The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  The music was turned down immediately, but Maisa didn’t hear footsteps until they were right behind the door.

  “What’s your business?” a tired falsetto asked from inside.

  “Are you Mrs. Saarikivi?” Maisa asked, leaning toward the door. She was annoyed how her words echoed loudly in the stairwell. However loud she was, the neighbors didn’t seem to take notice—the TV soaps and screaming children hadn’t been interrupted.

  “Yes, I am,” the voice said.

  “I’m a researcher, and I wondered if I could ask you a few questions?”

  Silence. Then: “Are you single?”

  Maisa frowned, not sure if she’d heard right. “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Well, all right, then,” the voice said before she heard the chain lock rattle and the door open.

  “Good afternoon,” Maisa said, still trying to figure out the logic behind her question.

  The woman, in full makeup and flashy earrings, responded to her politely.

  “Is this about the church-board elections?” she asked, eyeing Maisa suspiciously.

  Maisa looked at the long Oriental rug in the hallway behind Mrs. Saarikivi. The red walls were lined with large, gold-framed paintings of nature scenes. She could hear a faint tango in the background.

  “No,” she replied. “A friend of mine told me you are familiar with Suvikylä’s history.”

  Mrs. Saarikivi relaxed.

  “Come on in.” She gestured and backed away quickly from Maisa, still facing her.

  Maisa walked in and closed the door behind her.

  “Quite peculiar that a young woman like yourself is interested in Suvikylä’s past,” Mrs. Saarikylä said, beckoning her to walk in farther.

  She followed her to the living room, where a large chandelier dangled over the coffee table, and more scenic paintings and photographs hung on the walls.

  “Sit here, please,” Mrs. Saarikivi instructed. Maisa sat in a cushioned armchair. When she took off her jacket, she saw why she had to sit there and nowhere else.

  “Is that your husband?” she asked, folding her jacket over the chair’s arm.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Saarikivi said, following Maisa’s gaze as if she were surprised. “Those medals are his as well. He was in the war.”

  “I see. Very impressive. He was a handsome man.”

  “Indeed,” Mrs. Saarikivi said and leaned forward. “And an excellent lover.”

  Maisa could smell her breath and for whatever reason thought of dentures.

  Mrs. Saarikivi allowed her to admire the photographs and framed medals that covered an entire wall. The images appeared to cover the man’s entire life, from his early twenties as a soldier in baggy pants—he may have been an officer—until retirement. The rude intensity of his eyes remained the same throughout the years, even when age had made his face sag and features crumple. There was only one picture showing the two of them together, and that’s when Maisa noticed their age difference. Anni Saarikivi smiled like a mischievous teenager next to her severe, elderly husband. An excellent lover. She certainly hoped so.

  Mrs. Saarikivi decided that the ritual was over and sat across from her. She lifted her feet onto the coffee table. It seemed unsettlingly inappropriate.

  “So, about Suvikylä.” She sighed and crossed her hands over her belly.

  “Yes,” Maisa said. “I’ve heard you lived here before these apartment buildings and stores were built.”

  “That’s right. Since I was a child. I was born about a kilometer from here, in 1931. My old home doesn’t exist anymore.”

  “It must’ve been sad when all the old houses were torn down and these apartments were built instead.”

  “How come?”

  Maisa didn’t know what to say.

  “We’re better off with those old houses gone. They were absolutely terrible. And all fall and winter long, the yards were pitch-black, no lights. You had to feel your way to the outhouses. These apartments are much, much better.”

  “I see.” Maisa took a moment to collect her thoughts. “Actually, I’m researching stories that people are telling each other in Suvikylä.”

  “Are you interested in that girl? The one who went missing?”

  Maisa jumped. “Excuse me?”

  “The one who just recently went missing.”

  “When was this?” Maisa asked.

  “In ’87.”

  Maisa had to let the words sink in, then repeat the year in her mind. This wasn’t about Sagal.

