James Thompson: Snow angels

We held hands and watched the bonfire in silence. Afterward, I asked Kate if she would like to come over to my house for a drink.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“About a poronkusema from here.”

“How far is that?”

“A poronkusema is a Laplander measure of distance that means ‘reindeer piss.’ A reindeer can’t urinate when it pulls a sled, and it gets a clogged urinary tract if you don’t stop and let it pee once in a while. A poronkusema is about ten miles, around thirty minutes of riding on a sled.”

“You really are a font of useless information,” she said.

We went to my place. Six weeks later we were engaged. Nine months later we were married.

It’s hard to believe that this place, the site of an event that led to such happiness for me, is now the scene of such tragedy. I look down again at Sufia’s mangled corpse. “Esko… ”

“Yeah?”

I need to ask the question but I’m afraid to hear the answer. “How much of what happened do you think she was conscious for?”

“She’s such a mess that I can’t say without an autopsy. I’ve been wondering the same thing. Still, it could have been worse.”

“How?”

He stands up and brushes the snow off his pants. “She could have lived through it.”

I look down at Sufia the snow angel. Her face changes and I imagine Kate naked and slaughtered, dead in a snowfield. The wave of sadness I felt earlier renews itself, and for the first time in my life I’m sorry that Finland has no death penalty.

The crime scene has been processed. Sufia Elmi’s body has been taken away. We’ve been going inside Aslak’s house once in a while to warm up, but still I’m frozen to the bone. I’m the last one to leave and I stand alone shivering. I look up. Wind has chased the clouds away and the night is starry. There’s enough light to see without my flashlight and I flick it off.

The black-and-yellow crime-scene tape looks out of place on a reindeer farm. The spot where Sufia’s body lay is a bloody hole gouged in the snow, like an empty eye socket. The scene will be torn to bits soon, when forest animals smell the blood and come looking. It doesn’t matter. It will be buried in fresh snow before long anyway.

Years ago, when I was working on my master’s thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there’s almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God.

It’s just before ten P.M. Hours spent in the cold have left me so numb that it’s hard to move. My bad knee has gone so stiff that I’m dragging my left leg more than walking on it. I limp to the top of the drive.

On the other side of the road and down a narrow lane is a neighborhood of sixteen houses called Marjakyla, Berry-Village. I walk the two hundred yards, as I have so many times, down the unpaved road. Snow banked up from plowing makes walls on both sides of me and they funnel me into the village. The people that live here seldom come or go. They exist in their own little world, year after year, in little wooden homes. The only thing that changes is their ages.

I go from house to house and explain that there’s been a murder. People raise their eyebrows and say “oho,” our language’s expression of surprise, then tell me they’ve seen nothing. Canvassing brings me closer to my parents and their neighbors, the people of my childhood.

Big Paavo’s yard is lit up by work lamps that reflect off the snow and negate the effect of strings of Christmas lights scattered around. He’s in a shed with a kerosene heater, and, as usual, he’s building something. A two-stroke engine with a bad gasket stinks from burning oil and clunks, because one of the pistons isn’t firing. I ask what he’s working on. A clothes press, so his wife won’t have to iron sheets. He’s seen nothing.

I knock on the Virtanens’ door. Through the front window, I see Kimmo and Esa’s mother, Pirkko, sitting in an armchair. She doesn’t move. I test the door and it’s open, the place smells of must and urine. Both of them are incommunicado, Pirkko from her stroke, her husband Urpo because he’s passed out on the kitchen floor. I say hello to Pirkko. Her eyes flicker recognition but she doesn’t answer, so I leave. I’ll have to speak to their sons about them.

Next I try Eero and Martta. They aren’t home and if true to form are out walking.

Christmas candles burn in a front window. Tiina and Raila invite me in, but I know better than to accept. Tiina is forty-two years old and anorexic. All her teeth have fallen out as a result, and she can’t afford dentures, but she’s learned to smile in such a way that you can’t tell. She walks around the village pushing a baby stroller with a doll inside it, and has since she was a teenager.

Raila, Tiina’s mother, is an alcoholic. She was sober for twenty years, until her fortieth birthday party, when she decided to have just one drink. For the past thirty years, she’s lived in a nightmare of alcohol psychosis coupled with religious fervor. When I was a kid, she would stand outside our house, point in the front window and shriek. Mom would tell me to pay no attention and pretend like it wasn’t happening. I ask if they’ve seen unfamiliar cars today.

“This is a day of desolation,” Raila says. “My life is a vale of tears.”

Tiina smiles her funny smile. “We’ve been watching TV all day.”

I save my parents for last. Their house is the same as it was twenty-five years ago, except for the addition of indoor plumbing. No more freezing trips to the outhouse in the morning. No more cold showers in an underheated outbuilding shared with the neighbors. Mom and Dad fought about it for years. He refused because of the expense, although he always had booze money, but she finally wore him down.

As a little kid, because it was so cold in the outbuilding, I would go two weeks without washing if they let me, and sometimes I accidentally peed on myself because opening my pants in the freezing outhouse hurt so much that I would hold it for too long.

There must be fifteen clocks hanging on the walls. I don’t know why my parents are so concerned with marking the time. The syncopated drumming of all those second hands makes me crazy. They haven’t put up any Christmas decorations yet. They always wait until the last minute. We sit in the kitchen, and I explain about the murder.

“Mom, did you see or hear anything unusual today?” I ask.

Mom doesn’t work, Dad never would let her. She still calls me by my pet name from childhood. “Ei Pikkuinen” -No, Little One-he says.

“What the hell did you expect your mother to hear?” Dad asks.

“I didn’t expect anything. This is a normal part of a murder investigation.”

Dad isn’t bad when he’s sober, but when he’s drunk, he goes one of two ways, either euphoric or mean. “You think your mother has nothing better to do all day than sit by the window and watch what goes on outside?”

“I don’t think that.”

“So you think your mother killed a nigger woman on Aslak’s farm?”

I wonder if he’s going to take off his belt, like when I was a boy. “No, I don’t think that either.”

Dad pulls out one of his favorite expressions. “Haista vittu,” sniff cunt. A colorful way of telling me to go fuck myself. His sodden mind veers off in another direction. “You heard from your brothers?”