The lawyer has sent me an email. Accompanied with a link. He asks me to choose Juhani’s coffin and let him know my decision.
Schopenhauer has never met my brother Juhani, so to him the whole matter is rather distant. I haven’t bothered him with the details. I imagine he has his own worries, his own tasks. And in one of his tasks he has always been exemplary. He has always been a realist. He was like that when he was little too, and that’s why I named him as I did. I haven’t thought about this for a long time. Schopenhauer is seven years old. If the original Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher and my cat’s namesake, were still alive, he would have reached the ripe old age of 232. I don’t know what the infamous pessimist would make of that.
The choice of coffins is vast. The link expounds at length upon the quality of each casket and the local materials used, both on the outside and the inside. All in all, there are over twenty options to choose from, from a basic, no-frills model to luxury items for those who want to bow out in style. At this point, I think, the wishes of the deceased may differ radically from those of the living. How many people say at the moment of death: take the cheapest coffin you can find, it’s only my final journey? And how many would request that funeral guests are offered only a glass of water and that the flowers all should come from your own garden, thank you very much? That would be the cheapest, most sensible solution. But that’s all it would be.
I know why thoughts like this are bubbling in my mind.
Schopenhauer. A Pessimist’s Wisdom. In particular the essay ‘On the Vanity and Suffering of Life’:
‘For human existence, far from bearing the character of a gift, has entirely the character of a debt that has been contracted. The calling in of this debt appears in the form of the pressing wants, tormenting desires, and endless misery established through this existence. As a rule, the whole lifetime is devoted to the paying off of this debt; but this only meets the interest. The payment of the capital takes place through death. And when was this debt contracted? At the begetting.’
The first time I read these words I was a young mathematics student. It was a month or so after one of my parents had died. Combined with the rigour of mathematics, Schopenhauer’s doctrines seemed like the only possible way of surviving in the world, in this life that in all other respects was utterly mindless.
And for a long time thereafter, the German philosopher’s writings felt like a reasonable way of relating to people and things. Schopenhauer seemed to tell the truth about things. Whereas Leibniz claimed that this is the best of all possible worlds, Schopenhauer calmly asserted that it was the worst. He substantiated this statement by saying that ‘possible’ does not mean what somebody might be able to imagine, but what truly exists and what will endure. Thus, our world is constructed in such a way that it only barely remains afloat: if it were even slightly worse, it would no longer be able to sustain itself. And because a worse world would be unsustainable, it isn’t a possible world, ergo ours is the worst of all possible worlds.
I realise that, right now, I really should try and think more in the former way. That would be the most logical option, it would be based on the recognition of facts – no matter which way I look at it. I have problems, and finding a solution to those problems is literally a question of life and death. And though I might succeed at the first – in staying alive – I will still have greater problems than ever before. In a situation like this, shouldn’t I think that life is terrible, futile and silly, that it only ever leads to even greater suffering?
I flick through the coffin options, my mind still on the events of Friday evening.
We carried the pots of paint from the car into the warehouse at the adventure park. The tension that had built up while we were driving began to relent once we stepped out of the car’s claustrophobic interior. We found space for the paints beside the Bogeyman Swing, which has been temporarily taken out of use. Laura began organising the pots, and for some reason my attention was drawn for a moment to the hairy, metre-high bogeyman mask attached to one end of the swing. Still, we spoke about things other than those we had discussed outside the hardware store. Laura told me about her plans, I said I would gladly offer my unprofessional help. This comment amused her too, though again I was only being honest. I have no particular skills when it comes to painting. Once Laura had put the pots in a suitable order, she said she had to go and pick up her daughter from a friend’s place. I told her this was fine, I would lock up the park. We walked to the door at the back of the park, stepped out onto the loading bay. The evening was cool and dark, and we stood there next to each other. The roar of traffic carried in from the nearby highway. Laura thanked me and said that despite the awkward encounter it had been a lovely evening. I wasn’t sure what I was about to say, but just then Laura leaned forwards and placed a gentle kiss on my right cheek. Then she walked down the metallic steps, strode towards her car and waved as she steered the car towards the other side of the building.
Let Juhani have the very best. I select a coffin that looks more like a five-star hotel suite than a place where no one will ever meet anyone else ever again. I send the lawyer an email and switch off my computer.
14
My phone rings as I am waiting for the train on the platform at Kannelmäki. I’m unsure of the number, unsure whether I remember it from somewhere or whether it reminds me of a number I have seen before. In the past, I’ve always happily answered calls from unfamiliar numbers. Usually the caller is trying to sell me something that, naturally, I don’t buy and wouldn’t buy under any circumstances. I want to hear their sales pitch, their offers, which aren’t really offers in the truest sense of the word. As we speak, I calculate what their suggested purchases will really cost me, after which I tell them the reasons why their offer is unprofitable, why it doesn’t fit the definition of an offer, then I suggest what kind of offer might theoretically interest a hypothetical customer, assuming they were interested in what the company had to offer in the first place. Sometimes the telemarketer tries to end the call before I reach my real point: a discussion of the range of mathematical possibilities that have arisen and how they might best be presented to the potential customer. It is precisely these kinds of everyday mathematical considerations that I believe can be of great help when trying to make life as sensible and practical – in other words, as pleasant – as possible. I have often tried to share this joy with these lost souls who call me and try to sell me something. But all that is in the distant past now. It is in the same place as my superficially secure life in my role as an actuary with a stable monthly salary, back when there was an element of predictability to things, a sense that expectations would always be fulfilled, in a world where A led inexorably to B.
I answer the phone and I’m not especially surprised by what happens next: barely has the conversation started than Minttu K and I are having an argument.
‘What do you mean you don’t want to draw too much attention to it?’ she asks.
Obviously, I can’t tell her about DI Osmala’s suspicions, suspicions that I don’t want to augment in the slightest. My commuter train glides into the station.