Antti Tuomainen - The Healer

“I’ve heard about his methods,” I said. “And they may have to do with why my wife got lost looking for him.”

“Has Pasi, I mean Tarkiainen,” she looked me in the eye, searching for the right words, “has he done something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. To be honest, Laura, I’m at my wit’s end. I’m desperate. The only thing I know for sure is that my wife has disappeared. Everything else is speculation. I’m hunting for anything that’s even remotely connected.”

“How long has she been missing?”

I instinctively looked at my watch before I knew what I was doing and stopped myself.

“A day and a half. Almost two.”

“Have you told the poli—”

“Laura,” I interrupted, so quickly and bluntly that I startled even myself. “It was the police who gave me the tip about Tarkiainen. Since I have nothing else to look for, I’m looking for him. The police won’t do anything. They can’t do anything.”

My voice had risen, its tone turned sharp and hard. I realized that. The look on Laura’s face was familiar from the past.

“Sorry,” I said.

“That’s all right. It’s almost like old times. Now it’s my turn to raise my voice.”

We were quiet for a moment, then she started to smile. So did I. Tense. Traps and land mines.

“It’s good that we postponed arguing until we were comfortably seated, at least,” she said.

I started to laugh, for the first time in a long time. The laugh spread through my body like the warmth of a touch. It felt good.

“Should I start accusing you of living in a fantasy world, of being ineffectual and directionless?” Laura said.

“Go ahead.” I laughed. “And I’ll tell you how calculating you are, a backstabber, a social climber.”

Laura stopped laughing, but her smile still spilled all the way to her big brown eyes.

“I liked you,” she said. “In spite of everything.”

I looked at her.

“I liked you, too.”

She was still smiling.

“Maybe there’s no point in wondering if things could have been different, on a big scale or a small scale,” she said.

“Things are what they are,” I said.

There was warmth in her eyes now, the kind I had wished for twenty years ago.

“The two of you are happy.”

“Extremely happy,” I agreed.

“I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks.”

When I said nothing more, she took a breath.

“So. Tarkiainen.”

She talked about Tarkiainen, and I listened without interrupting. The chronology of the story was familiar from what Elina had told me: first idealistic activism, then conversion to single-minded radicalism, and finally disillusioned withdrawal. Where to, she didn’t know, and I couldn’t tell her.

Laura had got to know Tarkiainen at the end of her student days when information about the severity of climate change temporarily united people and laid the framework for many fine and well-meaning organizations, associations, and political parties.

But now we know that unity was only momentary, Laura concluded, and I noticed her voice speeding up a little. That fight was won by big business—in other words, a few thousand people who were already superrich, who once again masked their own interests in the mantle of economic growth for the common good. The return to the old ways was echoed by the desire of a populace tired of momentary scarcity, of consuming less, to live like they had before: self-absorbed, greedy, and irresponsible—the way they’d always been taught to live.

So the vision of the long-term common good was once again defeated by ever larger houses, newer cars, wider television screens, homes renovated once a year, stereos, radios, toasters, mixers, filters, browsers, and, of course, new wardrobes every week or so. And you had to get everything cheaper than it had ever been before. Which sped up the cycle of destruction exponentially.

I didn’t want to interrupt her to say that she was oversimplifying, exaggerating. I knew she knew it herself. Maybe she just needed to vent her frustration to someone, so why not me? I also selfishly hoped that she would soon get to the reason I came.

She did stop to take a breath and returned to Tarkiainen, the charismatic young man she remembered from fifteen years earlier. She talked about joining Tarkiainen to found an activist group for young academics. The original purpose of the group was to form a new people’s movement independent of politics, but Tarkiainen had other ideas right away. That was when Tarkiainen started learning about fringe groups practicing direct action. She thought it was possible that he had participated in some of their attacks. In any case, he took up a radical, militant environmentalism—if you’re even the slightest bit involved in consumption or nonecological activity, then you’re 100 percent against us—and he quickly dropped out of the group Laura belonged to.

It sent a shiver down my spine when she mentioned Tarkiainen’s girlfriend: a young, small, attractive woman with blue-green eyes, whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment.

“Johanna,” I said quietly.

A flash of memory and recognition shone in her eyes, and she nodded.

“That’s it,” she said. “How did you—”

“Johanna’s my wife.”

The room fell silent. So silent that I could hear shreds of hallway conversation in an entirely different part of the building. The Laura I once knew wouldn’t have felt comfortable going so long without speaking, but this Laura sat calmly in her chair, sunk once again in thought.

“What do you remember about Johanna?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“She was in the group for a while. I remember I thought that she was there sort of reluctantly. Maybe she realized before the rest of us did that Tarkiainen had changed his outlook.”

“So why did she stay, then?”

Now Laura looked me in the eye, raised her eyebrows, and snorted with amusement.

“Maybe she hoped she could change him, straighten him out, influence his thinking. People will believe all kinds of things. Even smart people.”

There was obviously no point in continuing in this vein. And in spite of the fact that I felt conflicted and uncomfortable asking my former girlfriend about my present wife, I continued: “What kind of relationship do you think they had—Johanna and Tarkiainen?”

“That was fifteen years ago,” she said, shaking her head. “And I couldn’t have told you even back then. But I think they had a relationship that began with a shared goal, and then one of them changed his goal to something the other couldn’t care less about. That sort of thing happens. I think when your wife, I mean Johanna, finally noticed that Tarkiainen had risen to another sphere of his own, she tried to get into it as long as she could. Just like I would have done. Even though that was a risky thing to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Men can’t always grasp this concept,” Laura said, “but if a man is willing to use violence, he’s willing to use violence. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

I told her I did know what she meant.

“If I had to guess—and this would only be a guess—I’d say that Johanna was waiting for the right moment to leave him. And maybe…”

I remained quiet. Laura shook her head.

“Now I’m just using my imagination,” she said.

“Go ahead. Anything at all might help.”

She shook her head again.

“This is going to sound crazy,” she said, not sounding the least bit crazy, “but maybe when she looked at him, or stood next to him, she felt self-conscious somehow, felt like she almost understood something about him—Tarkiainen, I mean—that she couldn’t say at the time, even though she ought to say it, needed to say it. But that’s pure speculation, of course. I can’t really remember anything like that.”