The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  He didn’t know what to do. He just stood there, the fridge door open and a clammy pack of meat in his hand, looking at the carton of milk his dad had opened before he’d died. He’d clearly had difficulty opening it: he’d mangled the carton by tearing it open, making it hard to pour.

  He felt soft pressure on his chest, like someone touching him.

  Now Samuel remembered why that feeling was familiar. His dad’s palm against his chest, sitting in the car when his dad had to slam on the brakes. That’s what he’d always done when Samuel sat next to him. His palm would be on Samuel’s chest a second before his foot pumped the brake pedal. A protective reflex. Then, at some point when Samuel was a preteen, his dad stopped doing it, perhaps thinking that Samuel should look out for himself now. Or maybe the gap between the two men had already begun to grow back then. His dad stopped protecting him, wrestling and tickling him.

  Was his dad trying to protect him now? The touch was soft, but he felt it as clearly as the cold piece of meat in his palm and the floor beneath his feet.

  It suddenly dawned on Samuel that something had just happened; something completely ordinary that he should react to.

  The doorbell. Its familiar ring echoed in Samuel’s sensory memory.

  He looked toward the front door. After setting the garbage bag on the kitchen counter, he closed the fridge and went to the foyer.

  He could barely see the shape of the door in the dark. The mail slot embedded in it reflected a distant light and flapped gently. The peephole appeared black. Who would stand in the pitch-black stairwell? For whatever reason, the first thought in Samuel’s mind was burglars—the kind who would clean out an apartment as soon as they heard that the tenant had died, but before any relatives would flock in. This plan merely required a contact at the hospital, a childhood friend with questionable ethics who stole drugs and old hospital equipment and sold them on the black market.

  Samuel took slow, deliberate steps to the door and listened. First all he heard was the rain drumming against the windows. Then there was a cough. Just an ordinary, harmless cough. Yet Samuel did not want to open the door. He didn’t have to. His dad was dead.

  But it was bizarre to stand in front of a door you refused to open, knowing that someone was standing on the other side of it.

  Samuel stood still, holding his breath. In the background of all this stillness, he could hear a low, steady hum. Like the gentle sound of a machine designed to run everything, made to be unnoticeable.

  The mail slot clinked. Samuel looked down at it. The minuscule movement of the metallic flap could’ve been caused by a draft. Then the flap stopped clinking and began to hinge up. Someone was lifting it up to look inside, and the first thing that someone would see were Samuel’s legs in the dark foyer.

  Samuel was still holding his breath, realizing what an idiotic situation he had gotten himself into. There was no reason to embarrass himself like this. He could have simply stayed in the kitchen. He could have stomped over loudly and then told the stranger to fuck off. What was happening now was the stupidest option. Standing still and holding his breath.

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  The voice echoed in the stairwell. Samuel couldn’t quite place it. Was it a man or a woman? Samuel thought of a midget, and he almost burst out laughing. It had been such an odd, exhausting day, so anything was possible. Even a midget dressed in bright-colored circus gear. Samuel covered his mouth, his shoulders heaving silently with the rhythm of his laughter. His eyes welled up with tears.

  The mail-slot flap remained up. Samuel now imagined a deranged midget crouching in front of his dad’s door, not knowing that the owner of this randomly chosen apartment had just died. That the son of the deceased who had gotten himself into this ridiculous situation was standing alone in the unlit apartment. Who had not thought about Krista and the girls for a long time. Samuel suddenly didn’t feel like laughing anymore. His muscles stopped jerking. Only the tears remained on his cheeks and a salty taste in his mouth.

  The flap fell down, swinging for a while in its frame. Samuel heard footsteps going down the stairs with a hollow boom.

  I’ll show you the way.

  The hurried echo of footsteps down the stairs. Samuel swung the door open. He caught a glimpse of a hand on the railing on the floor below. An unspecified limb in the dark.

  “Hey!” Samuel yelled.

  But it was too late. He heard the door to the building open onto the yard and then nothing—just the rustling of the wind and a light breeze on his face.

