He put me back to bed and rearranged my medical paraphernalia, told me he would check on me again as soon he could and left.
I lay in bed and pondered the meaning, the worth, of life without emotion. My remorse was gone, but also my passion. If my remorse and sense of failure were gone, what had replaced them? I was emotionless, or nearly so. What would motivate me in life now? Maybe the same things that always motivated me. A desire for balance. Justice. Perhaps now I could even pursue those goals with a feeling of equanimity. For me, duty and love had always been closely related. Something I doubted Kate would understand. I reached one decision. I would take Sweetness under my wing and help him find himself and discover, for good or bad, who he really was, and help him become whatever it was that might be. As I wished my father had done for me. I lay in bed for two days, practiced my fake smile, and contemplated the changes that had come over me.
I thought of Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, who awoke to find that he had become a monstrous insect. Was I a morphed Gregor Samsa, or a surgically enhanced Kari Vaara?
8
I came home on Friday. Despite all the work done to me, I had spent only four days in the hospital. I lay about, ate narcotics and tranquilizers as instructed, watched crappy television shows, played with Anu and the cat. I felt fine but a little tired and napped a lot. I was on a one-month sick leave, to be extended if necessary, but I was free to go back to work in two weeks if I chose. On Saturday I caught up on the news.
Parliamentary elections were a little over a year away, and a dark horse was gaining ground fast. The Real Finns Party. It was officially headed by Topi Ruutio, an experienced politician and member of the European Parliament. It had a second leader, Roope Malinen. He held no office, but his blog was the most popular in Finland. The Real Finns agenda was unclear, except that they were anti-foreigner and anti-immigration. The Real Finns had invented a euphemism for racists. They staunchly denied charges of racism and dubbed themselves “maahanmuuttokriitikot,” critics of immigrants. Our population was aging, our birthrate low, and without immigrants to work and pay taxes, there would be no pension money for our retirees. The Real Finns’ answer: Finnish women must bear more children, out of patriotic duty.
Other than hate, their agenda wasn’t clear. They wanted a return to traditional Finnish values. I’m unaware of what traditional Finnish values are, and I don’t think anybody else knows, either.
Real Finns believed that government should decide what qualifies as good art to receive government support. They looked to nineteenth-century-style Finnish classic works as ideals. They made wild promises to spread the wealth that couldn’t possibly be met. They wanted to leave the EU. Their rhetoric reminded me of early Nazi propaganda. Like I told Kate, Real Finns are like a more virulent strain of American Teabaggers.
Real Finns have skyrocketed in popularity because the global financial crisis, coupled with greed by our own leading financiers-despite manipulated statistics indicating we have the world’s strongest economy, leading the world to believe that Finland is some kind of financial paradise-has driven our economy into the shithole. Nearly twenty percent of Finns now live beneath the poverty line. Their jobs are being outsourced to other countries. Inflation is high, wages stagnant. People are frightened, and they’re focusing that fear, placing their blame, on immigrants.
I don’t believe they’re actually pro-Real Finn. I think they’re terrified and protesting the establishment that made them feel this way. I kept up with Real Finn antics because their policies changed daily and, when I felt emotions, it amused me. It’s not funny, though, because since the other parties are suffering mass defections to Real Finns, those other parties are taking positions to stem the tide. Keskusta, a center party, adopted the slogan “Maassa maan tavalla”-“in the the way of the country”-but left the well-known phrase unfinished: “tai maasta pois”-or “get out of the country.” Hate directed at foreigners.
Ruutio is charismatic and at least projects an image of being a good guy with strong if somewhat confused beliefs. He shies away from discussions about immigration and foreigners. Malinen writes well. In his blog, he makes convoluted racist arguments seem reasonable. He’s a good hater. In person, he’s almost unable to speak, and what he does manage to say is aggressive, defensive and often incomprehensible. Interviews give the impression that he’s a maniac in dire need of medication. Ruutio pretends to distance himself from Malinen and his extremism, but in truth, they work in tandem. Neither can do without the other.
I slept in the next day and the door buzzer woke me. It was Valentine’s Day. A detective handed me a thick envelope, a packet of dossiers on drug dealers and their upcoming events. It contained no note to me. The unspoken message: You’re on sick leave, but do as you will. After waking up and having coffee, I called Milo and asked him to come over. I didn’t want to talk on the phone, because ours had likely been tapped.
Kate was less than pleased to see Milo’s face on Valentine’s Day, on my second day of sick leave. He looked hung over. The black circles around his eyes were puffy. His eyes bloody red.
I gave him the envelope. “These are potential heist material,” I said. “You can carry them out at your discretion. But you’re not to take risks. If you act impetuously and someone gets hurt because of it, I’ll fire you.”
I wished I could go. He’s good at black-bag work. Thorough. And he’s slick with a lockpick set, can get through an average door in under a minute. I could learn from him. I hate to think how many B amp;Es he pulled off while satisfying his voyeuristic desires to develop that kind of skill.
His jaw jutted out, defiant. “The chief wanted me on this team. You can’t fire me.”
“Try me.”
He hangdog acquiesced. “We don’t need to have this conversation. I don’t intend to be impetuous.”
“Good.” I clued him in to leave. “Let me know what happens.”
“I’m getting everything together so when you’re back on duty, we can really rock. I want to have a welcome back party for you. You OK with that?”
I put on the smile I’d practiced in the mirror. “Sure. We’ll set the date later.”
He grinned, happy now. “Great. This party will be so much fun, you’ll want to take it out behind the middle school and fuck it.”
Going through the motions. Pretending to feel, to care. Without emotions, life lacks meaning. I learned a life lesson from my loss. Nothing has intrinsic meaning. We give meaning to the things important to us. It seems the other way around, that loved ones, material possessions we enjoy, our perceived successes, give meaning to our lives. Not so. Those things have meaning because we have emotionally injected meaning into them. Emotions keep us walking, talking, functioning, striving.
I promised myself that I would keep living life as if I felt emotions, in the hope that one day I would feel them again. I promised myself I wouldn’t forget that although I felt no emotions, others did, and theirs remained important. That the most important things in life lie outside my inner being. I had duties to fulfill, whether I found meaning in them or not.
But I was running on sheer desire. Childlike. That meant I had some form of emotion left, but base, almost animalistic, primitive. I tried to squelch it. The childishness that was now a part of me, however, had a blurred sense of right and wrong. It had no interest in them. I had to guard against that part of myself, be wary of it, suppress it. The trick, I realized, was to act through the memory of emotions. In that way, I could at least outwardly be the same person I was pre-surgery.