Little Siberia Read online

  Karoliina says nothing.

  ‘Can you believe it? There’s a million euros on offer, and someone would rather have a smelly old…’

  ‘No, it was a proper idiot,’ she says. Her voice is steady, without a hint of speculation. She glances to the side. At the end of the bar there’s a hatch, through which she can doubtless see the four men sitting in their booth.

  ‘That’s all there is round here,’ she says and turns towards me. ‘Village idiots.’

  ‘Have you always…?’

  ‘Lived here? Yes, so I know what I’m talking about. It’s Cretins Anonymous round here. This place has the highest density of dunces in eastern Finland. Welcome!’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve been enjoying it.’

  Karoliina gives a smile; she is clearly thinking about something. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I’m a pastor,’ I reply. ‘I go where I’m needed.’

  ‘Do they need you round here?’

  ‘I try to believe in providence, that there’s a reason why I am where I am.’

  ‘And is there?’

  ‘Sometimes you only realise it afterwards, that things were supposed to pan out a certain way so that something else could happen.’

  ‘You say you try to believe. Doesn’t it come to you lot naturally, believing all kinds of things?’

  ‘I don’t believe everything.’

  ‘I mean, God and all that jazz?’

  ‘I’m not sure what “all that jazz” means, so I’m not sure I believe in it.’

  ‘Jesus and his mates. Aren’t you supposed to believe in them?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to any more than you are. It’s all voluntary.’

  ‘You don’t sound much like a pastor.’

  ‘What’s a pastor supposed to sound like?’

  ‘The previous pastor used to turn every conversation back to God and Jesus,’ says Karoliina. ‘If I bumped into him in the shop, I’d say good afternoon, the liver bake is on special offer, and he would say God has given us this wonderful afternoon and thanks be to Jesus that today we can have liver bake at a knock-down price.’

  ‘I guess that was the end of the conversation.’

  ‘It wasn’t really a conversation. Thank Christ. Did he really walk on water?’ There’s an electricity now about Karoliina’s expression, a sense of interest in her eyes.

  ‘So they say,’ I answer.

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘You’re way too young.’

  I take a sip from my glass. I swallow slowly, cautiously, the whisky pleasantly burning the inside of my mouth. Karoliina follows the glass from my lips to the countertop.

  ‘So you’re keeping an eye on the meteorite in the museum?’

  I lick a drop of whisky from my upper lip. ‘By myself,’ I say. ‘Until it continues on its way to London.’

  We look each other in the eye.

  ‘Maybe it has a purpose after all,’ she says.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Another whisky?’ she asks.

  My glass is empty.

  ‘It’s not a good idea. Long night ahead.’

  Karoliina opens her mouth, glances towards the windows. Something about her posture shimmers, something in her expression changes. A large SUV is pulling up in the yard outside; it’s a vehicle I’ve seen before. It’s a German model, new. The car stops with its boot towards the windows. The doors open. I see the passenger. He is the largest human being I have ever seen.

  Karoliina picks up my empty whisky glass and takes it to the sink. I find myself thinking that I would have enjoyed continuing our conversation – even if it meant talking about theology. I immediately tell myself I’m only thinking that because of the break-in and trying to get to the bottom thereof. I’m not sure I even believe myself.

  Karoliina looks outside again, then turns to me. ‘You should come in more often,’ she says. ‘Or will it be a case of when they roll the stone away, there will be no one there?’

  ‘I’m not in holy shrouds yet,’ I reply. ‘And unlike Him, I’ll definitely be back.’

  Karoliina is standing perhaps five metres away. She smiles. Her hair is black, her eyes green. Shadows dance across her face, perhaps because of the distance and her heavy make-up.

  ‘When?’ she asks.

  I don’t get a chance to answer.

  The front door opens.

  The new arrivals are speaking Russian to each other. Their voices are low. They walk behind me and come to a stop in front of Karoliina.

