The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy

by Johanna Sinisalo

  The police went back to their missing persons’ files. They found a folder boasting the name Klaus Nagel on the spine. This aroused some suspicion, but a final identification could only be made once the deceased’s beard had been shaved and his hair cut. The man’s identity was then confirmed when his shaved face was compared to a photograph of Klaus Nagel several weeks before his disappearance. The director of the meteorological station had finally been found.

  Black Train

  Basement, Man and Wife

  Maarit Verronen

  Maarit Verronen (born 1965) began her career as a writer of short fiction and her early work is very clearly rooted in science fiction. Although her more recent output has come closer to the realist tradition, the strange and the mysterious, the mythical and the inexplicable are all still central themes. Her novels have twice been shortlisted for the Finlandia Prize. She has also written a number of radio plays. Both of Verronen’s short stories in the present volume were first published in the collection Kulkureita ja unohtajia (‘Tramps and Forgettors’, 1996).

  Black Train

  At the station in Zubotica stood a black train.

  In front of a run-down station house eight passengers were waiting for permission to board that train and continue their journey south. None of them looked in any way dangerous or suspicious, but despite this they were surrounded by a dozen or so border guards, their weapons at the ready.

  Zubotica had once been an important junction, a vibrant border town complete with beautiful old houses and churches. Now it was simply a border town; a town from which seven out of ten inhabitants had fled across the border to be with their relatives. From hundreds of kilometres away refugees had been brought in to replace them, but they did not enjoy being there either. The refugees longed for the ruins of their homeland, a place which Zubotica, their new home, did not resemble in the slightest.

  A single train came across the border from the north each day, almost always empty. It returned immediately, only this time it was full of passengers grateful to be given permission to leave the country. Any people travelling in the other direction, like the eight in question, were grilled about their reasons for entering the country, and those reasons needed to be good.

  The eight passengers answered the same questions in turn. The grandmother of a family of four had died and the family was travelling to her funeral. An old man was returning to his birthplace to die: cancer, two months to live, he said. A middle-aged man had arrived to collect his pregnant wife and their child and take them back to their homeland. A young man had come here in search of work.

  The eighth passenger was only travelling through. As always before. Everywhere.

  This eighth passenger was cleared through the border formalities much more easily than any of the others. No one rooted through any luggage, no extra questions were asked, all the relevant paperwork was stamped after only a quick glance. The chief of the uniformed staff remained expressionless, but two of the clerks beamed at the passing traveller as if they were trying to light up the station platform with their smiles. The eighth passenger looked them up and down and thought how they would have seemed equally appropriate marching in parades, standing at the border or taking care of staff entertainment. Humiliating people in one’s mind was an old way of overcoming those who appeared threatening.

  Guards escorted the passengers to their carriage. As they chatted, getting to know one another, there was an almost wild sense of relief in the voices, gestures and expressions of the youngster and the middle-aged man. The elderly man just stared blankly ahead, not saying a word. The family of four quietly, cosily, went about their business in their own compartment; the sound of conversation rising and falling could be heard through the wall; bags being opened, the rustling of sandwich papers.

  The train did not move for half an hour. It gradually filled up with dozens of locals – those who had not moved away from Zubotica and whose people were in the majority in the country. Laughter could be heard, high-spirited jokes, lots of chatter and small disagreements about everyday matters.

  At the first stop, a handsome young man sat down opposite the eighth passenger. He had acquired some gel on the black market and had rubbed it into his hair, which had been cut with care. The sunglasses on top of his head kept his coiffure in place. He was wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, trainers and had narrow hips. The eighth passenger was still so caught up thinking about the guards at the station that it was impossible to look beyond the exterior of a person. All one could do was try one’s best, particularly once the young man began to talk about his home country – and to a foreigner, no less.

  The man pointed out of the window: that’s such and such a town, where there’s such and such a famous building and where such and such a world famous poet was born. In daylight you can see how beautiful and peaceful it is all around; how refined and cultured, how thriving the countryside; how clean the towns are, with no need to worry about thieves or violence. I’m glad that you’ve come, he said, you can tell everyone what it’s really like here. The world has turned its back on us, people only believe the mendacious propaganda bandied about by our enemies.

  The eighth passenger was well aware of how peaceful it was in both the towns and the countryside, and reassured the man of this; there had been peace in that country throughout the long conflict. The neighbouring countries were at war with each other, but that was another matter entirely.

  The young man began to talk passionately about the neighbouring countries and their peoples. He spoke of ignorant, bloodthirsty, uncivilised barbarians who were trying to force his fellow countrymen to leave their homeland and give up their rights. The man asserted that his country had not been involved in any of the troubles. He and his compatriots were peace-loving people, but still they were being punished for the problems across the border.

