The Winter War

by Philip Teir

  ‘Yes. There was a time when Helsinki University, and especially the humanities departments, had a reputation for being very … sexy. Today it’s journalism and the various media that are hot. Seems as though everybody wants to be a TV news presenter. But you need to remember that Finland is a young nation. The seventies were highly political, and then in the late eighties everything was totally apolitical. After that, a middle ground was reached – a combination of what was new and superficial with what was old and intellectual. Including a place for philosophy. Maybe it was partially due to the growth of the middle class. People gathered in front of the TV to watch programmes about philosophical topics because they had the educational background to understand what was being discussed.’

  Laura continued to take notes.

  ‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘But you don’t think this is true any more? Is the field of sociology no longer sexy?’

  Max hoped it still was. Above all, he hoped that he was still sexy.

  ‘In a matter of only a few years people have adopted a different attitude towards a university education. Partly because there’s no longer the same guarantee that a degree will lead to a job. Other qualifications are required these days, like work experience. The other reason is that the whole university system has been restructured. Nowadays, the goal is to churn out graduates faster and faster.’

  Out of the corner of his eye Max saw Kantokorpi get up and head for the loo. He decided to follow. He needed to take a break.

  ‘Excuse me, but would you mind waiting a bit? I just need to …’

  ‘Of course.’

  He walked past the maître d’ and went into the small men’s room beyond the cloakroom. Kantokorpi was standing at the urinal and Max went over to stand next to him. As he washed his hands, Max pretended suddenly to recognise the professor.

  ‘Hey, I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Max! Long time, no see!’

  They shook each other’s hands, which were both still a bit damp. The Kosmos was an old restaurant, and there was something very fitting about two middle-aged men running into each other in the men’s room. Max had a feeling that he needed to explain his presence, even though Kantokorpi hadn’t even noticed that he was sitting at a table with Laura.

  ‘So … What are you doing in Helsinki?’ asked Max.

  Pekka shrugged.

  ‘Oh, nothing special. I’m just in town for a few days. Having lunch with an old colleague of mine. Maybe you know her … What about you?’

  ‘No, you know, nothing much. I’m just here doing an interview for Helsingin Sanomat. I’m about to turn sixty, you know. Yeah, it’s awful, isn’t it? But what can you do? Everybody gets old, right?’

  ‘Uh-huh. No way to get around it. But let me at least wish you happy birthday. Shall we?’

  The professor opened the door for Max, and they said goodbye before going back to their respective tables. As Max sat down, he noticed that Kantokorpi glanced in his direction and then at Laura. Then he signalled a ‘thumbs up’, which made Max instantly lower his gaze.

  ‘So. Where were we?’

  They talked for an hour, and Max finally managed to get the ball rolling. Laura took few notes, focussing instead on running her fingertip along the rim of her wine glass – in a devastatingly sexy way – and laughing whenever Max said something amusing.

  Speaking about his career in grand narrative arcs always came easily to Max. He made use of anecdotes that he’d told many times before to considerably larger audiences. At the same time, he couldn’t help thinking how easy this was, perhaps a little too easy. As if a person’s life could be defined by these big, vital themes. As if an individual reached certain points in his life when everything seemed to culminate, when decisive events occurred. But really, Max had always thought that such constructs were formulated by people after the fact. In reality, life consisted of a series of disparate embarrassments and episodic intervals that didn’t necessarily add up to a coherent whole. The moments that had the greatest impact on our lives were often those that we never talked about because they had to do with personal failures: divorces, children with whom we’d lost contact, painful misunderstandings. There was less controlled rationality in people’s lives than they outwardly projected.

  Yet Max did understand the merits of a good story. One important criterion for all research was that it had to be possible to explain the basic ideas in a simple manner. A good doctoral dissertation could be comprehensively summarised over lunch. Taking this to extremes: a good researcher should, in principle, be able to speak with such enthusiasm that his words could function as a series of pick-up lines.

  Right now, Max was discussing the atmosphere at the university during the seventies.

  ‘The most rabid Marxists were always citing Hegel, even though they really had no idea what he stood for. There was a lot of hype about Marxist literature, which meant that all other forms of sociology research were shoved to the background – and no one could write an article without first quoting a few fundamental statements from Das Kapital. Anyone who didn’t follow Marxist dictates was branded a bourgeois sociologist,’ he explained.

  Laura then asked him to say more about the intellectual landscape within the field of sociology during those heavily politicised decades. Max thought she seemed like a student trying to get extra credit by delving into things at such a detailed level, but maybe she was actually interested in what he had to say. When the waiter came over to their table to ask if they’d like more wine, Laura offered no objections.

  ‘What happened after that?’ she asked.

  She was looking at him with a different sort of curiosity in her eyes. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Max thought there was something informal and even intimate in her expression.

  He went on: ‘When the Marxist boom gradually subsided in the early eighties – and then the Berlin wall came down – we found ourselves at a crossroads. A number of sociologists turned their attention to manners and customs, or etiquette. In other words: how we use a knife and fork. Those who were younger, who had entered the university in the eighties, started reading Bourdieu and writing papers on “the sociology of fashion”, and things like that.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I suppose I found myself somewhere in between. I got interested in evolutionary psychology, and, well, of course I have nothing against reading Bourdieu. And that’s where we are today. I offer introductory courses in the history of sociology while I try to write my little book about Westermarck.’

