The Hummingbird

by Kati Hiekkapelto

The hospital had quietened. Visiting hours were over, dinner had been served and cleared away; only a handful of nurses were still wandering the corridors. Anna found Jaana Tervola’s room easily. The police officer sitting in front of the door lowered his book, stood up and greeted Anna like a soldier. Then he opened the locks on the door, briefly examined the room and let Anna inside.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ he whispered.

  Anna stepped inside the room. At first glance it looked like any other hospital room: a bed, a drip, dimmed lights that hadn’t been switched off though the patient was asleep, a glass of water on the bedside table.

  On closer inspection, the glass was made of plastic. Instead of a window, there was a rough, grey concrete wall. The bed was made up with the same light-blue sheets and thin blanket as were on Anna’s bed.

  Anna shuddered. Beneath the blanket she could see the arm on to which the drip and needle were taped. Some form of healing substance dripped in a steady stream from a bag hanging next to the bed and straight into the patient’s vein. The hand moved. The blanket was drawn further up. The orange orchid glowed in the dim light of the room. A green-and-black hummingbird, shiny and metallic, was sucking nectar from inside the flower with its long tongue.

  ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  Anna was startled. The voice came from beneath the blanket. It didn’t sound weak at all.

  Anna didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s not the same as the other one, in case you’re wondering. Come closer and take a look. Do you see? The colours are different. And my hummingbird has a much greedier expression; it’s digging its beak deeper into the flower.’

  Anna stood stock still. The woman sat up from beneath the blanket. Her eyes fixed themselves on Anna.

  ‘Frightened again? I told you, there’s nothing to be afraid of now that the hummingbird is in its cage. You’re quite the coward, aren’t you? But no matter, be like that. Do you want to know why I got this tattoo?’

  Still Anna said nothing. Something warned her against speaking, though the woman seemed to be feeding her little questions like pieces of bait.

  ‘I’d been watching that whore, Riikka. I followed her when she went out running, trying to slim that fat arse of hers. I saw the little thief move in with the hippie girl. And that’s when they started plotting to take everything away from me.’

  The woman heaved herself up, her posture now much straighter, and pushed her forearm out from beneath the blanket.

  ‘I first saw the tattoo when I was looking out of Kerttu’s window with the binoculars. The tattoo struck me, started whispering to me. It was the binoculars that gave me away, wasn’t it? It was the only mistake I made, leaving them out on the windowsill. Pretty good though, don’t you think? Only one tiny little mistake in an otherwise perfect plan.’

  But that was enough for us, thought Anna.

  ‘I saw the way those little sluts sat around giggling, knocking back sparkling wine and flirting with passers-by as though life were nothing but a breeze. It was maddening. For a while I followed one of them, the hippie girl with the tattoo. I approached her and talked to her, as if in passing; she was at a nightclub showing off her arm and offering her backside to anyone who’d look. She was so damn arrogant. And drunk. Telling people every detail – the trip to Mexico, her final exams, the story of her tattoo, how painful it had been, how much it had cost. People are so unbelievably stupid.’

  The woman was staring at Anna with ice-cold eyes. Her face was hard and expressionless, but Anna was sure she could discern behind them a sense of concealed pain. Esko must have hit her hard. Good, thought Anna.

  ‘The stupid hippie brat didn’t even realise that she was giving me everything I needed. Take it, take it, there’s your revenge! The deity Huitzilopochtli, right here on my arm. Be my guest, take his power, use it, become him, exact your revenge. The hummingbird spoke to me in that nightclub, its voice was clear and bright, but I’ll never tell anyone what it said to me. Its voice echoed in my ears; it grew and grew until it was shouting. And so I became the one with the hummingbird in her left hand. I became the Hummingbird! And no one takes anything from the Hummingbird without permission. Nobody. And still, everything was taken away from me. He was taken away from me. He abandoned me, but the Hummingbird will not be abandoned without exacting punishment!’

  ‘But you are Jaana,’ whispered Anna.

  The woman’s face contorted with rage. She tried to struggle up into a sitting position, but couldn’t, and her tattooed arm was thrashing so much that she knocked over the stand with the drip. She was kicking her legs so wildly that the bed began to rattle and shake from side to side. Anna noticed that one of Jaana’s arms was handcuffed to the bed frame. The woman started shrieking, curses raining down on Anna. The policeman on guard at the door and three nurses rushed into the room, and together they held the flailing woman down on the bed. Once they had secured her, one of the nurses injected some form of sedative into her arm. Jaana Tervola’s body went limp and she fell silent.

  Anna crept back to her own room in shock. She wrapped herself in the hospital blanket, which couldn’t quite keep out the cold, and stared for a long time at the flaking, cracked surface of the ceiling. The night nurse came and asked if she wanted to talk. Anna shook her head. Everything’s fine, she said. Then she shook one of the tablets from the bottle of pills into her hand, placed it on her tongue, took a sip of water and waited for sleep to consume her.