  Samuel ran to the floor below and looked through the balcony window into the yard. Nobody there. He opened the balcony door and leaned over the railing. Nobody.

  When he walked back into the stairwell, he could tell he was being watched. Each silent door, each dark peephole stared at him. Samuel didn’t care. It must’ve been kids pulling a prank. He was an adult, though, and wouldn’t get hurt. He walked back into the apartment and called Krista. The phone rang for a while, which itself wasn’t unusual.

  I’ll show you the way.

  Samuel waited patiently, thought of his dad in the hospital, the hand sliding against the windshield, the light body of a midget hopping down the stairs as if he were flying.

  “Hey there,” Krista said on the other end. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m all right. How about you?”

  Krista went into detail about a variety of everyday problems, all relating to how she now suddenly had to run the show without Samuel. Then she seemed to remember why he wasn’t there.

  “What’s it like over there?” she asked.

  What’s it like? It’s like nothing you would know, Samuel wanted to say. It’s about people who have never been to Bali or whose parents do not own a villa in Sipoo.

  “How are you doing?” she repeated.

  The phone call took longer than necessary because the girls were in bed and Krista had some time to kill. Finally Samuel played the my-dad’s-dead-so-I’m-behaving-a-bit-weird card and interrupted Krista midsentence, informing her that he’d run out of energy for talking.

  Samuel sat in his dad’s living room, looking at the bookshelf, the old, thick CRT television, and the VHS player. It had a tape in it. Looking at the player, Samuel vividly remembered the sound after pressing the “Eject” button. The forced wail, as if his request was too much for the device.

  I’ll show you the way.

  Samuel knew what came after that phrase. He was aware that he knew, but he refused to think about it.

  Instead, he stared at the VHS player. The tape peeking out of the player was probably the last one his dad had watched.

  His dad occasionally had taped Soviet movies and then, in the spirit of international proletariat solidarity, tried to watch them for their political message, but he’d always fallen asleep before reaching the end. Samuel and his dad had sometimes watched Bond movies starring Roger Moore together. His dad had complained incessantly about Western propaganda, but he’d never fallen asleep. Sometimes, Samuel would hear his dad sniffle when he tried to stifle a laugh.

  Samuel got off the couch and pushed the tape into the machine. It screeched but didn’t fight. The digital screen requested “Play.” Samuel began to look for the remote control, but the tape started playing by itself.

  First the entire screen was light blue.

  Then two quick flashes. One of clouds, and he heard a single syllable, “Oh—” The second flash was of wet grass. After some static, the image sharpened.

  Samuel stiffened.

  It is a teenage girl.

  Dark-red hair.

  One eye is purple and swollen shut. Her gaze is serious, focused on the upper corner of the screen. Her right hand is holding the camera, which is shaking like in an earthquake from the minutest of movements. Not exactly good film quality. Hand-held cam.

  The girl pul
ls away from the camera and sits down on a bed, crossing her legs. She is wearing an oversized T-shirt that is hiding everything except a shoulder and a knee.

  “All right,” the girl says. Then she takes one more quick glance at the camera before looking to her left.

  A door opens with a clang. A teenage boy steps into focus.

  Samuel leaned closer to the TV.

  He wondered whether his dad had done the same while watching the tape. Did his dad lean closer to the TV, too, not knowing that the light in his eyes would be switched off and his hands would stop moving and the pain in his chest wouldn’t pass this time?

  The boy on the tape sits on the edge of the bed. He’s wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt. He pulls his legs up onto the bed. The camcorder microphone picks up the wet smacking sounds of a kiss. The sound continues.

  Samuel closed his eyes, and in the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw flashes of color and a pale hand. He opened his eyes.

  The girl and the boy don’t look confident about what they’re doing. They’re imitating whatever they’ve seen and heard, looking like animals dressed up as humans, performing human feats. They live in the now and pant heavily, because even just kissing is new to them.

