A few days later, Siiri and Irma were enjoying a very peaceful, ordinary afternoon at Sunset Grove. Everyone had had their lunch and their midday rest, and around 3 p.m. they came down to the common room to play cards. The afternoon card game wasn’t one of Sunset Grove’s services; it had sprung up spontaneously when they realized how many of them liked to play.
Irma shuffled the deck and dealt everyone eleven cards. It was something she enjoyed immensely; she was a skilful shuffler and a nimble dealer. They didn’t play in teams because it only caused arguments and there wouldn’t have been a partner for everyone. The ritual they performed after the cards were dealt was always the same: Irma would show her hand and crow over the twos and jokers, which made Anna-Liisa tense, while Siiri, Reino and the Ambassador calmly and quietly arranged their hands. The Ambassador sat to Irma’s left, so that he could start the play.
‘I’m on the table,’ he said, laying down three jacks. Irma praised this achievement and Anna-Liisa coughed nervously – she had probably been hoping to collect jacks herself. Siiri drew a joker on her turn, tried not to smile, and discarded a four of diamonds.
‘Did you get something nice?’ Irma asked. ‘It’s your turn, Reino.’
But Reino didn’t draw a card. He looked like he wasn’t following the game. He was just staring straight ahead, muttering to himself and holding the cards unsorted in his hand. Everyone looked at him expectantly.
‘Olavi Raudanheimo . . . a war veteran! In a wheelchair! If he hadn’t told me himself, I wouldn’t . . . ! My God! How the hell could this happen?’
He shook his head and shouted so that the spit flew out of his mouth and his cards flew onto the floor. He waved his arms and wailed, then slumped in a lifeless heap and started to cry. He was a big man, and usually so happy, but he was crying like a child, sobbing and whimpering, his whole body shaking. It was frightening. Irma offered him her handkerchief. Siiri took his hand, leaned towards him, and asked him what the matter was. Anna-Liisa pushed her chair half a metre further from the table and watched him sniffle and sputter with a severe look on her face.
‘Speak up,’ she said. ‘Articulate. We can’t understand you.’ She was right, of course. His weeping had grown to a howl, and no one could make out a word he was saying.
Olavi Raudanheimo was Reino’s neighbour in C wing. He lived in a studio apartment and got around in a wheelchair, but they rarely saw him. Sometimes Reino took him out to the nearest park, but he didn’t participate in the Sunset Grove activities. Olavi was more of a bookish man who kept himself to himself. He enjoyed solving crossword puzzles and listening to the news on the radio. He had lost both legs in the war and lived in Sunset Grove on a state pension.
‘Is Olavi dead?’ Irma asked excitedly.
‘No, no. If only . . .’ Reino said, blowing his nose loudly into her lace handkerchief. ‘That’s something an old man could take, damn it.’
‘That’s my mother’s old handkerchief,’ Irma said, looking worriedly at the wet wad in his hand. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ she said, smiling. ‘Just an old rag.’ She always tried to keep her spirits up, whatever the situation. ‘It seems we’ll never die! Döden, döden, döden. Now what was that card . . . drat, it’s a king! Did Olavi have a fall in his apartment? Did he have a heart attack? Or is it that his children have started dying? Is it my turn? To play a card, I mean.’
‘Assaulted! Olavi was assaulted, yesterday evening, in his own home!’ Reino shouted, and everyone went quiet. Then he sniffed and started to bawl again. Irma dropped her cards into her lap and Siiri looked helplessly at Anna-Liisa and continued clutching Reino’s hand. The Ambassador stared at his cards as if nothing had happened.
Reino stood up to his full height, knocking his chair over with a clatter.
‘Olavi Raudanheimo was assaulted yesterday in the shower!’ he shouted, even louder than before. He looked dreadful bellowing like that, his face covered in tears and anger, his chin half unshaven. A large man in tracksuit bottoms with his dirty shirt hem flapping.
‘We heard you the first time,’ Anna-Liisa said calmly. ‘What exactly do you mean by assaulted? You must remember that assault is a way of wielding power. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with pleasure or desire, if you get my meaning. It’s an act of subjugation and humiliation.’
‘Whose turn is it?’ the Ambassador asked restlessly. He wanted the game to continue because he had a good hand.
Reino tried to pick up his chair but grew flustered when he couldn’t get it upright, and started to wail again.
‘That damned male nurse . . . that fag! He was supposed to be giving him a shower . . . Olavi told me himself, damn it all!’
‘Sit down, Reino,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘And please watch your language. Was this in the morning or the evening? Could somebody help him with his chair?’
As a language and literature teacher, Anna-Liisa was clearly used to handling the unruly and shepherding the restless. Irma was first to obey, picking up Reino’s chair and trying to get him to sit down. It wasn’t easy; Reino resisted, trembling and rubbing his face compulsively with his sleeve.
‘An, auf, hinter, in – I just drew a nice red ten,’ the Ambassador trilled, continuing the game by himself. He had a habit of reciting the German prepositions he’d learned in grammar school while he sorted his cards. Irma and Reino’s cards were on the floor but Siiri gripped hers in one hand until her fingers hurt.
‘I don’t know when it happened. I don’t remember. It doesn’t matter,’ Reino said, finally sitting back down, slightly calmer. He tried to take a deep breath and blew his nose again into Irma’s handkerchief, which looked smaller than before. ‘But Good God! A war veteran . . . can’t even wash himself.’
‘What are you all worked up about, Mr Reino?’
Head nurse Virpi Hiukkanen had appeared. None of them had ever seen her run before, but now she was moving so fast that her nurse’s shoes were flapping. She took hold of Reino’s shoulder with a firm grip, which only made him angrier. Now he started to really throw a fit. His walker took off on its own, the deck of cards flew into the air, and the chair fell over again, and even Virpi was frightened. A flock of startled members of staff gathered around them, all of them strangers except for Virpi, whose thin, sharp voice pierced through the general hubbub.
‘Get this patient to the dementia ward and sedate him!’
Four Russian women grabbed hold of Reino, who had suddenly changed from a resident to a patient, and gave him an injection. Reino yelled some choice obscenities and thrashed around. His voice echoed down the hall all the way to the locked ward. Irma started picking the cards up off the floor although it was hard to bend over because she was somewhat plump and very busty. The Ambassador hurried to help her, peeping down her blouse all the while.
‘I don’t think damn is such a terrible word,’ Irma puffed, putting the red stack of cards down on the table.
Then she told the story of the time her husband Veikko was screwing a bookshelf to the wall and the shelf fell with all the books on it onto the back of his neck and he shouted ‘damn it’, and Irma’s mother heard it and was horrified, because she thought a son-in-law of hers should have just said ‘hell’.
‘But I don’t think so. Hell is just as strong a word as damn,’ she said, which was how she always ended the story.
They started a new game, at the Ambassador’s request. Irma shuffled and dealt the cards. The Ambassador was upset because Reino’s outburst had cost him a good hand.