Helsinki White

by James Thompson

  “Well, the scar removal could be called a procedure as much as a surgery. We can have your knee assessed, and if your tumor removal goes well, it’s possible to do them both in a short time frame. “I’ll make some calls and get back to you,” he said.

  I rang off. Everyone gawked at me, too shocked to question my decision, even Kate.

  Sweetness changed Charlie Parker for Charlie Christian and sat down again. I issued my edicts. Milo was in charge. There would be no robberies, heists, B&Es, or any such activity while I was away. Robberies made enemies, they might cause problems. Milo would commit no acts of violence, because he enjoys them. If violence was necessary, it would fall under Sweetness’s domain, because he doesn’t enjoy it. Also, Milo was famous, Sweetness was unknown. He would be our front man, the face of the team, if we needed one. I suspect Sweetness has sociopath tendencies, doesn’t care if he hurts people or not. Milo got a carrot on a stick. He was to teach Sweetness computer skills. In return, he would slowly get to take more part in the exciting, meaning violent, aspects of the job if they were required. I sensed resentment between Milo and Sweetness. Neither liked the arrangement, but they nodded agreement.

  “That includes your hobby,” I said to Milo. “No B&Es for voyeurism. I don’t want you to get in any kind of trouble.”

  Milo’s hobby is breaking into people’s houses for fun. He doesn’t steal. Just looks around, prowls, goes through their things. He told me he just enjoys seeing how people live, what kinds of secrets they’re hiding. It’s some kind of fetish. His face went red and he glanced over his shoulder to check Kate’s reaction. She pretended as though she heard nothing.

  “You’re not to skim or steal,” I said. “You don’t have to. Both of you get five percent of the take. You’ll continue to get it as long as you don’t flash it around.”

  I told them that while I was out of action and recovering, Milo was to get us outfitted with everything we needed to cut the legs out from under the criminals of Helsinki.

  “Go heavy on surveillance gear,” I said. “We’re not going to war with the criminals of Helsinki, we’re going to steal them broke and put them out of business.”

  “I know what we need,” Milo said. “It’s going to cost a fuckload of money.”

  “Then spend the fuckload of money. We have plenty.” I continued, “I don’t trust the people we work for. Sweetness, I want you to surveil Jyri, the national chief of police, the interior minister, and also the leadership of Kokoomus”—the conservative party to which they belong—“and whatever other politicos you find they associate with. Just spot tail them at random. See what turns up.”

  I had an idea of who was crooked from my conversations with Jyri and bits and pieces of info I picked up during the Filippov investigation. Sweetness isn’t built for surveillance. He stands out from a mile away. “Get a camera with a long telescopic lens,” I said, “and don’t let them see you under any circumstances.”

  Milo said, “I’ll get you a shotgun mike and rig so you can record their conversations.”

  “And, Milo,” I said, “get us about ten safe-deposit boxes in different cities and banks. Kate,” I asked, “would you go with him and co-sign so we have access?”

  She registered surprise, but nodded.

  My phone rang. Jari said, “My office, seven a.m. I’ll escort you to the appropriate places and spend the day with you.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I want to.”

  Milo and Sweetness shook my hand and wished me luck before they left. Sweetness couldn’t help himself and gave me a bear hug, almost choked the life out of me.

  I sat down on the couch next to Kate. “Should I have discussed tomorrow with you before planning the other surgeries?” I asked.

  She put an arm around me. “No. I was thrilled. You wouldn’t have done it unless you believe you’re going to live.”

  Maybe I was addled because of the migraine. We had a newborn in the house. It didn’t occur to me how incredibly unfair to her it was for me to choose to have knee surgery and cripple myself, on top of whatever damage brain surgery might cause. I placed a terrible burden upon her.

  7

  The next days remain blurred wisps of images. It was Monday morning, the eighth of February. Not too cold, just below freezing but windy. I took the tram to Jari’s office downtown, not far from the railway station. Tomorrow’s brain surgery deleted most of the coming days’ memories.

