The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

“Are you that loverman?” the voice asked with a sneer, in a mix of English and Finnish.

  Samuel froze, terrified, not knowing what to say. He shrieked like Aki, “Yes.”

  “I’d like to have a little chat with you.” The man’s anger changed to forced politeness. “Your name is Samuel, right?”

  He could hear Julia in the background, “Come on, give it to me.”

  “Come over.”

  “Uh . . . right now?”

  “Yup.”

  The man hung up.

  Samuel got dressed and looked at himself in the mirror, breathed deep into his lungs, and blew all the air out. He aimed for a steady stream of air, but instead he breathed in gulps. Surely Julia hadn’t told her dad. Why would she?

  “Where are you going?” Aki yelled at him from behind his Fantastic Four comic.

  “It is so none of your business,” Samuel said as coolly as he could muster. Good thing their dad hadn’t come back from work yet. He wouldn’t have to come up with lies in this mental state he was in. If his dad found out, he would start preaching about how his sons weren’t going to grovel in front of capitalists in their homes, and how he should get himself a proper blue-collar girl, and so on.

  “We’re going to see Grandma today as soon as Dad gets back!” Aki shouted from his room.

  “I know,” Samuel said and tied his shoelaces. “Tell Dad I can’t make it.”

  “But Grandma will be sad.”

  “She won’t even realize I’m not there. Tell Dad I promised to fix Harri’s bike—I owe him for a record he got me. I can see Grandma alone some other time.”

  “You won’t.”

  Samuel didn’t want to argue. He took off.

  As he approached the end of Patteriniemi Road, he realized this would be the first time he’d see a rich man’s house from the inside. Behind his fear he felt a jolt of guilt. His grandma was lying in bed in a nursing home, she made no sense when she spoke, and she could move only in a wheelchair. Samuel wouldn’t be there, holding her hand awkwardly, unless he was forced to. Instead, he walked toward a house with two garages and more rooms than his grandma could count.

  “Welcome,” Julia’s dad said as he opened the door.

  He wore a white dress shirt with a stained apron draped over it. He had ridiculously bright-colored shorts on. His hair had been slicked back with gel, like Don Johnson’s in Miami Vice.

  “The man is in the house,” he yelled in English over his shoulder, turned back, and extended his hand.

  “Mike,” he said. “Movie mogul and master of barbecue. Nice to meet you.” His handshake was swift and loose. “Come on in.”

  Samuel followed him and began to take his shoes off.

  “No, no,” he said. “We wear shoes inside. None of these Finnish traditions in this house, please. Walk through with me—we’re having lunch in the yard. Julia will be right there.”

  Samuel walked through the house in his shoes, treading lightly as if that would prevent him from tracking dirt onto the rugs. The walls were covered in framed posters. The Octagon. The Legacy. The Evil Dead.

  “You have really nice posters,” Samuel said, about to shriek in falsetto.

  “Of course,” Mike said. “I import them. Come over here.”

  His hand crushed Samuel’s shoulder, pulling him into the living room. His breath smelled of alcohol.

  “Just look at that,” he said, pointing at a black-and-white photo in a frame. “You recognize that guy next to me?”

  Two men in black suits and bow ties. Mike and a shorter man.

  “Chuck Norris,” Samuel said, not believing his eyes.

  “Exactly. And I’m going to bring him to Finland. I’ll bring him here, to Vaasa. Can you believe it?”

  “No,” Samuel said. He really couldn’t.

  So Julia had told him the truth. He had assumed that of course Julia would tell an innocent lie. He’d even forgiven her for that lie a hundred times in his mind. Who wouldn’t want to make a lasting impression on the first person they meet in their new neighborhood?

  Mike laughed. “Of course you can’t. Folks here are not used to the ways of the big world, but believe you me, he’ll come. I talked with him on the phone just yesterday. But enough of that, let’s eat.”

