But it seemed that even the attentions of our local men would begin to bore the foreign women eventually: the more they drank vodka and walked around in the dust of the city, the more they tried to tell us—directly and selfishly—exactly what they thought of our men and our life. It seemed as though the foreign women couldn’t stand having to respect anyone for too long: couldn’t stand having to look them straight in the eye, mouths wide open, couldn’t stand having to admire their intelligence. No doubt our men saw this as unpleasantly pragmatic.
But, then, our men soon began to tire of the foreign women too, wanting nothing more during the last days of their visits than simply to take a break from socializing and sit in silence at the table reading a newspaper in their cramped kitchens.
Having downed a portion of tepid solyanka at the Artists’ Club and then drunk a stiff one for the road, the foreign women would rush off in their pre-hired, dirty-yellow taxis through our city full of posters of balding, senile-looking politicians to the airport, where they would be greeted by the turned-up collars, brown fur caps, and seemingly impassive faces of a phalanx of police informers, who’d already had more than enough of their antics, having been obliged to keep an eye on them for hours on end back in town.
When the long, drawn out visit by the foreign women had finally come to a close, when they’d finally departed, as Saturday moved towards sunset, my mother and father would fall, in the early evening, into a sleep so deep it almost seemed drug-induced, remaining silent in bed until dinnertime on Sunday. Once awake, they wandered pale and sleepy through the rooms of our apartment.
Father would try his new aftershave, light a good cigarette, leaf through Conversations with Ionesco or Man: In a Changed World. Mother would rustle the empty wrappers from liqueur-filled chocolates listlessly, having scooped the slivers of glass she found behind a window curtain into a dust-pan, a small worn comb in her other hand. I would still be playing proudly with some doll or other, a doll brought by a foreign woman, pretending that this doll with her long hair, this doll that cost as much as a whole Estonian toy shop, was sitting on a plane on its way to Philadelphia, drinking sherry, with orange negligee in her suitcase, as well as an issue of the magazine Naiste Tund—“Women’s House”—a book about magic, a wand, and a photo of some distant lover…
The foreign women would always leave countless essentials behind, accidentally: brightly colored scarves; sweetly scented bookmarks; stylish sunglasses; bottles of anti-hangover pills, with a lemon on the label; small flasks smelling of stale whisky; unsharpenable, environmentally safe pencils; letter-openers decorated with kangaroos or peacocks; flame-red, all-day lipstick—all of which they would no doubt promise to come and reclaim the following year.
TRANSLATED FROM ESTONIAN BY ERIC DICKENS
[FINLAND]
JUHANI BRANDER
FROM Extinction
FOES
Maire is from the southernmost corner of the province. Got into university on her second try to study cultural anthropology. Maire’s parents spent the whole of this last July just bursting with pride. Her father bought her a new Nissan Almera, gave her a few plump stalks of advice for her new life, his daughter leaving the nest, and smacked his potato-farmer lips. Her mother was dumb, not from birth, but had dampered her vocal cords little by little over the years out of some void, some understanding of the dark side of her dreams. Maire’s father called her mother a shoal so gloomy even the gulls avoided it.
Maire is still remembered in the village for her wild childhood, the satirist’s black sense of humor that she vented on the Midsummer birches, the seigneurial droit’s bastard kids, and the stolen landmines. Maire would wander through the village, gathering material, chatting with the widows, chortling like an idiot at the stories the winos told her. It’s widely believed that this restlessness of hers, this tendency she had to act as if she were some kind of writer, was the result of an unfortunate incident in which she saw her first love Gabriel dancing under all the stars and angels without a stitch on, the northern lights licking his naked body. After that, nothing could be sacred.
