Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

The men laughed.

Olli mumbled something about being in a hurry and smiled apologetically. When he tried to leave, they scolded him for being in such a rush and one of them laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Too much hurry’s bad for the blood pressure. Isn’t that right, boys?”

The others agreed.

Now Olli could smell the cognac on their breath. He said a firm goodbye and moved off so quickly that they made way for him.

The moustached man stumbled and would have fallen if the others hadn’t grabbed him. His hat and umbrella fell on the ground and he stared after Olli in shock.

“Did he hit me?” the man asked, panting and red-faced.

“He didn’t hit you,” the others said, patting him. “Mr Suominen’s just in a hurry and didn’t feel like chatting with us, nice as we were to him.”

Olli mumbled his apologies and ran down the steps. He stopped under the bridge. His temples were throbbing.

Greta was nowhere to be seen.

The gentlemen from the Jyväskylä Club watched him from above, grumbling. Olli wondered if he should go back and offer a proper apology and exchange a few pleasantries with Jyväskylä’s movers and shakers.

Then he changed his mind, and started running upriver.

Still no sign of Greta. When he got to the cemetery he sat down on a bench to rest. The rain was stopping. It was warm, but Olli was shivering. He lit a cigarette, then immediately tossed it away.

Eventually he got up and headed towards home. As he started across Puistokatu he noticed that he no longer had his umbrella with him. He went back to the bench. It was empty.

A little farther down the river shore stood a scruffy-looking cocker spaniel. Unless Olli’s eyes deceived him, it had his umbrella in its mouth.

He tried to approach the dog, but it turned and ran off.

It took Olli fifteen minutes to walk the two kilometres home. When he got there, he climbed to the second floor, winded, and sat down at the computer to look at Greta’s Facebook status.

She had just updated it:

Greta Kara has just come from a walk through the postcard landscape along the shores of Tourujoki, continuing to get to know the old places. A pleasant walk, which nevertheless felt somehow lacking. I guess this cinematic pilgrim was hoping that since she was in the old places she might see an old friend…

Olli wrote a comment on her post, directed more at the Blomrooses than at Greta:

I saw you from the bridge and tried to run after you, but I was held up and lost sight of you. If not for that, you would indeed have seen an old friend…

A moment later Greta’s answer appeared:

Olli! Were you really there? I know it sounds silly, but I was actually hoping the whole time that I would run into you. Maybe I sensed you were nearby. Judging by the past few days, it seems Jyväskylä is a surprisingly small town.

Olli thought long about his response, feverishly wondering if he dared suggest they meet that evening. Would that make up for his mistake, or would the Blomrooses be angry that he took the initiative?

While he was thinking these thoughts, a red number one appeared in the notifications slot at the top of the page. It said: Anne Blomroos posted something on your wall .

Olli went to his own profile.

Anne had posted a picture on his wall, a scanned image of a crayon drawing, by his son. It showed the boy himself and Aino, on the beach. They were both waving happily. At the top of the picture it said, in wobbly letters, HI DADDY .

Along the edges of the picture were dark, threatening-looking shapes. The post was accompanied by a message:

Hello, Olli. Your son asked his mother today when they were going to go home. She answered (beautifully!) that they would go “when these lovely holidays are over”. Then he asked when the lovely holidays would be over. And she patiently explained that it would be as soon as Daddy got all his work completely done at home in Jyväskylä. The dear child (he is the sweetest thing!) thought for a moment and then started to cry a little and asked with his little chin trembling, what would happen if Daddy didn’t get all his work done? What an adorable child!

Your boy really enjoys drawing! (Here’s his latest for you.)

Olli stared at the screen. The hours passed. Sometimes he got up to get a drink of water or take an aspirin. He wrote several messages to Anne and Leo begging, threatening, negotiating, pleading and enquiring in many different ways what Anne meant exactly.

He didn’t send any of them. It was wisest not to annoy the Blomrooses now that he’d already made his first mistake. He was sure he would receive another message if he just waited, and maybe it would offer some clarity.

He tried to pass the time by reading the Facebook profiles of his acquaintances, but at some point he let himself fall asleep.

In the dream he finds a video link on his profile and opens it with a sense of foreboding. The video was taken in a small room. The grainy, blurry image jerks. His son is sitting at a table, drawing. Aino is sitting beside him, her eyes blurred.

When the picture is finished, Aino shows it to the camera. “ Here’s his last picture for you ,” she says in a crackly voice that sounds like an old gramophone.

She smooths the boy’s hair, then takes hold of his wrists. “ I’m so sorry, but I don’t think Daddy got his work done .”

The boy nods in resignation, his eyes downcast.

A girl of about ten years old with blonde hair walks into the picture holding a large pair of scissors. Anne Blomroos. A cute girl, Olli notices. Like a postcard angel. No wonder he had a crush on her as a boy.

Anne looks into the camera, nods to Aino, who obediently holds down the little boy’s arms, and begins to snip his fingers off.

OLLI’S EYES SHOT OPEN.

As he jerked his head up a series of cracks ran down his spine and he gasped for breath until it felt as if his ribcage was about to burst. It took him a moment to realize he had been dreaming. There was no video from Anne Blomroos on his Facebook profile.

But he did have a message from her in his inbox.

Olli’s heart stumbled into an arrhythmic series of thumps. He took a breath and prepared for the worst.

Just as he clicked on the message, the doorbell rang. He ran downstairs. It was a delivery. “Will you sign for this?”

The parcel was about the size of a box of margarine, addressed to Aino Suominen. He carried it to the kitchen table, sat down in a chair a couple of metres away and stared at it in disbelief.

What would the Blomrooses send to him after what had happened? What could be in that package? He tried not to think of his dream. Instead he thought of Schrödinger’s cat.

Finally he started to open the box, feeling like an executioner.

There were no child’s fingers in the box, just a silk handkerchief with the embroidered monogram OS. His initials.

With his legs shaking beneath him, covered in a cold sweat, he returned to the computer and read the message.

Olli my friend, your family sends their greetings. They’re both well. Be on Puistokatu, at the wall of the old cemetery, tomorrow at 7 p.m. Wipe your tears away and take care that your heroine gets her kiss this time. Show some passion. She’s expecting it, although she’s too afraid to show it.

The message ended with a quote from A Guide to the Cinematic Life , the chapter titled ‘Stolen Kisses’:

Of all the crimes one can commit, stealing a kiss may be the most forgivable. Truffaut even named a whole film after it.

Stealing a kiss doesn’t mean forcing a kiss on anyone, but rather that the recipient of the kiss is surprised and has not given any verbal or nonverbal permission. When done right, however, the victim allows the kiss to happen, even if she has done nothing to initiate it, and may even reciprocate if she is not moved to resist. In either case, the kiss stealer should expect to receive a talking-to from her. If a womanly slap on the face seems too high a price to pay, he should forget the whole thing. Ideally, however, the victim’s resistance quickly melts, and a kiss that was stolen to begin with quickly becomes a classic kiss of passion.