The man paused. For a few seconds, the lizard reappeared. He continued.
‘But there is an upside to all this. We are prepared to extend the repayment schedule. Naturally, the debt will accrue more interest, but what’s most important is to get things rolling, as it were. The amusement park is ticking over nicely and…’
Pain was throbbing the length of my finger. I had reached a decision.
‘No,’ I said, then added, ‘This is an adventure park.’
‘What?’
‘This is an adventure park, not an amusement park.’
I explained the difference just as I’d explained it to the lawyer: an amusement park hurls people around, but in an adventure park people hurl themselves around. And so on. I added that though both parks might feature places like Caper Castle, the difference was still important and should be duly noted. For a moment the man was silent.
‘No?’
‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘I am not responsible for my brother’s debts. I don’t see how I possibly could be. I won’t pay.’
For the first time, the man showed a flicker of irritation.
‘AK could have torn your finger off,’ he said. ‘I told him to stop. I did you a favour.’
I glanced up at AK; he wasn’t listening to us.
‘Now please leave.’
The lizard reappeared, and this time it remained in the man’s eyes. He slowly turned his head towards AK and was about to say something when there came a knock at the door. I said ‘come in’ before anyone had the chance to open their mouth. A second later and Laura was in the room.
‘We need to talk about the maintenance to the Turtle Trucks…’
Laura stopped. Her eyes moved from me to the older man, then to AK, and finally back to me.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise…’ she began, but didn’t continue. From her expression, I could tell she knew she’d walked in on something very unexpected. Her gaze moved from the men to me, then to the middle of the room.
‘I didn’t realise either,’ said the older man, now more reptilian than human. ‘But if AK over here were to expand his activities, as it were, maybe we’d all realise something, yes?’
The older man shifted his lizard gaze from me to Laura. No, I thought instantly and automatically, no, no, no. You can break all the bones in my body and I still won’t pay, I was about to say, but so much as touch Laura and…
Right then I heard the sound of high heels against the laminate floor.
‘About the marketing budget,’ Minttu K said as she strode into the office. ‘Can we have a word, honey?’
Then she too came to a halt. There were now five of us in the small room.
For a moment, maybe as much as ten throbbing seconds, the office was like a wax museum where realistic dolls of living people stood frozen in position. Then the numbers, the facts, did their job. There were three of us. Even AK wouldn’t be able to snap all thirty of our fingers before the situation descended into chaos.
The wax dolls came to life.
The older man stood up from his chair, Laura stepped closer to my desk, Minttu K glanced inquisitively at both the men, particularly AK, corrected her posture and tugged down the hem of her all-too-short blazer. AK moved, following the older man towards the door. Once at the door, the older man stopped, and AK stopped too.
Laura took half a step closer to the desk, and I don’t know why noticing this seemed to warm me so much amid all the agitation. The older man turned, noticed AK in front of him, moved beside him and spoke in the friendliest voice he had used thus far.
‘Thanks again, Henri,’ said the iguana. ‘We love amusement parks. We’ll certainly be coming again.’
AK said nothing at all.
10
The following three days – Thursday, Friday, Saturday – I spent almost entirely in the adventure park. I was woken in the mornings by the gentle nudge of Schopenhauer’s paws. He sat purring beside my face, and prodding me beneath the nose. I got up and gave him some food. This always happened between five and a quarter past five in the morning. I shaved, had breakfast, tied my tie and headed to the adventure park.
I first took the commuter train, then changed to the bus. The journey took an average of forty-seven minutes, and I needed a two-zone ticket. I used the journey to calculate everything. Well, not quite everything. I didn’t take Juhani’s alleged gambling debts into account. The whole matter seemed more absurd with every day that passed: the visit of the two men, their claims and demands. My little finger was swollen and still sore to the touch, which reminded me that all this really had happened, but other than that…
What I said was exactly what I thought.
Even if Juhani had been playing poker more than he could afford, it was none of my concern, except for the fact that it had left the adventure park in something of a financial quandary. It was perfectly possible that Juhani had gambled a lot. In fact, it was highly probable, given everything that had come to light. A fanciful and unrealistic approach to the laws of probability makes people try their luck in situations that have nothing to do with luck – be it personal relationships or making a quick buck. For this reason, I didn’t gamble in any way, shape or form. To me it was like swimming in a pool half filled with sharks: though the sharks only took up half the pool, it was still their pool.
Once the man with the reptilian eyes and his not-so-little helper who only answered to the name AK had left my office, I asked Laura Helanto to show me how everything worked. Everything? she had asked. Yes, I replied, I want to know how my park functions, what goes on where, I want to master every aspect of this. I didn’t tell her I had no choice in the matter. I didn’t offer any explanations for this or for what had just happened. And I didn’t tell her about the park’s catastrophic financial situation or Juhani’s alleged gambling problems.
The next few days were packed.
I learned how to do everything in the park.
With a screwdriver in my hand, I tightened the structures beneath the slides. I acquainted myself with the most critical aspects of the park’s cleaning operation, sat with Minttu K – in the afternoons the smell of alcohol, specifically gin lonkero, was overpowering – as we went through the marketing budget, negotiated with the stony-faced Johanna about reducing the cafeteria’s acquisition budget (the answer was no), tried to coax Esa away from his screens and to expand his job description to include live interaction with the customers (this apparently wasn’t possible if maximum customer safety was to be ensured at all times), wondered when Venla might turn up for work (I still hadn’t actually met her), and, of course, all the while trying to avoid Kristian, who at every opportunity whispered various ideas about the general managership and the transition strategy, as well as asking when he could break the news to the others.
On Sunday morning I was sitting on the train once again.
The sun was rising. The streets, fields, parks and cycle paths were empty, as though they too were resting. As autumn had progressed, the gold and crimson of the trees seemed to have lost part of their previous splendour, but with each stop, as the sun slowly rose, their glow intensified, and when I arrived in Vantaa I stepped off the bus into an ocean of colour.
According to Laura Helanto, Sundays were almost as good as Saturdays in terms of footfall. I told myself that Sunday would be my last day as a trainee at the adventure park and that the last few days could be considered my induction week. As the new, full week began, I would be ready. Ready to introduce the staff to my list of changes, to our new ways of working, and especially to the new budgets for each department.