In Ancient Rome, Christians were routinely tied to four horses by their four limbs. Then the horses were whipped into a trot, and when they reached full speed the ropes began to tighten. It feels as though something similar is happening to me, but instead of horses I have thoughts.
My breath steams up in front of me as I walk towards the Golden Moon Night Club. The snowdrifts glint in the morning half-light. I grip my phone – the phone that only sends a certain type of message to a certain recipient.
It isn’t easy to admit.
Jealousy isn’t just the loss of our everyday common sense; it’s a degenerative disease. That much I understand. Judging by everything that’s happened, I have reached the stage where I think – secretly, in the back of my mind, in the deepest, darkest recesses of my soul – that I have the right to look around. Of course I know that when someone sufficiently plagued by jealousy says he is just looking around, he is either planning a murder or heading off in the early hours to play away from home. This logical conclusion begs the self-righteous question: if Krista has, shall we say, made more than a passing acquaintance with one of the villagers, why can’t I do the same? This is pure madness, I know that. I recall seeing and hearing hundreds of people whose lives were more or less ruined after they decided to avenge their perceived wrongs at the hands of a wayward partner. It’s hardly surprising because more often than not those wrongs are only imaginary. It’s hard to cure madness with more insanity.
I pass my workplace.
The church looks as though it has been flung into the snowy woodland, out of reach. It is surrounded by tall pine trees and behind that a row of thick spruces. Situated slightly to the west, the church office is still in shadow. The beams of the rising sun catch the tall, narrow metallic cross on top of the church. I’ve often wondered at quite how durable that cross is. This morning it looks even flimsier than usual as it reaches up into a new day, alone and vulnerable.
The low stone wall around the graveyard is covered in snow. I can see the car park serving the church, the graveyard and the church hall. There appears to be a car parked in the furthest parking space. I recognise the car and make – a Volkswagen Jetta – but I don’t know who it belongs to. The sun is shining into the car windows at such an angle that I can’t see if there’s anyone inside.
I try to formulate a message. I’m going to try one more time. I know I’m only accruing more things for which I’ll eventually have to apologise, but that is certainly not the only matter in which I am conflicted. It feels as though my whole life is a contradiction. The rising sun gleams between the snow-covered trees. Its beams cut through the grey; it tears, giving way. The same can’t be said for my state of mind.
Just before reaching the car park at the Golden Moon I stop and look at what I’ve written:
My love. I’m sorry I ran away. When I saw you, I panicked. You affect me in so many ways. Meeting you would have been too much right then. I want to ask for another chance. Can you forgive me?
I send the message, drop the phone into my pocket and glance once more at the darkened windows of the night club. Naturally I can’t see inside, but I know that the DJ this morning is not the village barber. Mornings are the busiest times at the salon.
And why am I heading back to the Golden Moon?
Because it’s an instinctive reaction, the kind that my opponent – for I have one or more of them – isn’t expecting. The element of surprise is at the heart of every victorious campaign or battle. But also because I need to retrace my steps, both my own and the steps of the investigation I’m undertaking. And, of course, because of…
The official version, the one I’m telling myself as I open the Golden Moon’s door, still stiff with morning, is that meeting this woman again is an essential part of my investigation and the suspicions that have arisen through it. When I see her behind the counter, my heart immediately beats more ardently and there’s a current inside me that doesn’t just warm me but strengthens the very sense of being alive. I tell myself that it must have something to do with the situation, the stress and the fact that she might be the person who knocked me unconscious.
Karoliina is pouring a pint of weak beer for a middle-aged man leaning against the counter with both arms. The man’s dark-brown hair juts in all directions as though a small bomb has gone off in his head. He is wearing a suit that looks not only as though he slept in it but as though he probably had a wrestling match in it too. The man appears to be at the very limits of his capabilities. His tie is astonishingly straight and tightly knotted, as though he had tried to pull himself together but forgotten about everything else. Karoliina places the pint in front of him. The man picks up the glass, raises it to his pouting lips, gulps down half. Karoliina angles her head towards me but keeps her eyes on the cash register.
‘What’s it to be?’ she asks.
‘I don’t really know, to be honest,’ I reply.
Karoliina looks up, turns slightly. ‘Pastor,’ she says, straightens her posture and brushes a hair from across her face. ‘Or am I supposed to call you Reverend Huhta?’
‘Joel is fine.’
Karoliina steps closer. I have positioned myself at the same end of the bar as yesterday. Even during the daytime, the Golden Moon isn’t a bright place. Here there is a perpetual dusk where people drink beer for breakfast, their hair a tangle. Here works a woman in ripped, holey jeans, a black polo-neck jumper, heavy make-up and dark-red lipstick. Her long hair, darker than dark, covers her face, her lips flicker like a lantern amid the shadows. When she is finally standing in front of me, I can’t see any discernible difference in her expression. If she really is somehow involved in the events of the night before last, you’d never know.
‘I thought you were joking,’ she says.
‘About what?’
‘That you would come in again.’
‘I keep my promises,’ I say and look into her green eyes.