  The gigantic man leans across the bar, kisses Karoliina on the cheek, and just when I think he is about to draw his head away, he places his lips on hers. By both Russian and European standards, it’s a lingering kiss.

  I can’t see Karoliina’s face, but I can see the man’s. His expression is one of joy and undeniable lust. It’s the kind of expression you normally see only on the faces of younger men. His hands reach for Karoliina’s body, but she has already extricated herself from his clutches and taken an almost imperceptible but decisive step backwards.

  The man’s hair is brown and tightly curled, the skin of his face very pale. He is wearing a black down jacket, which makes him seem all the larger. Judging by his shape and height he must be a former basketball player. With the emphasis on the former, because he is at least my age or perhaps a few years older.

  The man’s friend is noticeably older. Silver hair; the bags beneath his eyes acquired through years of office work no doubt; his skin loose and wrinkled. A suit and tie, exaggerated posture. At first glance he could be a CEO, an ice-hockey coach or a news anchor. If I had to offer an opinion on the dynamic between the two men, I would say this man made the decisions while the giant carried them out. Pure speculation, of course.

  Karoliina brings them glasses of the same whisky she gave me. The giant speaks to her in English; I can make out a word here and there: ‘beautiful’, ‘you’, ‘me’. I can’t hear Karoliina’s replies. Her body language suggests she is trying to keep a respectable distance, though half of her lipstick is now smeared on the man’s cheek.

  I can’t help noticing that the elder of the two men doesn’t speak at all. He seems to be pretending not to follow what is happening around him, but he’s a bad actor. His gaze moves from one spot to the next, and briefly alights on me.

  I glance outside. It’s started snowing again. I drink the rest of my beer and place my glass on the counter. I’m about to leave, when Turunmaa appears at the bar, seemingly in need of a top-up. He is bewildered to see me.

  ‘Joel,’ he says for the second time this evening. ‘I thought you’d gone to the museum.’

  His voice is loud and resonant. It’s not normally this loud, and I doubt Turunmaa is trying to reach a large audience. And yet his voice carries, cutting through the hubbub of conversation. His final sentence silences all chatter the length of the counter.

  The Russians look first at Turunmaa, then at me. Karoliina glances at me, then the Russians, then at me again. Turunmaa looks at me, then Karoliina, then the Russians, and finally at me again. Eventually they all end up looking at me in silence.

  If I were even slightly predisposed to paranoia, I would see in this set-up at least a hundred different scenarios, a hundred ulterior motives, a hundred secrets. I’m not paranoid, but I see them all the same.

  6

  Snow falls from the sky as vertically as I think is possible. There is not the faintest breeze. I can still taste the whisky on my palette. I walk along the pavement running parallel to the main street in the crisp minus-twenty air, the fresh snow providing a soft layer of padding on top of the old, hardened, compacted ice. Karoliina’s image refuses to leave my mind, and I have to remind myself that I am a happily married man. But am I? I ask myself a moment later. Am I really happily married? How happy can I be when I’m married to a woman who is suddenly a stranger, a woman carrying another man’s child?

  Fragments of my visit to the Golden
Moon still flash though my mind. At times it feels as though all the conversations, everything that was spoken out loud, blends into one. And sometimes it’s just chaos, one red herring after another. On the other hand, I think, there’s always more to a conversation than what is said out loud.

  It’s not easy to separate everything I know for certain and things I’m still unsure of into neat categories. What’s clear is that everything revolves around two fulcrums: Krista and the meteorite. Which, in certain ways, almost combine into one.

  I walk at a fair pace through the village, and on the way I happen to glance into an empty shop window. I see the snowfall, a few metres of snow-covered path, and myself. Something about what I see makes me stop – the reflection of myself in the windowpane, a blurred image, fragmented here and there.

  For some reason I think of my father. He was a pastor too, and that’s why I became one. This is true in its own way. But it’s not the whole truth.

