Helsinki White iv-3

by James Thompson

  Jari warned me that some of my perceptions and attitudes might be altered, that it was typical for brain surgery post-op patients, sometimes for a considerable length of time. I wondered if this feeling that my thinking was no longer diminished was false, the result of surgery, or if I truly was more intelligent now. Along with this new sense of clarity, I felt a sense of certainty, as if when they removed my tumor they cut away my angst and remorse along with it.

  I felt a complete and utter lack of emotion. No love. No hate. Nada. Kate and Anu visited. I felt nothing, I smiled and pretended that I was glad to see them. Pretending was hard. I was glad to see them leave. Over the coming weeks, I practiced smiling to hide my lack of emotion. I knew that I must love them, because I remembered loving them. I could feel the yearning affection and desire for them that I did only a couple of days ago, but only as a memory.

  This lack of feeling changed my attitudes. I lay in bed alone and psychoanalyzed myself. My overriding emotion in life had thus far been remorse. My life had been a constant struggle to make up for what I perceived as my failures. Every day, for more than thirty years, I mourned the loss of my sister Suvi and blamed myself for her death, because she was under my care when we were skating and the ice broke under her on the lake, even though I was only a year older than her. No longer.

  I bore no responsibility for her death. Our father was the responsible adult. He, however, was busy sucking down a bottle of whiskey and ice fishing rather than tending to his children. In fact, I remember now that I didn’t even like Suvi. I resented her because, even though our age difference was slight, I was often given the responsibility of looking after her, when I wanted to be out playing with my friends. After her death, my father began beating me for the slightest infractions, an unspoken punishment for failing to safeguard her. He beat my three brothers as well, and my mother on occasion, but not with the same severity as he did me.

  I remember taking a slice of a pie left cooling on a windowsill. As punishment, he made me eat the whole thing and I vomited. He made me eat that, too. And he laughed.

  I thought I had forgiven my father for beating me as a child. Why should I forgive him? My father has never even apologized for his abusive treatment of me. I had forgotten the frequency and severity of the beatings. The memories came flooding back. I thought I should go to his home in Kittila, pull his pants down as he did mine, bend him over the same chair as he did me so many times, and, as he did to me, beat him with a belt.

  He never beat me so severely at any one given time, but I would hit him hundreds of times until blood feathered the walls, to make up for all those beatings at once. That would only make it about one hit for every hundred times that Dad hit me, but still, the symbolism would be there. I should make my mother watch, as she watched and did nothing while Dad beat me. Maybe I should gather the whole family for the event and let them watch, like they watched him thrash me. I realized they were afraid of him, but collectively, they could have stopped him.

  As a young boy, we had no indoor plumbing. I hated going outside in winter to take a piss, would hold it as long as I could, and once in a while would wait too long and wet myself. Once, he made me walk to school in pissed-on pants. It was twenty below, and as I walked, my crotch hurt, burned and then went numb. When I got to school, I went to the bathroom and looked at my dick. It was gray, a first sign of frostbite. And as the day went on and my pants warmed up, my dick hurt like hell and I stunk like piss and didn’t live it down for months. I considered that I should make him drink several liters of water, deliver his beating before his work shift, wait until he pissed himself and then force him to walk to work. A shared experience between father and son.

  I felt no anger, no nothing, while I formulated this plan. It wasn’t revenge I contemplated but simple justice. A punishment born of rational logic.

  Jari visited to check on me. He tested my basic motor skills and pronounced them sound, asked me how I felt. Without going into great detail or relating the nature of my thoughts, I told Jari I had gone emotionally numb. Jari said not to make too much of it, it would likely pass. He said it was a common symptom of tumor removal called “going flat.” Where there once was tissue in my head, there was now only empty space about the size of a small egg. It took time for this space to fill back in, and this was sometimes the result.

  “How long does it last?” I asked.