  Samuel followed him in a trance, trying to forget the photo. For a reason he couldn’t quite place, he was ashamed of everything he’d ever told Julia and of every single poem he’d read to her. Compared to Chuck Norris they were meaningless.

  A large electric grill and a table had been set up outside. A woman in a pink bikini and sunglasses was sprawled on a lounge chair on the grass.

  “You speak English?” Mike asked in English.

  “Yes,” Samuel said, “but not much.”

  He laughed again. “It’s all right. There’s no point in talking to her, anyway. I usually just say yes or no. Usually no.”

  More laughing. The woman lifted her hand lazily and said something behind her sunglasses that Samuel didn’t understand. Then he realized the words were aimed at Mike.

  “Fuck you, too,” he muttered and walked up to the grill.

  Samuel didn’t know where to look. He just hoped Julia would come soon.

  “Samuel, did you know that a real live Communist lives right next door?”

  “Um, no.”

  “I hear he’s a commie, but he owns a pool and other flashy stuff. In LA no practicing commie would flaunt their KGB money that openly. If we were in LA, or especially somewhere in Texas, I could fucking shoot him, and the cops and the feds would only thank me for making their jobs easier. But here these commies can do whatever the hell they want.”

  Samuel finally knew who the man was talking about. He could’ve said that the neighbor was not a Communist but a Social Democrat, but he thought it was best to keep his mouth shut.

  “Do you know any other commies around here?” Mike asked, then took a swig out of a Bacardi bottle and turned over a smoking piece of meat on the grill.

  Samuel shrugged. His dad did come to mind. He certainly was no Social Democrat.

  “Where’s your bathroom?” he asked.

  “All these commie stories making you shit your pants, kid?” Mike laughed. “The nearest one is over there by the front door. And no jerking off in there, all right? Just do your business, and then we’ll talk about you and Julia man to man.”

  Samuel laughed when Mike laughed, although the promise of a chat sounded a little too ominous. His voice had turned cold when he’d mentioned Julia. Samuel was relieved to be back in the house, away from the hissing grill and the burning sun. He marched down the hallway lined with posters and was about to walk out of the house when Julia appeared and grabbed him by the sleeve.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

  “All right.”

  She slipped sandals on her bare feet and pushed the door open. By the time the door banged shut, they were at the edge of the woods, running toward the tip of the peninsula.

  “Does your dad really know Chuck Norris?” Samuel asked, out of breath.

  Julia ran in front of him, holding her video camera.

  “Yeah. Or at least he used to.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  She slowed down to a walk.

  “He was a hotshot back in LA. Then he started getting drunk more often than not and snorting coke first thing in the morning.”

  Samuel knew about coke, but had never thought someone outside of Miami Vice would be doing it.

  Julia stopped and turned to him. Her left eye was swollen.

  In a couple of days it would bloom in all possible colors. Samuel knew: Jape had once kicked his ass. Now these same marks on Julia’s face looked much worse. They looked criminal.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked.

 
“Dad, who else? Who the fuck else?”

  The posters and Chuck Norris all disappeared, replaced by helpless rage and a burning desire for vendetta. Samuel could’ve pushed Mike’s face onto the hot grill, and he wouldn’t have felt any remorse. Except Julia’s dad was bigger than him. He could feel helplessness all the way in the marrow of his weak arms.

  “Why did he—”

  “Just forget about it. And don’t come around anymore if he calls you.”

  “What right does—”

  “He goes insane whenever I’m seeing someone,” Julia explained, annoyed, like to a petulant child. “Ever since Mom died he’s been like that. End of story.”

  Samuel was left alone with his rage. Julia left him alone with it on purpose. He was insulted: why did she want to keep this to herself? Didn’t he mean enough to her to share this pain? But he couldn’t say anything. How could he, when she stood there with her eye all swollen and her mom dead? Samuel wanted to console her, to say he knew how she felt, but Julia’s expression was like drawn curtains at a theater. The show’s over. Go home.

