Olli felt better. It was fun to pretend that everything was fine, to share a moment of the sunny, unchanged ordinariness that his neighbours still inhabited.
He climbed up Harju Ridge. When he got to the top of the Harju Steps he looked at the clock and thought that he should probably continue straight down the other side.
Start down the Ridge at exactly 1 p.m.
It was warm. The light over the city was dazzling. The rooftops glowed. The shadows on the steps and the cold rising up from the earth cooled him pleasantly. Olli prepared himself for the encounter. He put a smile on his face.
You will meet Greta on the steps, quite by accident. Your mission is to buy her an ice cream and make her look forward to your next meeting.
Olli could see that the girl from his dreams was coming up the stairs. The colours were so bright that it hurt his eyes, the outlines unnaturally sharp. For a moment he thought he could see the irises of her eyes from dozens of metres away. He felt dizzy again. His legs were shaking. What if he fell, tumbled down the stone steps and cracked his skull open? Would his family get to come home then, or would they end up dead, tossed in the ocean?
Olli looked into Greta’s eyes as they approached each other. Her eyes sparkled. The surrounding foliage accentuated their greenness.
They met at a landing that looked like a little stone fort, halfway up the steps. Greta was wearing a sleeveless green dress and black pumps. She was the grown woman again, the successful author that the girl in the pear-print dress had become.
“Olli! What a pleasant surprise!”
“Greta,” he sputtered.
His throat was dry. He didn’t quite know what to do or what to say. He stood looking at her expectantly, nervous and embarrassed, a tight smile on his lips. They looked each other over. Greta laughed with a flirty tilt of her head.
“That’s still my name. And now that we’ve remembered each other’s name it must be time to dive into a little small talk. Beautiful weather today, isn’t it? Where are you off to, Mr Suominen? To work again, I’ll bet. Off to publish those autumn titles?”
No. I’ve come to meet you, so they don’t kill my family, Olli thought, and said, “I’m on my way to the supermarket.”
“Ah.”
“To buy some liver casserole,” he added, sounding reasonably natural.
“Oh,” Greta said. “Do you like liver casserole?”
“No. But…”
They stared at each other.
“But your wife told you to get some?” Greta eventually said.
“Yes,” Olli said. He was angry with himself. He shouldn’t have brought his wife into this. It wouldn’t advance his task. But it was too late to take it back. “The boy wants liver casserole,” he said.
Greta smiled sadly. “Children like liver casserole because it has raisins in it. Even I used to like it, years ago.”
“Time changes everything,” Olli said with a smile.
Greta gazed into the distance and whispered pensively, “Everything changes, and nothing changes. A person, anyway, always stays the same.”
Amid an electric silence, Greta sat down on the edge of one of the stone steps. Olli settled in beside her. When they looked at each other Olli could see how pale and transparent their safe roles as a publisher and successful author were; at that moment they were looking into the depths of thirty years past.
They felt embarrassed, as if they had both just realized they were naked.
Olli blushed and coughed uncomfortably.
Greta looked at her shoes. It was clear that she felt like running away.
Olli couldn’t allow that. He had his instructions. He had to think of some snappy line to steer events in the right direction.
As they got up again, there was a flash of disappointment on Greta’s face. She sighed like grass bending in the wind and mumbled, “So, I guess I…”
Just then their stone sanctum was invaded by a passing crowd of French tourists. The middle-aged woman leading the group was explaining the history of the steps, gesturing vigorously. Greta’s voice was drowned out by a chatter of French as the tourists emitted admiring exclamations.
Your mission is to buy her an ice cream and make her look forward to your next meeting.
It was clear that Greta had hoped for more from this encounter. He had disappointed her every time. And he was doing it again.
Olli understood her disappointment. He had been behaving like a distant acquaintance who by chance also happened to be her publisher.
He couldn’t think of anything to say. Words failed him.
And Greta was getting ready to leave.
If he failed at his task, his family would suffer.
Then Olli lifted his hands in the air like a praying Muslim, his palms towards the sky, surrendering to his inarticulateness. When there are no words, there are actions.
He looked Greta in the eye, stepped closer and took hold of her slender arm.
Her skin felt cool. Her startled, mint-scented breath brushed his face. Her surprise quickly changed to anger. Olli opened his mouth to explain himself before the situation became unsalvageable.
“Greta…”
Greta was waiting for him to say the right, conciliatory words, just as much as he was. An explosion was growing within the green of her eyes. Each failed encounter had built up the tension, and it was about to snap, one way or another.
Olli had spent the previous night reading the manuscript of the Magical City Guide. Now a passage from the book came into his mind.
And when it did, it activated the part of his brain where all good quotes come from.
Memento mori! Live like you still can, and live in such a way that when the time comes to give it all up, you will know that you have lived. Life is a divine dream, an unexpected gift, a film reel in a camera that’s already running. Just as believers feel close to God when they are in a place like a cathedral, a temple or a mosque, so too, the cinematic possibilities of life are closer to us when we are in the magical places that this book is about. Under the influence of M-particles we can create ourselves anew, free ourselves from the slow continuum and learn to throw ourselves into the moment and surrender to the story that we are becoming at any given moment. So seek out cinematicness for your life in places where the M-particle radiation is strongest.
M-particles and the secret passages might show us that we’re connected. Where there are M-particles there are often also secret passages, and vice versa. So beware, you visitors to magical places, for in the secret passages the M-particle radiation can be dangerously powerful, and for this reason the passages must be avoided if you do happen to find an entrance.
25
“I’M SORRY, but I can’t let you leave,” Olli whispers, not loosening his grip.
The French tourists climbing the steps look back at them in curiosity.
Greta’s eyes widen and her nostrils flare. Then she relaxes and the angry shadows fade from her face. They stare at each other. Finally she asks with a child’s wonder. “Why can’t you?”
Olli gazes at her solemnly and says, “Because I have to buy you an ice cream. Otherwise something terrible will happen.”
Greta’s jaw drops slightly.