The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  The reeds and Julia returned as soon as he closed his eyes.

  Maisa’s phone rang just as she’d gone out for her evening run at seven. It was Kirsi.

  She slowed down to a walk and looked at the glowing screen, weighing her options. Kirsi could’ve heard from Sagal. Her body could’ve been found in the Suvikylä woods or on the shore. This news spread quickly in the teachers’ lounge. Or maybe Sagal had come back home and told everyone how a strange lady had lied to her and blackmailed her to get a recording of a stupid teenage ritual. Maisa caught her breath for a moment and then answered.

  “I have a message for you,” Kirsi said after a rushed hello.

  Maisa stopped.

  “From Sagal?” she asked.

  Kirsi was quiet.

  “No . . .” she said, sounding slightly confused. “It’s from another former student of mine. A girl called Mira Haataja. She wants to meet you. Right now.”

  “Why?”

  “She didn’t tell me. She said she met you earlier today in Suvikylä.”

  Maisa tried to remember the faces in the circle of teenage girls. She remembered Mickey fucking Mouse.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “We exchanged a couple of words.”

  “She told me to ask you if you could meet at seven thirty today.”

  “I guess so . . .” Maisa checked the time on the phone. “It’s going to be a bit tight. I need to take a shower and then drive to Suvikylä.”

  “No, she wants to meet you at Brage Park. Remember where that is?”

  She tried to remember. “Of course,” she said. “I’m about fifteen minutes away.”

  “Good. And listen.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She sounded pretty anxious.”

  Maisa frowned. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Just . . . anxious. As if she were afraid of something.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you know what this is about?”

  Maisa thought about the teachers’ lounge and the fog of gossip floating over the coffee mugs.

  “I haven’t got a clue.”

  “She made me promise not to tell anyone about this. I used to sit in on her detention when she was at our school, and we talked quite often. I think she trusts me.”

  “All right.”

  Kirsi was quiet again, probably hoping that Maisa would use the silence as an opportunity to spill the beans.

  “Hey, I really appreciate it. Thanks for letting me know,” Maisa said.

  She promised to tell Kirsi all about it later, although she knew it was a lie. When she hung up she thought about how Mira had not actually trusted Kirsi, although they were supposed to be buddy-buddy. Then she thought about the cigarette butt flying past her face and how Brage Park was barely lit. It wasn’t hard to imagine a group of teenagers mugging her there. Girls could be evil if they wanted to be. Maisa had seen how a girl in her class had been beaten unconscious at the market square. Teenage girls, all of them—the victim and the perpetrators.

  Tied to a chair. Swollen gums.

  Maisa checked the time of the call and started a leisurely jog toward Brage. According to Kirsi the girl had sounded anxious. There had been no signs of that on the girls’ faces earlier, but their defiance may have been just for show. Behind their act they were overly romantic, crying into their pillows.

  Maisa slowed down before reaching Brage and was glad to see other joggers and dog walkers on the shore road. She left the road and walked on the grass, away from the lights. Their glow reached fairly far, but soon she realized how large the park was. It might be hard to find the girl in the darkness.

  “Hey,” a voice said behind her.

  Maisa turned around. “Hey,” she said.

  The girl stood in an odd pose. Earlier that day she’d looked like she knew what she was doing, and all her gestures were honed and precise. Now the rules were different. She had no audience to perform to.

  “Are you Mira?”

  The girl nodded. In the dusk her face looked even paler than before. The ember glow of her cigarette shook nervously in the air.

  “You wanted to see me?” Maisa said and glanced around.

  “I didn’t,” Mira said. “But I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “You asked about that girl who ran away.”

  “Sagal.”

  “Yeah. She didn’t run away.”

  Maisa waited for more information, but the girl had turned to look at the shore road. A biker looked their way and slowed down. There was no way anyone could recognize them in the dark, but the girl remained tense and quiet until the biker was gone.

  “We had to give her up,” she said.

  “Give her up?”

  A nod. “She broke the rules by talking to you. I saw you there.”

  Maisa was puzzled. “Saw me where?”

  “In the car. In the parking lot. And a week before that you stopped Sagal at the bus stop. Did you really think nobody would notice?”

  Maisa let the words sink in. She thought about the lit windows of the Patteriniemi apartment buildings and the shadows surrounding the parking lot. The thought of having been watched was uncomfortable.

  “Sagal gave you something in the car and that was the last straw.”

  The girl sounded bitter. Maisa was overcome with guilt but couldn’t let it show.

  “Mira, listen to me.” She put her hand in her jacket pocket and took a cautious step toward the girl. She hoped her cell phone’s recorder had turned on.

  “What are these rules you’re talking about?” she asked.

  Mira crushed the half-smoked cigarette with the toe of her shoe and lit another one right away.

  “Aren’t you interested in finding out where Sagal is?” she asked.

  Maisa swallowed. “Of course.”

  “Well, figure it out. All I know about is the place where we left her.”

  “Where?”

