by Selja Ahava
There was a platform at the summit of the tip. Pekka lifted the eight sacks of former life on to that platform. Gulls flew in the sky and a yellow tractor pushed scrap metal into a compact heap with a clanking scoop. All the stuff, all the life, became part of the landscape. It was a land of plastic cobbles. Tractors drove on top of it and clouds of gulls flew overhead. Everything on this mountain is broken, I thought. The sky is open, glass screeches, metal clatters.
And then we drove off with nothing. The wind was fresh, the trailer empty; we glided down the side of the rubbish mountain and back into the world, along with the wind. The girl sat in silence. The motorway flew with us, the wind flew with us, the gulls tried to fly with us but were left helplessly behind. And so we started a new life.
It rustles and crackles here. Detritus falls into the flue and things move inside the walls. Beetles drop off the ceiling. They’re big and black and once they’ve fallen, they lie there, twitching on their backs. When you press your heel on top of them, you hear a dry crunch. What on earth are they doing here?
When the baby is born, I will understand it. I will protect it, run to it when it has a nightmare, and I will no longer fear anything. Splash splash, it flips over. The doctor can say what he likes.
2
Pekka says this is a healthy house where all the basics are in order. I’m not quite sure what the basics are. He also says the house hasn’t been ruined by makeovers, though from the way he talks I get the impression there was always some building project or other on the go. I could certainly tell there’d been no cleaning done round here for the last three years, because when the evening sun hit the windows, you couldn’t see out of them. There were streaks of green pollen all over the glass. And thin spiderwebs everywhere – between the windowpanes, on the light switch, in every corner, and also in funny places like the washbasin, between the toaster and the kitchen roll, all over the rocking chair…The cobwebs were so fine you could only see them because of the dust sticking to the thin threads.
Dead flies on the sills. A buzzing sound somewhere. A wasp flew out of the wood stove. Later that day, I heard the chimney sweep telling Pekka that the easiest way to destroy a wasps’ nest was by dropping stones into the chimney. Pekka snapped at him, said we didn’t drop anything on top of anyone here. He nearly threw the chimney sweep out there and then.
Pekka was so excited when he brought me to the house for the first time. He told me how he had planned to extend the sauna and build a patio at the edge of the front garden, and he described the kinds of new heating systems we could consider. The yellow wall of the house glowed in the afternoon sun. I thought: three years ago, I couldn’t have imagined that I would be standing now in this warmth with a man who wanted to consider heating systems with me.
It’s hard to figure the garden out because it’s so over-grown. Pekka was talking like there was a lawn, a vegetable patch and a flower bed. But I really couldn’t tell at what point the hedge bordering the garden became the forest. Tree seedlings stuck out here and there from the grass at the front. The flower bed was apparently the thing that was buried under a massive rose bush. The string keeping the bush under control had given way, so the rose had fallen forward and started growing along the ground.
A dirty, crooked swing was tangled in a tree; sandpit toys peeped out from among greenery; the berry bushes had been choked by long grass.
But the glass veranda was warm and light. I imagined sitting there in a small, white wicker chair. And I pictured geraniums and stones polished by the sea on the windowsill. And I thought, this is what makes for happiness. That there’s a veranda, that there’s light, that you can dream of wicker chairs.
The hall smelled of a summer cabin or an elderly person’s home. The house was older and more wooden than I had imagined, and though it was sunny outside, it was dark indoors. All the inside doors were closed. The varnished wood panelling of the walls reminded me of a ski lodge where we went when I was a child, to drink hot juice.
‘This is the kitchen and the living room,’ Pekka said, opening the door. He was as excited as a small boy and even his movements were quicker than usual.
I felt a pang, realizing how happy he was, being able to move back home.
It was a real rustic kitchen. It had an old wood stove, a rocking chair and a wall hanging. The floor was covered with long rag rugs. A few children’s books lay on the living-room floor, together with a Hungry Hippos game. There was a dirty coffee cup on the windowsill by the sofa. It was as if the room had fallen into an enchanted sleep four years ago. They hadn’t even tidied away the unfinished game.