  “Which girl are you talking about?” she asked.

  “The one from America.”

  In ’87. Maisa was sure she knew who it was. Julia. The beautiful girl from America. The girl who had hypnotized Samuel. The disgustingly self-assured girl who didn’t play fair. The girl who showed off by carrying her video camera everywhere with her. These memories weren’t pleasant. Maisa’s fingertips tingled. Images of Julia and Sagal mixed in her head like overlapping photographs.

  “I knew her,” Maisa said. “Was her name Julia?”

  “I don’t remember the names of kids these days, but I know she came from America.”

  Kids these days?

  “You mentioned that this happened in ’87.”

  “That’s right. I remember because my son left that year on a peacekeeping mission to Lebanon.”

  Maisa hadn’t heard anything about Julia’s disappearance. She’d locked herself in her house for almost a year when she was fifteen. Then her family had moved away. Her parents had probably decided to move because of her. They never talked about it, but what other reason did they have to sell their townhome and move away from Suvikylä, where their neighbors had been their colleagues and everyone had a good time together at garden parties?

  “I didn’t know she disappeared,” Maisa said.

  Her voice rattled, so she had to cough. She apologized.

  “Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Saarikivi said. “Without a trace.”

  “Julia lived in that large single-family house over at—”

  “Exactly. The last house on the street. Her father still lives there.” She leaned forward again. “A complete drunkard these days,” she whispered. “Never got over his daughter’s disappearance. That hideous woman of his left a long time ago. He lives there all by himself, in that mansion. Curtains drawn day and night.”

  Maisa had pulled a notepad out of her pocket, her pen poised, but the page remained blank. She couldn’t even bring herself to pretend to take notes, to write down that Julia had disappeared. Her memory of Julia was clear at first, but as soon as she tried to bring back details, it became blurry. Like recognizing a person in one situation but not when she passes you on the street. Maisa began to sweat.

  “And that wasn’t the first time, either,” Mrs. Saarikivi said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She wasn’t the first child who went missing. It happened twice before her, but in those days nobody wanted to raise a fuss about it, unlike today.”

  “Do tell me,” Maisa said.

  “After the war,” she began, then covered her mouth. Maisa heard a frog-like burp.

  “Please excuse me. After the war a boy went missing. Reino Raaska. His family came from the Karelia region. They never found the boy. They claimed he drowned on a fishing trip, because people from Karelia were used to lakes, not the sea, where new groups of rocks form under the surface each year. So he may have hit a rock with his boat, who knows. The result was nevertheless the same: the boy went missing and no one has heard of him since. Then, in the early sixties a teenager, Siiri Vataja, went missing. She was quite a sight with her beautiful, bright-red hair. You just didn’t see that around here. She was a little too proud of herself, but we admired her and waited for her to come to Suvikylä from the town by boat. I can’t remember the year exactly, but people saw her go bac
k to her boat in the evening, never to be seen again. Even the boat went missing.”

  Maisa’s pen was still frozen in place. An ink spot was slowly spreading under its tip. She was thinking.

  “Are these disappearances in any way connected to this thing called the Fairy-Tale Cellar?” she asked. “The stories children tell each other in the bomb shelter?”

  Mrs. Saarikivi’s eyebrows shot up in confusion.

  “How do you know about it?”

  Maisa decided to lay the cards on the table.

  “I heard how you had once gone there when they were in the middle of—”

  “That is correct. What a terrible thing it was. Such a relic from old times, to sit in a circle and tell terrifying stories.”

  “Did you tell these stories as a child?”

  Mrs. Saarikivi shook her head and went quiet.

  “Children are telling stories about a strange old lady,” Maisa added to fish more out of her.

  “They’re always making fun of us old people.”

  “No, I didn’t mean they were making fun of the old lady. Their attitude is more like . . . respectful. Fearful, even. They talk about an old lady who murders children with a hatchet.”

  A faint smile played on Mrs. Saarikivi’s lips. The ticking clock on the wall sounded hollow.