  “There’s no way to know,” Jari said, “probably one to six months. Your emotions might return gradually, or they might come rushing back in a single moment. That moment could be sparked by an event, or it could happen for no reason at all.”

  “Or it might never happen,” I said.

  He sat down on the side of the bed, solemn. “Or it might never happen.”

  “I’d like to keep this between ourselves,” I said. “I can’t tell my wife that I feel nothing for her or our child.”

  “I won’t try to tell you how to handle your recovery, but understand that this problem is the result of illness. It’s not your fault, and the support of your family is important while you get through it. Keeping secrets, hiding your symptoms”-he put his hand on my shoulder-“is inevitably a mistake.”

  “Maybe. But I just can’t put that on her. It would be cruel.” It struck me that I wanted a cigarette. “Take me outside for a smoke,” I said.

  “It’s not a good idea. Just stay in bed. You can smoke your brains out in a few days.”

  I discovered the second primary symptom of the surgery’s aftermath. I’d entered into a childlike, binary existence. Want or don’t want. Will or won’t. Take or leave.

  “If you don’t take me outside, I’ll wait until you leave, hang all this IV shit on the thingamajig you use to walk with them and go by myself.”

  He cocked his head and stared at me for a long moment. I saw it hit him that my hardheaded attitude was because of my surgery, and he spoke to me like a child. “If I take you out for a cigarette, will you stay in bed for the rest of the day?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a bit of an arduous process, with IV tubes, the mobile carryall and wheelchair, but I got my cigarette.

  He put me back to bed and rearranged my medical paraphernalia, told me he would check on me again as soon he could and left.

  I lay in bed and pondered the meaning, the worth, of life without emotion. My remorse was gone, but also my passion. If my remorse and sense of failure were gone, what had replaced them? I was emotionless, or nearly so. What would motivate me in life now? Maybe the same things that always motivated me. A desire for balance. Justice. Perhaps now I could even pursue those goals with a feeling of equanimity. For me, duty and love had always been closely related. Something I doubted Kate would understand. I reached one decision. I would take Sweetness under my wing and help him find himself and discover, for good or bad, who he really was, and help him become whatever it was that might be. As I wished my father had done for me. I lay in bed for two days, practiced my fake smile, and contemplated the changes that had come over me.

  I thought of Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, who awoke to find that he had become a monstrous insect. Was I a morphed Gregor Samsa, or a surgically enhanced Kari Vaara?

  8

  I came home on Friday. Despite all the work done to me, I had spent only four days in the hospital. I lay about, ate narcotics and tranquilizers as instructed, watched crappy television shows, played with Anu and the cat. I felt fine but a little tired and napped a lot. I was on a one-month sick leave, to be extended if necessary, but I was free to go back to work in two weeks if I chose. On Saturday I caught up on the news.

  Parliamentary elections were a little over a year away, and a dark horse was gaining ground fast. The Real Finns Party. It was officially headed by Topi Ruutio, an experienced politician and member of the European Parliament. It had a second leader, Roope Malinen. He held no office, but his blog was the most popular in Finland. The Real Finns agenda was unclear, except that they were anti-foreigner
and anti-immigration. The Real Finns had invented a euphemism for racists. They staunchly denied charges of racism and dubbed themselves “maahanmuuttokriitikot,” critics of immigrants. Our population was aging, our birthrate low, and without immigrants to work and pay taxes, there would be no pension money for our retirees. The Real Finns’ answer: Finnish women must bear more children, out of patriotic duty.

  Other than hate, their agenda wasn’t clear. They wanted a return to traditional Finnish values. I’m unaware of what traditional Finnish values are, and I don’t think anybody else knows, either.

  Real Finns believed that government should decide what qualifies as good art to receive government support. They looked to nineteenth-century-style Finnish classic works as ideals. They made wild promises to spread the wealth that couldn’t possibly be met. They wanted to leave the EU. Their rhetoric reminded me of early Nazi propaganda. Like I told Kate, Real Finns are like a more virulent strain of American Teabaggers.

