The Winter War (4 page)

Now that Max thought back on the matter, he found the whole thing rather touching, but at the time he was furious, since he was painfully aware that his parents belonged to a different era – maybe even a different century. It was obvious that they didn't fit in with the milieu that he'd now made his own. He was afraid that they'd drag him back down, into their musty old world.

Ebba wanted to go to a play, and Max's only experience with the city's theatre scene was through the student productions that were staged in connection with various political movements. But he found out that Lilla Teatern was showing a revue by Claes Andersson and Johan Bargum, and so they'd bought tickets.

His mother enjoyed the show immensely, mostly because she'd never gone to the theatre in Helsinki before, while Max's father had responded with grudging silence. For the rest of the evening he'd downed one glass of brandy after another, muttering ‘utterly shameless' and ‘no respect'.

Vidar was a big admirer of Marshal Mannerheim. Some of his family members had been imprisoned by the Reds, and Vidar himself had fought in Finland's Continuation War, which lasted from 1941 to 1944. In one of the play's scenes, Mannerheim had been ridiculed when an actor pasted a picture of his face on a horse's body and then whipped the horse.

Before his parents boarded the train to head back home on Sunday, all three of them had stood on the platform, staring at the ground. Max's mother had asked him if he'd met a ‘nice girl', and Max had replied evasively.

They didn't come back to Helsinki until Max received his doctoral degree eight years later, in 1979. By then his father's alcoholism had escalated to such an extent that his mother and his sister Elisabeth had to devote all their energy to keeping the man upright. His university years had marked one of the happiest periods in Max's life, and he wasn't about to allow his father to ruin things. Not only had he finished his dissertation, which he'd written in one fell swoop, but he'd met Katriina at the university, and they were planning to get married very soon. Max was too much in love to be political about marriage. Katriina was from a Helsinki family, with roots in Russia, and Max had been dazzled with a sense of history – by the fact that her ancestry could be traced back to Czarist times, possibly even further. Compared to her, he felt like a real country bumpkin.

The Sparbank wharf looked like a mirage of granite up ahead, and Max thought that if they could find a café, they might stop and rest for a while.

Over the past few years the field of sociology had become particularly exciting because the neurosciences had made huge advances, supplemented by evolutionary psychology. For Max this was especially rewarding, because ever since the eighties poststructuralism had threatened to turn all research into relativistic blind fumbling, only to be followed by the prevalence of feminist studies. Today it seemed that the only research receiving funding had to do with equality, gender and cohabitation.

Max was fascinated by how brain research was able to contribute to so many of the age-old philosophical conundrums, such as the debate about reason versus emotion, or Freud's theories about the id and the ego. At the same time, there was a risk – especially on the part of the media – of reducing neurological research to metaphysical assertions. The brain was described as an organ with its own will. ‘The human brain likes equality and justice!' was a statement that Max had recently read in an article. The author made reference to yet another American research group that had done a study focussing on the reward centre in the brain. Of course the brain didn't ‘like' anything. That was a meaningless contention, just like all the talk about how a person was governed either by the left or the right side of his brain.

At the moment Max thought he was using his left brain too much. As he was paying for his coffee and Amanda's juice, a dark-haired woman in her thirties suddenly appeared at his side and began staring at him. She looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place her.

‘Hi,' she said. Try as he might, Max couldn't recall who she was. Was she one of his daughters' friends? Or a former student?

‘Do you remember me?'

Something in Max's brain refused to make the connection. He looked at her without speaking, unable to figure out how he knew her.

‘I can understand why you might not recognise me. Laura Lampela. You were my advisor at a continuing education programme years ago. I studied sociology for a while, actually only a semester and a half.'

Suddenly it came to Max: this was Laura, that hippie girl. He had helped her with a term paper that had something to do with … He couldn't remember exactly, but he had a feeling it had to do with alcoholism. Or was it consumerism? It must have been almost ten years ago.

‘Of course I remember you. Nice to see you again, Laura! This is Edvard and Amanda.'

‘Hi, Edvard and Amanda! But you don't really remember me, do you? I wrote a paper about the restaurant business and employees' attitudes towards alcohol.'

