The Last Season (26 page)

“I have read much about the Great Batterinski,” Jorma says. His voice is soft also, equally deceptive. It does not sing like most of them. He sounds like an Englishman, one of the snotty ones. Behind the voice I look for sarcasm, but cannot be sure.

“We have all today read so very much of the Great Batterinski,” Kristiina says, her sarcasm open, obvious.

“Sit down. Sit down,” I say, suddenly the perfect host. I signal to Thomas to bring over a round of beer.

We sit and Jorma immediately begins to clean his pipe with a large, elaborate jackknife, the blade left exposed and threatening on the table between us. Kristiina catches me staring at it as Thomas sets down the beer.

“Jorma is one of the architects for your new ice hockey stadium,” she says.

“That so? At Tapiola?”

He relaxes visibly, comforted by his work. “We are doing what we can, you see, considering the laws they have there concerning what you cannot build. If they had their way, old man, your centre-ice line would be a bicycle path — very difficult to deal with.”

“When will you have it completed?”

“With no strikes, maybe we shall see progress by this time next year.”

“How many seats?”

“How many seats do you want, old man?” he says, smiling from behind the pipe.

“One.”

Jorma is not sure whether to laugh. “
One?
”

“One.” I nod toward Kristiina. “For her.”

Kristiina blushes. Jorma laughs, pulls his pipe free and reaches on through several inches of sweater wool to drag out a leather tobacco pouch. He unzips it and loads up his pipe, staring back and forth at Kristiina and me as if we are a tennis match.

She serves. “I am not so sure I should want to be there after this.”

I return. “After what?”

“They are talking about you all over Finland. Do you not know that?”

“Good,” I say, turning to Jorma. “Better go for twenty thousand anyway. I'm a draw.”

Kristiina is not finished. “The radio station has started a petition against you.”

“A what? A
petition
against me?”

“Anyone who thinks you are wrong for Finnish hockey is supposed to go down and sign.”

“Let them go ahead. They have no idea what happened.”

“You, you —” she looks at Jorma, ‘
sylki
?'”

“Spit,” he says, smiling.

“Yes, you spit in that poor man's face.”

“He spit first.”

“Must you always be the person to react?”

“What would you have me do, kiss him?”

Jorma is beaming as he follows our rally. I am suddenly aware of what is in this game for him. He will be the true winner. If I go too far he will be leaving with Kristiina even more confidently than he came. I soften my shots.

“It was unfortunate,” I say. “I had no idea anyone would be there with a camera.”

“I thought it was great, old man,” Jorma says, putting away the knife. “It's not every day Finland gets to spit in Sweden's face on the front page.”

Kristiina is not amused, and deliberately changes the subject, talking directly to Jorma. I tune out, staring: she looks so lovely tonight, her teeth white as surf as she speaks.

This Jorma's agreeability does not fool me. I scare him. I have him. I look around. Viisi Pennia is winding down, the smoke snaking about the room as the front doors open and close on red-face, staggering patrons, each door swing silencing the bar a little more.

“I'm sorry?” I say, dipping back into the conversation. There was something there I didn't quite catch.

Jorma stops in mid-sentence, eyebrows flexing, pipe smoking, the talker idling. He pulls out the pipe and stares, questioningly.

“I don't understand what that is,” I say.

“What what is?”

“This Amisty thing.”

Jorma smiles, grateful. “Amnesty International,” he says loudly, as if the word should be as familiar to someone like me as “unsportsmanlike conduct.”

“That's where we were,” Kristiina says, her smile encouraging. “We had a meeting.”

“Well,” I say, a touch belligerently. “What is it?”

“You must have heard of it in Canada, surely,” Jorma says. “It is a world-wide organization to fight repression. Communist. Right wing. You name it, my friend, we fight it. Kristiina and I are both members. I am the national director, I think you would call it in your language.”

I am not listening. I stare at Kristiina, who hides her awkwardness behind a sip of her drink.

“What can
you
do?” I ask sarcastically. “You got guns in the closet or something?”

Jorma thinks this a huge joke and laughs the laugh of those who enjoy through imitation rather than creation. It comes across false.

“We have something much better,” he says, and winks at Kristiina. I clench my fists, wanting to lunge. I wish I were in full uniform and we were sitting in the penalty box, not here. There would be no winking there; a closed eye for Jorma, perhaps, with my blessing; but no winking.

Jorma goes on: “There is an English saying we use here, as well. ‘The pen is mightier than the sword.' We write letters, you see. We have no use for guns, believe me. They solve nothing, obviously, otherwise there would be no need for us. We write reasonable, persuasive letters.”

“Who to?”

“To whom?” he repeats, deliberately stretching the “m.” I want to kill him. “We write to the leaders of the countries like Pakistan and Guatemala, places where people are being tortured, where they are being detained in prison without charges, convicted of crimes without trials, where they are, in many cases, being executed at the whim of the ruling party. We fight against all of this everywhere.”

He leans back, deliberately staring down his nose at me. He thinks I don't understand. The prick.

“Fight?” I say. “In letters?”

“Yes. We apply enough pressure, we hope, to force them to release their political prisoners.”

“Through letters?”

“Yes.”

“You ever write Idi Amin?”

Jorma shrugs, now distinctly uncomfortable. “Yes, I have.”

“Did he write back?”

“Of course not.”

“Did he get your letter?”

“I assume he did.”

“Did he do anything about it?”

Jorma only shakes his head. “We are satisfied if we win even a small percentage. We believe we've caused over a thousand prisoners to be released in the past year, you realize.”

I turn to Kristiina. “And you write too?”

“Yes.”

“Who to?” I ask, emphasizing the lack of “m” for Jorma.

“Different regimes,” she says hesitantly, “all over the world really.”

“A waste of stamps,” I say.

