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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781786580276 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bonnier Books UK |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2018 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
When he was a child, he responded to smiles with a smile. He had two front teeth in his lower jaw and a dimple in his left cheek. When someone smiled at him, his face melted into sunshine and his dimple appeared so soft and delicious that it was tempting to press a finger into it and tickle gently, just to hear the laughter that shook his entire body.
When he sat in his buggy on the tram, strangers would lean over him, smiling and chatting as if they had always known him. He would smile back and point with his chubby fingers at the trees, buses, diggers and street lamps that were visible beyond the windows and say: 'Dat!' And people looked in the direction in which he was pointing, smiled and said: 'What a lovely tree. What a lovely digger. What a lovely motorbike. What a lovely child.'
When the people got off the tram, shielding their faces from the cold wind and the rain, they smiled for such a long time that they no longer remembered why.
CHAPTER 2
Helsinki, some time later
He listens again to Pink Floyd's 'Nobody Home' – a song which he has listened to many times each day, for years. When the music ends, everything in him feels light. This is the last time.
His smile is light, his fingers lighter than a fly's wings. He stands in the middle of the city, on a roof which he has always wanted to climb. In his left hand is a semi-automatic small-bore rifle. It was astonishingly easy to steal it from the boot of a car parked beside the shooting range. Ever since he decided to put his plan into action, everything has been astonishingly easy.
This is something I'm good at, he'd thought as he filmed his message and posted it online, packed the rifle into its bag and dressed in a black windcheater, black trousers and soft-soled trainers in which he would be able to climb well. The music moved his body; as he left home he felt like taking a couple of high leaps, leaving the mark of his knuckles in the ceiling with his fist, smashing a hole into the ceiling and marking the wall with the sole of his shoe, running nimbly over the cars, blowing obstacles from his path, like dandelion seeds, feeling so intensely in the moment that nothing could check his speed or his strength.
Now his movements are slower than usual, as if everything were happening underwater. The city is his dream and the sounds of police cars, ambulances and escaping people come distantly, from the other side of the water's surface.
The only thing he can see clearly is the woman he is aiming at. The woman is younger than his mother and so ordinary-looking that she could be anybody. Beside her is another woman, so old that she will probably die soon in any case. He rests the weapon against his shoulder and zooms in on the younger woman's head with the variable scope as if he were making a movie.
The weapon fires when you press the trigger. After the first shot you can fire again without reloading. The trigger is cool beneath his finger. Only a small movement is necessary. The click of the trigger and the kick of the rifle butt against your shoulder. His finger is not trembling. He narrows his eyes. The old woman is shouting something at the younger one, who turns her head away.
They may be mother and daughter, he thinks, as he sets the rifle down for a moment, shaking his arms and taking a deep breath as if after a long dive. Then he raises the rifle again and takes aim at the woman, who is holding her hat as she runs for safety.
CHAPTER 3
Laura
I pour some sea salt into an oven dish, scrub a swede clean and set it in the middle of the bed of salt, a round swede-moon. This will be a good night, I think. I have studied the art of positive thinking. Eerik, my husband, would laugh if he knew. Everyone who knows me would probably laugh at me. I have always considered that kind of thing stupid, and said so. But now I have decided to fill my mind with positive thoughts, to smile until my brain begins to feel pleasure, and to love myself so much that it will be easy for others to love me too. Otherwise I won't manage. I am fifty-eight years old and completely healthy. I do yoga in the mornings and lift weights in the evenings. I very probably have decades of life left and I have decided to learn to enjoy them.
I am on my way to the university to talk about the climate catastrophe. After that I will fetch Eerik from the airport. In the evening our son Aslak is coming round for dinner.
I lay the table with mismatching plates and put a tall red candle in a wine bottle. It makes me laugh a little: in almost forty years together Eerik and I haven't acquired proper flower vases, candlesticks or complete sets of crockery. Whenever I put a flower or a candle in an empty bottle I remember what it was like when we had little money and plenty of time, what it was like to go to parties thrown by people we didn't know, to wake up to languid Saturday mornings with friends, to order pizza and watch movies whose words we all knew by heart.
I am making Aslak's favourite dish, swede braised until it is soft, then fried until it is sweet and crispy. With the exception of a short period in his youth, Aslak has been a vegetarian all his life, and I am extraordinarily happy about this. As a child he would begin to cry if he saw newspaper advertisements for marinated chicken strips or wafer-thin slices of ham.
