Anna-Liisa wanted to go clothes shopping. Siiri thought it a funny whim, but then she remembered the Ambassador and understood why she wanted something new in her wardrobe. She already had her red hat and gloves.
‘I got them from Onni,’ Anna-Liisa revealed when they were on the tram. ‘What do you think – does the hat flatter me?’
‘Very becoming,’ Siiri replied. It was what Irma would have said.
Siiri couldn’t remember when she’d last bought clothes. She’d gone to Stockmann now and then to buy silk long johns and vests for Irma, but she didn’t care for them herself. Coats, trousers, shirts – she’d worn the same ones for the entirety of this century. Shopping for shopping’s sake was pointless and boring. But it was nice to go into the city, away from Sunset Grove where her thoughts trod over the same tedious paths from the fire to the pill counter to the Hiukkanens.
‘You don’t have to buy anything,’ Anna-Liisa told her. ‘It’s still shopping, even if you just wander from shop to shop and look at everything. It’s extremely popular. Do you remember when there used to be signs that said no begging or peddling? And yet there were always peddlers coming to the door. Sometimes that was fun. I used to always let one blind war veteran sharpen my kitchen knives and I bought lace napkins from a gypsy woman. There was no harm in it.’
They began their shopping trip at the Forum. It was bustling with people but there wasn’t a single shop suitable for someone over ninety. Anna-Liisa steered them out of the Forum, past the Chapel of Silence and into Kamppi, the huge shopping centre at the old bus station, or rather on top of it, since the bus station had been forced underground. It looked to Siiri like Kamppi had all the same shops as the Forum, but Anna-Liisa was more observant.
‘These are all one-brand shops. Shops have gone branded now, so each shop only sells one company’s clothes. That’s how you know that Kamppi has higher-quality products than the Forum.’
‘So, if I want to buy some trousers, I have to look in each separate shop? That’s rather complicated.’
None of the escalators started where the previous escalator ended. They had to walk a long way to the next one and got lost several times. They were surrounded by inappropriately short skirts and tops with multi-coloured lace and ruffles. One shop sold nothing but hairbands. For men, there were shops with tasteless green trousers and pink shirts. Siiri’s husband never wore anything but black, brown and grey. Even the Ambassador was hardly addled enough with springtime love to put on a pair of red trousers. The idea of it made Anna-Liisa laugh wonderfully, her voice high and musical. They sat down on some cafe chairs to rest for a moment, but a man working at the ice-cream parlour shooed them away, saying that the chairs were reserved for paying customers.
‘We are paying customers!’ Anna-Liisa said.
They had bought coffee in paper cups from the neighbouring shop, which seemed to be a bookstore of some kind. But that didn’t matter. They had to get up. So they stood next to a rubbish bin with the two empty chairs in front of them and finished their coffee. Shopping centres weren’t meant for old people – there was too much noise and bustle and the businesses were confusing. People shoved and elbowed each other and some of them were just standing around, obviously not there to buy anything, but just to watch what the others were doing.
‘Let’s go to Stockmann,’ Anna-Liisa finally groaned. This sounded sensible.
They got to Stockmann through an incredibly long underground passageway carved into the bedrock, which was handy, since large drops of sleet were falling outside in honour of spring. The passageway made them think of bomb shelters and the bombing of Helsinki. Anna-Liisa had been in Töölö and Siiri in Munkkiniemi on 30 March 1939. They remembered how some of the bombs had struck right near them and they both got an uncomfortable feeling just like they did on New Year’s Eve when people went outside to light rockets.
‘Fireworks always make me think of the war. I can’t understand how anyone really enjoys all those explosions and that dreadful racket,’ Anna-Liisa said as they emerged into the freezing rain just a short walk from the shelter of Stockmann. The department store was full of even more people than the shopping centre, such a mass of people in the middle of the day that they were driven by the crowd onto the descending escalator.
