The Summer House

by Philip Teir

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that man playing tennis,’ said Erik. ‘I think I’ll ask if I can play a game with him someday. I might be good at it. Would you like to play too?’

  ‘I think his name is Leif. His mother was friends with my grandmother,’ said Julia.

  Erik went into the kitchen and poured each of them a glass of water. Then he sat at the table, silently staring out of the window.

  ‘You’ll probably get a lot written this summer, I suppose?’ he said. It sounded more like a statement than a question.

  Julia was twenty-three when she and Erik got married. She used to say that it was her mother Susanne who proposed to Erik. That it was Susanne who suggested having a wedding since they were expecting a child.

  ‘Of course you have to get married,’ Susanne said one evening during the Christmas holidays, speaking with all the authority of a grown-up, as if Julia and Erik were still too young to make any decisions on their own.

  And maybe that was true. When Julia stood in the Old Church of Helsinki a few months later, listening to the pastor, who insisted on calling Erik ‘Henrik’, she still wasn’t sure what exactly was happening.

  Her wedding gown was made of cream-coloured silk. She’d bought it for only five euros at the UFF second-hand shop on Stora Robertsgatan on the day when she and Erik went to the doctor and saw the first ultrasound images. The dress draped beautifully over her stomach, which she imagined had already begun to show her pregnancy. She was happy and in love, though a little shocked by how fast everything had proceeded.

  Afterwards at the restaurant, everyone drank too much. Susanne finished off a whole bottle of white wine, which the waitress had set at their end of the table, and then followed with a glass of cognac as she talked boisterously. Julia could hear that her mother was telling someone about her dress, which she’d bought from the same designer who made many of the evening gowns worn at the president’s independence day ball at the palace. Susanne remarked that she knew the designer personally, so she’d got the dress for a good price.

  ‘He said he’d actually designed it with me in mind,’ Susanne added as she drained her cognac glass. ‘Normally it would have cost a fortune, but I think he likes to have high-profile customers …’

  Erik’s mother merely nodded politely, peering attentively at all the guests without saying much. Susanne kept on talking, though occasionally she would pause briefly to survey the others seated at the table, her expression a bit disapproving, as if she now realised that her daughter had married into a ‘sausage family’. That was what she called people she considered to be low-brow or ordinary.

  Erik’s family was a sausage family. His parents had arrived the day before by train from Ekenäs and had eaten dinner in the hotel restaurant. They had studied the menu for what seemed like an eternity and then ordered the simplest dish on offer: steak and chips.

  Erik’s father had left school at the age of fifteen back in the sixties, and after that he went to work for a company in Hangö that changed tyres. He worked in the automotive industry for fifteen years, married Erik’s mother – who had grown up in the same neighbourhood – and eventually became the proprietor of his own petrol station in Ekenäs. At the wedding supper, he drank almost as much as Susanne, talking mostly about a flat the family had owned in Spain back in the eighties – clearly an attempt on his part to raise, at least partially, the social stakes at the table. For Erik and his brother Anders, their working-class background was a constant source of pride, and Julia had even felt a bit jealous of them – the fact that they had deliberately risen in social class while she had merely done what everyone had always expected of her. She was capable and diligent and had chosen the natural path for any self-respecting member of the eighties generation with well-to-do academic parents: a highly uncertain career within the cultural sphere.

  Julia met Erik for the first time at the Old Student House, or student union, at a party organised by the student association of the literature institute. Erik was studying IT and lived in student housing in Otnäs. Julia had taken pity on him when he missed the last bus home. After that night, they spent nearly every day together for the next five weeks, although nothing happened between them. They even talked about the fact that they had such a good relationship because it was not based on sex. At that time Julia had a boyfriend, but it wasn’t serious enough for her to hesitate about inviting Erik to spend the night. She had actually been waiting for an opportunity to break off the relationship. Tomas was an assistant librarian at the literature institute and nearly ten years older, although he didn’t act like it. He was clumsy in bed and had bad breath. The only reason Julia hadn’t broken up with him before was because he seemed to be someone who had suffered rejection too many times in his life.

