by Philip Teir
Max never knew where he was headed once he started talking, but he thought that this theory, improvised on the spur of the moment, sounded quite plausible.
When the text was later published, his comments had been reduced to three sentences. The journalist had also put words into his mouth. This is what it said:
The sociologist Max Paul, whose specialism is researching sex practices, also believes that we’re experiencing a boom in which many more young people want to get married:
‘Marriage is part of our basic nature, it exists in all cultures. For young people today, marriage is a way of signifying that they’ve become adults, and it’s easy to get married.’
Wivan Winckelmann was still waiting for Max to explain further the reason for the confusion of names in his department. He was just about to say something when he heard someone clearing his throat at the other end of the table. Risto was preparing to sing a drinking song. Risto was a notorious boozer, tall and solidly built, with a circle of grey hair around his head. He could drink ten shots of vodka at one sitting and still show no signs of intoxication. He loved to take control of a room. Max wondered if this was a characteristic of psychiatrists. During the week they were forced to sit in silence and listen, so they became hypersocial when the weekend finally arrived.
The mood at the dinner table gradually grew more intense and boisterous. Everybody was laughing at a long, drawn-out story that Stefan was telling at the other end of the table, but those guests who were seated near Max couldn’t hear anything, which caused Wivan to keep asking the person on her left to repeat what Stefan had said. It was obvious that the story lost much of its impact in the few metres from Stefan’s seat to Wivan’s. The longer the story went on, the more bewildered she looked. Max glanced at Katriina. She was listening to Stefan, but he could see she had that glassy look in her eyes that she often had by this time of the evening. It meant that she wasn’t really paying attention.
When the dinner was over, Katriina went out on the balcony to have a smoke with Tuula. It was still raining. Max went over to a corner of the living room and glanced at his watch. We should be getting home, he thought. As soon as Katriina came back inside, he’d ask her to get her things.
Until then, all he could do was stand in the corner and pretend to be enjoying himself. The other guests were now scattered about the flat, some still sitting at the table while others occupied the sofa.
Max was leafing through a book when Stefan suddenly appeared at his side. They had known each other since the seventies. Stefan had worked as a journalist and travelled a lot, to anti-nuclear power conferences in Japan and Geneva, covering them for Fredsposten and Ny Tid – writing articles that Max had never felt the urge to read – and he’d been involved in protests against NATO and European missiles in the early eighties. But these days he talked mostly about the small islands that he visited in Southeast Asia, places with names like Koh Phangan and Pulau Pinang. Max barely even had a chance to say hello before Stefan launched into a monologue about yoga.
‘It’s more than just yoga, you know, it has to do with a way of looking at life. I mean, I’ve always been involved in moral questions, just like you are, but at the end of the day – ever since I learned to breathe properly – I realised that the journey has to start from within. Don’t you agree?’
Max nodded. ‘Absolutely.’
‘Just let me know if you want to join us and give it a try sometime. I can offer you a simple course in the basics. Free of charge, of course.’
Max promised to think about it, and Stefan looked pleased.
‘I’ll just tell you one thing: flexibility. You have no idea what the human body is capable of with a little training. Even at our age.’
Max didn’t care to be reminded of his age.
‘You mean that you get more agile?’
‘Not only that. You learn to breathe, and your blood circulation improves. You learn to feel every movement in your body. You get more sensual – it’s as simple as that.’
‘Sounds amazing,’ said Max.
‘You’re damn right,’ said Stefan, nodding towards Gun-Maj, who was standing a few metres away. She gave him a wave that Max considered excessively flirtatious. Max wondered how often they had sex. Probably more often than he and …
He left the thought unfinished when he noticed Katriina coming back inside.
She was listening to Wivan, and it looked like they were talking shop, since Katriina kept nodding impatiently, as if the whole discussion was something she wanted to put aside as quickly as possible. Max saw Risto appear, bringing new glasses for both of them, which he promptly filled.
An hour later they were sitting in a taxi, speaking to each other for the first time since the argument they’d had before leaving home.
‘Can you explain to me why we spend any time with those people?’ said Max.
Katriina was staring straight ahead. She was drunk – tonight maybe more than usual – and at first Max wondered whether she’d even heard what he said.
After a moment she told him, ‘Because people spend time with each other, Max. It’s perfectly normal.’
She sounded tired and resigned. Max should have stopped there, but he couldn’t resist. He’d had a whisky with Stefan and was feeling rowdy.
‘Sure, but I’m talking about those specific people. We have nothing in common with them. Okay, maybe with Risto and Tuula, but not all the others … Take Stefan, for example. I swear, if he starts telling me one more time about some fucking peninsula off Borneo, I’m going to strangle him. Do you know what he said to me tonight? That I should start doing yoga so I’d have a better sex life.’
Katriina giggled.
‘For a man who spends his time researching the subject, you’re surprisingly sceptical about everything that has to do with sex,’ she said, putting her hand between his legs.