  “Granny Hatchet,” she said, trying too hard to sound mysterious.

  Maisa accidentally scrawled a mark across her paper, then stopped.

  “You know about that story?” she asked.

  “Of course I do. Brats these days and whoever these immigrant kids are still use that term—Granny Hatchet?”

  “Looks like it.”

  The woman threw her head back and laughed heartily. Maisa saw that she’d been right about the dentures: Mrs. Saarikivi’s row of teeth tilted slightly in her upper jaw until it clunked back into place.

  “You see, I don’t pay attention to whatever kids these days talk about, not since that one time I tried to set them straight and it caused such an uproar. I do keep an eye on them from my window sometimes, and it’s like watching the Helsinki Olympics. They think they’re allowed to do whatever they want.”

  Her mouth settled back into a thin line.

  “But that lady, she was such a monster,” she continued.

  “Who?”

  “Regina von Bondorff.”

  “She’s the source of these stories?”

  “We were afraid of her as kids, too. We were also afraid of the stories she told us in the Fairy-Tale Cellar. Nobody dared to say a word about them to their parents. Any child repeating such nonsense would’ve gotten a smack on the head.”

  “So, this Regina was telling stories to children?”

  “Regina von Bondorff created the Fairy-Tale Cellar. ‘To teach children and to civilize the heart,’ like she always told parents who weren’t convinced their children should be allowed in the cellar. Whether the children lived in the villas or in the farmhouses, they were required to attend every Tuesday evening, every summer. I wouldn’t describe her stories as civilized, though.”

  Maisa recalled the abandoned houses. They had been empty ever since she was a child. Their broken windows and spray-painted walls lined the shore.

  “Everyone had to go down to Regina’s root cellar, although we were scared out of our wits. And we had to drink that terrible juice. I still haven’t to this day tasted anything so nasty. I have no idea what it was, some concoction created by a severely ill woman.”

  Mrs. Saarikivi shivered.

  “It was disgusting. And that smell. Once I threw up on my finest summer dress when I walked out of the cellar into the light. And I wasn’t the only one. Many of us got sick, and our tongues were so black we had to use soap to wash our mouths.”

  Maisa thought about Sagal’s recording. About Granny Hatchet, the black tongue, the cellar. Then she decided not to think.

  “There was something oddly unsettling about that place. I always had horrible nightmares afterward. Like I said, all of us children were scared, but none of our parents wanted to argue with Regina. She had royal blood in her, and she was married to a wealthy shipbuilder. I do believe Carl von Bondorff was German. He spent his days fishing ever since they lost their only son. He probably drowned, but that’s not what Regina claimed had happened.”

  The woman gave Maisa a meaningful look.

  “What did Regina claim?” Maisa saw it was her duty to ask.

  “Well, that’s a longer story altogether. Longer and more tragic. You see, her husband’s past was shrouded in all kinds of intrigue. Bankruptcies, that sort of thing. That’s why they settled at the villa permanently. Who knows what sort of goods the man bootlegged. There were rumors at the end of the war that shipments of an unknown poison were delivered to the island from Germany, and that poison was killing all the fish. Something strange had to be going on—you know how the seawater still doesn’t freeze around that island? Isn’t that peculiar?”

  Maisa nodded.

  “But that’s not all. Mr. von Bondorff’s claim to fame was his hunt for the sea monster.”

  “Sea monster?”

  “Yes, just like Captain Ahab. Are you familiar with that old movie?”

  “I am,” Maisa said, not wanting to point out that it was originally a book.

  “Gregory Peck was in it,” Mrs. Saarikivi went on. “Mr. von Bondorff wasn’t quite as handsome as him, but they were both obsessed in the same way. I used to think the man had gone insane, but then . . . Just a moment, please.”

  She lifted her feet off the table and pushed herself up from the chair, then walked over to peruse the bookshelf. Her finger flitted past all the Alistair MacLean books and stopped.