  Samuel dragged his feet toward the shore, angrily kicking little rocks until he sat down. The waves sparkled in the sunlight. There were no clouds in the sky.

  He stared at the horizon until he detected a faint buzzing behind his back. He looked over his shoulder. Julia was crouching there, her video camera blocking the swollen eye.

  “What are we filming today?”

  Samuel knew he could never be angry at her. Realizing this made him happy, yet unspeakably horrified. He really couldn’t be angry at her, not even if he wanted to be. A man like that would be trapped and would never take things lightly again.

  “I don’t know,” she responded and then paused. “How about we go to your place?”

  Samuel laughed at the absurdity. Then he remembered. His dad and Aki were visiting his grandma. They’d be gone for at least two hours: they’d take her to the pond in her wheelchair, and his dad would recite old stories and correct her stories, patiently, with his hand placed gently over her wrinkled hand.

  “Maybe,” Samuel said.

  “What does your dad think?”

  “He’s not at home.”

  Julia smiled.

  He was trapped.

  Samuel walked in first to make sure that his dad and Aki were gone. Julia waited one floor down in the stairwell until she heard him call to her. The coast was clear.

  “Where’s your room?” she asked as soon as she walked in.

  Samuel showed her and ashamedly revealed that he still shared a room with his little brother, but Julia didn’t seem to listen. She turned her camera on and began to walk through the apartment. Samuel walked behind her, excusing the mess and the stains on the wallpaper and why there was a black circle on the kitchen’s plastic rug. His dad had been about to move a hot pot of soup off the stove when he heard the news on TV that Yuri Andropov was dead. Samuel had been sitting at the kitchen table drinking juice when his dad’s back had stiffened and he’d said, “Not again,” lowered the pot onto the floor, and ran into the living room. Samuel had smelled the burning plastic and moved the pot onto the kitchen counter. His dad hadn’t even noticed. He’d spent the rest of the evening running between the TV and the phone. Samuel didn’t tell this version to Julia. Instead, he blamed Aki for the mess.

  Once Julia had seen everything, they went back to Samuel’s room. She walked to the middle of the room and let the camera pan. Then she put it down.

  “Go away for a bit,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll get ready.”

  “For what?”

  “You know, you dork.”

  “All right.”

  Samuel closed the door and strode into his dad’s bedroom. He went through all the drawers until he found a pack of condoms. There were three left. His dad would notice one missing, but there was nothing Samuel could do about it. There was a girl in his room who was ready to fuck, as unbelievable as it sounded. A girl who may have met Chuck Norris and who was prettier than Madonna on the cover of Like a Virgin.

  Samuel went back to the hallway and waited at his bedroom door. He squeezed the condom in his palm and kept telling himself that his dad and Aki wouldn’t be back for another hour, that their landlord wouldn’t walk in with the master key to check the radiators, that Harri wouldn’t ring the doorbell and call for Samuel through the mail slot in the door, horrified to relay the news that King Diamond has left Mercyful Fate or whatever he’d read in Metal Hammer with his older brother and a dictionary.

  “I’m ready,” Julia’s voice came through the door.

  Samuel walked in. Julia sat on his bed, wearing his T-shirt that looked comically large on her. His dad had bought it and Samuel hadn’t worn it once. He didn’t understand why Julia had needed to dig through his stuff for the shirt. Maybe she had planned on being naked, then had gotten shy, but did it really matter? Everything about her was perfect. Her oddities, her bashfulness, her swollen eye. She was an angel sent to Earth where Samuel thought no laws could ever be rewritten.

  As he closed the door behind him and walked to Julia, he felt free for the first time in his life. He was self-assured and inside a world of his own where no one could hurt or humiliate him. Only the two of them existed in this room. Nobody was watching, listening, searching for flaws. Nobody saw how he pressed his face into her hair and breathed in its scent as if he’d just woken up in a deep, infinite forest.

  As the outline of the Bondorff villa began to emerge from the stormy darkness, Samuel felt like he was fifteen again.