  Throughout their three hour acquaintance, the eighth passenger could not decide whether the man was deliberately being economical with the truth or whether he was simply a gullible fool. Perhaps the young man really did not know that his own government had in fact instigated the conflict in the neighbouring country and had openly been involved from the start, providing arms and moral support, until their losses had become too great. Perhaps – or maybe he just did not want to know the truth.

  The middle-aged man, travelling to join his wife and child, moved closer to the eighth passenger as soon as the self-proclaimed propagandist had left the carriage shortly before the terminus. The man first made some insignificant comment, and when the eighth passenger gave a friendly reply he began talking about his family. As the train was about to stop he finally got to the point: his wife may be in need of some help. Would it be at all possible for a foreign traveller like yourself to stay with us? The man explained that there were very few people left in the country that he could trust. He had always been an outsider, even before the conflict, though back then he had had nothing to fear. No one had directly threatened his life, but people had stopped keeping their promises; thieves and con-men were rife.

  The eighth passenger agreed to go with him, for want of a better place to spend the night. Knowing where to find a reasonably priced hostel was all but impossible, and it would have been plain foolhardy to take a cab. The price of a taxi ride had shot up as a result of the fuel embargo and only the greediest and the most unscrupulous drivers were still in business.

  A dozen or so people, two or three families, had turned up to meet the family travelling in the adjacent carriage. They all stood on the platform hugging, crying and lifting up each other’s babies. The young man, who had said he was coming here to work, walked past them and slipped quickly through the crowds of people and out towards the main entrance. He skipped down the steps, his bag on his shoulder, and strode off confidently into the street.

  The old man with cancer, returning to his homeland to die, did not leave the station. He stood on the platform for a moment clutching his few possessions and looking around. He then slow
ly trudged up towards the wall and into the doorway of a closed bar. There he lay down to sleep with a bundle of clothes as a makeshift pillow.

  The eighth passenger followed the middle-aged man out of the station and across a broad boulevard. They walked up to a tram stop, waited for five minutes, then boarded a half-empty tram. The man paid for both their tickets and began talking again; about his wife and their first born, now three years old, throughout the entire journey.

  He lived in a slightly dilapidated, dirty six-storey apartment block. There was no lift, and so they ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. The man bounded half a flight of stairs in front and could not even bring himself to wait at the door. As the eighth passenger arrived in the hallway, the man had already gone through every room in the flat and appeared from the bedroom scratching his head, looking rather confused.

  There was no one in the flat. Some of the furniture was missing, as were his wife’s personal possessions. What was left was old and in bad condition.

  The door to the neighbouring flat opened and a woman with rollers in her hair knocked on the door frame. She gave both of them a long and heartfelt hand shake and explained that there had been a robbery the previous night. It was only after this that she mustered the courage to tell the man that two days earlier his wife and child had suddenly taken ill and died.

  The man stood motionless for a moment.

  The neighbour quietly backed off into her apartment, as the man turned and dashed into the kitchen. The sound of clattering could be heard for a short while, after which the man reappeared carrying a pistol.

  He placed the gun in his pocket and said that he would rather not talk about the matter right now, but would take his guest to a hotel and go into town and drink himself to oblivion. There was a decent, cheap hotel right by the railway station. The man insisted on paying the costs for his guest.

  They said goodbye to one another at the reception desk. The man wished a happy life to the eighth passenger, who in turn appealed to the man to take care of himself.

  Walking up the staircase, the eighth passenger never once looked back, but upon reaching the third floor rushed up to a window at the end of the corridor looking down on to the intersection below.

  The man was standing on the street. Hesitantly, as if he were already drunk, he staggered across the lanes of traffic into the middle of the crossroads, stopped, turned slowly and took the pistol from his pocket. Then he shot himself.

  The eighth passenger backed away from the window and crept slowly into the room. The man had never even fully introduced himself – what a thought. What had just taken place had been beyond anyone’s control. Surely people couldn’t expect someone to keep an unknown, erractic, armed man company!

  The eighth passenger locked the door, switched on the television, laid out some clean clothes, undressed, took a shower and climbed into bed. There was still some food in the suitcase, but it no longer seemed appealing, even after eating nothing but a light breakfast all day. Eating in the restaurant downstairs was also out of the question. Best not to meet or talk to anyone, and not to leave any currency in this country whatsoever, not a single coin. Trying to get some sleep would have been something, but even that was difficult.

  Crime was on the rise around the capital city, said the newsreader. Although there were lots of police officers, there were still too few and they could not get to the right places quickly enough. The newsreader insinuated that a large number of police officers may be corrupt. Gangs of criminals were more organised than ever before and shootings had become more and more commonplace. One such incident had just occurred and, exceptionally, the suspect had been successfully apprehended.

