The Healer (15 page)

The coffee was dark, strong, chocolatey. I realized I'd been craving a cup of coffee. I also realized that I couldn't have drunk a thing one second earlier. I pushed the images from the apartment in Jätkäsaari out of my mind again.

I told her I was looking for a man who had once lived in her building, described Tarkiainen to her, told her his name and profession, and added that it was possible I was in the wrong building. Finally, I showed her the picture of him on my phone. She went stiff and assured me that I was in the right building.

“I remember him very well,” she said.

“He died five years ago,” I said.

She looked confused.

“Five years ago?”

I nodded.

She held on to the small porcelain handle of her cup as if she might pinch it off.

“At my age the years go by a bit faster, of course, but it couldn't have been five years ago.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it was just before Erik died,” she said. “My husband. He died of liver cancer. It started as throat and stomach cancer. He was in terrible pain, pain beyond description.”

Her searching gaze drifted out the window into the fog.

“I loved Erik. We had nothing left but each other,” she said quietly, and took a sip of coffee. I took a cookie from the saucer on the table, bit off a small piece, and let the toffee flavor dissolve in my mouth. She set her cup in its saucer with a clink.

“Erik was an athletic man, a good man, a strong man. At least as long as he was able. But no one can be strong when age and sickness come, when there's not much time left. Our children and grandchildren all live in America. We keep in touch with video calls. It just makes me miss them more. I'm old enough to feel that I ought to be able to touch them, be near them, pet them and hug them and hold them, and have them hold me. Erik was the same way. We were there for each other, took care of each other.”

She paused for a moment, sank deeper into the fog, then realized she had, and turned to look at me again.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, and quickly added, “actually, that's why I'm here today.”

She looked curious.

“My wife is missing,” I said. “This man, the man I was asking you about, might know something about it. It's not really him that I'm looking for, but my wife.”

“Do you have any children?”

“No.”

“May I ask why?”

“Yes. We couldn't have children.”

She seemed to ponder my answer.

“Just the two of you.”

“Yes.”

“That's good, too.”

I felt something rough in my throat and wiped my eyes just in case.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

We sat across the table from each other, two people randomly thrown together, and I had an almost tangible feeling of how much the two of us had in common. How much all of us have in common. I didn't want to break the silence that also united us. It felt strangely calming, almost final. I didn't want to pry, to interrogate her. Maybe she would eventually circle back to what I had come to ask her about.

I tasted the strong coffee and let it gently sting my tongue before I swallowed it. I looked at the pictures on the wall—seascapes sparkling with sunshine, country houses painted red and yellow, glowing golden fields and dark green forests. Fantasy places.

“Erik's pain seemed to increase as quickly as his medication,” she said. I had just been wandering in the wind-rippled wheat, about to open the gray-timbered house dimly visible at one side of a field. “The cancer was progressing, of course. And that's when the young man offered to help us.”

“How did he offer to help?”

She thought for a moment.

“Now that you ask, it was really quite surprising. How did he know to come here when the situation was at its worst? He was just at the door one day.”

“When did this happen?” I asked, putting my empty cup down in its saucer.

“Erik died a year ago,” she said. “He came about six months before that. That's why I don't understand—you said that the young man died five years ago, but a man of the same name, who looked the same, who I thought was a doctor, came here a year and a half ago and said he wanted to help us.”

She was clearly flustered.

“There's nothing wrong with your memory,” I said. “It's my mistake. I must have had incorrect information, that's all.”

“That must be it,” she said, looking for a moment even older than she was. “It frightens me. If I lose my memory—lose my mind—what will I have left?”

“You have nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “Your memory is excellent. Tell me more about this man, the one who showed up a year and a half ago. Did he ever mention why he had come?”

“That's another thing,” she said. “It wasn't for money. He never took any payment for his time and didn't even want much money for the medicine. Erik was so sick by then that we needed all the medication we could get for him. Things we hadn't been able to get.”

“And this man helped you?”

“Yes. I was grateful to him. He also helped Erik on his final journey.”

“Here at home?”

“What better place to die?”

I saw the place at Jätkäsaari again. Human forms under a blanket. Bloodstains on the wall above the bed.

“No better place, I guess,” I said. “Then what happened?”

She looked at me.

“Then Erik was cremated and I was left alone after forty-six years,” she said.

“I'm sorry. And after that?”

She looked impatient now.

“I would have liked to die, but I didn't die,” she said. “Sometimes it's that simple.”

“Forgive me, Mrs. Bonsdorff,” I said quietly. “I didn't mean that. Perhaps I didn't say it very well. I mean, what about this doctor, Tarkiainen? Did you ever hear from him again?”

“He disappeared the same way he had come. He arrived uninvited and left without saying good-bye. I've never heard from him again.”

“Do you know whether he lived in this building at the time he was helping Erik?”

She pondered the question.

“I hadn't thought about it. I suppose it's possible. It's certainly not impossible.”

“Did you ever run into him on the stairs or in the courtyard?”

She shook her head, slowly but with certainty.

“I don't think so. Of course…”

“Yes?”

“Now that I think about it, I may have wondered at the time how he could get here so quickly after we called him, and in his shirtsleeves, with just his bag in his hand. But I didn't think any more about it at the time.”

I didn't know in which direction my questions should go. I wiped my lips with the small napkin she'd given me, although they were already painfully dry.

“Are you and your wife happy?” she asked abruptly.

I looked deep into her blue-green eyes, so much like Johanna's that for a fraction of a second I almost fell into them.

