But Tom’s future wife, Susette born Packlén, had, in other words, been at the cemetery as a child, come there accompanied by her mother and brought flowers to the graves. Those eyes back then too—and somewhat later, as a teenager, she became his first girlfriend and he the first boyfriend for her too.
But wait now, first this. The Angel of Death. That was what they had called her. He and his sister Maj-Gun, when they were together. The girl who came to the cemetery with her mother, with flowers they had picked from the meadow that became the new side of the cemetery later on. The girl who filled jars with water at the water hydrant, placed the flowers in them. Big eyes. “Have you seen those globes?” he asked his sister. “Should we scare her?” And she galloped ahead, his sister, and he followed after her. Wearing the mask—but the girl was not afraid. Maj-Gun said to him later, “Death is not afraid of Death,” and they laughed. That is why she had for a time in private been called the Angel of Death by the two siblings. But he had of course too, in private, alone, without saying anything to his sister, immediately taken a liking to the girl with the big eyes. Not because of the Angel of Death, but because of who she was. Calm, a bit lost. Something steady in here, anyway. And a few years later he started dating her.
“I’m fascinated by the Death in her,” he had admittedly solemnly recited back then for his jealous sister, which he actually had not meant a word of. Because he had been embarrassed of course, shy. In the presence of everyone. In the presence of himself. The infatuation. Which there had been no words for. Then not inside him in any case And, dear Lord. What an unbearable person he had been, in public. What could be seen of him. As a person. “Old age,” which Maj-Gun talks about. Yes, yes, certainly.
Had gone around wearing a suit and a tie in school and a bow tie at festive occasions and cuff links and the like. God knows why. It had not exactly brought him closer to “friends” his own age at school for example. Not rejected, bullied, just off to the side. As if he wanted to, in some way, prove a point about something, but what this point was would be unclear, completely hidden in the mist, which would have been completely clear if someone had pushed him up against a wall and asked about it in detail—or “interrogated,” which is how he certainly personally would have described the matter at that time. No one had done so, none of his classmates exactly enjoyed getting into a discussion with him: he could debate, follow a line of reasoning, already then. In a way that was truly overbearing too, an overbearance that he would consciously eliminate when he got to the university. It had been easy. On the other hand, he found his place then and was so much more content with life and with himself, in general. Was incredibly interested in his studies from the beginning, it was also something that swallowed him up. So the smugness had disappeared; he knew what he was going to do, and now instead perhaps a bit exaggeratedly but still, almost a humility, a leniency started revealing itself in him. He could move and carry himself in company, deal with people which, granted, had carried and would continue to carry him far in his career.
But “I’m fascinated by the Death in her.” His solemn words to his sister at the rectory. He could barely think about it now. Of course he had not said it to poor Susette personally, not then and not ever. That would certainly have scared the life out of her from the beginning—or no, incidentally, despite that appeal, that Sorrow, whatever it was, there was something in her that did not yield. But it would without a doubt have called forth a coloring in their relationship from the beginning, transformed it into something it was not.
There as teenagers in his room at the rectory they had listened to music. Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. He remembers that, truly, even if he does not want to. Those pretentions in him. During the pauses he had spoken when the record was finished playing. Not many words as luck would have it, which quite simply also depended on his rather great shyness and strong timidity. He had not known, of course, what he should say to her, just wanted to be with her, so much. But what had come out of his mouth, however spare, insufferable. “Consciousness of life” and “consciousness of death,” which were united in an “intricate way” in Mahler’s Ninth, which was playing on and off on the record player. “Gustav Mahler’s music says more about the nature of emotion than all philosophers.” Elegant? Terrible. And maybe she had understood that intuitively, nodded (but submissively), absent as it were but still agreeing, in other words. But sought to be closer to him, his body, like a kitten.
Was this romantic? “All of us were young once.” And that fumbling, clumsiness. Yes, he could think like that. But he has still never been able to listen to Gustav Mahler after that.
And will never—incidentally—listen to Gustav Mahler again. With Susette they do not listen to very much music, have never done so. Sometimes they go out dancing. Just the two of them, she and he. Tango, salsa, Latin. Transformed in the dance. Good together. And the nights afterward.
That night 1989, seventeen years ago, when they started being together again, for real, in reality, she had called him. He had driven through the darkness after her, the same time of year, the same darkness, as now. But in snow. Here, now, no snow, just black black on the ground, everywhere. An appalling whirl of snow then and she had said on the telephone that she did not know where she was, but was on a road, and had been very upset, he had to come after her. Had been difficult to find out exactly where she was, but he had not hesitated for a second. Borrowed a former classmate’s car—Peter Bäckström’s, incidentally, the one they are going to visit now, and his family in Rosengården 2 where they are driving down the avenues to the right address—and yes, he, Tom, had found her in the end.
That night when he had picked her up in the snow, on the side of the road, in this area (as said, she was also from here, so that was not strange), and seen her, a small figure with a Fjällräven backpack on the side of the road in the snow, in the light of the headlights, he had known not only that she had been found, but he as well.
And not many words were needed after that, that had been clear. She had tried to speak, said, “I’ll do everything for you. I’ll—” Repay? No, she had not said it like that, not that word, there were no complicated words like that inside her, had never been, and also, for that reason, how he loved loves her.
But that had been her message, she was worn out: bloody, beaten, but appealed quietly and determined for a promise that he would never ask about it—but, she pointed out, no one had done anything to her. She would go to therapy, never talk about what happened, otherwise. Otherwise she would not be able to… live?
She had not needed to say that. He had promised, just as silently. And it had been clear. He had thought it would be good for her and for both of them to get away for a while. Thought about his aunt, in Portugal, who often wrote and invited him but he had not visited, had not had time; in and of itself had not had time then either, but he had been able to arrange the leave from work. The aunt was also sick, of course, needed help. “I know where we’re going!” he said to his fiancée Susette Packlén who was going to become a Maalamaa and have a child with him already that next year at the same time and then they would be living in New York, his first lengthy foreign assignment. “We’ll go to Portugal!” And she became as happy as a child too because she had never been abroad really and the aunt had also sounded happy on the phone and immediately wired money for the airline tickets, and shortly thereafter Tom and Susette were sitting on a plane, flying above the clouds in the beautiful clear air, her pale skin, her tired eyes—but held his hand, as said, those attacks of sorrow and melancholy were not over, of course, it would periodically be difficult in Portugal as well. But the main thing was the direction, the will, the approach, and he had not needed to say it out loud like when he held a speech for work, lay out the direction, the approach—this was without words, she knew. “Ja sieltä ei sit tuoda mitään ruumiita Kotiin / and then no corpses are brought home from there,” someone in the row behind them on the plane had said, vacationers in a vacationing mood who were describing how they had been let off by friends from their hometown when they were going on their first charter, country bumpkins among country bumpkins who had never been anywhere who clapped their hands when the plane took off, cheers!, in red wine and beer and sangria! No corpses. Ironic maybe, amusing, because it turned out that way when, roughly a month later, Tom Maalamaa and Susette returned to the homeland it was in connection with the repatriation of a corpse: the aunt who had died while they were there visiting her. A difficult time, a lot to take care of those final days in Portugal, so it had not exactly turned out as they thought it would. But Susette, his future wife, mother to his three children, had been invaluable, and still, also, as if the hardships involved with everything that needed to be arranged down there in Portugal and later with the funeral in the homeland only brought them closer together.