I’d been sitting in the same position on a tall stool near the window in the room smelling of paint for more than an hour now. My task was to look like myself. Relaxed. At first it had sounded like an easy enough task, but the longer I sat there and the more I thought about how best to look relaxed, the more impossible the whole thing started to feel. I’d had time to think about different things over the course of the last hour, most notably the fact that, to be perfectly honest, I didn’t think I’d ever been relaxed and wasn’t sure what it meant or what it was supposed to look like. Which, in turn, made me wonder what I looked like right now; if only I knew that, then perhaps I might relax a little. And this, in turn, meant I was trying to do something that I fundamentally didn’t understand and couldn’t control. I was like a ski jumper placed in the cockpit of a jumbo jet, simply because he too knows a thing or two about soft landings. It could have been the other way round too: I was a pilot pushed at full speed from the top of the ski-jumping hill because his job saw him flying through the skies too.
What restless thoughts, I sighed to myself.
The same thing happened every time I met her, particularly when I found myself under her attentive eye, having to remain there, relaxed, hour upon hour.
I was sitting for Laura Helanto while she painted my portrait. She wanted to give me this portrait as a gift, and naturally I was very grateful.
Laura Helanto was on my mind even when I wasn’t thinking about her.
The thought felt embarrassingly illogical, and of course it was. But it was impossible to describe this phenomenon without resorting to – in the absence of a more appropriate term – somewhat poetic language. Which felt like a profoundly reckless way of approaching any subject. When I compared the relative reliability of mathematics and poetry when it came to the successful outcome of a given project – say, constructing a skyscraper or designing a cheese knife – I knew there was no alternative to mathematics. But when it came to Laura Helanto, I found myself behaving differently. It was as though in a fraction of a second I had forgotten everything upon which my life had been based. And strangest of all, this didn’t seem to bother me nearly as much as I might have expected.
We had met each other only twice since she embezzled a sum total of one hundred and twenty-four thousand, eight hundred and sixty-one euros and thirteen cents from me. To be more precise, she didn’t embezzle the money from me directly: the money already had criminal origins. Her actions had saved both me and the park; this became clear to me a few weeks after she had left her post. And me.
I wanted to imagine this was all in the past now. From now on … Yet again I had to step back and remind myself that we had only met twice since then.
We’d gone for a walk and a cup of hot chocolate with Laura’s daughter, Tuuli. The walk had progressed in sporadic bursts, largely because Tuuli was setting the pace. She didn’t seem interested in maintaining a steady rate of steps per minute or trying to find the optimal route between two points, principles that governed my own walks. Instead, we zigzagged here and there, and stopped for pauses of indeterminate length to marvel at this and that: children, adults, birds, rubbish bins, the tow bars on the back of cars. The purpose of these pauses never became clear to me. But I didn’t need any explanations for our aimless wandering. I was in Laura Helanto’s company, and I had the distinct sense that I would enjoy her company whether we were moving or stationary, in a sensible place or a less sensible one.
Laura’s daughter asked questions that I would have gladly answered at length and more thoroughly than was possible. But I’d barely started my answer to one question, when she was already asking the next. Laura seemed to enjoy the conversation despite its occasional unruliness. She smiled at me, took my hand, gave it a few squeezes. And as I accompanied them to the metro station, she and I kissed. It wasn’t a very long kiss, and not remotely like those that occurred during our night of passion, when our tongues had seemed to intertwine and lock tightly together. And though, for reasons of biology, physiology and evaporation, I knew it was impossible, I imagined I could still feel that kiss on my lips.
Her brush skated across the canvas, the smell of oil paints filled the room. Laura’s trainers squeaked against the concrete floor.
It felt as though every second I spent with Laura Helanto existed on a different plane of relativity, that time was fuller and denser than usual. Of course, there was no quantum explanation for this, but…
‘Henri. Hello? Henri!’
‘What?’
‘Are you uncomfortable?’ Laura asked, and when I caught her gaze I was even more confused. Those blue-green eyes, framed and enhanced by her dark-rimmed glasses, conducted something akin to an electrical current through me.
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘Okay,’ Laura nodded. ‘You just look a bit … pained.’
