I don’t like big-city life. I don’t like the memories. I don’t like the so-called international atmosphere. Kaamos, the dark time, is short-lived. The light coming and going so fast depresses me. I miss the long Arctic darkness. Already now, in January, we have daylight from around nine a.m. until four p.m. This winter is nice, but most years it’s not cold enough in Helsinki, the snow doesn’t stick. Makes it like sloshing around in a bucket of shit all winter. I’m homesick for the North.
Kate’s eyes meet mine for a moment. She understands I’m trying to stop the argument and lets me. ‘I’m a little nervous about seeing them because it’s been so long,’ she says. ‘The last time I saw John was in 2006. The last time I saw Mary was 2005. They’re grown up now, and I wonder how they’ve changed. Still, who would have thought that three poor kids like us would have done so well. I’m running the best hotel in the city and John is becoming a university history teacher. Mary is a doctor’s wife. I more or less raised them. It makes me proud.’
‘You have a right to be proud,’ I say, ‘and I’m proud of you.’ I check the time, it’s a little after three. My therapy session begins at four. I’ve been attending counseling for eight months now, and dread it more and more as time goes by.
I hesitate. Apologies are difficult for me. ‘Kate, I meant what I said. You’re going to be a great mother. I was out of line and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. It just came out wrong.’
She squeezes my hand. ‘I know.’
Chapter 8
I limp through the snow toward my Saab. It’s parked near the taxi stand on Helsinginkatu. The street is nicknamed Raate Road, after the scene of a decisive and bloody battle in the Winter War, for the same reason that Vaasankatu is called Hunting Knife Boulevard. It has a bad reputation from bygone days, but not much real wickedness goes on here anymore. It’s true that Kallio has its fair share of the permanently unemployed that live on welfare and spend their days in räkälät – snot bars, as they’re called – drinking cheap beer, but most towns in Finland have their welfare drunks and dives for them to booze in.
I hear shouting down the street. As I close in, I see a man in front of Ebeneser School, a special-needs place for kids with dysphasia. The students there have speech disorders of one kind or another, difficulties with language comprehension or production, most often the result of varying degrees of brain damage. Some can speak but not write, others write but don’t speak. Very occasionally, a child will be able to sing but not speak.
The school is a beautiful off-peach Art Nouveau building constructed around the turn of the twentieth century, fronted by a chain-link fence interlaced with a growth of decades-old ivy, now wreathed in frost. I get closer and see that the screaming comes from a young man waving a half-empty bottle of Finlandia vodka. His rant is biblical and apocryphal in nature, and he has a bad speech impediment.
‘Thpawns of Thatan, damned at biddth, you have fawen fwom da Towew of Babel. Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!’
I get up close to him and look through the fence. Four little bundled-up children stand on the other side of it, terror-stricken but fascinated. I see no supervising adult. It pisses me off. ‘Listen kids,’ I say to them, ‘I’m a policeman. Would you please go inside.’
The guy bellows an incoherent howl and screams again. ‘Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!’
They don’t move. I make shooing motions with my hands. ‘Run along now,’ I say.
They scramble toward the front door. The guy isn’t making any noise now, but he flails his arms, makes frantic gestures, waves the bottle and claws at his face.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘My name is Weejun. Away fwom me, thpawn of hell.’
‘Well, Mr Legion, why were you scaring those kids?’
He gulps a drink from the bottle, wraps his arms around himself, rolls his head back and forth and shakes. He’s coming apart at the seams. He shrieks like a hurt animal, then manages a shrill, understandable utterance. ‘To save deir souws! Dey awe damned unwess I thave dem!’
I’m tempted to ask him why, if his name is Legion, aka Satan, he wants to save the children rather than see them spend eternity in hell. Then I decide I’m not interested in the logic of the insane. My head throbs – hate boils up in me.
I grab Legion by the neck, smack his face against the snow-covered fence. It gives me a modicum of satisfaction, so I do it again. He’s a skinny little bastard, maybe a hundred and thirty-five pounds. I’ve been working out hard for most of the past year, since we moved to Helsinki. It takes my mind off the headaches. I bench-press more than twice his weight. He starts to cry, his knees start to give way. I grab him by the neck with one hand, hold him up by his head so that his feet barely graze the ground and look close at him. He’s in his mid-twenties and has a bad, close-cropped haircut that looks like a home job. His longish beard is unkempt. His coat, pants and shoes are neat and clean though. I’m guessing his parents take care of him.
His left eyebrow is cut, blood runs into his eye. His nose bleeds. My satisfaction from banging his face off the fence dissipates. He’s crazy as a shithouse rat. I ask myself what to do with him. A final lesson and punishment for his treatment of defenseless children seems appropriate. ‘You like vodka,’ I say. ‘Enjoy yourself to the max.’
He doesn’t get it. His eyes radiate alarm and bewilderment.
‘Bottle to lips, drink until empty,’ I say.
He’s done screaming now. Frightening learning-disabled children comes easier to him than dealing with able-bodied adults. He gets the point. ‘I don’t want to. Don’t make me. It’th too much.’
I pull out an old Finnish proverb that teaches the virtue of patience. ‘Kärsi kärsi, kirkkaamman kruunun saat’ – ‘Suffering suffering, makes the crown glow brighter.’
He shakes his head no.
I let go of his neck. ‘Did I offer you a fucking choice?’
He understands now. Drink, or I’ll keep beating him. He’s in a bad situation. The booze is his best chance for escape. He lifts the bottle, sucks it down as fast as he can. I wait thirty seconds. Alcohol poisoning starts to hit. The bottle drops from his hand and shatters on the icy sidewalk. Another ninety seconds pass. He drops to his knees and looks at me with uncertain eyes. Another minute goes by, he falls backward. Head hits frozen pavement. Scalp splits. Blood runs in a thin trickle onto the ice.
I reach under him, into his back pocket, and find his wallet. His ID reads Vesa Korhonen, age twenty-three. I put the ID card back into his wallet and throw it onto his chest, then call for a police van to cart him off to the drunk tank. I leave him there on the sidewalk, don’t wait for them to arrive. Good afternoon and good night, Vesa Korhonen, alias Legion.
Chapter 9
I’m seeing a psychiatrist named Torsten Holmqvist. I didn’t choose him. The police department assigned me to him. His office is in his home, in the fashionable district of Eira, near embassy row. The house, which he told me he inherited, looks out over the sea and must be worth at least a couple million euros. We sit in big leather chairs, on opposite sides of a glass coffee table. I’ve eschewed his couch.
Torsten is a wealthy Swedish-speaking Finn, and certain mannerisms betray his roots. A casual yet confident way of sitting, an affable comportment and easy laugh that I think feigned. A yellow pullover sweater is draped over his shoulders and loosely knotted in front of his pink button-down shirt. He’s in his fifties, his thick hair combed up and back and hair-sprayed, politician-style, a dignified gray at the temples. He smokes a briar pipe. His aromatic tobacco is apple-scented.
His manner and appearance irritate me, or maybe he’s good at his job and knows how to push my