Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

  The boy stirred himself in the pram and craned to look at Olli, until his hat sat crooked on his head. His smooth brow was furrowed.

  “Daddy…”

  “What?”

  The boy concentrated intensely.

  Finally he said: “Daddy, you shouldn’t eat those pears. They’re poison.”

  5

  THE STAFF IN THE CONFERENCE ROOM of Book Tower Publishing were drinking coffee, munching on Marie biscuits and talking about A Guide to the Cinematic Life. The ceiling of the room was a high one, the ambience venerable.

  They sat in ornate oak chairs hand-crafted before any of them were even born. The dark table was too large. There were interspersed empty chairs and everyone was far away from each other. Olli sat in his usual place at the head of the table. The window was open. A warm waft of air blew in, bringing a scent of spring. Maiju was at the other end of the table giving them a report of what she had learnt from an acquaintance at WSOY Publishing.

  When Olli turned his head to the right, he was looking straight into the park. It was May. Now that winter was over, people were trying to learn to enjoy life again.

  Children ran around, teenagers lolled on the grass. People sat on the benches eating ice cream from the kiosk in the park. An old couple strolled arm in arm wearing heavy coats; their bones still remembered the cold of winter. They passed a fat woman who was tossing breadcrumbs to the pigeons. Then the children ran up and chased the birds away, which gave the old couple a start, and the woman was left standing in the path in befuddlement.

  In addition to Olli and Maiju, there was Antero, and grey-haired Seija. The rest of the staff were in Helsinki arranging a children’s book event, to which Eduard Uspensky had been invited, thus making it worth their while for Book Tower to be on hand and visible.

  There was always an intern present as well. These wards of the publishing house came and went. Just as they got to know one of them, a new one came to replace them.

  The current intern was a blonde girl in a blue blouse. She was sitting in the corner looking neglected. “Please, have some coffee and biscuits,” Olli said encouragingly. He pointed to the coffee pot and the plate of biscuits, which the regular staff were quickly emptying.

  The girl shook her head and looked at the ceiling.

  Olli peered at the intern over his horn-rimmed glasses. She had an interesting face. It had a certain refinement. The film club had recently watched Vertigo, and she reminded Olli of Kim Novak.

  The girl shifted her gaze uncomfortably, the impression faded, and Olli continued listening to the discussion. They were still talking about A Guide to the Cinematic Life. Olli had left his copy on his desk. The others had also bought the book and were reading it at a fast clip. They were all in agreement that although the book seemed trivial at first, it quickly hooked you and made you think. And it was making its publisher a lot of money.

  Antero said that as far as he was concerned it was mostly pseudo-philosophical pop silliness and the success of the book was proof of the book-buying public’s poor taste. “But we should take advantage of it as well as we can,” he added. “And people have a right to their bad taste. It’s probably mentioned in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.”

  Maiju said that the translation rights had already been sold to dozens of countries. WSOY was celebrating Greta Kara as their latest goose to lay a golden egg. “Apparently Kara is already writing another book,” Maiju informed them. “She’s writing it in an apartment in Montmartre, in Paris, provided for her by her French publisher, just so the media won’t bother her. And she doesn’t give any interviews. Supposedly. It’s a good gimmick. Playing the mystery woman and letting the media’s curiosity swell to bursting, the requests for interviews build up, until she finally gives in and, bang, suddenly she’s on every channel and in every newspaper…”

  Olli had heard enough. He stood up, waved his arms like he was swimming the butterfly stroke and roared, “Fine! Great! We don’t need to worry that WSOY is going to fail for lack of sales! Roll another stone over my heart!”

  Then he calmed down, tapped on the table and said, “Now can we talk about Book Tower business? Would that be all right?”

  The Book Tower staff gave each other furtive looks. Mr Suominen didn’t usually raise his voice. He was known as an extremely patient, deliberative and fatherly man.

