The Man Who Died Read online

  if you will.’

  I look at the doctor. His head is nodding, barely perceptible.

  ‘Of course, everything is relative,’ he says.

  The doctor is sitting behind his desk. He’ll be sitting there for the rest of the day, tomorrow and next week. It’s a powerful thought, and a moment later I understand why it occurred to me.

  ‘How…?’ I begin. It hits me that this is a once-in-a-lifetime question. ‘How … when … Should I…? How much time do I have?’

  The doctor, who will help save lives for at least another decade before retiring for another ten, perhaps twenty years, suddenly looks grave.

  ‘Judging by the combination of factors,’ he begins, ‘days; weeks at most.’

  At first I want to yell, shout anything at all. Then I want to lash out, to punch something. Then I feel nauseous again. I swallow.

  ‘I don’t understand how any of this is possible.’

  ‘It’s a combination of everything that—’

  ‘I don’t mean that.’

  ‘Quite.’

  We both fall silent.

  It seems as though summer turns to autumn, to winter, spring and back to summer again. The doctor casts me an inquisitive glance, all the while fiddling with the blue document on his desk bearing my name and details in large letters: JAAKKO MIKAEL KAUNISMAA. SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER – 081178-073H.

  ‘Do you have any requests?’

  I must look confused, because the doctor continues his question. ‘Crisis therapy? Psychiatric help? A hospice place or a home carer? Painkillers? Sedatives?’

  I must admit, I hadn’t thought about things like that before. I haven’t exactly spent time thinking about the practical aspects of my final days, so there’s no to-do list, as it were. Death only comes round once in a lifetime, that much I realise, and maybe I should have put a bit more effort into it. But I’ve always avoided the subject and everything to do with it. Now I understand quite how immense it is. Big questions, big decisions. And for the last seven years I’ve always made big decisions with my wife: the move from Helsinki to Hamina; from the mundane to the matsutake.

  ‘I’ll have to speak to my wife.’

  When I hear myself, I know it’s the only thing I can do: I must speak to her, and after that I’ll know everything there is to know.

  2

  The asphalt seems to puff and shimmer. The wind has forgotten its only function: to create a breeze. Everything around me is so green and the air so stifling that it feels like I’ve been plunged into a bath of thick moss. I grip the sweaty telephone in my hand. I don’t know why; I’m not calling anyone. You don’t tell people these sorts of things over the telephone. I peel my shirt from my skin, but it glues itself back almost immediately.

  I sit in the car, turn on the ignition and set the air conditioning to the coolest setting available. The steering wheel feels moist and limp in my hands. If my sense of calm is merely because I’m still in shock, that for the moment suits me fine.

  I turn left out of the hospital car park. The most direct route would have been to take a left. I need a few minutes; I want to gather my thoughts.

  Our premises are situated on the other side of the prominent water tower in the suburb of Hevoshaka. I drive as far towards Salmenvirta as the road will allow, take a left and follow the shoreline towards Savilahti. Flashes of police-blue sea glint between the trees and the houses. Someone is mending a series of already flawless garden paving stones; a woman with fluttering hair is returning from the market, the basket at the front of her bike laden with groceries. It’s five to eleven. Morning in the town of Hamina.

  I arrive at Mannerheimintie and turn left. From Mullinkoskentie I take a left onto Teollisuuskatu. The suburb of Hevoshaka is small and its vistas are staggeringly heterogeneous. There you can find all forms of business and dwellings of all shapes and sizes – everything from detached houses to blocks of flats, from fast-food kiosks to industrial warehouses.

  Our business is located in a brownish-yellow, single-storey building with a small loading bay at one end and sauna facilities and a patio at the other. I can’t see Taina’s car in the forecourt. Perhaps she’s still at home or gone into town for lunch. She does that sometimes. I don’t like to go home in the middle of the workday. It messes up my internal clock. It’s far easier, far more structured, to stay at work during the day and come home in the evening. In that way the two remain separate: work is only for work, and home feels all the more like a home.