Max glanced at the cab driver, wondering if he’d noticed. The driver was in his forties. He’s probably been driving in Helsinki long enough to have seen just about everything, thought Max. Then he tried looking at himself and Katriina from the driver’s perspective: yet another unhappy, spoiled, middle-aged couple who hate each other and start bickering the moment they get in the cab.
‘Why do people have such a hard time understanding that my research has nothing to do with sex? I only published one study on it, and that was almost twenty years ago.’
‘A study that set the course for your whole career. You really should be more grateful,’ said Katriina.
‘I’m just saying that this is the last time I’m going to one of these dinner parties,’ he told her, without much conviction. He knew it wasn’t true. In a couple of weeks they’d probably be on their way home in a cab once again, having attended yet another party at the home of some friends.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Suddenly Katriina asked her husband: ‘Do you know if Eva has a boyfriend?’
Max was staring out of the window. ‘How should I know?’
‘It’s just that I’m worried about her.’
Max laughed.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because she said the very same thing about you.’
‘About me?’
‘Yes, she said she was worried about you. “Dad, I think Mum is depressed.” Why do you have to tell her all your troubles? Why does she need to hear about your problems?’
‘I don’t tell her my problems!’
‘So explain to me, why is it that you’re depressed?’
‘Just because I like to phone my children, it doesn’t have to be something pathological. When did you talk to her?’
‘I don’t know. Day before yesterday.’
‘She called you?’
‘Called me? Yes, she did.’
He knew this was going to upset Katriina. Eva never called her. But that wasn’t so strange, since she knew that her mother would phone sooner or later.
They didn’t speak for the rest of the taxi ride. But once
they got home and were brushing their teeth, Max went over to Katriina to explain things further. He hated not being allowed to make his point. She would simply fall silent and go and hide in the bathroom. But she pushed him away.
‘I don’t want to hear it. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.’
For an hour he sat on the living-room sofa in the dark, looking out at the rain. He poured himself a whisky, and then another, and when he’d finished his second drink he got up to fetch his computer from his study and bring it back to the sofa. He opened the Helsingin Sanomat website and looked for the latest comment threads. Max had an overwhelming urge to write some provocative entry, to step beyond the conventions of good taste. At this time of night, there were no moderators censoring what people said. But what should he write?
He opened a discussion, tested a few ideas, wrote a few lines and then erased them. He decided to link to a text that he’d written – if nothing else, it would allow him to find out what people thought about him. He found a thread that had to do with cutbacks in home-help support and decided that would do fine. He chose a different user name than his regular one and wrote: ‘If women started working earlier, this would be beneficial to their families as well as to the Finnish economy in general. The new “ideal housewife fad” is a ticking time-bomb. Here’s an article on the subject by the sociologist Max Paul.’ He entered the link to an article about the biggest demographic groups and refreshed his browser. The article was about the fact that in a few years there would be a hundred working Finns for approximately every sixty-five retirees and children.
There probably weren’t many people awake at this hour. He sat in front of the computer for fifteen minutes, waiting for somebody to write a response, but nothing happened. So he switched off the computer, put his whisky glass in the sink, and went into Eva’s old room to go to bed.
But he couldn’t sleep. He was annoyed because he wanted to talk more but there was no one to listen.
After half an hour he got up, made his way through the dark flat to the living room, and once again turned on his computer. A few comments had come in. A couple of them seemed sensible enough, but Max’s eyes instantly fell on one remark in particular:
‘Hello. Who cares what that sex professor thinks anyway?’
two
AT THREE THIRTY IN THE morning Katriina woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Over the past few years her insomnia had grown worse, and lately she would awaken at this exact time and lie in bed thinking about everything that needed to be done that day and the next, about what might happen in her life during the coming six months, as well as in the lives of her children, and about how she ought to view what had gone on during the year so far. Often – since the early morning hours seemed endless – these chains of free association would cause her to ruminate about her whole life, her parents, her childhood, and how little she actually remembered about it all.
Katriina had enjoyed the evening at Risto and Tuula’s place, even though she wasn’t happy to be seated next to Risto. That must have been his idea. He’d been flirting with her ever since they’d first met, and she was surprised that Tuula never seemed to notice. He deliberately touched her hair every time he stood up or walked past. And the longer the evening went on, the more familiar he became.
But Tuula, as usual, was totally preoccupied with talking about her children. Last night she’d been upset because she had recently found something that she called a ‘hash pipe’ in her youngest son’s backpack.
‘And do you know what the worst thing is? The worst thing is that he lied. He lied right to my face.’
Tuula’s expression had revealed a combination of alarm and fascination, as if she’d already rehearsed this particular revelation earlier in the day, while she was preparing for the dinner. Katriina had listened, trying to insert a few words of advice whenever she could. Tuula’s son was fifteen, so it probably wasn’t a huge shock that he would be experimenting with drugs and tobacco; most teenagers undoubtedly did the same. Katriina herself could recall throwing up all over Kaivopuisto Park in the late seventies.
