The new budget forecast is ready by half past ten. Because of the rapidly changing circumstances, I’ve had to cut our expenditure even more radically and cancel a number of investments that we had previously agreed upon; but I have tightened the belt equally, spreading the burden across all our departments. I have lowered my own salary to zero. Separately, I have drawn up a plan to create a financial buffer in case of an emergency, so that a situation like the current one – not to mention the recent threat of wholesale bankruptcy – will never happen again. Building up a buffer like this requires patience and frugality over many years, but the chances of it paying off one day will be greatly increased. The numbers speak for themselves: if we work systematically and trust in the facts, we will survive. This I know from personal experience.
Mathematics has saved my life, both figuratively and literally. This is what mathematics does: it saves us. It brings balance, clarity and peace of mind; it helps us see how things really are, it tells us what we should do in order to reach our goals. Though the current situation at the adventure park is challenging, I still believe that the future is bright, and it’s all thanks to mathematics – and a little bit of effort. Of course, my views and feelings about this have reconfigured slightly, mostly because I’ve been able to dedicate myself to the data and have been left to calculate things in peace.
The last customers left the park a while ago, and, according to the rota, today Kristian has locked everything up. During the daytime, the background noise in the park is like the rush of crashing waves. Now the sea has calmed, and everything is perfectly still.
I go through the Excel file one more time. The rows flow beautifully, complement one another, and the sums are correct. I notice I’m not so much checking things as going through them one more time, simply for my own pleasure. Perhaps this is just what I need after all the recent twists and turns and surprises: good old-fashioned arithmetic, clarifying and illuminating matters and the relationships between them. I have to remind myself that Schopenhauer needs his supper and maybe even someone to talk to (which, while not entirely unprecedented, is, statistically speaking, a much rarer occurrence), and I click the file shut. I stand up from my chair and blink my dry eyes; I can almost feel how red they are.
The door into the corridor is open, and I can’t hear anything coming from Minttu K’s room either: neither her rough, ratchety voice on the phone nor the radio, let alone a low-pitched snore infused with cigarettes and gin lonkero. My back feels stiff, and again I am reminded that I really ought to take up some kind of exercise, though I have no idea when I would find the time. I’m coming to realise there’s no rest for the director of a successful adventure park.
I stare out of the window for a moment and see nothing but the empty, November-grey car park in front of me. Suddenly my attention is drawn to the furthest left-hand edge of the car park. It takes a few seconds for my brain to process what I see. The spot is right between two streetlamps, each pool of light barely touching the metal and the rubber, and this is why it takes a little while to put the shapes and contours together.
A bicycle.
It is propped on its kickstand, and in every respect it looks like a very average bicycle, parked and waiting for its owner. What seems somewhat out of the ordinary, however, is the bike’s location, which cannot be considered remotely sensible: it is far away both from the road and from the main entrance to the park. In fact, it is far away from everything. I look at it a moment longer, unsure what I’m expecting to see. The bicycle is parked in the half-light. Eventually, I come to the obvious conclusion: someone has simply left it there.
I switch off my computer, take my scarf and coat from the stand and pull them on. I switch off the lights in my office and walk across the dusky main hall to the back door. I don’t want to use the front door because opening and closing it again would require a complex series of checks and double-checks. The back door is quicker and handier.
I step out onto the loading bay, take the metallic steps down to ground level and set off around the building. I can hear the roar of traffic in the distance, and my own steps sound almost amplified.
The night air has that crisp, late-autumn note to it, and the earth is wet even without the rain. I arrive at the corner of the building, where I have a view of the full length of its left-hand wall, and the left side of the car park. This is the narrowest strip of the park’s grounds. From the outer wall, it is only about five metres before the asphalt comes to an end and the terrain dips steeply down into a ditch, then rises up just as steeply at the edge of a small stretch of tangled woodland on the other side. I walk alongside the wall, and the strip feels more narrow and corridor-like with every step, as though the adjoining woodland were a united front, growing in strength and tightening its grip on the building with small, inexorable steps. Of course, this isn’t literally true. What is true, however – though at first I think my eyes must be playing tricks on me – is that the bicycle has now disappeared.
