Things that Fall from the Sky

by Selja Ahava

  Things

  that Fall from

  the Sky

  Things

  that Fall from

  the Sky

  Selja Ahava

  Translated from the Finnish by

  EMILY JEREMIAH AND FLEUR JEREMIAH

  A BEGINNING is something that does not itself follow from something else, but after which another event or process naturally occurs.

  A MIDDLE both follows a preceding event and itself has further consequences.

  AN END, by contrast, is that which naturally occurs, whether necessarily or usually, after a preceding event, but need not be followed by anything else.

  Aristotle, The Poetics

  A WALLED-IN GIRL

  1

  ‘What’s on your mind back there?’ Dad asks, glancing in the rear-view mirror.

  Our eyes meet.

  ‘Nothing,’ I reply.

  We turn off at the petrol station. You go right here for Extra Great Manor, left for Sawdust House. These days we mostly turn right.

  Adults are always asking what children are thinking. But they’d be worried if they got a straight answer. If you’re three and it’s a windy day, it’s not a good idea to stare at the horizon and say, ‘I’m just wondering where wind comes from.’ You’re better off claiming you’re pretending to be a helicopter. And when you’re five, don’t ask too many questions about death or fossils, because grown-ups don’t want to think about dying, or characters in fairy tales getting old, or how Jesus died on the cross. When I was little, I thought Mum’s grandma was a fossil, because she died a long time ago. But these days I know you can get fossils with ferns, snails or dinosaurs in them, but not grandma ones. Or human ones, for that matter.

  A grown-up will see a child sitting in the back of a car and think she’s counting trucks or the letters on road signs, or pretending her fingers are princesses, but, actually, she might be thinking about the outline of a grown-up, or time.

  I’ve considered time a great deal. I have grey cells in my brain. I use them to think about how time marches forward and heals. Grown-ups say time heals and that means that when time passes, what’s happened changes into a memory and you remember it less and less clearly. When you can hardly remember it at all, you’ve been healed.

  But I don’t want not to remember Mum. I want to remember Mum properly, without the aeroplane, without the shards of ice, without the hole in the porch. The way Mum was normally.

  MUM NORMALLY. Mum wanders around wearing furry slippers and Dad’s big jumper. Mum makes a nest for me in the corner of the sofa using a quilt, and wraps me up in it before going to get firewood from the woodshed. Then she gets me dressed for the day in front of the stove. First she opens the stove doors, warming the clothes near the flames and shaking the chill off them, before undressing and then dressing me as quickly as possible. Mum shovels snow, wearing a blue bobble hat, and clasps a mug of tea to get the cold out of her hands.

  That’s what Mum’s like normally.

  Dad says time-heals is a load of shit. According to Dad, the only people who say that don’t understand anything about anything. They’ve never been through anything. And my grey brain cells think Dad may be right because, at least so far, nothing’s healed, even though the summer holidays have already started.

  And so I sit on the back seat and say ‘nothing’ and think about the healing power of time. To be on the safe side, I decide to remember Mum every day, before time has the chance to do too much healing.

  The car’s windscreen wipers sweep across the glass, and our damp clothes make the window mist up. Dad drives into a puddle at full speed; he likes the way the water whooshes up the sides.

  It’s raining.

  It’s always raining, these days. At school the teacher says, ‘Hey, we’re not made of sugar.’ We put on waterproof trousers, raincoats and wellies and go outside. I think of sugar children, melting in the rain. Just sticky, sweet waterproofs left behind in the schoolyard.

  Back in Sawdust House, Dad was always worrying that the roof would leak and he’d notice too late and by then, the attic would be rotting. Mum always said Dad was a drama queen, the way he made such a big deal out of things, ordinary things.

  But these days, everything is a big deal. And Dad barely notices the rain. These days, Dad can saw branches in the rain and get soaking wet, and all Auntie says is: ‘Let him slog it out for a bit.’

  These days, I get picked up from school every day by car. When we were still living in Sawdust House, Mum only came to get me if it was raining. After a working day, Mum would smell of cigarettes. She’d have pins in her shirt collar and paint on her fingers, and her hair would be twisted up in a work bun.