‘Right. Right,' said Max. ‘Well, uh … here's our coffee and juice. It was good seeing you, Laura.'

He looked around the café for a table. Every one of them seemed to be taken. Laura noticed that he was looking for somewhere to sit down.

‘It's really crowded, since it's Saturday. You can share my table if you like. I'll be leaving soon.'

Max picked up his coffee in one hand, holding the dog's lead in the other, and headed for her table. Amanda picked up her juice, giving Laura a suspicious look. After Max sat down, he didn't know whether he should start up a conversation or not, but before he could decide, Laura began talking.

‘I have to make a confession,' she said. Her hair was very dark and thick. She didn't look anything like he remembered. It wasn't just the fact that she was older – she looked more professional and no longer wore hippie clothes. Instead, she had on attractive black jeans and a black tunic.

He cast a quick glance around the café. Did the other people think he was sitting here with his daughters, or with his young wife and child?

‘Sorry, what did you say?'

‘I said that I have to make a confession. You know that interview you did that was published in
Anna
? That was me. I didn't want to tell you who I was when I phoned, because I was a little embarrassed.'

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Max looked at Amanda. She was listening attentively, waiting to hear more.

‘I thought the whole topic was ludicrous, but since that was the article I was writing … well, I suddenly thought about you. There was so much talk about that sex study back then. So that's why I called you.'

‘That was you?' Max said.

‘Uh-huh. I'm sorry. You're not angry, are you?'

‘Angry? Why should I be angry with you?'

‘When I saw how drastically they edited your replies, I asked them to remove my name from the by-line. This kind of thing happens occasionally, so then I use a pseudonym. I'm actually a serious journalist, otherwise.'

‘Is that right?'

Max thought she must mean some kind of news reporting.

‘So, I mean, if you'd ever agree to it, I'd like to do a proper feature article on you. A personal profile. I sometimes write for the
Helsingin Sanomat
.'

‘You do?'

‘On a freelance basis, of course. I'll try to interest the editor. But aren't you writing a book?'

Max thought about the 1,500-page document in his computer. All those scattered notes about Westermarck, all the material that in some miraculous way still had to be shaped into a book.

‘I'm afraid I am. Although I'm a bit behind schedule.'

‘That doesn't matter. You used to be everywhere – I mean back in the nineties. I always watched
The Brains Trust
when I was a teenager. We could do an article along those lines, you know: “Where Is He Now?” That sort of thing.'

Max didn't like the sound of that. As if he'd been forgotten and someone had been forced to look him up. He would have preferred a more dignified comeback.

‘I'm not really sure …'

‘Don't you have a birthday coming up soon?'

‘Why?'

‘Sometimes they do features about people around their birthday.'

Amanda had lost interest. She'd finished her juice and was now offering Edvard what was left of the biscuits they'd eaten as she tugged at Max's arm.

‘We'll go in a minute,' he told her. Then, turning to Laura, he said, ‘Actually, in three weeks I turn sixty.'

‘That's perfect!' said Laura. Max wondered why she was so enthusiastic. She acted as if he really was somebody important.

‘Grandpa?'

He looked at Amanda. She clearly thought it was time to go.

‘Here, I'll write down my number,' he said to Laura.

‘And I'll talk to my boss. I can't promise anything, but I think this could work.'

‘If it happens, it happens,' said Max as he stood up and called to Edvard, noting a happy tone in his own voice that surprised him.

When they got home, Edvard ran to the living room and jumped on to Helen's lap, making her spring to her feet with a muted shriek, since his paws were covered in mud. Amanda came rushing in after him.

‘Grandpa is going to be interviewed for the
Helsingin Sanomat
!'

Max hung up the dog's lead and then joined the others in the living room. Helen and Katriina were sitting on the sofa. Christian still hadn't made an appearance.

‘Where's Christian?'

‘He went into town. To Clas Ohlson's hardware store and a few other places,' Helen explained.

Max liked his son-in-law. He was the kind of person who could make complicated things seem simple. He could build and renovate a house, which was something that Max had never had time to learn. Christian was also unmistakably a Finland–Swede in the typical Helsinki style: well-mannered, always willing to help, and so polite as to be slightly boring.

