Antti Tuomainen - The Healer

I stopped to listen. The rain tapped against the windowpanes, pounded the surface of the patio table, and filled the woods with a murmuring sound. A car accelerated somewhere, slowed, accelerated again. There were no human sounds. The air had that slightly sour smell again, like the earth was already too wet, soaked through many times over, worn out.

I opened the door without a sound and entered a small room with a fireplace, decorated with opulent good taste. A staircase at the back of the room led up to street level. I climbed the stairs to the living room, which was joined to a kitchen and dining area on the street side of the house. Light spilled in through the windows from the illuminated porch, drawing long shadows on the floor and creating dark hiding places along the walls. I stopped and listened. The only sound was my heartbeat. It seemed to echo off the walls, which were covered in framed photographs. There was a staircase in a cage of airy latticework in the middle of the open room, and the light that I had seen from the street seemed to be glimmering from the top of the stairs.

I went up the stairs one step at a time, saw a lamp on a night table softly illuminating a room, and then heard an anguished, choking voice ahead of me to the right.

“Who’s there?”

I recognized Gromov’s voice, although it was raw and hoarse, like he’d been struggling to breathe for a long time. I stepped into the room, and both of us were frightened, but I was the only one who recoiled. Gromov didn’t move. He was lying on the bed fully dressed, his hands and arms stretched out, wet with blood. The bed around him was like a pool he was floating in. The room smelled of feces and something like raw meat.

“I can’t feel my body,” he said, struggling to speak.

I looked at him, bathed in blood. And I reminded myself why I was there.

“Where’s Johanna?”

“I can’t feel my body,” he said again, as if he hadn’t heard my question.

“Vasili, listen to me. Are you alone here? Has Johanna been here?”

Gromov let out a rasping sound that ended in a sputter that nearly choked him.

“Vasili,” I said. “You have to help me. I’m looking for Johanna, and I know what story you were working on. I know about the Healer and about Pasi Tarkiainen.”

I took a couple of steps closer and stood about where his waist was. There was a depression in his chest, darker than the blood. His face seemed surprisingly calm considering the fact that his chest was struggling and twitching with a life of its own. He seemed to be paralyzed. Perhaps the bullet that had ripped his chest open had also drilled a hole through his spine.

“I know about you, too,” I said. “I have the message you sent to Johanna.”

I was about to take my phone out of my pocket and show it to him, when he spoke.

“There’s something else. Besides Tarkiainen.”

I dropped the phone back into my pocket. Gromov’s eyes had a searching look in them now. He said something, but I couldn’t understand him. I leaned closer. After a moment, I understood. Love.

“I did it for love,” he said.

“What?” I asked. “What did you do for love?”

He looked like he couldn’t get enough air. He was clearly trying to express himself with minimal words.

“Johanna. I wanted her to understand that I still love her. Tarkiainen promised to help me.”

“How could Tarkiainen help you?”

The question echoed through the room, hurried, impatient. The words sounded like they came from outside myself.

“Johanna wouldn’t listen. I wanted another chance.”

“A chance to do what?”

“I wanted her to realize that I love her.”

Of course. And to show her that you love her, you deceived your longtime colleague and led her into the hands of a murderer.

“Tarkiainen promised,” Gromov continued hoarsely, “that he could make Johanna understand my situation. And he had to meet with her because he had information about the Healer that he could tell her only in person.”

Gromov’s words came out half-whispered, half in a series of quick yelps, all of it running together.

“Tarkiainen knew so much,” he said, sounding like he was running a foot race. “About Johanna, me, everything. I arranged to meet Johanna—told her I had a tip. Tarkiainen was supposed to talk to her and then bring her here. So we could talk in private.”

He stopped speaking like he’d hit a wall and struggled to breathe. There didn’t seem to be any more air going into his lungs than was coming out. He forced out a few more words: “But then Väntinen came here. And now look at me.”

“Johanna’s phone,” I said. “You had it in your hand.”

He tried to nod. His eyes closed and his chin jerked. Somehow, he got some oxygen.

“One more thing, to say,” he said. “To you.”

I looked into his eyes, where hope and hopelessness were taking turns. Like a man hanging on to a rope that can rescue him as time after time it slips out of his grasp. I waited as long as I could bear it. I was already turning away, looking for the phone, when he spoke again.

“You don’t know how it feels,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“You don’t know what love is. You don’t know what it’s like to lose the one you love,” he said, “and then get her back again.”

What was he talking about? I kept quiet and looked at his glistening face, drained of all color.

“I’ve known Johanna longer than you have. You don’t know everything.”

He looked like he would smile if he only could. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets, a strikingly nonchalant gesture considering that a dying man lay before me with a hole ripped in his chest.

“We were young lovers,” he said, and if a man with his life about to leave him can sound triumphant and proud, Gromov did. “Twenty years ago. Until she left me. Over a misunderstanding. Then life threw us together again. I’ve always been a one-woman man.”

I looked at the bloody figure on the bed and took my hands out of my pockets.

“According to Johanna, you were anything but a one-woman man,” I said.

His sigh was like a hacksaw on metal.

“I wanted her to be jealous. To feel the same gnawing jealousy I felt.”

I shook my head, trying not to lose my patience. He could breathe only a few moments longer. I could see the same rude superiority in his eyes that I’d seen in the past. I didn’t understand where he got his energy.

“Then she would know how it feels,” he said, in a voice that was so like his normal voice that I almost jumped.

“Where’s Johanna’s phone?” I said.

“Johanna still loves me. Do you know how I know?”

“Stop talking bullshit,” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “I need that telephone.”

He struggled to breathe again, gulping the air for a while with his eyes squeezed shut. Once he’d got some breath he opened them again, still looking defiant.

“I know one thing,” he said.

I didn’t reply.

“In her hour of need, she didn’t want to call you.”

I looked at him, wanting him to die, and wanting him to stay alive.

“You’re lying,” I said, wondering if he could hear the uncertainty in my voice.

“Why would I lie?” he said, looking as if it took all his strength to speak. “Look at me. I’m just telling you what happened.”

“Johanna would have called me if she could.”

“She had a chance to call you,” he said. At that moment, his chest stopped twitching. He noticed it, too, and hurried to speak. He only managed a few words: “But she didn’t call you.”

A look of amazement suddenly covered his face, his mouth opening and closing. His head nearly lifted off the pillow, then fell again. His eyes were left staring at the ceiling.