Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

Olli lit a cigarette and offered it to Karri. He shook his head. “Thanks, but I don’t smoke. That was Greta’s vice, not mine.”

Olli looked at Karri’s neck, where his teeth marks were still visible, and sighed.

Karri smiled. “I’m sorry. I know that this is all strange to you. No doubt you won’t be able to get it into your head that Greta is gone, and that this is Karri sitting in front of you. My hair is short and black now, I’m wearing different clothes, the red is gone from my fingernails, but…”

“Yeah,” Olli muttered.

Karri shrugged and said, “Actually, Karri is no more real than Greta. He’ll have to step aside soon, too. Greta was created in a bombardment of M-particles to be a girl that you could love. I gave her all my love for you and it became her defining characteristic. Karri, on the other hand, was a boy, like his mother wanted. Both are only half the truth. I’m going to find myself a new name in the secret passages, but for now you can call me Karri.”

Olli looked at the graceful creature sitting across from him and said, “But I loved Greta.”

It sounded like an accusation, and it was something like it.

Karri took his hand, looked at him thoughtfully, and said, “And Greta loved you, Olli. That was what she was created for. As a matter of fact, she loved you a thousand times more than you could ever love her back. The years spent without you were torture to her.

“She could only bear it because she believed that in the end the two of you would get to be together, one way or another. And you did. We arranged it. I arranged it, for Greta. But I knew Greta better than anyone did. She expected a lot from your love. She expected too much. Over these past few weeks you learnt to love her so much that it was just barely enough for her, and in the end she dared to be happy. But in a year, or two at most, your feelings would inevitably start to fade, while she was destined to love you more and more as time went by. Do you understand what that would have done to her?”

Olli nodded, but he didn’t understand completely. Although in his chat last night Karri had tried to explain what was happening and why.

He patted Olli’s hand now and explained gently, as if to a child: “You read her book. Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. We thought that a beautiful ending would be the right thing to do for you, and…”

“You said we ,” Olli interrupted. “Who’s we?”

“Us,” Karri said, confused. “Me and Anne Blomroos. Didn’t I mention her? Greta went to shoot the Blomrooses—she was always so dramatic in her cinematicness—but she was also too weak to carry out what she came to do. That was why I had to free her from that horrible Dr Engel, and take care of the situation with the Blomrooses.”

“My Greta is not a murderer,” Olli said stiffly.

Karri’s eyes flashed and an expression came over his face that Olli could never have imagined on Greta’s face. “Well, she certainly would have shot Anne, who tortured her thirty years ago, without batting an eyelid, but she probably would have decided to take pity on those foolish brothers and got herself into a lot of trouble. That’s why I pushed her aside, shot Riku and Leo, and made a deal with Anne.”

“A deal?”

“Yes. Anne would use her resources to arrange it so that Greta’s greatest wish, her one and only hope in this world, would come true, and she could spend the rest of her life with you and experience complete happiness and love. Then, after the beautiful ending, and preferably before Anne herself died, I would step in to fulfil Anne’s dearest hope.”

Olli walked through the Apple Gate onto Hämeenkatu. A taxi was waiting. Snow had started to fall. A scooter pulled up in front of the house. A gaunt but cinematically elegant blonde woman dismounted—the same woman Olli had talked with at the film club.

Anne Blomroos.

“Well, if it isn’t Olli,” she said. “My dear old friend. You’re still here. I thought the show was already over. The heroine died completely happy and so on. Mission accomplished, and just in the nick of time. Olli, you should be at home now. I’m sure you don’t want your family to come home to an empty house.”

Olli didn’t say anything. Anne gave him a peck on the cheek and whispered, “Now don’t be a sourpuss. Guess who’s on her way to the secret passages?”

For a moment Anne Blomroos looked like the young girl who years ago happened to take a ride on the same carousel as Olli. She flashed him another smile and went into the house, where the person Olli had known first as Karri, then as Greta, the person who had now become someone else, was waiting for her.

Olli watched the snowflakes fall, got into the taxi and rode to Mäki-Matti. He went into the house, climbed the stairs, turned on the computer and looked at his wife’s Facebook profile.

Aino Suominen and her son are on their way home.

Then he opened his own page. His status was empty.

What’s on your mind? Facebook asked.

AFTER THEY MAKE LOVE they are overcome with a weariness as big as the universe. Greta is falling asleep. Olli’s still awake.

At some point Greta lets go of his neck, turns and sighs. She is pale but calm. Her breath is fairly steady now, though shallow and quick. The marks of Olli’s teeth are distinct on her pale skin, just as she wanted. Olli, too, has deep, bloody scratches on his back and sides. I hope that at my funeral the marks of my fingernails will remind you of one thing: the most important part of our love story won’t be that I died, but that I lived, through you, and for you …

Greta smiles in her sleep. Olli smiles at the sleeping woman. For a little while everything is all right.

After a moment’s hesitation, he puts on his slippers and goes downstairs. He uses the toilet, drinks a glass of mineral water, eats a pear, sits down at the dining room table and turns on the computer. He can spend a few minutes on Facebook while Greta gets some rest.

Aino’s profile has a new travel photo. Aino and the boy look straight into the camera, sunburnt and exhausted. Their eyes ask: Why can’t we come home?

The M-particles ease Olli’s guilt. They show him in a filmic light. Enthralled to the mission he’s been given by the kidnappers, Olli Suominen may be a selfish cinematic character, in some sense even a traitor, but it’s all for the sake of a larger-than-life love, and there’s nothing a cinematic person can do about a sequence of dramatic events once it’s set in motion. All’s fair in love and war.

Then he notices that he has a new Facebook alert:

Karri has confirmed you as a friend on Facebook.

A chill goes through him. His hands feel numb and he sits there for a moment. He goes to light a cigarette, takes a drag and goes back to the computer to look at Karri Kultanen’s profile.

The profile photo is a sculpture of a naked youth. Olli remembers seeing it in person when he was at the Louvre. It’s called Sleeping Hermaphroditus. It was sculpted by Bernini sometime in the 1600s, on a commission from a cardinal. The sculpted figure had a woman’s breasts and a penis. When Olli noticed this at the Louvre it gave him a start, which made the French publishers and the Swedish literary agent he was with burst into laughter.

Olli looks at Karri’s information, which doesn’t mention his birthday, gender or hometown. All that’s there is his favourite quote, which Olli recognizes. It’s from Ovid’s Metamorphoses :