'How can anyone live in a world in which living creatures are made into strips and slices!' he said, his tears falling from his cheeks onto the newspaper. I took the paper from the floor and folded it up, stroked his head and said: 'My love, the world is always changing. You can be part of making it a better place.'
I put the swede in the oven, set the timer for two hours and pull on the clothes that I nearly always wear when I am lecturing to young people: a simple dress, thick tights and high boots. I glance at the mirror. I have short hair whose iron-grey stripes gleam, depending on the day, bravely or sorrowfully, and there are wrinkles around my eyes – wrinkles I haven't got used to. I hardly use any make-up, but nevertheless, occasion- ally at the chemist's or in an airport tax-free shop, I find myself reading the label of a new cream and hoping that the cream might be the solution. That it might return me to a time when everything was supposed to be possible.
Soon we are sitting at the sturdy, wooden kitchen table. When Eerik and I moved into this flat, we wanted a long table for a large group of friends. Through the years I often planned dinner parties which we would hold when we had time, when everyday life loosened its grip, when Aslak was going through a better period. I came up with complicated dishes and thought about how to invite friends who didn't know each other. We would eat for a long time and open one bottle of wine after another, the children would say goodnight to everyone in their pyjamas, the evening would continue on into the night and we would talk and laugh and in the morning we would wake up having had too little sleep, but full of energy after a happy evening. Those dinners never happened, and we sat around the big table, a long way from one another.
At that table Aava and Aslak, in their high chairs, ate their first solid food – half a teaspoon of mashed sweet potato. At that table they blew bubbles in their milk glasses and giggled when we told them not to. Years later they sat silently in their places, I talked too much to sustain the conversation, both Eerik and the children chewed their food with glum faces and I was sure that he was thinking of grinding me with his teeth.
I imagine our conversation.
'Aslak. You can't go on like this.'
I say it out loud. The words thud into the room where there is no one but me; they take with them the weight that has spread within me. It has made my breathing laborious and my steps heavy.
'We won't abandon you. We want to help you find somewhere where you can work out what is weighing you down. You're young, sensitive and intelligent and you have a lot to give. We hope that you will have a good life and be able to do the things that are important to you. Don't you want to do that too?'
I think of Eerik's so very familiar posture, which over the years has become ever so slightly stooped, as if he were carrying a burden that was too heavy. Eyes the colour of a winter sky and a gaze that, even in the happiest of moments, has a trace of disquiet. Fine wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, and a chin, covered in grey stubble, which he always rubs when he hears something he doesn't like. I think of Aslak's head, sunk between his shoulders, eyes hidden behind his heavy eyelids, teeth biting his lower lip. I think how everything in him could withdraw still further inside, how his whole body could look for a tortoise's shell to protect it, under which it could hide.
CHAPTER 4
A cold wind penetrates my cape-like coat. I wrap it more tightly around my body and try to ring Aslak. I want to make sure that he really is coming, that he is not planning to cancel our arrangement on some pretext whose implausibility would show clearly how little he values me and Eerik.
This happens often. We ask Aslak round, he promises to come, but he does not come. We pretend to be disappointed and suggest a new time, feeling guilty about how relieved we are. Meetings with Aslak are complicated and awkward. I hope for something that will never happen, and Eerik is desperately correct. Even Aslak tries, when he is in the mood, to play the part of a grown-up son. After such occasions Eerik rolls a joint, although he has been trying to give up smoking for almost thirty years. I go for a run, running such a long way in the forest that the world grows dim as if I were drunk.
All the same I go on arranging get-togethers whose spoken aim is to cheer Aslak up and to show that we care. The unspoken aim is that something should finally change.
On Mother's Day I persuaded Aslak to come into the centre of town for brunch. I had booked a table in a restaurant in a renovated banking hall; in front of it seagulls strutted and inside it sat well-dressed families in which even the small children behaved well.
I was wearing a sea-green silk dress, Eerik straight trousers and his best shirt; I had also bought Aslak a new sweater. He arrived with his hair greasy and his skin pale and waxy, dressed in a bobbly T-shirt that smelled of sweat.
'He can't come looking like that,' whispered Eerik, but I hugged Aslak. That day the sky was bright, the smell of the sea was in the air and I had decided to be a happy mother.
I grasped Aslak by the shoulders and piloted him into the restaurant. Eerik paced past me, his eyes on the floor, and the waiter directed us to the table with a smile despite the pungent smell emanating from Aslak.