  The gunshot scar on my face was removed with laser resurfacing. There were tests, X-rays. Surgeries. Nights in the hospital, waking and not understanding where I was. I have a blurry image of Kate’s face as they put me on a gurney and wheeled me off to an operating theater.

  The thought of surgery made me think of all the autopsies I’d witnessed. The whine and smell of an electric bone saw at work. The hushed murmur of a scalpel carving flesh. I was dizzy, woozy, confused.

  Eventually, I came back to myself. A surgeon came in and informed me that the knee surgery was a success. After several weeks of physical therapy, I would have full range of motion to the limits of the prosthesis, meaning only a slight limp. I should have full weight bearing with a cane within six weeks.

  Another surgeon came in and told me they got the whole tumor. No complications. I remember seeing Kate, Anu, Jari. I remember asking Kate to let me look at myself in her makeup mirror. With the scar gone, and a small bald spot with a stitched-up incision on the front of my head, I barely recognized myself. Mostly, I slept.

  When I awoke the next morning, the symptoms of the previous day had mostly passed. My headache was gone. It had tortured me for a year, and now it was as if it had never existed at all. And great changes had occurred within me. I felt like a different person. Despite the medication I had been given—painkillers and tranquilizers—it was as if my thoughts had been muddled for my whole life, and now, suddenly and miraculously, I was clear in the mind, sharp as a razor.

  Jari warned me that some of my perceptions and attitudes might be altered, that it was typical for brain surgery post-op patients, sometimes for a considerable length of time. I wondered if this feeling that my thinking was no longer diminished was false, the result of surgery, or if I truly was more intelligent now. Along with this new sense of clarity, I felt a sense of certainty, as if when they removed my tumor they cut away my angst and remorse along with it.

  I felt a complete and utter lack of emotion. No love. No hate. Nada. Kate and Anu visited. I felt nothing, I smiled and pretended that I was glad to see them. Pretending was hard. I was glad to see them leave. Over the coming weeks, I practiced smiling to hide my lack of emotion. I knew that I must love them, because I remembered loving them. I could feel the yearning affection and desire for them that I did only a couple of days ago, but only as a memory.

  This lack of feeling changed my attitudes. I lay in bed alone and psychoanalyzed myself. My overriding emotion in life had thus far been remorse. My life had been a constant struggle to make up for what I perceived as my failures. Every day, for more than thirty years, I mourned the loss of my sister Suvi and blamed myself for her death, because she was under my care when we were skating and the ice broke under her on the lake, even though I was only a year older than her. No longer.

  I bore no responsibility for her death. Our father was the responsible adult. He, however, was busy sucking down a bottle of whiskey and ice fishing rather than tending to his children. In fact, I remember now that I didn’t even like Suvi. I resented her because, even though our age difference was slight, I was often given the responsibility of looking after her, when I wanted to be out playing with my friends. After her death, my father began beating me for the slightest infractions, an unspoken punishment for failing to safeguard her. He beat my three brothers as well, and my mother on occasion, but not with the same severity as he did me.

  I remember taking a slice of a pie left cooling on a windowsill. As punishment, he made me eat the whole thing and I vomited. He made me eat tha
t, too. And he laughed.

  I thought I had forgiven my father for beating me as a child. Why should I forgive him? My father has never even apologized for his abusive treatment of me. I had forgotten the frequency and severity of the beatings. The memories came flooding back. I thought I should go to his home in Kittilä, pull his pants down as he did mine, bend him over the same chair as he did me so many times, and, as he did to me, beat him with a belt.

  He never beat me so severely at any one given time, but I would hit him hundreds of times until blood feathered the walls, to make up for all those beatings at once. That would only make it about one hit for every hundred times that Dad hit me, but still, the symbolism would be there. I should make my mother watch, as she watched and did nothing while Dad beat me. Maybe I should gather the whole family for the event and let them watch, like they watched him thrash me. I realized they were afraid of him, but collectively, they could have stopped him.

