“What are things coming to when the KGB doesn’t trust Kalevian Security?” Kuoppala shook his head. “Surely they can confide in their brothers in arms? No?”
“Sorry, not up to me.”
At this point, the secretary came in. She held out a letter in supplication.
“Please excuse th--”
Kuoppala was suddenly on his feet, his mug sailing through the air to shatter on the doorframe beside her head. She just stood there, frozen, as a drop of coffee crept down her pale cheek.
Kuoppala settled back into his chair with a little laugh, smiling, as if nothing had happened. The woman bent down to collect the shards in her trembling palm.
“All right,” Kuoppala said, and reached for the file Demyan held. “Talk to me. Who’s the suspect?”
At the sight of Kuoppala’s outstretched hand, Demyan felt a rush of passionate anger slice white-hot through his guts. A fiend such as Kuoppala wasn’t worthy of an enemy like this one--not even worthy to gaze upon his image or speak his name. He would look down on the photo as if it were dirt beneath his shoe, like a secretary in his office. Like a liaison officer.
Demyan could restrain himself no longer.
Demyan plunged straight for the wall of hatred, swimming against the current, fighting the sickness that rose within him as he thought only of destruction. He would bring this man so low--crumble him into a weeping husk as he dragged latent anxieties into the sunlight, kicking and screaming for all to see. Jagged branches of darkness stabbed at Kuoppala’s wall, tearing into it. Demyan’s mind was a howling beast that slammed itself at the barrier, all claws and teeth and jet-black terror, screaming: Fear me!
Kuoppala sat stock still in his chair, sweating and wide-eyed. Something was happening; he was weakening. Demyan redoubled his assault, shadow unfolding in all directions, closer than he had ever come to conquering the man’s malformed spirit.
Then he saw the stars laid out on the page in his memory.
He needed to go through with the arrest. There was too much at stake.
There was a war on.
Demyan abruptly retreated, swallowing the darkness back inside him. Kuoppala twitched, a breath escaping him in a tiny gasp.
We'll finish this later.
Demyan was barely able to keep his hand from trembling in rage as he surrendered the file to the dazed Minister of State Security.
“I need a man,” Demyan snapped, “named Toivo Valonen.”
Chapter 4
The building hummed with the muffled crank and whir of heavy machinery, and light from its fogged windows cast geometric patterns upon the newly fallen snow. For what could have been the hundredth time, Vesa checked his written directions to this little back alley in an industrial neighborhood on the far side of town.
This must be the place, he thought.
Vesa had sat alone on the bus ride, staring out the window and watching the lights come on. As the bus had taken him farther and farther from home, streets had blurred together in the afternoon dusk, leaving only a vague impression of a city drifting by in the darkness outside. He felt little of the elation of his previous transgressions--just the apprehension and gravity that accompanied forays into the unknown.
He had to admit that he also felt a little guilty. After all, it really wasn’t Mika’s fault--but Mika would bear the brunt of the fallout should his newfound delinquency come to light. Mika thought he was with his tutor; his tutor thought he had gone on to meet with his violin teacher; his violin teacher had been told that lessons would be canceled today, due to an impromptu family excursion that included his faithful bodyguard--all of them duped in a shell game that had won Vesa the privilege of freezing in the snow outside the print shop on Leppä Street, trying to work up the courage to open the door.
Vesa remembered returning to the car after running away in Market Square, and the way his bodyguard’s expression had crumbled in relief. It didn’t matter that Mika subsequently tried to affect the tone of a harsh disciplinarian; if he had a tail, he would have wagged it. The canine demonstrativeness of his bodyguard had always annoyed Vesa. Here was a man whose sole purpose in life seemed to be thwarting the adolescent desire to be left alone--did he have to be so earnest in the execution of those duties?
Perhaps there was still time. Vesa could still catch a bus back, dodge the questions of the guards at the gate, and be home in time for supper. No fuss, no damage to anyone’s livelihood.
But no. He had come too far to turn back now and risk losing contact with the first genuine human he’d come upon in years. If he ran, all would be as it always was: safe, proper, and unrelentingly, maddeningly lonely. With that thought, he tugged the big steel door open and slipped into the stifling heat and cacophony of the shop.
Vesa crept forward between the rows of presses, twisting his knit cap between his hands in an attempt to wring comfort from it. The great chattering behemoths loomed above him, churning newsprint through their jaws, and the oily smell of ink hung heavy in the air. He could feel it seeping into his skin and clothing, permeating every bit of him with the evidence of his misdeeds. He didn’t belong in a place like this.
He was about to leave, but a worker, catching sight of him from across the floor, jumped down from his perch by the feeder. Casually wiping his hairy hands on a rag, he ambled over to the threshold, where Vesa hovered awkwardly in the throes of indecision.
“Can I help you?” the worker asked, with the wry hint of a yellow-toothed smile.
“Does someone named Kai work here?”
In lieu of an answer, the worker turned and bellowed over his shoulder, causing Vesa to cringe in embarrassment and retreat farther toward the door.
“Kai! Hei! Someone askin’ for you!”
