Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

“There’s no reason to be nervous,” Olli assured her. He opened his briefcase and took the printed manuscript out. “The first part looks good. I think it’s going to be a fine book. Though it needs polishing, of course. Here are my comments. Don’t be frightened. These are just my thoughts and ideas. Just suggestions that can, and should, be discussed. The main thing I’ve been thinking about are the references to secret passages.”

Greta’s brow furrowed. “Oh?”

“Don’t you think they might be a bit confusing for readers?”

“Confusing?”

Greta looked at Olli with such amused disbelief that he felt confused.

He thought frantically, hiding his struggle behind a professional smile.

The whole time he was sitting there he tried to find something familiar in the face he had watched, caressed, kissed thirty years ago. But the face remained that of a stranger. Not that the years had changed Greta—they had taken a toll on his memory. He remembered many things wrongly, including the face of his beloved.

“Yes, confusing,” Olli said. “It is a book of non-fiction, after all. A city guide. Everything but the secret passages is based on facts, a charming description of the city, which will help readers get to know Jyväskylä from a new angle. Why confuse them with this secret passage thing?”

Greta let her cigarette burn down between her index and middle fingers. She put it out, got up and went to look at Jyväskylä at dusk, where the lights were already coming on. She rested her left hand on the railing and lifted her right. She put her index finger to her lips.

The air had cooled. Olli went to stand next to her, thrust his hands in his pockets and waited for her answer.

Finally Greta closed her eyes, wiped her brow, and whispered. “ How can you stand here beside me and pretend not to remember? Not to know that my heart is breaking for you? That your face is the wonderful light burning in all this darkness? …”

Olli stiffened.

Then he recognized the words. “ Wuthering Heights . Heathcliff’s lines. Played by Laurence Olivier. Directed by William Wyler in 1939. I saw it at the film club. Very good movie. But Merle Oberon’s lines would suit you better.”

Greta’s mouth curled into a smile. “Did you know that they designed a new spotlight just for lighting Merle Oberon? She had been in a car accident in London and had scars on her face. Unfortunate for an actress. But the special lighting made it so that the scars didn’t show in the film. The cinematographer who designed the light was her future husband. It was true love.”

Then Greta turned and looked him in the eye and asked, “Have you forgotten Tourula?”

“Of course I haven’t,” Olli said.

A light blazed up in her sea-green eyes. Olli could see now that it was the same green that glowed in the eyes of the tousle-headed umbrella vendor.

“I do remember Tourula. The Tourula Five. Our game of secret passageways,” Olli said. “But let’s leave them out of Magical City Guide . It will be better without fairy tales.”

Greta looked away, as if she heard distant music.

Olli didn’t know what she expected of him. Before he could organize his thoughts, she took the manuscript, kissed Olli on the cheek and asked him to call her a taxi. “So. We’ll think about it,” she said, and shot him a strange look.

Olli’s stomach hurt as they rode down in the elevator and exchanged a squeeze of the hand at the anti-aircraft gun. Greta’s hand felt cool.

The taxi came.

Greta got in and rode away.

Olli walked home.

He ate some supper, brushed his teeth, went upstairs, put on his pyjamas and crawled into bed.

A disturbing feeling. Olli’s eyes open. Adrenalin starts to seep into his body. He raises his head and sees that a painting has appeared on the bedroom wall.

The Sleeping Girl .

Olli looks for an explanation. Maybe Aino has bought a copy of the Sleeping Girl as a surprise for him. Quite a coincidence. She also bought A Guide to the Cinematic Life without knowing that her husband and the author were once lovers.

Then Olli thinks of a better explanation: he’s dreaming. The girl in the pear-print dress herself steps out of the dark, takes his hand, pulls him up and leads him away.

His body follows hers as if weightless.

He looks behind him. The bedroom recedes. Aino is sitting on the edge of the bed swinging her feet and waving happily. She yells, “ See you later, dear! Have fun! ”

The soles of Olli’s feet lightly touch a wood floor and he realizes he is in the room in the old house next to the Touru River. Their secret meeting place. There’s the dusty piano and the bed.

Greta is still holding his hand. Olli can smell her perfume and the cigarette she just smoked. Every detail is precise and vivid.

“I couldn’t wait any longer,” Greta says. “Were you thinking you might not come?”

She flirts with him, circling him, touching and examining him, teasing, gathering impressions like seashells on the shore. The floorboards creak under her steps. Her dress rustles. Olli can see the pores on her face and the little cinnamon-coloured nuggets in the green of her eyes. Nothing could be more real. Her face and his feelings trace themselves into his consciousness as if the memories were drawn with a tattoo needle.

This time he will remember.

The girl stops and reaches her light, cool arms around the back of his neck. Olli’s fingers travel up her spine and feel her vertebrae, her shoulder blades, the hollow at the nape of her neck. Joy ignites on her lips and spreads to her eyes. She presses her mouth against his throat. Olli closes his eyes. Her tongue is hot and wet. She presses tighter against him. Olli breathes through her hair. This is what gold smells like, he thinks.

Then someone begins to shriek like a seagull.

Olli.

Greta is biting him.

He struggles.

Her teeth sink deep into his throat. The darkness sways. Blood floods over his skin. Olli grabs the girl by the hair and tears her away from him. Her green eyes are full of tears, her mouth dark with blood.

“ Did I hurt you? ” she whispers. She has turned cold and sardonic. “ Forgive me, my love, but the pain you feel is but a hint of what I feel. Oh, yes, and give my regards to St Anthony .”

The girl steps forward and pushes Olli. He topples onto his back.

The floor gives way.

He falls.

Olli sat up in bed. It felt like an angry gorilla was pounding at the inside of his ribcage. He felt his neck and stared at the bedroom wall.

No bite.

And no painting. Just the mirror.

He pressed his head into his pillow and tried to go back to sleep. It was no use. Something wasn’t right. He’d had an uneasy feeling for days. Now the feeling was stronger. There was something he wasn’t noticing.

He was in bed alone.

He turned towards Aino’s side of the bed, scrambled across and looked over the edge of the bed at the floor. There was nothing there but a pair of striped ankle socks.

He got up and went through the house, looking into every room at least three times.

Aino and the boy were clearly gone.

OLLI TRIED CALLING Aino’s number, of course.

When he did, the Turkish March started to play in the kitchen. He followed the sound, puzzled.

He thought he was reacting to the situation with calm rationality—there was no cause for panic, after all—but the pale, pyjamaed man he glimpsed in the mirrors told him otherwise.

Olli found Aino’s phone on top of the refrigerator. It was a phone she’d bought around the time their son was born. Olli had offered to buy her a new phone but she didn’t want one, since the old one still worked. The phone kept ringing. That confused Olli, as did the message on the screen: Olli calling .