questions about its manufacture and marketing had been accumulating.
She had a conversation of some length with the managing director, stopping from time to time in the warm lights of the shop windows to look at the displays. Clothes, shoes, delicatessen. The managing director seemed to take it for granted that he could bother her with clauses and their necessary rewording late in the evening.
At the end of the conversation he thanked her and asked her to turn up punctually for tomorrow’s meeting although, unlike him, she was always punctual. It had turned cool.
Two excavators stood outside the last clapboard house at the end of the shopping arcade. Renovations to the gas mains, according to the letter put through all doors by the municipality. The works would be finished in two weeks’ time, it said. Two weeks. Two weeks ago Kalevi had been alive, not that she had noticed it. Only now did it occur to her that his death left something missing, although she didn’t know exactly what.
As she climbed the stairs and looked for the key to her apartment, the idea formed in her mind: she was the last. The last of them still alive.
She had not been consciously aware of her father’s death, and she knew him only from family stories. The death of her mother . . .
Her hand was trembling. The key didn’t seem to fit the lock and fell on the floor. She picked it up and tried to calm herself as the trembling took over her whole body.
She concentrated on getting the key into the lock.
Her mother hadn’t really died until yesterday.
Because now Kalevi too was dead.
At last.
She pushed the door open, went straight to the kitchen and opened the bottle of red wine that an over-attentive colleague in the law practice had given her on her birthday a few weeks ago. She drank, and thought that Kalevi hadn’t called those few weeks ago to wish her a happy birthday.
She thought of the photograph. Kalevi had not looked the way she remembered him. Probably because she had no concrete memory left of Kalevi’s appearance as a schoolboy. It was only the smile she had recognised, and it had looked as if Kalevi was pleased with himself. Although the date had been on the back of the photo: 19 August 1985. Pleased with himself and in a good temper.
She sensed memories coming back. Very specific memories. Things that had been said; she recalled them verbatim. Even the rising and falling of voices, the moments when her mother had begun shedding tears.
Kalevi’s voice, which had lost its resonance. The murmuring and lamentations, all about something incomprehensible to her.
And then that photo. The normality of it. Kalevi smiling at the camera and noting, on the back of the photo, that he didn’t have to worry about it. Because R. said so. That was the only indication of what might have been going on in his mind. The fact that he could no longer write the name out in full.
Risto. A name.
She picked up her glass and went into the living room. On the way she stopped several times because waves of feeling were running through her body. She went on.
When she was standing in the middle of the room the scream came out at last. It built up slowly and rose, until it finally broke out, too loud and too painful for her to hear it herself.
WINTER
32
WHEN WINTER CAME the body of the unknown woman, reference number 1108–11, was buried.
Kimmo Joentaa, representing the investigating team, and Salomon Hietalahti, the forensic pathologist, were the only people who came to the funeral. Four employees of the cemetery carried the coffin; the pastor officiating said a few words that seemed to be lost before they could reach anyone listening.
It was cold, but not snowing yet. When the funeral was over, Kimmo Joentaa spent a few more minutes standing at the side of the grave, thinking that there must be people alive somewhere who missed this woman. People who laughed and suffered with her. And thinking that there would have been hundreds at the
She had a conversation of some length with the managing director, stopping from time to time in the warm lights of the shop windows to look at the displays. Clothes, shoes, delicatessen. The managing director seemed to take it for granted that he could bother her with clauses and their necessary rewording late in the evening.
At the end of the conversation he thanked her and asked her to turn up punctually for tomorrow’s meeting although, unlike him, she was always punctual. It had turned cool.
Two excavators stood outside the last clapboard house at the end of the shopping arcade. Renovations to the gas mains, according to the letter put through all doors by the municipality. The works would be finished in two weeks’ time, it said. Two weeks. Two weeks ago Kalevi had been alive, not that she had noticed it. Only now did it occur to her that his death left something missing, although she didn’t know exactly what.
As she climbed the stairs and looked for the key to her apartment, the idea formed in her mind: she was the last. The last of them still alive.
She had not been consciously aware of her father’s death, and she knew him only from family stories. The death of her mother . . .
Her hand was trembling. The key didn’t seem to fit the lock and fell on the floor. She picked it up and tried to calm herself as the trembling took over her whole body.
She concentrated on getting the key into the lock.
Her mother hadn’t really died until yesterday.
Because now Kalevi too was dead.
At last.
She pushed the door open, went straight to the kitchen and opened the bottle of red wine that an over-attentive colleague in the law practice had given her on her birthday a few weeks ago. She drank, and thought that Kalevi hadn’t called those few weeks ago to wish her a happy birthday.
She thought of the photograph. Kalevi had not looked the way she remembered him. Probably because she had no concrete memory left of Kalevi’s appearance as a schoolboy. It was only the smile she had recognised, and it had looked as if Kalevi was pleased with himself. Although the date had been on the back of the photo: 19 August 1985. Pleased with himself and in a good temper.
She sensed memories coming back. Very specific memories. Things that had been said; she recalled them verbatim. Even the rising and falling of voices, the moments when her mother had begun shedding tears.
Kalevi’s voice, which had lost its resonance. The murmuring and lamentations, all about something incomprehensible to her.
And then that photo. The normality of it. Kalevi smiling at the camera and noting, on the back of the photo, that he didn’t have to worry about it. Because R. said so. That was the only indication of what might have been going on in his mind. The fact that he could no longer write the name out in full.
Risto. A name.
She picked up her glass and went into the living room. On the way she stopped several times because waves of feeling were running through her body. She went on.
When she was standing in the middle of the room the scream came out at last. It built up slowly and rose, until it finally broke out, too loud and too painful for her to hear it herself.
WINTER
32
WHEN WINTER CAME the body of the unknown woman, reference number 1108–11, was buried.
Kimmo Joentaa, representing the investigating team, and Salomon Hietalahti, the forensic pathologist, were the only people who came to the funeral. Four employees of the cemetery carried the coffin; the pastor officiating said a few words that seemed to be lost before they could reach anyone listening.
It was cold, but not snowing yet. When the funeral was over, Kimmo Joentaa spent a few more minutes standing at the side of the grave, thinking that there must be people alive somewhere who missed this woman. People who laughed and suffered with her. And thinking that there would have been hundreds at the
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