  MUM WORKING. Mum’s workplace is underground. It smells of dust, tobacco and old clothes, and it’s packed full of stuff from floor to ceiling. Mum has big golden scissors which she uses to cut cloth, and a velvet pillow covered with pins on her wrist. She has one long nail, which she uses to draw in the folds of the fabric precisely. A pen sticks out of her work bun.

  No one’s allowed to touch Mum’s scissors. Mum hangs the scissors on a hook for the night.

  That’s what Mum’s like at work.

  2

  At last, the car turns into the avenue that leads to Extra Great Manor. I put an end to my thinking, draw a white line around the pieces of Mum. When I stop my thoughts like that, I can pick them up at a later point, from the same spot.

  I love this straight, tree-lined lane. When you turn into it, you find an ancient road suddenly lying before you. A velvet curtain opens, the light changes, music strikes up. Violin music. The team of horses runs; the driver’s cloak billows. At the end stands Extra Great Manor.

  Once a house is old enough, it stops looking man-made. It becomes alive, just like a mossy stone or a magnificent old tree. I imagine Extra Great Manor rising from the ground like a mushroom. First, a stone ring appeared. Then, a red figure rose from inside it and solidified to become walls. As time passed, wooden planks stretched and windows opened. A tower sprang up, and the roof grew stronger. Moss mottled the stone foundations, and the colour of the walls faded. That’s how Extra Great Manor was born.

  Oaks and maples arch above us, forming a green tunnel, and the sand crunches. It’s a bit like we’re entering a magic wood or a time tunnel. Time splits, and the manor house appears ahead.

  ‘Dad, slow down.’

  You need to arrive slowly at places like this. Before, gentlefolk came with their horses, and there was a stable especially for visitors.

  Auntie’s sheep are standing on the lawn in front of the main steps, on the posh side. There are eight white ones and three black ones. When people call sheep black, they really mean brown, in the same way they say fish swim when what fish really do is dive.

  Bruno is the tamest of Auntie’s sheep. Whenever I go over to him, he says baa and puts his head against my thigh. He can’t push me over yet; an adult sheep could knock me over with a single shove. Sheep have hard skulls.

  Bruno is tame because when he was little, I fed him with a baby bottle. Now he thinks I’m his mum, and when I walk past, he always comes up to the fence and bleats. Bruno is black, which really means brown, and one of his ears hangs down lower than the other one, because his mum tried to bite it off. Even if a lamb has just come out of its bum, a sheep might not realize who its baby is.

  Bruno was sure he wanted to live and he latched on to the baby’s bottle like a wild beast. Milk splashed everywhere, the bottle bubbled and Bruno’s mouth slurped and smacked. Looking down at him, you could see his tummy getting bigger as it filled with warm milk. It wasn’t a cute job, feeding Bruno. It wouldn’t look nice in a children’s book, the way my
hands got wet with milk, holding the bottle.

  Bruno can eat grass now.

  Today the sheep look miserable: no one’s saying baa.

  They’re lying all over the grass, feet tucked firmly under their bellies. They always lie in the same gangs. The brown ones are friends and the white ones form two different groups. They look at each other as if they don’t get what the others are doing in the same pen.

  When it’s raining hard, the wool of the sheep goes flat and they look thin and wet. Auntie said that if you throw a sheep into water, it sinks.

  There’s smoke coming out of the small chimney of Extra Great Manor, which means that Auntie Annu has lit a fire in the kitchen. That’s good because otherwise the kitchen is so cold you don’t want to take your coat off.

  I know that you mustn’t complain of the cold if you live in a manor house.

  3

  When I was six years old, Auntie Annu got seven numbers right in the lottery. A genuine Double Mega Jackpot was up for grabs: so much money it’s hard to put into words. It’s more than the African Star in the board game: the diamond that’s worth more than the rubies and all the notes put together. When you win, you have to rethink things a bit. For example, do you enjoy working? Do you want to carry on playing African Star? Do you want to live in a different place, or sign up for riding lessons, or buy diamonds? Then you have to consider what’s important in life. Family, of course, but that’s got nothing to do with money. Anyway, Auntie Annu doesn’t have family because she’s got no kids. Also, you’ve got to beware of burglars. Even if you have won the lottery, you might not get to go into space, and money can’t buy happiness, and you won’t get to have servants in your house.