  On the television screen a young man lay on the ground, lit by spotlights, his head in a pool of blood, his eyes staring blankly into emptiness. The same young man who at the border station had said he was entering the country in search of work; the one who had zigzagged his way out of the station, on to the street, disappearing in amongst the throngs of people.

  To the side stood a young man of the same age, held in handcuffs between two policemen, his hair dishevelled, his white T-shirt soiled. He no longer had his sunglasses, and hissed at the camera something about defectors and traitors of the state. He looked and sounded panicked, as if he had been crying, as if all he wanted to do was throw himself into someone’s arms and sob, and tell them that he had not meant any harm.

  The eighth passenger turned off the television. Perhaps no one would ever know why the gunned down young man had really entered the country. He had talked about a job, but in this country official jobs paid money that would never have been accepted anywhere else. That money could buy people less and less of anything that had a price. Even honest work could no longer make young men move to a country where living and being successful was almost impossible.

  The eighth passenger slept badly, woke early in the morning and realised that it would be possible to catch a train earlier than planned. What a stroke of luck: there was certainly nothing in this city to entice travellers to stay for very long.

  According to the morning news the previous night had once again been restless on the streets. The police had been pursuing a group of criminals suspected of money laundering. They had been cornered into a hiding place under an old chapel, which by coincidence had also contained a store of smuggled petrol – and this had then caught fire. The criminals had all died, as had a family of four who had come to the chapel to mourn their late grandmother.

  Four familiar faces appeared on the television screen: a man, a woman and their two children. In the photographs they looked almost as nervous as they had the previous evening at the station in Zubotica.

  The eighth passenger reasserted that the goings-on in that country were of no concern to anyone else. It would have been naive to imagine that anything could be done about the situation. No one would be able to put an end to the mindless brutalities with simple, sensible measures, whilst mindlessness seemed to maintain the upper hand.

  There was only a handful of people at the railway station as the eighth passenger arrived. Just as the train came into view, the same old man stumbled out of the waiting room. A cleaner was prodding him with a broom stick and threw his bundles of clothes out after him: on your way, you lay-about.

  Climbing on board the train the eighth passenger wondered whether it had been worth coming back here for that. Looking out of the window, the man could no longer be seen on the platform.

  The train left on time but came to an abrupt halt almost immediately amid a screeching of brakes and stood still. There was no announcement to explain the reason for this delay, but the old man’s bundles of clothes had been scattered across the tracks in front of the train and the station staff were not allowing nosey passengers anywhere near them. The police quickly arrived on the scene – and promptly left again – followed shortly by a dark car, which was not an ambulance.

  The eighth passenger looked beyond the car and saw the black train on a distant track, standing waiting for evening to come, for its return journey to Zubotica. It was a perfectly average train, but it had to be defied; everything had to be defied by doing something mindlessly rebellious.

  The eighth passenger stepped off the train and watched it pull out of the platform; sat, stood, wandered back and forth across the station and its surroundings; watching that black train, this quiet city and its people, until everything became familiar and no longer seemed particularly special or threatening.

  Three hours later they boarded the train on which their journey had originally been intended.

  Basement, Man and Wife

  The man often stood in the boiler room, perfectly still, listening to the electric hum of the water tank, the crackle of flames in the firebox, and enjoying his freedom.

  That room was his refuge. It was small and bare, and whoever had built it had made a number of mistakes, but over the years the man had managed to fix most of them. There was only one flaw he had left unrepaired
, because his wife had thought the job would be far too difficult and expensive. Something approaching tearful hysteria crept into his wife’s voice, and indeed her entire body, every time they spoke about the matter and by now the man had become wary of even mentioning it indirectly. Naturally it was a bit of a bind that the drain in the boiler room was situated at the highest point on the floor, but it would have been stupid to upset his wife over something so insignificant.

  When the man had first seen the house he had barely even noticed the boiler room, because the woodwork room had grabbed his attention. Initially he had thought he could have that room all to himself: there was a carpenter’s bench, there were shelves and hooks to hang all manner of tools and equipment which even his wife thought suitable for a man. In fact the man’s hobbies had never really included woodwork or joinery – unlike the previous owner, who had built the house – but he had always done the odd bit here and there whenever necessity had demanded it. At his wife’s parents’ cottage, where they had lived until only recently, there had always been a constant flow of things in need of repair.

  Now he had told his wife that he wanted to dedicate more time to woodwork. He led her to believe that making things from wood had always been his secret passion. The truth of the matter was that he wanted to do something in which the very act of doing it is more important than the eventual result, but he certainly couldn’t tell any of this to his wife, who dismissed such things as ‘useless pottering’.

  It was of course rather risky to reserve himself a room like this for made-up reasons. When someone noticed that the room wasn’t being used for its given purpose, that someone might very well assume that no one was using it at all. That particular person might even have had some other use for it.