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?’
‘I can’t really see him having a cigarette outside the War Museum,’ I say. ‘He performs miracles, but to be honest I think this one would be far-fetched even by his standards.’
Grigori’s hand remains in his jacket pocket. He’s not smiling now.
‘If it’s all the same,’ I say. ‘I was just on my way to the museum. I can walk, if you’re not going that way. You can drop me where you picked me up. It’s fine.’
‘You don’t want more money,’ he says eventually. It’s not a question, just a statement of fact.
‘I don’t want any money at all.’
He doesn’t look disappointed per se, but something about his expression seems to indicate he’s been misunderstood.
‘So you don’t want Paradise either,’ he says. Again, a statement, not a question.
‘Maybe I don’t want to believe the snake.’
Grigori leans back in his seat. The shift in position changes the way he looks at me.
‘You’re a pastor in a remote village,’ he says, his voice now less pleasant than before.
‘That is true,’ I say.
‘You have no power whatsoever.’
‘I don’t need power.’
‘I don’t need to pay you,’ he says. ‘I could simply take what I want. If I want that meteorite, I’ll take it.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
Grigori looks at me. ‘And who’s going to stop me?’
‘A pastor from a remote village,’ I say.
Grigori turns his head, looks straight ahead. The snowfall has paused. Large, individual snowflakes lie on the car bonnet.
Grigori’s speed takes me by surprise.
The pistol is made of gleaming steel, probably a Smith & Wesson .375 Magnum. Grigori pulls it out of his jacket pocket, the same pocket from which he was supposedly going to produce his wallet. Which, of course, begs the question as to whether the wallet existed in the first place. I don’t have time to give the matter much thought. The barrel of the pistol is at my temple, Grigori’s hand pressing it against my skull. I can sense the weight of the metal, sense the strength and determination behind Grigori’s movements.
‘Out,’ he says. ‘Slowly.’
I slide my right hand towards the handle. My movements are slow. I open the door, push it wide. With my left hand I unlock the seatbelt and it rolls back into its holder. The air inside the car lightens, the temperature plummets. Grigori continues to press the pistol against my head, the barrel almost boring through my skin.
‘Down on the ground, slowly,’ he says. ‘Take one step forwards.’
I do as he says. I slowly lower myself to the ground, move one step closer to the main building of the Teerilä museum. A solitary lamp high on a pillar lights the yard.
And now I realise what Grigori has in mind. He is watching me closely; he slides over onto the passenger seat and steps out of the car behind me, keeping the pistol tight against my head all the while. It isn’t the first time he’s done this.
I’m standing in the freezing night with a gun at my back.
‘Forwards,’ he says.
I take a few steps away from the car, then Grigori tells me to stop. He is still very close to me, but now not touching.
‘Turn around.’
I begin turning to the right. When I have rotated almost ninety degrees, I pretend to stumble, as though I were about to fall on my right flank. I spin round to the left, drop down and dive towards him.
The trick works.
Grigori fires a shot at the spot where my chest should have been. I almost reach him, but he has moved a fraction further back. I grip his gun hand just as he starts spinning round. We turn 180 degrees – and the gun goes off again.
The bullet would have hit me in the chest if I hadn’t tackled him and grabbed his arm. The movement that follows my lunge and the gripping of his arm continues. And when the bullet exits the barrel of the gun, the gun is pointing at Grigori’s chest.
A long, black-and-red flare bursts from the back of Grigori’s jacket and sprays across the fresh snow.
Grigori dies instantly. He falls to the ground silently, and the gun slides half a metre across the snow. Grigori is lying on his back, staring up at the sky. His blue eyes are as open as they could possibly be. The scent of gunfire is strong in the pure winter air.
I try Grigori’s pulse. It’s gone. I pull back his trench coat. There’s a bullet hole in his suit jacket. There’s surprisingly little blood. The bullet has travelled through his heart, which has stopped pumping blood instantly. I stand up.
My thoughts are whirling, swirling. Most emphatically – and to my great surprise – I find myself thinking of Krista, of how much I love her, how, above everything else, she is the most important thing. She is what really matters.
I take a deep breath.
I raise my eyes from Grigori to the stars. They are so bright that it almost looks as though they are connected with strands of filament. I blink my eyes, the filaments disappear. The universe expands at an ever-increasing rate. I am clearly in shock. I lower my eyes. Around me is the nocturnal forest, the undulating, snow-covered landscape…
And further in the distance, a figure walking along one of the paths leading to the museum yard.