  My father was certain about everything. Everything about his profession he proclaimed as final, definitive truth. The other world was as real as the city of Tampere. Scripture was the literal truth – with the exception, perhaps, of the most brutal stonings, burnings and mutilations. But even they had a hidden truth of their own. Hidden, that is, for others, but not for him. For him, everything was perfectly clear. And it was with this attitude that he approached the rest of his life too. He knew everything about driving a car, about ice hockey, building a house, human relations. He was never wrong; he was always right. It was easy for him, because he knew he knew everything, and in that way he knew he was right. I can’t remember at what point it all became a bit unbearable for me – all that certainty.

  And there was another reason my father appeared in my thoughts too. His certainty was automatically linked to the belief that everything good that ever happened was down to him and the God on his side, whereas everything bad that happened was always someone else’s fault. Other people were a long series of disappointments to him. His life was a constant stream of complaint, agony and blaming other people’s evil and wrongdoing. He would come home from work and bemoan the things people do. He would watch television and scoff at people’s stupidity. He would spend time with family members and correct their words and deeds. He suffered. It was a suffering that stemmed from constant, incontrovertible certainty. I found it off-putting. It led to his despair.

  Meanwhile, I always doubted things. And that’s why I became a pastor.

  It was my father’s certainty that eventually killed him. He was certain he knew how long the ice would bear his weight. One spring morning he set off onto the sea ice to fish, and his body was washed ashore the following summer.

  I look at the reflection in the window. The unfocussed image with all its missing parts looks almost like him. Of course, there is a part of him in me, I think, but what…?

  I hear a car approaching. Before long I see the reflection of an SUV in the shop window. It slows and comes to a stop behind me. I recognise the car and turn around.

  I cannot see inside. The car is alone on the road running through the village, and it has come to a stop in the shadows between two streetlamps. Neither of them can quite light it.

  And there we remain for a moment. My breath steams in the air; the car churns out exhaust fumes.

  The window on the driver’s side begins to slide down. It seems the driver is alone in the car. This is the older of the two Russian men I saw in the bar.

  He beckons to me. I glance in both directions but cannot see anybody, cannot hear a single vehicle, not a car, moped or snow mobile. In Hurmevaara this is not exactly out of the ordinary. At times the silence is so profound that you start to question your own senses. I step towards the car. I keep my body’s centre of gravity low to the ground, ready to act quickly. The driver is sitting behind the wheel, wearing a trench coat over his suit, his hands clasped in his lap.

  ‘Good evening,’ he says in perfect English.

  ‘Evening,’ I reply.

  ‘Nice winter’s night. Can I offer you a ride?’

  It’s all of five hundred metres to the museum.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I think I’ll walk. I’m almost there.’

  In the glare of the dashboard and the faint, yellowish light from the lampposts the man’s face looks even more wrinkled, more officious than before. I can’t help thinking of an exhausted news anchor. The inside of the car gives off the smell of aftershave and stale tobacco, though at this moment the man isn’t smoking.

  ‘You’re a priest, right?’

  All I can see of the man’s eyes is their gleam; I can’t see their colour.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You listen to people? To what’s on their minds?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘I’ve got something on my mind,’ he says.

  Don’t we all? I feel like saying. That’s what makes us human. A person with no worries is a person without a conscience.

  ‘You can book a slot at the church reception…’

  ‘Now.’

  I shake my head. ‘My office hours start tomorrow morning at—’

  He shakes his head. ‘I mean, I need to talk right now.’

  Again I glance in both directions. Nobody. Then I remember what I was thinking about a moment ago. My father and myself – what I am, and why. I have to help people. That’s my calling. Besides, it’s only half a kilometre. I can enjoy the heated seat for that distance. I grip the door handle, lower myself into the passenger seat and pull the door shut. The car begins to move immediately.

  ‘Towards the museum.’

  ‘I know,’ the man replies.

  In only a moment the car has accelerated quite considerably, and we are well over the speed limit. The man holds out his right hand.

