‘All I’m suggesting is that right now we try to keep a low profile, especially with regard to the banking operations.’
‘Honey, which one of us is the marketing director round here?’
The train stops. I wait for the doors to open. Nobody gets off, and those getting on form a micro-crush around the doorway. I look at my feet as I step on board.
‘You are,’ I say, and without looking around me head straight for an empty carriage. I don’t like listening to other people regaling the entire train with news of their families, their political convictions that have nothing to do with statistical probability, their constipation issues. I find a cluster of seats with nobody sitting nearby. ‘This isn’t a question of—’
‘This is a question of striking while the iron’s hot, you’ve got to grab the seal by the horns while the tide is in, and all that. Juhani agreed with me.’
‘I’m not sure about that…’
‘He was dynamic and forward-looking. Juhani would’ve seen things just like I do.’
The sad thing, I think to myself, is that Juhani will soon be in a three-thousand-euro coffin, and I wish he was still running the adventure park, striking the iron with you and whatever else the pair of you come up with.
‘I know that,’ I say. ‘Juhani was…’
‘Fun and flexible.’
‘Right…’
‘Humorous and quick-witted.’
‘Right…’
‘Spontaneous and amiable.’
‘Right…’
I don’t fail to notice the flipside of Minttu K’s list of attributes, the ones that without saying out loud she implicitly uses to describe me. It doesn’t feel particularly nice, but I can’t possibly tell her I’m only trying to avoid ending up swinging from a makeshift gallows. Instead I apologise for being a bit reserved.
‘And right now our operations are the complete opposite,’ Minttu K says. ‘I’ve talked to the others about it.’
Which others, I wonder.
‘This is a transitional phase,’ I say. ‘And now I have opened up the bank, which—’
‘Which we’re not allowed to tell anyone about,’ she says, interrupting me again. ‘I’ve been thinking about running an ad campaign on the radio. In the capital region, maybe even right across southern Finland. There’s an offer on my desk, an offer we can’t and shouldn’t turn down. I’ve got people lined up to make the ad, bloody funny guys. I can already hear the jingle. They could come up with a few one-liners about the slides and the bank. You remember Scrooge McDuck splashing around in his money pit? “Now slide ride into the bank.” Something like that.’
‘That sounds funny,’ I say and realise my voice is bone-dry and businesslike, though there is something vaguely amusing about the idea. ‘But maybe later. At the moment, we are operating solely as an adventure park. That’s why we ordered the posters, the flyers and everything else. They are for use inside the park.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
I must admit, that question takes me by surprise. I feel like I already know Minttu K a little bit and I’m sure she’s just pushing me. Still, there’s something about the question that gets me thinking. At the same time, I realise this is neither the time nor the place for a deeper discussion of the matter. I have to do what I have to do. So I can survive. So the adventure park can survive.
‘I’m afraid that I’m afraid of humour, fun, spontaneity, quick-wittedness and amiability,’ I say and notice I have raised my voice. ‘For now, we do what the situation requires. Once the situation changes, we’ll rethink things.’
I end the call and glance around. Another golden autumn day: the trees are ablaze with colour, there’s a bright chill all around. At first, I sense more than feel that there’s someone else sitting at the end of the row of three seats. Then I hear that someone has sat down opposite me too.
‘The words of a man who means business,’ I hear in that now-familiar voice.
I turn my head. AK is sitting at the end of my row, Lizard Man is on the row opposite. We are the only three passengers in the carriage.
15
The train pulls into the station at Malminkartano. There are a handful of people on the platform. I can’t think of many moments quieter than when a train has just stopped. It feels as though everything else stops too and falls silent. Nobody gets into our carriage.
‘Someone told me this train goes around in a circle,’ says Lizard Man. He looks out of the window at the station walls covered in graffiti. ‘Which seems appropriate, given the circumstances. We go round and round in circles, and here we are again, just the three of us.’
I remain silent and realise I should have kept my eyes peeled while I was talking to Minttu K. On the other hand, I know only too well that Lizard Man and his friend would eventually have caught up with me somewhere else. Now the three of us are on a train together, and that isn’t even half the problem. The problem is sitting right opposite me.
‘But you know what really pisses me off?’ Lizard Man asks and looks at me. His pocked face looks a little swollen.
I shake my head to indicate that I don’t know.
‘Nowadays you can’t even buy a ticket without a credit card or a debit card. Try stuffing a fiver into an app on your phone. And right there on the side of the carriage, there’s a sign saying there’s no ticket vendor on the train. Whatever next? Imagine going into an off-licence and they tell you, yes, everything’s just like it was before, only now we don’t stock booze, or any other kind of alcohol for that matter, but apart from that nothing has changed a bit, come on in. So now AK and I are on this train without a ticket; every time the train pulls into a station we have to sit here worrying whether the inspectors are going to turn up, fine us and throw us off the train. Do you think it’s fair that we’re made to live in fear like this?’
Lizard Man’s gaze is so intense that I think I’d better give him some kind of response.
‘I suppose not,’ I say.
‘AK over there is shitting bricks.’
I glance at AK. Staring straight ahead with the headphones covering his ears, he looks like he might not even know he’s on a train at all.
‘I’m sure you have a ticket,’ says Lizard Man.
‘I have a monthly travel card.’
‘Give it to me.’
‘What?’
‘Give me the card.’
We look at each other. I was right, his face is slightly swollen. What’s more, he looks deadly serious. AK doesn’t look as though he is following our conversation particularly closely. But I know from experience that his apparent passivity can turn to action at the snap of a finger. I take the travel card from my jacket pocket and hand it to Lizard Man.
‘Thank you,’ he smirks. His smile is a snake’s smile.
I say nothing. Lizard Man slides the travel card into his own pocket, his movements so relaxed and suave that anyone might think it was his card all along. Then he leans his head against the back of the chair.
‘That feels much nicer,’ he says. ‘I must say. Not nearly as pants-wetting as before. What about you?’
I don’t reply.
‘That’s the thing,’ he says, now overdoing the pathos. ‘One day you jump on a train the way you’ve always jumped on a train, and you imagine the train is going to judder along just the way it’s supposed to, and the journey will be the same calm, lovely journey it was before. But then someone turns up, someone taking the piss, someone who says you can’t buy a train ticket on the train any more or some other completely nonsensical bullshit. And after that the train doesn’t seem to judder quite the same way ever again. It’s just that little bit colder inside.’