Antti Tuomainen - The Healer

Maybe.

Just maybe?

A firm maybe?

Maybe this was where Johanna had called me from.

I asked Hamid to wait, took my phone, and got out of the car. The wind blowing off the sea immediately grabbed my hair and clothes. It ripped and tore like it was trying to get a good grip on me. This close to the shore, its hands would have been wet even without the rain.

I pulled up my hood and held the phone to my ear under it, sheltered from the rain, and let it play the murmuring sound again. I raised and lowered the volume as I walked north along the shore, looking at the six-, seven-, and eight-story waterfront houses. Not knowing where to begin, I tried to see and hear parallels among what may have been unrelated things: the last phone call, the sounds in it that might have been wind and waves, the Healer’s coordinates that Johanna had plotted, and my own instinct and hope. I relied on these as I walked along the rainy, windy point, my shoes wet through, the soles of my feet aching with cold.

The houses along the shore seemed to be in unusually good condition: there were lights in many of the apartments, which was almost a small miracle, for at least two reasons. We were near the shore, an area that often flooded. We were also in a wealthy neighborhood. In a lot of other places that meant that the residents had gone north already—got out while the getting was good, whatever that means these days.

There was a steel stairway built into the vertically split side of a large rock. I climbed up the stairs and came to a little platform surrounded by a waist-high steel railing. I found a pair of binoculars fixed to the seaside, pointed out toward open water. You could probably see a long way with them on a sunny day. At the moment, you couldn’t see anything.

I turned around. The waterfront café was a couple of hundred meters away and the nearest house about fifty meters. I lowered the phone from my ear. I listened.

The rough, salty smell of the sea and the rhythm of the waves spilling against the shore was calming and soothing in the midst of the wind and rain. Some say the sound of the sea was impressed into our genes long ago. Some say it will one day, once more, press us under.

I went down the stairs and headed back toward the taxi.

When I’d got about halfway there, a hundred meters from the rock and a hundred meters from the cab, I suddenly found myself in a spotlight’s beam. I stopped and heard heavy footsteps coming from the direction of the light. Then the footsteps stopped.

The men were holding bright, powerful flashlights, which they seemed to have lifted onto their shoulders. They didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything. Only the sea and the wind spoke, overlapping murmurs. Neither of the men took a step forward. They stood in front of me, one to the right and one to the left. They had apparently been trained to stand this way, far enough from each other that the beams of their flashlights crossed where I stood.

The brightness of the light forced me to lower my head. I didn’t see the club until it hit my left side, near the kidney.

I fell to the ground and gulped for breath, paralyzed with pain, held fast in place.

“What are you doing here?” I heard from above me.

I tried to say that I didn’t mean any harm, I was just looking around. Before I could speak, I felt a steel-toed army boot smash into my stomach. The last vestiges of oxygen disappeared. The blinding beams of light spun wildly.

“What are you hanging around here for?”

“What kind of bum are you?”

“We don’t need any fucking refugees around here.”

I tried to say something. Spit gurgled out of my throat, not sufficient for words.

“Beggar.”

A kick to the ribs.

“Loser.”

A club to the right kidney.

“Fag.”

A kick to the groin.

I couldn’t see anything, could hear only words oozing with hate. I turned onto my stomach. Another blow exploded in the middle of my back like an angry stone.

“You’re lucky there ain’t more of us today.”

“You’re getting off easy.”

“You coulda been killed.”

Laughter. A club struck my left ear. It turned hot and deaf at the same time. More laughter.

Then a third voice, younger, speaking English: “Back off, or I’ll shoot.”

The beams of light disappeared.

“Go now. Go away, or I’ll kill you.”

Heavy steps. Moving away this time.

“Get going.”

Lighter steps. Hands grabbing my coat, lifting me.

“Get up.”

I tried to stand. It wasn’t easy. I leaned against something.

“Into the car.”

I fell onto something, first sitting, then lying down. A door slammed behind me. The world lurched; I rolled onto my back, then onto my side. Something hit me in the forehead.

“Now let’s get out of here.”

Of course. I was in the car. In Hamid’s taxi.

“They almost killed you.”

I rolled onto my stomach. I leaned my head forward and vomited onto the floor.

“Shit. Now we really have to hurry.”

I tried to stay conscious. I tried to hold on to the door handle. I tried to open my eyes. It seemed like no matter what I tried, I failed.

“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Just fifteen more minutes.”

Fifteen minutes. To where?

I held Johanna in my arms, breathed in the scent of her neck and kissed her warm lips. She let out a little laugh, pulled her face away, and looked into my eyes. I was about to say something, but then she was back in my arms again, laying her head on my chest. I stroked her hair, letting it flow through my fingers, and rested my other hand on the back of her neck. It was slender and graceful, radiating heat at the roots of her hair.

I could feel in my fingertips the places where the muscles attached, the delicate point where everything, where life itself, was connected. Johanna lifted her head. I looked into her eyes again and saw the green reflections in them. I pulled her closer and held her tight against me. She was small and soft like she always is in the morning. She turned off the alarm clock and snuggled close, put her arm across my chest, laid her forehead against my cheek and nearly fell asleep again, snuffled, said something sweet and silly.

I held her there, knowing that if I let her go I would let her go forever. I smelled her hair, breathing in its fragrance and trying to store it all away and remember how she really smelled, remember it for a long time. She breathed evenly. Silence surrounded us and we were safe. We belonged to each other.

Then she gave a start, like she sometimes did when she was falling asleep. Someone was pulling her away. I pulled back, clutching her closer to me, but that someone was strong and persistent. I held on to her. I wouldn’t let go. I tried to see her face, but it was turned downward. My grasp came loose. That unknown someone finally got hold of her and she sank away out of my arms into the darkness. When she had disappeared completely from my sight and only emptiness was left, I felt a shivering cold. I shook, and my hands reached out to grasp at nothing.

The light changed to a deep red, cursive neon behind a thin curtain. I tried to read it for some time from left to right before I realized that I was looking at it backward. I finally managed to make it out from right to left: kebab-pizzeria.

I lifted my hand to my left ear, which was itching, and I felt a rustling wad of bandage, held on with tape. I was lying on my side with my weight on my right arm, which had gone completely numb. I pulled my arm out from under me, grabbed hold of the edge of whatever it was I was lying on, and sat up.

I was in some sort of back room or storage area. My mouth tasted like blood and metal. I sat where I was, took a few deep breaths, shook my numb arm gingerly. There was a pain in my back whenever I breathed.