Antti Tuomainen: The Healer

We arrived at Temppeliaukio in twenty minutes. I shoved a bill through the narrow opening in the Plexiglas and got out of the car.

The modern dome of Temppeliaukio Church was gone; what was left of the building resembled ancient stone ruins perched high on a rock. The fragments of wall cast long shadows all the way to Lutherinkatu. Surrounded by the yellowish light of the street lamps, the shadows were black as pitch, as if painted on the ground. Someone had taken a PARKING PROHIBITED sign from its pole and thrown it into the middle of the street. The sign looked like it had finally given up on prohibiting anything.

The night was as cold in Töölö as it had been at home in Herttoniemi, but not as quiet. Cars could be heard here and there, the honk of horns, Finnish rock, people shouting, even people having fun. Above all the noise a woman’s bright laugh sounded carefree, and stranger than anything I’d heard in a long time.

Ahti and Elina Kallio were friends of ours—it was Johanna and Elina’s friendship that first brought us together. And no, Elina hadn’t heard from Johanna.

I stood in the foyer of their apartment, took off my rain-soaked jacket and shoes, and listened to Elina and Ahti ask questions in turn:

“Where do you think she might be?”

“She hasn’t called you at all?”

“And no one knows where she is?”

Finally Ahti asked a question that I knew how to answer.

“Yes, I’d like some coffee. Thanks.”

Ahti disappeared into the kitchen, and Elina and I went into the living room, where two floor lamps in opposite corners and one calmly fluttering candle on the dark wood table in the middle of the room gave the place a softer light than was perhaps desirable. Somehow I felt that at that moment I needed a different atmosphere, more light, something decisively brighter.

I sat on the sofa. Elina was in the armchair across from me. She pulled a light brown wool shawl onto her lap, not spreading it out but not leaving it folded, either. It sat in her lap like a living, waiting creature. I told her the basic outline of what I knew: Johanna hadn’t been heard from in twenty-four hours, and the photographer couldn’t be reached, either. I also told her what Johanna had been writing about.

“Johanna would have called,” Elina said when I’d finished. She spoke so quietly that I had to repeat the sentence in my mind.

I nodded and looked up at Ahti, who had just come into the room. He was a short, wiry man, a lawyer by trade, meticulous to the point of being comical, but just as likely to surprise you in some situations. A thought occurred to me, and as it did I saw a trace of uncertainty in Ahti’s blue, penetrating eyes that disappeared as quickly as it had come.

He looked quickly at me, then gave Elina a longer, more meaningful look. They held each other’s gaze for an unusually long time and then, almost in unison, turned their gazes back to me. Elina’s brown eyes welled with tears. I’d never seen her cry before, but it didn’t surprise me for some reason. Maybe the exaggerated homeyness of the room was a sign that surprises were in the offing.

“We should have told you about this before,” Ahti said. He stood with his hands in his pockets behind Elina’s chair. Tears glistened on her face.

“What?” I asked.

Elina quickly wiped her eyes as if the tears were in her way.

“We’re leaving,” she said. “We’re going north.”

“We have a year’s lease on an apartment in a little town up there,” Ahti said.

“A year?” I said. “What about when the year’s over?”

Elina’s eyes filled with tears again. Ahti stroked her hair, she lifted her hand and held his. The eyes of both wandered the room, unable to latch onto anything. A more paranoid person might have thought that they were being evasive about something, but what could they have to be evasive about?

“We don’t know,” Ahti said. “But it can’t be any worse than living here. I lost my job for good six months ago. Elina hasn’t had regular teaching work for a couple of years now.”

“You haven’t said anything about it,” I remarked quietly.

“We didn’t want to because we thought things would get better.”

We sat for a moment in silence. The smell of fresh coffee floated into the room. I wasn’t the only one who noticed it.

“I’ll go see if the coffee’s done brewing,” Ahti said with audible relief.

Elina wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. The loose sleeve wrapped around her wrist and she had to straighten it with her other hand.

“We really believed we would think of something,” she said, again so quietly that I had to lean forward to make out the words that fell from her lips, “that there was some solution, that this had all been some kind of horrible, sudden crisis that would work itself out and life would go on like before.”

I didn’t know if she was talking about their situation or the whole world’s, but it probably didn’t make any difference.

Ahti came back with the coffeepot. His movements were as smooth and precise as always as he poured the coffee into cups painted with flowers like mementos of a time forever lost. Which, of course, they were.

“Have you sold this place?” I asked, waving a hand and looking around to indicate the apartment. Ahti shook his head.

“No,” he said quietly.

“Tell him the truth, Ahti,” Elina said, wiping away the two or three more tears trickling down her cheeks with her sweatshirt sleeve.

Ahti sat at the other end of the sofa and pulled his cup closer, obviously going over the matter in his mind before speaking.

“Who would buy this place?” he said, sitting up straighter. “There are holes in the roof, there’s water in the basement, mold everywhere, rats and cockroaches. The electricity goes out all the time, and so does the water. The city’s about to collapse. No one has any money, and the ones who do sure don’t want to move in here. There are no more investors, and even if there were, why pay rent when you can live someplace for free? And who really believes things are going to get better?”

Elina stared straight ahead, not crying anymore.

“We believed,” she said quietly, looking at Ahti.

“We believed for a really long time,” he agreed.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I drank my coffee, watching the steam rise from it, warming my hands on the cup.

“Johanna’s certain to turn up,” Elina said suddenly, waking me from my thoughts.

I looked up at Elina, then at Ahti. He was nodding to her, as if to confirm what she’d said, and stopped suddenly when he noticed me staring at him. I didn’t let that, or the trace of uncertainty I saw again in his eyes, trip me up. I knew that if I didn’t ask, I might regret it.

“Ahti, I could help you out with a little money and buy something from you at the same time.”

He hesitated a second. He was obviously searching for words.

“I don’t know what we could have that you—”

“You like to go shooting sometimes,” I said.

He looked almost surprised. He glanced at Elina, who didn’t say anything, but nodded. Ahti leaned forward.

“Why not?” he said, getting up. “I don’t need both of the shotguns, and I only need one pistol. And I doubt there’s anyone who’d turn me in if I sold you a gun.”

I followed him into the bedroom. Large, nearly full duffel bags stood in front of the open, ransacked closets. There were clothes on the bed, headboard, and two chairs, and piled on the floor in front of the bags. Ahti went around the bed, stopped in front of a freestanding dark wood cabinet, and opened the door with a key. In the cabinet were two shotguns, a small rifle, and three pistols.

“Take your pick,” he said, pointing at one pistol and then the other. There was a touch of the salesman in the gesture, which seemed unnecessary under the circumstances. “A ninemillimeter Heckler and Koch USP or a Glock seventeen, also nine millimeters.”