The driving instructions are anything but clear. The map application on my phone is no help at all. I try to combine the complicated instructions written on a piece of paper with the random coordinates provided by the app. I am somewhere to the north of Hurmevaara, an area even more sparsely populated than the rest of the village, speeding along dark, narrow lanes and trying to find myself, both in the instructions and on the map.
Finally I arrive at a long straight road that I recognise from the instructions. I slow my speed somewhat but still manage to drive past the small opening in the trees that I’m looking for. I brake, wait for the snow puffed up behind me to settle, then reverse and turn on to another narrow lane.
Matias Ihantola lives far away from everything. Which, I assume, is the point. He might well believe that such a remote location will give him an advantage should the world be struck by a pandemic, hordes of people, or a nuclear holocaust. I’m not sure I entirely agree with him, especially when we look at the final result: what must it be like to live life in a world that has turned into a battlefield, a world in which everything has stopped working?
I give my head a vigorous shake. My thoughts are not glowing with positivity, but, naturally, there is a reason for this.
The trees slowly recede. The house stands right in the middle of a clearing and is surrounded on all sides by forest, forest and more forest. Noticing an approaching car is easy. I can see Ihantola in my headlights. He is expecting me.
The house is very small; inside it is tidy and equipped in a way that can’t help making a strong impression on me. Ihantola has prepared himself for the end of the world with great care and attention to detail. He clearly intends to survive long after the rest of the population has suffered plagues and floods of Old-Testament proportions. But in all these apocalyptic visions, there is one crack. And that crack is Matias Ihantola himself.
Never before have I seen him smile like this. Never have I heard the same levity, the sense of hope I now detect in his voice. Something has happened.
But the clock is ticking. What I have come to collect is…
‘Exactly,’ he says and raises his forefinger. ‘The rifle.’
He disappears into a room that I assume must be the bedroom and returns with the weapon in his hand. I recognise it: a boltaction Sako hunting rifle. He hands me the rifle. I take it and check it is loaded. It is not, and the chamber is empty. I look at Matias Ihantola.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘I suppose I should have mentioned this.’
‘Mentioned what?’ I ask, though I can guess where this is going.
‘I’ve been in such a dark place recently – ever since Kaisa took the children and left, in fact,’ he says. ‘And I haven’t been hunting either. But then…’ He scratches his thick stubble. ‘The last time we spoke,’ he begins, ‘I realised something. And I want to thank you. I don’t mean the praying. That was my idea; you didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it. Which I find rather puzzling, to be perfectly honest, but let’s not get into that. I finally realised that the way you relate to things … it made an impression on me.’
‘The way I relate?’ I ask. The rifle is still in my hand. I sense that time is passing and that right now I need to talk about something altogether different.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The way you often say that you don’t know or that you can only speak for yourself. It inspires … hope.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘After our last conversation, I realised I must think very seriously about the plastic in our oceans, the extinction of marine ecosystems, the atrophying of the seas, their death, which will come very soon, and how it is in fact our death too – but I didn’t. I did as you taught me. I told myself that I can only do what I can do, and that everything else is beyond my reach.’
‘I’m not sure I really…’
‘That’s it. You are a very positive person. You gave me hope. It is exactly as you said. And now I can say it too. What do I know? It’s very liberating.’
‘I don’t…’
‘And when I was supposed to think about artificial intelligence – because we already know there will come a day when machines can develop machines that are more intelligent than themselves, machines that can decide to commandeer everything connected to the web, turn everything against humans, and if humans try to resist they will destroy us with weapons and in ways that, obviously, we can’t even imagine yet – I decided to think about it the way you would think about it.’
The steel barrel of the rifle is pointing at the door, where I should be heading right now. But Ihantola’s monologue keeps me rooted to the spot.
‘And how would I approach it?’ I ask.
‘You would sit calmly in your chair and maybe you’d say that you don’t know.’
I’m about to say I’m not at all sure I would do that, but I realise this wouldn’t please Matias Ihantola. The silence of the house is arresting. We are so far from other settlements, so far from everything, that the silence is like an air-tight seal around us; it comes in from outside, its pressure greater than any of us can withstand.
Ihantola nods decisively and continues. ‘You realise there could be a market for this kind of philosophy these days? It’s the antidote to everything the usual snake-oil salesmen are touting: certainty, self-confidence, omniscience. And these days, with people thinking they know everything about everything, always taking a stance, shouting over one another because they are more right than the person in front of them, imagine how refreshing it would be if someone said simply, “I don’t know.”’
‘I don’t know…’
‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he says. He is clearly only getting started.
I have to stop him. I turn the rifle in my hands, show it to him.
‘The cartridges,’ I say. ‘You have cartridges for this thing, right?’
He hesitates, and his expression is overcast with that same anguish I’ve seen in him before.
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Like I said, I’d been having dark thoughts…’
He reaches out his right hand, and now I realise what he’s been holding throughout his monologue. He holds his fist between us and opens his fingers, slowly. In the palm of his hand is a .308-calibre bottlenecked cartridge.
One cartridge.
I look at the cartridge, then at Matias Ihantola.
‘I feel I should apologise,’ he says, his voice a little hoarse. ‘But I’ll say thank you instead. This was for me. My insurance for the end of days. I don’t need it anymore.’
He looks me in the eye as he drops the cartridge into my hand. His eyes are wet with tears.
‘You have given me hope,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’