The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  “Madame Blavatsky was here.”

  Maisa shook her head, annoyed. She grew even more annoyed when she realized she was waking up. She wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep again before her alarm went off.

  “Come on, stop it,” she said.

  She stared at the tree trunks waving in the wind outside her window and tried to grasp at her thoughts. Thoughts about what drunk people would usually do in the wee hours of the morning. About what drunken university professors in their forties would do. And finally, what Pasi would do.

  “And just so you know,” he said, still whispering, “someone’s home.”

  A large maple leaf smashed into Maisa’s window. It slid down the glass like a starfish. For a moment it wasn’t such a far-fetched idea that the apocalypse had begun and that the sea had begun to send out its dead.

  “You’re not telling me you’re—”

  “You have a fucking great case here.”

  Pasi hung up.

  Maisa watched the starfish shivering on the window, until the wind whipped it away to join the mad carnival the world had hosted while she’d slumbered.

  KILLS CHILDREN

  “Let’s go somewhere together,” Pasi said to the phone. “Let’s leave all this behind.”

  He’d found Maisa’s number and held the cell phone to his ear, but he hadn’t yet pressed the call button. Maybe he wasn’t drunk enough. Maybe he didn’t have news shocking enough. He’d call when he’d reached the Bondorff villa.

  “My life is full of shit,” Pasi muttered into the silent phone. “Let’s steal a yacht from . . . some millionaire and sail into the sunset like pirates.”

  The taxi driver glanced at him in the rearview mirror but made no comments. Pasi set the phone down.

  “Just talking to myself here,” he said, holding the phone so that the driver could see. “I didn’t call yet.”

  The driver let out a barely audible grunt. He’d protested at the beginning of the drive, but Pasi had managed to convince him to go along with all his demands once they’d agreed on a price. The driver had walked into a dark townhome—perhaps his own—to fetch rubber boots, size forty-two or forty-three. He called his colleagues to find out where the Bondorff villa was exactly. He didn’t turn the meter on. Still, the man was tense and didn’t speak much. His hands wrapped around the steering wheel too tightly. He sighed and complained under his breath.

  When they arrived at poorly lit Patteriniemi Road, the driver pointed into the woods and gave vague instructions on how to find the villa.

  “Wait for me here,” Pasi said as he was about to get out of the car.

  “How about you pay for the trip so far,” the man said, “and call another taxi once you’re done. I should be getting back home.”

  “What about these boots?”

  “Keep them.”

  Pasi held the door open for a moment, then closed it, still sitting in the car.

  “My, aren’t we skittish.” He laughed and looked for his wallet. He’d spent all his cash, so he paid with a credit card.

  “Charge a little extra. Buy something nice for yourself. Like a new pair of poison-green rubber boots.”

  The man said nothing. He shoved the card reader over his shoulder, staring ahead. Pasi typed his PIN and removed the card. He didn’t request a copy of the receipt.

  “Have a good evening,” the driver said, but Pasi had already slammed the door.

  The taxi dug into the gravel as it sped away. Pasi stood alone in the parking lot with rubber boots dangling in his hands. He looked up at the apartment buildings: only one window had a light on. The wind hissed so loudly he couldn’t hear any other sounds.

  Pasi took a swig out of a small Chivas Regal bottle, then leaned against a garage to put on the rubber boots. He left his shoes on top of the trash can and began to walk in the direction the taxi driver had pointed. The woods were dark. He could see only the waving tops of trees against the night sky.

  “I love you, Maisa Riipinen,” Pasi said out loud and began to second-guess himself. With crystal clarity he realized he was doing this only because he was drunk—which was precisely why he had to do it.

  Many of his best decisions were made under heavy influence. Like right now.

  “Comfortably wasted,” Pasi muttered and staggered onward.

  After he’d walked a few steps, he began to hum a tune. He wasn’t exactly afraid of walking in unknown territory in the early morning darkness. Instead, it made him feel lonely and melancholy, so he had to fill the void with something. Pasi used his cell phone as a flashlight, and it worked well, as long as he didn’t light the path right in front of his toes—that made him lose his balance.

  He found the shore. The taxi driver had told him he could walk to the island. He used the cell-phone light to look for the rocks and began his slow, unbalanced tightrope act. He whistled Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” all the way. Occasionally he’d stop and listen, thinking he’d heard a swishing sound nearby. Drunken paranoia, he decided, and managed to reach the island with dry feet. He jumped onto even ground and searched for his bottle as he walked determinedly ahead. Then he heard it again.

  Pasi stopped and listened. A swish. Accompanied by a quick clink. Then silence again. He looked around. Darkness waved in the wind.

  “Whatever,” he mumbled, turning his cell-phone light left and right.

  His mind was playing tricks on him, interpreting some neutral nature sounds as highly meaningful. He had to keep his cool, even when he was drunk. Pasi realized he often dreamed within a dream, and when he was drunk he realized he was drunk, which put things into perspective.

  The outline of the villa began to appear in the darkness. The wind joined in on the drunken hum in Pasi’s ears, building his confidence. The light from his phone wasn’t quite enough to illuminate its walls, so he turned it off. Besides, his eyes were already adjusted to the darkness. The steps leading onto the porch gave a hollow boom under his boots as he marched on without hesitation.

