He doesn’t remember the last time he felt this way.
When his son was born?
No. It was an important event, of course, and it still moves him whenever he remembers it. There’s no question that the birth of his son gave him a deep, biological satisfaction. He was fulfilling the reproductive task programmed into his genes; but it was more like giving up on living his own life and avoiding the whole process than it was making cinematic meaning of his existence.
When he and Aino got married that, too, was more of a pleasant surrender, in the name of clarity and tranquillity. Of course he loved Aino, and their wedding day was beautiful. But he can see now that the main point of getting engaged and married was that it fit into the slowly progressing continuum that had been set in motion the moment they met. Olli hasn’t told Greta the whole truth about his family and the Blomrooses, but the most important part is true: he has decided to divorce Aino once the kidnapping is over.
Olli has finally recognized the truth. He and Aino have no chance of continuing their marriage after everything that has happened. If telling the truth doesn’t estrange them from each other, keeping it secret will.
If they were forced by attachment to the slow continuum to stay together, they might manage to be together for a few more years. But eventually the day would come for them to part. And while they waited for that day they would tear each other to pieces, and their son in the process.
Life is too short. Olli understands that there is no way he can content himself any more with an ordinary life slowly going sour, not now that he’s met someone and realizes he’s been pining for her for thirty years. His marriage with Aino might become just an interlude in a larger story, it seems. It’s sad, but without sadness there is no beauty.
But, of course, Olli isn’t stupid: he knows that his attitude towards his new cinematic life is like that of a sinner who gets religion. Like it says in the Guide, the grandiloquence of a romantic scene also contains an ironic distance. A person has to know how to live out his greatest emotions while simultaneously laughing at them. Olli’s greatest emotions notwithstanding, it’s clear that divorce may not be easy. There might be problems and arguments and a lot of tears. Aino isn’t cinematic and she definitely won’t immediately see the situation as Olli sees it.
After all, Aino doesn’t really understand movies, not the way they’re meant to be understood.
38
OLLI NEEDED TO PICK UP some things from his house in Mäki-Matti.
As he had feared, the slow continuum struck as soon as he walked in the door. It was difficult to breathe. He wanted to go upstairs, crawl under the covers and wait there for his wife and child to come home, for everything to go back to the way it was before. Then he would make sure that everything would stay the same. Preferably forever, but at the very least until he died.
With trembling hands, Olli lit a cigarette and got enough cinematic energy from it to pack a suitcase with his most important personal items and return to the taxi waiting at the gate.
39
CONTRARY TO WHAT ONE MIGHT EXPECT, their first night together at Wivi Lönn’s house doesn’t culminate in a passionate love scene.
Before Olli follows Greta into the house, they sit in Lounais Park under the dome umbrella in the rain and Greta talks until midnight about memories that have troubled her all these years.
Several times as she speaks, she inadvertently comes close to that summer’s end. When she does, she turns pale and loses her words and only finds them again when, with Olli’s prompting, she returns to those carefree days long enough ago that the Blomrooses’ shadow hadn’t yet been thrown over them.
When they finally take a taxi to the manor house, pass through the Apple Gate, walk through the door and climb the stairs to the bedroom, as if by unspoken agreement they perform the same ritual that they did many times in the secret room in Tourula: Greta undresses Olli, but not herself, in complete silence, lays him on his back on the bed, and caresses him with her hands and mouth until he comes.
Afterwards they lie intertwined, breathing each other’s breath, Olli naked and Greta in her dress, until they fall asleep. This is repeated for six nights in a row.
On the seventh, Olli stops her. He takes hold of her shoulders and looks into her eyes.
Greta avoids his gaze and nods. Olli closes his eyes and lets his hands move over her dress.
His touch delineates her slender neck, her soft but muscular arms, firm back and narrow waist, in both their minds. Then it finds the breasts like oranges, the curve of her hip, her supple rump.
All the while Greta is trembling, her breath catching. But she allows him to continue, just as the girl she was thirty years ago did the first time.
Olli, too, is terrified. He’s afraid he may break something that can’t be repaired, in both of them.
When he opens his eyes he sees that she has closed hers. He kisses her lightly on the lips, slips his fingers under the shoulder straps of her dress and lets them fall. When he starts to take off the dress, Greta panics, opens her eyes and grabs his hands.
“Wait. Olli, please close your eyes. You can open them when I say it’s all right.”
Olli can feel her get out of the bed. He hears the rustle of fabric as she takes off her dress, bra and underwear and puts them on the chair. Then she lies down on her back on the bed. “Give me your hand.”
Olli puts out his hand.
She takes hold of it and starts to move it slowly over her skin.
40
WHEN THE DRUNKEN BLOMROOS SIBLINGS break into their room on the last day of summer, Olli and Greta are naked and asleep.
Before Olli has time to wake up, Leo and Riku wrench the golden-haired girl out of the bed and out of Olli’s arms and drag her down the stairs like a goat to the slaughter.
Olli would like to go to help her.
But Anne is still in the doorway, freezing him with her mocking eyes. “Good morning, lover boy,” she laughs, and Olli covers his dick.
He hears shouts and banging from below.
Anne delays him for a moment longer, then beckons him down the stairs so he can get a look at the “freak” he’s been messing with.
Trembling, Olli pulls on his trousers and follows her. Downstairs the morning light is flooding in through the large windows, leaving everything naked and defenceless. Most naked and defenceless of all is Greta, pinned to the floor by the Blomroos brothers. They’re holding her arms and legs so that every inch of her body is bathed in light, as if she were a specimen, an object to be examined by strangers, down to its last detail.
If she struggled against her captors at first, she has given up by the time Olli bursts into the room. The damage is already done. Her green eyes peer out from under her hair, filled with shame.
Olli stands in the middle of the floor not knowing what to do. He’s helpless and scared.
Anne coughs behind him and says, “Thanks to brother Riku’s natural curiosity and voyeurism, we found some interesting papers in Aunt Anna’s bureau drawer, a drawer we’ve been wondering about because it was always locked.”
Anne’s voice oozes cold sarcasm. There’s a rustle of paper.
Riku sneers.
Leo is horribly drunk. He stares at his naked cousin, filled with disgust.
“What we have here, it seems, are doctors’ reports on a newborn baby,” Anne says, flipping through the documents. “Very interesting. And here are some similar reports from later doctor’s visits. There’s a urologist and a gynaecologist and a poor, frustrated surgeon who wasn’t allowed to operate because the child’s pig-headed mother refused to give her consent. A lot of papers full of fine medical terms like genitalia, developmental irregularities, hormone levels…”