A large man stood in front of Siiri and Anna-Liisa, looking at them with tender blue eyes. He held out a red poinsettia.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he said. ‘Or should I say Happy New Year’s, since Christmas is more or less over now?’
‘Mika Korhonen!’ Siiri shouted as if the Angel Gabriel himself had appeared out of the heavens. And that’s exactly how she felt, because no one but Mika could help them out of the mess they were in, a mess that had only grown more befuddling as the weeks went by.
‘Have you ever thought about what a fun word befuddling is? Almost as good as flummoxed,’ Siiri said to Mika, giving him a hug – which was totally unlike her – because at that moment a big hug from her new friend with his squeaky leather jacket and his wonderful smell was just what she needed. It made her feel safer than any childhood memory.
‘You don’t need the plural, or the possessive, in this case. It’s “Happy New Year”, not “Happy New Year’s”,’ Anna-Liisa informed him, and Siiri realized she hadn’t introduced them.
‘This is my friend, Anna-Liisa Petäjä,’ Siiri said to Mika, who extended his strong hand.
‘Master of Philosophy, language and literature teacher. Very nice to meet you, Mr Korhonen.’ Anna-Liisa squeezed Mika’s hand, obviously satisfied by his grip.
‘Right, yeah. Just Mika. And where’s the other happy lady? I have a flower for her, too.’
‘Poinsettias are poisonous,’ Anna-Liisa began, but Siiri interrupted and invited both of them to her apartment, feeling that it would be a safer place to talk. You never knew which of the people dozing around you were actually in full possession of their faculties and ready to pass on everything you said. Good gracious, she was getting paranoid!
Mika glanced around with curiosity as they went to the lift and took it to Siiri’s second-floor apartment. He sniffed the air and grimaced now and then – no doubt the retirement home had a strange smell to outsiders, a mixture of disinfectant and excretions that the residents had reluctantly grown used to. Siiri opened her apartment door and regretted that she hadn’t cleared the remains of her breakfast. She hurried to put things away and wiped the table. Anna-Liisa had never been to her apartment and so was making an eager inspection of it. She stopped her Zimmer frame in front of the bookshelf and scanned it with apparent approbation, though it only contained Siiri’s most beloved, and newest, books. She had given most of her books to the antiquarian bookstore when she moved into the retirement home. The bookstore owner had wanted to give her a few hundred for them, but she wasn’t worried about the money because she felt that second-hand book dealers were performing a public good by rescuing books and spreading the word about them.
Mika looked at the framed photos of Siiri’s husband and children on the windowsill, peeked into the bedroom, and sat down on the sofa, which looked smaller with him filling half of it. It was a rather silly sofa, low and curved, from Stockmann department store, and had followed Siiri in every move she’d made since the 1930s. Siiri put the poinsettias on the table and asked if her guests would like some coffee and nookies. She didn’t give it a thought – it was what she and Irma always said. Mika laughed in astonishment and Anna-Liisa saw it as an opportunity to launch into an explanation of why an old person from Helsinki might call cookies nookies.
‘. . . a similar transposition of the initial consonant happens with other expressions, such as spoving louse,’ she said.
‘Yep. Plenty of louses and nookie these days,’ Mika said, and drummed his fingers on the table. Anna-Liisa furrowed her brow doubtfully.
‘Are such expressions still in use among young people today?’ Anna-Liisa asked.
Siiri had to raise her voice to focus the conversation. She gently reminded her guests that it would be best to forget about the nookies and concentrate on talking about Irma. And then she told them everything, just as if she’d been uncorked. She told them in no particular order about the medical records, the forgetfulness, the sudden sleepiness, the additional drugs, the apathy, the missing green folder, the strange package, the complaints, Virpi Hiukkanen’s fits of rage, and how she’d been left lying unconscious on the floor. Anna-Liisa corrected, supplemented, and elucidated whenever an opportunity presented itself.
‘It’s a bit unusual these days to wear a slip under a dress, you see,’ she interjected.
Mika listened, not interrupting or asking any questions. Siiri felt tremendously relieved, and positively giddy, from finally putting all the oppressive thoughts she’d been carrying inside her all these months into words. Anna-Liisa was full of energy. She remembered the dreadful incident with Olavi Raudanheimo and described what had happened as far as she understood it. ‘And Reino has been in the closed unit ever since. But I don’t remember where Olavi Raudanheimo is, do you, Siiri?’
Siiri had completely forgotten Olavi’s room with a view at the Hilton! So much had happened that she couldn’t keep up with it all. Tero and Pasi seemed like far-off creatures on this rainy Christmas, although, just a short time ago, all of Sunset Grove had been abuzz about their fate and Siiri had thought that she would never get over the young cook’s death.
‘Didn’t Irma say in a lucid moment that Olavi had been moved from Meilahti to the chronic ward at Laakso Hospital?’ Anna-Liisa said, digging the fact out of her memory.
Yes, that might be right. But no one had even thought to miss Reino. Even the Ambassador hadn’t said anything about him. Siiri was worried that Mika might be getting a very confused picture of everything and he might think they were a couple of scatter-brained old ladies. But Mika didn’t say anything unpleasant, he just wanted to know Olavi’s son’s name and phone number.
‘Oh, we don’t have any of that kind of information,’ Siiri said hopelessly. ‘We don’t have your telephone number either.’
Mika gave her a quick glance, but made no comment on this remark. An uncomfortable moment ensued, which Anna-Liisa defused by pondering whether Irma might have Olavi’s son’s contact information, since she had been so curious about him and was always figuring such things out when she ‘d been in her right mind.
‘She had a habit of writing down any important name and number on a yellow sticky note and sticking it to the wall or the cupboard door, which was ridiculous, but that information might be among the rest.’
‘Let’s go and look,’ Mika suggested. ‘You probably have a key?’
Siiri and Anna-Liisa were frightened. They didn’t think it was appropriate to go into someone else’s home uninvited. Mika assured them that they were doing it to help Irma, so eventually Siiri gave in.
They were shocked when they saw the state of Irma’s apartment. Although Irma had a lot of things, she always kept them well organized, in stacks and piles that had some kind of logic. But now her place was a terrible mess, as if someone had been there before them and rummaged through her possessions. Even the cupboard doors were open, and the dry goods and bags of flour that Irma had collected for emergencies were scattered over the worktop. There were jumbles of medicine bottles on the sofa and tables and the only things that seemed to be in their usual places were Irma’s sticky notes. They were on the walls, mirrors and doors, and they all said, ‘Remember to buy ice cream and wine.’
‘As if she was going to forget,’ Anna-Liisa muttered, venting her perplexity in anger.
‘Someone’s been searching for something here,’ Mika said. He examined Irma’s medicine bottles, and Siiri thought she saw him put some of them in the pocket of his leather jacket.
‘And returning something,’ Anna-Liisa said, picking up a green folder from the floor with remarkable dexterity.
Mika grabbed the folder, flipped quickly through it, and stuffed it into his backpack. He said he had to leave, but would be back on Sunday to clean Irma’s apartment. Which was, of course, very kind of him.