Kai emerged from behind the machine and cleared the steps down to the main floor in a single bound. Clad in a filthy canvas apron, hands stained black and shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the sinew of his slender arms, Kai looked so much taller without his layers of winter clothes--and Vesa felt what remained of his confidence going down in flames.
After their first meeting, Vesa had thought of this boy as an equal, oppressed by the same powerless teenage existence as himself. But as he looked at Kai now, so graceful and self-assured, he knew how wrong he had been. He felt like such a child standing in front of this adult, this heroic worker from a government poster made flesh and blood.
“If you’re busy,” Vesa murmured, “I can come back another time.”
“No, no, I get off my shift soon. Stick around, I’ll be with you in twenty.” Kai gave him a soft punch on the arm before disappearing once more among the whirring giants.
Vesa parked himself in an out-of-the-way chair and observed the printers at work. He watched Kai, far off at the end of a raised walkway, carry heavy stacks of pages over to the trimming machine and position them with a deft, practiced motion of his hands. Kai seemed an entirely different creature than the boys at school, freed from the soft chrysalis of childhood and now soaring far above. When Kai spoke, his words were shot through with a fiery conviction that Vesa had never encountered among his peers--a strength and honesty that deeply impressed him.
Was it only because Kai didn’t yet know whom he was talking to?
Vesa curled up like a pupa in his coat and waited, despairing, for the shift whistle to blow.
**
As Kaija hung her apron in her locker at the end of her shift, she began to have doubts about meeting with the boy. She desperately hoped he wasn’t still on the run. He had seemed so nervous when he’d seen her--barely able to make eye contact--and while the idea that he’d accidentally brought a tail with him was nerve-wracking enough, she feared that his unease had its origins in a more sinister purpose.
Yesterday, in a moment of weakness, she had said things--given out personal information to lead him here. And what did she know about him, really? Kaija pictured him leaving their tête-à-tête in the cathedral ruins to denounce her as a dissident to the police he claimed to be r
unning from. It seemed like the sort of trick they were likely to pull.
She emerged from the back room almost hoping for him to be gone, but she found him sitting quietly in a chair by the door, eyes closed and resting his chin in his hands. She tapped him on the shoulder, planning to exchange a few pleasantries and send him on his way.
“Vesa? Thanks for waiting for me.”
He looked up into her eyes, and the way his face brightened drove any lingering suspicions from her mind.
He’s not with them, she thought, with genuine relief.
The snow had started to fall again as they left the print shop. Before Kaija could stop him, Vesa bounded from the curb and spun around in the empty street, kicking a drift into sparkling showers. Kaija looked around in dismay, dreading the sight of a windowless van or a parked car containing a solitary shadow. Nothing stood out as suspicious, but she still felt the need to rein in his terrifying exuberance, lest it draw any unwanted attention. She hooked her arm around his neck and pulled him toward her, their faces close in conspiratorial communion.
“Watch it!” she whispered. “Aren’t they still after you?”
“What?” He struggled against her arm, looking shocked.
“The police!”
“No way, no way!” He shook his head, laughing, disentangling himself from her clutches. “Don’t worry! I mean, I’d rather not run into them, but...”
“So you don’t need my help?”
“I just wanted to talk again,” he began, but she held up a hand to silence him.
As she passed her gaze over the boy who stood in front of her, a new suspicion began to take hold.
How could she not have seen it before? The hand-knitted hat, the new winter boots with hardly a scratch on them--he was no wanted man, just a boy dabbling in youthful rebellion, looking to get in over his head.
“Listen,” she sighed, and struggled to harden her heart against the crestfallen look in his eyes. “You should probably just go back home.”
“No, please, come on...”
“Sorry. I don’t need any more trouble than I already have.”
“I won’t be any trouble, I swear!” he pleaded, but Kaija had already started to walk away.
It’s for your own good, she thought. It’s not too late for you.
“Go home,” she called back over her shoulder. “Your family’ll get worried if you’re out after curfew.”
“What family?”
His words echoed off the stone walls and stopped Kaija like a bullet through the heart. She slowly turned around.
“What did you say?”
“I don’t have a family! Who the hell cares?” The boy stared at the ground, fists clenched, his voice wavering with the strain of holding back emotion.
She felt a prickle in the bridge of her nose--the hurt she had caused rebounding back on her as her own.
“Didn’t you mean what you said yesterday?” Vesa continued. “That was the first time I’d met someone who feels like I do. Us against the world! I thought we were brothers, man!”
As Vesa began to walk away, Kaija caught up to him and grabbed his shoulder. He turned to her once more.
His face was sad, but his eyes were dry. Even in the dark of evening she could see how unreasonably blue they were.
“They’ll never see us coming, right?” she said with a hint of a smile.
He didn’t reply, so she tugged gently on the sleeve of his coat. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“My place.”
**
The fragrance of frying onions and a clatter of pans from the shared kitchens seeped under the doors and into the dank stairwell, welcoming Kaija and her guest as they climbed to the fifth floor. As they mounted each flight, Kaija’s heart began to quicken at the strangeness of inviting someone into her apartment.
As she turned her key in the lock, she struggled to remember another time she had had company in the dilapidated building she called home. She supposed there was a first for everything.
