Antti Tuomainen: The Healer

“I thought Johanna was working at home today,” he said.

I shook my head.

“To tell you the truth, I was hoping to find her here.”

Now it was his turn to shake his head. The gesture was impatient and brief.

“The last time I saw Johanna was at yesterday’s all-staff meeting, around six o’clock. We went through the jobs in progress as usual, then everybody went their separate ways.”

“I spoke with Johanna yesterday evening at about nine o’clock.”

“Where was she?” he asked indifferently.

“Outside somewhere,” I said, and then, after a pause, more quietly, “I didn’t think to ask where.”

“So you haven’t heard from her for a whole day?”

I shook my head, watching him. His posture, leaning backward, the expression on his face, and the pauses deployed between his words revealed what he was really thinking—that I was wasting his time.

“What?” I asked, as if I didn’t understand his body language.

“I was just wondering,” he said, “whether this has ever happened before.”

“No. Why?”

He puckered up his lower lip and lifted his eyebrows—it looked like each one weighed a ton—and acted as if he expected a reward for raising them.

“No reason. It’s just that these days… all kinds of things can happen.”

“Not to us,” I said. “It’s a long story, but these things don’t happen to us.”

“Of course not,” Lassi said, in a tone somewhat lacking in conviction. He didn’t even bother looking me in the eye. “Of course not.”

“What story was she working on?”

He didn’t answer right away, just weighed his pen in his hand, perhaps weighing something in his mind as well.

“What was it about?” I pressed, seeing that he wasn’t going to begin on his own.

“It’s probably stupid of me to share this information with you, but then it was a stupid article,” he said, leaning his elbows on the desk and looking at me obliquely, as if to gauge my reaction.

“I understand,” I said, and waited.

“It’s about the Healer.”

I may have flinched. Johanna had told me about the Healer.

She’d got her first e-mail from him right after the family in Tapiola was murdered. Someone who called himself the Healer had taken responsibility for the crime. He said he did it on behalf of ordinary people, to avenge them, and said he was the last voice of truth in a world headed toward destruction—a healer for a sick planet. That’s why he had murdered the CEO of a manufacturing company and his family. And that’s why he would continue to murder whoever he claimed had contributed to the acceleration of climate change. Johanna had notified the police. They investigated and did what they could. There were now nine executives and politicians who’d been killed altogether, along with their families.

I sighed. Lassi shrugged and looked satisfied with my reaction.

“I told her it wouldn’t lead anywhere,” he said, and I couldn’t help noticing a slightly triumphant tone in his voice. “I told her she wouldn’t find out any more than the police had. And our rapidly shrinking readership doesn’t want to read about it. It’s just depressing. They already know that everything’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

I looked out into the rain-soaked darkness over Töölö Bay. I knew there were buildings out there, but I couldn’t see them.

“Did Johanna already write the article?” I asked when we’d had sufficient time to listen to ourselves and the building breathing.

Lassi leaned back in his chair, put his head against the headrest, and looked at me through half-opened eyes, as if I were not on the other side of his narrow desk but far off on the horizon.

“Why do you ask?” he said.

“Johanna and I always keep in touch with each other,” I explained. It occurred to me that when we repeat things, it isn’t always for the purpose of convincing other people. “I don’t mean constantly. But if nothing else we at least send each other a text message or an e-mail every few hours. Even if we don’t really have anything to tell each other. It’s usually just a couple of words. Something funny, or sometimes something a little affectionate. It’s a habit with us.”

This last sentence was purposely emphatic. Lassi listened to me, his face expressionless.

“Now I haven’t heard from her for twenty-four hours,” I continued, and realized I was directing my words to my own reflection in the window. “This is the longest time in all the ten years we’ve been together that we haven’t been in touch with each other.”

I waited another moment before I said something just like all the clichés, not caring a bit how it sounded.

“I’m sure that something has happened to her.”

“Something has happened to her?” he said, then paused for several seconds in a way that was becoming familiar. There could be only one purpose for these pauses: to undercut me, to make what I said sound stupid and pointless.

“Yes,” I said drily.

Lassi didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he leaned forward, paused, and said, “Let’s assume you’re right. What do you intend to do?”

I didn’t have to pretend to think about it. I immediately replied, “There’s no point in reporting her disappearance to the police. All they can do is enter it in their records. Disappearance number five thousand twenty-one.”

“True,” Lassi agreed. “And twenty-four hours isn’t a terribly long time, either.”

I lifted my arm as if to fend off this statement physically, as well as mentally.

“As I said, we always stay in touch. For us, twenty-four hours is a long time.”

Lassi didn’t need to dig very deep to find his irritation. His voice rose, and at the same time a colder rigidity crept into it, as he quickly said, “We have reporters that are in the field for a week at a time. Then they come back with the story. That’s the way it works.”

“Has Johanna ever been in the field for a week without contacting you?”

Lassi kept his eyes on me, drummed his fingers on the armrest of his chair, and puckered his lips.

“I admit, she hasn’t.”

“It’s just not like her,” I said.

Lassi twisted in his chair and spoke rapidly, as if he wanted to hurry up and make sure he was right: “Tapani, we’re trying to put together a newspaper here. There’s basically no advertising money, and our rule of thumb is that nobody’s interested in anything. Except, of course, sex and porn, and scandals and revelations connected with sex and porn. We sold more papers yesterday than we have in a long time. And I assure you we didn’t do it with any in-depth reports about the thousands of missing warheads or investigative articles on how much drinking water we have left. Which, by the way, is about half an hour’s worth, from what I can tell. No, our lead story was about a certain singer’s bestiality video. That’s what the people want. That’s what they pay for.”

He took a breath and continued in a voice that was even more tense and impatient than before, if that was possible.

“Then I’ve got reporters, like, for instance, Johanna, who want to tell the people the truth. And I’m always asking them, what fucking truth? And they never have a good answer. All they say is that people should know. And I ask, but do they want to know? And more important, do they want to pay to know?”

When I was sure he had finished, I said, “So you tell them about a no-talent singer and her horse.”

He looked at me again, from someplace far away where clueless idiots like me aren’t allowed to go.

“We’re trying to stay alive.”

We sat silently for a moment. Then he opened his mouth again: “Can I ask you something?” he said.