Only a few days ago, I’d imagined that my life was finally in order again. The thought hadn’t come out of nowhere: it was founded on a realistic assessment of the situation and the facts at hand. The truth was that, at the moment I thought it, my life was in order.
But I couldn’t say the same about the current state of affairs.
I rolled over in bed, though I knew the relief it gave me was only illusory. Soon enough, this new position would be just as uncomfortable as the previous one, and sleep would be as distant as when I had started tossing and turning. I heard Schopenhauer take a deep breath at the foot of the bed. From the time he was a kitten, he had a tactic of falling asleep once and once only during the night, and he resorted to that tactic now too.
It felt as though the park was somehow slipping from my grasp, out of reach. Or worse still: as though I had already lost my grip and only just realised it. It was hard to explain the feeling in concrete terms. I was still the park’s owner, and I still made all the decisions about new acquisitions; all changes, large and small, required my consent. But despite this, it still felt as though I’d drifted from the shoreline and found myself up a certain creek without the proverbial paddle.
Juhani’s return still flummoxed me. I was understandably angry at him, but I was still happy and relieved that he was alive, as silly as it sounded in the light of all that had happened. At no point had he actually been dead – he had been fast asleep in his caravan in eastern Finland while I was fending off his criminal moneylenders with a giant, plastic rabbit’s ear. And while he was doubtless roasting sausages on an open fire and exchanging pleasantries with the other happy campers, I was left with no option but to hide the considerably heavy body of one of these dangerous crooks in the adventure-park freezer.
And what was Juhani talking to the staff about? Was the change I’d noticed in their behaviour a result of his influence? Did Juhani talk to them the way he talked to everybody else – feeding them irresponsible, unfounded and, more to the point, untrue notions and ideas?
These questions brought me back to Laura Helanto and what she had said about me and Juhani.
Those words spun round and round in my mind, and so did my reaction to them. Of course, I was aware that Laura Helanto caused me varying degrees of agitation, but losing my temper like that, as well as developing a sudden reluctance even to count things properly, was something I really didn’t know how to process and couldn’t have anticipated in any way. I could see, and later had concluded, that this sense of agitation was akin to what people called happiness – the emotion I felt when I was around her – only this emotion was a negative one: it was just as powerful but positioned at the opposite end of the spectrum.
My emotions continued along their rollercoaster ride: I found myself at times strangely disappointed, only to feel hopeful again a moment later. I was perturbed by what Laura had said I was. On the other hand, it seemed perfectly possible that at least one of us was mistaken in our assessment of the situation.
The restless night and the hours lying awake failed to provide any clarity on the matter.
It was still dark when I set off for the train station. Wind whipped across the platform, whistling around me in the rickety shelter. And perhaps the strength of the wind, the way it tugged at my coat and ruffled my hair, had a cumulative effect on me. The night seemed to merge with the wind, irrevocably, and I found myself wondering whether I’d overreacted – in every respect.
The train arrived on schedule, and the connecting bus slowly glided to my bus stop a full minute earlier than usual. This sealed one of my decisions: when it came to internal affairs at the park, I could talk to the staff too, just like Juhani. In these conversations, I would stick to the facts, lay out what was sensible and, where necessary, invoke the inviolable authority of my carefully compiled calculations. For, ultimately, what can possibly be more convincing than the truth? Whatever Juhani had told them, the truth would prevail. By the time I started walking from the bus stop to the adventure park, I didn’t notice the wind at all.
I found Esa sitting at his monitors. The only light in the room was that emanating from the multiple screens in front of him. There was something laborious and instantly exhausting about staring at these faint, blurry images. Having said that, they seemed to have the opposite effect on Esa. Again he was wearing his Marine sweatshirt, which provided details of the owner’s years of service and which, again, I found highly improbable.
‘There’s a minesweeper on camera two,’ he said, and pointed at one of the screens. ‘The kid in the dinosaur T-shirt. One metre fifteen, fair hair. Lightweight little trooper. There he goes, running, looking for cover, pants down, then plants the mine. My guess is he doesn’t want to tell his commander he’s got an upset stomach, so he isn’t taken off active duty.’
