He placed the envelope with his bill next to the envelope with Juhani’s letter. I noted that both of them bore my name. The lawyer checked the papers one last time, then slid the folder to my side of the table.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘My condolences.’
4
YouMeFun sprawled through the autumnal landscape in technicolour, almost genetically modified splendour. A box of tin and steel, painted in garish red, orange and yellow, and almost 200 metres across, it was an eyesore, no matter which colour of tinted spectacles you used to look at it. Presumably the point of the brash colours and enormous lettering was to spread the joyous gospel of sweaty fun and games for all the family to everyone who entered its gates. It was hard to gauge the height of the adventure-park box, fifteen metres maybe. There was enough space inside for a sports ground and an air hangar, a few schools and a truck park. YouMeFun was situated just beyond the Helsinki city limits.
Two days and two rather sleepless nights had passed since the lawyer’s visit.
I accidentally got off the bus one stop too soon. The closer I got, the harder walking became. It wasn’t because of the slight incline or the faint headwind, or the fact that I wanted to enjoy the cobalt-blue sky and almost white afternoon sun. It was more a question of disbelief, disgust and despair that I felt welling within me the closer I got to the park. As though something was forcing me to turn around, walk in the opposite direction and never look back. This must have been the voice of reason, I thought. But at the same time, I heard Juhani’s voice: It’s my only wish.
I knew very little about the adventure park’s operations. I knew that Juhani had nothing to do with its day-to-day running. The doors opened and closed without him. He had an office in the building, but he was away a lot, vaguely ‘on business’, as they say. As to who did take care of the day-to-day running of the park, I knew nothing at all. The car park, a field of concrete the size of three football pitches, was half full. Most cars were family-sized, most of them a few years old. I looked at the lettering on the roof of the building.
YouMeFun
The letters looked bigger than on my previous visit – which was also my only visit to date. To my surprise, they looked almost threatening. I found myself thinking I’d need to be careful not to be struck by the sharp prongs of the Y or caught in the fluttering flag of the F. Where had the thought come from? I could only assume that recent events had been more than enough to foster such irrational trains of thought. I walked towards the entrance and glanced up at the roof one more time.
Once inside, I queued at the ticket desk. The foyer seemed to give a clue as to what was in store: children bursting with energy, wild cries and high-pitched shrieks, and the lower, rather less enthusiastic conversation of the mums and dads. The semi-circular counter, around ten metres in length, was painted in the same colours as the rest of the park. Along the length of the red-orange-and-yellow counter, a large dome curved through the air. Between the counter and the dome, as though caught inside an enormous, psychedelic space helmet, stood a man in an adventure-park uniform.
The man was young, twenty-five perhaps, and had a name badge on his shirt. In large white letters was the word ‘YouMeFun’ and in smaller black letters the word ‘Kristian’. Kristian was brown-eyed and muscular. Judging by the toolkit hanging from his belt, I assumed he was responsible for park maintenance. Standing behind the counter he looked half at home and half very out of place.
When it was my turn, I stopped.
Why was I here? My original idea had been to inform the staff of Juhani’s passing and the park’s transferring into my ownership, but now that felt terribly insufficient. I hadn’t considered Kristian or the other members of staff. And I hadn’t considered the customers at all, crowds of whom seemed to be gathering, even at this hour of the morning.
It looked very much as though there was literally nothing in the world that could prepare a person to inherit an adventure park.
I told Kristian who I was and asked to speak to someone responsible for the park’s operations. He asked why I didn’t just talk to my brother. I told him I couldn’t do that because Juhani had died unexpectedly and now I owned the park. Kristian’s smile disappeared, and he told me a woman by the name of Laura Helanto was in charge of things. I asked if I could meet Laura Helanto. Kristian held the phone against his ear and turned away from me before I managed to say I’d rather tell Helanto the news in person. Right then I heard Kristian saying into the phone that Juhani is dead and there’s someone here who says he’s his brother, he doesn’t look like Juhani, should I check his ID to make sure this isn’t some kind of Nigerian inheritance scam … Baltic, then … well … okay, bye. Kristian ended the call and turned to face me again. We stood silently on either side of the counter and waited. Eventually he spoke.
‘Juhani was a really good boss, gave us free rein. He was chilled out, he wasn’t always looking over your shoulder and counting every penny.’
You’re not wrong, I thought. Then I remembered why I’d thought there was something strange about the sight of Kristian behind the counter.
‘Why exactly are you in the ticket office?’ I asked and nodded at the tools dangling from his belt. ‘It looks like you do a rather different job here.’
‘Venla hasn’t come in today.’
‘Hasn’t come in? Why not?’
‘She can’t get up.’
‘Is she ill?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Kristian, and this time he sounded genuinely worried. ‘Have you heard something about her?’
I was about to open my mouth, but just then I heard a woman’s voice behind me. The voice said hello. I turned and gripped her outstretched hand.
Laura Helanto had dark-rimmed glasses and brown hair that curled and spread out like a bush until it touched her shoulders. Her eyes were blue-green and had an inquisitive alertness about them. She was around forty, perhaps a year or two over, just like me. She was approximately twenty-five centimetres shorter than me, about average height for a Finnish woman. I was rather adept at estimating people’s height because I was a tall man myself, one hundred and ninety-two centimetres, so I was used to continuous, meaningless questions on the subject.
Laura Helanto gave me a quick glance, quite literally looked me up and down from head to toe, and gave me her condolences. I wasn’t sure how it was customary to respond to this, and from her expression it was hard to tell whether she was genuinely sorry or just simply continuing to scrutinise my appearance.
Then we marched off apace.
‘The Doughnut,’ said Laura Helanto and pointed at an enormous, transparent plastic tube where a few children were bumping into one another and knocking against the padded walls. ‘Our first acquisition, still one of the park’s firm favourites. You can run in a circle and defy the force of gravity. Just say if you’ve heard all this before.’
‘I haven’t heard anything at all,’ I said. It was the truth.
The air was heavy with an indistinctly sweet smell, a combination of the aroma of the cafeteria, disinfectant and something human. There were shrieks, squeals and high-pitched cries on all sides. I kept a constant watch on my feet and realised I was worried I might accidentally step on one of the shorter clients.
‘Just ask anything that comes to mind,’ said Laura Helanto. As we took a sharp turn to the right, she glanced at me. There was something about that glance; it had the same curious, inquisitive shimmer as before. As her head turned, her bushy hair bounced as though caught in the wind. ‘It’s your park now. That over there is Caper Castle, one enormous climbing frame. There are a couple of alternative routes through it. In each area of the castle, you have to climb a little differently and the obstacles are different too. From a maintenance perspective, this is one of the most critical places in the park. There’s always something broken. Caper Castle is affectionately known as Spare Part Castle. There’s a lot of wear and tear. You wouldn’t think a child weighing only thirty kilos could be such a terminator, but that’s how it is.’