Mika Korhonen came with a friend to help with the move. It was fantastic, because they couldn’t have managed it without these big, strong men. Anna-Liisa had a tremendous number of things, and since half of her belongings were books, there was a lot of carrying to do. The poor fellows were drenched with sweat. Siiri told them to take off their leather jackets so they wouldn’t be so hot, but they refused. Their motorcycles gleamed beautifully in the Sunset Grove car park, and attracted deserved attention.
Anna-Liisa was an efficient supervisor, accustomed to command, and she had a detailed plan prepared ahead of time. She stood in the middle of the apartment with drawings in her hand and issued clear and audible instructions. Quite a large load of the Ambassador’s possessions went to the dump, because otherwise Anna-Liisa’s treasures wouldn’t have fit. Two walls had to be cleared for bookshelves, and Mika kindly spent an entire day assembling them. Anna-Liisa wanted the books arranged in alphabetical order according to language area.
‘The German novels on my right, the Russian ones on my left. The Finnish fiction here in the middle at my eye level, and the Finnish non-fiction in the same spot on the other wall.’
The boys were rattled. They didn’t know which books were fiction and which weren’t. Anna-Liisa was admirably patient with them, and didn’t get upset, even when one of them thought that Joel Lehtonen’s Wild Chervil was a book about plants and the other one asked what language group Thomas Mann should be in.
‘I’m a language and literature teacher. I’ve seen it all.’
The Ambassador was nowhere to be found on moving day. He had gone to his summer house to meet his offspring and former wives from abroad and tell them about the new turn his life had taken – the marriage, in other words, which was to take effect the following week. The announcements had been made, the non-impediments taken care of, and Irma and Siiri were almost going to be bridesmaids, or at least go to the Pasila courthouse to serve as witnesses.
‘Should we put ribbons in our hair?’ Irma asked, but Anna-Liisa just snorted and continued issuing orders to her leather-jacketed army.
Irma’s apartment, Anna-Liisa’s old apartment, was quite empty, of course, because her relatives had sold all her possessions. They didn’t hear anything from the darlings, which Siiri thought was shameless behaviour, but Irma was terribly understanding about it and said that of course they were embarrassed and that was why they didn’t dare show their faces. And they were so busy, too, because of the summer holidays. Irma seemed unfazed. In fact, she seemed positively thrilled at the chance to decorate her new apartment.
‘Is thrilled the opposite of unfazed? What do you think?’ she asked as she thumbed through the IKEA catalogue.
Siiri couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. Irma had always lived among her ancestors’ antique furniture, cherished them like relatives, told stories about them, how her uncle had spilled liqueur on the card table and left a stain that would never fade, how the bust of Runeberg had made the rounds of the summer cabins, frightening innocent victims, and how they’d found a wad of currency from the time of the tzars that was of no use to anyone now, in a hidden drawer in the chiffonier. And here she was, blissful at discovering IKEA. She thought the veneer furniture that you put together yourself was awfully cute. But there didn’t seem to be any rose-print upholstery at all.
‘They have such funny names, too! Klumpen, Stumpan, Buller and Bang!’
Those were names she’d made up out of her head, but what did it matter? Mika Korhonen had promised to come over to carry and assemble her new furniture, and Siiri was glowing with more happiness than even Anna-Liisa, because Irma was herself again, and making Siiri’s days happy ones.
Siiri had ridden the tram every day to visit Irma in the hospital, on several different routes, and sometimes the trip from Munkkiniemi to Töölö had taken almost two hours, if she was feeling particularly adventurous. Helsinki was so beautiful in the summer. It felt as if the whole place were designed just for summer – the plazas and market squares and all the new construction that had gone up in the past few years. Helsinki in July was like a big amusement park, and the tram was the rollercoaster.
Irma made her apartment very personalized. She combined traditional white Swedish furniture that looked like something out of an old Carl Larsson illustration with bright-coloured modern furniture designed for children. IKEA was an amazing place. You could get cheese-cutters and flowers for your balcony and finish up by eating some meatballs and chocolate. Mika came with them on their IKEA adventure and acted like an experienced tour guide.
‘This is the real amusement park,’ Irma said as they lay on the test mattresses in the bed department.
A young sales clerk wanted to know Irma’s weight and all kinds of other information, such as what position she slept in, and Irma started to flirt with him until Siiri was embarrassed, but he just laughed and sold Irma an enormous bed with mattress, pillows and bedclothes.
‘It’s called the Sultan. Can you believe it?’ Irma enthused.
‘What, no harem?’ Siiri laughed.
Mika had his work cut out for him, painting the walls white and putting the furniture together, but they were in no hurry, because Irma had been told she could stay at Kivelä Hospital until the end of August.
In the meantime, there was Anna-Liisa and Onni’s marriage ceremony to attend, and Siiri and Irma served as their witnesses. Both members of the wedding party were wearing formal attire.
‘Why get married in black?’ said Irma in wonder, as they waited in the hallway for the ceremony.
‘For practical reasons,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘We can wear the same clothes to funerals.’
‘Clever!’ Irma said. ‘So that’s what you’ll look like standing next to my coffin.’
The magistrate’s wedding chamber was small and drab, and the judge behaved about as enthusiastically as he would withdrawing cash from his own account. Anna-Liisa was very touched, in spite of the ordinariness of the setting, and said ‘I do’ much louder than she needed to. The Ambassador behaved in his accustomed manner, positively shouting his ‘I do’.
Irma and Siiri didn’t have any real role in the ceremony; they just sat in the drab office chairs and wrote their names on a piece of paper when it was over. A problem arose, of course, when they didn’t have anything but their old driver’s licences as identification, but Anna-Liisa handled the matter with her own passport like an old pro. She wouldn’t need to request a new passport, because she wasn’t changing her name.
‘Onni’s last name is Rinta-Paakku,’ she explained.
Anna-Liisa and Onni left Pasila in a taxi to go to Restaurant Lehtovaara, and then somewhere for their honeymoon. It was quite absurd, but Anna-Liisa was very secretive about it and said that Onni had arranged everything and even she didn’t know where he was taking her.
‘To Tallinn with a veterans’ tour group,’ Irma whispered to Siiri, and they hopped happily onto a tram home – yes, home, because now that Irma was at Sunset Grove again, and Virpi and Erkki Hiukkanen were nowhere to be seen, it was finally starting to feel like a real home.