Helsinki Noir

by James Thompson

  Laukia’s face didn’t change. His breathing rasped as if he had a piece of paper caught in his throat and the air blowing past was flapping it around. “I just can’t get past the thought that it’s all my old lady’s fault,” he whispered finally. As he heard the words coming out of his mouth, he gave a sad little laugh and glanced around at the others with an almost imperceptible look of apology in his eyes. “But no. I made that bed, I have to lie in it. You know what they say, there are no evil women, just spineless men.” Laukia cleared his throat with a quick little harrumph and focused his gaze on the man who had given him the floor. “I’m J.P. and I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, J.P.” The response came in unison as from a chamber choir.

  Laukia nodded and said the words that would end his testimony: “I haven’t taken a drink in three weeks.”

  Although confession was an integral part of AA meeting discourse, the applause that followed sounded sincere and deserved. For whatever the words preceding the confession were, whatever they dealt with, every person present knew that they came from the heart.

  Laukia walked back over and took his seat again, fished his pack of nicotine gum out of his pocket, and slipped two mint-flavored pillows into his mouth. Then his eyes landed on a guy sitting across the room, against the wall. The man didn’t turn away when their eyes met; he smiled and gave an encouraging nod.

  Laukia responded to this stranger’s gesture with a touch of embarrassment. He was nearsighted, couldn’t see the faces on the other side of the circle clearly, but he was certain he’d never met this man before. Laukia turned to watch the next speaker, but felt the stranger still staring at him. He leaned just a bit to his left, into his nearest neighbor’s space. The man kept staring. He was wearing a flannel shirt and corduroys.

  “Who’s that guy over by the door?” Laukia whispered.

  The man gave Laukia an amused look, as if about to remind him what the second A in AA stood for.

  “I mean, have you seen him here before?” Laukia hissed, looking back across the room. The stranger was now intently focused on the group leader’s speech—or at least pretending to be.

  “No. Why?” the man whispered back.

  “Just wondering,” Laukia whispered one last time, and straightened his back.

  * * *

  The meeting ended at seven thirty. The drizzle that had started coming down earlier in the evening was now being whipped around by a stiff wind into a minor storm. Laukia walked up the stone steps from the apartment building’s basement into the courtyard.

  He raised the collar on his jacket and jammed his fists deep into his pockets. He hadn’t sat behind the wheel of a car in a year and a half, ever since his wife had managed to get his license revoked. Laukia strode across the courtyard, stepped out into the intersection of Bulevardi and Annankatu, and checked his watch. The next local train to Kirkkonummi was leaving in seven minutes. Two decades and fifteen kilos ago he might have made it by a hair. In his current state, at age fifty-two, after two knee operations, he decided to wait for the one leaving in half an hour. And what hurry was he in to get home anyway? No more tonight than any other night.

  Laukia cut through Ruttopuisto—Plague Park—toward Mannerheimintie, the main drag. The old church park made memories from twenty years ago spring into full-blooded life. Memories that were among the very few happy ones that Laukia had of Helsinki. The park had been the favorite place for him and his only daughter, Kaisa, to go when she was still preschool age. Jari-Pekka and Kaisa had had countless picnics there.

  Even then he’d sensed the depths into which an unhappy marriage was dragging him, and those fleeting moments when he could just listen to his little daughter laughing were the pillars on which he built the crumbling ruins of his life.

  The last time father and daughter had sat in Plague Park—well, the last time so far—was when Kaisa graduated from high school. A few months after that day the Laukias got their first postcard from Berlin, where their daughter had moved.

  The main Helsinki train station was less than a kilometer away. As he walked toward it, Laukia kept his eyes on the tips of his shoes. Whenever he lifted his gaze to the faces moving toward him, he imagined them judging him, criticizing him—as if his testimony had blared out over the streets of the city through loudspeakers. And so Laukia felt like even more of a loser tonight than he usually did when returning from an AA meeting. It was like he was a pariah, an outcast, someone who had betrayed his community and would be driven onto the rooftops by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks. It was no effort at all to see in his mind’s eye the lynch mob led by his wife, or especially his father-in-law: There goes the lousy bum! To which some friend from the city would add: The drunk’s ducking for the station! Grab him!