‘Tram routes and the arrangement of the departments at Stockmann are two things that should never change,’ Anna-Liisa said when they noticed they were on a floor labelled with the English word ‘basement’. They argued about this for a moment, because Siiri was quite pleased with all the new tram routes that had appeared in Helsinki lately. She wouldn’t mind if they ran tracks to Munkkivuori, too. A little adventure was always refreshing, including here in Stockmann.
‘Now look at this gadget. I’ll bet you’ve never seen this kind of vacuum cleaner . . . yes, it’s a vacuum cleaner, not a humidifier, like I thought it was. It moves by itself, goes into the corners to suck up the dust. Isn’t that a fun invention? And you would never have found it, if you hadn’t come looking for it.’
‘We’re not really looking, we’re just browsing,’ Anna-Liisa said and strode to the escalator to get back to the ground floor.
Siiri reminded her of the fun of shopping and sang a bit of Schubert, the song that starts with ‘Das Wandern ist des Müllers Lust, das Wandern’, but Anna-Liisa silenced her with a sharp elbow in the ribs.
‘Don’t sing,’ she said, and tried on an orange scarf.
In the end she bought a white scarf and a new black handbag to replace her old black one. The orange scarf was unnecessarily bold in her opinion, and the white one could be worn anywhere, even at a funeral, which made it a very practical purchase.
They caught the number 3 on Aleksanterinkatu and took it past the Tennis Palace to the Opera, where they planned to change to the number 4. This had become Siiri’s habitual route from the city centre to Munkkiniemi. As they sat on the number 3, they wondered where old ladies like them were supposed to buy their clothing. There were no such stores, specializing in old people’s clothes, although you heard all the time that there were more things for old people every day.
‘We can’t walk around in flashy, bright-coloured young people’s clothes, like lunatics.’
Anna-Liisa thought anything at all could be an old lady’s clothes as soon as an old enough lady wore it. She looked Siiri up and down appraisingly.
‘It’s not as if that poplin coat you’re wearing is particularly designed for ninety-four-year-olds.’
While they waited for the number 4 at the new opera house they played with the idea of fashion just for old people.
‘The trendy granny this spring is wearing shades of pear and olive. A gracefully draped skirt covers varicose veins handsomely, and brings out the legs from behind a Zimmer frame. The heels on her colourful sandals are subtle but youthful, and a polka-dot chiffon scarf completes the ensemble.’
Siiri extended her ankle and pivoted like a model, just as Irma had done when they were planning what to wear to a funeral – it must have been Tero’s. There certainly had been a lot of funerals since then.
Just as the number 4 pulled up to the stop, Anna-Liisa said she was going to Tallinn for Easter with the Ambassador, on a veterans’ rehabilitation tour, where spouses could come along for free.
‘Just think of it – a sea crossing! And I plan to leave the Zimmer frame at home completely.’
It was only then that it occurred to Siiri that Anna-Liisa hadn’t brought her Zimmer frame with her on their shopping trip. She walked perfectly without it, her red spring hat balanced on her head. It seemed she didn’t need her old support now that she had a real gentleman friend to lean on – a cavalier to escort her to the crematorium, Siiri thought, and missed Irma terribly.
‘You know, Siiri, I feel so young and alive. It’s just like you always say – life is certainly amazing.’
‘Do I say that? And did you just say that veterans’ spouses get to go to Tallinn for free?’ Siiri was shocked and a little envious of these travel plans.
‘Yes! Since there are so few veterans of the war left, they’re paying all expenses for spouses, too, although back in the eighties they didn’t pay for anything. And since the spas are so much cheaper in Tallinn than in Finland, they’re sending us there to save money!’
‘But you’re not the Ambassador’s spouse, Anna-Liisa. At least, not to my knowledge.’
Siiri noticed that she was getting worked up and her voice was unnecessarily sharp. She had certainly never sponged off the government like that. Anna-Liisa didn’t seem to notice Siiri’s annoyance; she just told her proudly how clever Onni was at arranging the visas and everything – all taken care of in a snap.
‘And he said we can always buy the rings in Tallinn if they’re required.’