  It had been a long time since he’d had the pleasure of talking so much about what interested him.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Laura. Her eyes narrowed, and then she turned to survey the room. For a moment she seemed puzzled, as if she didn’t really know where she was. But then she closed up her notebook and slipped it into her handbag. She got up to go to the ladies’ room.

  ‘Clearly I’m a bit tipsy,’ she said. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  She spent a long time in the loo. When she returned, Max could see that she’d touched up her lipstick. He took that as a compliment.

  ‘So, are we done here?’ he asked.

  ‘I assume so.’

  ‘And you’re positive that the newspaper will reimburse you for the lunch?’ said Max.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  They stood outside in the snow, putting off saying goodbye. Laura didn’t seem to be in any more of a hurry than Max. She wore the same chic black coat she’d had on when he saw her for the first time in the café, and a purple scarf. They watched the people walking past on the street, and Max lit a cigar.

  ‘So where are you headed now?’ he asked.

  ‘I suppose I should be getting back home. I have to write up this interview for Monday. It’ll be published next week. Could you read through it for me?’

  ‘Sure, I’d be happy to. Unless there’s someone else who could do that.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘A boyf
riend, maybe?’

  Laura laughed. ‘Nope. No boyfriend. And even if I did have one, I think I can write my own articles without any help. I meant that you might want to read it to make sure all the facts are correct.’

  ‘Oh, of course. I can do that.’

  She smiled at him. Max took her smile to mean that she didn’t think he was a total idiot. He earnestly wanted to stay right where he was.

  ‘Actually, my wife is organising some kind of party for me, it’ll probably be awfully boring, but apparently I can’t get out of celebrating my birthday. You could come, if you like. I told her that I didn’t want any big production, but if I know my wife, she’s going to invite half the city. So it won’t matter if you don’t know anyone.’

  ‘Maybe. But thanks for inviting me.’

  ‘It would be really nice if you came. Something for me to look forward to. To be perfectly honest, I hate these kinds of social functions. You could offer me some moral support.’

  ‘It’s nice of you to have such faith in me.’

  She gave him another smile. She had beautiful teeth. It was something he’d thought about all during lunch. If they hadn’t been standing outside on the street, he would have leaned down and kissed her.

  ‘Strangely enough, that’s exactly how it feels. Like I have faith in you, I mean.’

  She shrugged. ‘That’s sweet of you. But now I’d really better get going.’

  She held out her hand, and Max took it, at the same time leaning down, as if to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘All right, see you!’ she said, stepping out of reach. He managed to catch the scent of her perfume.

  Then she was gone. For a moment Max didn’t move, hardly aware of the snow falling all around him. Suddenly Pekka Kantokorpi appeared half a metre away, along with the woman who was his lunch companion. Max greeted them with some reluctance.

  ‘So, that was the journalist from Helsingin Sanomat?’ queried Kantokorpi. ‘Nice-looking girl.’

  eight

  EVA COULD HAVE STAYED IN London, saying that she couldn’t afford the expense or take the time to fly home until Christmas (which was true), but then her parents would have started worrying about her finances, and she didn’t want that. So when her mother phoned – Eva could hear Helen’s kids in the background – she promised to book a ticket on Norwegian Air so she could be home for her father’s birthday.

  ‘Only two days? Can’t you stay a little longer?’ said her mother.

  ‘I don’t know, Mum. I’ve got a lot of work to do.’

  ‘Just tell me that you’re happy over there.’

  ‘Yes, I’m happy.’

  ‘Okay, okay. It’s your life. By the way, to change the subject … Don’t worry about getting a present. We’re going to buy him something from all of us. I was thinking of having a party here at home, nothing big, just a few colleagues and you girls, and maybe some of our friends.’

  When Katriina started talking like this, Eva would sometimes put the phone down on the table and pick it up again only when she could hear that the flood of words had stopped. She pictured Katriina lying on the sofa, wearing her reading glasses and paging through some women’s magazine as she talked, with her thoughts leaping from one topic to another. There were seldom any awkward silences in conversations with Katriina, since she just didn’t react to those sorts of signals. It was as if the synapses in her brain were so active that she never registered the more subtle emotional moods.

  Eva pressed the phone to her ear and said that she still might want to buy her father a present.

  ‘Your sister is here, by the way. Do you want to talk to her? Wait a minute and I’ll give her the phone.’

  Before Eva could say a word, Katriina handed the phone to Helen. ‘Hi, Eva.’

  ‘Hi, Helen. How are things?’

  ‘Well, as you can hear, Mum is planning a birthday party for Dad. She thinks that you and I should sing something.’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I told her that we haven’t done that since we were teenagers.’

  When they were younger, the two sisters had always sung at the parties given by their parents. It had been Katriina’s idea, since people were always telling Eva what a great voice she had. Now that they were adults, Eva wasn’t entirely sure that her voice had ever been that great. At least, no one had complimented her singing in a very long time.

