The End of Sunset Grove

by Minna Lindgren

  ‘How exciting,’ she said to herself. Perhaps it was an invitation, or something else amusing.

  She fetched the letter opener from her telephone table. It had belonged to her husband, who had always kept it on his desk, next to the paperweight and the hole-punch. She smiled for a moment at the thought of her husband at his desk and opened the envelope with one swift stroke.

  The missive had been written with a tremulous but firm hand, the sort produced by her age-mates these days. It contained just a few lines separated without punctuation, as if the message were a poem:

  I watch you from a distance

  Your smile, your eyes demure

  Could I overcome your resistance?

  Fear not, my heart is pure

  Yes, perhaps it really was a poem, as it had the requisite rhymes and other features. Siiri started to laugh. She re-read the spidery verses, shook her head, turned the paper over, but found no sign of the sender’s name. That preacher couldn’t be behind this silliness, could he? she reflected with a smile. She slipped the note back in its envelope and whisked the envelope into her bag. She would have to hurry; she didn’t want to keep the others waiting.

  ‘Going. Up.’

  She spent an eternity in the corridor waiting for the elevator to go up and come back down. There weren’t many floors above hers, but every stop took ages, as entering and exiting expeditiously was beyond the capacities of the building’s elderly residents. Those capable of getting about on their own two feet would enter the elevator first, while those who hobbled about with walking frames were left nearest the doors. Every time someone needed to get out, those with walkers were first forced to march out into the corridor and then back in, the same tragicomic performance at every floor. The walkers bumped into each other, got caught in the gap, scraped at the legs of the independently mobile as they passed and escaped the control of their owners.

  ‘Going. Down. Doors. Opening.’

  The elevator was a youngish woman who sounded vaguely uncertain. Her daily announcements couldn’t help but make Siiri yearn for the long-gone elevator girls at the Stockmann department store, with their blue uniforms, beautiful legs, efficient movements, bright voices and bilingual vocabularies. Siiri’s daughter had dreamed of becoming an elevator girl when she grew up, until deciding to become a flight attendant and eventually ending up a translator and a nun. That’s the sort of adventurer she was.

  ‘Good morning, madam! Or should I say miss?’ The strong scent of after-shave surged out of the elevator. A well-dressed man stood so awkwardly in the middle of the elevator that Siiri had a hard time deciding which side to squeeze herself into. The man stood tall and trim and seemed, in the manner of the composer Jean Sibelius, to be using his cane for nothing more than to put the finishing touch on his dandified presence. His hair was dark brown, certainly dyed, as at this age white and grey were the only genuine options for hair colour. Siiri had never encountered the fellow like this, one on one.

  ‘I’m a widow. Siiri Kettunen, good morning.’

  ‘Aatos Jännes, second floor, generous one-bedroom.’

  ‘Doors. Closing. Going. Down.’

  The man gave Siiri a handshake as firm as a soldier’s, and her hand continued to ache for quite some time after he released it. Aatos Jännes didn’t say another word during their brief sojourn in the elevator; he was humming something Siiri couldn’t quite make out, but in all probability not classical music.

  ‘First. Floor. Doors. Opening.’

  ‘After you, Mrs Kettunen!’

  ‘We generally use first names here at Sunset Grove. Just call me Siiri.’

  Aatos Jännes drew his mouth into a smile and held his hand in front of the elevator’s infrared eye, chivalrously protecting Siiri from the door and other perils. Siiri thanked him and turned towards the corner of the common room. Anna-Liisa already sat there glumly, along with the smiling Irma, who was busily shuffling two packs of cards. It took a moment before Irma noticed Siiri approach.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  ‘I see you were privileged to ride the elevator with Aatos Jännes,’ Anna-Liisa said, ignoring Irma’s greeting. ‘He’s quite the topic of conversation around here these days.’

  Now that the Ambassador is dead, Siiri thought, but managed to hold her tongue. Anna-Liisa reported many of the building’s female residents were pining for Mr Jännes, although the widower had only taken up residence at Sunset Grove two weeks previously. He was known to attend afternoon dances in the city, occasionally requesting one of his co-residents from the retirement community to accompany him.