  As a young boy, we had no indoor plumbing. I hated going outside in winter to take a piss, would hold it as long as I could, and once in a while would wait too long and wet myself. Once, he made me walk to school in pissed-on pants. It was twenty below, and as I walked, my crotch hurt, burned and then went numb. When I got to school, I went to the bathroom and looked at my dick. It was gray, a first sign of frostbite. And as the day went on and my pants warmed up, my dick hurt like hell and I stunk like piss and didn’t live it down for months. I considered that I should make him drink several liters of water, deliver his beating before his work shift, wait until he pissed himself and then force him to walk to work. A shared experience between father and son.

  I felt no anger, no nothing, while I formulated this plan. It wasn’t revenge I contemplated but simple justice. A punishment born of rational logic.

  Jari visited to check on me. He tested my basic motor skills and pronounced them sound, asked me how I felt. Without going into great detail or relating the nature of my thoughts, I told Jari I had gone emotionally numb. Jari said not to make too much of it, it would likely pass. He said it was a common symptom of tumor removal called “going flat.” Where there once was tissue in my head, there was now only empty space about the size of a small egg. It took time for this space to fill back in, and this was sometimes the result.

  “How long does it last?” I asked.

  “There’s no way to know,” Jari said, “probably one to six months. Your emotions might return gradually, or they might come rushing back in a single moment. That moment could be sparked by an event, or it could happen for no reason at all.”

  “Or it might never happen,” I said.

  He sat down on the side of the bed, solemn. “Or it might never happen.”

  “I’d like to keep this between ourselves,” I said. “I can’t tell my wife that I feel nothing for her or our child.”

  “I won’t try to tell you how to handle your recovery, but understand that this problem is the result of illness. It’s not your fault, and the support of your family is important while you get through it. Keeping secrets, hiding your symptoms”—he put his hand on my shoulder—“is inevitably a mistake.”

  “Maybe. But I just can’t put that on her. It would be cruel.” It struck me that I wanted a cigarette. “Take me outside for a smoke,” I said.

  “It’s not a good idea. Just stay in bed. You can smoke your brains out in a few days.”

  I discovered the second primary symptom of the surgery’s aftermath. I’d entered into a childlike, binary existence. Want or don’t want. Will or won’t. Take or leave.

  “If you don’t take me outside, I’ll wait until you leave, hang all this IV shit on the thingamajig you use to walk with them and go by myself.”

  He cocked his head and stared at me for a long moment. I saw it hit him that my hardheaded attitude was because of my surgery, and he spoke to me like a child. “If I take you out for a cigarette, will you stay in bed for the rest of the day?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a bit of an arduous process, with IV tubes, the mobile carryall and wheelchair, but I got my cigarette.

  He put me back to bed and rearranged my medical paraphernalia, told me he would check on me again as soon he could and left.

  I lay in bed and pondered the meaning, the worth, of life without emotion. My remorse was gone, but also my passion. If my remorse and sense of failure were gone, what had replaced them? I was emotionless, or nearly so. What would motivate me in life now? Maybe the same things that always motivated me. A desire for balance. Justice. Perhaps now I could even pursue those goals with a feeling of equanimity. For me, duty and love had always been closely related. Something I doubted Kate would understand. I reached one decision. I would take Sweetness under my wing and help him find himself and discover, for good or bad, who he really was, and help him become whatever it was that might be. As I wished my father had done for me. I lay in bed for two days, practiced my fake smile, and contemplated the changes that had come over me.

  I thought of Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, who awoke to find that he had become a monstrous insect. Was I a morphed Gregor Samsa, or a surgically enhanced Kari Vaara?

  8

  I came home on Friday. Despite all the work done to me, I had spent only four days in the hospital. I lay about, ate narcotics and tranquilizers as instructed, watched crappy television shows, played with Anu and the cat. I felt fine but a little tired and napped a lot. I was on a one-month sick leave, to be extended if necessary, but I was free to go back to work in two weeks if I chose. On Saturday I caught up on the news.

