The Healer (10 page)

“What did you used to do?”

“I was a poet.”

Jaatinen was quiet for a moment. It was comical how the reaction to this simple statement never changed even when the whole world was changing around me. Next he would ask the names of my books and then he would tell me he'd never read them, or heard of them.

“What have you published?” he said.

“
The Most Beautiful Words on Your Lips
was my first collection. Then
A Wind All Winter
, and the last one was
Don't Forget to Remember
.”

“I don't think I've ever…”

“No need to apologize,” I said, smiling. “No one else has, either. I managed to publish three collections before all this started. They sold about two hundred copies each, including library sales. They disappeared a long time ago.”

We both watched as an elderly man in a long gray coat tried to help a woman with a scarf on her head cross the street in short, uncertain steps before the light changed. The curb was too high for her, and the man didn't have the strength to lift her onto the sidewalk. Somehow they leaned on each other and, one step at a time, hauled each other over it. A bus rushed by with its horn blaring, its side mirror missing the old man's head by mere centimeters.

“My daughter's in Norway,” Jaatinen said, taking me by surprise. “She's been there four years now, ever since Irina, her mother—my wife—died. A drug runner ran her down with his SUV as she was riding her bike to work.”

I glanced at him. He was still watching the old couple.

“The driver got a year and a half probation. I got single parenthood. Which didn't go well, of course, since I'm always at work. I have to be at work—school and day care cost so much. When my daughter's godparents suggested that she come stay with them in Norway, I said yes. I don't know if that was the right thing to do. And I don't know what else I could do. As long as I keep earning, we can afford for her to live there.”

Hotels loomed on the right, the flags in their courtyards fluttering in the morning wind. They were full. Who would have guessed that Finland would benefit from people losing their homes in the south?

I didn't know what to say to Jaatinen. It didn't matter, since he continued his story without waiting for me to comment.

“To send her to Norway, I had to sell my little house in Korso. I was lucky I managed to sell it at all. Several young families bought it, some kind of shared living arrangement, for safety. They bought it for half of what I paid for it, but for some reason the debt I had left didn't trouble me.”

“Where do you live now?” I asked, for something to say.

“In Pasila.”

“You must have a short commute to work, then.”

“From the basement to the fourth floor.”

He smiled again, but his eyes weren't along for the smile.

We passed Parliament House, which was surrounded by security barriers with twenty-four-hour floodlights on top. Their light looked feverish in the metallic gray of the morning.

“I meant what I said before,” Jaatinen said.

“What was that?” I asked.

“That I keep trying because I'm a cop. I'm not one of these unemployed cops working as a security guard, playing soldier. That's why I didn't answer right away when you asked about those guards with the “A” logo at the Sports Hall. It's a new security company, as you probably guessed. The fastest growing one. Aggressive. Feared, in fact.”

He switched on his turn signal and changed lanes.

“These security companies are all the same, if you ask me. Most of the guards aren't cut out for protecting the public and keeping order. More cut out for something entirely the opposite, in fact. We know of one security company that actually robs people and businesses instead of protecting them.”

Jaatinen dropped me off at the corner by the Forum. I got out of the car, and he eased back into traffic—with his signal on, of course. I dug my phone out of my pocket, looked at the photos I'd taken, clipped an image of the “A” logo and did an image search on it.

The company was called A-Secure. There was no specific information on it, no street address. The phone numbers online didn't return any names when I searched for them. I looked at the logo again but still didn't know what it was I expected it to tell me.

I crossed the street and headed toward Urho Kekkosen katu, for something to do.

 

13

“Do you think we'll ever move again?” Johanna asked one night two or three weeks ago just as she was about to fall asleep.

I put down the book I was reading. Johanna pressed against me, the blanket rustling, and laid her head partly on the pillow, partly against my neck. The soft light of the reading lamp shone on the golden yellow of her skin. At a glance, her delicate arm lying across my stomach on the black-and-white blanket resembled a doll's.

“Why do you ask that?”

“I was just thinking,” she said, and I could almost feel her lips against my neck as she spoke.

“Would you like to move?” I asked.

“I guess not.”

“What about just for pretend?”

“Maybe just for pretend.”

“Where would you move to, just for pretend?”

“That's the thing,” she said, raising her head from the pillow and wrapping herself halfway around me. “There's no place I'd like to move to, except for pretend.”

She braced herself on an elbow.

“I've been going around Helsinki the past few days working on this story. I went to a lot of places I haven't seen for a long time, and I kept getting a really sad, wistful feeling.”

“A lot of places have changed quite a bit the past few years. Even right around here.”

“I guess so,” she said. “But when you see places where you used to live and you remember what they used to be like and all the things you did there and all the people you knew … friends, family, people like that.”

Thinking about this conversation later, I knew, of course, that I should have asked her where she had gone, why she went there, what she found there. But it was an ordinary evening and we were just lying in bed talking like we always did, like we always would.

“It also made me wonder,” she said, “whether people could have done something else, something more. Done things differently. But at the same time I know that they couldn't.”

Everything she said that night had an insidious underlying meaning now: Pasi Tarkiainen. He was the snake that slipped into my thoughts through the smallest opening and poisoned all my memories. I shook him forcefully from my mind and saw Johanna before me again.

She raised her head and looked into my eyes from so close that it was difficult to clearly see the flecks of color in her irises, her hard, black pupils, or the expression behind their moist surface.

“On the one hand, we've got so much,” she said. “But at the same time, so much is already lost.”

I took her hand. She answered with a gentle squeeze.

“If I understand you correctly, we're not moving.”

A dark shadow crossed her gaze quick as lightning, then vanished. She smiled.

“Let's not,” she said quietly.

She heaved herself up, putting her hand on the pillow beside my ear and bending over to kiss me with warm, soft lips.