  * * *

  Laukia slouched into the train station building through the main entrance, the one guarded by the statues of the lantern bearers. The hall was only quiet at random times of the day, since alongside the main entrance there were not only ticket windows and doors out onto the platforms but the gateway down into the Station Square metro station.

  Now, too, the hall was filled with sounds and smells the likes of which at rush hour would have tightened Laukia’s spiritual screws to the breaking point, but for some strange reason he felt relieved to become part of this larger group of nameless strangers than his anonymous alcoholics. Here he didn’t even have to talk. Here he could disappear for a moment, briefly be one nameless person among hundreds and hundreds of others.

  Laukia set a course through the crowds toward Eliel, the station restaurant, where outside of rush hour it was hardly ever a problem to find a seat.

  He snagged a tray and loaded it with a slice of chocolate cake, a coffee, and a glass of water. There was no line to the cashier. Laukia slid his hand into his inside coat pocket, but to his surprise didn’t feel the fake leather surface of his wallet on the tips of his fingers. In dismay he stepped back from the counter and scanned the floor back the way he’d come. Had his wallet dropped out while he was taking a tray? The situation unnerved him to the point where he paid no attention to the man standing behind him, patiently waiting his turn in line. Laukia was studying the floor in front of the glass case when he noticed the person in line behind him putting something on his tray. A wallet. Astonished, he turned his eyes up to the man standing there, a short, plumpish, balding sort who despite the sadness in his eyes was smiling with his whole round face. The fiftyish man looked remarkably like an American actor whom Laukia had seen in countless films: like Paul Giamatti, most famous for his role in Sideways.

  “Guess this must be yours,” the man said.

  Laukia nodded and instinctively checked it for his money.

  “Don’t worry, it’s all there,” the man laughed, and raised his palm in a gesture of innocence.

  Laukia realized that, instead of being grateful to this man, he had insulted him by automatically suspecting him of dishonesty. He stuffed the wallet back into his pocket with a little embarrassed smile on his lips.

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Always good to help a fellow sufferer.”

  Laukia wrinkled his brow, and now realized that this was the same man he had been wondering about at the AA meeting.

  “You ain’t seen me . . . right?” the man said in English, imitating a sketch from the popular British comedy series The Fast Show.

  The pop culture allusion went right over Laukia’s head, but he tried to cover his confusion with a forced smile. “Can I buy you a coffee as thanks?”

  “Come on,” the man said, waving his hand and moving to turn away, “it’s no big deal.”

  “No, I mean it,” Laukia pressed, and put another cup on his tray. “With or without milk?”

  “Well, with milk, if you insist, but there’s really no need.”

  Laukia nodded. “But you didn’t need to help me either.”

  “After that round condemnation of Helsinki of yours, I thought maybe y
ou’d appreciate a gesture of friendship from a local,” the man laughed.

  Laukia smiled. “I do appreciate it. What’ll you have with the coffee?”

  “Thanks, just the feeling of having done a good deed,” the man replied, giving himself a smack to his bulging belly. “A corner table okay with you?”

  “Yep,” Laukia said, and followed the man to the back of the restaurant.

  “You left the meeting like a bat out of hell,” the man said, dabbing at his high forehead with a hankie. Despite the chill outside air, it was glistening with sweat. “It took all I had to keep up with you.”

  The men sat down at a table and studied each other. Both seemed to be thinking the same thing: This is the moment when a normal guy introduces himself.

  “Uh,” Laukia began, sticking his hand across the table, “J.P.” His voice had an uncertain note in it, as if wanting to ask whether a handle consisting entirely of initials was okay outside of AA.

  The man shook Laukia’s hand. “Tapsa.”

  “Thanks again. My wife would have thrown a hissy fit if I’d lost my money.”

  “I have to ask,” Tapsa began, then sipped his coffee. “If you hate Helsinki so passionately, why do you live here?”