  ‘How’s it going in London?’ Helen asked now. ‘Is it exciting to be part of the art world?’

  ‘Uh-huh. And I’m actually really busy. It’s going to take a while for me to get fully acclimatised. What about you guys?’

  ‘Apart from the fact that I’ve been ill all autumn, everything’s fine. Except we had lice. Did you know people still get lice? We never had lice when you and I were kids, did we?’

  ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘Or maybe we did, but Mum and Dad never had time to check. I had to go through three rounds of treatment to get rid of them. But Lukas was lucky. Apparently they didn’t like his hair – too grubby, I guess. It’s impossible to get him to wash his hair.’

  Eva could hear her mother trying to say something in the background.

  ‘Helen, I have to run. I’m on my way to meet a friend. Give Amanda and Lukas a kiss for me. Do you think they’d like me to bring them something from London?’

  ‘I’m sure they would. Do you want to talk to Mum again?’

  ‘I’d rather not. Tell her goodbye, okay?’

  It took a moment for Eva to refocus and remember where she was going. She was standing at a large crossroads near Liverpool Street. It was Saturday, and it was raining. A depressing, grey sky had hovered over London all week. Eva paused at the stairs leading to the Tube as she waited for a large black woman to carry her pram down to the platform. The sweet scent of her perfume blended with the smells of the big city: urine and greasy takeaway.

  A man wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase raced past, nearly knocking over the woman with the pram. When she angrily shouted after him, he just kept on going, down into the tunnel that led to the Tube. Eva and the woman exchanged glances, as if to confirm that the man was a dickhead, and then Eva continued down the stairs.

  It was lunchtime, and the whole city was crowded with Saturday shoppers. London was chaotic and enormous, with both wide and narrow streets criss-crossing each other, new and old buildings jumbled together, business districts and tourist areas and hipster neighbourhoods all mixed up with no rhyme or reason to their location. In a city like Paris, you always knew where every district was situated, since the whole place had been mapped out all at once. London lacked any similar sort of urban planning, and had been allowed to develop organically. Its layout was said to be so complicated that out of necessity cab drivers had developed larger brains.

  The city was filled with galleries. In the beginning, Eva had tried to visit as many as possible, although most of the art she saw was dull and boring. But she liked the architecture of the big museums, especially the Tate Modern, which was huge, as big as an aeroplane hangar.

  During the past few weeks the hot topic of conversation had been the Occupiers living in tents near St Paul’s Cathedral. The anti-capitalism movement had spread to London, and now the area surrounding the cathedral was besieged by tents that had been set up on pallets. Eva sometimes walked past late at night, wondering whether anyone was really asleep inside those tents, or whether the Occupiers just came over in the daytime. Apparently some people did spend the night there, because if she walked very quietly, she could hear movement coming from inside the tents and someone’s radio playing. Or she might see a faint light shining under one of the tarps. In the daytime the area was an odd mixture of grass-roots activists and tourists. Foreigners seemed just as delighted by the demonstrators as they were by the old cathedral.

  Eva was on her way to a chemist’s. She had decided that she could no longer put off taking a pregnancy test. The whole thing was an inconvenience that she would have
preferred to avoid, but this was the situation she found herself in and she would have to deal with it.

  She hadn’t told anyone about it, not her sister, not Natalia. Aside from Malik and Natalia, she was friends with only one other person in London, and that was her classmate Russ. One day when they were working in the studio he’d come over to talk to her. It was hard for her to know what he really wanted to say, since he kept mumbling into his moustache, saying something that sounded like he thought the opinions that she offered during one of the seminars had been ‘valuable’.

  Russ was extremely private about the paintings he did. If she came near his easel, he would always act embarrassed. He spoke quietly, keeping his voice low, but he had a vulnerable and self-deprecating – on the verge of self-annihilating – sense of humour that merely served to underscore his almost slapstick appearance. His moustache, which he kept carefully waxed, was the comical type that you saw in old photographs of workmen, butchers and shoemakers from the late nineteenth century. The only difference was that Russ was dark, with a complexion that revealed his Near Eastern heritage. (Eva soon learned that his family had roots in Algeria.)

  She didn’t tell him anything about Malik. Russ seemed so timid and prudish, and he probably would have been shocked to hear that she was sleeping with their professor. But it didn’t really feel like she was doing anything that was strictly forbidden. When it came down to it, Malik was no more than twelve years older, and she was an adult, after all. Malik was discreet when they were at college. He claimed that he’d get kicked out if their affair became public, and Eva didn’t doubt it – and that gave her a thrilling feeling of power over the whole situation.

  Now she was standing at a crossing in Covent Garden. She tried not to think about it, but if she turned out to be pregnant, she had already decided to have an abortion in Finland. There was no other option.

  The chemist shops in London were big and air-conditioned and brightly lit, following the American example. She asked one of the shop assistants where she could find a pregnancy test and then took from the shelf one in the middle price range. The box was small and yellow and cost two pounds. She had told herself to handle the whole situation with all the composure she could muster. But the package burned in her hand as she went over to the cashier to pay for her purchase.