‘You said there was something you wanted to talk about.’
Laura Helanto seems to remember this too. Alongside her usual cheerfulness, there is now a sense of doubt.
‘Right, I’m just not sure it’s all that sensible,’ she begins, stressing the final word so that it’s almost all I hear. ‘It’s more of an … emotional suggestion. At least, I hope it is. Perhaps if I show you…?’
By all means, I indicate. Laura gets up and fetches her A3-sized portfolio from the hallway. On the way back, she seems to stop briefly to look at Gauss’s calculations. I find myself hoping she’ll ask me something about them. She doesn’t. She moves the dishes to make space in the middle of the table and asks me to stand up. We both stand beside the table. Laura unzips the portfolio, opens up the folder inside and shows me an A3-sized photograph of the adventure park. Except it isn’t a photograph. Things have been added to the image: wild patterns, fantastic colours.
‘These are murals, wall paintings,’ Laura explains as she turns the pages. ‘I’d like to paint the walls at the adventure park. These are just sketches from which I’ll design the eventual murals. I’ve been trying to combine the tradition of graffiti with the influence of various artists I admire. These are very different from the canvasses I usually paint, but that’s because I really want them to suit the character of the adventure park, the rhythm, the childish sense of play and adventure, as the name YouMeFun suggests, and they’ll really fit the different spaces too. It’s a form of installation, I suppose, though that term normally has a rather different meaning.’
I can hear from her voice that Laura is her usual, enthusiastic self again. I look at the images. To me, what I see doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t stop looking at them, all the same.
‘Here,’ she says and taps the upper left-hand corner of the third picture with the tip of her finger. ‘You can certainly see the influence of Lee Krasner, though the reference is maybe a bit oblique, whereas in the next picture we’re clearly in the world of Dorothea Tanning. I have named each wall accordingly, so this one is Krasner Goes Adventure Park and this one is Tanning Takes the Train, because the wall will be right behind the Komodo Locomotive. Essentially, one way or another, each wall comments upon its surroundings. There are six of them in totaclass="underline" Krasner, Tanning, de Lempicka, Frankenthaler, O’Keeffe and Jansson. The murals are all between four and twelve metres in length, and they are all four metres tall. I’ll have to hire someone to help me during the work phase, but I’m sure it could all be done in a month. Alongside my own work, that is. I’ll paint all night, if need be – with your permission. The costs are very reasonable too, because I’ll be working with normal wall paint, except in a very few places, where I’ll have to mix something special. I estimate that we can keep the costs within the standard renovation budget. I just love the walls in that big hall. I’ve been looking at them right from the start, but without really knowing what I’d like to do with them. Now I know. That’s why I wanted to come and present my ideas to you. Directly.’
I am still looking at one of the images when I realise Laura has already stopped speaking. What’s more, I realise I’m smiling. Just as I did when I looked at the small photograph on her phone, I feel an almost irresistible desire to continue looking at it, because with each passing moment I see more. Not to mention the fact that Laura Helanto’s paintings, her swirls and patterns, quite simply delight me and please me without any useful or practical reason, and I can’t explain why in this context it feels so acceptable, so right, though in everything else I reject such illogical and irrational behaviour. Neither can I help picking up the sheets of paper and flicking through them.
‘I like this one most,’ I hear myself saying. ‘No, it’s definitely this one.’
And so on. Though it’s hard, I eventually manage to close the folder. I see that Laura Helanto is trying to respond to my smile. But she is clearly tense, nervous. That makes two of us: I am constantly tense and nervous whenever I’m around her. Then I say something I could never have imagined hearing myself say.
‘This doesn’t make any sense. But it has to be done.’
What happens next is even more radical. Laura Helanto shouts – a cry of victory, perhaps, a universal, international yes – and throws her arms around me, pulls me towards her and squeezes tight. The squeeze is forceful, we collide against each other. There’s warmth, a sense of nearness in so many parts of my body that the word ‘holistic’ wouldn’t be entirely unwarranted. I can smell her, feel her, her arms, her body. I hear her triumphant whoop so close to my ear that I’m certain I can feel the warmth of her breath against my eardrum. The scent of her hair, of her body, her clothes, all discernible as individual fragrances, because she is so close and she remains there for a good few seconds, and those seconds echo like chimes from a belfry. Then she releases me, steps back and shakes her arms and apologises for the third time in the course of this visit.
‘I was so overcome,’ she says. ‘I’m so happy. You’re so different from other people … You are…’
‘I am an actuary.’ The words come out of their own volition.
‘Exactly,’ she says, almost a shout. ‘You’re matter-of-fact, a bit edgy and strictly businesslike, and yet so fair and nice and … reliable. Do you know how rare that is? Do you really like my paintings?’
‘No,’ I say and instantly realise I was replying to the first question. I try to rectify the situation, and in doing so I say something extremely out of character for me. ‘I love your paintings.’
I know I am standing in the middle of my very own living room, my tie neat, but still it feels as though I have stepped into a new world, completely naked, without any form of protection.
5
This time they cover my eyes. AK is holding me by the hand again. I’m used to it by now, which in itself feels quite bizarre. But here we are, on the road again. The air inside the car is cool and pungent. I catch the smell of expensive aftershave and pine-forest Wunderbaum. I can feel the SUV’s acceleration in my body, the brakes, the turns. Covering my eyes has nothing to do with the time of day, that much was clear when I received instructions to stand in the staff car park situated behind the adventure park at ten-thirty at night. Nobody says anything.
It’s been a normal day, as normal as my days get at present.
I spent the morning learning about art: I’d agreed to the transformation of the adventure park and listened to a more detailed explanation of how it would happen. Laura Helanto drove us to the park. In retrospect, it feels as though I was walking on air and spent all morning living someone else’s life. In the afternoon, I tried to find a moment in Johanna’s diary when she would be away from the café and the kitchen, so that I could check the phone situation at the bottom of the freezer, but no such opportunity was forthcoming. Johanna is very dedicated and hard-working. I also visited Esa in the control room.
The air in his room was fusty. I learned a few important things. Firstly, of all the cameras on the outside of the building, only one is currently in operation. Secondly, unless there is a particular reason, Esa doesn’t routinely check the night-time security tapes, which in any case automatically delete themselves after a week. I didn’t ask a single direct question; I just let him talk. People talk when you ask them whether they think they need a rise in their annual budget. All I had to do was sit there breathing through my mouth. The air in the small room contained large quantities of sulphur, which caused a wave of nausea when inhaled through the nose.