  “Short answer: my wife’s from here.”

  “I understand,” Tapsa nodded.

  “I can’t stress the shortness of that answer enough,” Laukia added, rolling his eyes at his coffee companion.

  “My sympathies,” Tapsa laughed. “How long have you two been married?”

  “Twenty-five years.”

  “Kids?”

  “A daughter.”

  Tapsa heaved a deep sigh and shook his head. “And the situation is really that bad?”

  “It really is,” Laukia said with a weary smile. “Every single fight goes unresolved because my wife doesn’t give a shit about any attempt I make to make up, or to talk about the problems in our relationship, let alone my feelings. She has never once admitted she was wrong, or that she’d harmed anyone else with her actions. It’s always someone else’s fault—usually mine.”

  Tapsa wiped the corners of his mouth with a paper napkin and leaned back in his chair.

  “Finally, she broke my spirit and I started drinking,” Laukia said, washing the last crumbs of cake down his throat. “You can imagine what kinda torque a wife can get out of a weakness like that.”

  “A patient suffering from narcissistic personality disorder does not feel he is sick, and the best treatment for a narcissist’s victim is to leave the narcissist.”

  Tapsa’s words surprised Laukia. He had thought the conversation was over; instead, he noticed that the expression on the man’s face had deepened, as if he had actually started to reflect on his anonymous acquaintance’s marital problems.

  “No hope of a divorce, either,” Laukia lamented, and dropped his spoon on the edge of the ceramic plate.

  “Why not? No prenup?”

  “Every cent I’ve ever earned in my life has come through her family’s business,” Laukia replied. “You’d understand if I told you the family’s name. So if I give her the boot, they’ll give me the boot, and haul me out with the trash. I’ll be paying court costs for the rest of my life.”

  Tapsa wrinkled his brow. In every possible way he looked like someone who listens to people’s troubles for a living: a psychologist, a therapist, something like that. Among AA members one could find top doctors whom the bottle had enslaved just as effectively as it had some temp who’d gone years between jobs. Whatever he was, the man who’d introduced himself as Tapsa was someone Laukia felt comfortable talking to.

  “I’m too old to make a new start, especially since I never made it past the ninth grade. I’ve basically let my whole life get played on a single card, so if I pull the plug on my marriage, I pull the plug on my whole life.”

  Tapsa sat there for a moment digesting Laukia’s words, his elbows resting on the edge of the table. “Why doesn’t she want a divorce?”

  “She . . .” Laukia began, managing to make even that first word drip with scorn, “is not a nice person. She enjoys the power she has over me.”

  “Interesting.”

  Yep, Laukia thought, this guy is definitely a shrink on the skids. “But also,” he added, “her family is right-wing and fanatically religious. Divorce isn’t in their vocabulary. It’s till-death-do-us-part, the whole bit.”

  “At least you have your child,” Tapsa said comfortingly. “I hate to say it, but it seems that in way too many marriages the younger generation is the only thing holding them together.”

  “That’s what she was for us too,” Laukia nodded with a wistful smile. “Kaisa isn’t at all like her mother.”

  Tapsa sipped his coffee and waited patiently for Laukia to continue.

  “But she’s grown up now. Thirty, living abroad. I hardly ever see her. And I certainly can’t blame her for never coming home. She isn’t on the best terms with her mother, which is completely understandable.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Tapsa smirked.

  “So what’s your story?” Laukia laughed sarcastically.

  “Let’s not go into that now,” Tapsa said, shaking his head with a sad look in his eyes.

  “Come on, spill. It can’t be a wife at least.”

  Something flashed in Tapsa’s eyes. “Why not?”

  “I don’t see a ring.”

  “Very observant,” Tapsa laughed. “I’ve been married fourteen years.” He pulled the collar of his sweater down and revealed the pendant hanging on top of his undershirt. It was a gold ring strung onto a thin silver chain. “Here’s my wedding ring. I’ve never been one for jewelry.”

  “After fourteen years you call it jewelry instead of a shackle,” Laukia chuckled heartily. “That’s a good sign.”

