Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

  They laugh a lot.

  And then there are other times. Sometimes Greta lays her head on Olli’s breast and listens to the pounding of the rain on the roof and Olli strokes her golden hair and dark thoughts overcome her and she starts to talk about them in a low voice, the salty drops of her sadness falling on his skin.

  And sometimes she asks Olli to take off his clothes and she caresses him with her mouth and her hands. At first he was too shy. As the summer passed he learnt to enjoy it more and more. What Greta does to him is so sweet, so private, that he can’t even think about it afterwards. The darkness of the room makes it all unreal, like it’s all half a dream.

  Greta herself refuses to take off the pear-print dress. She says it’s because her body isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. She sometimes lets Olli touch her naked body under the dress but she guides his hands, and she’s tense the whole while.

  Her breasts are small, quite different from Aunt Anna’s, and smaller than Anne’s. Olli likes them.

  And he likes the slim lines of her body, the softness of her skin.

  One day when Greta is lying on the bed with her eyes shut Olli lifts the hem of her dress and touches her belly, then the skin of her thighs. Her breath quickens. Her hips start to move hungrily. Her tongue licks her lips.

  Olli reads these signs as an invitation, and pushes his hand into her underwear.

  Then she freezes, jumps to her feet, and slaps him in the face. Don’t ever do that, do you hear me? If you do I’ll kill you.

  Her dark fury flares, then disappears.

  The familiar, playful spark lights up her eyes again. Then it, too is extinguished by bewilderment.

  Hey, you’re bleeding. Did I hit you? I couldn’t have… Was it me? I don’t understand. You know that I’d rather kill myself than hurt you? Olli, my love, please forgive me.

  They lie side by side, not speaking, listening to each other’s breath until the light behind the curtains starts to grow dim and the room is quite dark.

  A light rain patters on the roof. Then Greta, who is only a voice now, whispers words in Olli’s ear that he still doesn’t completely understand.

  I love you more than I love myself. You know, don’t you, that I wouldn’t even exist if not for you? You see darling, I was created just for you to love.

  35

  AS THE SUMMER CAME TO AN END they enjoyed being in the throes of their fierce longing for each other. It was as if deep down they had already been separated and were groping for each other across time and space.

  What did it matter that they had only just met at the end of the previous summer and now they had to part? They had always known each other and they would always know each other. They expressed this in many words and deeds. They made promises.

  On the first day of summer they had met as agreed on Touru Bridge, where Greta was waiting for him under the French umbrella. They had become lovers over the winter through letters. It was raining. They took each other’s hands and exchanged a kiss. After that they met every day and hid their relationship from the Blomrooses and everyone else. Before that summer Olli thought that nothing could be better than the adventures of the Tourula Five. Now he knew that it was time to move on. The spell of the secret passages belonged to childhood and he had to let it go as he let go of his childhood. In the end, love was the most exciting thing of all.

  Their love wasn’t mutual at first; Olli was confused and afraid. Encountering Greta for the first time in the secret passageway, he was terrified. When he got back above ground he ran away without looking back, although she called after him to stay.

  When his father drove him home to Koirakkala he tried not to think about what had happened, because he didn’t understand it. He didn’t want to go back to Tourula ever again. The thought of it made him feel sick.

  But a few weeks later he got a letter that changed everything.

  Olli, you don’t know me but I know you and I love you. My name is Greta. I’ve been secretly watching you for some time and hoping that you could like me when I was finally ready to show myself to you.

  I’m sorry I scared you. That wasn’t my intention.

  Do you think you might like us to write to each other? Because I’m quite alone here now. I’m being blamed for Karri leaving, although he did it voluntarily, so that you and I could be together. Before he left he asked me to tell you that even though you weren’t interested in knowing him better and it upset him, he always liked you more than you realized.

  Olli, I’m sending a picture of myself with this letter. I hope you like it.

  With love,

  Greta

  The letter didn’t help him understand any better what had happened. But the girl in the photo was beautiful. After looking at it for about a week, Olli answered the letter, apologized for his earlier behaviour and said that he was pretty lonely in Koirakkala, too, so he understood how she felt.

  In her next letter Greta said that she was happy that Olli was willing to share his thoughts with her. Their letters went back and forth between Jyväskylä and Koirakkala every couple of days. In the fourth letter, Greta wrote, I’m so looking forward to next summer, when we’ll see each other again.

  Olli answered, Me too.

  After he posted the letter he felt faint. The promise had been made. He would be going back to Tourula after all, even though he wasn’t sure what he would find waiting for him there. Greta was one of those things that he couldn’t talk about to anyone, as was the fate of Karri. The whole thing was bizarre and confusing but at the same time somehow simple: sullen Karri was gone and now this sweet girl named Greta had taken his place.

  Olli spent days sitting in his room looking at the girl in the photo and trying in vain to understand. Finally he decided that maybe not everything was meant to be understood completely. Some good things in life just have to be accepted as they are without asking too many questions.

  Like the secret passages.

  And now Greta.

