I need more information. The snow crunches beneath my winter boots as I walk. The centre of the village of Hurmevaara looks smaller than usual this morning. Of course, this is because I’m looking at everything through a gauze of double suspicion: someone must have made Krista pregnant; someone wants to steal the meteorite. Hurmevaara has a total of 1,280 inhabitants. Both the intruder and the impregnator may be closer than I think – or than I know.
Jealousy stops me eating. It’s impossible to feel hungry; my stomach is continuously full and knotted. In fact, my entire chest feels tense. Part of the reason for this jealousy is the uncertainty. The snake with two poisonous heads.
I plan to identify the father of the child. It’s a matter of utmost necessity. I don’t yet know what I’ll do with that information, but I’ll do something. Knowledge will give me direction. In my case it won’t increase my agony, I think; if anything it might alleviate it.
A few cars drive in both directions along the main street. It’s about twenty degrees below freezing, but the air is dry and there’s no wind. This is one of the things about this place that confused me at first. In Helsinki, by the sea, I was used to a different kind of sub-zero temperature. In Helsinki it could be as little as –4°C, but if there was enough wind and moisture in the air, just waiting for the bus felt cold enough to bring all your bodily functions to a halt, no matter how thick your eider jacket. Out here I could easily spend an hour and a half skiing in a thin ski suit in –15°C, opening my collar and wiping away the sweat as I went.
Depending on the weather, it’s a ten or fifteen-minute walk to the church hall. I pass a bar and a clothes shop. Neither have opened yet. The kiosk, however, has already opened its doors, and in its window is a sign that makes me think of something that caught my attention earlier this morning.
The kiosk owner is slightly older than me, a man yet to find his calling in life. He stands behind the counter like a prisoner. He constantly looks outside as though searching for an escape route and seems thrilled at every customer who walks in, as though they were bringing him a file he could use to saw through the bars of his cell. He greets me as though I was the first person in years to step foot on his desert island. This morning I feel as though I understand the man better than usual. I too feel as though I have lost a vital connection to something, and that I’ll have to do something decisive if I want to re-establish that connection.
But this time we talk about a different kind of connection. The man with the thick beard seems over the moon to help me. I feel a strange sense of brotherhood with this man, this prisoner of his day-to-day routines, as I listen to him explain the various prepaid phone-card packages on offer. Not that I need any particular information or that I really care what kind of package I should get. There’s only one number I will be contacting with this phone, and I don’t think I’ll be needing talk time. In fact, talking is the very last thing I plan to do with this phone card.
I know what I am about to do is wrong. Nonetheless it takes me a mere thousandth of a second to justify it to myself. This is a fact-finding operation, and I have a right to know. We agree on a package with free text messages, and I pull out my wallet.
Midway through the purchase another customer walks into the kiosk. I know him the way you know someone you’ve read about in the papers and seen interviewed on television. Timo Tarvainen is a former rally driver who lives a few kilometres away, by the shores of Lake Hurmevaara. I know his career was cut short by an accident and by the various improprieties that followed it, of which I have only a blurry understanding.
His hair is pure white – so white it could be bleached – and he wears a jacket bearing, at a quick glance, the logos of at least thirty corporate sponsors. The jacket is not new. He is sporting a pair of sunglasses too. He nods both at me and the assistant. At least that’s what it looks like. His sunglasses are the darkest shade imaginable, so it’s hard to say exactly where the former hot-shot driver’s eyes are focussed. He places a twelve-pack of beer on the counter just as I slip the phone card into my pocket. I bid the owner a pleasant day, though I can see in his eyes that his daily sentence is far from over.
At the door I stop, pull on my woolly hat and mittens, and step out into the bright, frozen day. I manage only a few steps before I hear a voice behind me.
‘What the hell does God think he’s playing at?’
I turn around. The rally driver is standing with his back to the low, glaring sun, the twelve-pack tucked under his arm. I look around and assume he must have intended his words for me. I can’t see anyone else nearby. Or further off, for that matter. I guess the question must stem from genuine theological concern.
