In his passion Olli makes a blustered demand: he has to be able to touch Greta the same way she touches him. After all, it’s not right that only one of them has that pleasure.
He blushes; he’s glad it’s dark. Greta stares at him frozen, like a frightened animal.
“Don’t you trust me?” Olli says.
His voice is thin with guilt. He forces himself to continue to try to persuade her.
“We don’t have to… to go all the way, if you’re scared. I don’t think I’m ready for that, either. Greta, I just want to touch you so bad.”
It’s true. He’s been thinking about it so much lately that he hasn’t been able to sleep. Remembering, through the long hours of the night, what it felt like to touch Anne, and imagining what it would be like to do the things to Greta that Anne wanted him to do.
Finally Greta nods.
She takes off her dress and underwear and folds them in a neat stack on the chair next to the bed. Then she lies on her back next to Olli and waits there, like a sacrificial lamb.
There’s not much light; all he can see is an outline, but it’s enough.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers.
Greta smiles, her eyes closed.
Olli strokes her cheek, feels the hot stream from her eyes, realizes she’s trembling.
He suppresses his guilt, kisses her small, perfumed breasts and licks the smooth skin of her belly.
Then his hand slides down and stops between her legs.
It isn’t the same as Anne’s, anyway, or his own.
He lays his head on her chest, strokes her hair with his left hand, kisses her face every so often, letting the fingers of his right hand explore with gentle curiosity.
He doesn’t try to picture it, figure it out, understand it. He isn’t a naturalist here, just an inexperienced lover eager to learn.
So he concentrates on finding the right ways to touch, the ways to please his beloved.
Greta sighs in the dark and lifts her hips.
Olli learns.
When night finally withdraws from around the house, a dim red glow comes through the curtains.
Olli and Greta lie in bed naked, wrapped around each other, covered in nothing but a thin sleep.
Then they open their eyes and look at each other with frightened faces.
They hear footsteps on the stairway.
The door flies open.
Shouts.
Greta is yanked out of the bed and dragged down the stairs.
A clatter.
Olli sits up, bewildered. Anne is standing in the doorway. She grins at him mockingly. She’s drunk.
“Good morning, lover boy,” she pants. “Amazingly fine day today. The sun is shining and all that cliché shit. I have a bit of a headache. We were up all night, too, you know. But hey, come on downstairs and see what sort of freak you’ve been messing with.”
Anne runs down the stairs. Olli pulls on his jeans and stumbles after her.
36
IT’S STARTING TO RAIN HARDER. Lounais Park is gradually surrendering to autumn. The children abandon the carousel and swings and run away.
Olli and Greta are left in the park alone.
Under the umbrella a little world has come into being, warmed by a sun from thirty years ago.
As Greta continues to reminisce, Olli watches her mouth. It’s beautiful. He could kiss it, but he doesn’t have the heart to stop the flow of words. The words are building a living picture of the summer they once spent together.
Nothing feels quite real any more. Maybe the secret passages under the ground are leaking the substance that dreams come from. Making the tiniest details significant, making life feel like a dangerous, mesmerizing dream where no sacrifice is too large if it can let you experience something beautiful.
To die with the blossoms, or else to live forever—those are our choices. Anything else is a waste of time.
Olli understands now what Maggie Cheung was saying in that film.
Greta speaks and the words make her skin glow. Olli finally has to reach out and touch her lips to make sure she’s real.
Her talk breaks off for a moment. She looks at him in surprise, smiles and continues.
One memory follows another.
As long as she keeps remembering more details of that summer together she doesn’t have to come to what happened that morning.
Remember when we climbed up the observation tower and spent the whole day there, looking out over the city? There was a thunderstorm all around us, and we kissed, and the lightning made me jump and I bit your lip so hard that it drew blood, and I licked it away, and then we started to plan exactly what kind of house we were going to live in someday. It had to have a big garden and have lots of spacious rooms, a piano so I could play for you and a greenhouse… You wanted apple trees in the garden… They had to be Finnish cinnamons…
As Greta brought that long-ago summer back one word at a time, Olli was amazed to realize how much he had forgotten.
Greta’s talk, together with the M-particles, is altering his mood. His deep cinematic self is controlling what he experiences, how he feels, what he thinks.
It’s scary.
Familiar things are becoming strange, forgotten things familiar. His character is coming into focus as he realizes his role in the love story. His deep self is whispering dramatically that in order to save his family, Olli must betray his family.
Cruelty, betrayal and ruthlessness can, in some situations, be aesthetically justified and even unavoidable choices, and categorically avoiding them can lead to slow continuum attachment and the death of life feeling.
He hesitates.
He’s horrified that part of him is enjoying having to step out of bounds and surrender to the power of feelings that he would normally reject. What Greta is saying is too beautiful to resist. Just as he wanted the Klimt painting at the Pompidou, he wants a life with Greta now, even though the part of him that’s attached to the slow continuum is still resisting it. Its power comes from things like the familiarity of Aino’s face, from the things they share, like their son’s ear, so perfect it almost makes him believe in God.
Yesterday he received a message from the Blomrooses that was probably the last one for a while:
Hello, Olli! So far you’ve followed the script to the letter. Thanks! Here are your final instructions. You will meet Greta in Lounais Park on the cafe kiosk terrace at 3 p.m. After that you’re on your own. Your mission: to make her completely happy. You have until the first snow. Then your family can come home, but only if you complete your mission.
We wish all the best to you and Greta!
So his task is to make Greta completely happy before the first snow.
Completely happy.
How will he know when he’s achieved his objective? How can the Blomrooses know? Can a person ever really be completely happy?
And when will the first snow come to Jyväskylä?
These thoughts race through his mind, until he gives up.
Greta is still talking.
Her sea-green eyes glow with the light of the summer past. The memories are terribly beautiful, but the shadow of that last morning falls over them all. Olli remembers now, the footsteps on the stairs, Greta naked, dragged out of his arms and taken away.
He realizes that he has felt the hopelessness of that moment every night for all these months.
Olli presses a finger against Greta’s lips and she falls silent.
“What?…”
Olli holds the umbrella with one hand and presses her against him with the other. She makes a noise like a frightened animal and tries to wriggle free.