  ‘Grigori,’ he says.

  ‘Joel.’

  We shake hands without any problems; the car is an automatic. Grigori doesn’t need his right hand. Perhaps that’s why his handshake feels unnecessarily long.

  ‘Okay if we talk somewhere quieter?’

  Grigori steers the car off the main road before I can answer.

  ‘Well, what’s on your mind?’ I ask him.

  Grigori seems to think about this.

  ‘I feel it’s just a small worry,’ he begins. ‘But it’s a shared one too.’

  I say nothing. The houses become further and further apart. We pass a solitary runner. Grigori is driving fast. Perhaps he knows the nearest police station is miles away, in Joensuu. We arrive at an intersection. Grigori doesn’t slow at all on approach but swerves the car to the left. The turning is a familiar one. The car starts up a steep hill. Eventually Grigori guides the car into the yard at the Teerilä Outdoor Museum.

  And he’s right. This is certainly somewhere quieter. Near the village but far away from it. You can drive here in a matter of minutes, but you can be here in peace and nobody lives nearby.

  Grigori stops the car, the motor dies down. He clasps his hands in his lap again, then turns to face me. All this he does very slowly – clearly an attempt to show me how calm he is.

  ‘A priest,’ he says. ‘That’s great.’

  I don’t know his profession, so I can’t return the compliment. Though for some reason I doubt he needs my approval.

  ‘It’s valuable work,’ he continues. ‘In many ways. So much anguish. These days people’s souls get torn to shreds.’

  ‘I don’t know if it’s just these days,’ I say. ‘I guess tearing people’s souls began when…’

  ‘When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise.’

  I say nothing.

  ‘That’s right’, Grigori nods. He must surely register the expression of mild confusion on my face. ‘And that’s appropriate to this situation in more ways than you can imagine. God gave them everything, and all they had to do was recognise their gift, accept it and take care of it. Nothing else. Everything was provided for them. Accept it, that’s all – accept what was given them. But no. The
moral of the story – one of the morals of the story, because, you see, there are many – is of course that sometimes it’s wiser to do nothing than to run headlong into an apple tree.’

  The contradiction between his monologue and his physical appearance is striking. An ice-hockey coach contemplating scripture.

  When I’m certain he has stopped, I speak. ‘Is this what’s worrying you?’ I ask. ‘A fall from grace?’

  He moves slightly in his seat, turns his upper body towards me. ‘In a way,’ he says. ‘My friend, I wish to offer you Paradise.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘By that I mean an earthly Paradise. You don’t even have to do anything. In fact, this Paradise is conditional on you not doing anything. You have to do … nothing at all.’

  We sit in silence. The air in the car has become stuffy. Grigori looks me in the eye. His eyes are blue and moist.

  ‘Tonight, at the museum,’ he says in a soft, pleasant voice. ‘All you have to do is leave the door open when you go for a cigarette.’

  I return his gaze. ‘I don’t smoke,’ I say, trying to keep my voice friendly and neutral.

  ‘Ten thousand euros,’ says Grigori. ‘One cigarette. Anyone can smoke one cigarette. And how many people are paid ten thousand euros to smoke that single cigarette?’

  ‘Ten thousand euros?’

  Grigori smiles. It doesn’t flatter him. The smile reveals a set of large, yellowed teeth, and doesn’t seem to suit his face in any way.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘Right now. I have here…’ He raises a hand to his jacket pocket.

  I interrupt the movement with a question. ‘And what if it leads to addiction?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Say I smoke one cigarette. I realise I quite like it. I smoke another one. A third. I get hooked. Before long I’m smoking a packet a day. One packet costs ten euros. At that rate I’ll have smoked my reward in less than three years. In the worst scenario I’ll have a problem with my lungs and be in a spiral of debt.’

  Grigori clacks his jaw, purses his lips, clearly thinking. ‘You want more money? Isn’t poverty supposed to be a virtue? Just ask yourself, what would Jesus do?’