I looked at the monitor. At that moment, our young customer wasn’t leaving behind a trail of destruction but was instead climbing at a ferocious pace up the so-called Velcro Palm.
‘We need to eliminate the enemy,’ Esa continued. ‘Or before long we’ll have half the battalion in the field hospital. Do you want me to call in the cavalry?’
Esa was already pulling the microphone attached to the monitor table towards him, aiming it at his angular, square goatee, and his right hand was nearing a row of buttons.
‘There’s no need,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll take care of it. Esa, I wonder if I could have a word.’
Esa stopped, leant back from the console. ‘As I’ve always said,’ he nodded, ‘when the park calls…’
‘You will answer the call of duty. Well, this very much affects the park … Or, let’s say for now that it might affect the park. As you know, my brother Juhani has returned.’
‘That was a surprise,’ said Esa. ‘But I didn’t let it distract me. There are still men coming back from Vietnam.’
‘Indeed,’ I said, though I wasn’t sure I wholly agreed with him. ‘I’ve noticed that he’s been talking to the staff, as a group and maybe even one on one. Perhaps he has spoken to you too?’
Esa maintained his composure but somehow retreated into his chair a little too. Moreover, he didn’t say anything, which was most out of character. Not that Esa was one for small talk – far from it; but I’d become used to him having an answer for everything. Not this time, though. He only responded after an extended silence.
‘We discussed the park’s security and defence protocols. I planned this myself long ago. In fact I started the minute I began working for the park four years ago. Back then, we didn’t even have a security camera, so I patrolled the park by myself. Long stakeouts, terrible provisions, unclear lines of attack.’
‘Right,’ I said, before Esa could sink any deeper into his memories. ‘Did Juhani have anything to say about the park’s current … protocols?’
‘He agrees with me that the defence budget needs increasing.’
‘Does he?’
‘In fact, he agrees with me about everything else too,’ Esa continued, and it sounded unmistakably as though this thought pleased him greatly. ‘Like me, he recognises the need to extend our operations beyond the park itself. There are a number of large blind spots all around us. A few unmanned aircraft should do the trick, I think. A fleet of drones. Of course, this is a big investment and will require a significant expansion of my job description. But when we spoke about it, Juhani was assured that this is exactly what we need.’
‘Juhani doesn’t make the decisions,’ I said so quickly that I heard my own words before I’d even been able to think them through. ‘What I mean is, he doesn’t have that sort of position in the park.’
Esa’s usually unflinching gaze inched its way towards the row of monitors.
‘He has some good ideas,’ said Esa.
It felt as though, just as the oxygen levels in the room were dropping, the temperature was rising. It shouldn’t have been possible, either biologically, physiologically or thermo-dynamically. The phenomenon was clearly the upshot of Esa’s steady methane production, which in a variety of ways had a cumulative, deleterious impact on his surroundings.
‘Esa,’ I asked after a short pause. ‘Did Juhani tell you how all this would be paid for or where the extra money is going to come from?’
Esa looked down at his monitors. ‘He mentioned it,’ he replied, still not looking at me.
‘And?’
‘He gave the impression that things might be different if he came back to run the park.’
I had come to Esa first because I’d imagined he would think of Juhani’s return with the same neutrality as he did when, say, one of our customers broke a shin. Perhaps I was wrong.
‘Esa,’ I said as calmly as the turmoil Juhani was causing within me and the stuffiness of the air allowed. ‘Even if Juhani were to start running the park again, which is a highly theoretical proposition, this would not in any way increase the amount of money at our disposal.’
I believed I had expressed this fact as clearly as it could possibly be expressed. Now Esa looked me in the eyes, adjusted his position in his tall chair with the large neck support, and regained his characteristic dourness.