  “Well, yes . . . My nightmare has nothing to do with family.” He opened his wallet and showed Laukia a photo in a plastic pocket.

  “Good-looking kids,” Laukia said, and shifted his gaze from the kids to the blond woman standing behind them. “Good-looking wife.”

  “Thanks,” Tapsa said, nodding and taking another look at the photo himself. The smile that warmed his face as he did so spoke volumes.

  “So, fourteen years,” Laukia sighed, shaking his head.

  “Yep,” Tapsa nodded. “I can honestly say that I’ve worked my ass off to keep them, uh, happy.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “And mostly it is.” A tender smile flickered on Tapsa’s lips. The man looked like the guy next door. For the life of him, Laukia could not make out what might have driven him to alcoholism.

  Laukia glanced at his watch and realized that he was going to have to split. “Damn,” he grunted, jumping up, “train’s in two minutes.”

  “Nice chatting,” Tapsa said, looking Laukia straight in the eyes.

  “Ditto.”

  “Can I ask one more thing?”

  “Do it fast.”

  “Tonight at the meeting, why’d you ask the guy sitting next to you who I was?”

  Laukia stopped to gaze back at him.

  “I didn’t get my nose out of joint or anything,” Tapsa rushed to explain.

  “My wife,” Laukia laughed, pulling his jacket on.

  Tapsa looked understandably confused.

  “A couple of times she’s sent her friends to follow me, to make sure I am actually going to a meeting,” Laukia explained.

  “Sick.”

  “What’re you gonna do?” Laukia shrugged his shoulders. “But as the program teaches us, one day at a time and this too will pass.”

  Tapsa snorted at the familiar platitudes. “You know . . . if you want to talk about this stuff again, I’d be happy to listen. Anonymously, of course.”

  “That wouldn’t be such a terrible idea.”

  “Next week, same time, same place?”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t forget your wallet.”

  Laukia laughed. Yep, that sealed it: my
new friend’s a shrink.

  II

  The next week Tapsa met Laukia in the station restaurant, at the same table where they had launched their anonymous acquaintance. Laukia had two empty beer steins in front of him, and after a few swigs they were joined by a third.

  Tapsa held a mug of tea when he sat down across from his backsliding friend. It wasn’t long before Laukia was venting about an argument with his wife that had lasted days, and in which his in-laws had participated. Tapsa said he’d heard about marriages in which the wife indulged knowingly in emotional violence, taking great pleasure in the results of her actions, but that the Laukias’ case sounded like something else altogether, completely unique.

  “Have you considered the possibility that middle age has blown things completely out of proportion?” Tapsa began in a conciliatory tone, sipping on his tea. “Maybe this will pass?”

  “I’ve been waiting for it to pass for twenty-five years. I can’t wait any longer. I don’t have the strength for it.” Laukia folded his hands and looked the man across from him in the eyes. “The truth is that I’m trapped with a mean-spirited shrew of a wife.”

  Tapsa scratched at the stubble on his cheek and knitted his brow. “Listen, J.P.,” he sighed, “I have an idea, and I’m just going to blurt it out.”

  “Go for it.”

  “Once you’ve heard it you may want to storm out of here, or maybe have another beer. Hell, you may want to deck me. Do you still want to hear what I have to say?”

  “How could I refuse after that introduction?”

  Tapsa pushed his tea aside and leaned toward a confused-looking Laukia. “In my work I’ve had to travel a great deal, both here in Finland and out there in the world. I’ve gotten to know people that a dad from Eiranranta wouldn’t necessarily get to know.” He paused, as if to see what kind of reaction he had awakened in his listener so far. Laukia was curious, that was for sure. “I’ve seen many kinds of couples and witnessed how a few doomed marriages were saved by extramarital—projects . . .”

  Laukia rubbed his forehead and motioned for Tapsa to continue. The latter laid a business card in the middle of the table, text side down, and left his finger on it until he’d said his bit. “There’s a phone number on this card. It belongs to a certain person who is extremely capable at what she does, and very discreet. She might be willing to meet you, if you so choose.”