As White as Snow (5 page)

Jiři stretched his arms and put on his suit jacket. Over his shoulder, he slung his new black backpack, which contained the thinnest laptop on the market, along with more traditional note-taking materials. He had learned that, with some interviewees, a small notebook and a pen created just the atmosphere of credibility and trust he needed. Tapping away at a keyboard put too much distance between him and his subjects. You had to know how to appear genuinely present in just the right way. You couldn’t push or seem too eager.
Knowing how to listen patiently was crucial. You had to ask the right questions and be interested, but not intrusive.

Many of the same rules applied to doing a good interview as to hitting on a woman.

Jiři found himself humming. The tune was from Carly Rae Jepsen’s irritatingly catchy new song.

Maybe at the end of the day he’d go sit at a street café and relax, letting an ice-cold beer spill down his throat while he watched the giggling tourist girls and explored what he could get them to say using different interview techniques. Jiři promised himself he could do that if he made significant progress on his story today.

Rules bring safety. Rules create a home. Rules make a family work. Without rules, we would be adrift, at the mercy of our desires, beings drawn to darkness and chaos.

That is why we need rules. Rules are our guardian angels.

The most important rule is this: The family is sacred. Family business is sacred. Family business belongs to no one outside the family. We do not talk about family business. Silence is our rule. If someone tries to ask about internal family business, we do not answer in any way.

For this we all know: He who breaks this most important rule and sins against the Holy Family shall not go unpunished. We shall silence anyone who talks too much. We shall smother all words that attempt to sully the holy whiteness.

If one speaks, we are all in danger.

The will of the one may never outweigh the will of the family.

Lumikki kept thinking she’d get used to this sight, that it wouldn’t take her breath away every time, but she was wrong. Prague always looked enchanting from above. Of course, everything looks more beautiful from up high, when your gaze has room to scan the landscape far off into the horizon. Lumikki dreamed that someday she could live in an apartment with windows overlooking a city. What city, she couldn’t yet say. During these days in Prague, she had begun increasingly to feel that the city wouldn’t necessarily be in Finland. Central Europe was a much more attractive option. You could smell the history in the streets here in a different way. The pace of life was more relaxed, and it was easier to melt into the crowd and hide.

For Lumikki, Vyšehrad Fort was one of Prague’s most beautiful places. She was kind of glad that Lenka had suggested
meeting here. The hill didn’t draw gaggles of tourists the same way the center of the city or Prague Castle did. There was no traffic noise. It was peaceful, tranquil, and green.

Lumikki sat down on a wooden bench warmed by the sun and filled her lungs and her senses. She closed her eyes. As far as she was concerned, time could stop right now. She could just be here, in the middle of this summer, not wanting to go anywhere or yearning for anyone, as long as she kept her thoughts in check. The hours could glide past. The day could turn to afternoon and the afternoon could turn to evening. Lumikki could just drift off to sleep and then reawaken to continue gazing at this scenery, which never grew old and always offered new details to find.

Lumikki sensed Lenka’s arrival before the rasping of her feet on the gravel path was even audible. She smelled the same medley of scents as the day before, but now something sharp was mixed in. Sweat? That too, but on days this hot, sweat flowed more readily and was more dilute. It didn’t smell this strong. No, this was something else.

Lenka stank of fear.

She sat down next to Lumikki. Lumikki kept her eyes closed, and for a moment, Lenka said nothing. Lumikki tried to gauge her own feelings. Did she feel like she was sitting next to her sister? Was this person familiar to her on some deeper level? Was it easy and natural to sit silently side by side?

No.

Lenka was frightened and tense. Lumikki was nervous. She knew she couldn’t conclude anything based on that, though. This was only the second time they’d met. And
Lumikki didn’t actually believe she should be able to feel a genetic link. For all intents and purposes, they were two complete strangers.

In Lumikki’s life, there had only ever been one person who felt familiar right away, and she was still amazed that had ever happened.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Lenka began.

Lumikki opened her eyes. For a few long seconds, the sunlight felt too bright.

“Of course I came,” she said.

Lumikki tried so hard to keep out of things that weren’t her business. This was, though. As much as anything could be.

“I should probably tell you about my family now,” Lenka said.

She hesitated with every word, as if saying them was unpleasant or caused her pain. Burning coals in her mouth. Her gaze darted around even more than the day before. Lumikki thought of a skittish rabbit expecting a fox or hunter to lunge for it at any moment. Or scared it would step in a trap. Lumikki imagined a snare biting into the rabbit’s foot and blood dripping on the white of its pelt. She remembered her dream and shivered.

“When my mother died, I learned for the first time that I had other relatives in Prague. Mother never talked about them. I don’t understand why. They are good people.”

Again those words. “Good people.” It sounded somehow strange to Lumikki, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

“How did you find them?” Lumikki asked.

