The Healer (16 page)

“Who isn't supposed to know that Johanna's missing, and her husband's looking for her?” I asked.

He didn't speak for a moment.

“Keep on babbling,” he said. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“OK, let's forget that for a moment. Tell me why you called me to tell me Gromov was dead.”

Lassi looked at me almost pityingly.

“I was trying to help,” he said.

“That's all?”

“That's all,” he repeated with a sigh.

“I don't remember exactly how you put it, but you said something about how much you value your employees.”

“It's true,” he said.

“Then tell me why Johanna's disappearance hasn't caused you to act. You know that Gromov is dead. You have reason to believe that Johanna is in at least some kind of trouble. You have reason to believe that the trouble she's in might have something to do with the family murders she was writing about.”

“You're a poet, Tapani. A journalist would get to the heart of the matter, think about what the truth is, and report on it. You're building stories, fairy tales. You're making things up. On the other hand, imagination is a good thing. We need it these days.”

“No editor would pass up a story like this,” I said.

“I don't see any story in it.”

“You don't want to see one. And I want to know why.”

Lassi leaned back in his chair.

“You sound like your wife,” he said. “And that's not a compliment.”

“What have you got against Johanna?”

He shook his head.

“The question is, what has Johanna got against me?”

“Your attitude, for one thing, I would imagine.”

“I'm trying to put out a newspaper.”

“And Johanna's not?”

“Not the same newspaper. I told you what our situation is. Some people get it, and some people don't.”

“And Johanna didn't?”

I glanced outside. The fog looked like it was pressing against the windows, trying to get in.

“Not at all,” Lassi said, leaning still farther back. “We're living in rather difficult times, in many ways, but one thing is beginning to become clear. The kind of truth that a few journalists like Johanna are still looking for just doesn't exist anymore. There's nothing to rest it on, nothing to base it on, nothing to cultivate it. I could talk for a long time about the end of history, the disappearance of values, the pornographication of everything. But stuffed shirts like you know better. It was what it was. We're trying to put out a paper in the environment we're in now. I have a blank page that I have to fill with pictures and text that looks like news, something that will interest people. And what are people interested in? Today it's an R&B singer and her horse. Tomorrow it's a celebrity caught shoplifting and exposing herself, if it's up to me. We have surveillance photos, close-ups almost, of this woman stuffing an MP3 player in her underwear, and while she's at it you can see practically everything, if you know what I mean.”

“Congratulations,” I said.

“You think you can afford to be sarcastic? You're a poet whose most successful collection sold less than two hundred copies. We sell at least two hundred thousand papers a day.”

“You're relieved that Johanna's missing.”

“Relieved is the wrong word,” Lassi said, shaking his head.

“There's more to it than that,” I said.

“Of course there is,” he said with a laugh. There was more than a touch of superiority in his laugh. He looked at me in amusement. “You can imagine what you want. Write a book of poems and put all your crazy imaginings in there.”

I leaned forward and put my elbows on the table.

“I know that Pasi Tarkiainen is a friend of yours. Or a former friend, at least.”

He stopped. There was a crack in his practiced, weary expression, a brief glimpse of uncertainty, before his jaded outer shell remembered to cover it up. I mentally thanked Jaatinen for giving me the information.

Lassi looked at me for a moment before he spoke.

“Former friend.”

“You played on the same floor hockey team,” I said.

“On the one hand I'm amazed that a scribbler like you found something like that out, but on the other hand I'm rather frustrated. You know why?”

I shook my head, spread my arms.

“No matter how I try,” he said, “I can't see any sense in all this. So what if I played floor hockey with the guy—what was his name again?”

“You don't remember his name? A moment ago you were sure that he was an old friend of yours.”

Lassi sighed, once again safe within his role—the weary, worn-out newspaperman. He folded his arms across his chest.

“Pasi Tarkiainen was a friend of yours and you also worked together in radical activities,” I said. “I found out about the floor hockey by accident, by doing an Internet search for your name and Tarkiainen's together. I found out from other sources that you were part of one of the most extreme environmental groups. Tarkiainen joined when you two already knew each other, didn't he? You were young—young enough to think that bombs could change things. Metaphorically and literally.”

Lassi looked at me, his face locked in that one familiar expression that masked whatever he might be thinking or feeling. I continued: “And when a bomb went off at the offices of Fortum Energy fifteen years ago, you were one of the people questioned. So was Tarkiainen. Neither of you was ever indicted, however, and nothing was found to connect you to the crime. Nevertheless, it's not the kind of thing an editor wants people to know about him. You can hardly put such a thing on your résumé: Fortum Energy bombing, such and such a year.”

He looked out the window before speaking.

“Someone once said that a person who isn't idealistic in his youth hasn't lived and a person who isn't conservative in his old age hasn't learned anything from his life. I might add that by ‘conservative' I mean realistic, recognizing reality. And your information is correct in the sense that I was a young idealist. As far as the rest of it, I would respectfully suggest that you go fuck yourself.”

I nodded and asked softly, “So did Tarkiainen the young idealist turn out to be a cynical shit like you?”

Lassi had regained his superior smile, and he used it.

“Pasi Tarkiainen died years ago. Whether he died an idealist or a cynical shit I don't know and I don't care. And, anyway, what does he have to do with anything?”

“Maybe a lot. And you're lying again. How long have you known that Tarkiainen isn't dead?”

Lassi's grin contracted a little at the edges. He scratched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he might be a little nervous.

“Is that a trick question?”

“No,” I said. “It's a straightforward question, and it has to do with Johanna. It has to do with your reluctance to invest in finding her and your sudden lack of interest in publishing a story that would almost certainly bring in readers. Just think of it—families brutally murdered, an ambitious reporter vanished, police stupefied. A textbook case of media appeal. Is Tarkiainen blackmailing you?”