In the city at a student party, Maire starts fucking Petrus, a great lonely lame mystic always in search of quality time with a bottle of red wine. Month after month he inserts his dirty fingers into the timid thicket between her legs, and soon an infection, having marinated in the dark, sprouts symptoms. The thicket itches and fizzles. Maire goes into a pharmacy, she just wants help, that’s all, o saintly Gabriel, o beautiful prince, o first love already pushing up daisies. The checkout girl’s hands tremble, unmarried, young, first day on the job, here she is ringing up some thicket medicine, all human dignity has been stripped away by the public display of a drug like that, she can’t look Maire in the eyes, with this gesture like a tiny animal I give you the gift of self-respect. Behind Maire the line of the sick and the Samaritan now vanishes into the park-pounding autumn wind outside; here in the pharmacy is waged the eternal battle between good and evil, between the right and wrong man’s potato blight. Here are weighed in the balance the sucking up of teachers’ pets and the condemnation in advance of the rowdy back-row boys to jail or the docks; here are measured the buffalos’ shrinking prairie and the slow extinction of the pike stock. Yes, there’s no one left in the pharmacy now except two mortal foes, in one corner hard work and accomplishment, in the other humiliation and disappointment in the public soiling of a good name. The name on the checkout girl’s shirt front, in that last demonic irony, that telling detail that always finds its way into a tall barroom tale, is also Maire. Seeing the name, Maire stops wrestling with her demons over that horror in her thicket and smiles broadly, the smile of a con-artist, a businessman, a dentist drilling teeth without cavities. Accepting her change, Maire grabs the checkout girl by the chin and subjects her for just a moment too long to the red eyes of a disgraced woman. The checkout girl wets herself. In a flash, she also grieves for the treachery of that thicket, the vulnerability of every thicket in the world to the fraud so often hiding behind the love of a fair prince, and the helpless victims then left in its wake. Maire laughs the pharmacy windows into the street; the glass shards slice into many a beautiful person, and the envious rejoice.
HAMLET WAS A SHIT
That’s why they got fed up that Monday. Aki, cute as a bug, always had hysterical giggling fits before they committed one of their heinous crimes. Henna decided that this was no day to worry about being underpaid. They wanted to have two children: Luukas and Oinas, future merit scholars, CEOs, fox-hunters, rollers of eyes at vulgarity.
Aki and Henna chose the top of the hill. There was no crosswalk for two meters. The sky was cruel. It was trying to rain. It was the Monday of destiny, if business school students are allowed to wax poetic. The BMW generation trod their gas pedals furiously, and Aki and Henna ran, full of joy, bellowing like autumn calves. Not even slightly concerned now with making money or that dreamy Keijo who worked in the supermarket checkout line. In an instant it was over. His boyhood was not curtailed. They heard the squealing of brakes, those two business school students, the furious cursing from rolled-down windows. Henna looked at Aki. Total understanding sealed them off from the rest of the world. Pubescent defiance rose up in Aki. He ran back out to the middle of the street and glared at Henna like Hamlet, surrounded by scheming courtiers. A semi rushing to the nearby port, a miracle from the east, ended Aki and his business school dreams. They put him in an oaken box under a big rock.
Against her parents’ wishes, Henna married the driver of the semi that killed Aki. The driver sang in a choir and talked in his sleep.
SAIGON
Pasi Aarnio needed freedom outside of work, so he spent his summers riding his motorcycle and wore moccasins when he helped out around the neighborhood. Pasi’s biker name was “Saigon.” Saigon had bested Roadkill, the former gang leader, on the scales. Roadkill weighed forty-seven grams more, so naturally he had to step down as gang leader. Roadkill was so depressed at this loss of status that h
e accepted an honorary consulship in a warm country, there becoming an alcoholic, refusing the call of the sea, and delighting the locals by growing his hair long.
Now Saigon pulled the gang’s strings. Saigon decided where they would and would not drive on a Sunday afternoon. This aroused some opposition, even rebellion in the up-and-comers—the futures traders and nouveaux riches all ridiculed Saigon’s cockiness, even though he was indisputably the cock of their walk, reliable, unyielding, a champion chanticleer if ever there was one.
The day came when Saigon and the garage gang were supposed to drive more than a hundred kilometers. Saigon was up all night before the ride, he hit his wife, called his only son a fag, and tore the kid’s down comforter. The comforter was very warm, a shame to ruin it. Saigon didn’t water the leaves on his withered money-tree, with a sardonic laugh he gathered dust from under the rug and sprinkled it on his salad. Saigon sent messages full of double entendres to his firm’s angel-faced courier boy and told his wife all about it; she suffered from insomnia and the memory of her father’s younger brother getting lost in the bulrushes and dying.
