It was only his love for Greta that freed Olli from his obsession with Anne. And there Greta sits on the bed, under the valuable painting, pleased that he has come.
She throws herself on the bed and beckons to him. Olli hardly dares look at her. He’s ashamed. It feels criminal even to touch this tender figure in her pear dress now that he’s become so big, so clumsy and middle-aged.
Luckily the candlelight is forgiving.
He sits down on the bed and lowers himself onto his back. Greta climbs on top of him, smiles and touches his face with her fingertips, wondering at the traces left by the years and laughing at his rough razor stubble. Her hair falls across his face and tickles him. She feels amazingly light, almost weightless. The green of the forest glows in her eyes.
She kisses him. Her hand presses between his legs, her lipsticked mouth smiling mischievously.
Olli trembles.
Then he closes his eyes and pushes his fingers into her golden hair.
11
OLLI SUOMINEN, publisher and member of the parish council, opened his eyes, threw off the blanket and realized he had just ejaculated into his striped pyjama bottoms.
He also noticed that he was no longer caressing the girl in the pear-print dress; he was in his bedroom, in a double bed, with a woman beside him who had at some point in his life become his wife.
He turned onto his side and stared at the sleeping woman’s face, which was more familiar to him than his own. It was pretty, almost beautiful. The kind of face that was easy to remember, that felt familiar even when you saw it for the first time.
But now it was puckered up like an accordion and lying next to him.
As he had on many other mornings, Olli had the thought that the feeling of familiarity was an illusion. When people have lived together for years, they think they know each other through and through. In reality, the longer people are together, the more they become strangers to one another. At some point, people who were once in love get used to each other and they stop being curious, stop sharing any but the most commonplace thoughts, imagine that the other person will stay the same day in and day out. So they change without realizing it, become alien to each other.
It felt strange that the person sleeping beside him had given birth to his offspring. He remembered the hairy head, squeezed to a point, pushing out from between her legs, and the body that followed, equipped with a little weeny. He remembered the look on his wife’s face when the newborn was laid on her chest, hungry and bewildered.
That child was asleep in the next room, his head nicely round now.
The woman smacked her lips when a strand of hair fell into her mouth.
Soon this person would get up and think it self-evident that the Suominen family’s life would continue unchanged in this house where they had lived for years and would continue to live until death finally did them part. She would look at Olli, but see only the unchanged image of him she had already formed, would say the same ordinary things she always said, and he would of course give her his ordinary, equally unsurprising answers. They would both carry out their usual tasks and then in the evening come to this same bed to sleep and wait for another morning.
The thought of this horrified Olli, who at that moment felt torn loose from his life, didn’t feel it to be a part of himself. It was as if some part of his mind had fallen away during the night.
He stared at the panels on the ceiling, which seemed to grimace at him, and finally grimaced back.
He dimly remembered reading a newspaper in his dream. In reality the articles about the Tourula Five had been considerably more modest.
The police were also assisted by five children who found the burglar’s hideout by chance.
That was in the Jyväskylä Lehti. In the next issue there was a brief interview with the “junior detectives” who had helped the police. They were asked how it felt to be praised for their alertness. The grand group photo of them had gone unpublished because the space was needed for a meat market ad.
The article was published after summer was over. Grandma had asked the lady in the next apartment for an extra copy and sent it to Olli. There was also a fifty-markka bill with a picture of President Ståhlberg on it, and a note that read Nicely done. With best wishes from Grandpa.
Olli’s mother and father had been amazed. They didn’t know how to respond to the clipping or to Grandpa Suominen’s congratulations. To them Olli was an unhappy boy who didn’t get on with his teachers or classmates.
Olli was confused, too. He had started Year 5 and was living a grey routine of textbooks, boring classmates and dusty schoolrooms. When he held the article about the Tourula Five in his hand it was as if a piece of a summer dream had come sailing into his reality.
A couple of days later Leo had called him. The Blomrooses’ mother had, it seemed, nearly burst with pride. She had written a letter to Enid Blyton’s daughter Gillian Baverstock, who had had a standing request for any information about “real-life Famous Fives”. Leo wasn’t pleased about this.
“If you ask me, this lady Baverstock probably thinks my mom’s a complete lunatic, and doesn’t care a bit about what some Finn writes to her, no matter what it was we did,” Leo said. “But anyway, see you next summer. We’ll see what happens then.”
Olli got up with a groan, threw his pyjama bottoms in the laundry hamper, washed, dressed, drank a cup of instant coffee and went to his computer. He had an uneasy feeling that drove him to look at his Facebook profile. He had collected 659 Facebook friends: acquaintances, colleagues, contacts in the publishing world…
As he was going through the list, which was arranged alphabetically by first name, he found three names from the past:
Anne Blomroos
Leo Blomroos
Richard Blomroos
He felt like he might be sick. There they were: the Blomrooses. Father a question mark, mother in banking and proud of her signed first edition of Enid Blyton from 1942. The names of her children were an homage to the great writer, and knowledge of Blyton’s works had fallen on them as a sacred duty.
The Facebook photos showed middle-aged people, which shocked Olli more than finding them on his friends list. He realized that he had expected the other members of the Tourula Five to remain smooth-faced children.
Leo had been a muscular, athletic type whom Olli had admired and envied for his self-confidence. In the photo he was a puffy, ruddy man with a bald head. According to his profile, he was a car salesman. Religious views: Ford forever. Olli shook his head.
Richard, or Riku, as they always called him, was somewhat better preserved than his brother. Riku didn’t give much information about himself, but he belonged to a Facebook group called “Tits and Beer”.
And Anne. Beautiful little Anne. According to her profile her hobbies were yoga, golf, sailing, going to the gym, swimming, movies and collecting art. The only information about her profession was that she had a “leadership position in the business field”. The photo showed a plump, bourgeois woman with blue eyes, blonde curls and freckles on her nose.
Olli had once thought Anne was the sweetest creature in the world with nothing but the most marvellous girlish thoughts in her lovely head. He used to think about her eyes and her freckles when he masturbated—particularly the freckles. Afterwards he was always wracked with guilt for soiling his angel with his lustful thoughts.
Then the awful things happened. When he looked at Anne’s face now, a cold wind blew through his memories and the world flickered dimmer.