‘Am I in the wrong position?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, and I got the distinct impression she was holding back a smile. ‘The position is fine. I just thought you might be getting a bit tired. Seeing as you’re tensing every muscle.’
‘I’m trying to look relaxed.’
‘It’s the trying bit that’s the problem. You’re tense. If you stop trying, you’ll get it. He who doesn’t seek, shall find. That’s what they say, right?’
‘I suppose someone might say that,’ I admitted. ‘But I’ve always found it a misleading and distinctly unscientific saying. The truth is the very opposite. It is specifically by seeking that we will eventually reach a solution. This is fundamental. Nothing would ever have been invented if people had simply shrugged their shoulders and waited for the right answer to fall from the sky, and if—’
‘Henri.’
Now Laura was smiling. She placed her brush on the work surface next to her and started walking towards me. I tried to make my pose even more relaxed. Laura approaching me didn’t help.
‘I once said I’d never met anybody like you,’ she said as she came to a halt in front of me. ‘But that’s an understatement.’
‘I’ve never met anybody like you either,’ I told her earnestly. ‘Someone able to mislead me so profoundly in a matter of practical mathematics, and someone I was interested in for many different reasons. If I’m honest, it’s the first time either thing has ever happened to me.’
Laura was standing in front of me. I could smell her wild, bushy hair, that familiar fragrance of forest flowers. She was so close that I could make out a tiny droplet of red paint on the rim of her glasses.
‘That’s just what I mean,’ she said.
‘Not to mention that these two things happened simultaneously,’ I nodded. ‘In any case, the probability of such a coincidence is so infinitesimally small that I haven’t even tried to work it out, which is quite out of character for me.’
‘That’s not quite when I meant,’ she said quietly, and smiled.
What happened next is what kept happening to me in Laura’s company: I completely lost my thread. Very often, I had the sense that Laura’s words, even those that at first seemed simple and appeared to have a purely practical function, in fact had many different layers, and they almost always referred to something other than what she had just said. The connections between them were either intentionally unclear or very hard to deduce. So I remained quiet, sitting on my tall stool, and simply enjoyed her presence.
I don’t know whether one of us had leant our upper body forwards or whether we had both done so. Our faces were so close that I shut my eyes and prepared myself for two things: a kiss and telling her what was bothering me.
‘Juhani is back,’ I said, and continued leaning forwards.
And fell into thin air.
I didn’t find Laura’s lips, or Laura, or anything for that matter. I opened my eyes again. Laura had backed away and was standing a metre and a half from me. She didn’t look like she was looking for my lips – which I noticed were still pursed in a kiss. I corrected the position of my lips and sat up straight.
‘Juhani? Your brother … Juhani?’
‘That’s right,’ I nodded. ‘He said, all that time he was supposed to be dead, he’d been living in a caravan.’
Laura looked at me. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. She tried again, and this time she spoke.
‘Juhani is alive?’
‘I’m quite sure of it.’
‘When you arrived here, I asked how you were doing, and you didn’t say anything about … your brother.’
‘Yes, I remember. I told you I was doing relatively well. I thought you were asking about me, all things considered. I didn’t imagine you meant Juhani. I don’t know how he’s doing, other than that he’s been staying in a caravan somewhere in eastern Finland.’
Laura looked the way I imagined she might look if I were to mix up her paints, then take a brush and daub it over her painting.
‘You mean he just … turned up?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He wants the park back.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘That it wouldn’t be at all sensible, either financially or practically, especially in light of the recent demonstration of his management skills and ability to take responsibility for his actions, but I told him he could have a good job at the park, which would give him a regular income and health insurance and accrue his future pension. He accepted my offer.’
‘He accepted your offer?’ Laura asked, as though she had just heard the most impossible statement in the world.
‘The park manager’s position has been free since you left.’
‘Juhani will probably make an excellent park manager.’
‘I’m still not sure quite how qualified he—’
‘Henri, that was sarcasm. Irony.’
‘Irony, sarcasm, right. I like them too.’
I didn’t know why I added that last sentence. I realised I was a little off kilter and noticed that Laura seemed agitated.
‘Doesn’t it seem strange to you – that Juhani should turn up and take a job just like that, a job where you need to be really careful, always on site, always available, and where you have to take care of a thousand practical things all at once?’