“I've never loved anyone or anything as much as I love my wife,” I heard myself say. Mrs. Bonsdorff's gaze never faltered. Deep creases appeared in her cheeks, at the edges of her eyes. A warm smile rose to her face, and I could see that they were her eyes and not Johanna's.

*   *   *

I
WAS IN THE
foyer putting on my coat and looking at myself in the large, gilt-framed mirror when she said, “When you find your wife…”

I turned and looked at her. She was nearly swallowed by the large entrance to the living room and the dense fog outside the window.

“Don't lose her again.”

I tied my scarf around my neck.

“I'll do my best, Mrs. Bonsdorff.”

I had already turned away from her and put my right hand on the door handle and my left on the lock when I heard her say: “It's not easy, but it's worth it.”

 

20

I looked at the directory again for the building manager's apartment number. It was on the first floor, someone named Jakolev. There was no answer. Maybe they weren't home, or maybe they were just keeping quiet on the other side of the door. I could hear myself breathing, and water in the pipes somewhere, and smell the heavy, rotten smell of fried eggs. I waited a moment, then found the phone number on the directory and tried calling. Jakolev didn't answer. I was getting used to no one answering my calls, I guess. I slipped the phone back into my pocket and left.

When I got outside I filled my lungs with air, opened the door of the taxi, and got in, waking Hamid.

“Where to now?” he asked, looking more alert in a second than I ever did.

I thought about where to go, what place made sense. And about what I knew for certain now: Tarkiainen was alive.

Johanna had been on the trail of the Healer.

Tarkiainen had some connection with the Healer.

Tarkiainen and Johanna had met.

That's as far as I'd got when Hamid turned and looked at me with his dark, nearly black eyes.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

At that moment my phone beeped, telling me I had a message. I took it out, read the message, and immediately knew where to go.

*   *   *

O
N THE WAY
, H
AMID
stopped at a service station. He hopped lightly out of the car, went to the pump, inserted his card and keyed in his code, and started to fill up. I got out of the car, too, got a blast of heady, metallic gasoline fumes, and walked the couple of steps to the counter. The fog was still thick, and the air felt stagnant and damp on my skin.

The former culinary school behind the service station stood silent, its windows black. There were about a dozen people milling around in front of it, men and women who communicated through roars, grunts, and half-syllable shouts. They had a plastic bottle that they were passing around and lifting to their lips.

A large, high SUV with darkened windows pulled into the station on the other side of the pump. Both the driver's and the passenger's doors opened and two Slavic-looking men the size of bulldozers appeared and dropped to the ground. One of them went to the gas pump and the other stood next to the car. I couldn't see inside the car, but I made an educated guess that there was a man in the backseat who would never be able to spend all his money.

The service station was the world in miniature: petroleum under the ground, the masses in their vehicles, and a few who enriched themselves on the distress of the rest. I suppose we all had our place here at this gas station, and in the universe.

Hamid put the nozzle back on the side of the pump with a clank, waking me from my thoughts. His timing was excellent because the bulldozer guarding the car had noticed me staring and, judging by his expression, was about to come over and ask me if I had anything to say to him. And I couldn't honestly say that I did.

Hamid backed the taxi up from the pump and headed toward the center of town.

The plaza at the train station was nearly full of people and cars. Hamid dropped me off in front of the shopping center across from the station. I dodged people, went into the café, and got in line. While I waited I heard bits of conversation in at least ten different languages. Some of them I understood, most I didn't. I bought a coffee and a sandwich that was so tightly wrapped in thin paper that only the golden-brown tip told me that it was some kind of bread. I paid and looked around for someplace to sit. I got lucky when an African family gathered its coats and bags and headed toward the railway station.

I sat down, and when a man with a broad smile asked in Spanish-accented English if he could have the extra chairs, I told him yes, except for one. One was saved for Johanna's editor, Lassi Uutela. I didn't say that part out loud.

The roll was dry and contained the thinnest slice of cheese I'd ever seen. Had it been any thinner, I wouldn't have seen it.

I'd finished the sandwich and coffee when Lassi arrived.

He shook my hand, glanced into my eyes only in passing, pulled out a chair, threw his left leg over his right, slapped his hair into place, and ran a hand over the stubble on his face. Then he picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee.

He looked as tired and world-weary as he had the day before, but I understood better now that his battered, worn-out appearance was a kind of armor that made it easier to make decisions, to play for time, and to conceal his own thoughts and their resulting actions. The whole image of the exhausted but tough newspaperman, red around the eyes, his beard always at the right stage of stubble, was just a role made to measure for an experienced player.

“I've got a pretty tight day today,” he said. He nodded toward his offices across the street. “The place is in chaos. A lot of articles just about to come together. That's why I suggested meeting here. Get a little peace.”

“Right,” I said, and looked around me. The people of all ages and colors, the multitude of languages, and the clatter of the café made it a pleasant place to meet, of course, but it certainly would have been more peaceful someplace else. “I haven't looked at this morning's paper, but I'm sure there must have been an article about that singer and her horse you were talking about yesterday.”

Lassi still didn't look me in the eye.

“Did you want to praise me for a successful piece of journalism?”

He slurped his coffee, the cup steady in his hand, his eyes not evading mine by a millimeter now.

“Why not meet at your office?” I asked.

“Like I said,” he sighed, putting his cup gently on the table and pushing it a few centimeters away from him, “it's more peaceful here.”

“First you don't answer my calls, then when I send a message that I'm coming to your office, you call and suggest we meet somewhere else. It makes me wonder—who's at your office who isn't supposed to see me?”

He looked at me questioningly, again with that tired skepticism that said he was perhaps a bit intrigued, but also convinced that I was an imbecile and a nuisance.