by Philip Teir
‘Brita cake. It’s a cream-filled layer cake with strawberries.’
‘Oh.’
He turned towards her, leaned down, and kissed her. She hesitated at first, but then kissed him back. He could feel himself getting an erection, so he lay down on his stomach.
‘How do you make a layer cake? Tell me all the details,’ he said.
Again she laughed, turning over so he saw how the sand had stuck to her breasts.
Anders reluctantly went back to the summer house in the evening. Erik was sitting on the terrace, having a beer, and Anders nodded to him. Erik hastily stood up, wobbling a bit before heading for the steps.
‘Where have you been?’
‘Nowhere.’
‘Nowhere? All day?’
Erik frowned before sitting back down, almost falling off his chair.
‘It was such nice weather, and I thought I needed to be alone for a while.’
‘Did you talk to anyone?’
‘Me? No, I didn’t.’
‘Huh,’ said Erik. He sounded sceptical. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Anders thought Erik might have seen him with Kati. It was possible. Did it matter?
‘And you didn’t even bother to come home to have dinner with us,’ said Erik.
‘But I did. I’m here now.’
Erik looked as if he’d been drinking steadily all day. He gave Anders that sort of look: focused and yet restless, as if he was trying to formulate something scathing to say but couldn’t find the right words. He did not look happy.
‘Is there something you want to ask me?’ said Anders as gently as possible.
‘I don’t want to ask you anything. I have no problems. You’re the one who borrows money from me and comes here without saying how long you plan to stay, and then we hardly see you. You just hang around the beach with some woman you don’t even know. Your generation seems to have no idea what it means to take responsibility or what it is you want.’
‘My generation? You’re only two years older than me. We’re the same generation,’ said Anders, sitting down next to Erik on the terrace.
‘Are the two of you having sex?’
‘Who do you mean?’
‘You and Kati.’
‘So you know her name?’ said Anders. ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me that, when it’s none of your business. But no, we’re not having sex. Mostly we talk about cooking.’
Erik stood up again, swayed, and went to the front door.
He stood there for a long moment, breathing as he stared at the ground. He reminded Anders of their paternal grandfather. Erik looked at least ten years older than his real age.
‘Forget it. I just thought … you came here and … You haven’t even asked me how I’m doing … Forget it.’
He opened the door and went inside.
2
ONE MORNING IN LATE JULY Julia found the family car down at the road, almost in the ditch. It must have rolled down there. As if the handbrake had failed. As if someone had been playing in the car and then let it roll away, across the road. Nothing had happened to the car. It was almost as if it had been parked at the drive leading to the big grey house where the melancholy woman lived. The woman Anders had started spending time with. The woman they knew nothing about. But the car hadn’t been there the night before, and none of them had driven it anywhere.
Julia couldn’t imagine the kids playing in the car. Anton wouldn’t dare, and Alice wouldn’t be interested in anything like that. When she asked Erik, he merely shrugged. He often sat on the terrace in the evenings, drinking. It seemed as if his plans to have a summer filled with activities like fishing and swimming had faded. Julia hadn’t said anything to him because she didn’t want to make him cross. But he’d already gone through a big bottle of Bacardi and two cases of beer.
‘But don’t you think it’s a little strange? I mean, that the car would roll down there from the driveway? If I’d forgotten to set the handbrake, I think I would have noticed,’ she said.
‘Maybe you forgot after we came back from the grocery shopping,’ Erik said. He had a beer in front of him, and he was eating a sandwich.
‘But that’s what I’m saying. If I forgot, the car would have rolled down right away. But it didn’t.’
‘Was there any damage?’
‘Not that I could see.’
‘Okay then. Next time you need to leave the car in gear so it won’t roll anywhere.’
‘I think I’ll go see Marika and Chris,’ she said, and left.
She walked down to the beach, squinting in the warm July sun.
Chris was sitting in a lotus position outside the yurt, totally focused on what he was reading. His chest was bare. When he saw Julia, he got up, and that’s when she noticed Helena was there too. She was lying on a blanket next to Chris, sunbathing topless.
Julia wondered how old Helena was. Surely no more than twenty? She thought it was easy for such a young woman to latch onto a man because she could exploit her own youth. She was someone who didn’t need to take responsibility for the attractive aura or sexual energy she radiated. If she flirted with Chris, it was basically his job not to encourage her.
Something told Julia that he didn’t really care about such things.
‘Would you like some coffee?’ he asked.
‘Sure, why not,’ said Julia. ‘Where’s Marika?’
‘I don’t know. Around here somewhere. Wait, I remember now. She was going to town to shop for groceries,’ he said, showing no interest in the subject.
The beach was deserted, and Julia couldn’t see any of the others, except for Ville, who was sitting outside the house working on his laptop. Julia hadn’t really talked to him. He had always kept in the background, something of a bit player among Chris’s disciples.
She went over to Ville, wanting to ask him whether he’d seen the children. He too looked young, at least ten years younger than her. She thought he seemed like one of those young Finnish men who flocked to various extreme-right groups, like Soldiers of Odin or climate dystopia, creating a new context for themselves when society offered no prospects.
