He shivers. His ears ring. He feels like he’s going to vomit. A moment passes. Olli imagines his correspondent putting his thoughts in order.
Finally, text appears on the screen:
Olli my friend, I’m so sorry, but it’s nearly time for the closing scene.
53
WHEN OLLI WALKS into the bedroom, Greta is slumped on the edge of the bed. Her arms hang at her sides and her whole body is trembling. The laptop on the night table is open and the screen illuminates her pale face. “I guess I turned on the computer in my sleep,” she says quietly. “I must have wanted to look at Facebook. But I can’t. I feel numb. My feet are frozen.”
There’s no green in her eyes now, just the dark of October.
Olli helps her to lie down on the bed and puts the covers over her. Her breath is laboured and her pulse erratic.
“I can rub your feet to warm them,” Olli says, and looks out the window. “But first let’s put the computer away…”
The approaching winter grips the house tight. According to the weather reports the first snow could come at any time.
Greta takes hold of Olli’s hand and whispers, “No, leave it on. I need Facebook… Please don’t think me silly, darling, but I want to leave a goodbye message for all the people I know around the world, when I feel the end is at hand… I still have to think of what to write. Would you help me with that, Olli?”
Olli strokes her golden hair and nods, because he can’t speak. It feels as if his chest is trying to tear itself open. But for Greta’s sake he’ll hold himself together until the end. For Greta, and for his family, of course.
“All right,” he finally whispers. “But that’s not something that has to be done tonight. Not at all. There’ll be time tomorrow. Let’s wait until morning, together.”
Death is justly considered the high point of a cinematic life. It is a strong ending for any story that has been lived truly, and also serves as a dramatic element, if not the critical turning point, in the lives of those who know the dying person.
Depending on the context and point of view, death can be emotional and melodramatic, coolly laconic and expressionless, courageous, happy, symbolic, senseless, terrifying, sickening, ironic, tragic, even comic, but whatever the tone, it gives ultimate meaning to everything that has come before it. If at all possible, a cinematic person should pay particular attention to his or her death, in order to make it elegant and cinematically meaning ful.
(See following page, death scenes: Max Schreck in Nosferatu; Lew Ayres in All Quiet on the Western Front; Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms; James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces; Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun; Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal in Love Story.)
The windows brighten. They lie under the covers, holding each other. The house is heavy with silence. The doctor, whom Olli summoned at six o’clock, is making no sound downstairs. He’s probably reading the book he brought with him, some kind of play.
Olli’s hand is on Greta’s left breast. His index finger is laid across her nipple, his thumb gently pressing the side of her breast. He feels a scar stretching under his hand and thinks that it’s there because of him. The thought floods him with an overwhelming tenderness.
His face is pressed against Greta’s neck. He breathes through her golden hair and seems to smell the scent of a warm hillside. It fills the room and carries him back to a meadow where they had a picnic a few days after they lay together in Wivi Lönn’s house for the first time. Autumn was postponed for a day and summer blazed up one last time before the coming winter.
They sat in the tall grass to eat, and ended up having sex. It was more ritual than unbridled passion. Without a word, Greta put her half-eaten tomato sandwich back in the basket, unzipped Olli’s trousers, took her panties off under her dress and sat on his lap.
As they merged, the M-particles sang to them from deep in the earth, and for one moment Olli sensed all the secret passages in Jyväskylä, their locations, their routes, as if he were viewing a map drawn on his soul.
Naturally, their meadow is mentioned in the Magical City Guide. Olli wonders if a lot of people will go there now that the book is available and the first printing is virtually sold out. Maiju at the office has told him that next summer the Jyväskylä tourist office is planning to sell guided tours to all the magical places where his love for Greta Kara was reborn. The thought of it makes Olli sad, although it is good news for the business.
He lies at the edge of sleep and imagines them first at the meadow and then in Tourula, in the house on the bank of the river. He is startled when Greta makes a sound.
His left knee has been tucked between her thighs for a long time. His leg is starting to go to sleep, but he can’t bring himself to move it because he doesn’t want to disturb her.
Greta turns, points at the computer and breathes a request. Olli picks it up, puts it in her lap and helps her hands to the keyboard. She writes her last status update, closes the computer, and looks up at Olli.
Before she falls into another sleep, he thinks he sees the sun reflected in the green of her eyes. He turns to the window and is surprised to see that the sky is an impenetrable grey.
He puts away the computer, gets dressed and sits in the chair next to the bed, watching the life fade from the golden-haired woman. He holds her hand and looks at her red-painted fingernails. Her fingers grow cold; her face turns waxen; her breath slows and stumbles. Olli isn’t sure if he knows how to feel for a pulse, but it feels weak and irregular and sometimes disappears altogether.
Hours pass.
Olli sits, waits and makes observations. They fall like drops somewhere inside him, waiting to be pondered later.
Greta has been silent and still for a long time. Olli bends closer. Then her lips part and smile weakly.
She whispers, “Olli, ask me now…”
Her voice is like the rustle of dead leaves. It takes a moment for him to understand what she means, and another moment to collect himself.
Finally, he asks her the question. But Greta is already gone.
54
AFTER PRONOUNCING GRETA KARA DEAD, Dr Oksanen sighs and pulls the blanket up over the face of the deceased. The blanket is covered in white satin, and the effect is impeccably cinematic.
Olli feels cold. He and the doctor stand next to the bed in their suits, stiff and serious, their arms at their sides, both wearing ties. Greta lies naked under the blanket, the marks of Olli’s teeth still on her skin.
“My condolences,” the doctor says. “It’s obvious how much the two of you meant to each other. I sense a great love. I hope that you were able to say goodbye to each other and nothing was left unresolved between you. As a physician, I see all sorts of things. Many kinds of deaths. Sad ends. Bitterness. Inability to put away pride and ask for forgiveness even when faced with eternal separation. This is so very sad, but I hope I don’t offend you if I venture to say, Mr Suominen, that your love story had a very beautiful ending.”
Olli nods. He’s numb, and the situation is unreal, right down to the drama-reading Dr Oksanen’s brief speech.
They go downstairs and shake hands. The doctor prepares to leave. He promises to take care of the requisite notifications relevant to Greta’s death, which he says “falls to him in his role as physician”. He also says that someone will come soon for Greta’s body, and the owner of the house will come to take care of everything connected with terminating the rental contract. Olli needn’t worry about anything. He can “walk out of this house of sorrow and close the door behind him and focus on grieving”.