“I'm sorry, really,” Jorma says, lighting up his pipe for support, “but I can't agree with you. Amnesty has a fine record — we won the Nobel Peace Prize, you know. We are simply —”

“Kidding yourselves. You can't change the world.”

Jorma shakes out his match. “We can try.”

“It won't do any good. Writing letters? Come on, man, use your head. You're being laughed at.”

Jorma eyes Kristiina for further support. “We believe we are taken very seriously. I can show you the statistics —”

“I can show you statistics, too, fellow.”

I leave it at that, standing up and walking through the smoke and away from Kristiina's uncertain call. I do not even turn. A hundred-Finnmark bill tossed at the bar, my coat lifted from the rack and I vanish into the night, leaving them to wonder how they can best deal with the island known as Batterinski.

Let them write. Let them see firsthand how useless it is to fool yourself like that. Imagine, believing their idiotic letters mean a fucking thing to someone like Idi Amin or the Russian pigs. The fools.

Outside, during the long walk back to the hotel, I imagine my letter to Tiger Williams:

Dear Tiger,

It was brought to my attention the last time we played that you don't like me. Seven stitches and a fat lip, thanks to your repressive activities. This has got to stop, Tiger. I don't care whether you're right wing or left wing, I'm telling you right now that the Philadelphia Flyers will no longer tolerate this treatment. Putting Batterinski in the slammer solves nothing, surely you can appreciate that. Batterinski is merely expressing his right to play, his freedom to check as his conscience tells him. You're not fooling anyone when you blab in your hometown press that Batterinski sharpens his butt end or kneed you in the face. Search yourself, Tiger. See that there is more to this life than cheap shots.

Someone else will be writing to you in Pig Latin in case plain English isn't your first language.

Yours in hockey,

F. Batterinski

She wants to talk.

How many times have I been through this same idiocy? She wants to talk. Talk, in all the years of Batterinski's experience, has yet to solve a single goddamn thing. Talk I can do without.

But she wants to talk. She says we
have
to talk.

Why can't people just screw until they solve things?

It is Sunday and I am no longer Batterinski, I am Christ, walking on water. We are approaching Helsinki from the sea, walking; fortunately, the harbour has frozen solid. When I breathe in too fast my nostrils solder together and my lungs cringe. I love it.

The walk, that is, not the talk. We met at the market, walked up through the Kaivopuisto hills and down onto the ice off the island fortress, then on toward the harbour. The conversation seems to have raced ahead of us, all sorts of meaningless talk of Tsar Nicholas and hot baths and armed Russians at the city gates, but I have not even bothered to chase it. My mind is caught between leather and wool, aware only of the life in the small mitt I hold in my glove. Kristiina has a ski jacket so white she stands out startlingly even in the new snow. She has her Lapland toque on, reds and yellows like an electrical circuit, and carries a birch sucker with yellow and pink dyed ostrich plumes dancing from the tip, a purchase she forced on me in the market.

The mitten loosens in my hand. It is time, obviously. She pulls it free and pretends to adjust the ostrich plumes, an unnecessary act for the plumes but necessary for her tactic. She steps away just enough.

“I think you did not have any reason to embarrass me in front of one of my friends,” she says at a reasonable level.

“I thought
I
was your friend,” I say unreasonably.

“Jorma was very good about it I thought,” she says. “He behaved admirably where you did not. Why did you just jump up and leave?”

“I had a practice next morning.”

“You could have said good night.”

“I forgot.”

Her mouth curls into a frown. “He is a good friend of mine and I would appreciate you treating him this way. Do you understand?”

“How good a friend?”

“A good friend. Why — are you jealous?” She smiles.

“Should I be?”

“No. You should not be. My friends are
my
choice, not yours.”

“Ever sleep with him?”

She stops, turns. “What?”

“Did you ever sleep with him?”

“Why would you ask something like that?”

“I want to know.”

“It is not for you to know, I think.”

“So — then you have.”

“I did not say that. What if I have, as you say, ‘slept' with him? What difference does that make?”

“A big difference.”

“
What
difference, please?”

If she were only in hockey uniform I would hit. But I am helpless here. Talk — always goddamn
talk
. She should know the difference without having to ask. She should feel the same things as me.

“Please, Bats, what difference would it make?” she laughs, but not with amusement. “You don't own me, you know.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“Well, then, what,
do
you mean? If I cannot have the friends I choose and I cannot make love to whom I choose, what are you doing then but possessing me?”

I feel a turn, in my favour: “That's the point — I want you.”

She laughs: “You have had me.”

“But I want you for myself. Just the two of us.”

“You want to own me.”

“No. I want you to feel the same way I do. Just me for you and just you for me.”

“Isn't that what they call ‘going steady' in your country?” Again, the laugh.

“We're a little old for that,” I say with heavy sarcasm.

“Then you want marriage,” she says.

I say nothing. I cannot say anything.

She picks up on it, giggling. “You
do
want that!”

I feel like I am in a movie, the lines beyond my control. “I care a great deal for you, Kristiina, you know that.”

Laugh. “How much?”

“Lots.”

“Well, how much is lots?”

I am being played with here. I feel almost giddy with finally talking about it. Again, it is like a movie, the two lovers oblivious to the world going on around them. But I am not. The harbour is the reverse of summer: no white sails wedging through the colours, but colours cutting everywhere through the white. Skiers are passing us. A young family has a youngster on a toboggan, the rope around his waist and the second rope trailing from the toboggan to a ribbed sled, where a baby sleeps.

“
I love you
!” I shout. I imagine everyone coming to a dead halt, applauding while the young lovers fall into each other's arms, but they merely look at me as if I'm mad and the father of the children says something in Finnish to his wife, making her laugh.

Kristiina is also laughing.

“What's so funny?”