Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage (25 page)

As soon as he arrived at the Helsinki airport, Tsukuru exchanged his yen for euros, found a cell phone store, and bought the most basic, prepaid phone they had. This done, he walked out of the terminal, his carry-on bag hanging from his shoulder, and walked to the taxi stand. He got into a taxi, an older model Mercedes-Benz, and told the driver the name of his hotel in the city.

They left the airport and drove onto the highway. Though this was Tsukuru’s first trip abroad, neither the deep green woods they passed nor the billboards in Finnish gave him the sense he had come—for the first time ever—to a foreign country. Obviously it took much longer to come here than to go to Nagoya, but he felt no different than when he’d gone back to his hometown. Only the currency in his wallet had changed. He wore his usual outfit—chinos, black polo shirt, sneakers,
and a light brown cotton jacket. He’d brought the bare minimum when it came to extra clothes. He figured if he needed anything more, he could always buy it.

“Where are you from?” asked the taxi driver in English, shooting Tsukuru a glance in the rearview mirror. He was a middle-aged man with a full, thick beard.

“Japan,” Tsukuru replied.

“That’s a long way to come with so little luggage.”

“I don’t like heavy baggage.”

The driver laughed. “Who does? But before you know it, you’re surrounded by it. That’s life.
C’est la vie
.” And again, he laughed happily.

Tsukuru laughed along with him.

“What kind of work do you do?” the driver asked.

“I build railroad stations.”

“You’re an engineer?”

“Yes.”

“And you came to Finland to build a station?”

“No, I came here on vacation to visit a friend.”

“That’s good,” the driver said. “Vacations and friends are the two best things in life.”

Did all Finns like to make clever witticisms about life? Or was it just this one driver? Tsukuru hoped it was the latter.

Thirty minutes later, when the taxi pulled up in front of a hotel in downtown Helsinki, Tsukuru wasn’t
sure whether or not he should add a tip. He realized he hadn’t checked this in the guidebook (or anything else about Finland, in fact). He added a little under 10 percent of what the meter said and gave it to the driver. The driver looked pleased and handed him a blank receipt, so it was probably the right decision. Even if it wasn’t, the driver clearly wasn’t upset.

The hotel Sara had chosen for him was an old-fashioned place in the center of the city. A handsome blond bellboy escorted him via an antique elevator to his room on the fourth floor. The furniture was old, the bed substantial, the walls covered with faded wallpaper with a pine needle pattern. There was an old claw-foot tub, and the windows opened vertically. The drapes were thick, with a thin lace curtain over the window. The whole place had a faintly nostalgic odor. Through the window, he could see green tram cars running down the middle of a broad boulevard. Overall, a comfortable, relaxing room. There was no coffee maker or LCD TV, but Tsukuru didn’t mind. He wouldn’t have used them anyway.

“Thank you. This room is fine,” Tsukuru told the bellboy, and handed him two one-euro coins as a tip. The bellboy grinned and softly slipped out of the room like a clever cat.

• • •

By the time he’d showered and changed, it was already evening. Outside, though, it was still bright as noon. A distinct half moon hung above, like a battered piece of pumice stone that had been tossed by someone and gotten stuck in the sky.

He went to the concierge desk in the lobby and got a free city map from the red-haired woman working there. He told her the address of Sara’s travel agency, and the woman marked it in pen on the map. It was less than three blocks from the hotel. He followed the concierge’s advice and bought a pass that was good for the city buses, subway, and streetcars. She told him how to ride these, and gave him a map of the lines. The woman looked to be in her late forties. She had light green eyes, and was very kind. Every time he talked with an older woman, Tsukuru got a natural, calm feeling. This seemed true no matter where in the world he found himself.

He went to a quiet corner of the lobby and used the cell phone he had bought at the airport to call Kuro’s apartment in the city. The phone went to voicemail. A man’s deep voice spoke in Finnish for about twenty seconds and then there was a beep where he could leave a message, but Tsukuru hung up without saying anything. He waited a while and dialed again, with the same result. The voice on the message was probably Kuro’s husband. Tsukuru had no idea what he was saying, of
course, but he got an impression of a straightforward, positive person. The voice of a healthy man who lived a comfortable, relaxed life.

Tsukuru hung up, put the phone back in his pocket, and took a deep breath. He didn’t have a good feeling about this. Kuro might not be in the apartment now. She had a husband and two small children. It was July, and maybe, as Sara had thought, the whole family had decamped on a summer vacation to Majorca.

It was six thirty. The travel agency Sara had told him about was no doubt closed, but it couldn’t hurt to try them. He took the cell phone out again and dialed the office number. Surprisingly, someone was still there.

A woman’s voice answered in Finnish.

“Excuse me, is Olga there?” Tsukuru asked in English.

“I’m Olga,” the woman replied in unaccented English.

Tsukuru introduced himself and explained that Sara had suggested that he call.

“Yes, Mr. Tazaki. Sara told me about you,” Olga said.

Tsukuru explained the situation. How he’d come to see a friend, but when he called her, all he got was a recording in Finnish.

“Are you at your hotel now?”

“I am,” Tsukuru said.

“I’m about to close the office for the day. I can be over there in a half hour. Can we meet in the lobby?”

• • •

Olga was blond and wore tight jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She looked to be in her late twenties. She stood about five foot seven and had a full face with a rosy complexion. She looked liked a girl born to a well-off farming family, raised with a gaggle of garrulous geese. Her hair was pulled back, and a black enamel bag dangled from her shoulder. She had good posture, like a courier with an important package to deliver, and took long strides as she walked into the hotel.

They shook hands and sat down next to each other on a sofa in the middle of the lobby.

Sara had been to Helsinki a number of times, and each time she visited, she had worked with Olga. So Olga was not only a business partner but also, it seemed, a friend.