‘I don’t know,’ is my honest answer.
The rally driver rips open the plastic packaging and grabs one of the cans. He takes a few steps towards me and places the rest of the pack on the hood of his car. There’s a similarity between the car and the jacket: both are covered in stickers; neither are the newest models on the market.
‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard,’ Tarvainen begins, snapping open his can, ‘but that meteorite fell on my car.’
I tell him I was aware of that. Tarvainen gulps his beer. It’s a long gulp, at a guess almost long enough to down the entire contents of the can.
‘My old man used to say the Lord works in mysterious ways, but nothing ever happens by chance,’ he says, and I catch the smell not only of fresh beer but of a prolonged bout of drinking. ‘And it’s got me thinking. You know, that thing comes shooting out of nowhere and finds me. Then along comes some bloke from the museum who says it belongs to him. What does it mean? That the Lord gives and the Lord takes right away again?’
‘The probability of a meteor strike is—’
‘The probability is so small that it almost doesn’t exist. I’ve read a bit about astronomy, watched a video about it on YouTube. The universe and all that shit. Made me really angry, it did.’
There’s nothing I can say to this. In me, astronomy prompts quite the opposite emotions. That said, I’m beginning to understand feelings of anger, bitterness and disappointment, of how claustrophobic the universe can feel.
‘You know what God’s up to, right?’ Tarvainen asks with a belch. ‘For a moment everything looked great. I contacted an old mate, said we should start a new rally team, world class. I’ll drive, he can take care of the business side of things. You see, for a moment it looked like we were sitting pretty on a million euros that just fell from the sky. Then before you know it, it turns out it’s not just any old lump of rock, it’s something freakishly rare that needs to be researched. My old mate turns up at the house, at my invitation, and I have to tell him the rock is under lock and key at the museum.’
Tarvainen drains his can. I’m listening with increased interest.
‘A mate?’ I ask.
Tarvainen wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then waves his hand through the air.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says. ‘All I’m asking is, what does God think about all this?’
I decide not to tell him there has been some degree of uncertainty about what God thinks for a few thousand years. I want to continue the conversation.
‘You were going to start up a new rally team, you say?’ I ask.
Tarvainen looks at me more closely. At least, his sunglasses seem to focus on my face. For a moment he is silent.
‘Does that meteorite mean something or not?’ he asks eventually. ‘It’s a simple question.’
It’s clear this man wants to get his hands on the meteorite. But I’m not sure he’s burglar material, and there’s nothing to suggest he is the man who was lying in the snowdrift outside the cottage. The mate he mentioned, on the other hand … This business associate sounds interesting.
‘I’m not sure it is such a simple question,’ I reply. ‘If you take it slightly further, it becomes the fundamental question of whether the universe is a tightly, carefully organised system, like a gigantic Swiss clock, or whether it is a random, collapsing cluster of junk – in other words, chaos.’
‘I was asking for God’s opinion,’ says Tarvainen. ‘You’re paid to know this stuff.’
Despite what people who make this statement think, they are not the first people to put this thought into words. I must have heard at least a few thousand versions of this particular adage.
‘I’m paid to serve the community,’ I say. ‘Is it a problem that the meteorite is being held at the museum?’
The rally driver’s hand stops, the can in mid-air. His head shifts position ever so slightly. The reaction is like a sudden realisation of something. Then he appears to notice the empty beer can in his hand. Tarvainen returns to his car, pulls another can from the plastic packaging. He cracks it open; in the frozen morning air the sound is like a branch snapping in two. He takes a gulp and opens the car door, then stops and looks up towards me.
‘I guess God is on my side after all,’ he says.
I look on as Tarvainen reverses, turns the car and ambles out of the parking lot and into the street. He’s clearly over the limit. I could always make another call to the police in Joensuu. They would be here in an hour.