  The girl begins to take her clothes off first.

  Her bra is black.

  “What the fuck . . .” Samuel mumbled and wrapped his fingers tighter around the remote.

  The girl pulls the blue shirt over the boy’s head. It’s a clumsy act, because the boy doesn’t understand that he should stop kissing her. For a long time they appear topless, the boy moving his crotch against the girl and sucking on her lips, as if not knowing that he can take this further and that there’s actually a goal to reach. Then the boy unzips his jeans and pulls the girl’s pants off.

  Those jeans are from the department-store sale rack, Samuel thought. He said it almost out loud. The image on tape warped for a moment in the corner, as if to nod and say, Correct. How did you know?

  General confusion came next when they tear open the condom wrapping.

  Stole that condom from his dad.

  The boy rips the plastic, and they’re both puzzled, observing the odd plastic ring and looking simultaneously aroused and slightly concerned when the boy pulls it on.

  From the department-store sale rack.

  Samuel watched the fifteen-year-old boy’s overly excited, bouncing erection and the small-breasted girl, who has opened her legs to let it in.

  In this grainy image Samuel saw how once upon a time and space one boy had been inside a girl called Julia. He suddenly remembered how it had felt; how it’d been hard to believe it was happening; how he had thought about how real the room and the world outside were; and how the sun was in the sky as if nothing special was happening. He had been trying to comprehend that it was really happening to him, Samuel Autio, yet at the same time he had not been thinking anything.

  His dad’s living room was filled with loud panting, the panting of two little animals, sounds that were not yet heavy with life experience, blasting from the speakers in waves of distortion.

  The girl turns to look at the camera. The boy’s head is covered by her hair. Her eyes are first drowsy from pleasure, but then they blink wide open.

  She shoots a meaningful look at the camera.

  Samuel coughed. He recognized he did it as just something to do, like birds that start to peck at the ground when they’re in danger. He coughed again.

  The girl’s lips begin to move. To form words.

  Her mouth moves slowly, deliberately.

  Samuel stared so hard that everything else on-screen first became a blur, then disappeared. He stared at the screen as if he were trying to interpret a weak transmission on an emergency broadcast. Then he snapped out of it and realized what he was watching, on whose couch, in whose viewing posture.

  Samuel yelled and began to frantically look for the VHS remote. He couldn’t find it, so he leaped at the device and hammered on the “Eject” button. The machine began its laborious toil and for a split second Samuel was sure it wouldn’t want to part with the tape. It had been able to hold on to it for too long, replaying it, and when his dad had watched that same part over and over and—

  Samuel yanked the tape out as soon as it emerged. He paced the apartment, realizing he was looking for any tool he could use to smash this piece of his past into such small shrapnel that it would cease to exist. He couldn’t force himself to return to his old room, so instead he looked around and saw an ashtray next to the TV. Cigarette butts flew everywhere as Samuel dropped the tape onto the floor and raised his hand to strike.

  The two white reels on the tape stared at him like idiotic eyes. Expressionless and ready to record and play back anything. No shame. The player wasn’t picky. The thought of Julia having videotaped the two of them. The thought that his dad had watched it. The thought that Samuel would destroy it. It didn’t matter. The sun was in the sky as if nothing special was happening.

  Why did his dad have to see it? What meaning could such humiliation provide in a world already full of shit?

  This is really happening to me.

  Samuel paused in midstrike, ashtray still in his hand.

  His skin remembered how the girl had stiffened underneath him, pushed against him with her hips, her wrinkled brow, her panting like an animal in distress. His skin desired such memories, wanted to protect them. He remembered the girl’s smile; how she sniffled in July; and how he’d felt willing to do anything, even lick her nose despite her snot-inducing hay allergies.

  The ashtray fell onto the rug with a thump and rolled away. Samuel grabbed the tape and twisted it. The plastic strained against his grasp, but of course it didn’t give. He let go, stood up, and wobbled as if he were drunk.

