Pasi Jääskeläinen - Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

How are you, Olli? According to your Facebook status, you live in Jyväskylä and you’re married. Do you have any children? And, hey—is it true you’re a publisher now? What kinds of book do you publish? Novels?

Let’s keep in touch (when my busy schedule allows)!

Olli started writing his answer.

After a couple of sentences, his eyes came to rest on the eyes of Olli Suominen, publisher and parish-council member, stiff in black and white, staring at him from the photo on the wall. The man in the photo had a career and a family to support and plenty more urgent things to do than bombard a beloved of his youth with messages.

With his cheeks burning, Olli closed his Facebook page, did a couple of hours of work, and left the office.

He had left his umbrella in a bookshop on his lunch hour, and now he needed one. It was raining so hard that water was flowing down Kauppakatu. Cars and bicycles splashed the people on the pavement. Olli’s trouser legs were soaked, and he jumped back into the shelter of the building.

Finally, he ran across the street. His shoes slopped with water. His socks were drenched. He hurried to the next street for the shelter of the linden trees that lined the old church park.

The stone entrance of a bank offered safety. There were already three shivering old women there who greeted the parish councillor as they would a great gentleman. Olli answered their greeting heartily. They were flattered.

The next dash took him to the Forum shopping centre.

A passageway between the florist and the optician led to the inner courtyard. Teenagers were gathered against the wall watching the river of harried, middle-aged people flowing from work to the shops and from the shops to their homes. Two youngsters in black leather stood leaning against each other in the middle of the courtyard, oblivious to anything but each other, and the kiss they had abandoned themselves to. Olli remembered the film The Wild One , and Kathie’s words to Johnny: I wish I was going someplace. I wish you were going someplace. We could go together .

Olli descended the steps, crossed the lower level and took the escalator to the basement shops, which included Jyväs-brella, the pearl of the Forum. Olli stepped inside and started looking at the umbrella selection.

The owner was pottering behind the counter—a large woman with black hair teased into a wild tangle who was always sweating, though she wore gauzy dresses and went around the shop barefoot.

The back wall of the shop was covered with a large poster of a seashore. After the first time he went in, Olli had a dream where the woman was part of the poster. She was standing at the edge of the water holding up her skirt and looking out to sea. In his dream, Olli had walked up to the poster and the woman had turned, stepped out of the picture into the shop, and started rearranging the umbrellas.

The shopkeeper recognized her regular customer and came to assist him with swinging steps. Sweat poured down her neck in branching streams that melted together again as they reached between her ample breasts.

The salty scent that surrounded her reminded Olli of a childhood trip to the Mediterranean shore. On the very first day of the trip the tide had carried his blue toy boat away. He cried over it for three days. He was only consoled when a local fisherman made up a story and his mother translated it: the boat belonged to the beautiful mermaids now, and whenever they played with it they would think about how much they loved the pale-haired Finnish boy who had sent it to them.

“Some weather we’re having,” the umbrella seller said hoarsely.

Olli nodded. Phrase number one. The woman was interesting, in a burlesque sort of way, but she never said anything original or surprising. Her eyes were peculiar, though. They sometimes made him think of a forest, other times of the Mediterranean, and when he looked into them he felt as if he were just about to remember something.

“Sure is raining today. Nice weather for an umbrella dealer, but not so great for everyone else,” the woman laughed.

Phrase number two.

Olli decided that this time he was going to buy a perfectly ordinary, traditional black umbrella. He paid. As the woman gave his bank card back their hands touched and they looked each other in the eye a little longer than felt quite natural.

The woman’s hands were hot and damp. Playfulness flashed in her eyes. Olli remembered a dream from several nights before:

He steps into the umbrella shop. Aino and the boy are with him. Aino is wearing a ludicrously large sun hat and the boy has on a sailor suit. The shopkeeper is dancing and sweating. She twists and shakes her body, to make her flesh obey her, panting like a dying bear.

Olli can see that it’s because of the pear-print dress. She has put it on although it’s much too small for her. Now it’s stuck and she’s trying to dance her way out of it.

The dress is ripping a little more with each movement. Olli approaches her, apologizes for disturbing her and says that he’s going to the beach with his family and that they need a parasol.

The woman shakes her head, fluffs her hair, smiles, dances over to him and gives him a noisy kiss on the cheek.

Just then, the dress rips open.

Her left breast pops out. It’s enormous and white and it’s splashing milk in every direction.

Olli’s son laughs out loud and runs after the woman all around the shop trying to catch the drops of milk in his hands. Aino taps Olli on the arm, points to the woman’s breast and shouts excitedly, “Sweetheart, that’s the exact colour of white that I want for our bedroom walls! Look at it closely! Otherwise you’ll forget when you go to the paint shop.”

Water is pouring onto the floor. The poster of the seashore is leaking, and the sea is sloshing into motion. They’re already standing in seawater up to their waists, and the umbrellas are drifting away.

Then a darker patch of blue flashes in the poster picture. It moves with the water and disappears under the surface. Olli mentions it to Aino, who nods, takes a breath, and dives after it.

Her sun hat is left bobbing on the surface of the water and floats away.

The bare-breasted woman dances until the fabric of her dress finally gives way and unpeels in strips.

She stops dancing. She’s naked. Her green, surprisingly long pubic hairs flutter in the water like seaweed. They spread on the current through the shop and wrap themselves around Olli’s legs.

The shreds of pear-printed fabric slither with the current out of the shop, hissing as they go.

Olli remembers his son, now. He doesn’t see him anywhere. He looks into the woman’s eyes and trembles.

The woman pulls him close to her. Her body is soft. Olli sinks into it and feels calmer. They kiss. They’re both crying; she has lost all of her umbrellas, and Olli has lost his son.

Then she sighs, tells Olli to lower his head and puts one of her breasts in his mouth. Milk is flowing out of it. She whispers that it’s salty like seawater, but it frees you of all sorrows.

Olli drinks.

She strokes his hair.

Olli can see that there is a menacing shadow approaching under the water. He tears himself away from the woman and makes as if to escape.

But the shadow is Aino. She rises to the surface and shakes the water from her hair. When she smiles, a gentle light radiates from her face.

Aino places a blue toy boat in Olli’s hands and whispers, “Look what I found, darling. Don’t let the mermaids take it away again. I had to make a dear sacrifice to St Anthony to get it back. But I have to go now. Our little boy is waiting all alone at the bottom of the sea.”

Olli tries to take hold of his wife’s hand, but she’s already gone.