At dawn Saigon drove to the garage in plenty of time, circled a nearby church with his helmet off, burning rubber, wrong, wrong. The elderly flock leaving the house of the Lord trembled with fear at the sight of someone they’d read about in the paper carrying on like that. Saigon shouted gray war reparations at them. The gang was ready. Nine engines roared in satanic thunder.
It was a Sunday, traffic was light, a hundred kilometers slid beneath them without pain or perspiration. The garage gang was on edge, though, suspicious: is this all there is to it? Saigon sensed his gang’s unease. Then he got it, by God he got it. Biker etiquette requires that you greet oncoming bikers. On the ride out the garage gang had greeted every biker they’d passed. Saigon decided that on the ride back there would be no greetings.
This radical notion boiled and burned in the group, but the gang members all got onboard with the decision. When the first biker passed them, they all turned their heads, but then instantly there was nervous laughter and growing regret. Saigon tried to stay strong at the head of the gang, but caved in at last. At the first intersection he turned, the gang faithfully following behind, and soon they chased down the biker they’d ignored, shouting “hi” to him. The biker nodded in reply. That made Saigon’s gang smile.
At home Saigon apologized to his battered wife, took her to a private hospital, and hired his son a hooker. That should get him interested in women, the scrawny kid. Saigon ate his dusty salad with gusto and tried to write a short story. The next Saturday night when his wife returned from the hospital he tripped her in the front hall and went out into the yard to gather night crawlers. He began to feel free again and cast his bloodshot eyes over the handsome house where his loved ones were still safe.
MAKE A NOTE
His work day starts at seven. He showers, brushes his teeth, makes coffee, makes oatmeal, reads the paper, tsking a little at the strong emotions on display in the letters to the editor. He rubs good smells into his armpits and onto his chin and drives to work. This is a nicely set-up studio apartment just off the main street downtown. His first client is an insatiable heiress. She’s sick of her new husband’s incompetence between the sheets. Before she arrives he likes to recite the tenets of his faith and thank God for his well-earned work day, water his flowers, iron his favorite shirt, and meditate. In his eyes every moment in God’s hands is a blessing. The heiress arrives on time. She gets tongue and penis. She gives him a hundred euros extra and he throws in a tickle or two for the erogenous zones on her breasts. She leaves satisfied and promises next Monday. I’ll make a note of that, he says. After she leaves, he goes out for lunch. His next client isn’t until the afternoon. For his appetizer he chooses a mushroom soup and radishes. For his main course he wants crane in sour cream with potatoes in Aura cheese, and for dessert the always-safe strawberry ice cream. He adds a little quality time with a French coffee and a cigarillo. After his filling lunch it’s back to work with the human race. Two twentyish girls want a proper fucking. The girls leave satisfied and that makes him feel good. He has done his bit to alleviate frustration and contribute to public hygiene. It’s four o’clock and he drives home. At home he rides his exercise bike for a moment, works his abs, then picks up his wife, with whom he goes to a prayer meeting at a nearby church. The female pastor winks at him. He is disgusted by overt desire. The pastor can’t just do her job but has to whore it up before her entire flock like a lost sheep.
SWIMMERS
We modern romantics, what are we doing out here on the boat’s hull, hugging? Uncle comes and demands an explanation, but we’re adults, we decline to answer. We tell Uncle to hop in the water with his clothes on. He refuses, goes and gets the heavy drinkers from the village to join him in defiance. We listen, we lovers, dodging bottles and knives. We wonder why this would only happen in Finland, but our answer stands before us, the whole machismo thing, the negative capabilities of drink. We swim away across the lake to the island, where mad cows were kept through the summer. Uncle and the drunks from the village swim after us, only make it halfway, one by one their slack bodies go under. Love only laughs. We swim back to the humans’ island, no floaters yet. We do our thing on the boat hull again, that thing that brings babies into the world. The constable takes our information and looks out over the lake longingly. He doesn’t say it, but he’s thinking about fish. We spend the night in my room, bury the other swimmers. We light our cigarettes and memorial candles, let them burn in secret.
ELVI A DEALER?