  Olli sat down and continued in a calm tone, “Speaking of best-sellers, how is the Emma Bunny book doing, Antero? Has there been much interest in the book or the author?”

  “Surprisingly, no,” the young man answered, without looking up from his cup, where he had dropped a biscuit.

  Olli noticed that Seija, their grey-haired office and accounting manager, was following the discussion worriedly.

  “Well, there will be a few articles, mostly the usual children’s book outlets,” Antero continued. “Emma Bunny is a popular series, and I’m sure there will be reviews, and the ‘let’s play doctor’ aspect of the new book will arouse some interest, but we might as well give up waiting for a media circus. Amanda Vuolle is no Greta Kara, and Emma Bunny is no Guide to the Cinematic Life. Which doesn’t mean, of course, that the new Emma Bunny won’t sell well enough, if Maiju can just think of a catchy name for it. I Have a Fanny and You Have a Wee-Wee isn’t quite it…”

  “Selling ‘well enough’ isn’t good enough,” Seija announced.

  Everyone turned to look at her and Seija’s cheeks reddened. Her faced tensed. “As I’ve explained before, we’re not at any immediate crisis point. Nobody needs to start looking for a new job, at least not yet. But we need an increase in sales.”

  The conference room emptied and everyone went back to work on their own projects. Olli went into his office, sat on the edge of his desk and began thumbing through A Guide to the Cinematic Life. He started to tremble. He forced himself to relax. It was ridiculous to get so worked up about a book.

  There was the picture of a pear on the cover. Olli read the author’s name and whispered it three times aloud, first with disbelief, then tasting the words, as if saying a prayer. Then he opened the book. He examined the flap photo closely, close enough to smell the ink. It was a picture of Greta Kara.

  The same photo was on his computer screen, open to a Facebook profile.

  Lately Olli had been remembering his dreams more and more clearly, and waking up melancholy and restless. He already had 425 Facebook friends, but only one of them had been haunting him every night for the past several months.

  View my friends (425).

  Greta Kara.

  Olli thought for a moment, then moved his mouse.

  Send Greta a message.

  Click. A message box appeared on the screen.

  Send Message.

  To: Greta Kara

  Subject:

  Olli wiped his lips and wrote:

  Subject: To the girl in the pear-print dress.

  Message: Hello!

  Olli lifted his fingers from the keyboard and stared at the screen for a long time before continuing.

  6

  Most of the time, life is a pear left in a glass bowl to rot while we eat potatoes day after day.

  GRETA KARA,

  A Guide to the Cinematic Life

  The house is close to the river, at the edge of Tourula, his old summer neighbourhood. The trees and bushes hide it from passers-by. The window by the front door is broken. Inside the house is a fluttering sparrow.

  Olli wipes sweat from his brow, sweat mixed with the dust from the dirt road. Climbs the stairs. Piano music from above. He recognizes the piece: Debussy’s Clair de lune. It’s beautiful. The door to the room is open. Inside is darkness.

  He’s winded. It’s difficult to see. His pupils gradually dilate to adjust to the dark.

  The piano player’s fingers lift from the keys. It’s quiet. Olli holds his breath and listens. Someone nearby is breathing quick breaths.

  His nose is flooded with the scent of meadow flowers. The perfume is familia
r. Thick curtains cover the windows. The light smoulders red; the day and the whole rest of the world are shut outside. Olli walks farther in. The floor creaks, the scent grows stronger, surrounds him.

  A girl approaches him in the darkness. Olli closes his eyes, opens his mouth, breathes between his teeth and draws the smell onto his tongue.

  “Why are you doing that?” the girl whispers in his ear.

  “I’m tasting your scent,” Olli answers.

  He opens his eyes and turns. The girl’s mouth is open. They breathe in the same air, and it takes turns inside each of them, growing hot. Olli looks at her lips and chin and neck and shoulders. He doesn’t yet dare to meet her eyes, lest his heart beat too fast.

