I stand up, the car keys in my hand, and push them into my own pocket. I listen for a moment longer, just to be on the safe side – nothing but the gaping, empty adventure park around me and the Komodo Locomotive stopped in the night in front of me – and begin walking off towards what the park’s staff call the workshop.
When I’ve found what I’m looking for, I return to the rabbit, place the tools on the floor and try to prepare myself for something I could never have imagined myself doing. Very few people can imagine it. You don’t need an analyst to tell you that.
Namely:
Removing the ear from the man’s head is easier said than done. The metallic parts inside the ear have moved, the steel meshing has begun to unravel, individual strands have snapped and are now poking out of the ear like dogged, determined hairs. I tease the individual metallic hairs from the man’s head, and eventually the ear comes loose and I hold it in my hand again. I place it on the floor and pick up the roll of plastic wrap. I position the roll on one side of the man and step backwards, pulling the roll open as I go. Once I have pulled it about five metres back, I return to the man and roll him on top of the plastic. Then I grip the plastic firmly and wrap the man once, twice, thrice. I wrap him in plastic until the pain in my shoulder forces me to stop. He’s wrapped well enough. I fasten the plastic with a stapler. The package is tight and – as was my original intention – transportable.
The wheelbarrow is propped next to the door of the loading bay. I manage to heave the package diagonally across the barrow and begin hauling the load towards the Curly Cake Café. I can only pull the barrow with one hand, which means leaning forwards and straining myself with every step. Needless to say, this isn’t a very satisfactory plan, let alone perfect, but what’s most important is that if I succeed, I win.
Only yesterday, I tried to suggest to Johanna that she keep less surplus stock in the café. Now, I think, thank goodness she flat-out refused.
I pull the barrow and its load through the café. Johanna has left on the stand-by lighting. Hanging above the counter, the price list and pictures of the café’s various dishes glow in the pale light. Mighty Meatballs and Silly Spaghetti, Cinnamon Gigglebuns and the Boisterous Breakfast. The prices are more than reasonable.
I reach the kitchen and push my way through the swing doors. Then I stagger through the kitchen until finally reaching my destination.
There are two enormous freezers in total. I choose the one on the left. I lift the lid and get to work. I empty the contents of the freezer onto the floor and a nearby table, careful to remember the order in which everything is packed. Though at times my attention is drawn to how wasteful and imprecise Johanna’s acquisition methods are, how much room there is for improvement, I don’t waste time thinking about that now. I don’t want the products to thaw. This would be problematic on a number of levels: the food would go off, which would cause waste, and someone would ask why it had happened. I try to take into account both the ecological and criminological dimensions of what I’m doing by placing the products in neat piles, to make sure they thaw as little as possible. The large black-and-white clockface attached to the wall tells me that time is marching on more briskly than at any time in my life thus far.
Once the freezer is completely empty – this operation takes longer than I had anticipated because my left shoulder is getting sorer by the minute and because there are more products in the freezer than one might imagine could ever fit inside – I begin lifting. I hold the barrow’s handles as high as I can, which lifts the plastic-wrapped knife-thrower almost exactly halfway between the mouth of the freezer and the concrete floor. That’s enough. I bend my knees, assume a firm squatting position, place my hands beneath the man and push.
The performance isn’t flawless. But after some creaking and groaning, and one large, convoluted hoisting motion, the man is lying in the freezer. He fits perfectly. I pick up the polystyrene panels I found in the workshop and cut them into pieces big enough to cover the swaddled body at the bottom. This double bottom works better than I’d imagined: the polystyrene panels fit tightly and look almost like the bottom of the freezer, particularly once I pack a layer of raw dough and chicken wings on top of it.
I clean up the kitchen and leave. At the swing doors, I stop. I return to the fridge, open a half-litre bottle of yellow Jaffa and down the fizzy orange in a single gulp. From the cardboard box on the counter, I take two Mars bars and eat them both. Then I glance at the time again.
Sweeping the floor in the hall is a relatively quick operation. I return the wheelbarrow to the warehouse and take the ear with me into the workshop. I almost have to take the whole ear apart, then rebuild it from scratch. The paint is still tacky as I finally take the ladder back into the hall, climb up the steps and reattach the ear to the rabbit’s head with glue and a few screws. I come back down the ladder, take a few steps back and look at the rabbit. If my shoulder wasn’t throbbing with pain, if my thoughts weren’t dashing here, there and everywhere, flashing terrifying images through my mind, if I wasn’t so utterly exhausted, I might behold the enormous animal with its slender ears and think, it’s alright for you, standing there with your twenty-five-centimetre buck teeth; everything is fine, just as it used to be, as the giant German-Finnish rabbit smiles back at me and pricks up its friendly ears.
I clench the car keys in my hand and remind myself why I started doing this in the first place: one way or another, I’m going to save this adventure park.
The night outside is dark and cold. I zip up my coat, pull the baseball cap further down my head. I wait and listen, then I set off. After flicking the button on the keyring to open and shut the doors a few times, I easily locate the right car. The lights of a Hyundai start flashing against the eastern wall of the building. In addition to all his other unbusinesslike behaviour, the man has parked in one of the parking spaces reserved for staff members only. These spaces are clearly marked, and the relevant registration number is on the wall in front. I don’t know all the staff registration numbers off by heart, but I don’t think it matters right now. I doubt anyone told the man, just park in my space when you turn up to throw a knife at the new boss.
The car is messy and smells of McDonald’s. The source of the smell is a paper bag of fast food in the legroom on the passenger side. A few French fries protrude from the opening of the bag. I start the car, open the window slightly and pull away. I drive slowly and carefully, looking calmly around me and regularly checking the rear-view mirror. But this is all unnecessary. Nobody is following me, let alone paying me any attention. There is no traffic. I look at the clock above the speedometer; I am on schedule.
On arrival in Myyrmäki, I park the car beside a driveway between two blocks of flats, a place where security cameras are unlikely and which is at the intersection of several possible footpaths. I leave the car’s door unlocked, the keys on the dashboard. I walk half a kilometre to the train station and get the first train of the morning heading towards the airport. Once inside the train, I sit by the window and for a few stops I watch the landscape passing by, the night-time streets, the few illuminated windows.
I walk home from the station, and as I have correctly predicted, Schopenhauer is not amused. He hasn’t been fed, he’s hungry and now he’s been abruptly woken up. I tell him I’m sorry, I open a can of cat delicacies and pour a drop of cream into his cup for dessert. Schopenhauer eats. As always, I tell him about the events of my day – or, in this case, my evening and night too. Twice he looks up from his bowl. I then take off my shirt and look at my shoulder. The bleeding has stopped, and I’ve already become used to the pain. I should get up and have a shower, but I’ll do it in a minute. I sit in the kitchen with Schopenhauer and gaze out of the window, as though looking at this view for the first time.