Again she looks embarrassed. At least, that’s what I assume until I realise this is about something else altogether. The realisation is like a flash of light. Mentally I try to put it into words. Perhaps she truly does think of my company in rather the same way as I think of hers: that my company has an impact on her, that it complicates her thoughts and actions in a way that is, at least to some degree, unpredictable. Then there’s the thought that she might actually like me – and that affects me in ways that are more than unpredictable. I try not to think about how many love songs, which I used to consider gushing and sickly sweet, suddenly feel like a very concrete consideration of the current state of affairs. Laura praises the dish. All I can taste is a perfectly standard Finnish mushroom and try to avoid thinking about the price per kilo. Right now, I don’t care.
The wonderful company.
We eat our way through various gastronomic configurations, each containing around a tablespoon of food. The presentation of the dishes adheres to standard geometrical patterns, and their weight is more or less the weight of the plate. The lightest course – smoked forest hare and archipelago sorrel in an almost invisible form – must weigh no more than a whisker from said forest hare. But Laura likes it, and I like that she likes it. Wine glasses seem to multiply before our eyes as each dish is accompanied by a splash of a particular recommended vintage, but it’s hard to drink wine with the food when the food disappears the moment you touch it. And so, each of us now has a row of wine glasses in front of us. The wines don’t differ from one another nearly as much as the waiter’s lengthy descriptions and background stories might suggest. We are served a slew of adjectives – tart, oaked, complex, toasty, earthy, fleshy, flamboyant and dozens of others – and a hearty dose of highly dubious flimflam about a small organic vineyard in northeast Italy. Still, I realise the point of an overly priced evening like this is not to identify the flaws in the waiters’ logic or their attempts to pull the wool over your eyes, but simply to sit opposite each other and to do so over a prolonged period of time.
‘It feels like I’m getting my confidence back,’ says Laura after we have swallowed a solitary spoonful of crayfish mousse, thus emptying our plates. ‘I didn’t even realise how blocked I was. And I didn’t know that painting was just the thing to help me – the same thing that caused the block in the first place. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but your mathematical model really helps me to think about things from a different angle. It opens up a whole new perspective, in so many different ways.’
Laura’s voice is low but enthusiastic, she takes a sip of wine, all the while looking across the rim of the glass and right into my eyes. The soft, dim light cannot hide it: her face, her entire being, combine a new hardness with the happiness and positivity I knew from before. She truly looks like she has turned some kind of corner. Mathematics can work wonders, I know that. But for some reason, I find it hard to imagine that all this is down to the numbers. I don’t know why. Maybe my general life experience and the tens of thousands of calculations I have performed tell me that a mathematical awakening like this is a privilege for the few, not the many. I smile because Laura makes me smile. Laura smiles too.
‘Things seem to have fallen into place,’ she says, leaning forwards slightly. ‘All kinds of things.’
By the time dessert number two arrives (three raspberries, a drop of syrup and a minuscule pyramid of vanilla foam), we have started discussing the next wall to be painted. Laura tells me this will be the one inspired by Tove Jansson.
‘But it won’t be in her style. It will be in my style, but it’s so influenced by Tove and her themes that I’m going to place her in the centre and surround her with what she means to me and what her work makes me think of time and again. Freedom, beauty, the sea … love.’
That last word remains hanging in the air, wedged between us, there above our rows of wine glasses, at the spot where our eyes meet. I’ve been wondering whether or not to loosen my tie. The notion that the ambient temperature in the restaurant has risen throughout the evening is improbable, but it certainly feels that way. I say what I’m thinking.
‘It’s going to be amazing. Everything you paint … touches me. I noticed it in the Ateneum too. I liked the waterlilies in the French pond. I liked the Finnish masters – I had no idea there were so many different ways to paint death, sorrow and misery, and in such an array of melancholy colours. But I didn’t love them. But you … When I saw your work, I mean, your paintings … I loved … love … you.’
I don’t think I’ve had very much to drink, but I feel dizzy, I’m sweating, saying things I don’t mean to say, and by now I firmly believe that the substantial financial expenditure for this evening out and all the symptoms of mild ethanol poisoning are infinitely smaller than the joy it has bought me. It feels as though I am lost though I am sitting on the spot.
Perhaps Laura notices this. She props her elbows on the table, and her new face – which I find much harder to read than her previous face – is closer to mine than at any time throughout the evening. When she finally surprises me with a question, there’s something new and unrecognisable about her voice too.
‘And what were you thinking of doing after dinner?’
19
I’ve never kissed anyone on the commuter train before. It makes the journey seem much quicker than usual, there’s no time to register the stops.
Of course, these are merely superficial observations that I make after the fact, once we are already sauntering through the Kannelmäki night.
In a strange way, my lips feel like they are ablaze; at the same time my body is both light as a feather and taut as an archer’s bow. Laura is walking next to me – or, more precisely, she is walking with me. Her shoulder is right up against me. We are on our way to my home. And while I feel the most extraordinary sensations in my mind and body, I still remember to look around.
I’m looking out for an SUV. I look carefully at the parking spaces, the edges of the roads, the driveways. All the while, I spend a second or two examining every person, every figure that walks past. AK would stand out due to his size, I assume, and Lizard Man with his shoulder-less frame. But I can’t see an SUV, I don’t see the two men or anyone else who might threaten my life, tonight of all nights. With a view to our date, I decide this is a good sign.
I open the front door and we take the stairs in silence. We arrive at my apartment door, I hold it open for Laura and walk in behind her. I help her shrug off her coat, tell her where the bathroom is, then walk into the kitchen and give Schopenhauer his little evening meal. Once I have done that and I hear Laura flushing the toilet, washing her hands and opening the bathroom door, I no longer know what to do. But at this point, my body seems to know on my behalf. We kiss each other in the living room, bathed in moonlight, right in front of Gauss’s equations. Naturally, I see the equations, but I don’t feel the same steadfast, respectful admiration for and awe at them as before. Now they are only symbols, a moment later not even that.
Once in the bedroom, we undress. For my part, at least, this is a very disorganised affair, as if I didn’t know how to remove items of clothing or in what order. Last of all, I take off my tie. The entire process is complicated by the fact that by now I am like the afore-mentioned archer’s bow, taut and ready to fire. Undressing and finding a comfortable position on the bed are made all the more difficult because our lips and tongues are so tightly pressed against each other, as though they were glued together, as though we are unable to affect the matter one way or another. Our mouths feel like they are at boiling point, our kisses are a long, wet, molten-hot tongue wrestling match. This isn’t as off-putting as it sounds. The sensation is very pleasant indeed. But it is nothing compared to the feel of Laura’s bare skin against my own.