  We went to Auntie Annu’s for a Double Mega Jackpot Coffee, and on the way there in the car, Mum and Dad explained that the lottery win was a secret not to be shared in nursery or at my friends’ houses or in the shop or on the bus. We were the only ones who knew – that’s why Auntie had made a gateau. This was a secret celebration. I like celebrations and secrets and cakes.

  MUM DRESSED UP. Mum has a silk dress with black and silver on it. Mum is tall, because she’s wearing high heels. Her hair forms a swirling peak, as if an ice-cream machine had sucked it into the clouds. Dad looks at Mum, smiling. His chest swells as he tries to stand as tall as Mum. Mum’s wrist clinks. It seems her hands don’t know what to do with themselves, with no hair to push out of her face.

  That’s what Mum’s like dressed up.

  I wondered what Auntie would look like now, but she looked just like her old self, only with red hair again. Auntie Annu only went to the hairdresser’s when she got a grant or sold a big enough wall hanging. In between visits, her hair went back to normal. She was a big, strong woman, but sometimes she’d be too shy to look you in the eye. She spoke softly, though she had man’s hands. Soap, water and textile dust had made Auntie’s hands rough and red, and sometimes they were so dry, wounds opened up on the knuckles. They were bear’s paws. You could even see the muscles between her fingers.

  We crowded into Auntie Annu’s flat. It only had one room, plus a kitchen hidden inside a cupboard. The hall was so narrow and so full of coats and shoes that you had to form a queue to get inside, and Auntie Annu had to flatten herself against the door of the toilet in order to let her visitors pass. We threw our coats on top of a dresser. The whole hall was chock-a-block.

  Mum, Dad and Auntie Annu hugged and sighed: well I never, I mean really, who’d have thought, what can you do.

  ‘Where’s the Jackpot Cake?’ I asked.

  Auntie Annu winked and drew me into the room.

  Auntie’s desk had been moved to the middle and a large platter had been placed on top of it. The platter was covered with a tablecloth, coffee cups and saucers, along with the world’s finest gateau, a raspberry and white chocolate cream cake. The whole surface was decorated with rolls of liquorice, raspberry pillows, grapes, chocolates, gummy bears, popcorn and marshmallow hearts. A paper umbrella, a shiny swizzle stick, a marzipan rose and a candle were stuck in the middle. Looking at that cake, I saw that the Double Jackpot really was something to write home about. And Mum laughed till she cried. But Auntie must have laughed enough already, because she started setting up folding chairs for Mum and Dad, sniffing a little.

  There was no sign of the lottery win.

  ‘You don’t take it home,’ Auntie Annu explained. ‘It went straight to the bank.’

  ‘Would it fit in this room?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Didn’t you get to see it?’

  Auntie shook her head and clasped her hands together. Then she shrugged.

  ‘Would it fit in a bathtub?’

  ‘It might have been a good idea to go and see it, actually,’ Auntie Annu said.

  Dad opened a bottle of sparkling wine, and I got to pour myself a mixture of Jaffa and Coca-Cola without prompting a word of criticism from any of the grown-ups.

  ‘Well, then, congratulations, millionaire!’ Dad said, and we clinked glasses.

  ‘Well, yes. What can I say?’ Auntie said. ‘I’ll get appoint-ments with the dentist and the gynaecologist right away!’

  And the grown-ups laughed again and wiped their eyes.

  Then Auntie picked up the cake slice and said, ‘You choose, Saara. Where d’you want me to cut?’

  And I went for gummy bears, popcorn and the marzipan rose.