  ‘Apparently he asks these women to chaperone him, despite being exceptionally active on the dance floor, with fancy footwork and fast moves.’

  ‘To chaperone him?’ Siiri asked, in an unnecessarily loud voice. Even Tauno heard her, despite sitting at some distance in his regular seat on the abandoned Jugendstil sofa.

  ‘Well, well, isn’t that something!’ Irma exclaimed. ‘You clearly sparked Siiri’s interest. Do you want to start attending daytime dances with our new Don Juan?’ She started painting visions of Siiri’s and Aatos’s afternoon assignations that bordered on the indelicate. ‘That adorable little widow from our floor whose husband just died, is her name Eila, the widow’s, I mean, I don’t think I ever heard the husband’s name, since Eila only refers to him as her husband, without using a name, although he must have had one. I always say “Veikko” when I talk about my husband, oh dear oh dear, my lovely old Veikko, but . . . What was I saying again?’

  ‘Something about this Aatos Jännes,’ Anna-Liisa said tiredly. She rapped the baize table top to reinforce her words, but the raps were listless. Her hands were visibly shaking; Siiri had never noticed anything of the sort in the past.

  ‘Yes, she, I mean this petite Mrs Eila, had panicked when Aatos invited her to a daytime dance and so she accepted. She got very dizzy from the way Aatos whirled her around the floor. Her blood pressure is very low, you know, I mean Eila’s, unlike the rest of us, and low blood pressure is a good thing, of course, since you don’t suffer heart attacks so easily, although of course there’s nothing I hope for as much as a merciful heart attack. I don’t want you to misunderstand me, now; I don’t find your company tedious, even though every day that passes at this religious observatory is so similar that it’s impossible to know what season it is or even what time of day, since it’s always the same grey, but . . . What was I talking about again?’

  ‘It seemed as if you had some story to tell us about Aatos Jännes.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right. I certainly am a fuddy-duddy, but I always tell my darlings that they’re not allowed to get upset with me, even though I’m such a forgetful old lady, seeing as how I’m already over the age of ninety, as a matter of fact so much over that I can no longer remember how much, but I have no intention of turning one hundred, and I’ve told my darlings there’s no point preparing any sort of big celebration, as I plan on kicking the bucket long before that.’

  ‘Long before?’ Siiri asked brightly.

  But Anna-Liisa looked like a nervous wreck. ‘Are you intending to tell us something about this new resident who has invented the surname Jännes for himself?’

  ‘What do you mean, invented?’ Tauno asked from the sofa. ‘It sounds like a typical Fennoman name. Like Petäjä. Anna-Liisa Petäjä and Aatos Jännes, those are the kinds of names we all have.’

  ‘Irma! Get to the point. Everyone else, silence!’

  ‘You know, I can’t remember what I was saying any more. Can you give me a little hint?’

  Beads of sweat glistened at Anna-Liisa’s pallid temples. ‘According to you, this adorable woman with low blood pressure had been at a dance with Aatos Jännes. You never made it any further, despite the fact that you’ve been going on and on about your hundredth birthday.’

  ‘But I have no intention of turning one hundred! Aren’t you listening to a word I’m saying?’ In her agitation, Irma began rummaging around in h
er bag and unpacked its contents onto the table, next to the packs of cards. The handbag disgorged a pair of bunched-up nylons, apparently snagged, as she generally carried an unopened package of spare hose in her bag for emergencies, a small bottle of whisky, a lace handkerchief, her oval fob, a box of pastilles without the attendant cigarettes and a colourful bag that crackled. She opened the bag and offered its contents to everyone.

  ‘I have some snacks, help yourselves!’

  They were little brown nibbles in a variety of shapes. Everyone eagerly partook, including Tauno, who hauled himself up from the sofa with difficulty and poured himself a fistful of Irma’s treats from the bag. He decided returning to the sofa was too much trouble, so he stood there next to the women in his peculiar hunched stance. And who should happen to emerge from behind a pillar and make his way over to them at that very moment but Aatos Jännes himself.