  I turn the car round in the forecourt and drive towards Pappilansaari. The phone is in my lap, between my legs.

  Hamina is often called a concentric town. However, this is only true of the town centre: the Town Hall and the blocks immediately surrounding it. Otherwise its streets are every bit as angular as they are in other towns.

  The market is bustling.

  In addition to the local stall keepers, there are the trinkets common to every summer market square in the land: hardened strips of liquorice, unashamedly overpriced cotton sauna towels, stiff underwear in boxes of ten, twenty and a hundred.

  I sometimes think about death, but even thinking about it is all but impossible – especially your own death. A second later I’m thinking about something different altogether: today’s shopping list, the business’s outgoings.

  A few minutes later I reach the bridge across the Pappilansalmi strait. Hamina is a small town dotted across islands, peninsulas and heathland, in clusters of a few houses here and there. The sea reaches its long tentacles between the houses and their inhabitants, snatching up blue segments of the green landscape.

  I see Taina’s wine-red Hyundai from a distance. Behind that, one corner at a time, I make out the shape of a black, shining Corolla. It looks as though it has just been washed. Well before the end of our drive, I pull in by the side of the road and switch off the engine.

  Had Taina said anything about Petri popping round?

  Sometimes Taina stays at home testing new recipes, and Petri gives her a hand. Petri was our first full-time employee. He knows all our machinery and equipment and he can install and mend everything we need. On top of that he knows every road, and every hill and dell within a fifty-kilometre radius. He also helps to solve the company’s various logistical problems.

  Very well, I think as I step out of the car, I’ll tell Petri to go back to the office, tell him the cleaning equipment won’t start up. I’ll think of something. Then I’ll sit Taina down on the sofa and tell her … I don’t know what I’ll tell her. But you can be sure I won’t have to make anything up.

  Ours is the last house at the end of a narrowing gravel road. Its lively yellow front faces the street; behind the house there is a verdant garden decorated with currant bushes and age-old flowerbeds, which rolls down towards the reeds and bulrushes along the shore. In the middle of the garden is a patio ten square metres in size, where you can sit and look out at the sea in peace and quiet; only the opposite shore is visible, and that too is at a suitable distance.

  I walk up the steps to the front door. These last few weeks I’ve felt constantly out of breath. I thought it had something to do with my flu, that it might be bronchitis or at worst a bout of pneumonia. I place a hand on the railings and steady myself for a moment. I hear the sound of an approaching hydroplane.

  Affluent Russian tourists have bought up enormous fortresses along much of the local shoreline, and in addition to the yachts moored at their private jetties, many of them have their own light aircraft too. They roar around in the things, causing a nuisance for a few summers, before becoming bored and putting everything up for sale. Of course, it’s impossible to sell villas that size, let alone hydroplanes. In a recessive and ageing community with high unemployment there are relatively few impulsive millionaires.

  The hydroplane glides closer.

  The railing suddenly feels cold. I pull my hand away, open the door and shout out a hello. Nobody answers. Maybe they’re in the kitchen. I walk along the hallway to the
other side of the house, where the kitchen is situated. The wooden floorboards creak beneath me.

  The kitchen is empty, everything is spotless. No pots or pans bubbling on the stove. No smell of cooking in the air. The counters gleam, clean and empty. I call out Taina’s name.

  The hydroplane sputters directly above the house, its noise drowns out my voice. I move towards the back door, open the door and walk out onto the top step. The hydroplane masks the sound of the door opening – that and the inadvertent gasp that escapes from my mouth.

  The patio sways.

  Or perhaps it’s me that sways.

  No, it’s definitely the patio that’s moving.