We ate many tiny starters, a hot main course, cheese and a dessert. Eerik was silent throughout the entire meal and I talked constantly, smiling until my cheeks ached. I passed food to Aslak and ordered drinks, champagne in honour of the occasion, although Eerik raised his eyebrows: in his opinion it was better to drink water with Aslak. I put my arm around Aslak and talked about books and movies he knew nothing about, bands that he had listened to years ago, and memories, the few we had in common that I dared speak about.
'Do you remember when we were on the cycling holiday in Copenhagen? You and Aava sat in a box bike eating melon?
'Do you remember when you learned to skate – you let go of the support and suddenly raced round the rink?
'Do you remember when you programmed your first robot ... when you wrote an essay and the teacher gave you full marks?'
After the meal I paid the bill, got up with a smile and went to the toilet, locked the door and burst into tears. When I returned, Aslak had already gone. Eerik stood silently by the cloakroom waiting for me, then walked silently out before me.
Aslak doesn't answer. This often happens. When I try to let Aslak take responsibility and don't pay his bills, I cannot reach him for weeks and finally I become so anxious that I take it upon myself to look after all his expenses. I don't tell Eerik about this. He thinks I treat Aslak like a child and that is why he seems stuck in the nest, a fledgling grown enormous who doesn't know how to fly. I leave Aslak a message and run to the metro station.
Beside the entrance is an old beggarwoman on her knees; I turn to give her money and she says thank you in Finnish. I'm startled.
'What a sentimental nationalist you are,' Eerik would say if he was with me. He feels it is perverse of me to avoid gypsy beggars as if I did not see them but to stop whenever I see an elderly Finnish person with a cup in their hand.
When I look more closely at the woman, I notice that she has applied rouge under her sharp cheekbones and wound her scarf around her neck in the manner of French women twenty years ago. For a moment I see myself in her place, in a too-thin coat with a cardboard cup in front of me, trying in spite of the circumstances to look dignified.
I want to speak to my daughter Aava. She lives in Mogadishu and never calls me. Not even when the place where she lives, a small island surrounded by a wall and high watchtowers whose barracks are home to foreign workers, was bombed and her neighbour died.
I am always the one that makes the approach, Aava the one who ends the conversation. Aava leaves and doesn't come back for a long time, pays a quick visit to Finland and only has time for one meeting, even that a brief one, during which she glances around her as if checking for an escape route. When I suggest another meeting, a joint day out or trip, a couple of days when we could get to know each other again, Aava leaves again. She goes to countries where there is too much blood and too little water, to camps quickly jerry-built amid wars, their dry streets swarming with children whose parents were born in the same camp.
I am proud of Aava. My daughter has the courage to go wherever she wants, to survive anywhere. I would like to say this to her. I would also like to say that you don't always have to cope, and when you can't bear it any more, you can come home. I tried once.
'Do you really not get it? It's home I want to stay away from,' Aava said, and I smiled as I learned to do when I was a child and something inside me was crushed.
I love Aava, of course. And admire her. But my admiration is not as pure as I would like it to be. Aava is a better version of myself. She does important work all over the world and lives a life that I thought for years that I would live sometime. Aava doesn't have to negotiate her decisions with anyone, and she doesn't know what it feels like when passion fades. When she comes home, she can close the door and be quiet; she can go whenever she wants to and mourn her own sorrows alone.
CHAPTER 5
A ava doesn't respond. The metro station door opens; warmth blows in my face, and the smell of urine that has dried in the corners. Everything is fine with me, I think. In my life many things are almost ridiculously fine.
Three young girls are obstructing the escalator and I can't get past them. Hanging from their shoulders are gleaming bags from a designer shop, in their ears headphones decorated with diamonds. Something in their faces makes it clear that it is not worth asking them to step aside. I try to imagine the sounds that are flooding into their ears: are they listening to the streets of Brooklyn or the shores of the Maldives or a secret whispered by a beautiful boy?
The girls' faces glow with health; their bodies are muscular and trim in just the right way. They touch each other gently, and everything about them breathes a deep satisfaction and confidence that the glances directed at them are full of approval.
A year ago a young woman – perhaps the same age as these girls – shot three people in the Helsinki metro. Unlike most other gunmen, she did not leave any clue, any message about her thoughts. According to the policemen who examined the case, there was so little trace of her background that it looked as if she did not exist. She was twenty years old, had dropped out of school, was not in or out of employment, her parents had died, she lived in a flat inherited from her mother, did not socialise or use social media; no one claimed to be her friend. The neighbours said that she went orienteering once a week in the forests near her home. Almost nothing else was known about her.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "When Time Runs Out"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Elina Hirvonen.
Excerpted by permission of Bonnier Zaffre Ltd..
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