right. It's almost like old times. Now it's my turn to raise my voice.”

We were quiet for a moment, then she started to smile. So did I. Tense. Traps and land mines.

“It's good that we postponed arguing until we were comfortably seated, at least,” she said.

I started to laugh, for the first time in a long time. The laugh spread through my body like the warmth of a touch. It felt good.