  Real Finns have skyrocketed in popularity because the global financial crisis, coupled with greed by our own leading financiers-despite manipulated statistics indicating we have the world’s strongest economy, leading the world to believe that Finland is some kind of financial paradise-has driven our economy into the shithole. Nearly twenty percent of Finns now live beneath the poverty line. Their jobs are being outsourced to other countries. Inflation is high, wages stagnant. People are frightened, and they’re focusing that fear, placing their blame, on immigrants.

  I don’t believe they’re actually pro-Real Finn. I think they’re terrified and protesting the establishment that made them feel this way. I kept up with Real Finn antics because their policies changed daily and, when I felt emotions, it amused me. It’s not funny, though, because since the other parties are suffering mass defections to Real Finns, those other parties are taking positions to stem the tide. Keskusta, a center party, adopted the slogan “Maassa maan tavalla”-“in the the way of the country”-but left the well-known phrase unfinished: “tai maasta pois”-or “get out of the country.” Hate directed at foreigners.

  Ruutio is charismatic and at least projects an image of being a good guy with strong if somewhat confused beliefs. He shies away from discussions about immigration and foreigners. Malinen writes well. In his blog, he makes convoluted racist arguments seem reasonable. He’s a good hater. In person, he’s almost unable to speak, and what he does manage to say is aggressive, defensive and often incomprehensible. Interviews give the impression that he’s a maniac in dire need of medication. Ruutio pretends to distance himself from Malinen and his extremism, but in truth, they work in tandem. Neither can do without the other.

  I slept in the next day and the door buzzer woke me. It was Valentine’s Day. A detective handed me a thick envelope, a packet of dossiers on drug dealers and their upcoming events. It contained no note to me. The unspoken message: You’re on sick leave, but do as you will. After waking up and having coffee, I called Milo and asked him to come over. I didn’t want to talk on the phone, because ours had likely been tapped.

  Kate was less than pleased to see Milo’s face on Valentine’s Day, on my second day of sick leave. He looked hung over. The black circles around his eyes were puffy. His eyes bloody red.

  I gave him the envelope. “These are potential heist material,” I said. “You can carry them out at your discretion. But you’re not to take risks. If you act impetuously and someone gets hurt because of it, I’ll fire you.”

  I wished I could go. He’s good at black-bag work. Thorough. And he’s slick with a lockpick set, can get through an average door in under a minute. I could learn from him. I hate to think how many B amp;Es he pulled off while satisfying his voyeuristic desires to develop that kind of skill.

  His jaw jutted out, defiant. “The chief wanted me on this team. You can’t fire me.”

  “Try me.”

  He hangdog acquiesced. “We don’t need to have this conversation. I don’t intend to be impetuous.”

  “Good.” I clued him in to leave. “Let me know what happens.”

  “I’m getting everything together so when you’re back on duty, we can really rock. I want to have a welcome back party for you. You OK with that?”

  I put on the smile I’d practiced in the mirror. “Sure. We’ll set the date later.”

  He grinned, happy now. “Great. This party will be so much fun, you’ll want to take it out behind the middle school and fuck it.”

  Going through the motions. Pretending to feel, to care. Without emotions, life lacks meaning. I learned a life lesson from my loss. Nothing has intrinsic meaning. We give meaning to the things important to us. It seems the other way around, that loved ones, material possessions we enjoy, our perceived successes, give meaning to our lives. Not so. Those things have meaning because we have emotionally injected meaning into them. Emotions keep us walking, talking, functioning, striving.

  I promised myself that I would keep living life as if I felt emotions, in the hope that one day I would feel them again. I promised myself I wouldn’t forget that although I felt no emotions, others did, and theirs remained important. That the most important things in life lie outside my inner being. I had duties to fulfill, whether I found meaning in them or not.