Lenka shook her head and smiled slightly.

“I didn’t. They found me. They came to me the day after the accident and said they would take care of me. That they would take care of everything. And they did. They handled the arrangements for Mother’s funeral and all the paperwork and official things. They contacted our landlord and the tax authorities and all the other places I never would have known to call. I wouldn’t have survived without them. They saved my life.”

Lenka’s expression turned more ethereal. Illuminated from within by a strange light that struck Lumikki as otherworldly. It was clear why Lenka would feel as if she’d been saved after an experience like that. She’d been a couple of years younger than Lumikki was now when her mother died. Lumikki wondered how she would have felt if her own parents had died suddenly when she was fifteen. If people appeared and promised to take care of everything. She would probably have ended up worshiping them too. At least for a while.

“Are they a couple or . . . ?” Lumikki asked. She wasn’t clear how many people Lenka was talking about.

“No, they’re . . .”

Lenka’s sentence trailed off, and Lumikki watched as her expression changed from that bright smile to one of alarm. Lenka looked over Lumikki’s shoulder. Lumikki turned to glance behind her and saw a bearded man with dark glasses and white linen clothing. She didn’t have time to get a closer look because Lenka grabbed her firmly by the shoulder, stood up, and roughly dragged Lumikki away.

“Run!” Lenka hissed in Lumikki’s ear and took off.

Lumikki didn’t wait around to ask questions. She just ran, following Lenka along the cobblestone street toward the
Basilica of St. Peter and St. Paul at the center of the fort. The rounded stones were treacherous underfoot. Lumikki nearly stumbled over and over. When she took a quick glance back, no one seemed to be following them. Lenka ran ahead surprisingly fast, and Lumikki had to struggle to keep up. Lenka ran as if she were used to escaping.

At the church, Lenka finally stopped. Lenka panted heavily. Her eyes shone with panic.

“It must not have been him,” Lenka said. “He would have come after us. Maybe it was someone else. The sunglasses and everything made it hard to tell.”

Lumikki was lost.

“Before our next wind sprint, it would be nice to know what’s going on,” she said.

Lenka wiped the sweat from her brow.

“We’re not in any danger. I just didn’t want him to find out this way. It would be hard for him to understand. But it wasn’t him, so . . .”

Lenka was talking to herself as if Lumikki wasn’t even there, and Lumikki was getting frustrated. Lenka swung between moods so fast it was hard to keep up.

“What are you talking about?” Lumikki demanded loudly to get her attention.

It worked. Lenka straightened up and came back to the present moment.

“I should probably just take you to meet the family. Openness is the best solution. They’ll know what to do.”

Lumikki wasn’t at all sure she liked the sound of Lenka’s words.

The house rose dark and drowsy even in the brightest sunshine of a summer day. It was an old, three-story wooden house with a tower. Actually, it looked a lot like Tuulikki Pietilä’s model Moomin house. Not the simple, cone-shaped building from the Japanese cartoon versions of the Moomin stories or from the Moominworld amusement park. This was more like the rambling, angular model with all the windows and balconies that Lumikki had loved studying as a child when she went to the Moomin Museum at the Tampere City Library.

But where the mysterious passageways and unexpected nooks in the Moomin house excited the imagination, Lenka’s family’s house seemed strangely melancholy. That was probably because of what awful shape it was in: peeling paint, rusted gutters, collapsing balconies, and unwashed windows,
some of which were cracked. The house was so far gone it would have been condemned in Finland. Overgrown ivy crept across the walls, climbing all the way to the roof. The exterior must have been ivory once, but now it was more splotchy gray.

The yard didn’t seem like anyone paid much attention to it either. The grass was short, but it was yellow and dead in places. The only decorative element was the row of white rosebushes along the front walk. And even some of the roses were discolored, their heads hanging down in sorrow. At the back of the yard was a small, strange stone building whose purpose Lumikki couldn’t imagine. It was too narrow to be a toolshed, but didn’t look like an outhouse either.

Nothing about the house or the yard was welcoming. Even less so was the massive, black iron fence that surrounded the property, tall and threatening. The sharp spikes sent a clear message: Don’t even try getting over. The gate was big and heavy and locked.

The house definitely wasn’t in the center of town. Lenka had led Lumikki first by metro, then by bus, and finally, a long way on foot. They were off the beaten path to say the least. There were no residential buildings on the neighboring lots.

Lenka looked at Lumikki hesitantly.

“Do you believe you’re my sister?” she asked.

Lumikki was uncomfortable.

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. “Everything you said sounds possible, and it would explain a lot, but—”

“You can’t come meet the family if you don’t believe,” Lenka said, interrupting Lumikki brusquely.

What the hell was this? Had she brought Lumikki all this way for nothing?