  Erik and Julia began going to the theatre and the cinema together, yet they were both so busy thinking about each other that afterwards neither of them could ever remember what the play or film was about.

  One night they ended up sitting on a park bench somewhere in Havshagen after taking a long walk, and they started talking, hypothetically, about becoming a couple. The air seemed to pulse with tension, and they were both shivering with cold as they stared at a man who was fishing out on the ice.

  Erik and Julia had constructed a story in which they were merely friends, but Julia could feel how she tingled with desire whenever she looked at him. Erik was twenty-one and planning to enter the mobile phone business when he finished his studies. He seemed filled with self-confidence and faith in the future.

  ‘What do you think about becoming a couple? How would that work?’ she asked, looking at him.

  ‘It would be awful,’ he said, and then smiled. It was so cold outside that vapour issued from his mouth. He was very handsome, though he seemed unaware of that fact – which only increased his charm.

  ‘Horrible,’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘You’d soon get sick and tired of me. You’d think I was boring, with lots of boring friends,’ he said.

  ‘You’d study all day long, and I’d be home trying to write my masterpiece.’

  Julia had decided to become a writer. She’d told Erik about this, with some embarrassment, because she thought it sounded a little pretentious, but he had reacted in exactly the right way. He had encouraged her and said she should set aside at least two hours a day for her writing. He had taken a completely practical view, considering it a goal worth pursuing, almost in the same way as if she’d wanted to be a doctor. She admired his pragmatic attitude. She wasn’t used to that back home, where everyone expected that she would succeed as if by magic.

  ‘And then I’d come home and you’d be cross because you didn’t get any writing done,’ he said.

  ‘And finally I’d get so frustrated because of writer’s block that I’d start talking to myself, and then I’d find an axe and start chasing you around the flat like Jack Nicholson in The Shining,’ said Julia.

  ‘Great film,’ said Erik.

  ‘Hmm … I was only fourteen when I read the book. That’s always what I think about when I don’t get any writing done. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’

  ‘But there would be one positive note: I’d cook great food. You’d eat well,’ said Erik.

  Julia laughed.

  ‘Wonderful. I hate to cook.’

  ‘So maybe it would work out after all.’

  ‘Maybe it would.’

  Now, as he sat here in the kitchen and asked Julia whether she was hungry and whether he should light the barbecue, it felt as if those two people existed only in old photo albums. And Julia felt both touched and embarrassed when she thought about how young they had been.

  Julia admired Erik and knew that he was a good father, but sometimes she felt quite lonely when she was with him. She would look at other couples and think that they didn’t seem to be experiencing the same sort of loneliness. Other couples seemed to belong together, and they were so obviously fond of each other. She felt guilty that sh
e didn’t feel the same way about Erik, which made her even lonelier, since there was no one she could talk to about this. She considered it to be the greatest possible betrayal, this yearning to get away. And she wasn’t even certain that’s what it was. Maybe her loneliness stemmed from something else, something existentially indefinable – the incurable ennui of modern times. She often thought about Madame Bovary, which she’d read during her first year at university. Maybe she was no better than Emma Bovary – equally naïve in her longing, equally enticed by some sort of imagined adventure that might break up the monotony of everyday life. But Emma Bovary was barely an adult, while Julia would soon turn thirty-six. Wasn’t she too old to be yearning to get away? Shouldn’t she have grown out of that phase of her life?

  ‘Do you know when your parents will arrive?’ asked Erik.

  ‘Probably in a couple of days,’ she said.

  ‘Are they going to sleep here?’

  ‘I doubt it. I don’t think they’ve slept here in ages. Besides, there’s no room for them.’

  ‘They could sleep up in the attic.’

  ‘It’s too hot in the attic for Mamma. She’s always complaining about it. They’ll probably drive back home.’

