The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy

by Johanna Sinisalo (Translator

  We picked up the mattresses from the loading bay of some old junk shop, there were loads of them piled up under a plastic cover. Again, all we had to do was basically walk in, I managed to get the wire fence open just by sticking my hand through the mesh, although I did have to fiddle with the lock a bit first. Who can be bothered watching a place like that, I mean, who’d want to pinch a load of fertiliser? We took shed loads of thick, ready-cut superlon. Nina made sure it all fitted in the chests. It was quite a good size, mattress-sized stuff. We must have taken about twenty of them. Loads of the stuff, at least four per box.

  When she told me what was next on her list I started wondering if there was any sense in the whole thing; still it was a pretty smart address, but the worst one yet. I tried to think which chemists’ the lads used to do over and which ones had alarms fitted. Finally we drove away from the city centre out towards Messukylä where there’s a chemist’s in a small old house by the side of a busy road, nicely tucked away in the bushes. We didn’t waste any time: brick through the window, door open and inside. I had a quick look round for some speed, or dex or whatever, while Nina went and picked up two enormous buckets full of some vaseline ointment. It was bloody funny, like someone had broken into the off-licence and only nicked the carrier bags. We were in and out in less than a minute.

  After we’d been on the road for a while, we turned and drove off through Nekala so we wouldn’t be spotted, Nina saw an old bin outside a shop – it was probably just for sweet papers. She wanted that too. We picked it up and then she told me to drive back where we’d come from, so back to the bottom of the rocks near Näsinpuisto. By the time we got back there it must have been about two in the morning, and when she told me what we needed to do next, I swear I’ve never laughed so hard in my life.

  Handler(s): Lamminmäki and Eerola / pk

  Subject: Transcript of interview with care worker Airi Kurkinen

  A: It was six o’clock in the morning. Nina normally wakes up very early indeed, and now I woke up because she didn’t start whimpering as usual. Waking up is clearly distressing for her and she tends to react very strongly in the mornings. So I awoke to an unusual calm and went to her room to check on her. The bed was empty. I quickly searched the flat – Nina lives with me around the clock, except during my holidays; her parents didn’t want to put her into an institution – and I realised that she was nowhere else either. I checked through all the cupboards as well.

  Q: This is slightly off the subject, but isn’t being at work around the clock extremely taxing?

  A: Nina is in fact no trouble whatsoever and her parents pay me very well. Are you implying that I haven’t taken good enough care of her, that I’m too exhausted to watch her carefully? Now listen here, Officer, I am …

  Q: Miss Kurkinen, the fact of the matter is that Nina disappeared without her carer’s noticing it. These are the facts.

  A: Another fact is whether you would expect your own two-year-old to run away from home. The place they feel the safest – if they feel anything at all that is. This is someone who is so uninterested in the world around her that she can’t even open the front door. There’s no way I could have seen this coming.

  Q: You mentioned that she opened the door – something, clearly, that she could not previously do.

  A: Yes, unless someone opened it for her from the outside. I strongly believe that is what must have happened, but why would someone have done a thing like that? From the inside the door opens almost silently. The only possible explanation is that she opened it herself from the inside because any other noises would have woken me up straight away.

  Q: Is there any way of explaining why she could suddenly do things she had not been able to do before?

  A: I’m as baffled as you are; more so probably, you’re not very familiar with the subject.

  Q: Miss Kurkinen, this sounds strange, and you reacted rather strongly a moment ago when we touched on the matter, but is it at all possible that a child with these symptoms could suddenly acquire new strengths, skills which were blocked and then released?

  A: So what you’re suggesting is that all this time, without my knowledge, she has been taking in information about the world around her and then, abracadabra, she decides to start making use of it?

  Q: You could put it like that.

  A: Officer. (Pause.) Let me see. Do you think autism is merely some kind of outward block? That children like this learn and develop and have an awareness of things, but are simply unable to show anyone what they can do – and we think they are simply withdrawn? It’s a very far-fetched hypothesis and I have to say I’ve never thought of the matter from such an angle. Just a minute – are you seriously suggesting that Nina has managed to break down this so-called block and started using her skills by opening the door and running off into town in the middle of the night?

  Q: Or that some external factor may have caused the block to subside?

  A: I can’t imagine it.

  Q: All we know so far is that she left your apartment between 11pm and 6am last night. Can you tell us, Miss Kurkinen, everything you and she did the previous day …

  Handler: Lamminmäki / pk

  Subject: Transcript of dictated confession of Klaus Antero Viksten, arrived in custody 14.7; awaiting trial.

  Once I’d pulled myself together I looked at her and said: are you off your nut? She just stared back at me with that mysterious look in her eyes, and that’s when I realised that maybe she’d been right all along, maybe that’s exactly what we had to do. I took a handful of the tabs I’d nicked from the chemist’s and that was it: after that everything felt okay and sensible.

  I’d never been to a dolphinarium before. It was in Särkänniemi, just down from the planetarium, in amongst the spruces. I knew there would be guards about at night, and I knew something would have to be done about them.