  41

  ANNA SWITCHED ON her computer. She had only just been discharged from hospital. The doctor had given her an initial two weeks of sick leave, with the option of extending it if necessary. Not because Anna had been seriously injured or was deemed otherwise physically incapable of working, but to give her time to recover from her traumatic encounter with the Hummingbird. Anna had also finally mentioned the insomnia she’d been experiencing all autumn. The doctor’s brow had furrowed with Hippocratic concern.

  Life can be so strange, she thought as she booked plane tickets for Ákos and herself. A flight to Budapest, then two hundred kilometres along the motorway in a rented car. Then across the EU border and they would all be there together once again.

  Home.

  From their front door in Koivuharju to the front door in Magyarkanizsa, complete with connecting flights, the journey would take less than seven hours.

  It was so close.

  And yet so far away.

  Outside it was dark. Grey slivers of sleet slapped against the window. The first pathetic attempt at snow so far. Would they have a decent winter at all this year?

  Jaana Tervola had recovered sufficiently and had already been interviewed. The home-helper had had a brief affair with Veli-Matti Helmerson back in the spring. They had met one another at Kerttu Viitala’s house. Veli-Matti had been standing in for his wife, who had come down with a particularly vicious bout of flu, and he had taken care of his mother-in-law for a few weeks. For Jaana it had been love at first sight, but it was unclear quite how serious Veli-Matti had been about their fling. Anna suspected that the relationship might have been largely the product of Jaana’s disturbed mind. In any case, he had met his former student, who in the intervening years had grown into a young woman, on the running track at Selkämaa – the same place where, according to Jaana, she and Veli-Matti had often met up with one another. Eventually Veli-Matti had abruptly ended the relationship with Jaana by text message.

  She had planned her revenge at her vantage point in Selkämaa and at Häyrysenniemi, sitting on the old garden chair with her binoculars. During a search of her apartment, they had found sets of keys to the Helmersons’ house and for Mrs Viitala’s house and car. Jaana had revealed that she went in and out of the Helmersons’ house as and when she pleased and had driven the old woman’s car hundreds of kilometres – without anyone noticing a thing. People can be so gullible and stupid, she had laughed.

  Ville Pollari had had nothing whatsoever to do with Jaana, Riikka or Veli-Matti. The killings had
to be made to seem like the work of a crazed serial killer, Jaana had explained. What does that make you then, Anna had wondered. Many things were still unclear. Jaana Tervola refused to answer certain questions and sometimes spoke such gibberish that it was hard to get an overall picture of events. But there was no doubt that they would establish the remaining details in time – as much as was necessary, that is. The initial case report would be long and difficult to compile – her first report as a criminal investigator.

  Anna’s private email account flashed as a new message arrived.

  Finally, she thought and began reading the dreamlike story of a real-life nightmare that appeared on her computer screen.

  If I hadn’t made the call that night they would’ve killed me for sure. There was death in the air, wallahi; it wasn’t far off. Or they might’ve sent me to Turkey or somewhere and married me off to the first guy who’d take me. And believe me, there would’ve been plenty of takers! Some lucky old git would have bagged himself a young sex slave that it would’ve been his duty to treat badly for ever. That would’ve been death too – a life sentence.

  When the cops turned up at our place (I gave the home address because I wasn’t even sure where I was), Dad said straight off he was gonna kill Adan. I could hear my sister screaming with terror in the background. Dad’s voice was so cold. He said if I didn’t take back what I’d said to the Emergency Services and come up with some kind of explanation, like it was a dream or something, then nobody would ever see Adan again.

  The idea of taking revenge only came later, before the interviews. Dad was really nervous that the cops wouldn’t swallow any far-fetched stories about it all being a bad dream once they started interviewing us all. That’s when he decided to say the call was just an angry young girl’s attempt to get back at her strict parents. It must have sounded pretty convincing, I’m sure. And, in a way, it was true.

  I couldn’t put Adan in danger. I had to lie.

  I made the T-shirt during an art lesson the day before the interviews. My teacher said it was great, that sometimes she’d wanted to shout for help when she was younger. In any other situation it would have felt encouraging or something. I’ve always been irritated by teachers banging on, ‘I so understand you’, and all that. In that situation it just felt absurd. They understand fuck all. They’re just molly-coddled big kids that think a detention is an effective punishment, because they would’ve died of shame if they’d ever been given one.

  Juse thought my T-shirt was great, but he didn’t think it would work. He was shitting himself that my folks would find out and kill me – and Adan. He wasn’t worried for himself, said they wouldn’t dare touch a Finnish kid. I wouldn’t be so sure about that.

  Not all Kurdish girls live like this. I know a Kurdish fitness model. She’s always working out and showing off her body, parading around Europe in a tiny bikini, and her family is really proud of her. Not all Muslims live like this either. Believe it or not, most of us are a totally normal bunch. And don’t forget that some Christians are brought up just as strictly as we are; think of the South Sudanese. And Finland has a huge problem with domestic violence, which of course Finns don’t think is comparable to our situation. Finnish people’s behaviour is ‘only’ because of the booze, and anything that’s caused by the booze is almost wholly acceptable or at least justifiable. That’s what people will tell you.

  I don’t know what causes these things. I know loads of Muslim girls in Rajapuro that wear make-up and go out shopping and openly hang out with their Finnish friends – even with boys. Their families might not particularly like it, but at least they give them the freedom to do as they wish. It’s well cool. If I ever have children, I want them to be free. And now I’m going to be free too.

