Another thing that Olli hasn’t asked her about is where in Jyväskylä she’s staying. He has the impression that it’s not a hotel but a house somewhere north of the city centre.
Each cinematic encounter is a complex dance of expressions, gestures, words, intentions, cues, sensations, actions and retreats, the Guide to the Cinematic Life says. And indeed, in the present situation certain things feel natural to say or do while others break the rhythm and flatten the mood. They’re like errors that the two of them, caught up in the cinematic moment, instinctively avoid to the very last. It’s remarkably difficult to ask questions if they don’t seem to belong in the built-in script of an encounter.
When they’ve emptied their glasses of raspberry soda, Olli and Greta walk down the stairs that lead to Lounais Park. They find a bench sheltered by shrubbery and sit down to watch the children ride around on the carousel. The sky has gone grey. It’s drizzling. A bus drives by on the street below, its chassis rattling over the cobblestones.
Greta lights a cigarette.
Olli opens his black umbrella, which is large enough to cover them both. It’s the Chantal Thomass design dome umbrella, direct from France. He picked it up the day before when Maura called to tell him that his order had arrived. Greta looks at the umbrella in surprise and starts to reminisce, smiling dreamily, about the summer they shared thirty years ago.
She knows how to choose her words skilfully. Her talk brings the past closer, close enough to touch the present, like the hand of a beloved. The years that have grown up between them gradually fade until they lose their meaning completely.
His consciousness saturated with M-particles, Olli closes his eyes to listen to the waves of Greta’s words and the rhythm of raindrops on the umbrella.
33
AS OLLI’S EIGHTH and last summer holiday in Tourula is coming to an end, it’s obvious to all of them that the Tourula Five are no more.
The tart smell of autumn rises from deep in the earth and birds gather in restless flocks. It’s been raining all summer. Little by little the rain is wearing the green landscape down to shades of brown, and Olli, Anne, Riku and Leo look at each other as if they were strangers. The Five have spent the whole summer without Karri, who disappeared into the secret passages the summer before.
They don’t go into the secret passages any more; without Karri they don’t even know how to find them. Their memories of the passageways are fading, too, like long-ago dreams.
The Blomrooses have been hanging around Aunt Anna’s house and Olli has gone to see them, but even their best visits have been pitiful attempts to recapture something that no longer exists. Even Aunt Anna’s treats have lost their flavour, and Anna herself is nervous and strangely brusque now, and she’s often drunk.
They’ve tried to go on picnics like they used to, but without their expeditions in the secret passages their outings wither to listless wanderings and the heavy rains drive them back indoors. There’s not much to talk about and attempts at the old banter turn into arguments. Anne in particular needles the others; it’s especially hard for her to accept that Karri is gone. Riku throws tantrums, has fits of rage, breaks things—he jumped Olli once. Leo had to calm him down. Riku broke two fingers and Olli came away with a bloody nose.
Leo’s usual firm patience is wearing thin, too, and his gloomy outbursts frighten the others. Once when Leo seemed particularly sullen, Anne blurted that he ought to find himself a woman, or at least go and jerk off. Leo turned pale and stood up. He had grown considerably since the previous summer and thickened up, and when he glared at Anne, a vein in his temple throbbing, she left the house.
There are still those moments when everything feels like it used to be. At those times the remaining members of the Tourula Five look at each other with their eyes shining and the colours seem to brighten. But that happens less and less often, and the moments are slipping away from them faster than the mice that used to run away from Timi.
Olli is shocked that the Blomrooses have started to seem ordinary to him, even unpleasant, just like his classmates in Koirakkala. They seem tired of his company, too. They don’t seem even to enjoy being with each other. Karri is gone, and with him the magic that they shared for so many summers.
The Blomrooses have pilfered Aunt Anna’s cognac a few times and tried to medicate away the tedium. Olli didn’t want to touch the alcohol, at least not since the time that Anne, alone in the house, drank until she was so messed up that she was laughing like a lunatic, and broke the porcelain cat and the floor lamp, and ended up making a pass at Olli.
“You’ve wanted this for a long time, Olli,” she purred, and took off her shirt. Her nipples shone through her white bra. Her fingers groped at his fly.
It was true that Olli had dreamt of something like this at one time. But now Anne smelt disgusting—and Olli’s heart belonged to another. So he turned his back to her and said as kindly as he could that he wasn’t interested, and suggested in a fatherly way that she put her clothes on and have a cup of coffee and clean up after herself.
She wouldn’t listen. She put his hand between her legs and promised that he could do whatever he wanted as long as he kept it to himself, promised she wouldn’t get pregnant.
It scared him, and he jerked his hand away. It was wet and slippery and smelt weird.
They stared at each other.
Then she fell onto her hands and knees and started throwing up on the rug and Olli ran out of the house.
The next day Anne was washing the rug in the yard and acting like nothing had happened. But since then she’s been colder towards him.
That was two weeks ago. In three days Olli’s father will come to take him back to Koirakkala. The day after that school starts. Olli doesn’t want to think about that yet. He sits at the table drinking juice and eating pastries with Leo, Riku and Anne. He’s come to say his goodbyes to Aunt Anna and the Blomrooses today so that he can spend the rest of his holidays with the girl in the pear-print dress.
The clock ticks on the wall. Riku gobbles down one pastry after another. Anne sips from her coffee cup, her face tight. Leo is sunk in thought.
Olli wants to leave but can’t bring himself to get up from the table. He should be polite.
The house has been different since Karri went into the secret passages. The air is hard to breathe. There’s not enough light even with all the lights on. Aunt Anna doesn’t feel like taking care of the house or her summer guests any more. She just talks about how much she misses her son.
The Blomrooses said a couple of days ago that they won’t be coming to Tourula for the summer next year. Anne is planning a beach holiday somewhere warm.
Aunt Anna is standing at the sink. Her hands hang at her sides. She’s wearing her bright-yellow summer dress, but she looks grey. Her plumpness has thinned and shrivelled.
“Oh how I miss that boy,” she sighs again. She’s slurring her words a bit from the cognac, although she tries to speak carefully. “One of the neighbours asked about Karri. I couldn’t even begin to explain it to them. I don’t understand myself what happened to my Karri.”
Life returns to her a little as her temper flares. “Didn’t I do everything for him? I even took him to Paris so he could get out of this little town for a while and fill his head with the fresh air of Europe. We saw the Eiffel Tower. We went to the Moulin Rouge… You raise a child for a decade and a half to be a good boy and then all of a sudden you’ve got a flirty little girl in his place, a complete and utter stranger.”