Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

Your mission is to buy her an ice cream and make her look forward to your next meeting.

It was clear that Greta had hoped for more from this encounter. He had disappointed her every time. And he was doing it again.

Olli understood her disappointment. He had been behaving like a distant acquaintance who by chance also happened to be her publisher.

He couldn’t think of anything to say. Words failed him.

And Greta was getting ready to leave.

If he failed at his task, his family would suffer.

Then Olli lifted his hands in the air like a praying Muslim, his palms towards the sky, surrendering to his inarticulateness. When there are no words, there are actions.

He looked Greta in the eye, stepped closer and took hold of her slender arm.

Her skin felt cool. Her startled, mint-scented breath brushed his face. Her surprise quickly changed to anger. Olli opened his mouth to explain himself before the situation became unsalvageable.

“Greta…”

Greta was waiting for him to say the right, conciliatory words, just as much as he was. An explosion was growing within the green of her eyes. Each failed encounter had built up the tension, and it was about to snap, one way or another.

Olli had spent the previous night reading the manuscript of the Magical City Guide . Now a passage from the book came into his mind.

And when it did, it activated the part of his brain where all good quotes come from.

Memento mori! Live like you still can, and live in such a way that when the time comes to give it all up, you will know that you have lived. Life is a divine dream, an unexpected gift, a film reel in a camera that’s already running. Just as believers feel close to God when they are in a place like a cathedral, a temple or a mosque, so too, the cinematic possibilities of life are closer to us when we are in the magical places that this book is about. Under the influence of M-particles we can create ourselves anew, free ourselves from the slow continuum and learn to throw ourselves into the moment and surrender to the story that we are becoming at any given moment. So seek out cinematicness for your life in places where the M-particle radiation is strongest.

M-particles and the secret passages might show us that we’re connected. Where there are M-particles there are often also secret passages, and vice versa. So beware, you visitors to magical places, for in the secret passages the M-particle radiation can be dangerously powerful, and for this reason the passages must be avoided if you do happen to find an entrance.

“I’M SORRY, but I can’t let you leave,” Olli whispers, not loosening his grip.

The French tourists climbing the steps look back at them in curiosity.

Greta’s eyes widen and her nostrils flare. Then she relaxes and the angry shadows fade from her face. They stare at each other. Finally she asks with a child’s wonder. “Why can’t you?”

Olli gazes at her solemnly and says, “Because I have to buy you an ice cream. Otherwise something terrible will happen.”

Greta’s jaw drops slightly.

“I see,” she coos. A new sharpness comes over her; a new game has begun. “All right. But only if you can guess what kind of ice cream I want. If you don’t, I’m leaving and we’ll never have anything more to do with each other. I’ll even take my book to another publisher.”

She says this with a smile. But Olli can see that she’s serious and has horrified even herself with what she has said.

“Fine,” Olli says, feigning confidence. He hasn’t the slightest idea what Greta’s favourite ice cream is, but he can play for time.

They start down the steps. At the bottom is an ice cream stand. They don’t say a word, just glance at each other now and then, Greta trying to hide her fear that Olli won’t remember, Olli trying not to look desperate. He has to calm down. His heart is pounding too fast; his ears are roaring so loud he can’t hear.

He can’t help but notice that the cinematic beauty of the woman beside him draws the attention of passers-by. This gives him pleasure, and a fatalistic calm. Whatever will be will be. Everything has its own meaning. He tries to focus on that. Don’t think of what you’ve wagered in the middle of the game.

When they reach the street, Greta sits down on the edge of the blue fountain. Olli goes to the kiosk window and looks at Greta one more time. Underneath her smile she’s like a frightened child.

Olli buys two ice cream cones, pays and turns around with the cones in his hands.

Greta’s eyes sparkle with joy.

Olli answers her smile.

He needs to sit down too, so his legs won’t fail him.

Just a moment earlier he was seeing in his mind’s eye how this meeting could end in catastrophe. Greta, offended at Olli’s forgetting, could leave him standing there at the bottom of the hill. The result: Book Tower would lose the author most important to its future, people would lose their jobs, the kidnappers would take revenge for his failure on Aino and his boy. Olli’s life would be ruined.

Then he remembered something about Greta and ice cream. The closer they got to the bottom of the steps, the clearer it grew in his mind.

And when he stepped up to the ice cream stand, the memory finally opened up completely: he and the girl in the pear-print dress stop at a little kiosk at the corner of Puistokatu and Tellervonkatu, thirty years ago. They’ve come to buy ice cream. When they left the house Greta said she wanted a strawberry ice cream cone. She grabbed Olli’s hand, looked deep into his eyes, and made him vow to remember forever that she never, ever ate any ice cream but strawberry.

Back then he never asked why strawberry, although he had wondered.

He asks now.

Greta demurs for a moment, but eventually says, “You must not remember it, but at the very beginning of our summer together I said I felt like having some ice cream. I didn’t have any money. You had half a markka. Enough to get one ice cream cone at Hjelt’s, which we ate together. It was strawberry, because they were out of everything else.”

They go back up Harju Ridge and sit on a park bench near the steps looking out over the city. People are climbing up and down. Olli remembers something from the Magical City Guide :

M-particle levels on the steps vary from one day to the next, but even at their most ordinary the steps offer a fine view of the great meetings and partings of life.

“So you’re still not tired of this flavour?” Olli asks.

Greta licks her cone and shakes her head. “In Paris, Brazil, Hollywood… everywhere I’ve been I’ve only eaten strawberry. In Bombay I thought I would have to go without, but then I had Amul strawberry ice cream. I was rather weak at the time, and the ice cream helped me cope. I might have died without it. My friends there bought it for me when they found out what it meant to me.”

Greta turns her face away, embarrassed. Her golden hair shines so brightly that it dazzles him.

“Oh, Olli,” she whispers. “We have so much to talk about. More than we could possibly have time to say, or hear, even if we sat here talking for the rest of our lives. And we don’t have… But never mind. You have to go to buy some liver casserole. I’m sure your family is expecting it.”

She gets up, puts on her large movie-star sunglasses, thanks him for the ice cream, and walks away towards the city.

Your mission is to buy her an ice cream and make her look forward to your next meeting.

Olli is left sitting on the bench, thinking. They succeeded in eating ice cream, but will he succeed in the next part of his mission?