  Just like that Nasima Razmyar, Immigrant of the Year. OMG, you should have seen her doing the rumba on Strictly! Dad yanked the plug out of the wall and started shouting so much that his chest was bulging, saying that’s the last time we’ll ever watch that whore in his house. He didn’t get it, didn’t understand that that’s exactly why she took part in the show in the first place: to show people stuck in their ways (like my stupid family) and their children that anything is possible.

  They threw a right party once the investigation was called off, and started setting me up with Plan B, a guy somewhere in Germany, older and even more revolting than the first. That would make sure I didn’t get any ideas and would put an end to my sinful life, and, more importantly, the family’s tattered honour would be saved. They thought they could carry on just as before.

  It was great when you started following me and keeping an eye on us in the yard. Dad was livid. Literally, so angry that you wouldn’t believe it. They couldn’t take me out of school after all. They couldn’t lock me at home. They couldn’t send me to Germany, let alone kill me. That’s where Plan C came in, and they had no control over that plan. It was so cool.

  I feel sick with worry every time I think about you creeping around the documentation division at the police station in the middle of the night. It’s terrifying. Imagine if someone had walked in and seen you putting together that passport. They’d have banged you up or something. And you’d have been kicked out of the police, for sure.

  Still, it makes me laugh. It’s incredible, just like in the movies. You’re so cool – I can hardly believe it. I hope you don’t get into trouble because of me. Or Esko. Give the old drunk a nudge from me and tickle him every time he comes out with any of his racist crap. I still can’t believe he hid me at his place until everything was sorted. Amazing. And that’s the other miracle – that things actually did get sorted. You made me the Angel of Rajapuro, who wasn’t stoned to death in the end, but who flew away on wings of her own.

  The new name is going to take some getting used to. I keep starting to say Bih… But I’ll learn.

  High school is great; they enrolled me as soon as I arrived. I’ve already made a couple of friends; we eat together and sometimes go to the movies in the evenings. The hostel is okay too. At the moment there are eight girls here from all over the world. I share a room with a girl from Syria, whose older brother was the only one in the family to defend her; he arranged for her to be sent here when the situation at home started to resemble mine. Imagine, her older brother! The most important member of the family after the father. How come he wasn’t involved in it all? It makes me think that all this will change one day. There is hope. It’s crazy that you even knew an international safe house like this existed!

  So everything’s finally going well, but I’m still really worried about Adan. The thought of her being taken into foster care feels awful, but at least now I know she’s safe. It’s hard for me that we can’t keep in touch. I hope she’s been placed with a nice family. Thanks for forwarding her my message. Otherwise she’d be frightened all the time; she’d think I was really dead. But I’ll see her again. At the very latest when she turns 18 and can travel out here by herself.

  As for my fucking arsehole of a family. It serves them right that they think they’re still being investigated for my disappearance. Now it’s their turn to sit at home shitting themselves, wondering what’s going to happen next – just like yours truly did for years. It’s not like they can be convicted of anything, because there’s nothing to link them to my disappearance. I know it sounds cruel, but I don’t pity them in the least.

  Maybe Mehvan. But just a bit.

  Love B.

  P.S. Juse is applying for school exchange next year. Guess where?

  After reading everything carefully, Anna deleted the message and removed it from her email trash folder. Then she destroyed the email account altogether; it had been created for one reason only. Now nothing could link her to Bihar or her disappearance. Finally Anna switched off her computer. She expected to feel a sense of relief, but there was none.

  From her wallet she took out the business card that she had been turning in her fingers every now and then for some time now.

  Pink
Ink. Professional Tattooing and Piercing. Because You’re Unique.

  She thought of that striking face, covered in tattoos, the arms and fingers decorated with ink patterns.

  Then she dialled the number on the card.

  THANK YOU

  Thank you to Aino, Ilona and Robert for the love, the creativity, the light that shines from each and every one of you.

  Thank you to everyone at Otava, particularly Aleksi. Thank you to Jaakko, Maija and Jani for advice regarding police procedure, to Satu for tips on forensic science and to Sari for correcting a few medical details. As you can see, details aside, imagination still won the day.

  Thank you to my mother for reading to me indefatigably when I was a child. Without you this would never have happened.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KATI HIEKKAPELTO is a special needs teacher by training. She lives on an old farm on the island of Hailuoto in Northern Finland with her children and sizeable menagerie. Hiekkapelto has taught immigrants and lived in the Hungarian region of Serbia. This is her first novel. The sequel, The Defenceless, will be published in 2015 by Arcadia Books.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  DAVID HACKSTON is a British translator of Finnish and Swedish literature and drama. He graduated from University College London in 1999 with a degree in Scandinavian Studies and now lives in Helsinki where he works as a freelance translator. In 2007 he was awarded the Finnish State Prize for Translation.

  Copyright

  Arcadia Books Ltd 139

  Highlever Road

  London W10 6PH

  www.arcadiabooks.co.uk

  First published in the United Kingdom by Arcadia Books 2014