“It’s not much, but it’s home.”
Kaija made a sweeping gesture around the tiny room, as though welcoming Vesa through the gate of an opulent palace suite. For a moment, she saw the place as she knew he must see it--the peeling, stained wallpaper, the iron frame of the narrow bed--and she felt a fierce, defensive pride well up in her.
No one else could appreciate this room like she did. This was the one place in all of Kalevia where she was master of her own domain; this seedy apartment had a door she could shut against the rotten world outside. Here, listening to the scurrying of rats under the floorboards and the slow, erratic shuffle of elderly drunks making their way to the communal bathroom, she could sit at her narrow desk and write feverishly until her head nodded down to rest on the ink-scarred wood, finally finding dreamlessness and peace.
“It’s...nice,” said the boy.
She chose to ignore the ambivalence in his voice and began to scour the closet shelves for refreshments. The hunt yielded little: a packet of gnawed-upon crisp bread and a half-bottle of vodka left over from some late-night carousing in the back room of the print shop. She grabbed the vodka and two small tumblers, grateful for the drunken generosity of her workplace compatriots.
“Here. This’ll warm you up a little.”
She handed a glass to Vesa, and his eyes widened as she poured him a generous dose. He took a swig and shivered, his face scrunching up at the burn of the alcohol.
“How old are you, anyway?” she asked, amused at his evident inexperience.
“Just turned sixteen. How about you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Really?” He looked surprised. “But you don’t go to school?”
“Nah, I chose an employment track a few years ago after I finished compulsory education. It’s not exactly how I would’ve planned it, but printing’s not bad work, I guess, and I lucked out in the housing lottery. Found me this place right away--only a few months’ wait.” She sighed, thinking back on things that could have been, the doors now forever closed to her. “I just...I needed to get out of that place. You know what it’s like.”
“I do?”
“State care?” she asked, searching his face for signs of apprehension at the mention of the dreaded institution. “You at the boarding school, too?”
“No, I...” He licked his lips, blushing furiously. “I’m not technically an orphan.”
“What the hell!”
“No, wait, I wasn’t trying to lie to you or anything. I really did mean what I said.” He inhaled deeply, collected himself, and began again. “I live with my dad, but he’s so busy with work, he couldn’t care less if I was around or not.”
“And your mom?”
“Is dead.”
“I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have...”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t really remember her--she died a little after I was born. It was the war, and dad was away fighting. He...wasn’t there,” he muttered, almost as though talking to himself. “He’s never there.”
Vesa turned to her, his face gone tender, and probed the wound. “Do you...remember yours?” he asked carefully.
She nodded. “I was seven when I last saw her.”
There was an extended pause as they stood there, awkwardly sipping their drinks, trying not to tread on each other’s pain. Kaija wondered how she ought to change the subject. If she rekindled their fiery enthusiasm for discussing hatreds, perhaps she had a chance of salvaging the night before it began an irrevocable slide into melancholy.
One particular idea came to mind, but it involved a jealously guarded secret--a further gamble with her already-uncertain future. It was a risky proposition, but she’d come far enough that perhaps she could let him in on it. Nothing like the thrill of shared conspiracy to strengthen the bonds of new friendship.
“Let me show you something.” Kaija said, leaning over her bed.
She tugged the mattress toward her, and in the gap cr
eated, located a nail sticking out of the wall. As Vesa looked on in wide-eyed curiosity, she gave it a few solid tugs; a plank came away cleanly in her hands, revealing a neat little shelf concealed within the walls.
“My obsession.” She held up one of the flimsy paperbacks for him to see, rifling its uneven pages. “Samizdat.”
“Banned books!”
“There are perks to working at the shop.” She laid them one by one on the bed, lingering over each smudged brown cover. “The night manager is an eccentric, and he has this old, old printing press in the back room, from back before they kept reference prints for every run. A few of us who are in on it take turns making what we think Vainola needs to read.”
“You could be arrested!”
“Only if someone tells. Keep my secret?”
“I swear!”
He ran his fingers over the books. Poetry folios of avant-garde geniuses, novels with salacious titles, the Book of Psalms, pamphlets, handbooks, and a thin volume simply labeled In Prisons and Camps.
“The Master and Margarita,” he read, puzzling out the Roman characters on one of the books. “They’re not in Kalevian.”
“This is the Finnish translation; close enough. It’s the Roman alphabet throwing you off.”
Vesa selected another book, its cover graced by a scratchy pen drawing of the moon rising over pine trees. “Stories from the Kalevala.”
“Ah, that’s one of my favorites. Printed and bound it myself.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s a collection of the old tales,” Kaija explained, gently taking the ragged book from him. A familiar feeling of veneration swept over her as she opened it to her favorite passages.
“Finland, Karelia, Estonia, Kalevia--we share a history of folklore. These are the ancient songs that shaped our northern lands from before history was written--the poetry of heroes.”
He shook his head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Why would you have? No one teaches the legends in Kalevia anymore. We have new heroes now.” She scoffed as she thought of the parade of bearded men whose graven images watched over every home and factory in Kalevia. “Who wants to hear poems when you have manifestos?”
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