  ‘Or else they’ll stay here, and she’ll walk around the whole time in her underwear, like in Spain,’ said Erik.

  ‘I forgot about that,’ said Julia, now recalling the trip they’d taken to Spain two years ago. Susanne had slept every night on the sofa, clad in her underwear, worn out and numbed by the wine she’d had from the wine-in-a-box she’d bought at the local shop.

  It had felt like spending the holidays with a force of nature, a storm with a will of its own. Susanne was the sort of person who might ask the children what they wanted to do in the morning, and then forget all about their wishes and spend the day following her own plans. For Susanne, being able to talk about how she’d spent the holiday with her grandchildren was more important than actually doing anything with them.

  ‘Well, it’ll be fun to see them, no matter what,’ said Erik.

  ‘Really?’ said Julia.

  ‘At least for the kids. And your mother means well. She can be a little much sometimes, but she’s basically good-hearted.’

  ‘I suppose so. At any rate, I don’t think they’ll stay long,’ said Julia.

  The wind picked up in the evening. Erik cooked dinner on the barbecue, but they ate inside because it was too cold to sit outdoors. As Julia rinsed off her plate after dinner, she noticed a strange smell. She pressed her nose against the fabric covering the walls, but it smelled only of old sackcloth.

  ‘Do you notice that?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ asked Erik.

  ‘There’s an odd smell,’ said Julia.

  ‘All old houses smell odd,’ he replied.

  ‘You don’t think we have a mould problem?’ she said.

  ‘That doesn’t seem likely. Where would it be?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think it smells damp. But maybe I’m just imagining things.’

  ‘When it gets warmer, we can air the place out,’ said Erik. ‘And then you can sit outside to write instead of in the kitchen. But I’ll check it out. Maybe there’s something your father and I can do about it when they get here.’

  After dinner the kids retreated to the living room where they tried to get the old television to work. Julia and Erik stayed sitting at the kitchen table. Julia thought she should spend every day writing, and she wondered whether she would do just that – isolating herself completely for the rest of the summer and letting Erik take care of everything else.

  Erik was holding his mobile, staring at it.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, sticking the phone in his pocket. ‘I just wanted to see if we had any coverage here.’

  Erik took his mobile to the beach so he could check his emails in peace.

  The bay was deserted. He saw only the heavy, restless clouds that shrank the landscape. A strong wind was creating big waves further out. After a while he started to freeze.

  He stared at his phone. For a moment he considered flinging it into the sea so no one could reach him. Instead, he called the number that had been trying to reach him all day. It was a number he knew well.

  ‘Hi! How’s it going?’ asked Jouni. He was clearly at work because Erik could hear sounds coming from the department store in the background.

  ‘Good, thanks. Everything’s great,’ he replied.

  They spoke for two minutes and forty seconds. He made note of the time on the display afterwards as he stared at the phone and wondered what he should do. It was true that they’d promised him severance pay. Six months’ salary, which wasn’t bad. The last thing Jouni said was: ‘I’m sorry, Erik. I’m really sorry.’

  When Erik stepped through the door, the kids had just brought their bedclothes downstairs so they could sleep in their parents’ bedroom. Anton said he was afraid of snakes, and Alice refused to sleep up in the attic alone because she thought it was horrible.

  ‘You’ll have to sleep head to toe in that little bed,’ said Julia.

  It was still light outside, a muted, grey light, and Julia hung a blanket over the window to make the room dark. Anton wanted to know whether there were tadpoles in the woods.

  ‘I’m sure there are,’ said Julia. ‘At least, there used to be when I was a little girl. Goodnight, you two.’

  Later, after they’d turned off the lights and the kids were asleep, Erik lay in bed wide awake for a long time.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ he finally asked.

  ‘No, not yet,’ said Julia.

  ‘Feel like having sex?’

  ‘Now? Here?’

  ‘I was thinking up in the attic. So we don’t wake the kids.’