  “In one of the storage spaces in the building basement. Hooded and with Ami’s used sock shoved into her mouth. That, by the way, was Ami’s idea. I had nothing to do with it. But Sagal is no longer in the basement, so there’s no use for you to go there. I went there first thing the next morning. I didn’t sleep a fucking second. I would’ve let her go, but what can you do?”

  The hood and a sock shoved into a mouth played a trick on Maisa’s thoughts for a second.

  “Then why are you even a part of this?” she asked.

  “Because of the rules. According to the rules, Sagal was my responsibility.”

  “There can’t be rules where another person would—”

  “Yes, there can!” Mira shouted.

  Maisa flinched. She realized how cold she felt. Her sweaty running jacket was glued to her back.

  “We didn’t come up with those rules, you fucking cow. We just do what we’re told. And we’ve never had to take any action until you came around to stir shit up.”

  Maisa didn’t know what to say. Guilt gnawed at her, although the voice inside her head said she had no reason to feel that way. The voice told her other things, too. The material she was recording would be unique, as long as the phone did what it was supposed to do.

  “Who comes up with these rules?” she asked.

  Mira shook her head. Crushed her cigarette on the ground. Lit another one.

  “How would I know who they are?”

  “Which ‘they’? How can they tell you to do anything if you—”

  “We receive letters.”

  “Letters? In the mail?”

  “No, the letters are dropped off at this one place that you don’t need to know about.”

  “So someone leaves you letters that tell you what you should do?”

  “Yeah. They contain the Sermon, and—”

 
“The Sermon?”

  “Don’t fucking play dumb. You probably made Sagal record it for you, so cut the bullshit. I’m responsible for fetching the letters and I’m paid in cash and cigarettes and some other stuff, but that’s not why I’m doing it.”

  “Why, then?”

  She shrugged. “You’re just . . . supposed to.”

  Excellent, Maisa thought. Pasi would drop his sarcasm at this point in listening to the recording.

  “It’s an old thing.”

  “Do adults know about it?”

  “I guess so. At least some of them do. They say that the Granny catches you if you walk to the woods at the shore at night, but we can’t start asking them questions. You just don’t do that. Some leave gifts under the octopus tree. Like I told you, it’s an old thing.”

  The octopus tree. Maisa thought about the twisted beech but didn’t recall anyone calling it the octopus tree when she was a teenager. She had seen shopping bags full of stuff underneath it, and you weren’t supposed to touch the bags no matter what.

  “Mira,” she said, searching for a voice that would evoke confidence. “I need to ask you one important thing.”

  Mira didn’t say a word.

  “I received a note. A threat.”

  “Oh.”

  “It came with a photo. It was pretty gross.”

  Mira dug into her empty cigarette pack, then dropped it onto the ground.

  “Do you know who sent it?” Maisa asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Are you fucking deaf?”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “All right, it was me!” she shouted.

  This time she didn’t sound angry, just relieved. Mira stepped on the cigarette pack and twisted her heel as if she were crushing a snake.

  “But I don’t write them,” she said. “And I don’t take any pictures. I just deliver the letters where I’m supposed to. I don’t really believe in any of that shit in the letters. I’m not interested in some fucking . . . hatchets and grannies and what’s under the island.”

  “There’s something under the island?”

  “Yeah. There’re supposedly caves and some old shit that nobody should be talking about.”

  “What do you mean?” Maisa chuckled. Her light tone was meant to encourage Mira, but she got even more worked up.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “If you don’t want to help me, then whatever.”

  She turned to leave. Maisa panicked and grabbed Mira’s sleeve.

  “Can you sit down for a second with me?” she asked.

  Mira yanked her sleeve away, but stopped walking.

  Maisa waited. “There’s a bench over there.” She pointed.

  The girl remained quiet until they sat down. Then Maisa heard a sound she didn’t recognize at first.

  Mira was sobbing.

  “I don’t want anything bad to happen to Sagal,” she said. “She’s suffered enough.”

  This should be reported to the police, Maisa thought. Tell Mira to call the police. Or call them yourself.

  Something prevented her from doing it. Either it was the fear that her own dishonesty with Sagal would come to light, or that this wondrous and now almost unraveled secret would be taken away from her right under her nose and committed to dry interrogation reports, typed up by some older constable with his index fingers one letter at a time without realizing how important it was.

  “Mira,” she said and touched the girl’s shoulder, carefully, like approaching an unpredictable animal. “I can help you.”

  She was prepared for the girl to pull away or to throw her hand off. But she just wiped her eyes and looked away.

  “Does anyone on Patteriniemi Road know what these rules and letters are all about? Any adults?”

  Mira shook her head.

  “Someone older? Someone who’s been talking about a hatchet and how you should avoid it?”

  The girl looked toward the hospital. She was still breathing hard. Maisa could feel her breathing against her palm, the helpless confusion of a young human being.

  “Maybe Anni.”

  Maisa leaned closer. “Who?”