The ceiling light in the kitchen flickered as Pekka con-nected the fridge-freezer to the wall. The freezer sighed and fizzed but it still started up. And with the sound of the freezer the kitchen came alive. Pekka peered into the fridge, sniffed and shut the door.
When I looked at the kitchen, it hit home for the first time that Pekka was older than me. It didn’t matter – it just crossed my mind. Perhaps it was the rag rugs. Or how big the house was. Or the hippo game. The manor house was big, too, but it wasn’t his. This was Pekka’s home: his hands and steps knew this place; his feet fitted into the boots by the door.
‘Well, then,’ Pekka said. ‘We’d better get started.’
Then he stood in the middle of the kitchen holding a bucket, but he didn’t start anything. I didn’t know what he wanted to start, exactly, nor if the thing had to do with the bucket, or with me. Maybe the enchanted sleep was still floating about in the room and freezing his brain.
‘Is there an upstairs?’ I asked.
Pekka swivelled round, came back to life, put the bucket away and rushed to the stairs.
The stairs were made of wood. Each step creaked at a slightly different point and in its own way. The colour of the steps changed from blue to brown after the seventh one, because, according to Pekka, there had previously been a wall and a door at that point. The banister stopped halfway, too. The doorway to the old balcony had been covered by just hardboard, the upstairs landing had no wallpaper, and all four doors leading off it were shut. Varnished a yellowy colour, they looked terribly closed, as if we weren’t meant to be there. The backing paper was lumpy, and part of the walls was covered with raw planks. I say ‘backing paper’, but I don’t even know what that is, really.
‘This was Saara’s room, and the bigger one was ours,’ Pekka said, opening the doors.
In the girl’s room there was a doll’s house and a Winnie-the-Pooh cover on the bed.
‘And that door leads to the attic, and here we built a toilet. Otherwise, the upstairs is pretty much in its original state,’ Pekka explained. Then he stopped by the door of the bigger bedroom. ‘I thought we could have the downstairs bedroom and let Saara have this large one. She’ll have her own space that way, a bit of privacy.’
‘That’d be fine,’ I replied. It was fine, too, because I didn’t think the upstairs wanted me.
After coming back down, Pekka opened cupboards, fetched a basketful of logs from the woodshed and lit a fire in the stove. I watched him sitting there in front of the stove on a small stool and thought: this is where he belongs. He was never a lord of the manor; this, sawdust, is what he knows and understands.
3
Pekka was surprised when I suddenly left the antenatal group. I can’t explain it to him. I don’t need that kind of thing. The baby is growing and moving about; that’s enough for now.
‘Has it got scales?’ the girl asked yesterday.
‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘It’s got skin.’
‘Aha,’ the girl answered, and carried on with whatever she was doing.
It’s got skin and a face and a little snub nose in the middle of its face – you can see it in the ultrasound. It’s got hands and fingers and a spine.
‘But no legs,’ the girl said then.
‘Saara…’ said Pekka.
‘Krista said it herself!’ the girl snapped. ‘So, has it got legs or not?’<
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Pekka didn’t react, just carried on chopping potatoes. He sank into his own silence, like a diver, blowing bubbles and vanishing into darkness.
‘No, as a matter of fact,’ I told her. ‘You can say it hasn’t.’
‘There you are, then,’ the girl shot back. ‘You can say: no legs.’
Pekka still doesn’t want to talk about it properly. He’s angry, though he won’t say that out loud. He’s angry because I didn’t believe the doctor. I tried to, but when I got home, I just didn’t any more. I googled the doctor; he was three years younger than me. I missed the second ultrasound and then within a week, the whole thing had just kind of disappeared. I started the antenatal group and was like all the other mothers there. Pekka and I went out and got a cot. I bought a liner for it decorated with seahorses and fish.