‘And you know how Risto is. He refuses to take this sort of thing seriously. Says it’s just a phase, and wants us to pretend nothing’s going on. But I beg to differ. One day it’s a hash pipe and the next day it’s heroin needles. Or those designer drugs that all the kids are into right now. I read an article about it … They order them online and take them so they can study for exams.’
Katriina couldn’t remember the whole conversation, since she had focussed most of her attention on her wine glass. She had a feeling that she’d said something along the lines of how they hadn’t been the most angelic of kids either and that her own daughters had probably tried one thing and another when they were in their teens.
‘But you should see his friends, Katriina! You should see them! Their shoes are as big as yachts, they stink from sweat and God knows what else, and all they do is sit in front of their computers or hunched over their phones, giving off that smell of horny teenagers, belching and farting. I mean, do you realise what I have to put up with?’
And Katriina had said that she understood. As parents they were rather like travelling salesmen, telling anecdotes about their children’s lives.
She had decided to go bed as soon as she and Max got home. If there was one thing she detested, it was a long, drawn-out nightmarish argument filled with derogatory accusations. It was just like sex: not worth all the commotion.
Katriina viewed marriage as a form of reciprocal tyranny, like living in a highly functional totalitarian state. There weren’t many options, but as long as you kept to yourself and didn’t challenge the status quo, it worked fine.
Being married to Max was like floating on a raft in a comfortable climate and occasionally going ashore without realising that you had been missing civilisation. In the proper mood he could be wonderful and generous, but over the past few years she’d also learned to appreciate her solitude, a sense of simply drifting aimlessly, without constantly yearning for the sight of a harbour.
Now she lay in bed, listening to Max snoring in Eva’s room. He must be lying on his back, with his mouth open slightly and his head tipped back, exhausted after staying up late in front of his computer, as usual. He thought she didn’t know that he slipped out of bed at night, but she always woke up whenever he left to go into the living room.
Why had they started arguing?
Oh, that’s right. She was hungry. Max had come into the kitchen barely two hours before the dinner party, wearing his work-out clothes. Katriina had glanced at her watch and saw that it was five thirty. Then he’d asked if she’d phoned Eva again, as if she wasn’t allowed to call her own daughter.
‘Are you planning to go out to play tennis now?’ Katriina had asked, wanting to keep the conversation focussed on what was important: the fact that they were about to go out for dinner.
She’d been looking forward to this opportunity to socialise. It had been weeks since she and Max had done anything together. She was already picturing the gin and tonic that Tuula would hand her the minute they went through the door, how Tuula would compliment her on her new dress and shoes, how they would enter the living room and sit down. And how Katriina would report on the plans she had for the new kitchen and how Tuula would nod with interest, maybe recommending a builder they could trust to redo their kitchen. (Tuula’s sense for interior decorating had resulted in their home being showcased in a four-page article in Avotakka.) But, as usual, Max had come home late from his tennis game, since he never thought he needed to make any special effort when it came to his wife’s friends.
Katriina listened for a moment. The rain had stopped. She got up and went into the living room. Edvard, their dog, was asleep on the sofa. She continued on to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
The shelves were crowded with partially open packages of butter, glass jars containing beets and pickles, a few tinned goods. There was some duck paté on a porcelain plate
(when had she made that?), a half-full bottle of sparkling water, a plate of mashed potatoes, little bottles of veal and chicken and chanterelle sauce, several jars of sun dried tomatoes, pesto, mint marmalade, dijon mustard and blackcurrant jam. She couldn’t remember when she’d last cleaned out the fridge.
She took out the duck paté and lifted up the plastic to smell it. Seemed okay. She spread some of the paté on a small piece of bread. Edvard woke up, ran into the room, and immediately leapt on to the table. She put a dab of paté on her finger and offered it to him. He sniffed at the reddish-brown lump for a moment and then devoured it with a light nibble. She thought about what Wivan had told her, that she would have to do a lot of travelling in the spring. Katriina had travelled a great deal over the past ten years, but it was starting to get old. Where she had previously seen excitement, she now saw only logistical problems.
The kitchen had been put in seventeen years ago, customdesigned for their flat. The carpentry work had been done by three Estonian brothers who had recently started up a family business. Max had heard about them from one of his tennis partners. He gave them a call and received an offer that sounded reasonable. Then one day the three men had shown up and started tearing apart the old kitchen without consulting either Max or Katriina about any of the details. It took only a couple of hours for them to demolish the existing kitchen completely, but after that the work proceeded at a much slower pace. The pile of cigarette butts grew on the dust-covered concrete floor until Katriina finally pointed at the butts and told the men they could no longer smoke inside. Apparently the brothers understood what she wanted, because they resorted to standing on the balcony to have a smoke, and consequently the work went on at half the speed.
When the kitchen was finally finished two months later, she was generally quite pleased. It was custom-made and well designed, and the primary material was a lovely, reddish oak, which had a timeless quality to it. The kitchen was impressive without being the least bit ostentatious.