  They tiptoed up the stairs, which creaked under their feet. There were two big rooms, one on either side of the stairs. Both were dark because the ceilings were low and the windows small. In one room was a double bed, and they lay down on it. The whole time Erik had a feeling that Julia was responding stronger than usual, as if her body were more sensitive to his touch here, and he wondered whether it was because of this place, in this dark and stifling room with the woods outside the window and the current low pressure – as if she were a barometer. It was a similar experience for Erik. With every touch, during every second of sex, he felt fully present, and yet it seemed like a film, as if he were looking at both of them from the outside. She climbed on top of him and he looked up. He saw Julia’s dark hair, her soft breasts, and the beams in the ceiling. He happened to think that it had probably been a long time since anyone had had sex in this room. Maybe it had never happened before. At the same time, as he felt himself on the verge of coming, he also thought about his job and the phone conversation with Jouni, about Riina Pitkänen and the way she’d stood in front of the room during the meeting. Suddenly he pictured her naked, holding a whip in her hand, wearing stiletto heels, and bending over the conference table.

  Afterwards they went back downstairs. He felt strangely happy and warm. They walked through the silent house in the muted summer light to get a glass of water in the kitchen. He thought that life was quite wonderful, even though maybe he should have felt differently now that he’d lost his job.

  ‘That was intense,’ said Julia.

  ‘It sure was,’ said Erik.

  They lay awake in bed for a while, without talking. When Julia finally fell asleep, Erik thought he could hear a tennis ball striking a backboard outside. He couldn’t believe anyone would be playing tennis at this time of night. And even if they were, could it really be heard up here?

  6

  ‘WAIT FOR ME,’ SAID Anton. He always had the feeling that Alice knew so much more than he did, which gave her an advantage. She was only three years older, and that worried Anton. Would he be able to learn everything in three years? It was a mystery how people managed to learn things at all. He’d noticed it did no good to ask his parents. They were so
busy with their own interests. Instead, he learned most things from YouTube, clicking from one video to another to find out about everything from computer games and basketball shoes to American politics.

  Anton could never get a straight answer from his father, only a vague hemming and hawing. His question would get swallowed up in a feeling that there were lots of different ways to look at matters. Anton didn’t understand how that could be true. Either there were snakes or there weren’t. That should be simple enough to work out.

  Right now Alice was walking ahead of him along the road. It was Sunday, and they’d left as soon as breakfast was finished to see if they could find any tadpoles. It was sixteen degrees Celsius, warm enough to wear a T-shirt. Anton had never seen a tadpole, so he didn’t quite know what to expect. Would he be able to hold one? His mother had said they were so fast that it would be hard to catch them. Down at the beach this morning, his father had Googled tadpoles and found out this was a good time to catch them because the eggs had been laid back in April.

  ‘Although I’m not really sure … it says here that they hatch in April to May. You’ll just have to go and scope out the real situation,’ he added, causing Anton to sigh.

  They had turned off onto a narrow path. Anton followed Alice, carrying a bucket in one hand and keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him.

  ‘We should have brought a cup to catch them with,’ said Alice. ‘That bucket is too big. We’ll come back again if we find any.’

  ‘Do you think there are any snakes out here?’ he asked.

  He was wearing his rubber boots. They were black and felt hot because he’d put them on over his bare feet. He peered down at the blueberry bushes along the edge of the ditch, imagining how a snake might jump out and bite him. He hadn’t yet decided whether he liked nature or not. In many ways it seemed dangerous and troublesome, and he missed the shops and the security of Helsinki. Since his father worked at the department store in the centre of town, he’d always had access to that world. He’d been allowed to see everything in the warehouse that none of the customers ever saw, and he’d sat in the staff room to drink juice. He liked going to work with his father. The women who worked there all smelled so good, and there were so many of them that someone always paid special attention to him. He liked the atmosphere in the electronics department. Everything looked as if it had just been taken out of the packaging, all shiny and new. It seemed like an amazing place to work because all his father had to do was repair some internet connections once in a while. Often it only required turning off the internet and then switching it back on.