Ville was talking to somebody on Skype.
‘Am I disturbing you?’ she asked.
‘I’m talking to a client, but it can wait,’ he said, closing up his computer after ending the conversation.
Ville had told Erik that he came from Seinäjoki, but that’s all she really knew about him. He had a scruffy beard and looked a bit dishevelled, but there was a certain warmth to his gaze.
‘What sort of work do you do?’
‘As little as possible,’ he said. ‘But you might say that I work on the fringes of the internet.’
‘As a hacker?’
‘That’s not a word I’d use. As I see it, it’s a matter of freedom of expression and freedom in general. And that’s becoming more and more important in today’s world.’
‘Huh,’ said Julia. ‘Have you seen the children?’
‘Whose children?’
‘My daughter. And Leo.’
‘Not for a couple of days,’ said Ville. ‘I don’t really pay much attention to other people.’
Julia went back to Chris and Helena. Helena’s light-brown skin looked so soft, and Julia found herself getting lost in a fantasy about pressing her finger against Helena’s stomach, the way she might press her thumb into a stress ball. The young woman’s arms looked pale against the dark sand, where several empty beer cans had been tossed.
Julia noticed how messy the yard was, as if no one had done any cleaning in ages. In addition to the beer cans there were plastic sacks filled with rubbish, and cigarette butts and ice cream wrappers scattered about. A big rubber boat that someone had tried to inflate but then abandoned lay next to the yurt.
‘Are Alice and Leo here?’ she asked.
Alice had left early in the morning without saying a word to anyone, and she hadn’t yet returned home. Julia had assumed the kids had gone down to the beach, but sh
e didn’t see them when she walked past.
‘They’re fine. Why don’t you sit down?’ said Chris.
‘Okay,’ said Julia as Chris smiled, feigning naïvity. During the summer she’d worked out what sort of person he was. She’d met his kind before. He was a man who’d made it far in life by smiling that way, yet on some level he knew there were also limits to using his charm as currency, especially having reached middle age. Men like that had a tendency to acquire younger girlfriends, since boyish charms didn’t work on women their own age. Older women were much quicker to recognise his type, and they understood that there might not be much of substance beyond the first impression.
Poor Marika, thought Julia.
Chris handed her a cup of coffee.
‘We’re considering moving here,’ he said now.
‘Really?’ said Julia.
‘Yes. Putting down roots here, in fact. Maybe organising a large festival or workshop with people from all over the world. You should join us.’
For some inexplicable reason, Julia didn’t go back home. She stayed there at the shore, listening to Chris as he told her about his plans for the movement while Helena sat close by, watching them with a look of deep concentration, as if she were trying to seduce Chris through telepathy.
Julia asked Helena whether she had a boyfriend. She couldn’t resist breaking the mood. She wanted to see the young woman’s reaction, rather like a child tearing the wings off a butterfly to see if it could still move.
But Helena did not seem surprised or taken aback.
‘That’s such a heteronormative question,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘You assume I’d be with a man.’
‘Okay. So, are you seeing anyone?’
‘Now you sound like my paternal grandmother in Greece. Life doesn’t have to be so binary. Did you know that? Although I suppose it is when you’re married,’ said Helena.
‘Chris is married too,’ said Julia.
Chris smiled again.
‘Actually,’ said Chris, ‘Marika and I aren’t married. Did you think we were?’
Julia glanced at his left hand.
‘Oh, you mean this ring I’m wearing? It’s a family heirloom. I’ve had it all my life,’ he said, looking at the wide silver band he wore on his left ring finger.
He stood up and brushed off the sand.
‘Anyone interested in a little dessert?’
‘Sure,’ said Helena.
It turned out that what Chris called ‘dessert’ was an electronic cigarette with marijuana. Julia declined since it was still morning and she didn’t really care for the effect. The few times she’d smoked grass, she had felt jittery and restless.
After a while a mellow mood came over Chris and Helena, as if they were sinking into a lethargic state. The sun was so hot that Julia had to move into the shade.
Chris talked about how the human era was following the same pattern as Greek drama.
‘And that’s why civilisation is a tragedy, if we’re going to classify it as a specific genre. All the horrors are pre-determined,’ he said.
Helena lay with her head resting on his lap. She nodded at his statements with the same admiration a first-year college student might show whenever her philosophy professor said something brilliant. She glanced at Julia, her expression clearly saying: ‘Don’t come here and pretend you’re anybody.’
‘It’s encoded in the human DNA, in the whole information process. The more technological advances we make, the closer we come to our own annihilation. It’s like fireworks. Or like waves that break up under their own weight. We humans are too smart for our own good,’ he said.
‘That’s awfully pessimistic,’ said Julia. ‘There are lots of movements that want to make the world better and more sensible.’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter what kind of political system we have. Capitalism, or a growth economy, is often seen as the villain in the drama, but where does it come from? Where does industrialisation come from? These days, it’s all about civilisation. And that’s the whole problem,’ he went on.
