Helena Halme - The Red King of Helsinki - Lies, Spies and Gymnastics

Pia and Heikki were standing at the zebra crossing waiting for the lights to turn to green. Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer. She took hold of Heikki’s hand and ran against the red light. A car sounded its horn, narrowly missing them. A man, standing on the opposite side of the street caught Pia’s eye.

‘Why are we going there?’ Heikki asked, nodding at the Council building. ‘Just follow me,’ Pia said and took a few steps sideways and hurried past the man. Please don’t let him grab us, she thought and glanced back. The man moved towards the edge of the curb. Pia took a deep breath in and ran to the heavy door of the Council building. She took the key out of her pocket and went to open the door but it gave way. Thank God, Pia thought, it’s unlocked. She glanced back. The man was now on the other side of the road, hurrying towards Stockmann’s.

The woman at the reception to the Council made a phone call before she allowed Pia and Heikki inside. Pia had to show the key that Iain had given her. Heikki raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Once inside one of the outer rooms, which looked like a library, the woman asked Pia in perfect Finnish, ‘Would you like a hot drink? Tea, coffee?’ She smiled and looked almost friendly. Her demeanour had changed after she’d put the phone down.

‘Yes, please, coffee’ Pia said. Heikki nodded. Suddenly Pia was starving, and as if the woman had known this, she brought something to eat with the two cups of hot drinks. There were English sandwiches on a blue patterned plate, soft white bread filled with ham and cut into small triangles.

The woman closed the door and Pia and Heikki sat in a corner of the dark room smelling of old books, with a low table between them, and started eating. Pia picked up a sandwich and looked at Heikki. His shoulders were hunched, he didn’t seem as confident as he had done the last time he was here. Pia wished Iain could see him like this. With his head bent, eating his sandwich, he glanced at Pia, but didn’t say anything.

‘I saw you talking to Sasha outside the school this morning.’

Heikki looked up and bit his lip.

‘She warned you about me?’

‘No!’ Heikki nearly shouted the word. Now he’d gone bright red. Did this mean he was lying? ‘Look, Sasha and I belong, belonged,’ Heikki’s voice got higher and for a moment he looked embarrassed rather than sad or angry, ‘or rather it’s our parents that really belong, to the Pioneers.’

Pia looked at Heikki. ‘The Communist thing?’

‘Yeah, well it’s kind of fun, they do camps in the summer and discos for us older kids.’

‘So, you and Sasha…?’

‘We’ve known each other since we were babies.’

‘You never said.’

‘Belonging to the Pioneers isn’t exactly cool at the Lyceum.’

Pia thought about what the Old Crow’s reaction would have been if she’d known, and nearly smiled. ‘But how did you keep it a secret? And why? I thought you lot were proud of your beliefs.’ Pia couldn’t believe she didn’t know this about Heikki. There was a girl in the year below her who everybody knew was a Communist. She wore grey clothes and always had sweat marks under her arms. Nobody spoke to her. Pia’s grandfather had fought Stalin in the war and her grandmother hated the Russians. She’d told Pia they wanted Finland to belong to the Soviet Union, to lose its hard-fought independence. If the Communists had won the civil war, or if Finns hadn’t fought so hard against Stalin, she said, there’d be no Finland. The country would be like Estonia or Poland. There’d be food shortages, bad clothes and everyone would work in large factories earning little money, and live in huge, cold blocks of flats. Pia wanted to say all this to Heikki, but she wondered if it would have made any difference. ‘Communism is like a disease, once you get it, you can’t be cured,’ her Grandmother had told Pia.

Heikki was quiet. He leant back on the low chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Normally Pia would have wanted to kiss Heikki, seeing him do that, but now she was strangely unaffected by the gesture.

‘I didn’t think you’d understand,’ he said after a long while.

‘You’re right,’ Pia said, ‘but that’s not important now. Tell me, without lying,’ Pia emphasised the last word, ‘what you were looking for in Anni’s father’s desk?’

Heikki’s face was serious, ‘Nothing.’

Pia considered Heikki. He looked Pia squarely in the eyes. He seemed sincere.

Maija closed the door behind her and plonked the two heavy shopping bags on the hall floor. She’d been so preoccupied this week she forgot to shop for food on Saturday and had to go all the way to Valintatalo, the only store that was open on Sundays.

‘Pia!’ she shouted. Her room was empty. Maija glanced at her watch. It was nearly two o’clock. The rehearsals were supposed to finish at lunchtime. Where was the girl?

Maija wished she’d accompanied Pia to the training session. They could have shopped together afterwards. She had wanted to, but didn’t want to be the over-protective mother. Besides, what could possibly happen to Pia at school? But now, Maija started to wonder if Jukka Linnonmaa had been right after all. Maija dismissed his warnings about the Communist conspiracy President Kekkonen was heading. She knew he was a right-wing activist. Sitting opposite Linnonmaa at the Happy Days Café, in the middle of a harsh Helsinki winter, Maija had felt the same fear she now knew made her leave the Customs. But surely it was highly unlikely that Pia’s new boyfriend could be involved in something similar. She’d politely listened to Linnonmaa for a while and then told him she had to get to work.

Maija decided to meet Pia at the school and re-entered the slippery street outside the block of flats. The sun was high up in the sky, but covered by a thin blanket of clouds. The tram was empty and it gave Maija an eerie feeling that something was amiss. When the tram stopped at Erottaja, Maija was leaning against the back window of the carriage. She saw a man in a grey coat running through the Esplanade Park towards the vehicle. Suddenly, he turned and crossed the street without looking at the traffic lights. Maija looked closer and saw it was Iain. He entered an office building on the other side of Erottaja. When the tram started to move, Maija thought how different Pia had been since Iain had falsely accused her of using drugs. More grown-up somehow. She’d also talked less to Maija about her problems. But perhaps it was Heikki’s influence. Maija saw how fond Pia was of the boy when he came over the other night. Maija sighed. Perhaps there was something in what Mr Linnonmaa had told her. Perhaps he’d been trying to protect Pia after all? Where could the girl be now? With Heikki? Maija decided to go after Iain. Perhaps he could make sense of it all.

Maija got off the tram outside Stockmann’s. The store was shut up and there was no one else on the street. She walked back up to Erottaja and made her way to the building Iain had disappeared into. Inside the gleaming entrance hall, she looked at a blackboard of office names. There was a dentist, a solicitor’s office, debt collectors. Then she saw it, ‘British Council 4th Floor’.

Iain was panting when he walked through the door, ‘Thank God you’re alright!’ He came over and put his hand on Pia’s shoulder. ‘Good girl,’ he said in English. ‘You did exactly the right thing coming here.’ He was standing between Pia and Heikki, surveying the two from a height. He took his coat off and pulled up a chair and sat down. ‘Heikki, are you alright?’ he asked. His breath was still quick and as he spoke to Heikki, he placed his hand on Heikki’s arm.

Pia looked at Iain with astonishment. She didn’t think he liked Heikki.