  “Here it is,” she said, leafing back and forth through its pages. “Confu . . . Hmph, you read it. You young people know foreign languages.”

  Mrs. Saarikivi handed the book to Maisa. “You never know; maybe it’s a true story.”

  Maisa looked at a picture book about the World Heritage site in Kvarken, the waters that separate the Gulf of Bothnia from the Bothnian Bay. The page she was on had a small box in the left margin, containing a few sentences with the heading “Confusarius Maris Baltici.” Just an interesting side note among all the facts. Apparently, a lawyer in Raippaluoto had written a report in the 1700s about a curious sea creature—and he hadn’t been the only one. The monster was mentioned by a lighthouse keeper in Norrskär and multiple fishermen. Later, in the 1900s, the sea monster had been reported by Carl von Bondorff, a bankrupt shipbuilder, who had obsessively begun to research and try to locate the mysterious sea creature. Maisa wrote down the Latin name and left her notebook open on the table.

  “Fairy tales or not, Mr. von Bondorff went to his grave believing in them,” Mrs. Saarikivi said. “Apparently Regina handled his peculiarities just fine, but then they lost their son. Their only child. That must’ve finally broken her. She wasn’t always mad. My mother used to tell me stories about how she chatted with her across the bay before the war. To her, Regina was a sophisticated and friendly woman, who never looked down on people below her stature. She tended to her small field of potatoes and managed to make it bloom in that rocky soil. But that’s not the Regina I remember. She looked filthy, and . . .”

  Mrs. Saarikivi looked at her hand with soft, unfocused eyes.

  “Her arms were always covered in strange, round wounds. In the summer heat, pus leaked out of them, and they smelled. She always waited for us children at the shore with a hatchet in her hand, but she certainly had not used it to work on the potato patch—it was an overgrown mess. Who knows what sort of a devil had gotten into her.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose sorrow can be a personal devil, when it’s heaped on indefinitely. At any rate, Regina believed that the sea monster snatched her son. And . . .”

  She shook her head, dist
ressed by a distant memory. “That’s what her stories were all about.”

  “In the Fairy-Tale Cellar?”

  Mrs. Saarikivi gave Maisa a quizzical look.

  “Is that where she told you about her son?” Maisa asked.

  “Yes. And how we were supposed to go see the monster.”

  Maisa was now confused. “See the monster where?”

  Mrs. Saarikivi sighed. “That cellar was a strange place,” she said. “It was like a cave that led downward. It’s hard to describe.”

  No need to, Maisa thought, almost saying it out loud. Only the tiny dot of ink from her pen made her focus and control herself. She stared at it on the paper, her neck muscles gradually tightening.

  “This sea monster supposedly lived under the island. Regina claimed she had captured it. How absurd. I wonder what she would have done if someone had actually followed her down there. Who knows, she could have whacked them with her hatchet. She was already then so unpredictable. She could be silent and then scream or laugh for no reason. She kept telling us that she watches us sleep at night. That she follows us in the dark when we have to use the outhouse and carries her hatchet with her, and you never know when she is right behind you. I do not understand what sort of sick pleasure she gained from scaring little children.”

  Mrs. Saarikivi leaned forward to grab the World Heritage–site book off the table. She stared at the pages—the part about Confusarius Maris Baltici was Maisa’s guess—as if they would unravel the mystery of Regina von Bondorff.

  “One day she told us that the monster had escaped. She managed to ruin many beautiful summers for us children for years—nobody wanted to go swimming again. As soon as you did, and if your foot sunk into the mud even a little, it felt as if something were grabbing your ankle. Just think about it: we’d listen to her terrible stories in the cellar, surrounded by disgusting smells and with only an oil lamp for light, and once we climbed out we had to walk along the shore to get home. The only way to get to the tip of the peninsula is to jump from rock to rock over the narrowest part of the bay. As soon as we were at the tip, we’d run fast without looking back.”