Anna-Liisa suggested that they go to the bank on their way to see Irma at the hospital. Siiri wasn’t thrilled at the idea – an old woman has no business doing two things on the same day. But it was futile to resist, since Anna-Liisa was brimming with vim and vigour. She really looked almost girlish in the new red hat she was wearing.
Siiri had tried to go to the bank in Munkkiniemi the day after Mika’s visit and deposit the wrinkled bills he had given her. But the door had been locked in the middle of a weekday and there was a sign that said you could only get in by appointment and that the branch no longer handled cash transactions. It was really shocking. Siiri had kept an account at the same bank since the 1930s, though the bank had changed its name several times. Originally, it had been Finland United.
‘Oh, so you’re an anti-Fennoman. My bank is Citizen’s Cooperative, of course,’ Anna-Liisa said self-righteously.
It said on the bank window that the nearest branch with staff was the one in Lassila, and Siiri couldn’t understand why she should have to take a bus all the way to Espoo and get carsick just to put money in her own bank account. Anna-Liisa said that Lassila was in Helsinki, not Espoo, but since you couldn’t get there by tram they decided to go to the branch in Punavuori instead. It sounded pleasant, and safer in every way.
As they rode the tram they pondered what the bank’s business could be if it wasn’t cash transactions. Siiri suggested stocks and bonds, but Anna-Liisa thought those had to be cash transactions, too.
‘They probably do something with accounts. They don’t want to serve ordinary account holders, just deal with investments and funds and other more lucrative financial matters.’
The door to the Punavuori branch was broken. It was supposed to open automatically, so there wasn’t any handle to pull on. For a moment they thought that this branch was closed, too, but then a miracle happened and the doors suddenly slid apart.
‘Open sesame!’ Siiri shouted.
Three middle-aged men rushed in at once, talking on mobile phones, not even noticing the two old ladies pressing up against the wall to get out of their way. Siiri and Anna-Liisa let them go first since they were in such a hurry, then went inside and looked around to see where they were. The bank looked like a government office, with birch-veneer counters, a TV screen and casual furniture. There were several rows of chairs like at a health clinic, where you waited for your number to be called. There was no sign of the luxury of yesteryear, no arches, no marble, just a look of dull utility.
They went bravely up to the number dispenser, pressed all the buttons, just to be on the safe side, and got numbers 721, 13 and 221. The number on the board read 438.
‘This is like the lottery!’ Siiri said happily, but Anna-Liisa started squawking, although it had been her idea to stop at the bank on their way to the hospital.
‘At this rate we’ll never get to the hospital. There must be some mistake.’
Off to the side, in front of an advertising placard, stood an idle-looking security guard in uniform. Siiri asked him why the number board read 438 and the numbers on their tickets were 721, 13 and 221.
‘Do you think these will ever be winning numbers?’
The guard said he worked for a security company and wasn’t officially employed by the bank, except to stand guard and keep order. Siiri thought she might be disrupting order, so all they could do was sit down and wait their turn. Luckily, Siiri had her green cushion with her, because the seats were hard and uncomfortable. After a moment it became clear that there were four queues, each one with different numbers, and the best one had 38 customers ahead of them.
‘Well, then! This should all go swimmingly! Only two more hours to wait,’ Anna-Liisa said sourly and adjusted her red hat, its shiny trim gleaming in the glow of the halogen lighting.
Siiri suggested they play a word game to pass the time, because she knew that Anna-Liisa liked those. They thought of adjectives that began with a K, verbs that began with a vowel, and nouns that ended with an S. They couldn’t think of a single nice neighbourhood in Helsinki that began with an L, and to finish up, Siiri even declined some nouns into whatever grammatical case Anna-Liisa gave her. Anna-Liisa was quite impressed with Siiri. She’d had no idea that Siiri knew her case endings so well. When Siiri remembered the comitative case she gave an appreciative whistle.
‘Seven two one! Bingo!’ Siiri squealed when she saw one of their numbers come up, and ran to the counter in two steps with the number in her hand. She often leapt into motion like this out of habit, although she shouldn’t any more. Irma had always scolded her about it, told her that one day she was going to fall down and break a bone and spend the rest of her life rotting in bed, and Irma didn’t intend to come delivering gruel and liver casserole.
‘I can’t be your designated caregiver, even if I wanted to, because they won’t pay for it if you’re over ninety,’ Irma had said, and told her about her cousin Tauno who took care of his senile wife to the day she died and didn’t get a penny for it because he was overage. And now Irma was lying in the hospital in line for a new hip because she’d been drugged into senility and tied to a bed that she fell out of without anyone even noticing. Siiri would rather break a bone running a few steps than falling out of bed.
She greeted the young lady in the window politely, put the notes on the counter, trying to smooth them out as much as possible, and said that she wanted to deposit them into her account. She wrote her account number on a piece of paper to avoid any error, but it wouldn’t do.
‘You need an IBAN number.’
‘But I’m sure this is my account number. Or do you want my PIN?’
‘We have to have an IBAN number. An international transfer number. It’s an EU rule.’
Siiri had no idea what she meant, so she dug her bank card out of her handbag. They ought to be able to figure out the right number from that.
‘You mean you want to put the money in your own account? That’s not possible, unfortunately.’
One of them had to be confused. It wasn’t possible that a bank wouldn’t let a person put money into her own account. What harm could possibly come of it?
‘You see, you can put money in someone else’s account – make an account transfer, in other words – but depositing cash into your own account is no longer, like . . . it’s not done. You ought to keep that money, because you’re gonna hafta get cash sometime anyway, right?’
Siiri explained patiently that she didn’t need such a large sum of cash, and that she was living in a retirement home where all kinds of funny things happened, and that it was much too dangerous to keep large sums of money in a biscuit tin under her mattress.
‘Oh, OK. Well, maybe we can sorta make an exception this time. Wait a minute.’
The young lady left and came back with an older cashier. They whispered between themselves and looked at the wrinkled notes as if Siiri were a thief. Even the security guard was standing unnecessarily close behind her, ready to settle the dispute. Siiri clutched her cane and handbag in one hand and her green cushion in the other, trying to remain calm.
‘All right, so a deposit is charged for at the bank’s costs, so it’ll be twenty-seven euros. But you can deposit your cash; it’s possible with, like, special dispensation.’
‘Kekkonen was made president with a special dispensation,’ Siiri said, and told her to put the money in her account, regardless of the cost.
‘D’you need a receipt?’
Siiri took a receipt, thanked the cashier, then remembered to her chagrin that it was special legislation that had got Kekkonen re-elected, not special dispensation, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain her mistake to the bank cashier. She found Anna-Liisa in the waiting area with the other old people, reading a Donald Duck comic. Siiri would have thought that Anna-Liisa would consider comic books rubbish, but she was completely engrossed in the happenings in Duckberg and gave a start when Siiri interrupted her artistic appreciation.
‘Donald Duck comics are different,’ Anna-Liisa explained. ‘They help Finnish children learn to read. The Finnish language in them is exceptionally good and always current. I’m interested in it mainly in a professional sense.’
Anna-Liisa still considered herself a teacher at the age of ninety-three. It wouldn’t have occurred to Siiri to look at the world from a typist’s point of view, but, of course, that was because typewriters didn’t exist any more, and her job had never been that important to her. It seemed that once you were a teacher, you were always a teacher.