“Let's not,” she said again.

*   *   *

A
PIT HAD APPEARED
at the intersection of Urho Kekkosen katu and Fredrikinkatu. Some men were crowded around it, and an excavator stood with its shovel raised on one side of it. Trucks from the electricity and water departments were lined up in front of the pit facing Fredrikinkatu as if waiting to drive into it. Traffic was driving up over the curb to get around it.

I stood on the corner, pulled my scarf tighter around my neck, zipped my parka all the way up, readjusted my stocking cap, and carefully pushed the cuffs of my gloves into the ends of my sleeves. When one of the workers from the water department, a red-faced man in winter coveralls, walked by me, I asked him what had happened. As you can see, he said, there's been a cave-in. I couldn't get any more information out of him, but then there was no reason I should.

I walked around the intersection and looked first at Temppeliaukio Church, then at Malminkatu, Fredrikinkatu, Urho Kekkosen katu, and then at the church again. Now and then I looked at the pit in the middle of the intersection. Since there was nothing in any direction to see but the pit, and since the wind seemed to be growing teeth, I gave up and headed toward Töölö, to Ahti and Elina's house.

When is it time to admit that you don't know someone as well as you thought you did a moment before?

I tried to gather the facts in my mind as neutrally as I could, to filter truth from imagination. I tried to separate my worst fears from what I could see with my own eyes to be true. It wasn't easy, but it was for the woman I love. No matter how I tried, I couldn't remember Johanna ever mentioning anything about Tarkiainen or ever saying a word about the house in Kivinokka. But then I couldn't think of a reason why she would, either. She had no reason to. Who could have predicted that Tarkiainen's and Johanna's paths would cross again?

I crossed the bridge between Eteläisen and Pohjoisen Rautatiekatu and looked down. Cars driven under the bridge and abandoned there now formed a row of small dwellings. The narrow passage under the bridge had been growing into its own neighborhood for several years. I could see smoke and steam rising, and smell grilling meat, gasoline—and moonshine, of course. The shouts of children could be heard here and there, playing a game, or shouting for other reasons.

I looked at my watch. It was almost ten. The minutes and hours seemed to pass more quickly as time went by. I reached Arkadiankatu, took out my telephone, and tried to call Johanna, with the same results as before. How many times would I try to call her? How many times would I listen to the toneless recorded voice of the woman telling me again and again what I knew only too well? I didn't know. Maybe events had to be repeated until the repetition produced results, or until it was useless to try.

A tram full of people coming from downtown rattled past a couple of meters from me. The passengers standing near the door had their coats pressed up against the windows. Countless people on their way to work, on an ordinary day, getting on with their lives. The tram thudded to a stop and I continued walking, the cold wind, the smell of burned meat, and the angry stench of ethanol elbowing me in the back as I went.

I arrived at Ahti and Elina's building, pressed the buzzer, and waited a moment. The camera moved under its hood like an insect's antenna as it made its little circuit of the entrance. When it had assured itself that I wasn't a threat, it stopped, the lock on the door opened, and I went inside. Although the elevator was waiting in the lobby, I took the stairs. My footsteps on the stone staircase rang like drumbeats in the quiet building.

The smell of a sickroom hit me as soon as I walked into the apartment. Elina's face was small and pale in the electric light of the entryway. She nodded in greeting, turned, and walked into the living room. I pulled the door closed behind me, took off my coat and shoes, and followed her, pausing at the door to the bedroom to hear Ahti's snores and see his feet under the covers at the foot of the bed. I was about to take a step into the room but decided against it.

Elina sat on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, her long hair lying all in a clump on her left shoulder. Once again the soft light gave the room a feeling that it had been forcibly frozen in time, an overly homey feeling. That was what bothered me about it. It felt like a fantasy, an attempt to return to the past.

I sat down in an imposing armchair that was covered in rough black fabric. It instantly warmed and relaxed my tired frame. I became aware of how exhausted and hungry I was, and of how little I felt like eating anything or making myself comfortable.

“Luckily he's sleeping again,” Elina said. “Since he's not really awake when he's awake. He was so mixed up when he was talking just a while ago that it scared me.”

“I'm sorry Ahti's sick. I'm sorry your trip's been delayed.”

Elina gave a yelping laugh, but there was no joy in it. She took a breath, exhaled quickly, and lifted her left hand to her forehead, like she'd just remembered something.

“I'm sorry. I'm a little tired,” she said. “Tired of everything.”

“That's all right,” I said. “It's just a temporary setback. We'll think of something.”

Elina didn't say anything but glanced toward the bedroom and looked for a moment like she was listening very carefully to something that my ears, at least, couldn't hear.

“Elina, we have to talk,” I said.

She looked at me again, her gaze sharper, colder.

“About Pasi Tarkiainen?”

I nodded. About Pasi Tarkiainen.

“What does he have to do with anything?” Elina asked. “With finding Johanna or anything else? It was all years ago, fifteen years or so. What does it matter?”

“I have a theory that Tarkiainen does have something to do with it.”

She stroked her hair with one hand and tugged at the hem of her sweater with the other.

“Johanna and Pasi lived together in Kivinokka, didn't they?” I asked.

Elina nodded—not right away, but she nodded nevertheless.

“I find it hard to believe that digging up the past will help you find Johanna,” Elina said. “But go ahead. Do what you like.”

She sighed and tucked her feet tighter beneath her.

“We lived a different kind of life then,” she said. “We were young and naive. Students. We did everything together. Some things we shouldn't have done.”

“Like what?”

“Like things Pasi thought of.” Elina glanced at me, saw the expression on my face, and laughed again. This laugh was noticeably more genuine than the previous one. “It's not what you're thinking. Pasi Tarkiainen was a radical environmentalist back then. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.”