My bump floats in the silence. Or rather, my bump is the silence. Even though I pull my coat round my belly so the seams are really straining, no sound comes out. That’s where the diver sinks. There are tubes, oxygen and darkness down there.
When Pekka rests his ear against my watery belly, listening, everything’s OK. The baby splashes. This is just how I imagined it. Pekka said himself you always love your child, whatever it’s like. You don’t need to go on a course to learn that.
Anyway, miracles do happen. I’m the first to believe in miracles.
4
The girl’s shouting again. It’s night, and the room is pitch-black. I hear Pekka grabbing something from the chair to put on and charging upstairs. I can hear what they’re saying through the ceiling.
The girl: ‘No no no…Don’t look!’
Pekka: ‘Saara, open your eyes.’
The girl: ‘They are open!’
Pekka: ‘Come on, open your eyes.’
The girl: ‘They are open.’
Pekka: ‘No, they’re not. Saara, open your eyes.’
The bed clatters as the girl kicks and thrashes her adoles-cent arms and legs about. I’ve told Pekka she needs a new bed; she’ll be taller than I am soon. A bed with no sides, so we don’t have to listen to that clattering. She can fall on the floor for all I care.
At last it all goes quiet. I can hear Pekka moving and the floor creaking. The girl must have fallen asleep.
Ten minutes pass. Pekka’s still not back. No creaking, no more shouting, nothing. Somewhere in the distance, the brakes of trucks squeal; they sound so alive at night. Sometimes I’m not sure if it’s a dog or a truck or an unhappy person. Boohooooo.
The house is cold.
The upstairs has swallowed Pekka.
Boohooooo.
I sit in bed and wait for a bit.
Finally, I switch on the bedside lamp and get up. I put on a jumper and slippers and walk into the hall. That’s weird, too, that we never just wear socks indoors here. There are shoes scattered all over the hall floor. I stumble over one of Pekka’s boots. I’d like to switch on the heat pump. The pump and I, we belong to the same world, where there’s light, heat and humming. When I come home, I always press the button straight away and the pump welcomes me. It’s like a homecoming button. The pump beeps and opens up its flaps for me. The home gets going, humming and warming up.
‘Pekka,’ I call out into the stairwell, but there’s no reply.
I climb the creaking stairs that change colour halfway up. The varnished doors of the upstairs landing are shut. They’re always shut; gravity and the wonky house make them close by themselves. A thin strip of light shines out from the girl’s room.
Pekka is asleep on the edge of the girl’s bed. He’s curled up uncomfortably against the wooden side, using his elbow as his pillow, his knees sticking out over the edge. His skin is covered with goose pimples. There he sleeps, a big man without a quilt, on the edge of a red child’s bed all covered with stickers.
And behind Pekka’s back sleeps the girl. She snuffles lightly like a small animal, her face relaxed and ageless. Sometimes people look like babies when they’re asleep, sometimes they appear older and wiser than they are, but the girl seems to combine all ages at the same time.
With her eyes closed and lips slightly parted, she actually looks quite beautiful. By day, she frowns and purses her lips so much that it’s hard even to see her features. Somehow, she lacks joy. I do understand it. Right now, watching her sleep, I see that she simply lacks joy.
How on earth do they fit in one bed? I suppose it’s something parents and children can do and others find hard to understand. They find peace in each other, even in awk-ward positions. There’s a kind of magic to it. The parent’s strength grows with the child’s weight; they say that even when a woman has had a caesarean, she can lift her baby and the wound can take it. Once in the library I saw a father carrying his disabled son. The boy was school age but not able to stand, even with support. They’d left the wheelchair at the bottom of the steps. The father carried the boy with ease, as if his son were a baby, as if he hadn’t even noticed that his son had grown. I watched the father as he climbed the steps, the boy in his arms, and wondered if that father’s strength would last to the end. Would his strength grow, as after a caesarean, so he’d be able to carry his son even when the boy was an adult?