  Despite the roar of the hydroplane as it swerves through the warm, blue sky directly above me, my sharpened senses see and hear the cheap metallic sun-lounger creaking at the joints, the fabric of the red-and-white striped cushions rubbing against one another with synthetic howls, the wheels of the German gas barbecue standing to the right of the sun-lounger shunting closer to the edge of the patio one millimetre at a time, the garden swing to the left moving restlessly from side to side, the pots of geraniums that look as though, at any moment, they might burst into a sprint.

  Petri is lying on the lounger, the soles of his feet facing the house – facing me. His neck is arched backwards in an almost unnatural position over the edge of the lounger. He is looking upside down at the sea – if his eyes are open, that is. I don’t know if it’s possible. Taina is doing her best to make sure he keeps his eyes shut.

  Taina has her back to me. Her broad back is gleaming with sweat, her round, strong buttocks glow like a pair of ruddy cheeks. She is riding Petri as though she were trying to climb a mountainside on horseback: her feet are placed firmly on the patio decking and her hips are pumping, encouraging the horse to give all it’s got. It’s an impressive sight. Taina’s face is angled up towards the sky. Perhaps we’re looking at the same hydroplane.

  The tempo increases, though such a thing ought to be physically impossible.

  I see an iron bar leaning against the side of the woodshed.

  At that point, vomit surges within me. The wave of nausea is so powerful that it almost floors me. I grip the railings with both hands. An arch of vomit flies through the air towards the patio.

  The hydroplane shakes the entire house. Instinctively, as if guided by an inner power, I step back inside and pull the door shut behind me.

  I can feel air filling my lungs. For a few moments I haven’t breathed at all. I stand up straight.

  The sound of the hydroplane has grown fainter, more distant, like a fly buzzing in the next room. I know now that what I came here to say cannot possibly be said – doesn’t deserve to be said – and that what I need most of all right now is the air conditioning in my car.

  3

  Every now and then I drift into the lane of oncoming traffic and have to focus my eyes on the middle of the road. The road jumps, swerves. Thankfully the streets are all but empty; the tourists must be at the market or out at sea, while all the locals go about their business in the town centre either in the morning or the early evening. Midday is a moment of calm.

  My mind, however, is anything but calm. My rage turns to shock, then colossal disappointment, then a hollow chill that encompasses everything, before the rage wells up again. At times I can hear the doctor’s voice, see his serious face and white coat in front of me, then a moment later the sight of Taina’s round thighs pumping like a rodeo rider.

  The car’s air conditioning is at full capacity. The cool air calms the tingling sensation on my skin and soothes the sting of the sweat in my eyes.

  My face feels like it belongs to me once again.

  And I seem to know where I’m going.

  I see a parking spot outside the police station. The two-storey building looks quiet. It is the only modern building in the square. There are churches on both sides of the Town Hall: to the southeast one for the Orthodox congregation, to the northwest one for the Lutherans. Lining all sides of the square are rows of wooden houses, all a hundred and fifty years old – renovated, beautiful, ornate. If they were in Helsinki, you’d have to win the lottery to own one.

  I’ve visited the police station only once before, about a month ago. It was to report a theft. Some packing materials left by a delivery firm we employ were stolen from the forecourt outside the company premises. I knew who had taken them. I’d done a bit of detective work myself. The problem was I couldn’t prove anything, and the police didn’t warm to my theories. So I kept my mouth shut, took my copy of the statement in which I’d reported the missing goods so that I could send it to our insurance company, went back to work and got a lecture from Taina, who told me I always give in to people far too easily.

  Which makes the current situation markedly different from how I’d thought of it only a moment ago.

  I’ve switched off the engine. The air conditioning’s all-consuming vortex subsides and is replaced with a curious sense of calm. I am sure I can hear the sound of a girl in a summer dress cycling past, the breeze in her skirt, the tyres against the asphalt, the conversation about blue pansies taking place outside the florist’s, the hum of the refrigerators at the ice-cream stall. I ask myself what has happened to me, and I know the answer.

  The front door of the police station opens.

