When the room finally fills with one of Greta’s favourite nocturnes, Olli loosens his hold and lets his hands rest on her shoulders.
“How did I get here?” Greta says, hoarse and sputtering—but continuing to play.
“The main thing is that you are here,” Olli says, kissing her neck and picking up the telephone. “Please keep playing. More than anything right now, I want to hear Chopin. I’m going to call Dr Oksanen. He has to come over right away. Darling, I think he may be able to cure you after all.”
58
THE WINDOWS BRIGHTEN. They wake at the same time, lightly make love and lie for a long time under the covers, holding each other.
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.
Greta sits up in bed, stretches, glows for him, wraps her arms around his neck and gives him a kiss. Then she turns on her computer and updates her Facebook status.
Greta Kara is completely happy today!
Two days earlier, Greta experienced a miraculous recovery from the neurological disease that had been pronounced terminal.
When Olli called Dr Oksanen and told him that Greta was lying in bed, not breathing, the chemist hurried over to perform the deathbed scene and help Karri rise from the dead.
The moment he walked in the door, the doctor discovered that there had been a last-minute rewrite.
Olli forced him to inject Greta with the antidote and declare that the patient would have a complete recovery. “My dear Mr Suominen, I don’t know what to say,” he mumbled as Olli shoved him out through the Apple Gate onto the rainy street.
Olli had no intention of telling Greta about Karri’s plans. If Karri came back to haunt Greta’s body, Olli was ready to do whatever the situation demanded.
Now that Greta was well again, Olli could consider what to do about his wife and son.
He felt that he had completed the task that Anne Blomroos had given him, and before the first snow, too. Karri could say what he liked, but Greta had said—on her Facebook status, no less—that she was completely happy. It was official.
That night Olli tiptoed downstairs to the computer and opened Aino’s Facebook profile. The status was a relief. But it also meant that he had a lot of explaining to do to his family.
Aino Suominen and son are on their way home.
The Blomrooses’ Facebook profiles had disappeared from Olli’s friends list. He pondered this for a while and decided that it meant he had seen the matter to its conclusion, and there was no need to continue their connection.
He also checked to make sure there were no new posts on Karri’s profile.
When he went back to the bedroom, he noticed light peeping out from Greta’s laptop. It had been left open a crack.
Greta was asleep, so he pushed the computer closed and crawled into bed.
It’s Sunday, so although Olli has to stop in at Book Tower to take care of some marketing plans for the Magical City Guide, he and Greta have the rest of the day to themselves. Greta’s legs are still a little stiff, and the weather is cold. But she announces that she wants to go out and walk hand in hand through the city.
Olli is glad.
They eat breakfast. Afterwards Olli smokes a cigarette and stares out the bay window. Greta plays Chopin. Waltz no. 7.
She gets up, comes to stand behind him, and wraps her arms around him.
“Olli,” she says hesitantly, “do you think we’ll always love each other as much as we do now?”
Olli blows smoke at the window and tries not to think of what Karri said to him. Snowflakes are starting to fall in the garden.
Greta is waiting for an answer.
“Darling, I am sure that we will be happy for the rest of our lives,” he says, suddenly filled with certainty. “And when the moment of death finally comes, we’ll go 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 meaningful.
(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.)
59
AS THEY LEAVE THE PUBLISHING HOUSE, Greta takes his hand and tugs him towards Harju Ridge.
“Come on! I want to climb the steps!” she whispers, and Olli follows with a smile.
They cross the street and start up the stone staircase. Frost covers the ground. The sparse snow starts to fall thicker, turning the hillsides white.
Greta glows.
“It’s winter, so we ought to go to the observation tower and drink hot cocoa with whipped cream on top. Oh, Olli, I’ve always hated the cold, but I love this snow! We’ve had two summers, but this will be our first winter. The best winter ever!”
She hangs on his arm, chattering happily.
Olli grows winded. His heart is light, but beating fast. His feet feel heavy.
Through the falling snow he sees a large, black car stop at the top of the steps. A door opens and two women and a child get out of the back seat. The first woman points at them. The other starts down the steps with the child.
“Maybe after this we can go have hot cocoa every Sunday,” Greta says. “We can do it every year after the first snow and stop when the snow is melted… What’s the matter?”