  After seeing the Blomrooses for the last time and witnessing how Greta has stopped being ashamed of her existence and defied her cousins and even her mother, Olli runs back to his grandparents’ house.

  He tells them he’s going to spend the night at Aunt Anna’s.

  “Now you be sure to behave so you leave them with another good memory of this summer,” his grandpa says without looking up from the newspaper. His grandma turns away from the sink and tells him to have a nice visit and to give her regards to Anne, Leo and Riku. She also tells him not to forget to thank Aunt Anna for her hospitality.

  Greta doesn’t need to think up a story for anyone. Nobody will notice whether she’s in her room or not.

  That evening they meet in the secret room by the river and spend their first whole night together. The girl in the pear-print dress gives Olli pleasure in many different ways. But he still can’t get her to take the dress off.

  In his passion Olli makes a blustered demand: he has to be able to touch Greta the same way she touches him. After all, it’s not right that only one of them has that pleasure.

  He blushes; he’s glad it’s dark. Greta stares at him frozen, like a frightened animal.

  “Don’t you trust me?” Olli says.

  His voice is thin with guilt. He forces himself to continue to try to persuade her.

  “We don’t have to… to go all the way, if you’re scared. I don’t think I’m ready for that, either. Greta, I just want to touch you so bad.”

  It’s true. He’s been thinking about it so much lately that he hasn’t been able to sleep. Remembering, through the long hours of the night, what it felt like to touch Anne, and imagining what it would be like to do the things to Greta that Anne wanted him to do.

  Finally Greta nods.

  She takes off her dress and underwear and folds them in a neat stack on the chair next to the bed. Then she lies on her back next to Olli and waits there, like a sacrificial lamb.

  There’s not much light; all he can see is an outlin
e, but it’s enough.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers.

  Greta smiles, her eyes closed.

  Olli strokes her cheek, feels the hot stream from her eyes, realizes she’s trembling.

  He suppresses his guilt, kisses her small, perfumed breasts and licks the smooth skin of her belly.

  Then his hand slides down and stops between her legs.

  It isn’t the same as Anne’s, anyway, or his own.

  He lays his head on her chest, strokes her hair with his left hand, kisses her face every so often, letting the fingers of his right hand explore with gentle curiosity.

  He doesn’t try to picture it, figure it out, understand it. He isn’t a naturalist here, just an inexperienced lover eager to learn.

  So he concentrates on finding the right ways to touch, the ways to please his beloved.

  Greta sighs in the dark and lifts her hips.

  Olli learns.

  When night finally withdraws from around the house, a dim red glow comes through the curtains.

  Olli and Greta lie in bed naked, wrapped around each other, covered in nothing but a thin sleep.

  Then they open their eyes and look at each other with frightened faces.

  They hear footsteps on the stairway.

  The door flies open.

  Shouts.

  Greta is yanked out of the bed and dragged down the stairs.

  A clatter.

  Olli sits up, bewildered. Anne is standing in the doorway. She grins at him mockingly. She’s drunk.

  “Good morning, lover boy,” she pants. “Amazingly fine day today. The sun is shining and all that cliché shit. I have a bit of a headache. We were up all night, too, you know. But hey, come on downstairs and see what sort of freak you’ve been messing with.”

  Anne runs down the stairs. Olli pulls on his jeans and stumbles after her.

  36

  IT’S STARTING TO RAIN HARDER. Lounais Park is gradually surrendering to autumn. The children abandon the carousel and swings and run away.

  Olli and Greta are left in the park alone.

  Under the umbrella a little world has come into being, warmed by a sun from thirty years ago.

  As Greta continues to reminisce, Olli watches her mouth. It’s beautiful. He could kiss it, but he doesn’t have the heart to stop the flow of words. The words are building a living picture of the summer they once spent together.

  Nothing feels quite real any more. Maybe the secret passages under the ground are leaking the substance that dreams come from. Making the tiniest details significant, making life feel like a dangerous, mesmerizing dream where no sacrifice is too large if it can let you experience something beautiful.

  To die with the blossoms, or else to live forever—those are our choices. Anything else is a waste of time.

  Olli understands now what Maggie Cheung was saying in that film.

  Greta speaks and the words make her skin glow. Olli finally has to reach out and touch her lips to make sure she’s real.

  Her talk breaks off for a moment. She looks at him in surprise, smiles and continues.

  One memory follows another.

  As long as she keeps remembering more details of that summer together she doesn’t have to come to what happened that morning.

  Remember when we climbed up the observation tower and spent the whole day there, looking out over the city? There was a thunderstorm all around us, and we kissed, and the lightning made me jump and I bit your lip so hard that it drew blood, and I licked it away, and then we started to plan exactly what kind of house we were going to live in someday. It had to have a big garden and have lots of spacious rooms, a piano so I could play for you and a greenhouse… You wanted apple trees in the garden… They had to be Finnish cinnamons…

  As Greta brought that long-ago summer back one word at a time, Olli was amazed to realize how much he had forgotten.

  Greta’s talk, together with the M-particles, is altering his mood. His deep cinematic self is controlling what he experiences, how he feels, what he thinks.