The sound of loud conversation is coming from the room, an argument about which cities hosted the Olympics in the fifties and sixties. It seems there are many people in the village who start their day with something other than a yoghurt or a bowl of porridge.
‘You haven’t slept; you’ve been at the museum all night,’ she says. It isn’t a question. ‘And now you’re here.’
‘So are you,’ I say.
She doesn’t respond. Perhaps she’s thinking. ‘So, what’s it to be?’
Which is the least suspicious option, I wonder? A vicar coming into a bar in the morning for a beer or a vicar coming into a bar in the morning but not ordering anything? It’s not a question that needs much thought. When Karoliina brings my beer, I pick up the glass but don’t drink.
‘How was the museum?’ she asks.
‘Pretty calm. I felt almost lonely.’
‘Almost?’
‘Especially compared to the previous night,’ I say. ‘Then I had company and there was plenty of action.’
‘You sound as if you miss the company and the action.’
‘It depends on what kind of action we’re talking about,’ I reply calmly. ‘And what kind of company, of course.’
Karoliina takes a packet of cigarettes from behind the bar. ‘What does it feel like, being there with a million euros right next to you?’ she asks.
‘I don’t really think about it.’
It’s a good question, a justified one.
‘Personal reasons.’
‘And they are?’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘Personal.’
Karoliina takes a cigarette from the packet. She holds it, unlit, between her forefinger and middle finger, as though she were smoking it.
‘So it’s not as though God spoke to you and told you to look after the thing?’
‘I saw a burning bush outside the museum, and that’s when I knew what to do.’
Is that a smile? If it is, it’s gone quickly.
She looks at me intensely. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘Is this what you want out of life?’
‘What exactly?’
Karoliina gestures towards my pint with her cigarette. ‘Sitting in a pub in Hurmevaara having a pint at nine in the morning.’ She stresses every word individually. I can tell she doesn’t like any of them.
‘No,’ I say. ‘It isn’t.’
‘Nobody drinks beer at nine in the morning if they’ve got something better to do.’
‘I imagine that’s true.’
‘And nobody spends as much as an extra day in Hurmevaara if they can be somewhere else.’
I say nothing. Karoliina has touched a nerve, one of many nerves, a nerve that I’ve barely noticed amid the chaos of the last few days. It’s true: I don’t feel the same admiration I once did for this quaint little village and the nature surrounding it. Of course, there are various reasons for that. The quaintness and fresh air have lost their allure of late.
Karoliina leans towards me. ‘Have you ever thought how easy it would be to change things?’
‘I’m not sure it would be easy.’
‘But you want to change things?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then it’s simple.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Because I can see that you want to,’ she says. ‘And because I can help you. The question is…’
The middle-aged man calls over for more beer, giving his empty pint glass a jiggle. In a strange way he seems to have perked up a bit. Karoliina walks to the other end of the bar and glances behind her. We look each other in the eye. She pulls the pint, takes the payment, returns to my end of the counter.
‘You can help me,’ I say, reminding her where we left off.
She doesn’t reply straight away. She leans her hip against the bar, places her hands on the counter top. She is closer to me than ever before. And yes, the perfume is familiar. It is familiar, its scent not at all unpleasant.
‘I was saying it’s a question of how we can help each other. But I don’t know if I can trust you. You’re a vicar.’
‘Does that make me untrustworthy?’
We are speaking softly, our voices lowered. Any quieter and we’d be whispering.
‘“Thou shalt not steal”,’ says Karoliina. ‘Isn’t that one of the commandments?’
‘The seventh,’ I reply.
‘How closely does your lot keep to all those rules?’
‘I can’t speak for others.’
‘What about you?’ The look in Karoliina’s green eyes is either one of playfulness or utter sincerity. I can’t tell which.
‘What do you suggest?’ I ask.
‘What’s your answer?’ Karoliina leans closer still. She is so close that looking into her eyes almost hurts.
‘I try to uphold certain tried-and-tested principles,’ I say. ‘But if I’m going to give you a specific answer, I need to know what we’re up to.’
‘I like the idea that you think we’re up to something.’
We are now so close to one another that I can feel her warmth, feel her face near my own. The moment is significant. The middle-aged man starts shouting again. By now there’s a new-found depth in his voice. The beer has redeemed him, has started to soothe him. Before long his tie might even slacken. Karoliina doesn’t take her eyes from me. Then she turns her head and shouts at him for a moment.
And when her head turns and her hair swings to the side, I see it.
A bruise.
It’s higher up and further back than I’d thought, but there it is all the same. There on her temple, hidden behind the layers of make-up, the skin is still ever so slightly swollen. She turns back and looks me in the eye again. I hear the front door opening and closing behind me; I feel the cold draught of air against my lower back; I hear hearty, male laughter, the sound of winter boots kicking off the snow.
‘You know where to find me,’ Karoliina whispers, her eyes still fixed on me.
She presses her lips together and blows me a kiss. Then she turns again and walks to the other end of the counter and doesn’t look back. She doesn’t need to. She knows my eyes are following her.
It’s an important part of the play.