‘So when did the tragedy start, in your opinion? With the Big Bang? When human beings migrated from Africa?’ asked Julia.
‘From a purely technical standpoint, maybe when humans began eating fish and their brains developed so much that they could think more abstractly. That’s when they began leaving traces in nature,’ said Chris.
‘So things were better before that?’ asked Julia.
‘That’s right. Today’s world is a sham.’
Helena seemed annoyed by Julia’s questions, but Julia thought Chris was trying to impress her, and the more she looked at him and listened to his remarks, the more comical he seemed.
‘The world is a sham?’ she said now. ‘That seems like a very grandiose statement.’
‘People are always putting on an act, displaying a façade,’ said Chris. ‘And we keep getting better at doing that. There’s a story about Goebbels and his lover, a Czech actress. Hitler demanded that he break off the relationship because it could cause a scandal. At the same time, those two men were killing six million Jews. I mean, how strange is that? Devoting lots of energy to make sure there are no stains on your personal reputation while committing the most horrific acts without even a trace of guilt. Civilisation is nothing but a thin veneer.’
Helena nodded as she ran her hand lightly over Chris’s arm.
3
ERIK CREPT CLOSER TO Kati’s house, wanting to peer in a window. He knew it was a childish thing to do, but he couldn’t help it. He’d been drinking and now felt such a yearning, and yet he was so disappointed in himself. He should have pulled himself together and begun looking for a job; he should have done something about his situation, or at least spent some time with the kids. Instead, he merely sat on the terrace every evening, drinking rum and noticing how his muscles and his thoughts gradually relaxed until he sank into a pleasant torpor. Two big shots of rum were enough to make him drunk, but not too drunk. Just enough to smooth out any sharp edges.
There was no wind on this hot afternoon. Anders had gone down to the beach early in the morning, and by three Erik had poured his first drink. When they’d first arrived here, he’d mentally set five o’clock as an okay time to start drinking, but today after lunch he’d already started longing for some rum.
Yesterday he’d driven the car to the supermarket even though he’d been drinking. It was his job to do the grocery shopping, and he didn’t want Julia to know that he’d started drinking so early in the day. So he’d gone to town, driving as cautiously as he could and hoping no one would stop him and ask him to take a breathalyser test. That would have been unlikely, since it was only two in the afternoon. At the supermarket he stood in one spot for a long time, unable to recall what he was supposed to buy. It took him two tries to remember everything on his shopping list. When he finally had all the groceries, he drove home as if in a dream and unpacked the grocery bags in the kitchen. He must have forgotten to set the handbrake. He couldn’t remember, but in some mysterious way the car had rolled down to the road during the night.
He got closer to Kati’s house, but he didn’t hear any voices or laughter. In his mind he pictured what they were doing inside: his brother and Kati having sex. Anders’ big, beefy body on top of her lovely dark silhouette. She would come several times while he spilled his seed onto her stomach. Why was he tormenting himself with these kinds of thoughts? He didn’t know. He felt obsessed.
He sneaked behind the house to the front door, stopped a few metres from the terrace, and stared at the big window facing the bay. But the sun was reflecting off the glass, and he couldn’t see anything. He thought they might catch sight of him; they definitely would if he went any closer. So instead he went around to the side of the house and peered in through a window. It was dark inside. He was looking at an empty room.
He thought: What am I doing here?
Someone opened the door to the room and
came in. It was Kati. When Erik saw her, he quickly moved away from the window, but he wasn’t fast enough. She saw him.
He fled.
As he ran towards the road he could hear his brother calling after him. Or maybe he just imagined he heard Anders’ voice. Maybe it wasn’t too late, maybe he could still save the situation. But by running away, he’d managed to emphasise how absurd it was, so all he could do now was continue heading for the road and home.
Erik was packing. Julia came back just as he was carrying his suitcase out to the terrace. He told her he was going to catch a train, and he could drive himself to the station if she didn’t want to take him.
‘You’re going to Helsinki? Right now?’ she asked.
‘Yes. It’s sort of an emergency. The whole department store is having trouble with the internet, and I can’t fix it over the phone. I need to go back and have a look at the servers.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Maybe it’ll do you good to go back to the city for a while. How long are you staying?’
‘Probably just a few days.’
‘All right. Shall I drive you to the station now?’
‘In an hour. Let’s leave at five.’
He didn’t want Anders to turn up and force him to explain, so he went down to the cellar, giving the excuse that he wanted to have another look at the pipes and maybe find out where the strange smell was coming from. It was dark and damp under the house. The floor was cement, and an oil-fired boiler stood in one corner of the room. He looked at the pipes and realised he had no idea where to start.
There was water all over the floor, at least five centimetres deep. The water hadn’t been there earlier in the summer.
He sat down on a stool and spent a little while surfing the internet on his mobile. He pictured how he would organise his life when he got back to Helsinki. How he’d pull himself together.
I’m basically a positive and optimistic person, he told himself now.
He’d been an important cog in the wheel at his job, and he still had a lot to offer the world.
He was a good person.
He was a smart person.