  A man, approximately my own age, angrily looks around, gets in his car and sits down with a thump, as though he is determined to break the seat, and then, with a screech of tyres, he speeds off towards the Reserve Officers’ School. Precisely, I think to myself. The mistakes we can make when we do things in haste, in a tantrum, a state of turmoil.

  Only seconds earlier I was about to storm into the police station – and tell them what, exactly?

  I’m dying, I might have been poisoned, but I haven’t a shred of proof. My wife is in the garden right now, screwing our young employee, Petri. What are you going to do about it?

  I realise all too acutely just how stupid and unmanly it would sound.

  If I die – I can’t bring myself to say ‘when’ – I don’t want to spend my last days at a small-town police station revealing details of my private life to all and sundry. Especially as revealing such details won’t achieve anything. What happens, then, if the conspiracy theories hurtling through my mind turn out to be true? What happens if my wife and her lover – ten years her junior, no less – really have decided to poison me?

  The idea pops into my mind of its own volition, from where I don’t know. I certainly haven’t put it there. But there’s a certain logic to it all: let’s get the fat old git out of the way, then we can stop all this foreplay and get down to business. But why not just file for divorce? I don’t know.

  And if we assume that the two of them were to come under suspicion, how would the matter ever be resolved? In what time frame? And how would I benefit from it?

  I wouldn’t. I’d be dead.

  I step out of the car. The midday heat takes me in its arms, the air is still. I glance around. The deep, bright, radiant green of the trees heralds the height of summer.

  Two uniformed officers step out of the station, young men with weapons dangling from their belts. One of them looks over towards me. I smile and nod a hello. The officer looks as though he’s wondering whether or not he knows me. He doesn’t; he couldn’t. He turns, looks ahead and continues listening to his partner. We pass one another, the distance between us a metre and a half at most.

  There’s a young schoolgirl working at the ice-cream stall. She has long brown hair and long brown arms. A friendly smile is her default expression. She’s the embodiment of summer.

  First I order a scoop of rum and raisin, then a scoop of liquorice and banana, and just as she’s about to hand me the cone, I ask for a third scoop, this time of ye olde vanilla. The girl presses the scoops tighter against one another and hands me the cone, now standing over a foot high. I hand her a fifty-euro note and put the change in the little tip box on the counter.
She thanks me in a bright, ringing voice, and I wish her a sunny life.

  With the cone in my hand I sit down on a small, stone wall and lick the little melting streams running down the side of my ice-cream tower. I can’t really feel anything. Here I am, right here. It occurs to me that’s how it’s always been, I just didn’t understand it before.

  Again I look over at the police station. I have to talk to someone. Not right this second, my mouth full of the delicious, sweet, creamy goodness – but soon. From now on, everything is soon.

  My parents are dead. I was the only child of an elderly couple, I have no siblings or other close relatives. I haven’t kept in touch with my childhood friends. I have no hobbies, no colleagues. I go through the faces that have populated my life – the sounds they make, their shapes. One after another, familiar people stand up to say something, walk towards me, touch me, look me in the eyes, then saunter away again all the more assuredly. Nobody stops, nobody remains, nobody waits to hear what I’ve got to say. I’m about to lose all hope.

  The ice cream makes me feel better. The effect is like injecting a strong stimulant directly into my veins. At least it’s what I imagine that must feel like. I might never have the opportunity to try intravenous drugs in what’s left of this life, so the comparison will have to remain in the realms of supposition. But isn’t that the same for everything? What else is our life if not a mishmash of assumptions, expectations, suppositions and conclusions pulled out of a hat?

  I’ve never had thoughts like this before. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.

  The ice cream feels good in my stomach. It’s a small victory.

  Once again I go through the people in my life and eventually come up with something that might yet prove useful.

  The short car journey to the office goes far more smoothly than the psychosis of the previous drive. I steer with my right hand, hang my left out of the open window and let the summer air blow against my face.