The bodies of Pekka and the girl curve in the same way. Their eyes form the same lines. I hadn’t noticed before how similar they look.
In the morning, we both sit at the table, the girl and me. It seems we’re as tired as each other. We listen to the crack-ling of the breakfast cereal in her bowl. Ever since she had braces put in, she hasn’t eaten bread. That was a right hoo-ha. Amazing how helpless a grown man can look under pressure from a small, frowning girl and a couple of metal wires. ‘I won’t have them,’ the girl announced, pinching her lips together. Pekka sweated and pleaded. He went online and dug out a list of famous people who had had braces. But then, luckily for all of us, the girl got a dentist who was young and funny and also into mountain climbing. She was so impressed that the braces were no longer a problem.
‘I have a recurring nightmare, too,’ I say as I’m refilling the coffee cups.
‘Oh. What happens in it?’
‘I’m at a party and I shoot everyone there. Pekka, you, my brother and sister, my mum, everyone.’
The girl replies: ‘Oh.’
It feels like she’s looking at me properly for the first time. After a moment, she asks, ‘D’you know how to shoot in real life?’
‘No. Only when I’m dreaming.’
Why am I telling her this? Do I want to get into a bed of nightmares with them, to share whatever it is they’ve got? Do I want a black bin bag of my own, which I can stuff with things? Without any questions, without any explanations?
‘Do you know what the wishbone of a chicken is?’ the girl asks then.
‘The one you pull with your little fingers?’
‘Yeah,’ the girl replies, stirring her cereal. ‘I heard the click in my dream. But then the bone was a key but I lost it. And I had to cut off my little finger with scissors so it could be a key.’
‘Lucky it was just a dream,’ I said.
‘No, it’s from Grimm’s fairy tales.’
‘There’s one like that?’
When I changed the girl’s sheets over the weekend, I found a huge pair of golden scissors under her pillow. They were probably her mother’s: they’re like the ones used to cut velvet in fabric shops. I didn’t feel like asking about them; I just put them in the desk drawer.
5
The cold slinks about on the floor and makes my ankles hurt. Somehow, in this house, the border between outside and inside is not as clear as in a block of flats. The weather comes in, the mud comes in, the wind comes in, creepy-crawlies and bats come in. We haven’t got a doorbell, either. Or we do, but it doesn’t work. Here, people just stroll into the hall. But Pekka keeps a close eye on the interior doors; you’ve got to shut all doors after you or he gets uptight. One day he explained that the brickwork at the centre of the house is like a warm heart jointly heated
by separate fireboxes. And I thought: the centre of this house is an ice-cold hall, more like. We heat the rooms on the edges and keep the cold out with these thin interior doors, but in the hall, a chilly draught blows.
Yesterday I was at home on my own and it got so cold I decided to light a fire in the stove. Pekka had shown me the dampers and the hatches but I couldn’t remember which damper was for what, so I opened all of them to be on the safe side. I lit the fire and thought about how cosy it looks when you’re arriving home and there’s smoke coming out of the chimney.
There was smoke all right, but it didn’t go up into the chimney. First it came curling out from the edges of the stove plates, then from all sides of the stove. All of a sudden, the whole kitchen was full of smoke. I opened and shut the hatch, added fuel to the fire, opened the dampers wider – nothing helped. How on earth could I put the fire out? Should I throw water on it? I pulled the charred logs out and a whole load of ash spilled out with them. Smoke poured out of the hatch into the room and pushed its way through every joint of the stove. Quite a lot of joints, a stove has.
The chimney had to be blocked. What could have dropped into it? What if the chimney caught fire, if there was a dead gull in there? My eyes were stinging because I’d been running around in the smoke; my hair and everything else stank of it. I knocked my head on the brick dome of the stove and I was too embarrassed to call Pekka.
By the time he finally got home, I had managed to get rid of some of the smoke. I had opened all the doors and the room temperature was down to sixteen. I was lying in the bedroom; there’s an electric heater in there.