Elvi in the old folks’ home called a wrong number. That’s how it started. Osmo, in hock for his life to a drug dealer, saw the unfamiliar number and panicked. Osmo got an ulcer. Osmo imagined the Estonian thugs, their cruel fists-for-hire. Osmo, sweaty, called back, the individual’s freedom forgotten now. Elvi in the old folks’ home picked up on the fifth ring. Osmo said, someone at this number called me. Elvi heard the heavy breathing, got scared, grabbed at his chest. Elvi filled his voice with bailiffs, sheriffs, and his outlaw brother. This all gave Osmo another ulcer. Elvi hung up and told the guy in the room next door, Jurtta Kuusisto, that it had been a bad person on the phone. Jurtta said to Elvi, you and your stories, but in another dialect. Osmo coughed up his health, his soul, en route to a new diocese. The doorbell rang. Osmo saw himself on the reaper’s shitlist. Osmo headed toward his fate, toward opening the door, two coins in hand for the ferryman, hoping he’d still take Finnmarks. His kidneys collapsed before he got there, and degradation soaked his pants. Osmo thought, nothing more to lose, opened the door, his teeth fell out, though no one had punched him. On the stoop two singing Jehovah’s witnesses with all their promises: heavenly joys, fancy words. With his last ounce of strength Osmo closed the door and felt a fierce pain in his chest. Osmo believed in God’s wrath and was certain he was heading for the dark. On the edge of consciousness Osmo heard the witnesses still singing and rose again for battle. Osmo had heard that natural yogurt is good for a bad stomach, had some in the fridge. Then the phone began to ring goddammit. That did it. Later, investigating the cause of death, police listened to a message on his answering machine saying that Mailis, the dealer, had given up drugs, forgiven the debt, found Jesus, and wanted to wish Osmo a pure life and God’s love. A month later, Elvi died of old age and a childhood as a war refugee. The memorial service was held in the same chapel as Osmo’s.
CREATION STORY
Markku aspired to metrosexuality. Markku had his behind liposuctioned and piles coins on his bookshelf as a total feng shui solution. Markku’s better half, the healthily cynical and sharply conservative Janita, raked over her relationship with Markku in therapy. Markku often urged Janita to cheat on him with men and women. Markku drilled a hole in the wall so he could watch Janita writhe. Her therapist found nothing wrong in that, it was a new era, and anyway Janita didn’t have to worry like her mother about getting pregnant or thrown in the poorhouse. Janita
was annoyed by the therapist’s reaction, she would have liked to get her full money’s worth of support for every problem, a reason to hate Markku for this and that; she wanted to damn her mother to the lowest circle of hell and to steal her father to redeem her childhood. There was nothing for her to do but seek out Markku’s parents, whom no one had seen in years. Markku’s father groped everything in sight, even daughters-in-law-to-be, and Markku’s mother considered it a daughter-in-law’s duty to submit to the paterfamilias, even though Markku’s father was a retired ferryman. Janita whined to her as if to a sister about Markku’s new desires and the whole circus of compulsions Markku had developed. Markku’s mother was delighted with the change in her shy son, while his father was too stupid to do anything but wolf down the pastries Janita had supposedly made by hand. They had blood and lipstick on them. Janita ended up alone, though she was open to life and wished nothing but the best for everyone around her. Markku squandered his advance inheritance on designer drugs and private coaches at the gym. He wasn’t muscleman material, his genes and bad technique worked against him. Janita resigned herself to skiing and roaming the woods, occasionally she’d collect the odd dagger that had been used in some bloody revenge to place as a focal point in the interior décor of her brother’s sailboat. Finally Janita took Markku in his business suit back to his roots in the woods, because she did not believe they had been born of a perch or the story about the rib in pieces and the wrath of some lizard. Janita burned Markku’s military passport and gas card and ran naked around an alder. A bear padded out of the woods with Janita on his mind in terms of dinner. Markku woke up then and wrestled the bear. The bear won that round. It let Janita off easy and she escaped without much damage. At home Janita hung the suit back up in the closet and poked her finger into the hole through which Markku while alive had seen everything.
Best European Fiction 2010 Page 10