  Pasi knocked on the door’s window. There was no point in it, but hey—he couldn’t disregard good manners, even if he was in the middle of nowhere. He stood there, staring at his dark silhouette reflected in the glass. He thought he heard sounds from inside, footsteps stomping toward the door, but it was just his imagination. When you knock on a door, you expect to hear steps. Touching the door handle, Pasi was just about to push it down when someone spoke.

  He wasn’t startled. He recognized a momentary tingling on his skin, but it was like one of those nightmares where you realize you’re awake. He slowly lifted his hand off the door handle and turned toward the voice.

  There was a chair on the porch. Something was on it. Maybe a human being, maybe an object covered in fabric.

  “Is someone there?” Pasi asked, realizing how much he was slurring his speech.

  No reply.

  He must’ve heard wrong. When you knock on a door, you expect someone to appear. He was keeping his cool, yet supposedly that person was sitting right there now.

  “It’s locked,” the voice said.

  A woman’s voice.

  Pasi chuckled.

  The figure on the chair was now clearly human. Not a pile of black fabric. A real human being. A woman who had slumped in the chair. Her arms were hanging off to the sides. Her fingertips almost touched the porch, her head tilted. But her voice wasn’t drowsy. It was excited, happy.

  “I didn’t see you there,” Pasi said. “I’m terribly sorry, intruding like this. I don’t mean any harm, I’m . . .”

  He didn’t quite know where to go with that sentence. At least he’d stopped slurring. He had a talent for shutting out drunkenness when he needed to.

  “That door is locked for you,” she replied, as if she had not heard him.

  For you?

  The tilted head and the arms slun
g to the sides weren’t moving. It reminded Pasi of a ventriloquist doll. He barely suppressed his giggles.

  “All right. Of course, of course.”

  For a moment Pasi stood there in the midst of howling wind and uncertainty, which made him realize he needed to take a piss, and badly.

  “Sit down,” the woman said.

  Pasi looked for a place to sit. There was another chair to the left of the door.

  “Why not,” he said.

  He sat down, thinking about possible reasons why a woman would sit alone on the porch of a dark house in the early hours of the morning, but he decided not to dwell on it. It was more important to come up with an excuse to take a leak and convince the woman he had a good reason to be sneaking around on her porch at this time of night. Luckily the woman didn’t seem too concerned about him. He leaned his head back against the cool siding.

  Pasi couldn’t see all the way out to the sea in the darkness. He only heard it murmuring somewhere under the moonlit clouds. He was sure he’d imagined the faint white foam on the waves, just like he’d imagined the footsteps after his knock.

  He took out his small bottle of Chivas Regal and took a swig. He turned to the woman and offered the bottle to her.

  “Want some?”

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  A slumped head. Hands loosely hanging off to the sides. What a goddamned bore.

  “All right, then,” Pasi said and finished the bottle, then put it back into his breast pocket.

  They listened to the waves in silence. He wanted to take out his cell phone to illuminate his partner on the porch, but it felt somewhat inappropriate. Her voice didn’t betray her age, but Pasi came to the conclusion that she wasn’t very old. Maybe around his age. Ten years older than him wouldn’t have been too alarming, either. Life was constructed from experiences. Nobody needed to know.

  “Why here?” the voice said.

  Pasi looked at the woman and pondered this question, then turned his gaze back to the sea.

  “You mean, why am I here?” he said.

  There was no reply, so he continued.

  “Well . . . I heard about this place and thought I’d check it out.”

  “It piqued your curiosity?”

  “Yes. Sort of.”

  “A boring old place like this?” the woman said.

  No rebuttal came to mind, so Pasi laughed instead. The woman laughed, too, and for a moment they laughed together. It cleared the air. He liked her laugh. It was scratchy in a perfect way, not like some suburban Miss Sings-Karaoke-and-Smokes-Too-Much, but like a woman who didn’t care about keeping up appearances. He was sad the whiskey had run out. He stopped laughing when he heard the swishing sound again.

  This time it was followed by a knock. A clink. Then another sound. A tapping on wood. It came from somewhere really close. Pasi turned toward the noise.

  All he saw was meaningless darkness. He wanted to ask the woman about the noise.

  “This is not a boring place,” the woman said.

  “I’m sure it’s not,” he said, still trying to locate the sound.

  “When nothing changes, all sorts of things just accumulate.”

  Pasi’s gaze still rested on the darkness beyond the porch. It took a few seconds for his drunken confusion to make sense of her words.

  “Nothing changes . . .” he repeated.

  He looked back at the woman.

  She was no longer slumped. Her arms weren’t lifelessly hanging to the sides. She had sat up straight. Her face was still shrouded in darkness, but she was clearly looking at Pasi.

  “Is your last name Bondorff?” Pasi asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Surely you know your own name.”

  “Of course I do.”

  Pasi snorted. “My, aren’t you mysterious.”

  He was about to ask her name again when a new sound emerged. A clatter from inside the house, followed by a muffled mutter.

  “Do you live alone?”