Now Helen asked her father: ‘What's this Amanda has been telling us? She says you're going to be interviewed?'

Max looked at Katriina. ‘That's right. By a former student. Apparently she now works at the
Helsingin Sanomat
. Or maybe she said she's a freelancer,' replied Max, his eyes still fixed on Katriina, who nodded.

‘That sounds risky.'

‘Well, anyway. I guess she's working as a journalist now. She said that she wanted to do a feature article about me. It's not a big deal. And it might not even happen. But an article because I'm turning sixty.'

Edvard ran from one person to the other, greeting each of them in turn. Then he lay down in front of the door to Eva's old room to keep an eye on all of them.

Katriina looked at Max. ‘Helen and I want to go into town, so you get to take care of Lukas and Amanda. Did Edvard pee?' she asked.

‘And took a dump,' said Max.

four

WHEN EVA WAS SEVEN YEARS
old she'd almost drowned near the family's summer cottage in Sideby. She'd learned to swim in the spring, and she'd gone out into the water without thinking that it was a whole different matter to swim in the sea, where there were rocks and high waves, than in the community heated swimming pool on Topeliusgatan. After swimming twenty metres she could no longer touch the bottom with her feet, and she panicked. The beach was on a small bay, and a strong wind was blowing in from the sea. It was cold (since it was still only June), and the waves were bigger than she'd thought. They came towards her like dark, threatening swells, and she suddenly felt that she'd lost all strength to fight back, that something was pulling her towards the bottom and she was about to go under. Her big sister Helen was somewhere up on the rocks, but Eva couldn't turn around. And when she tried to yell, not a sound came out.

But the strange thing was that the panicked feeling changed into something else. She thought: so this is how I'm going to die. The realisation wasn't frightening but fascinating.

And when she accepted that she was going to die, she suddenly felt completely calm. She looked up at the sky and let her body fall back. Her body had gone numb, so the water no longer felt as cold as before, and Eva thought that she could see millions of different colours. Was this how it felt to drown?

The moment was shattered when Helen shouted that it was time to eat. Eva pretended not to hear, but then Helen, who was standing on the rocks, jumped in, and Eva noticed that her feet could touch the bottom after all.

She never told anyone what happened – not that day, and not afterwards, either. Maybe she hadn't been on the verge of drowning, but she'd definitely learned something: to die, to disappear entirely, was not something that she needed to fear.

She thought that was the reason why she was rarely afraid of failing, of making the wrong choice, or of ending up in unexpected situations. And that had led her to make some drastic decisions. For instance, she'd broken off her engagement to Alexander after four years, just as they were starting to talk about having a baby. Eva had done what men had been doing all through history: she told him that she was going out for a while, and then she never went back.

It was also Eva's fearlessness that had driven her to move to London, more or less on a whim, with no real plans other than to study art for a year.

Now she was lying in bed in her flat in Bethnal Green, pondering whether to drop the course and try to find a job instead. Her period was late, but she didn't know why. She suspected that it was due to a general stressed-out feeling.

It was the end of November and the course had been running for two months. The air was still warm enough to sit outside in the afternoon, and Eva often went to Weavers Fields, a nearby park, to sit on a bench and read. Or she would go to Brick Lane and stroll through the flea markets there. She enjoyed peoplewatching, and in London there were plenty of people to watch. Young pseudo-hippies sitting in cafés with backpacks, frowning as they read Hemingway; stylish couples in their eighties roaming through the art museums wearing matching tweed jackets; British children in school uniforms walking in perfectly straight lines through busy streets; bankers outside pubs drinking on Friday afternoons; the multicultural vibrancy of the city itself. Eva liked the anonymity of London and the feeling that no one demanded anything of her. She could wander aimlessly for hours, from one area to another.

The university was on the northwest side of London, a fortyfive-minute trip on the Tube from her flat. Usually she didn't have any lectures to attend until ten in the morning, so she would get up at eight, eat a quick sandwich and catch the Tube, provided that it was running. Sometimes she was forced to make her way by means of a combination of buses and Tube lines.