Perhaps someone simply had a spot of acute, late-night business to attend to in the woods. We’re all different, as I’ve come to appreciate on many occasions. If you have something to take care of, something you might not necessarily do elsewhere, then here, in a spruce forest in the middle of Vantaa, you can do it to your heart’s content – spend a moment of time in your thicket of choice, before continuing on your way, the richer for it. But these thoughts are like matchsticks that won’t quite light; they flare up only to go out right away. I’m indulging in wishful thinking, and I know it.
Then I see him.
A man running right towards me.
Like a bowling ball with legs, I think to myself.
And, in fact, it is in a bowling alley of sorts that we find ourselves. The strip of tarmac is long and narrow, and the bowling ball is hurtling towards me at a ferocious pace, right in the middle of the alley – and I am standing at the end. On top of this, the ball seems to be speeding up. I turn as soon as I realise what’s happening. I set off running, and at the same moment I see that the corner of the building and the back yard are much further away than I had estimated.
I’m still stiff from all the hours sitting at my desk. The bowling ball’s speed is quite simply greater than mine, I realise this from the very first step. But I have to run.
I quickly glance over my shoulder. The bowling ball is wearing a dark-blue tracksuit, a black or blue hoodie and a black woolly hat pulled almost right down over its face. Its short little legs look like something out of a cartoon, where the legs are replaced with a wildly spinning tornado. Arms punctuate its frantic run like a pair of pistons on overdrive. If this were any other situation, I would stand there watching the bowling ball’s acceleration out of sheer fascination. Instead, I run as fast as I possibly can, and still I can hear the whirring machine gaining on me.
The corner is just up ahead.
The loading bay is right around the corner. At the other end of the loading bay is a ladder leading up to the roof. I can’t think of anything else. If I can just reach the foot of the ladder and start climbing, I’ll be able to kick at the fingers of anyone trying to climb up behind me. Naturally, this is a far from optimal solution. It’s hard to think of many alternative scenarios, let alone consider which of them is the best choice, because the ball is rolling ever closer, and I am the tenpin.
I’m nearing the corner, it’s only fifteen metres away. I reach the corner and change course.
I run towards the loading bay, only a few more steps until the steel stairs. I reach the foot of the stairs and start climbing up to the loading bay, one rattling rung at a time. I see the ladder in front of me and think I might just reach the lowest rung and make it up to the roof when…
The bowling ball slams into my back.
The impact knocks me forwards, as though someone has flung me up into the air. I slump face first to the latticed floor of the loading bay. I try to stand up, but I can’t. Instead, a horse appears on my back. At least, that’s what it feels like, as though rider and ridee have suddenly changed place.
The bowling ball presses down on my back, gripping my head in its hands – its cold fingers, stubby but strong, against my temples – then it lifts my head up … and slams it right down again.
My forehead strikes the steel grille once, twice, thrice. I hear a dull metallic sound ringing in my ears and vibrating through my body. I grip the man’s wrists, but they are thick and sturdy as pipes buried in the ground, which means I can’t stop their movement. My forehead is battered against the grille over and over. When my head rises again, or, rather, when it is yanked upwards, ahead and to the left I see some wooden planks that I’ve been using to mend the Strawberry Maze.
I stretch out my arm, elongating my entire upper body, and manage to grab hold of an L-shaped length of wood. I pull it closer, inch by inch, and eventually clasp my fingers tightly around it. At the same time, my forehead is still being thwacked against the steel floor, and I get the distinct impression that the steel will soon give way under the force of the blows. There isn’t much time. I grip the plank as firmly as I can, make a quick assessment of the length of the bowling ball’s back and the position of its head, and fling my arm backwards with all the strength I can muster.
As it lands, the sound the plank makes is surprising. It’s soft and wet.