  It’s scary.

  Familiar things are becoming strange, forgotten things familiar. His character is coming into focus as he realizes his role in the love story. His deep self is whispering dramatically that in order to save his family, Olli must betray his family.

  Cruelty, betrayal and ruthlessness can, in some situations, be aesthetically justified and even unavoidable choices, and categorically avoiding them can lead to slow continuum attachment and the death of life feeling.

  He hesitates.

  He’s horrified that part of him is enjoying having to step out of bounds and surrender to the power of feelings that he would normally reject. What Greta is saying is too beautiful to resist. Just as he wanted the Klimt painting at the Pompidou, he wants a life with Greta now, even though the part of him that’s attached to the slow continuum is still resisting it. Its power comes from things like the familiarity of Aino’s face, from the things they share, like their son’s ear, so perfect it almost makes him believe in God.

  Yesterday he received a message from the Blomrooses that was probably the last one for a while:

  Hello, Olli! So far you’ve followed the script to the letter. Thanks! Here are your final instructions. You will meet Greta in Lounais Park on the cafe kiosk terrace at 3 p.m. After that you’re on your own. Your mission: to make her completely happy. You have until the first snow. Then your family can come home, but only if you complete your mission.

  We wish all the best to you and Greta!

  Your friend,

  Anne (and her pesky brothers)

  So his task is to make Greta completely happy before the first snow.

  Completely happy.

  How will he know when he’s achieved his objective? How can the Blomrooses know? Can a person ever really be completely happy?

  And when will the first snow come to Jyväskylä?

  These thoughts race through his mind, until he gives up.

  Greta is still talking.

  Her sea-green eyes glow with the light of the summer past. The memories are terribly beautiful, but the shadow of that last morning falls over them all. Olli remembers now, the footsteps on the stairs, Greta naked, dragged out of his arms and taken away.

  He realizes that he has felt the hopelessness of that moment every night for all these months.

  Olli presses a finger against Greta’s lips and she falls silent.

  “What?…”

  Olli holds the umbrella with one hand and presses her against him with the other. She makes a noise like a frightened animal and tries to wriggle free.

  Rain splashes from the edge of the umbrella.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go,” Olli whispers.

  Greta freezes.

  Then, realizing that she has got what she came to Jyväskylä for, she sinks her fingers into Olli’s hair and presses against him, trembling with passion.

  PART THREE

  37

  Jyväskylä has preserved some buildings that are particularly cinematic, of which the highest in M-particles is architect Wivi Lönn’s city villa. The villa and its separate outbuildings were built in 1911.

  On the southern part of the property is a large garden. The lot is bordered by rows of flower beds and birch, larch, and apple trees separated by gravel paths. On the Hämeenkatu side is a fence contiguous with the back wall of the storage barn. The fence terminates in a gate known as the Apple Gate for the decorative relief of apples that tops the rounded arch. Through it one passes into a pillared passage. The house itself is graced with such features as an attached glass conservatory with a fountain.

  Many of Jyväskylä’s secret passages lead to the gardens and building foundations of Wivi Lönn’s villa. For this reason, the concentration of M-particles in the house reaches considerably elevated levels.

  GRETA KARA,

  Magical City Guide Number One: Jyväskylä

  Olli sees a blonde-haired girl in a doorway.r />
  “Good morning, lover boy,” Anne says, sizing up his middle-aged nakedness with amusement. “An amazingly clear day today. But hey, come on downstairs and see what sort of freak you’ve been messing with.”

  He turns, and the dream fades.

  Olli sits up, rubs his eyes and looks around.

  He’s alone in the room. Someone who was just sleeping beside him is gone. He can still smell the scent of another person in the bed. Confused, he scratches his hairy chest and sighs as he remembers the fresh feeling of a cool hand on his skin.

  He hears a piano playing, and realizes where he is.

  Not in Tourula. There is no Tourula any more, not like the place in his dream.

  And not at home in Mäki-Matti.

  He gets up and puts on his dressing gown. Classical high windows admit the grey autumn sky into the room. He looks at the garden and farther off at the glimmering lake, then goes downstairs to where the piano music is coming from.

  The stairs curve in a graceful arch. Everything in the house is flawless to the last detail.

  The piano is in front of a window. Greta is playing. Olli lays a hand on her shoulder and smells her golden hair.

  In a smiling voice she wishes him a good morning, while her hands continue their skilful rendition of Chopin’s Prelude no. 16.

  She’s still wearing the sleeveless green dress, like Maggie Cheung in the film In the Mood for Love.

  Olli has spent three nights now at the northern edge of Jyväskylä in the house Greta is renting—Wivi Lönn’s city villa.

  His summer holiday ended five days ago. It only dawned on him yesterday while eating breakfast with Greta in the dining room, watching her make corrections to the manuscript of the Magical City Guide. Olli jerked upright and slammed his hand on the table: he had to get the book to the printers immediately! He grabbed the stack of papers from Greta, told her to send her final edits to the publisher’s by email, called a taxi, got dressed and hurried to the office.