  Just take it easy, he said to the living room, to that stupid videotape, to the erection pressing against his zipper. Now is now, no matter what had happened on that tape. His dad was gone, Julia was gone.

  Samuel began to cry in a guttural, confused howl. There were no tears, just first syllables of words and moans. Each detail in the room was attacking him. The old electrical outlets, the crown molding, the familiar smells that a quick renovation had not been able to hide. That smell penetrated his clothes and sank into his pores, digging for a memory of itself. Samuel covered his mouth to stop himself from wailing.

  Once he was done, he left the apartment without cleaning out the fridge.

  When he reached the freeway, he glanced at the tape riding shotgun with him.

  It flashed Samuel its idiotic gaze, one that didn’t care about grief or the burden of memories. It was all the same, something to record onto a magnetic strip and repeat forever.

  MAISA RIIPINEN’S NAILS

  “Nobody talks about this. Ever.”

  Maisa took her headphones off and looked at the muted TV screen. She saw a rain forest shrouded in fog, then a close-up of a green insect that wavered back and forth, camouflaged as a leaf.

  Maisa stared at the insect and tried to decide whether she was disappointed or excited. She was overjoyed for having been able to record what happened in the Fairy-Tale Cellar. The guilt of using an innocent Somali girl as a middleman gnawed at her a little. She tried to keep her journalist friend’s motto in mind: even the friendliest of wolves have to eat. The world wasn’t conquered by feeling guilty.

  The insect pretending to be a leaf caught a butterfly, as if to convince Maisa she was right. The frantic flapping of its wings quickly slowed down to resigned jerks.

  She went to the window, where she could glimpse the sea through the trees lining Ranta Street. Although her apartment was next to the hospital in the center of the city, this view was nice enough to have been from Suvikylä. She saw pine trees straight as needles and a path through the woods where an overweight jogger tried to keep up with his dog.

  Suvikylä was her
childhood. It was one of those issues she couldn’t shake off as an adult, although it would’ve been much nicer to remember blowing bubbles and lazy summer days. She didn’t care what people said about humans living in the present and how it was never too late to have a happy childhood and all that crap. Maisa knew exactly where her panic attacks came from.

  You get those if you are, say, locked up at fifteen in a cellar for, say, twenty-four hours. What a lovely teen memory. Wish everyone could have one.

  Maisa was one of the peculiar members of the welfare state, because she knew what it felt like to scratch at a wooden door so hard until her fingernails tore off. What it felt like to realize you’ve pissed your pants—or even worse—when someone finally let you out. The shame of it didn’t even register until later on. An animal without nails isn’t interested in shame: it just wants to claw its way out. It holds tight to the first human standing in clear daylight and prays that the light won’t be taken away again. It doesn’t care what the world’s cutest boy thinks or whether it should be losing its virginity already.

  Maisa’s breathing turned shallow. She realized she had been staring at her own reflection instead of the view. That wasn’t good. She needed to look beyond herself.

  She went back to the couch and unmuted the TV. The narrator talked about hatching and eggs and ideal circumstances. She watched these incomprehensible, messy events and the determined motions of the newborn insects. She liked insects, because she could see life in its rawest form in them. No traumatized kissing and hugging that the mammals covered in hair performed—it was all pure action.

  Maisa had found out about Sagal Yusuf through Kirsi, who taught at the grade school in Suvikylä. She and Kirsi had met once a week over a glass of wine since Maisa had returned to her hometown. They could have been called childhood friends, except once they’d reached high school age, they hardly saw each other outside of school. Apparently both of them had felt they could’ve seen each other more, because they hit it off immediately upon meeting again. Maisa hadn’t kept in touch with any of her high school friends, but for whatever reason—perhaps because they had such a different set of memories—she got along well with Kirsi. They’d gone to different parties, had crushes on different boys, had a different history yet still the same childhood and just enough common ground. The economic depression, Finland’s winning the ’95 ice hockey world championship, watching news about the World Trade Center attacks. They didn’t share much from the time Maisa was fifteen.