Lassi laughed, but it was a feeble laugh this time. He didn't answer, and he didn't look me in the eye.

“Last question,” I said. “Let's go back to the beginning: Why couldn't we meet at your office?”

 

21

Johanna was working the first time we met. She was writing an article about the closing of the libraries, and I happened to be one of the people she interviewed.

“Do you come here often?” she asked as we stood in the foyer of the Kallio library during its last week in operation. I was struck by how she had worded her question.

I seized the opportunity and said, “Haven't we met somewhere before?”

She blushed the way that she always did—just a fleeting trace of pink. She wrote my answers in her notebook, thanked me, and was turning to leave when I asked her how often she came to the library.

She smiled a little and turned to face me again.

“A couple of times a week,” she said.

That's when I really noticed her eyes. They seemed to gather all the sunlight that filtered through the tall, many-paned windows into the library. It felt like all the light in the dimming, fast-darkening world was shining from this young journalist's eyes.

“What do you like to read?” I asked.

She thought for a moment.

“Mostly nonfiction, I guess,” she said, looking like she was really thinking about it. “Things connected with my work. Directly or indirectly.”

“What about history?”

“Sometimes.”

“Novels?”

“Sometimes.”

“Poetry?”

“Never.”

“Why not?”

“It's annoying. Particularly newer poetry. Deliberately, willfully obscure. ‘Heart's blood on a hammer's handle striking eternal moonlight as the gentle hoof handkerchief lashes its licorice temples.' Who can read something like that and pretend they get something out of it?”

“OK,” I said. “Can you remember the names of any poets or books of poems you've read?”

She looked at me with those wondrous eyes, named a couple of books of poems, and shook her head. I said I agreed with her that the poems she mentioned were obscure, but I thought that there were some good poems, too, that I knew of a few excellent collections that I was sure would change her opinion or at least make her realize that an entire genre of literature she was rejecting did include some exceptions.

“Do you read that stuff?” she asked in slight disbelief.

“Yes, I read that stuff,” I said, with the emphasis on the last two words.

We smiled at each other for a moment, the light dancing in her eyes.

“I'll bet you could recommend a book to me, to make me change my mind.”

“Maybe,” I said.

She followed me to the poetry section of the library. I could feel her eyes on the back of my neck. The feeling was not unpleasant. I thought about the blue-green light shining from this woman's eyes and settling on me like the light of a rainbow or a bright, sunny day.

We came to the poetry shelves and I picked out a few Finnish poets' works, putting one of my own books on the bottom of the pile. Johanna came and stood next to me and listened, if not with interest, at least with the appearance of interest, as I told her about each poet's characteristic qualities and read her one poem from each to demonstrate the clarity and conciseness of their language.

She was wearing wide-legged jeans, a black turtleneck sweater, and some kind of combination of a leather shoe and a boot. And as we stood close to each other, I couldn't help but smell the scent of her hair, sense the warmth from her body, and feel the pull of those light-collecting, blue-green eyes.

I grabbed the last book in the stack, opened it, and read a poem. When I had finished, I looked at her. She didn't look as impressed as I had hoped she would be.

“I don't know,” she said.

“Shall I read another one?”

“Go ahead.”

I read another.

“You seem to know it by heart,” she said. “You said it without looking at the book.”

She took the book out of my hands, opened it, and saw my photo on the inside cover. She raised her eyes.

“Very clever,” she said with a smile.

 

22

I stood for a moment on the sidewalk and watched Hamid's taillights disappear into the fog.

On the short drive from the train station to Temppeliaukio, I had time to think about the tenacious strands that held us all together: Johanna, Pasi Tarkiainen, Lassi Uutela, Laura Vuola, Harri Jaatinen, and me. Even Mrs. Bonsdorff and Hamid. Not to mention Ahti and Elina. We run, straining, gasping, and groaning, in our own separate directions, and the more we struggle the closer we're pulled together.

Elina opened the door. She greeted me with a warm smile and had an almost questioning look on her face for a moment. I got a glimpse of myself in the entryway mirror and realized why. My eyes were shining in a way that could be interpreted as anger, even rage. I didn't want to explain it to her—I didn't really think I could. At least not yet. I said that I wanted to see Ahti.

“Ahti's asleep.”

“Wake him up.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Wake him up.”

She looked at me in amazement, then with apparent annoyance. Finally she granted my wish and walked toward the bedroom shaking her head.

Everything in the living room was as familiar as it could be. I knew Ahti and Elina's bookshelf by heart. The books and their arrangement had been etched into my mind over the dozens of times that we had all sat in this room together. I knew without touching it how soft and enveloping the black armchair was that sat in front of it, how bright the floor lamp was that stood next to it. I remembered an evening we'd spent together that stretched into the night, the candles and candle holders rummaged out of the dark brown antique chest huddled on the other side of the chair with a book lying open on its lid, as always.

Although the room was familiar, I looked at all of it as if for the first time as I listened to the noises coming from the bedroom. I thought about how it's not the things that are new to us that surprise us, it's the things we think we know and find out we don't.

“He'll be here in a minute,” Elina said from behind me.

“Thanks.”

“I don't understand.”

“I very nearly didn't understand it, either,” I said.

We sat on opposite ends of the sofa, leaving the entire middle cushion between us as if by mutual agreement.

“You're not yourself.”

I didn't say anything. I was still gathering my thoughts.

“Tapani,” Elina said quietly, leaning toward me. “You must have misunderstood what I said. About what happened. About Pasi Tarkiainen.”