  “Anni Saarikivi. There are rumors that she once burst into the bomb shelter right in the middle of a Fairy-Tale Cellar session. She said those stories shouldn’t be repeated anymore. She even attacked someone, causing a huge ruckus. The adults got involved, too. It caused a lot of fighting, although it had been innocent back then.”

  “What was innocent?” Maisa asked and repeated Anni Saarikivi’s name in her mind in case the recording hadn’t caught it.

  “The Fairy-Tale Cellar and all that. That’s when we still used the old Sermon. It was just something everyone did. You know how adults do things just because that’s the way things have always been done. Especially the people who are still around, fishing.”

  “Tell me more about the old Sermon.”

  “It was just this story that older kids read to the younger kids in the bomb shelter. We’re just having fun. We laughed if someone was really afraid.”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “And then there was the new Sermon.”

  “Yeah,” Mira said.

  “When did this happen?”

  Mira thought about it for a moment. “Maybe two years ago.”

  “And you have no idea who sent it?”

  “No.”

  “Some older guy from your building, or—”

  “I don’t know.”

  They were both quiet for a while before Mira spoke again.

  “Anni might know something. My dad says she’s lived in Suvikylä since she was a kid—that was when the apartment buildings were built. She moved to Patteriniemi Road when her house was torn down. She’s at least eighty. She lives in one of the apartment buildings. The first building on the left, second floor.”

  “Why did she get so upset about the Fairy-Tale Cellar?”

  “I don’t know. I was in sixth grade so I wasn’t taking part yet. The adults fought about it publicly, out in the yard. Anni said she’d call the cops, but everyone just laughed at her.”

  The cops. An unfortunate topic. Maisa was about to say something when Mira turned to her and looked her straight in the eyes.

  “You’ll find Sagal, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Maisa said before she even thought about it.

  Mira nodded, then pulled away from under Maisa’s hand and started walking toward the hospital, probably to catch a bus. Maisa thought about offering her a ride, but she was sure Mira would’ve said no. You really thought nobody would notice?

  Besides, Maisa had better things to do. She waited until the girl was back on the lit road where no one could see into the dark park. Her cell phone was still recording. She stopped it and played the file back.

  First white noise, then mumbling in the background. If she hadn’t known that they were human voices, there would’ve been no way of telling. Maisa cursed out loud, dug out her earbuds from her pocket, and tried again.

  White noise. Mumbling. A couple of curse words and then something she could perhaps interpret if she tried hard.

  Some old shit that you don’t—

  Maisa stopped the recording and deleted it. So much for that material.

  She slumped onto the bench and looked out to the sea, contemplating the promise she’d hastily made.

  Of course she’d find Sagal.

  Samuel saw Julia every day that week. They’d walk over to see Helge, they’d sit at the tip of the peninsula long into the evening, filming seagulls and reeds floating on the water, despite the hordes of mosquitoes surrounding them.

  Julia had a dream. She wanted to make the world’s best tourism clip about S
uvikylä. She told Samuel about America, how large the sodas they sold over there were, and how many TV channels everyone had. All movies were shown in theaters a year before anyone saw them in Finland.

  Once, Jape and the other idiots spotted Samuel and Julia together. They had a lot to comment on. Samuel briefly worried about Julia developing a crush on Jape when he showed off wheelies on his moped and gave her cigarettes. Later he grew even more worried when Julia suggested that Jape should move to the States.

  “Really?” he said as coolly as he could. “Why’s that?”

  “He would fit in perfectly in the Georgia backwoods where people yell Praise Jesus! while having sex with animals. Squeal like a pig. Do you know that one in English?”

  Samuel guffawed loudly. “Yeah, I do.”

  “Deliverance. What an awesome movie. I don’t know what it’s called in Finnish.”

  He told her. They laughed together about how great Jape would’ve been in that movie, if he only knew how to play the banjo. Samuel and Julia, they wouldn’t have fit the scene. They were a different breed altogether. He began to read poetry to her. She had asked what kind of books he read, and he had told her about Stephen King and James Bond. Julia thought they were boring, so he quickly blurted how he also read poets like Manner, Meller, Harmaja, and even Leino, although his poems had lame words in them, like “oh!” or “taketh” or “shroudee.”

  Julia had never read poetry—her dad considered it commie literature. When Samuel brought books to her one evening and began to read them at the tip of the peninsula, a curious expression spread over her face. They sat on the rocks. The sun had almost disappeared behind the trees. Julia’s face was illuminated in heavenly light, and her hair waved in the wind as she listened to Samuel. Her video camera lay on the ground, untouched.

  Soon the sun glowed only faintly over the horizon’s thick, black line. A pale moon had risen, the kind nobody usually noticed. Just a ghost of a moon, as if ants had gnawed on it.

  “You need to write me a poem,” Julia said.

  “I can’t,” Samuel said, looking at the ghost of a moon.

  “Yes, you can. I can tell by the way you’re reading them.”

  “What do you mean?”