James Thompson: Lucifer's tears

The doctor comes in to check on Kate occasionally, and finally says it’s time to get down to business. The baby’s head is crowning. He tells Kate to start pushing. She says she wants this over soon and pushes like hell. It works. After only about an hour, our child, a girl, is out and into this world. The doctor gives her a slap. She sucks air and squeals, and he cuts the umbilical cord. Kate flops back against her pillows, exhausted. From her first contraction at home until now, her labor lasted sixteen hours.

A nurse takes our baby, who resembles a bullet-headed frog covered in blood and viscous ooze, wipes some of the mess away, wraps her in a blanket and hands her to me. I’m nervous at first, afraid I’ll make a mistake, hold her too tight, drop her. Irrational fears. But they fade within seconds, and I realize that I love this little bullet-headed frog as much as anything in the world.

The doctor tells me that Kate’s delivery was one of the easiest he’s ever seen. No complications, no vaginal tearing, no nothing. Kate didn’t even require an episiotomy. Kate begins contractions again, and within a few minutes expels the placenta and the umbilical cord. And it’s over. All my fears came to nothing.

I hand the baby to Kate, and she asks me to get John and Mary. I bring them into the room. We exchange hugs and share joy. For the first time since they arrived, I feel that they truly are part of my family, and it gratifies me.

John and Mary go back to the waiting room to give Kate, me and our bullet-headed-frog privacy. Kate and I sit in the silence for a while, bask in our moment. After about half an hour, Kate tells me she’s tired and wants to sleep. She wants me to sleep, too. I don’t want to leave, but know it’s for the best.

I talk to John and Mary. John wants to come home with me. Mary says she’s slept while waiting, and she’ll stay in case Kate needs something. Mary tells me not to worry, if anything happens, she’ll call me straightaway. For a woman who doesn’t like me, she’s working hard to be my friend.

We get back to my place. John crashes on the couch. I go to bed, and for the first time in I don’t remember how long, I have no headache and feel no anxiety, and sleep the sleep of the dead.

I wake up in the middle of the afternoon and check my cell phone. I kept it on silent while I slept. I have seventy-two missed calls. Press, police and God knows who else are trying to contact me to find out how it came about that in my presence, in the restaurant of the city’s finest hotel, a ninety-year-old Winter War hero put a bullet in the brain of a Russian businessman whose wife had recently been murdered.

I go back to the hospital to be with Kate, but she’s sound asleep. I hold our baby, enjoy the quiet and sit next to her. Finally, I decide Kate may not wake for hours, and go back home to get something to eat. Mary continues to wait, in case Kate wakes and needs something.

I find John in the kitchen, a bottle of kossu in front of him. He’s not tanked, just drinking. “I guess you know I told Kate about myself and everything you did for me,” he says.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Are you pissed off at me?”

“No.”

“Can I give you a brotherly hug to congratulate you on the birth of your child?”

It makes me laugh. “If you have to.”

He stands and gives me a hard squeeze. “Want to have a drink with me?” he asks.

I sit down with him. “Sure.”

He fetches me a glass and pours me a drink. We nurse our vodkas and share a comfortable silence, something I wouldn’t have thought him capable of.

My phone rings. It’s Jari. “Hi, little brother,” he says. “I haven’t spoken to you since we left your house in a rush. I’m sorry about that.”

It amuses me when he calls me “little brother,” since I’m almost twice his size. “It’s okay, just a little culture clash. It happens.”

“I wanted to check on you. How’s your migraine situation?”

“Better today. Kate gave me a healthy baby girl this morning, both of them are fine, and my headache went away.”

“You have a baby! Wow! Congratulations! You busy right now?”

“No. Kate’s asleep and I’m at home.”

“Then we’re going to have your varpajaiset. ”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

I smile and sigh. “Okay, then meet me at Hilpea Hauki and we’ll do it.”

His voice is full of glee. “I’ll meet you in an hour.”

We hang up.

“Come on, John,” I say. “We’re going out. It’s time for my var pajaiset.”

“Varpajaiset?”

“Varpaat are toes. A varpajaiset is a party. When a man becomes a father, he’s supposed to have a drink for every toe his child was born with. So I’m required to have ten drinks. I suspect you will, too. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

We tramp through the snow over to Hilpea Hauki and sit at a corner table. My phone rings, it’s Milo. “Arvid Lahtinen murdered Filippov,” he says. “That’s fucking awesome. You have to tell me the story.”

“Not now,” I say. “Kate had a baby girl, and I’m having a varpajaiset at Hauki.”

“That’s great news,” he says. “Can I come?”

His voice is so full of enthusiasm that I can’t say no. “Sure. Come over. Buy me a drink.”

Within a few minutes, Jari and Milo are sitting with us, and our table is covered with beers and shots. Apparently, I’m expected to exceed the ten-drink quota. The mood is gregarious, the jokes are silly.

“All right, Milo,” I say, “now I’m ready. Tell me the story behind your Hitler Youth dagger.”

He beams, thrilled that I asked him to tell a story. “My great-grandpa took it off a Russian soldier in the war. Which means he must have taken it off a German soldier.”

He pauses, once again attempting to build anticipation.

“That’s vaguely interesting,” I say, “but I was expecting something more.”

“I wanted to make you ask. I’m coming to the good part. Great-Grandpa gave it to Grandpa, who gave it to Dad, who had a weakness for women. One day, Mom decided she had enough and stabbed Dad with it.”

Milo grins. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or not. “Did she kill him?”

“No, she stuck it through his leg and ripped a seven-inch gouge in it. He nearly lost the leg, missed weeks of work. Mom got her point across. He quit cheating on her after that.”

A good story. It gets a laugh out of me. We toast to Kate, and all of us knock back another kossu.

My phone rings again. It’s Jyri Ivalo. He also wants to hear about Arvid capping Filippov, and he wants to know if I’ve got my hands on the evidence against him and certain prominent others. I tell him I’m celebrating the birth of my child, and if he wants to talk to me, he has to come to Hauki and buy me drinks to earn the privilege. I hang up on him, as he’s so often done to me.

Milo slams his shot glass onto the table to get our attention. He doesn’t have enough body weight to have a good head for alcohol, and his eyes glisten. He claps a hand on my shoulder. He raises his voice, as drunks tend to. “I admire this guy,” he says. “I killed a man this week, and it’s eating me up. I feel fucking awful. Kari, you don’t seem to feel anything about it. You tough motherfucker.”

I don’t have words of wisdom for him. I shrug. “It’s something that happened. You did the right thing. Time will make it better.”

“You killed a man once,” he says. “How did you live with it? Did time make it better for you?”

We’ve been drinking hard and fast, and the booze has gone to my head, too. I feel like I owe him the truth. “When I blew that gangster’s head off, I felt nothing but relief that it was him instead of me. I didn’t feel guilt, or anything at all. Never have. The only reason I went to therapy for it was because I thought my lack of guilt meant something was wrong with me.”