  But I was running on sheer desire. Childlike. That meant I had some form of emotion left, but base, almost animalistic, primitive. I tried to squelch it. The childishness that was now a part of me, however, had a blurred sense of right and wrong. It had no interest in them. I had to guard against that part of myself, be wary of it, suppress it. The trick, I realized, was to act through the memory of emotions. In that way, I could at least outwardly be the same person I was pre-surgery.

  In early afternoon, Kate went grocery shopping. Anu slept. I had promised to cook that evening, was going to make linguini carbonara. Nothing quite like salty American bacon was available in Finland until recent years, and so carbonara is a relatively new dish for me. Bacon. I love the stuff.

  I was gimping across the floor on crutches, a newspaper tucked under my arm, on my way to the couch to sit down and read it. Then I lost it, went incoherent, got dizzy and light-headed. My chest got tight. The world went slow motion. I felt myself going down. A few minutes later, I came to, sprawled on the floor. It scared me.

  I followed my first instinct and called Jari. He said I’d suffered a seizure, but told me to stay calm. Especially in the first week after surgery, this could be a onetime event. To be on the safe side, though, I should start on anti-seizure medication and, depending on how things went, stay out from behind the wheel of a car for three to six months instead of just the standard one month following non-problematic brain tumor removal.

  I nixed that idea automatic. I wanted my freedom, wanted my car back. I told him if it wasn’t an anomaly, I’d take the medication, but wanted to wait and see first. He said that was OK.

  But I was afraid to pick up Anu, in case I had a seizure while I was carrying her. Kate would be home soon, I had to think fast.

  Mobility was difficult enough already. I had a baby carrier that fit in the front, against my chest. I put her in it and then walked around on crutches. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. First, I lost feeling for my own child, and now I was afraid to pick her up.

  I went with my first idea, called Arvid and explained the situation, omitting the lack of emotions part, and told him I didn’t want Kate to find out about the seizure because she would try to insist that I take the medication. This total truth thing with Kate didn’t seem to be working out for me.

  “Can you come here and stay for a few days?” I asked.

  “What will it help, and on what pretext?”

  “It will help because I don’t want to fall with the baby. You carry her for me. The pretext is you say you were in Helsinki and just decided to drop by and visit. You seem dispirited, so I invite you to dinner. You accept, and then later, old man that you are, pretend to nod off on the couch.”

  “I doub
t I’ll have to pretend,” he said. “I’m two days older than dirt. I nod off frequently.”

  “I’ll suggest putting you up in the spare bed for the night. Then, in the morning, you just don’t leave. You help out with the baby, carry her to me or for me, and I point out how much easier this makes life for me. I say you’re probably just lonely, that you just lost your wife after fifty years of marriage.”

  I waited for a response, but none was forthcoming. I shouldn’t have said that, it cut too close to the bone. He was so lonely and sad that it was unbearable for him. That’s why he called me so often.

  “I can spare a few days,” Arvid said. “What am I supposed to do about bringing clothes, though? I can’t exactly show up with a suitcase.”

  “When it becomes apparent that you’ll be staying, I’ll send one of the boys to pick some things up for you.”

  “All right. I won’t be long. I’m coming by taxi.”

  “Why? A taxi is a hundred euros.”

  “I’ve been meaning to visit anyway. I’ve got a couple things for the baby and can’t carry them to the bus stop.”

  “That’s nice of you to think of her. I’ll pick up the tab.”

  “No, you won’t.” He rang off.

  Kate came home loaded down with groceries. After she put them away, I said, “I’ve got a Valentine’s Day gift for you.”

  She smiled. “I have one for you too, but I thought we would wait until after dinner to exchange them.”

  I’d planned in advance, bought them weeks ago, and I wanted to give them to her while we had a private moment, before Arvid arrived. I put on my practiced smile. “I want to do it now.” I hobbled off to the bedroom to take it from its hiding place in the closet and came back with a small, gift-wrapped box.