  Parliamentary elections were a little over a year away, and a dark horse was gaining ground fast. The Real Finns Party. It was officially headed by Topi Ruutio, an experienced politician and member of the European Parliament. It had a second leader, Roope Malinen. He held no office, but his blog was the most popular in Finland. The Real Finns agenda was unclear, except that they were anti-foreigner and anti-immigration. The Real Finns had invented a euphemism for racists. They staunchly denied charges of racism and dubbed themselves “maahanmuuttokriitikot,” critics of immigrants. Our population was aging, our birthrate low, and without immigrants to work and pay taxes, there would be no pension money for our retirees. The Real Finns’ answer: Finnish women must bear more children, out of patriotic duty.

  Other than hate, their agenda wasn’t clear. They wanted a return to traditional Finnish values. I’m unaware of what traditional Finnish values are, and I don’t think anybody else knows, either.

  Real Finns believed that government should decide what qualifies as good art to receive government support. They looked to nineteenth-century-style Finnish classic works as ideals. They made wild promises to spread the wealth that couldn’t possibly be met. They wanted to leave the EU. Their rhetoric reminded me of early Nazi propaganda. Like I told Kate, Real Finns are like a more virulent strain of American Teabaggers.

  Real Finns have skyrocketed in popularity because the global financial crisis, coupled with greed by our own leading financiers—despite manipulated statistics indicating we have the world’s strongest economy, leading the world to believe that Finland is some kind of financial paradise—has driven our economy into the shithole. Nearly twenty percent of Finns now live beneath the poverty line. Their jobs are being outsourced to other countries. Inflation is high, wages stagnant. People are frightened, and they’re focusing that fear, placing their blame, on immigrants.

  I don’t believe they’re actually pro–Real Finn. I think they’re terrified and protesting the establishment that made them feel this way. I kept up with Real Finn antics because their policies changed daily and, when I felt emotions, it amused me. It’s not funny, though, because since the other parties are suffering mass defections to Real Finns, those other parties are taking positions to stem the tide. Keskusta, a center party, adopted the slogan “Maassa maan tavalla”—“in the the way of the country”—but left the well-known phrase unfinished: “tai maasta pois”—or “get
out of the country.” Hate directed at foreigners.

  Ruutio is charismatic and at least projects an image of being a good guy with strong if somewhat confused beliefs. He shies away from discussions about immigration and foreigners. Malinen writes well. In his blog, he makes convoluted racist arguments seem reasonable. He’s a good hater. In person, he’s almost unable to speak, and what he does manage to say is aggressive, defensive and often incomprehensible. Interviews give the impression that he’s a maniac in dire need of medication. Ruutio pretends to distance himself from Malinen and his extremism, but in truth, they work in tandem. Neither can do without the other.

  I slept in the next day and the door buzzer woke me. It was Valentine’s Day. A detective handed me a thick envelope, a packet of dossiers on drug dealers and their upcoming events. It contained no note to me. The unspoken message: You’re on sick leave, but do as you will. After waking up and having coffee, I called Milo and asked him to come over. I didn’t want to talk on the phone, because ours had likely been tapped.

  Kate was less than pleased to see Milo’s face on Valentine’s Day, on my second day of sick leave. He looked hung over. The black circles around his eyes were puffy. His eyes bloody red.

  I gave him the envelope. “These are potential heist material,” I said. “You can carry them out at your discretion. But you’re not to take risks. If you act impetuously and someone gets hurt because of it, I’ll fire you.”

  I wished I could go. He’s good at black-bag work. Thorough. And he’s slick with a lockpick set, can get through an average door in under a minute. I could learn from him. I hate to think how many B&Es he pulled off while satisfying his voyeuristic desires to develop that kind of skill.

  His jaw jutted out, defiant. “The chief wanted me on this team. You can’t fire me.”

  “Try me.”

  He hangdog acquiesced. “We don’t need to have this conversation. I don’t intend to be impetuous.”