  Nina stepped out of the van and I parked it a little way off round the back. She stood there looking helpless, shifting her feet and peering around. It was about half an hour before the guards turned up. There were two of them and they both had walkie-talkies, but thank God there were no dogs. Perhaps they couldn’t have a dog ’cause of the little zoo right next door, the smells probably get them all excited, or maybe their mutts were on sick leave. Anyway, the blokes went up to Nina and asked her something, they could obviously see she was having some difficulties, she was talking funny, and one of them was about to say something into his radio when she fell on the ground and lay there limp. The guards dithered for a split second, and that’s all it took. I smacked one of them above the ear with a wrench and he fell to the ground. The other one turned round and I booted him in the stomach – I did a lot of karate the last time I was inside. He was staggering there winded and was just straightening himself up when the pink panther grabbed him round the neck: Nina grappled him to the ground and all I had to do was clobber him again.

  I took the radios off them and threw them as far as I could into the bushes. I didn’t know how long they would be out for, but I didn’t dare hit them again. I didn’t have to: Nina picked up that bloody wrench and smacked them both round the head. I hope she didn’t fucking split their skulls open. I’m not a murderer. You’ve got to understand, I’m not a murderer, I might be a right old bastard, but I’m not a murderer. I’m not.

  We then drove the van down to a set of glass double doors and reversed it right up close. I don’t know how you’d open a lock like that and I didn’t have any equipment with me. In any case the glass might be alarmed. But then something happened that I still don’t understand. Nina walked up there and opened the door – it wasn’t even locked. I still don’t get it, for some reason someone had just cocked up big time, the way to get yourself the sack pretty quickly. But why did it happen just then, and how did Nina know about it, for Christ’s sake? As if she’d arranged it, or she had a mate who worked there and they’d either left it open themselves or distracted someone else so they forgot to
double check it. Something like that. However it happened, we were there inside and you could smell the sea. The smell of salt water was amazing, just like being on the beach. Benches rose up on the left, in front there was a tiled trench or some sort of walkway, and on the right hand side there was a glass wall and, behind that, water; an enormous pool with steps going up its side coming out of the walkway. Nina ran up the steps to the edge of the pool, fiddled with some buttons and then a net separating the pool into two parts rose up and, with the sound of water rushing, five beautiful, dark-backed animals came bounding across.

  Their snouts bobbed just above the water and the noise they made was really strange, like a ping-pong ball being smacked against a surface really fast, krrrrr, krrrrr. Nina backed off slightly and they leapt out of the water and landed on their stomachs at the side of the pool. It was amazing to watch. Then Nina said: now.

  I was standing next to the glass wall, or acrylic or whatever. I’d taken one of the reinforced chests out of the Transit van and I threw it corner first as hard as I could towards the wall.

  I knew it was strong stuff, but I knew how much pressure there must have been behind it as well. That’s why there was a trench between the pool and the arena; the couple of metres of water above the actual pool could run down there if anything funny happened – there’s drains and everything. And something funny was about to happen. The chest hit the glass full on. It created a little star-shaped pattern in the glass, nothing too serious. But then, as I watched it in a kind of trance, the cracks stretched out really slowly. Then they started to move quicker and quicker until a huge section of the glass looked like it an enormous spider’s web. And then it collapsed.

  The box flew back at me with the rush of water and an entire piece of the glass wall was in smithereens. The dolphins must have jumped out of the water so they wouldn’t get caught in the first wave. The trench was already almost half full and water was splashing against the double doors.

  The dolphins jumped back into the pool and allowed the current to carry them gently out of the hole one at a time and into the shallow water at the bottom of the trench. The whole thing lasted about two minutes. Soon they were bloody lining up at the door.

  We opened the doors and the water flooded out down the hill towards the road. They were really big animals, a couple of hundred kilos each. Nina said they weren’t even fully grown yet. We placed a sheet of the veneer slanting down towards the van and a piece of tarpaulin which we’d found in the back – I wondered whether Nina would have asked me to get some of that too if it hadn’t been there already. We put the tarpaulin on the ground and lay the dolphins on it one at a time. It seemed almost like they were wriggling along to make it easier. And they weren’t a bit afraid. Then the two of us took hold of the rails at the corners of the tarpaulin and pulled like hell. Totally mental; we only just managed it. The boxes were stacked neatly by the van, one at a time we turned them on their side right next to the boot. Mattresses at the bottom; dolphin inside. It took all our strength to heave them upright and push them to the back of the boot. Then straight on to the next patient. We slogged away for about half an hour. It was already starting to get light and I kept thinking we’d soon hear police sirens coming over the hill. Finally we filled some buckets with water and poured it into the boxes. That’s when I understood: the wet mattresses were to carry the dolphins’ weight and keep them damp. Finally we filled the bucket again, put it in the boot and set off for the motorway like there was no tomorrow.

  Handler(s): Lamminmäki and Eerola / pk

  Subject: Transcript of interview with care worker Airi Kurkine

  Q: Then what happened after lunch?

