Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

I envy those who can live their lives the way you describe. What would it be like to be “Homo cinematicus”, as you say in your book? But I depend on predictability. Change, new experiences, make me nervous. On the other hand, I also depend on being able to escape now and then to something new, to keep my life from becoming unbearable.

As soon as he sent the message, he regretted it. Having ascertained that he couldn’t get it back, he made himself step away from the computer.

He walked through the house to the kitchen. At night, Aino’s many mirrors multiplied the dark. Olli tried not to look at his reflection, but as he stopped to scratch he accidentally saw himself in the hallway mirror. A middle-aged man in pyjama bottoms looked out from the glass. In the dimness the hair on his chest made him look like a great ape. He still had some muscle, although the firm physique of his youth was history. He could stand to be a little slimmer around the tummy, too.

His stubbly face had a confused, surprised expression, which made him look stupid. He scowled to bring his features back under control.

He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. For a second he couldn’t see anything. The kitchen had been completely remodelled a couple of years earlier, with money Aino inherited from her father. It was the only corner of the house without measuring errors or other imperfections, only eye-pleasing elements. Pale ceiling panels. Glass cupboard doors. Wood surfaces like dark chocolate. Four chairs around the table. A booster seat covered in food stains on one chair.

Olli opened the refrigerator. There was low-fat bologna, low-fat Gotler sausage, ground beef, tuna, meatballs, peanut butter, milk, yogurt, some strawberry compote that Aino had made, buttermilk, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, eggs, cheese and low-fat frankfurters.

The peanut butter caught his interest.

When was the last time he’d eaten peanut butter? He opened the lid and the kitchen was filled with the thick, sweet scent of it. Peanut butter molecules slipped over the mucous membranes of his nose and sensory impulses raced down his neural pathways and entered his cerebral cortex. Lights went on in the darkest corners of his neural network. A recollection from years past began to crystallize in his mind.

They’re lounging under an apple tree, feasting. Olli is enjoying Aunt Anna’s fresh-baked French bread spread with a layer of peanut butter as thick as his finger. At home in Koirakkala he hardly ever gets to eat peanut butter. When he does, he has to spread it thin or his mother gets nervous.

Grass tickles the soles of his feet. The trunk of the tree feels rough against his back. Insects buzz around them. Bird sounds pierce the greenery.

This is Olli’s seventh summer with the Tourula Five.

Leo and Riku are talking about television shows. Riku’s favourite is The Six Million Dollar Man. Leo likes Columbo better. Anne thinks the best show is Little House on the Prairie . Riku makes a crude comment about Laura Ingalls’s bum. The boys snigger. Anne mutters that she wishes she had Laura Ingalls as a sister instead of a brother who has a personality like that brat Nellie Oleson, and looks like her, too. Leo laughs. Riku doesn’t. It makes Olli smile.

Even in the shade, it’s hot. Silence falls. The Blomrooses don’t feel like talking now. Olli closes his eyes, relaxes and lets his head rest against the tree.

He hears sounds:

The scratch of insects’ legs on apple-tree bark.

The shush of water flowing inside the tree.

The hollow crack of its powerful slow growth.

There are noises coming up from the ground, too. The tree trunk magnifies them and transfers them directly to the bones of his skull and from there to his inner ear. When he lets his ears really tune in and listen, he can hear moles, grubs, beetles and earthworms moving through the soil.

Beneath the sounds of these small creatures, if he concentrates hard, he can hear one more sound: the whisper of the secret passages.

His eyes open and green light falls from the branches.

Olli looks at the dozing Blomrooses.

Karri once said that the ground below Jyväskylä was full of secret passages. There are probably some here, too, right underneath them. In his mind’s eye, Olli can see the roots of the apple tree hanging from a passageway ceiling.

His eyes close again. A dream is pulling at him, and bit by bit he wraps himself in its darkness. His heart is beating too hard. The sound of it is ringing through his head and making its way into the tree, spreading along the roots and underground into the secret passages.

Something deep in the earth wakes up and starts to listen.

His lost dog Timi?

No.

Something darker. It can hear him, is reaching towards him.

Olli breathes in rasping breaths, springs to his feet and throws himself away from the tree.

The Blomrooses rub their eyes and look at him in bewilderment. “Did a wasp sting you?” Riku asks, looking around.

Olli feels foolish. Startled by his own thoughts.

“No, but it tried to,” he says.

He stands in the middle of the yard and the ordinary sounds of Tourula surround him. Someone is chopping wood. A small child squalls. Women talk over each other and laugh. A truck rumbles past. The Blomrooses bicker about something silly. Olli smiles.

Everything he has in Tourula makes him happy. The Blomrooses, Aunt Anna, the garden, the grass, the flowers, the butterflies, the apple tree, the warmth and colour. Summer in Tourula is eternal, because when it starts to end he always leaves.

When he’s with the Blomroos siblings and Karri, everything feels great. And not just great, but meaningful. Time isn’t wasted on nothing, like it is in Koirakkala. In Tourula, every minute is spent in the best possible way.

The window creaks open. Aunt Anna calls them. They run into the house.

Aunt Anna is in the kitchen loading a picnic basket. Morning light is pouring through the windows, making her lemon-yellow dress glow. She is the Blomrooses’ father’s sister, a handsome, motherly woman. Olli can never stop looking at her breasts. The fabric of her dress is thin and the tips of her breasts show through, large and dark like the mint chocolates she sometimes gives them.

“Well, my faithful Five,” Aunt Anna says with a smile in her voice.

Olli is charmed by her way of speaking to them in such a friendly, mischievous tone.

“It looks like you’re all together and ready to go, as soon as that dreamy son of mine gets himself downstairs. I wonder what else I can supply for you. Here’s your lunch. I did my best. I hope it tastes good. If you run out of food just come back for a refill. Would you please carry it, Leo? You’re probably the strongest. Or have Riku and Olli been training over the winter?”

She puckers up her mouth and laughs until her breasts jiggle. The laugh infects the children, too.

The kitchen is full of wondrous aromas that wind their way through the room like the serpent in paradise. They come from the jams, cardamom buns, cakes, pies, rolls, meat pasties, marmalades, cookies and pastries that she endlessly prepares and packs into their picnic lunches.

Olli hopes and trusts that he will never forget the smell of Aunt Anna’s kitchen.

The boys thank her for the picnic basket, nodding politely. Anne is sassy. “It seems like Aunt Anna’s trying to fatten me up till I look like a pig,” she says sulkily.

But you can see in her eyes that she’s as excited about the picnic as the others. Her plaid skirt and short top show off the new shape of her body. She’s grown over the past year, and she has breasts now. Her bottom is a “tight little package”, as Riku said to Olli on the lake shore a couple of weeks ago when the others were out of earshot.