THAT EVENING KIMMO Joentaa sat in an empty house and watched the children out on the lake, playing ice hockey in the pale moonlight.
Joentaa sat back and let himself be lulled by the game. By the children’s shouting, the dull thud of the hockey sticks colliding, and he thought, vaguely, that the goalies had a tough job. You could hardly even see the puck.
The game seemed to be endless. After a while Joentaa began keeping track of the score. It was an evenly balanced match, although he had realised that only late in the day, so he didn’t know whether one team already had a clear lead or not.
The game never flowed smoothly; there were constant discussions, and now and then players sat down on the ice at the rim of the playing area, presumably sent to the sin bin for two minutes, and Joentaa wondered where the referee making these decisions and timing the penalty period was. He couldn’t see anyone. Goals were being scored all the time.
Finally one side was jubilant, its team members hugging one another, and the other side collapsed, exhausted. The game was over.
A few minutes later they all came off the ice together, shouting greetings to each other before running off home in different directions. Joentaa recognised Roope, the boy from one of the houses nearby, and the goalie, who was wearing an unsuitable cycle helmet, came up to the window where he was standing. The goalie knocked at the glazed door to the terrace, and as he opened the door Joentaa thought he must be suffering from some kind of delusion.
‘We won,’ said Larissa. She took off her skates, threw the helmet down on an armchair, and ran her hands through her hair. ‘Twenty–eighteen. Great game.’
‘Oh …’ said Joentaa.
‘I’m sweating like a pig. I’ll go and shower.’
‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.
She pulled her sweater off over her head, ‘Everything okay with you?’
‘Yes,’ said Joentaa.
‘Great. Be with you in a moment.’
She took off her trousers, and was halfway to the bathroom when Joentaa said, ‘But eighteen goals against you – that’s a lot.’
‘It’s winning that counts,’ she said without turning round.
‘Only joking,’ he said. ‘Hang on a moment.’
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘I need to shower.’
‘If you’d told me you were an ice-hockey goalie, I’d have thought that was guaranteed to be a lie,’ said Joentaa.
She studied him for a long time.
Then she turned away and went into the bathroom.
Joentaa heard the rushing and pattering of the shower.
When she came back, he was lying stark naked on the sofa, arms reaching out to her ostentatiously, with a silly grin on his face.
She seemed baffled, and frowned. ‘Er … Kimmo,’ she said.
He laughed at her confused expression for several minutes before joy finally overcame him, and he began to shed tears.