  A: We went on a stimulus outing. My contract stipulates an excursion like this at least once a week.

  Q: And where did you go?

  A: The dolphinarium at Särkänniemi.

  Q: Miss Kurkinen, now this is extremely important. Try and tell us as precisely as possible what happened. Everything, the slightest detail.

  A: We bought the tickets and went inside. Nina was being rather phlegmatic; she walks like a machine, but this time she wasn’t reacting to anything. It’s quite rare, in fact. These stimulus outings are just a formality really. I remember she almost stumbled as we were walking down the steps into the arena. Our seats were on the fourth row, I think … is there any point to this?

  Q: Please, continue.

  A: Well, the dolphins came in through something like a corridor and into the pool. There were a couple of young girls guiding them, commanding them to do all sorts of tricks; to jump into the air, to swim up to the edge of the pool, to hop along on their tails. These girls appeared slightly on edge. As they were talking us through the various tricks, they kept explaining that things hadn’t gone quite as they should have. Apparently the dolphins were having difficulty concentrating, what with it being the holiday season – they must have hundreds of shows. Still, it was as if Nina lit up during the performance, even though the show itself wasn’t up to much. But this is typical of autistic children; they may not react in the slightest if a bomb exploded next to them, but they can go frantic at the sound of a fly buzzing around in the next room.

  Q: How was she behaving?

  A: She was looking fixedly at the pool and she seemed to understand something of what was going on. The performance was full of stimuli: the trainers’ voices, the sound of the whistle, the rush of the water, the splashing, the salty smell. There was a time when Nina was so afraid of the amusement park that she would almost have a catatonic fit; now she was clearly consciously reacting to what was happening. Typically children with Nina’s symptoms often get funny notions into their heads. I haven’t noticed it in Nina, but this time she must have made real contact with that environment and was reacting accordingly.

  Q: And how did this reaction manifest itself?

  A: At the end of the show she didn’t want to leave. Nina has never had violent or destructive outbursts before, but when I started guiding her towards the exit – the glass double doors leading into a tiled trench along the side of the pool – she started struggling and resisting me. It was probably because the dolphins happened to have stopped at precisely that spot and their snouts were all pointing towards her, as if they were watching her. And then Nina went wild. She was jumping up and down, trying to climb up to the dolphins and when I tried to calm her down she started lashing out blindly, punching and kicking and screaming at the top of her voice. This went on for some time and I remember the other people who had been at the performance staring at us in shock and distaste. Outwardly, after all, Nina looks perfectly normal, so for an outsider this must have looked almost grotesque, a teenage girl shrieking like an animal, biting and kicking. I remember thinking that the sudden appearance of new symptoms can often signify a turn for the worse. Nina’s condition has been quite stable of late. Then all of a sudden she stopped. The dolphins were still there behind the glass. Nina stared at them in silence for a long time, very intensely. This was another new reaction: she appeared to see them and perceive them perfectly clearly, even though she is rarely aware of external impulses. It was almost as if she was listening to them and watching them, her head tilted to one side. And when I gently nudged her as a sign that it was time to go, she stood there in perfect silence and didn’t move a muscle. It must have taken about five minutes before she let me guide her away.

  Q: What happened next?

  A: Nina had gone back to her phlegmatic state; we got in my car and drove home. She went straight to bed and for all I could see she fell asleep. Nothing out of the ordinary happened that evening – she dozed off, I fed her, she lay on her bed again. I watched television. She went to bed rather early, about nine o’clock. That’s all.

  Q: So absolutely nothing else untoward happened that evening?

  A: No, not that I can think of. Well, there was one thing: she was lying on her bed with her eyes shut, in a foetal position as usual, and I noticed sh
e was purring gently to herself. Very quietly, and I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, but it was such a strange sound. I remember thinking it was new to her range of sounds: it was odd and sharp, krrrrr … krrrrr …

  Handler: Lamminmäki / pk

  Subject: Transcript of dictated confession of Klaus Antero Viksten,arrived in custody 14.7; awaiting trial.

  We were on the motorway driving out towards Pori; me, Nina and the dolphins. Nina was in the back – there was hardly enough room for her to walk between the boxes, so she was walking along their edges. She had those enormous pots of vaseline and she was rubbing it into the dolphins’ backs. The Transit van was chugging along with the extra weight, but we were moving smoothly enough and I even tried to drive carefully so the ride wouldn’t be too bumpy. The dolphins looked exhausted and pained, even though I know they breathe air and that, so they couldn’t have been in too much trouble, but it must have been a bummer to be out of the water all of a sudden. That’s why Nina was rubbing their sides and backs with vaseline, so their skin wouldn’t dry out. Then they would have been in serious trouble.

  Nina said their names were Joona, Veera, Näsi, Niki and Delfi. Apparently Joona and Delfi were boys and the others were girls. In dolphin years they were teenagers, still kids really. I don’t know where she got all of this from, she must have gone to the dolphinarium a lot and got this crazy idea that someone ought to set them free.