Her flatmate, Natalia, was often in the kitchen when she got up. Natalia worked at the London Stock Exchange. She was a highly social and extroverted person, which had turned out to be very practical when Eva arrived in London not knowing a soul. She'd found the flat through an advert. Natalia had opened the door in a cloud of perfume, with her brown hair gathered in a perfect knot. She was a large woman, not fat but curvy, and over the past two months Eva had seen how men would turn around to look at Natalia whenever they went to a pub. Eva had inherited her mother's blonde hair and her father's scrawniness – she'd always thought that she looked very ordinary compared to her sister Helen, and she'd never really got used to the fact that people clearly regarded her as, if not beautiful, at least genetically interesting.

That was more or less how Malik, her tutor, had expressed it after they'd slept together for the first time.

‘You could be a fashion model,' he'd told her. ‘You have that slightly cool and androgynous look about you that's so “in” right now. Seriously. I mean, don't take it the wrong way. I like it.'

‘Don't be ridiculous,' Eva had told him, turning over in bed with the feeling that she was much too old for that type of flattery. She'd actually caused a stir on the streets of Paris when she'd gone there as a teenager with her mother. Men had wanted to take her picture, claiming to be the owners of model agencies. But that was probably something that happened to all Scandinavian girls. Her first boyfriend had broken up with her because he thought she was too bony.

After Malik started spending the night at Eva's flat, they often didn't fall asleep until two in the morning. When she woke up, she would feel tired and not especially motivated to go to class. Sometimes he'd have his car with him, and they would drive to the university together. Last night Malik had stayed at home, saying that he needed to correct papers. Eva had teased him, offering to help.

He got annoyed and told her dismissively, ‘It's okay that we're in a relationship. We're both adults. But I take my work seriously, and you need to understand that it's a point of honour for me. My work takes priority over sex.'

She hadn't said another word. She didn't really know what sort of relationship she had with Malik. She couldn't remember ever hearing him call her his lover, or anything else, for that matter.

Eva had arrived in London in mid-August. It was still hot and sticky, and it seemed as though everyone had fled the city. Families with children were on holiday, the schools were empty, and the only people she met when she walked through Shoreditch were badly paid thirty-year-olds who had come from elsewhere and had uncertain career prospects. People in the same situation as Eva. Every time she went to a party – and in the beginning she often went to parties with Natalia – she would meet people with similar stories: arts graduates trying to make their way as freelancers; academics temporarily waiting tables in cafés; students with enormous debts; Australian IT guys working in the financial sector (they were the only ones who appeared to have any money, and Natalia seemed to know them all); young people with advanced degrees in hopeless fields like comparative literature and aesthetics. All of them were making do with improvised living situations; many had wealthy parents. Most had already finished their education. When Eva said that she was studying art, nobody seemed especially impressed.

She'd finished her BA in art history at Helsinki University after five years of indolent studying and then toyed with the idea of continuing for a Masters, but she realised that she lacked the incentive to do so.

It was on impulse that she'd applied to study fine art in London. She was almost certain that she wouldn't be accepted, since she had no practical experience. But she wrote an essay on the concept of beauty from a Darwinian perspective (she borrowed a quote from one of her father's articles: ‘The aesthetic relativism of our era still cannot explain the universal and crosscultural pleasures which we all enjoy on a daily basis') and dug out a few illustrations that she'd done during her last year in secondary school. She also made several new, fresh illustrations – dark watercolours inspired by the cave paintings in Lascaux. Painting them had been fun, and the results were significantly more provocative than she'd counted on, with different combinations of genitals and truncated body parts. In June she found out that she'd been accepted, which apparently hadn't come as a surprise to anyone else in the family.

‘I've always known that you'd be an artist,' her father had said when she phoned to tell him the news. It was as though he'd just been waiting all along for her to make this decision.

‘Why didn't you ever say anything?'

‘I didn't want to influence you. You need to do what interests you most, and not what I think you should do.'

