KIMMO JOENTAA LAY awake. The snow and the night were melting away beyond the windows. He sat up carefully so as not to wake the woman lying beside him.
He looked down at her for a few minutes.
Heard her breathing quietly and regularly.
Then he let his head drop back against the sofa cushion and felt the woman whose name he didn’t know clutching his arm with her hand. She was moaning slightly, as if in pain. Probably dreaming. He wondered whether he ought to wake her and liberate her from the dream, but after a while she lay at rest, breathing regularly again, and Joentaa closed his eyes and thought, for the first time in a long while, of that last night in the hospital.
Thought of the last few hours that turned into the last few minutes, the last few seconds. Sanna too had slept. Sanna too had been breathing peacefully and regularly. Peacefully, regularly and barely perceptibly. Then her breathing had stopped.
He had been waiting for that. Had been waiting, together with Sanna, for that moment, because he had known it would be the most important moment in his life. A never-ending moment.
When he heard a knock at the door he thought at first that he had imagined it. When the knocking came again, a little louder and more insistent, he sat up and looked at the green glow of the numbers on the DVD recorder. Two in the morning. It couldn’t be Pasi Laaksonen from next door. Nor his mother, because no trains from Kitee arrived in the middle of the night. Nor the woman who had broken Ari Pekka Sorajärvi’s nose, because she was already lying beside him.
He heard the knocking again, a little softer this time, with some slight hesitation. He got up and put on his T-shirt and trousers. He picked up the sofa throw, which was lying half on the floor, and covered up the woman, who seemed to be fast asleep.
Then, legs feeling shaky, he went to the door. His back ached. He opened the door and felt the clear, cold air on his skin. There was no one outside, but under the apple tree with its covering of white snow stood a man, just about to get back into his car.
‘Hello?’ said Joentaa.
The man stopped and seemed to hesitate briefly. ‘Kimmo. Sorry. I thought … I wasn’t going to ring the bell, only knock, because I thought you might be asleep.’
The man came towards him. It was Santa Claus.
‘Tuomas …’ said Joentaa.
Tuomas Heinonen. He couldn’t remember Tuomas Heinonen ever visiting him before. Tuomas Heinonen dressed up as Santa Claus.
‘What … come on in,’ said Joentaa.
‘Yes. Thanks.’
Tuomas Heinonen stood in the corridor, stooping and frozen, and seemed to be at a loss for words.
‘Would you like a hot drink? You look as if you’re freezing,’ said Joentaa, smiling, but Tuomas Heinonen probably wasn’t listening to him.
‘I’ve had a few problems at home. I … we had our present-giving and it went wrong, you might say. And then … then I thought of you. I’m glad you were still awake – or had you gone to sleep?’
‘Come on, let’s sit down and have something to drink first,’ said Joentaa, going into the kitchen.
Tuomas Heinonen followed. He sat down, lost in thought, and looked at the vodka bottle and the milk container standing on the table.
‘The trouble is it’s all my fault. That’s the worst of it,’ said Heinonen.
‘What’s happened?’ asked Joentaa.
Heinonen looked at him, forcing a painful smile, and hesitated. ‘Maybe we’re all washed up,’ he said at last, leaning back as if that explained everything.
Joentaa sat down opposite him and waited.
‘If you …’ he began, but Heinonen interrupted him. He was talking at a frantic pace now. ‘It’s like this, I’d like to tell you about it but I don’t know if I can. It’s … it’s, well, difficult.’
‘You don’t have to …’
‘It’s like this, Kimmo, the twins, they were just too much for me.’
Once again Heinonen slumped back as if that told the whole story.
‘Twins?’ said Joentaa.
‘Yes, you know we have twins, don’t you? Tarja and Vanessa.’
‘Of course they’re great … great little girls. Sorry, I’m sure this is all nonsense I’m talking. I’m so sorry …’
If you say sorry for no reason once again, thought Joentaa vaguely.
‘It was too much for me, I could have done without it,’ said Tuomas Heinonen. ‘I could have done without all that, I never wanted kids. I love them, of course, but I didn’t want to have them. Do you understand?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Joentaa, seeing pictures in his mind’s eye. Pictures of the twins’ christening. Joentaa had been there, and had felt out of place, because he hadn’t known anyone apart from a few colleagues. Heinonen carrying the two little girls under his arms like rugby balls, laughing as he ran with them.
‘It’s all too much for me. We don’t have any time these days. Nothing happens any more, it’s the kids all the time.’
Joentaa nodded.
‘The problem is … well, it’s like this,’ said Heinonen. ‘I … I looked around for some kind of, well, compensation.’
Joentaa waited.
‘I … I’ve been gambling.’
‘Gambling?’
‘Gambling money away. A lot of money. Almost everything we’d saved up for a rainy day.’
Joentaa nodded, wondering what to say.
‘Internet betting,’ said Heinonen. ‘On sporting events. Virtual poker. But the money is real enough, you could say. If you … I lost control of myself and it came out. Paulina discovered what was going on, I don’t know how. But this evening she suddenly started on about it.’
Joentaa nodded.
Heinonen stared at the table, then at the sleeve of his Santa Claus coat. ‘Oh … sorry, I’ve only just noticed I still have this stupid costume on,’ he said in surprise.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Joentaa.
‘Hm …’ Heinonen began to chuckle. ‘Kimmo, how do you do it? I mean, how do you manage it, keeping perfectly straight-faced in the most outlandish situations?’
‘Well, it was obvious that you’re feeling sad.’
‘Yes,’ said Tuomas Heinonen. He seemed to be thinking. ‘What I’d like to ask you, Kimmo, sorry if I’m bothering you, but anyway I’m really sorry about turning up here like this …’
‘You don’t have to keep saying sorry.’
‘But how … how have you managed over these last few years, since your wife’s death … how have you managed living like this for years, I mean, on your own? I’ve often wondered. I’m sure it sounds silly, but I do kind of admire you for having this … this world of your own to live in, so peaceful, at least that’s the way you …’
Joentaa wondered what Tuomas was getting at. He looked up into the eyes of the woman he didn’t know. She was standing in the doorway, sleepy and naked.
‘What are you two talking about all this time?’ she asked.
Heinonen turned to look at her.
There was silence for a while, then Kimmo said, ‘Tuomas, may I introduce you to … this is …’
‘Names don’t matter, but you can call me Larissa,’ said the woman.
Larissa, thought Joentaa.
‘That’s what the others call me,’ she added.
There was a long pause.
Heinonen stared at the woman in the doorway. The woman in the doorway did not seem to mind either the silence or the way Heinonen looked at her.
Larissa, thought Joentaa, suddenly feeling his heart lift.
‘I … I think I’d better be …’ Tuomas Heinonen began, then broke off. Kimmo Joentaa concentrated on the silence.
An easy, a different silence. A new silence.
Names don’t matter, he thought.
‘I really didn’t want to barge in on you two … I mean I didn’t know that … that you … well, Paulina will be waiting, and there’s the twins …’
‘Let’s get some sleep,’ said Joentaa.