  His limbs were heavier, more vulnerable. The angular shape of the rooftop and the lonely turret against the dark-gray clouds forced him to slow down and eventually stop. The reeds hissed all around him. The woods hummed loudly at him from a distance. It was easy to be transported to a time when networks or cell phones didn’t exist to check for location or call for help.

  The mere thought of it made Samuel fumble for his phone. He pulled it out and used the screen as a flashlight to light the way ahead. He was sure he’d heard the low churning of waves right next to his feet. The cell phone shone on the rocks that led the way to the island.

  Samuel hopped onto the first rock, wobbled, then hopped onto the next one. On the third rock his foot slipped and dipped into the sea. His shoe was immediately soaked in freezing-cold water. Nothing left to lose, he continued on less carefully. The water was shallow, up to mid-calf, but each time he pulled his foot up, the stench of muddy clay surrounded him.

  The rocks in the water soon became a shore. Samuel stopped walking, put the cell phone back into his pocket, and tried not to think about his legs that had gone numb from the cold water. He noticed how the wind sounded different on the island. There were only two birch trees on the shore, so the wind could blow straight through. Samuel’s coat hem flapped and a gust of air forced its way under his shirt. He pulled his collar up and began to trudge toward the villa. He looked around but didn’t see anything moving, except a bush and some saplings waving in the wind behind the building. Samuel noticed something in one of the villa’s windows.

  He slowed his pace.

  Light shone through one of the windows downstairs. It flickered, like a candle in a drafty room. But it was no candle. The light was paler, lifeless. It had to come from an artificial source, maybe from a dusty, broken lamp, as if no one had taken the time to screw the bulb in properly.

  Samuel stopped. He expected to feel his dad’s hand on his chest, but the hand never came. He was alone now. He’d crossed the line into a territory that no memory of a protective hand could reach. He was growing concerned about his numb legs. He had to either get inside the villa or turn back.

  He took a few more determined steps to reach the house, then a few slower, cautious steps up the stairs onto the porch. It didn’t dawn on him until he stood at the front d
oor.

  Someone was inside the villa. Someone lived here. He had no business being here.

  The light shone dimly through the glass. Samuel knocked on the window. First he knocked loudly, but it just made the glass shake and rattle in its weather stripping, eaten away by the salty winds from the sea. Then he knocked more quietly. Three cautious knocks.

  Nothing changed in the dimly lit darkness beyond the dirty window, but he did hear sounds. Samuel cocked his head and listened. Thumps. A high-pitched hollering that was immediately lost in the howling wind. He pressed his ear closer to the glass, shivering when the cold surface touched his face. He covered his other ear, facing the sea, with his palm.

  The high-pitched sound was gone. It was replaced by low mumbling. Like stifled speech.

  Samuel took a step back and pressed down on the door handle. The door squeaked, fought back, then opened a little. An unfamiliar smell flooded his nose. It was thick and stuffy.

  I remember, Samuel mouthed to himself. I remember this.

  The memory didn’t quite turn into images in his mind, but it had an immediate effect regardless. His muscles tensed and shriveled slowly into a small lump. He pushed the door open wider. It led him inside a narrow vestibule. Another door was ahead of him. He pulled his cell phone out again. Its cold light shone on the wooden floorboards and patterned wallpaper that had buckled and cracked at the seams. Samuel moved the light slowly to the right until the wall disappeared, and he saw a narrow hallway leading down. He walked further into the house.

  He felt like he was supposed to announce his arrival, to say something, anything, but the thick air inside the house had gagged him. To the left of the wall was another hallway that clearly led deeper into the house. That’s where the light was coming from. He wasn’t able to locate the mumbling. It resonated through the beams, as if the house were having a conversation with the wind howling outside. Samuel took a few tentative steps toward the light. He turned the phone screen off when there was enough light, but he didn’t put the phone away just yet. His fingers clutched the plastic piece like a talisman from another dimension.