8

“Come in, please.” Suri smiled and waved me into Ilkka’s office. “It’ll take me just a minute to finish up, then we can get something to eat.”

I looked around while she fiddled with her computer. Wooden filing cabinets covered one wall, beneath framed copies of magazine covers and pictures of Ilkka with people like Isabella Blow and Franca Sozzani. Covers from Vogue Italia, Elle, Women’s Wear Daily; plaques for the Iconique Societas Award and Kontakt Award. A painted antique cupboard held odd ephemera on its upper shelves, high enough that small children couldn’t reach them: old pop-up books showing Red Riding Hood being swallowed by the wolf; hand-colored pictures of Bluebeard from a Victorian toy theater. A fragile copy of Der Struwwelpeter opened to a lurid illustration of a girl in flames. Had this guy ever seen the Disney version of anything?

I picked up a stack of vintage postcards—some sort of macabre Christmas cards, dating to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Every one featured a leering devil doing something unpleasant to a child—stuffing a boy into a burlap sack, brandishing a handful of sticks at a shrieking girl. In some pictures, the devil’s feet were cloven; in others he wore stylish shoes or hobnailed boots. Saint Nicholas accompanied him in a few images, but more often the devil cavorted alone. The same greeting was printed on every card. GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS! I fanned them out as though they were a fortune-telling deck.

“What are these?”

“Ah, you found Ilkka’s collection.” Suri laughed. “Those are old Krampus cards. He buys them on eBay.”

I held up a picture of a devil riding a broomstick, his long tongue coiled suggestively. “But what is that?”

“You don’t know Krampus? He travels with St. Nicholas and beats bad children. You know, to make them behave.” She laughed again. “I think it must have worked; he’s very scary.”

“Finland must have a lot of traumatized kids.”

“Oh, he’s not Finnish. German—no, Austrian. Maybe both. Here we have Father Christmas with his reindeer because, you know, this is where he lives, on Korvatunturi Mountain in Lapland. The Finns invented Father Christmas—all of it, with the reindeer and the little elves and the snow.”

I pointed at the cards. “But not this?”

“No, not Krampus. That is Ilkka’s taste.”

“It’s a little strange.”

“Ilkka is interested in old things, especially rituals about the dead.”

“Like the bog boy?”

“Yes. And Pyhäinpäivä, what we used to call Kekri—All Saints’ Day—the end of harvest, before winter comes. People would visit the cemeteries, because that is when the dead come back. I don’t know why he likes to study these things, but he does. Old religions, old legends. I’ll shut down now. I’m hungry.”

She turned, and I noticed a framed photo in one corner of the desk: Ilkka and a beautiful blond woman on the deck of a sailboat, their arms around two young children. A towheaded girl, barely a toddler, and a boy a few years older. He was completely bald, with his father’s thin mouth and narrow eyes. No eyebrows or eyelashes. I thought of the mummified boy in the Windeby bog.

“That’s Oskari,” said Suri in a soft voice. She picked up the picture and studied it. “Their son. He has a very rare cancer, leukemia that goes to the brain. He was in remission, but a few months ago it came back. The care here is very good, but he is not responding to it anymore. That’s why Ilkka is so upset when he gets sick. They want to take him overseas for an experimental treatment, but it’s very expensive.”

“I bet.”

His son’s cancer treatment might explain Ilkka’s decision to sell the Yuleboy photos. Or maybe something else was going on and this was just a good excuse to finally unload them. Either way, I decided I’d give a big thumbs-up to Bredahl, maybe even invent another interested party to jack up the price.

We walked to the front door. Suri stopped to retrieve a pair of boots, then tugged a brightly knitted cap over her hair. “Have you seen any of the city yet? No? We can walk down to the harbor market. If you don’t mind walking.”

“Nah, I don’t mind.”

I grabbed my leather jacket and followed her outside. What I really wanted was a drink, but I didn’t feel like pulling out my private stash of whiskey in front of this girl. We were almost to the sidewalk when there was a noise behind us, a sound like tumbling dice. I looked back to see the raven perched on the lintel, clacking its beak as it stared at me with one baleful yellow eye.

“Hyvää iltaa,” it croaked, and flew above the barren treetops.