I didn’t have time to think of an answer, let alone say it out loud, before Laura was speaking again.
‘Henri, can I ask you something? Did you talk about me?’
‘Not at all. Why would we?’
And why did this conversation suddenly feel so uncomfortable? And not just the conversation we were having right now. It felt as though there were two conversations going on at once, the first with these very words and the second somewhere under the surface, invisible and wordless, but every bit as audible. I felt as though I didn’t understand either of them. Then I found something to grab hold of.
‘Why are you so upset about Juhani and his return?’ I asked. ‘You don’t work at the park anymore, and there’s nothing in our bookkeeping to implicate you in any way in what happened.’
Laura glanced at the portrait she was painting. Then, just as quickly, she turned away. To me, it looked as though she wanted to give herself a little time to think.
‘You’ve just managed to get the park’s finances back on their feet,’ she said eventually, still staring up at the tall windows. ‘And now Juhani … is going to mess everything up again.’
Once again, the way Laura stressed the words in her last sentence was such that I found myself listening in between the lines, as they say. At least, that’s what I tried to do, because I imagined that was where the essential information might lie. And what I found didn’t feel particularly pleasing.
‘I have drawn up plans for both the long term and the short,’ I said. ‘And I’ve calculated everything thoroughly several times over, based everything on the facts and told the employees the truth about the direction the park is heading. I am the park’s owner, and everybody knows that. Juhani is an employee. What could he possibly do?’
Laura didn’t answer right away. She had lowered her eyes, and looked as though she was staring at a spot on the floor behind me.
‘It’s just … he’s Juhani.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He is…’ Again Laura seemed lost for words, and I was puzzled at what had just happened; she’d always been to express herself so fluently. ‘You and he are … different.’
I didn’t know where the feeling came from, but I was sure that a great fire had just burst into flame.
‘I’ve known him my entire life,’ I said, perhaps more quickly than I’d planned. I was suddenly angry, almost livid. It had come over me by stealth. ‘Nobody knows better than me that he and I are different. Juhani has demonstrated this in practice too, most obviously with regard to the adventure park. He hadn’t even drawn up a preliminary budget proposal, he got into debt in the most nonsensical way, high-interest loans, criminal loans. Wastage, carelessness, unfounded promises, dangerous impulsive behaviour.’
‘That’s not what I mean … Well, maybe that’s exactly what I mean. That too. It’s hard to talk about this.’
The tall, bright studio seemed to dim a little, as though someone had drawn a black curtain in front of everything. At the same time, my thoughts seemed to be darkening too. I looked at Laura and saw something I didn’t want to see.
‘When you say Juhani is different,’ I began, and formulated the end of my thought just as the words came tumbling out of my mouth. ‘What you really mean is that I am different.’
Laura didn’t answer right away. She looked as though she didn’t know quite what to say. That felt worse than if she’d actually said something – anything, in fact. She didn’t look at me.
‘And because I’m different,’ I continue, ‘you think I’m no match for a man who doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going, who lies, makes promises he can’t keep and a conveyor belt of catastrophic decisions. A man whose actions are based on everything but reason. In that respect, I am very different indeed and I’m no match for a man like that.’
‘Henri, you are—’
‘Different. For your information, when I completed my mathematics degree in record time, I heard people say I was different. And when, as an actuary, I was able to calculate things two and a half times quicker and more accurately than anyone in the company’s history, they told me I was different. Maybe I’m different in a different way from how you think. Maybe I am a match for my brother.’
I stood up, walked to the steel coat rail by the doorway. I pulled on my coat, tied my woollen scarf loosely but carefully, so as to provide optimal heat above my tie. Laura Helanto was still standing there, by my reckoning almost diametrically in the middle of the floor space. I looked at her, and knowing her height I could easily have calculated a whole array of measurements regarding the distance and volume of the room, and perhaps even produced an equation that would bring these measurements together, or at least an expression to that effect, but I realised I didn’t want to. This I took to be the clearest of signals, and I turned away.
The door was made of thick metal, but I didn’t even notice its weight.
Outside, I chose the shortest route to the bus station and set off at a steady, leisurely pace of seven kilometres an hour.