  He touches her dress, with its pattern of pears, and lets his eyes move over it. He feels heat through the fabric.

  He’s terrified of the breath escaping from her reddened lips, scorching his skin, because it is palpable with a hunger greater than both of them.

  7

  GRETA KARA, THE AUTHOR, answered his message two days later:

  Well, hello yourself, Olli! How delightful that you decided to write to me! And you remembered the pear-print dress, too! I’m flattered. I didn’t know if you would remember it, or even me, any more. I’m sure you’ve met thousands of interesting people since you knew me, and it’s been almost thirty years since we last saw each other.

  Forgive me for the delay in responding. I’ve been very busy here in Paris. (I’ve had to spend some time in cafes, for instance, where the Années folles are becoming more and more palpable to me. Although Cocteau, Chagall, Miller, Beckett, Miró and the other big names who buzzed around here have of course been lying in the ground for a long time…)

  You’ve probably heard that I wrote a book. It’s been doing quite nicely. My French publisher loved it so much that he gave me an office to use in Tour Montparnasse, on the condition, of course, that he will get the French rights to my next book. Actually, he wants the rights to the whole series, but more about that later—it’s still a secret! They even gave me a piano in my room; he knows I enjoy playing Debussy and Chopin to pull my thoughts together when I’m writing.

  The view from here is worth mentioning. Can you believe I have a view of the Eiffel Tower? But I suppose that’s not so exciting, now that it’s become such a postcard cliché. And speaking of clichés: I confess that I went to Hollywood to write my first book, and I took one of those photos of myself standing at the foot of the “Hollywood” sign. Maybe I’ll show it to you sometime—but I won’t put it on the Internet.

  How are you, Olli? According to your Facebook status, you live in Jyväskylä and you’re married. Do you have any children? And, hey—is it true you’re a publisher now? What kinds of book do you publish? Novels?

  Let’s keep in touch (when my busy schedule allows)!

  Sincerely,

  Greta K.

  Olli started writing his answer.

  After a couple of sentences, his eyes came to rest on the eyes of Olli Suominen, publisher and parish-council member, stiff in black and white, staring at him from the photo on the wall. The man in the photo had a career and a family to support and plenty more urgent things to do than bombard a beloved of his youth with messages.

  With his cheeks burning, Olli closed his Facebook page, did a couple of hours of work, and left the office.

  He had left his umbrella in a bookshop on his lunch hour, and now he needed one. It was raining so hard that water was flowing down Kauppakatu. Cars and bicycles splashed the people on the pavement. Olli’s trouser legs were soaked, and he jumped back into the shelter of the building.

  Finally, he ran across the street. His shoes slopped with water. His socks were drenched. He hurried to the next street for the shelter of the linden trees that lined the old church park.

  The stone entrance of a bank offered safety. There were already three shivering old women there who greeted the parish councillor as they would a great gentleman. Olli answered their greeting heartily. They were flattered.

  The next dash took him to the Forum shopping centre.

  A passageway between the florist and the optician led to the inner courtyard. Teenagers were gathered against the wall watching the river of harried, middle-aged people flowing from work to the shops and from the shops to their homes. Two youngsters in black leather stood leaning against each other in the middle of the courtyard, oblivious to anything but each other, and the kiss they had abandoned themselves to. Olli remembered the film The Wild One, and Kathie’s words to Johnny: I wish I was going someplace. I wish you were going someplace. We could go together.

  Olli descended the steps, crossed the lower level and took the escalator to the basement shops, which included Jyväs-brella, the pearl of the Forum. Olli stepped inside and started looking at the umbrella selection.

  The owner was pottering behind the counter—a large woman with black hair teased into a wild tangle who was always sweating, though she wore gauzy dresses and went around the shop barefoot.

  The back wall of the shop was covered with a large poster of a seashore. After the first time he went in, Olli had a dream where the woman was part of the poster. She was standing at the edge of the water holding up her skirt and looking out to sea. In his dream, Olli had walked up to the poster and the woman had turned, stepped out of the picture into the shop, and started rearranging the umbrellas.