  ‘Well, look at that! Speak of the devil – I mean, what a devilish coincidence,’ Irma said, with a tinkling laugh. ‘Would you care for a snack, Mr Aatos? Have you noticed that everyone is always snacking these days? It’s the latest craze, as they say. You have to be shoving something in your mouth all the time to stay lively. People can’t even be bothered to sit through a movie without a bucket of food. Energy levels! That’s the idiotic phrase you keep hearing everywhere. You have to keep your energy levels up, and that’s why the supermarket shelves are jam-packed with temptations like this these days. Look at this bag! Partymix, it says, with a cute little cat smiling on it. That kitty-cat is the reason I grabbed this particular bag; there were miles of different kinds of snacks at the supermarket yesterday. Or was it the day before? These certainly are fresh—’

  ‘Thank you, Irma.’ Aatos Jännes’s voice was a soupçon too high and delicate for his black-and-white matinee idol image, but he looked at Irma so intently that she stopped talking. There was a moment of awkward silence, as everyone was waiting for Aatos to say something more, since he had made such a dashing entrance into their little group.

  ‘Ewww, goddammit!’ Tauno spluttered and spat out Irma’s little treats so they flew every which way, including the table top. Apparently in his greed he had crammed the entire fistful of titbits into his mouth at once. The ever-alert cleaning robot started up and moved towards them.

  ‘Not to your taste?’ Irma asked cheerfully, placing one of the dark brown nuggets in her mouth. The others looked on curiously. ‘On the bland side. Not much to write home about. They must be very healthy, because one certainly wouldn’t snack on these for pleasure.’

  ‘Downright disgusting, if you ask me. And I’ve eaten everything from pine-bark bread to pebbles,’ Tauno said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. The robot cleaner was bustling at his feet, sucking up all the nibbles that had flown to the floor.

  Now Siiri placed two of Irma’s delicacies into her mouth, too. They were dry and hard and seemed very healthy indeed. She didn’t dare bite, because her old teeth would have lost the battle against the crunchy morsels. She might break a tooth, or in the worst case, one might fall out. She tried sucking the little candies, but her mouth was so dry that she couldn’t detect any taste. Anna-Liisa sucked on hers, too, and appeared satisfied.

  ‘I can practically feel my energy levels rising,’ she said. ‘The flavour is really no different from our three-dimensional food waste. In other words, they have no flavour at all.’

  ‘The smell is a little unusual,’ Irma said, sniffing the bag in her hand.

  Aatos Jännes watched them in amusement. He hadn’t popped a single one of his own treats into his mouth; he just watched the others’ reactions. Tauno started tottering off towards the drinking fountain to rinse his mouth. His cascade of curses echoed in the spacious lobby, above the elevator’s announcements and the smartwall’s sermon about the Holy Spirit manifesting in each of us. Aatos took the bag of snacks from Irma’s hand, pulled his spectacles from his breast pocket and examined the ingredients.

  ‘This is cat food,’ he said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Irma squawked, bursting out into her cheerful staccato laugh that started high and light and dropped from there. ‘Do you think I want to poison us all?’

  ‘That might not be such a bad idea,’ Anna-Liisa said, trying to tidily expectorate the cat food she had been sucking on. Irma kindly handed her her lace handkerchief.

  ‘I’m going to eat mine; they cost a mint. No one could be mad enough to make snacks for pussies. Fiddlesticks, is what I say!’ She laughed so hard that her rotund body jiggled with joy.

  Siiri couldn’t get a word out. She had swallowed both nibbles without chewing. They caught nastily in her throat, but her stomach started feeling even nastier now that she knew she’d consumed cat food. At first she just experienced a slow rolling, but the waves of nausea gradually swelled and swelled until she was genuinely afraid she would vomit.

  ‘Siiri, you look pale. Would you like some more fortification?’ Irma handed the bag of cat food to her, and Aatos Jännes laughed out loud. He found the episode spectacularly funny, since he hadn’t fallen for Irma’s trick. Irma refused to admit she had pulled a prank and remained adamant that she had offered everyone a healthy energy boost. The text on the bag was in such tiny print that none of them could decipher what the nibbles were made of, but apparently Aatos was right. The big picture of the cat and the name, Partymix Katzenfreude, clearly indicated as much.