  Auntie Annu gave some thought to the decision to buy the manor house near our home. It was pink and old, and Auntie Annu had always seen it across the fields when driving our way. It was called Great Manor, but Dad began calling it Extra Great Manor, because it was so big, whereas Auntie was so small, and no one really needs fifteen bedrooms. Soon everyone else called it that too.

  Extra Great Manor had been vacant for twenty years. Before that, it had housed an office; before that, some sort of depot; before that, a children’s summer camp. Before that, there had been a war, and the hospital maternity ward had come to Extra Great Manor to escape the bombs. Before that, the manor-house furniture had been sold off at auction, and before that, Extra Great Manor was occupied by a Mrs Gyllenhök, whose grandfather had the place built for his family in 1877.

  Auntie Annu moved out of her flat and became lady of the manor. The whole of Auntie Annu’s old home would have fitted into the blue parlour of Extra Great Manor, and when Auntie’s furniture was carried in, the pieces squatted in the corner of the hall, hopelessly low, tatty and fragile.

  The old wooden dresser was the only item of furniture that suited Extra Great Manor. It had stood, dark and heavy, in Auntie’s studio, partially hidden behind a door. There wasn’t enough room to open its own doors fully. But even stuck in that corner, the cupboard had managed to look like the only real piece of furniture in the flat. Now, as it was carried into the drawing room, it puffed up its chest, straightened itself out and let its decorative patterns flourish.

  I loved Auntie’s Czech coffee cups. Each one was different, and yet they went together. They had roses of different colours, landscapes, golden whorls, slender blades of grass, rust-coloured hearts and green triangles. The cups hung on the hooks in the cupboard, the matching saucers sitting underneath.

  When it was time for coffee, Auntie Annu let me lay the table and choose the cups I wanted. Usually I picked a rose or a circle of girls in folk costume for myself, bear paws or violets for Mum, golden trees or pale-blue sailing boats for Dad, and an extra-large mug that showed a girl in a bonnet feeding Bambi for Auntie Annu.

  Extra Great Manor had a thick stone foundation, large steps leading up through a glass veranda, two columns in front of the door and one tower. The manor stood on the ground as sturdy as an oak. You could crawl into the stone foundation through three hatches, but because it had no windows, it was pitch-black inside. There was a circular lawn in front of the manor, on the posh side, and a tree-lined avenue led to it. The tower at the south end had a small summer room at the top, which was reached via a sp
iral staircase. This granted a 360-degree view, and Auntie Annu arranged for a bed to be carried to the middle of it. The bed had to be lifted through the window in two pieces, using a rope, because the spiral staircase was too narrow. That’s where Auntie slept, at the top of the tower, until the nights grew cold.

  Downstairs was a kitchen and five rooms all named after colours: Blue, Green, Lilac and Yellow Rooms, along with Red Hall. Upstairs was a library and fifteen small bedrooms. The bedrooms held metal hospital beds and small, wartime stoves, but otherwise they were empty. There were no books in the library, but a large, old bookcase was discovered in the attic, and Annu, Dad and Mum carried it back into the library together. Auntie later bought a sofa, a smoking table and armchairs at auction.

  As soon as she’d moved into the manor house, Auntie Annu bought a flock of sheep. A fence was put up on the posh side to make a pasture for them, and because the fountain pump was broken, the basin became their trough. The sheep were Auntie’s lawnmower. Their enclosure was moved to different sides of the house as necessary.

  Extra Great Manor breathed. There was room for everything, everything went together and you could open the doors wide. The rooms looked cosy even without furniture, but every now and then Auntie would buy something, like a chandelier.

  When winter came, the timber walls gradually surren-dered to the chill. The windows frosted over, though there was lichen between the panes. It was cold in the manor house. Auntie closed off most of the rooms and retreated to live in one downstairs corner, to avoid heating the whole house. She made up a winter bed for herself in the Yellow Room and lived just there and in the kitchen. You went into the house via the kitchen door. The Red Hall, the other downstairs rooms and the upstairs became a cold store. Auntie Annu sealed the doors with wool and taped up any gaps. Finally, she hung woollen blankets and old quilts in front of the doors and carried all the wool rugs into the Yellow Room.