  The shopkeeper recognized her regular customer and came to assist him with swinging steps. Sweat poured down her neck in branching streams that melted together again as they reached between her ample breasts.

  The salty scent that surrounded her reminded Olli of a childhood trip to the Mediterranean shore. On the very first day of the trip the tide had carried his blue toy boat away. He cried over it for three days. He was only consoled when a local fisherman made up a story and his mother translated it: the boat belonged to the beautiful mermaids now, and whenever they played with it they would think about how much they loved the pale-haired Finnish boy who had sent it to them.

  “Some weather we’re having,” the umbrella seller said hoarsely.

  Olli nodded. Phrase number one. The woman was interesting, in a burlesque sort of way, but she never said anything original or surprising. Her eyes were peculiar, though. They sometimes made him think of a forest, other times of the Mediterranean, and when he looked into them he felt as if he were just about to remember something.

  “Sure is raining today. Nice weather for an umbrella dealer, but not so great for everyone else,” the woman laughed.

  Phrase number two.

  Olli decided that this time he was going to buy a perfectly ordinary, traditional black umbrella. He paid. As the woman gave his bank card back their hands touched and they looked each other in the eye a little longer than felt quite natural.

  The woman’s hands were hot and damp. Playfulness flashed in her eyes. Olli remembered a dream from several nights before:

  He steps into the umbrella shop. Aino and the boy are with him. Aino is wearing a ludicrously large sun hat and the boy has on a sailor suit. The shopkeeper is dancing and sweating. She twists and shakes her body, to make her flesh obey her, panting like a dying bear.

  Olli can see that it’s because of the pear-print dress. She has put it on although it’s much too small for her. Now it’s stuck and she’s trying to dance her way out of it.

  The dress is ripping a little more with each movement. Olli approaches her, apologizes for disturbing her and says that he’s going to the beach with his family and that they need a parasol.

  The woman shakes her head, fluffs her hair, smiles, dances over to him and gives him a noisy kiss on the cheek.

  Just then, the dress rips open.

  Her left breast pops out. It’s enormous and white and it’s splashing milk in every direction.

  Olli’s son laughs out loud and runs after the woman all around the shop trying to catch the drops of milk in his hands. Aino taps Olli on the arm, points to the w
oman’s breast and shouts excitedly, “Sweetheart, that’s the exact colour of white that I want for our bedroom walls! Look at it closely! Otherwise you’ll forget when you go to the paint shop.”

  Water is pouring onto the floor. The poster of the seashore is leaking, and the sea is sloshing into motion. They’re already standing in seawater up to their waists, and the umbrellas are drifting away.

  Then a darker patch of blue flashes in the poster picture. It moves with the water and disappears under the surface. Olli mentions it to Aino, who nods, takes a breath, and dives after it.

  Her sun hat is left bobbing on the surface of the water and floats away.

  The bare-breasted woman dances until the fabric of her dress finally gives way and unpeels in strips.

  She stops dancing. She’s naked. Her green, surprisingly long pubic hairs flutter in the water like seaweed. They spread on the current through the shop and wrap themselves around Olli’s legs.

  The shreds of pear-printed fabric slither with the current out of the shop, hissing as they go.

  Olli remembers his son, now. He doesn’t see him anywhere. He looks into the woman’s eyes and trembles.

  The woman pulls him close to her. Her body is soft. Olli sinks into it and feels calmer. They kiss. They’re both crying; she has lost all of her umbrellas, and Olli has lost his son.

  Then she sighs, tells Olli to lower his head and puts one of her breasts in his mouth. Milk is flowing out of it. She whispers that it’s salty like seawater, but it frees you of all sorrows.

  Olli drinks.

  She strokes his hair.

  Olli can see that there is a menacing shadow approaching under the water. He tears himself away from the woman and makes as if to escape.