  ‘Unless they’re made from cats,’ Irma laughed cheerfully, and was as unconcerned by this alternative as the notion that she had just fed her friends cat food. Siiri felt she was perspiring oddly and she wasn’t feeling the tiniest relief, even though she sensibly tried to tell herself that cats were in all likelihood fed better food than they were back during the war or now in the retirement home, so it was unlikely any permanent damage had been done. It was simply the thought that was disgusting, that was all.

  ‘They eat cats in China, so why not here?’ Irma continued, and Anna-Liisa fainted. She was white as a sheet and went limp in an instant. Aatos Jännes leapt over surprisingly nimbly to catch Anna-Liisa before she could hit her head on anything. A volunteer staff member flew to their sides almost as quickly. None of the trained caregivers from the old retirement home days had ever offered assistance with such enthusiasm. But Sirkka the Saver of Souls’ skills at administering first aid were slight. She lowered her hands to Anna-Liisa’s head and started talking gibberish.

  ‘How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil; for God was with him. Acts of the Apostles, chapter ten, verse thirty-eight. I have been blessed with the Holy Spirit. I heal you, Anna-Liisa.’

  A ray of sunlight fell upon Anna-Liisa’s wan face, and a miracle occurred. She came to.

  ‘How do you know my name, you godless creature?’ she said weakly but angrily.

  Sirkka the Saver of Souls looked at her hand as if doubting her own gifts. Aatos Jännes rose and released Anna-Liisa. He seemed very uncomfortable and surreptitiously disappeared to the left, whence he had come.

  ‘Would you care for a snack? You can have the whole bag,’ Irma said to Sirkka, who had been struck dumb by the ecstasy of the moment. Her hand was still on Anna-Liisa’s head, and Anna-Liisa swatted it away in annoyance.

  ‘Thank you, Lord, thank you,’ Sirkka said before greedily snatching the bag of cat food from Irma’s hand.

  ‘You may leave,’ Anna-Liisa ordered, as if she were a seventh-generation aristocrat addressing her lowliest servant on a British television series. Sirkka the Saver of Souls clacked off in her green high heels, and they could hear the bag of cat food crackle as she devoured the manna her miracle-working had earned her.

  ‘She must have been hungry, the poor dear,’ Siiri said, feeling rather recovered herself.

  ‘Wasn’t that a neat trick, giving her that dratted cat food?’ Irma said, transferring the belongings from the table back into her handbag. In doing so
, her hand struck on something the existence of which she had already forgotten.

  ‘Look what I’ve found!’

  She was holding an envelope. The same sort of envelope Siiri had nearly trod on on her welcome mat. Irma’s letter didn’t have a name, address or stamp either.

  ‘What I have here is, my friends, a poem from an anonymous admirer. Isn’t it sweet that I received a love letter in my last days.’

  Irma opened the envelope, which contained the same sort of little card as Siiri’s letter. But the poem wasn’t the same. Irma read it in a vibrato, supporting her interpretation with gesticulations.

  ‘I feed, ravenous, on pine and spruce

  Senses heightened, a bull moose

  But now that I’ve caught your scent

  My hunger will never relent’

  ‘Impudent!’ Anna-Liisa cried in outrage. ‘And clumsy to boot. Mine is better.’

  Anna-Liisa had received a letter, too. She pulled hers out from the pocket of her black cardigan and recited the poem as if it were the handiwork of a skilled wordsmith.

  ‘I yearn for darkest night

  And bridge of sweet moonlight

  That carrieth me to thee

  Die, day, hear my plea!’

  ‘I wouldn’t call that much of a poem either,’ Irma said, when Anna-Liisa’s artistic pause had lingered embarrassingly long. ‘I liked the bull moose in mine. Didn’t you get any mail, Siiri?’

  As she opened her letter, Siiri caught a whiff of Aatos’s cologne, which still lingered at the card table. She drew the paper out of the envelope and for some reason sniffed it. A waft of the same powerful kölnisch wasser. Of course! Their mystery poet was the daytime dancer with dyed hair and erect bearing. They should have known from the start.

  It all made sense, Aatos Jännes’s demeanour, body language and cologne. Quite the showman.