The ball’s fingers release their grip and the horse on my back wobbles. I push myself up, and the horse staggers again, a little more violently this time, and I manage to crawl out from underneath it. I move my legs, stand up, and my first thought is that I ought to start running again. But that’s not what happens. The beating my head has taken causes me considerable dizziness, and I have to move in careful, fumbling steps. I glance over my shoulder. The bowling ball is staring at something in his fingers, then he looks at me and holds up the focus of his attention for me to see. A tooth. It quickly dawns on me exactly where my wooden hammer struck him.
Square in the mouth.
The bowling ball throws the tooth from his hand. It arches through the air and disappears into the darkness. He wipes his bloody mouth on the back of his sleeve. Then he lunges at me again. I turn and dash into a sprint. Another mismatched bout of wrestling will be too much for me, I know that. But I run all the same, and it’s only ten or so metres to the foot of the ladder. Every step requires the utmost concentration. Maybe that’s why I haven’t noticed that a third person has appeared on the loading bay too.
This new arrival is wearing a balaclava and is approaching me from the dark end of the loading bay. The balaclava first runs towards me then changes tack, and I can see he is trying to pass me.
A lot happens in the next two and a half seconds.
The bowling ball is about to catch up with me again; now he is only an arm’s length away. The balaclava is approaching from the opposite direction, out of the darkness behind me, so it’s likely that the bowling ball hasn’t seen him.
As he runs forwards, the balaclava crouches down, snatches up the strawberry, and finally reaches me.
The strawberry in the balaclava’s hands is part of the Strawberry Maze. It’s a decoration, the same one I brought out here earlier this afternoon to take apart and put the pieces in two separate recycling bins, the plastic with the plastic and the metallic parts with the metal. It has a diameter of around sixty centimetres, and I’ve removed it from the park because it is broken and its cracked edges might injure the children.
I try to change direction, but this only makes me stumble and partially turn around. And then I see what happens next.
The balaclava and the bowling ball collide at full pelt. It might be more correct to say that the balaclava strikes the bowling ball with the strawberry, bringing it crashing down on his head. Or, to be even more precise, I should say that the bowling ball slams into the strawberry. The plastic cracks even further, and the bowling ball’s head disappears inside the strawberry.
The strawberry becomes lodged around the man’s shoulders, and the whole thing looks like a giant cochineal crown with a tuft of green hair on top. At the same time, the sharp straggles of steel wire cut into the man’s neck, specifically his jugular. Which tears open. And the result of all this is…
…a strawberry-headed man staggering to regain his balance on the loading bay with a fountain of blood gushing from his neck.
I feel dizzy, my ears are rushing, and the only way I can remain upright is by gripping my knees for support. I assume there are several reasons for the dizziness: lack of oxygen, the sustained pummelling of my forehead against the steel grille and the gruesome sight in front of me. It’s as though I’m watching a complex magic trick that has gone wrong somewhere along the line, or perhaps even an attempt at some kind of world record.
The man is clearly bewildered, a little discombobulated – who wouldn’t be, after getting lodged inside a plastic strawberry and sustaining a deep laceration to the neck? And his subsequent actions aren’t at all sensible. His arms are flailing here and there, and he seems to jump up and down on the spot, though what he really should do is…
The balaclava takes a few steps towards him, says something I can’t hear, then approaches the man, his hands outstretched in what I assume is an attempt to help him. Perhaps the man hears the approaching footsteps and fatally misreads the situation. Either that, or something else makes him panic, and he suddenly spins round 180 degrees and bursts into a run.
My strawberry-headed assailant dashes across the loading bay, sputtering blood as he goes, his legs moving like little propellers.
The balaclava runs after him and shouts something again. It looks as though the man is speeding up. Then, only a few steps later, the strawberry starts to sway, and the orbit of the swaying motion increases with every step. The balaclava is about to catch up with him when the final sway makes any kind of assistance virtually impossible. The man dives from the bay into the night.
For a brief moment he flies through the glare of the streetlamps, the strawberry gleams, the blood spurts a red rainbow through the air, his legs paddle hard…
Then all the variables change at once.
Gravity has the last word.