In only a minute I am back in my office. I instinctively open the window and through the narrow gap in the wall I draw cool, fresh air inside me as though gulping down water to quench my thirst. Then I sit down at my desk and begin making a series of calculations using my calculator, a pen and Google Maps, in particular the satellite-imaging function. Every time I have sat in that SUV, we meticulously kept within the speed limits. And I’m sure I can remember all the most important turns and which direction they took. At the same time, I can roughly remember stretches of that journey when we didn’t turn or slow down, and I can recall the approximate length of each of those sections. The blindfold across my eyes still allowed me to look down, and I was able to follow how the vehicle behaved in relation to the road. But more importantly, now I have exact departure and arrival times. I calculate measurements and distances, I read the map, zooming in and out dozens of times, and before long I have narrowed the options down to three. I know the direction of travel with moderate certainty, I know the overall distance with some degree of certainty, and I know exactly what kind of building I am looking for with utter, lucid certainty.
Forty minutes later, I have two barns to choose from.
17
The adventure park is turning a handsome profit. Naturally, the bank is not. Yet. The park’s sales figures have leapt almost twenty percent from the time of the first loan. The numbers are promising. I will be able to pay the staff’s wages and clear the park’s tax bill and some of the company’s official debts. If sales continue like this and the bank gradually becomes profitable – at first only marginally, then exponentially – then I can start to address Juhani’s less-official debts. What I can’t do, however, is find an extra fifty thousand euros to hand over to Lizard Man.
And that’s only part of the problem.
I don’t think it’s ever occurred to me, not even for a second, that I will actually ever pay him a cent. I’ve had enough. The moment he stuffed my travel card in his pocket, the matter was done and dusted. I realise it might have been done and dusted much earlier, and in light of the facts I could have made the decision much sooner, but the travel card sealed the deal. Even without the threat of a fifty-thousand-euro debt – you just don’t do that. You do not travel on another man’s travel card.
I spend a moment addressing both sets of accounts. I don’t forge anything, but I extrapolate two separate reports – both of which are truthful – in such a way that the two sets of accounts eventually merge into one. This requires close attention to detail. I am so immersed in my calculations that I only realise I have beckoned someone into the room once Laura is standing in front of me. She has tied her wild hair in a tight bun at the back of her head and propped her glasses on her brow. For the first time, I see her face in its entirety. There’s something about it that I haven’t seen before. I can’t put my finger on what it is, and I don’t have time to think about it because she’s asking me something. Or more specifically, she repeats something I said to her before and asks me to follow her.
The first mural is almost ready. Laura has spent the entire weekend painting. She started with the section of the hall least visible to the guests. This is understandable. That’s what I would have done too. This also explains why I didn’t notice the wall when I arrived this morning, or when I left Esa’s control room and walked to my office. The mere thought of Esa makes me hope that the tropical aroma in the control room hasn’t become ingrained in my clothes. I refrain from sniffing my sleeve. Instead, I listen to Laura as we walk and talk.
‘I did as you suggested. I started with the easiest bit, the part I knew how to resolve. And I solved it. Quite well, in fact. And now…’
I glance at Laura, see her in profile. At the same time, I catch a glimpse of what I have always instinctively known. There is something hard about her face. By that, I don’t mean that her face is worn or angular or in any way harsh. Perhaps the word I am looking for is experience, knowledge, a skill she doesn’t want to bring out or share publicly. Something that her glasses and her bushy hair usually soften and hide.
‘Here we are,’ she says as we turn right after the throwing range, the Furious Flingshot, and the back wall comes into view.
And the view is breath-taking.
The wall clenches me, somewhere between my heart and stomach. The swirls and patterns flow and mingle, constantly changing form. Images appear, only then to disappear and create new images. I realise I look as though I’ve turned to a pillar of salt.
‘Frankenthaler,’ Laura explains. ‘Adapted, of course. It’s my version now, my interpretation. Kind of a graffiti version, I’d say.’
I look at the wall, unable to speak. I don’t know what it is I can feel. Suddenly I am unsure of everything. A moment passes. I notice I have been silent for some time. My whole body is reacting to Laura’s creation, and I can’t do anything about it. I feel the mural in my feet, though at the same time I know that, rationally, such a sensation is impossible.
‘Frankenthaler or not,’ I say, ‘this is the greatest thing I have ever seen.’
I mean what I say. I turn towards her. She has removed the band from the back of her head, letting her hair frame her face again. She looks more familiar now. Still, I have seen the hardness now, I know it exists. But I don’t think of that any longer. I feel an irresistible desire to hug Laura, to hold her in my arms. It would be inappropriate, I tell myself. But then something happens. I might have inadvertently made to touch her, I don’t know, because right then Laura takes a step forwards and wraps an arm around me.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘Frankenthaler or not,’ I hear myself repeating.
As Laura Helanto hugs me, as I stand looking at this mural, I feel something I have never felt before. I am myself. The thought intertwines with the feeling, the feeling with the thought, they are one and the same, and everything surges through my mind with such clarity, such certainty that it could form the foundation of an entire skyscraper, the bedrock of a new continent. Laura steps away, I can still feel her warm arm around me, the touch of her hair against my chin and cheek. I don’t know what has happened. I just know that something has … happened.
‘So you like it, then?’ she asks.
‘I love it.’
18
Mere mention of the word ‘date’ has always caused me a degree of discomfort. Not to mention what I think it is supposed to mean in practice: that, of my own free will, I should meet up with someone whom I either don’t know at all or only know slightly. This has never struck me as an especially wise way of behaving under any circumstances. There are many rational arguments against such behaviour, not least the fact that the probability that the meeting will turn out to be worth the effort is vanishingly small. We only have to count the number of interesting people we have met in our lives and relate that number to the total number of people we have met to get an idea of what kind of lottery-ticket odds are in play. As an actuary, I obviously don’t buy lottery tickets and I have decided that, if I ever did go on a date, I would first have to assure and convince myself of the relevant factors so I could deduce whether my actions would be profitable or not.
That being said, I ended up asking Laura out – without carrying out a single calculation or the most rudimentary probability assessment in advance. You could say it all happened irrespective of me. We were standing in front of the wall she had just painted, and I heard myself saying I wanted to see her as soon as possible. It seems she understood what I meant and immediately started calling our forthcoming meeting a date. At that moment, I lost control of all my faculties, all my doubts regarding probability calculations, and experienced in practice the adage about butterflies fluttering their wings in someone’s stomach when they are waiting for something exciting to happen.