Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

He feels like a coward, wants to add: P.S. Right now I’m living in the Wivi Lönn house with my lover and I want a divorce, but hey, there’ll be time to sign all the papers when you get back .

He remembers something he read in A Guide to the Cinematic Life :

A person who surrenders to cinematicness will inevitably experience shocks to reality from the change of perspective, and unfortunately those whose lot is to become less important in the scheme of things will be the casualties.

Greta’s profile is updated every day. Her prevailing mood is apparent in her posts:

Greta Kara and a lost summer reawakened (for a moment) under an umbrella in rainy Lounais Park.

Greta Kara with the summer of youth sleeping beside her. Once lost, long missed, newly found.

Greta Kara made love for breakfast. Now she’s combing the cornflakes out of her hair and secretly crying at all the beauty, because beauty fades.

Greta Kara wants to love! Ilsa’s lines: “Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time.”

Greta Kara would like to be happy, but?… Oh, these awful premonitions…

Her most recent update was written a few hours earlier in the day. It says: Greta Kara would tell you a love story, but she doesn’t yet know the ending .

Olli writes a comment on the post: Here’s looking at you, kid. I’m coming back to bed. I’ll wake you up and kiss you and then we’ll write another erotic scene for your story …

When he walks up the perfect curve of the staircase, Greta is awake. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, examining her body as if she’s never seen it before.

Olli watches in wonder as she touches her breasts and thighs and arms. In the light of the garden lamps through the window she looks more ghost than human. As he touches the skin of her back, he feels the thin scars. The room is cool. Greta’s skin is cool as well.

Greta turns and looks at Olli as if she doesn’t know him, her eyes dark. Finally she breaks into a smile and whispers, “Olli… She’s asleep now, but I woke up and found myself here. I was just looking at her while I waited for you. She’s beautiful. I hope she pleases you. And this house. This is the one you wanted, isn’t it?”

There is a peculiar expression on her face as she pulls Olli’s pyjamas down, continuing to speak in such a low voice that he can just barely hear it. “She’s tired and worried, poor thing. Let’s not wake her. Let me do this now. I’ve waited so long. Don’t worry. I know how to do it.”

Olli doesn’t like this new game of hers. There’s something frightening about it, something repellent.

Then it occurs to him that it might not be a game. Greta doesn’t seem to be completely awake. She’s behaving like a sleepwalker.

But Olli doesn’t resist when she lays him down on the bed, touches his body everywhere, wondering at it like a child with a new toy, and finally takes him inside her with her face glowing in joyous surprise.

Since moving into the Wivi Lönn house with Greta, Olli hasn’t dreamt about the girl in the pear-print dress, or anything else. This seems natural to him—his life is like a dream now, so why would he have dreams?

Then, after making love to Greta in this strange state, he does have a dream that lingers troublingly in his mind.

In the dream, he wakes up to a humming sound and sits up in the bed at the Wivi Lönn house. Greta is sleeping beside him. He can see the dark autumn garden through the window. Everything is just as it is in reality, except that at the end of the bed there’s a spinning wheel, and the three umbrella vendors are sitting around it.

The large, dark woman from Jyväs-brella is naked. She’s sweating and milk is dripping from her breasts as she spins her wild, overgrown pubic hair into green yarn.

Maura with the golden hair is measuring out the yarn and checking its quality.

The woman from the Pukkala umbrella shop is smoking a cigarette, her hair in a bun, her face paler than before, her profile remarkably similar to that of the woman sleeping in the bed beside him. Olli is startled when the woman from the umbrella shop suddenly shoots him an icy stare and holds the glowing end of her cigarette near the green strand of yarn, which starts to smoulder.

Then the sleeping Greta stiffens, stops breathing and begins to go pale. The gold of her hair changes to the colour of hay after a frost.

Maura grabs the smoking woman’s hand and shakes her head. Not yet , she seems to say. The smoking woman gives in and leaves the yarn alone.

The colour returns to Greta’s face and hair and she sighs in her sleep.

The next day Greta is playing the piano again. A cold rain lashes the garden. No snow, at least not yet. Olli sits on the little sofa next to the piano reading Rossetti: Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land …

Then he puts the book aside, lights a cigarette, smokes for a while and asks: “What about today? Are you completely happy?”

Greta doesn’t answer. Her face tenses as she stretches for the notes.

“These hands,” she mutters.

“What about them?”

“The clumsy things don’t want to play Chopin today,” she says. “Maybe I should play ‘Chopsticks’. Dr Engel knew how to play it. I taught it to him. Although he knew it by the name Der Flohwalzer —the Flea’s Waltz.”

She’s trying to sound amused but when she stops playing and turns to look at Olli there’s panic in her eyes. “I think I’m sick. This has happened several times before. I just suddenly can’t control my own hands. I feel as if I’m falling into a deep, dark hole.”

Olli helps her to the sofa.

“Maybe it’s the flu,” Olli says, surprised at how unconcerned and sensible he manages to sound.

“Yeah,” Greta sighs. “Maybe I’m just coming down with something. Take me in your arms. Hold me tight. I feel cold and dizzy. Don’t let me fall. Please don’t let go.”

A cold sweat breaks out on her forehead. It’s clear that she’s about to faint.

“Wait a moment,” Olli says, laying her down on the sofa. “I’m going to call a taxi and get you to a doctor. Or maybe we should go straight to the hospital.”

Greta grabs his sleeve and says in an urgent whisper, “No. I don’t want to go to the hospital, I want to stay here. I have my own doctor. Call him. I got a letter about it. I think my French publisher hired him when he heard that I was coming to Jyväskylä. He wanted to make sure I got good care way up here in the godforsaken north. There’s a phone number in the letter. It’s on the night table.”

Dear Miss Kara,

Welcome to Jyväskylä! I am writing to inform you that I will be at your disposal here for the duration of your stay, should you ever need a physician. I also make house calls. My services are free of charge, and will be covered by the publishers, to whom it is important that your health is attended to. Please do call if you need me, at the number below.

THE DOCTOR ARRIVES an hour later. Olli goes out to the street to meet him.

Dr Oksanen is a greying, bespectacled man with warm eyes who fidgets nervously as he introduces himself. He takes a large De Boissy doctor’s bag from the back seat of his Mercedes, walks through the Apple Gate and into the house, and climbs puffing up the stairs to where Greta is waiting in bed.

It takes him two hours to give Greta a complete physical examination. At her request, Olli sits the whole time on a chair next to the bed where she can see him. Dr Oksanen peers into her mouth and ears, feels her glands, draws a blood sample, makes notes, pokes her with pins, talks with her and flips through a thick file with her name on it.