“I haven’t seen Sara for a while. How is she?” Olga asked.

“She’s fine,” Tsukuru replied. “Work keeps her busy, and she’s always flying off somewhere.”

“When she called me she said you were a close, personal friend.”

Tsukuru smiled.
A close, personal friend
, he repeated to himself.

“I’ll be happy to help in any way I can. Don’t hesitate to ask.” Olga beamed and looked him right in the eye.

“Thank you.” He felt like she was sizing him up, deciding if he was good enough to be Sara’s boyfriend. He hoped that he passed the test.

“If you don’t mind, let me listen to the message,” Olga said.

Tsukuru took out his cell phone and dialed the number for Kuro’s apartment. Olga, meanwhile, took out a memo pad and a thin gold pen from her bag and placed them on her lap. As soon as he heard it ring he handed her the phone. Olga listened to the message, with a serious look on her face, and quickly noted down the requisite information. Then she hung up. She seemed like a smart, capable woman, and Tsukuru could imagine her and Sara getting along well.

“The voice is the woman’s husband, I think,” Olga said. “Last Friday they left their apartment and went to their summer cottage. They won’t be back until the middle of August. He gave the phone number for the cottage.”

“Is it far away?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t say where it is. What we know from the message is just the phone number, and that it’s in Finland. If you call the number, you should be able to find out where it is.”

“If you could do that for me, I’d really appreciate it. But I do have one request,” Tsukuru said. “I don’t want
you to mention my name on the phone. If possible, I’d like to visit her without her knowing that I’m coming.”

Olga seemed curious.

Tsukuru explained. “She’s a really good friend of mine from high school, but I haven’t seen her for a long time. I don’t think she has any idea that I came to see her. I’m hoping to surprise her.”

“A surprise,” she said, opening her hands on her lap palms up. “That sounds like a lot of fun.”

“I hope she’ll agree.”

“Was she your girlfriend?” Olga asked.

Tsukuru shook his head. “No, it wasn’t that kind of relationship. We belonged to the same group of friends. That’s all. But we were very close.”

She inclined her head a bit. “Good friends in high school are hard to come by. I had one good friend in high school. We still see each other often.”

Tsukuru nodded.

“And your friend married a Finnish man and moved here. You haven’t seen her for a long time. Is that correct?”

“I haven’t seen her for sixteen years.”

Olga rubbed her temple with her index finger a couple of times. “I understand. I’ll try to get her address without mentioning your name. I’ll think of a good way. Can you tell me her name?”

Tsukuru wrote down Kuro’s name in her memo pad.

“What’s the name of the town your high school was in?”

“Nagoya,” Tsukuru told her.

Olga took his cell phone again and dialed the number given on the answering machine. The phone rang a few times, and then someone answered. Olga spoke to the person in Finnish, using a friendly tone. She explained something, the other person asked her a question, and again she gave a concise explanation. She said the name Eri several times. After a few rounds of this, the other person seemed convinced. Olga picked up her ballpoint pen and noted something down. She politely thanked the person and hung up.

“It worked,” she said.

“I’m glad.”

“Their last name is Haatainen. The husband’s first name is Edvard. He’s spending the summer at their lakeside cottage outside a town called Hämeenlinna, northwest of Helsinki. Eri and the children are with him, of course.”

“How did you find that out without mentioning my name?”

Olga smiled impishly. “I told a tiny lie. I pretended to be a FedEx delivery person. I said I had a package addressed to Eri from Nagoya, Japan, and asked him where I should forward it. Her husband answered the
phone and didn’t hesitate to give me the forwarding address. Here it is.”

She passed him a sheet from her memo pad. She stood up, went over to the concierge desk, and got a simple map of southern Finland. She spread the map open and marked the location of Hämeenlinna.

“Here’s where Hämeenlinna is. I’ll look up the address of their summer cottage on Google. The office is closed now, so I’ll print it out tomorrow and give it to you then.”

“How long would it take to get there?”

“Well, it’s about 100 kilometers, so from here by car you should allow about an hour and a half. The highway runs straight there. There are trains, too, but then you’d still need a car to get to their house.”

“I’ll rent a car.”

“In Hämeenlinna there’s a lovely castle by the lakeside, and the house where Sibelius was born. But I imagine you have more important matters. Tomorrow why don’t you come by the office whenever’s convenient for you? We open at nine. There’s a car rental place nearby, and I’ll take care of renting a car for you.”

“You’ve been a big help,” Tsukuru said, thanking her.

“A good friend of Sara’s is a friend of mine,” Olga said, and winked. “I hope you can meet Eri. And that she’ll be surprised.”

“I hope so. That’s really why I came here.”

Olga hesitated for a moment, then said, “I know this is none of my business, but is there something very important that made you come all the way here to see her?”

“Important to me, perhaps. But maybe not to her. I came here to find that out.”

“It sounds kind of complicated.”

“Maybe too complicated for me to explain in English.”

Olga laughed. “Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”

Tsukuru nodded. Coming up with witty sayings about life seemed, after all, to be a trait shared by all Finns. The long winters might have something to do with it. But she was right. This was a problem that had nothing to do with language. Most likely.

She stood up from the sofa, and Tsukuru stood up too and shook her hand.

“Until tomorrow morning, then,” she said. “I imagine you’re jet-lagged, and with the sun staying out so late at night, people who aren’t used to it sometimes have trouble sleeping. It’d be a good idea to ask for a wake-up call.”

“I’ll do that,” Tsukuru said. Olga slung her bag over her shoulder and strode off through the lobby and out the entrance. She didn’t look back.

Tsukuru folded the paper she’d given him, put it in
his wallet, and stuffed the map in his pocket. He left the hotel and wandered around the city.