  The figure shrugged. Pasi recognized the gesture clearly. His eyes had now adjusted to the darkness perfectly. He had cat eyes.

  “It’s hard to be alone here.”

  “I see,” he said. “But you’re still doing all right?”

  “Of course.”

  They began to laugh again. The woman leaned forward, her entire body convulsing. She was no doll—just a nice, drunk woman with a lovely, hoarse voice. Pasi glanced at the way he had come. Darkness had swallowed the woods and the path lined with reeds, but farther beyond he could see little lights. The streetlights of Patteriniemi Road. He wasn’t out in the boonies. Maisa would admire him until the end of time. Lovely Maisa.

  “What do you say we go inside, and you’ll get us something from your bar? Anything,” Pasi suggested.

  “From the bar?”

  “I’m sure a house as grand as this has a bar.”

  “And anything?”

  “Anything.”

  The woman burst out laughing.

  “Anything at all,” Pasi said. “We’ll drink it up and then you’ll take your clothes off and we’ll see what happens. How about it?”

  Silence. The wind and the waves. The hum of perfect intoxication.

  “You’re insane,” the woman responded. “You have no idea what . . . what people usually . . . which is . . .”

  Pasi waited for her to finish, but she just laughed again.

  “You can’t come inside,” she then said.

  “Why not?”

  “You just can’t.”

  He weighed his options. He wanted to go in, drink some more, lick a little pussy, have sex numbed by his drunkenness and a condom, and then he would let the lady sleep while he rummaged through the house and called Maisa to tell her whatever evidence he’d find about the disturbed Bondorff family or the lack thereof. But Pasi was also a logical thinker, who would know in his dreams if he were dreaming.

  “Let’s drink out here instead,” he suggested.

  “But I’ll be cold,” the woman said, “if I’m naked.”

  “Well, well—we’ll have to drink first and see about that part later.”

  The woman was about to die laughing.

  “You’re really something,” she said.

  She jumped out of the chair. Her face was suddenly right in front of him. It happened disturbingly quickly. His drunken gaze didn’t have time to refocus on the woman.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  Her breath smelled sweet, reminding Pasi of his childhood and rowanberry candy and Arctic-bramble liqueur. And something else. Something nauseating. Then the face was gone.

  “Wait,” she said. She walked to the door and yanked it open.

  Pasi stared at the empty space where the face had been. The dark eyes . . . But everything would look dark in the darkness. Her pale face . . . But everything except black would appear pale in the darkness. And so on.

  That mouth.

  He heard booming footsteps inside the villa, wandering the rooms, walking away, then returning toward the door. Pasi looked up at the moon and touched the cell phone inside his pocket. He rehearsed what he’d tell Maisa. Then he called her.

  He waited for her to answer as he looked at the little lights shining on Patteriniemi Road, the little votives of safe everyday life telling him everything was all right. Maisa answered.

  “Guess where I am?” Pasi said.

  She sounded clearly excited. He answered her questions as best as he could, which was difficult because he had to listen to the footsteps inside the villa.

  “You have a fucking great case here,” Pasi whispered when the footsteps got closer. He was about to tell Maisa something else, too, but what could he do.

  The door blasted open just as he shoved the phone back into his p
ocket. The woman stood in front of him with a bottle in hand. Naked.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” she said, lifting the bottle.

  “I guess so,” Pasi said.

  He was supposed to feel exalted. Her age was still a mystery, but she definitely hadn’t shaved down there. She looked just like in the porn magazines Pasi had sneaked a peek at as a kid. She was no trimmed neurotic who had grown up bingeing on Cosmopolitan. She was naturally naked, and she just stood there, in this cold weather, with a wide smile across her face. A bit too wide, actually.

  “Sit on my lap,” Pasi said. “So you won’t freeze.”

  She walked over and sat down. They both laughed, but more nervously now. The bottle had no label on it, but the liquid in it was dark. It looked like red wine.

  “Should we kiss now?” the woman asked.

  “Not just yet,” Pasi said, stroking her back. Her goose bumps tickled his fingertips, as if he were reading Braille.

  He just couldn’t get over the way her mouth looked. Pasi hadn’t been scared when the woman spoke for the first time, nor did he feel threatened at any point after that. But that smile. It reminded Pasi of a hospital waiting room when he had broken his thumb playing baseball, and his father had taken him to the doctor. A woman had sat in the waiting room. She had been sent straight from the dentist’s office to the ER. The dentist’s drill had torn the side of her mouth, but she hadn’t felt a thing under anesthesia. His father had talked with her, but Pasi had just stared at her face where the corner of her mouth stretched slightly too far into her cheek. He had thought of an illustrator falling asleep in the middle of drawing a face, letting his pen wander off by itself on the paper.

  He was about to drift further into this unpleasant memory when the woman pressed her lips against his. Her eyes were right in front of his. First Pasi resisted, then relaxed. It was just an ordinary mouth. Cold lips and a tongue rough like a kitten’s.

  “Are you sure we can’t go in?” Pasi asked when she pulled away.

  The woman nodded.

  “I’m sure. Want some?” she asked and lifted the bottle in front of her face. Its cold surface tapped Pasi on the nose.