The classes started in September. During the first week there were two orientation days for foreign postgraduate students, and on Wednesday the lectures began. Eva showed up for the first lecture ten minutes early and found the room practically deserted. Only two other students were present – a guy and a young woman. Eva guessed they were probably a couple. She nodded to them as she came in, then took out her mobile to surf, trying to look busy.

There were very few chairs. The students were apparently supposed to sit on cushions and small Oriental rugs in the room with bare whitewashed walls. The classrooms seemed new, although they were in an old building that Eva surmised was from the mid-nineteenth century. This part of town was called Hendon, and the campus consisted of both modern architecture and old stone buildings. At nine fifteen the doors were closed. Eva had found a place for herself in a corner of the room.

Malik Martin was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his forties. He had dark curly hair which was thinning at the back. He looked as if he worked out on a regular basis. He wore a tight cotton shirt with short sleeves stretched over his hairy arms.

‘Before we begin, there are a few things that you need to know about my classes,' he said as he walked around the room, making everyone turn their head to look at him.

‘Some of you may be here because you want to be the next Damien Hirst, because you've heard that London has the most dynamic art scene in the world. And you think you can make money here. In that case, let me spare you both time and effort: you can't. Or let's put it this way: ninety-nine per cent of you can't.'

Malik glared at them in a way that was presumably meant to signal a combination of authority and mystery, but Eva thought he looked a little shifty, like an estate agent.

‘Another thing: there are certain words that I never want to hear in my classroom. “Beauty” is one of them. “Sublime” is another. “Masterpiece” is a third. These are words used by people who think of art in an emotional way. They're words that belong to the romantic tradition, which admires the solitary genius and believes in essential values. But the last time I checked, this was the twenty-first century. The purpose of art is to explore the key cultural and social ideas of its time. If you want to create emotions and pleasure, you can go to Hollywood for that. What I want you to do here is to find your own voice.'

Eva felt her cheeks flush. Her essay on the application had been filled with words such as ‘sublime' and ‘beauty'.

There was a wide range in age among her classmates. Before they started, Malik wanted all the students to introduce themselves. Many seemed to have an impressive array of accomplishments. One person had already had his work exhibited in a gallery, another had a degree from Oxford. A young woman mentioned that she viewed this course as a means for her to get into Goldsmiths' famed art course. Eva knew that many of England's most successful contemporary artists had attended that college, and some of them had won the Turner Prize.

When it was Eva's turn, she briefly explained that she came from Finland and had moved to London a month earlier.

‘And what is it that appeals to you?' asked Malik Martin, running his hand through his black hair. Everyone's eyes were fixed on her.

‘What appeals to me?' she repeated.

Malik nodded.

‘I don't know … I guess I like the High Romantic period.'

Several guys in another corner of the room started to laugh. Another guy, a bit delicate-looking and sporting a moustache, looked at her with interest. Some of the female students were texting on their mobiles.

‘Anything else?'

The truth was that Eva had very little interest in contemporary art. In her opinion it was often based on simple ideas that acquired importance merely through association with a specific gallery or museum. She had no idea what sort of work she intended to create.

‘Well, it really doesn't matter what any of you think or know. You're here to forget about all of that,' said Malik, as he moved to the front of the room and took up position there.

‘You've probably heard that my teaching method is a little unusual. I don't give any tests, and we won't be studying periods of cultural history according to some fixed chronology. Instead, each week for the next ten weeks we're going to discuss a specific work created by one of you. For each class, one student will be asked to prepare a work. And that's why we really need to get going. I expect you to start working immediately. Today we'll begin by discussing a particular work of art that I'm hoping you'll find exciting.'

In the afternoon, when Eva joined some of the students at a nearby pub, she got to hear all about Malik Martin. Everybody sat there eagerly talking about how exciting the class was going to be, and several times they mentioned someone named ‘Sarah'. When Eva asked who Sarah was, a skinny young woman sitting next to her explained.

‘That's his wife. She's almost as legendary as Malik. She owns an art gallery in Bethnal Green. Apparently they have an open marriage, or at least that's what people say. Malik's got something of a reputation.'

‘That's right. He likes to sleep with young female artists,' said another student.