‘There are several waterways nearby too,’ he said. ‘The Vantaa River is less than a kilometre away. Juhani pointed this out; I hadn’t thought of it myself. He suggested investing in an amphibian defence team too, maybe even with some underwater reconnaissance capabilities. Why would he say something like that if we couldn’t afford it?’
The sight and smell of today’s lunch, Frolicking Fish Fingers, was so strong that I had the distinct sense of wading through breaded cod as I walked along the corridor towards the café. The noise was as potent as the smell. To my mind, eating and shouting at the same time was an impractical combination, but it didn’t seem to cause the children any difficulty.
I walked through the swinging doors into the kitchen and found Johanna sliding a tray of Scoundrel’s Scones – small strawberry toffee muffins – into the oven. She closed the oven door and turned to look at me. Her expression didn’t flinch.
‘Do you want something to eat?’ she asked, tucking a few strands of long red hair behind her ears. ‘I’m frying ten eggs for myself. I can fry the same for you, if you want.’
‘Ten…’ I said, bewildered. ‘No, thank you, I don’t need … ten eggs. There’s something I wanted to ask you about.’
‘I can cook and talk.’
Johanna always got straight to the point; she was a woman of few words.
‘Very well,’ I said, and looked on as she cracked the eggs into the frying pan quicker than I could blink. ‘As you’ve probably noticed, my brother Juhani has come back.’
‘He eats all his meals here, from breakfast right through to supper.’
‘Indeed,’ I said as the eggs sizzled in the pan. ‘I wonder if he’s spoken to you, one on one?’
‘He eats here. Sometimes we eat together. Are you sure you don’t want an egg?’
‘I’m quite sure I don’t want an egg,’ I said, and noticed I was getting a little agitated. I feared Johanna might have noticed it too, though she didn’t so much as glance at me. ‘While you’ve been eating together, I wonder whether the subject of the park has ever come up.’
‘Of course,’ said Johanna, and peered at me. ‘We both work here.’
I was keenly aware of what I’d just heard from Esa.
‘Would I be right in thinking he has some plans for the café too?’
Almost imperceptibly, Johanna raised her shoulders. ‘He sees a lot of potential in the Curly Cake, the kind of potential I see too. The kind of things I’ve already mentioned to you.’
‘I’m afraid, right now, opening a French-style bistro at the other end of the park simply isn’t possible,’ I said.
‘Juhani says he and I share many of the same dreams,’ said Johanna as she moved the spatula under the eggs with the same precision and lightness of touch as a brain surgeon. ‘And together we can make those dreams come true, he told me. He says he might know a suitable vineyard where we can order quality vintages directly. Château Platini, it’s called. And he has a potential contact with Mitterrand, an importer specialising in artisan pâtés. Juhani said good ideas pay for themselves many times over, and you should always look bravely to the future, and a lot depends on the attitude you have to getting things done.’
This wasn’t the Johanna I knew, I thought to myself. That Johanna would never talk like this. I looked on as she slid the flawless yolks and dazzling whites onto a plate, picked it up and carried it to the table.
‘And he stressed to me,’ Johanna continued as she ground black pepper over the eggs, ‘that any French bistro worth its salt should always have fresh squid on the menu. How did he know that’s my favourite food too?’
Samppa was just rounding off his action-story lesson. A dozen children were listening to Samppa’s story and moving – or rather dashing, bashing and climbing – to the words. There were certain sections in the story where the children’s actions lost focus a little. From time to time, the story’s hippopotamuses and albatrosses spoke in rather abstruse psychological terms, and I wasn’t sure whether the scene in which the albatross and the hippopotamus came face to face at a divorce hearing was suitable listening for six-year-olds. I could see that Samppa thought this was an important moment in the story, and he wiped the corner of his eye as he read out a section in which the albatross and the hippopotamus divided up their belongings in a way that, even after much agonised self-reflection, the hippo still found terribly unjust.
I waited for Samppa to finish his lesson and send the children back to their parents. Then I walked up to him and asked outright what he had been discussing with Juhani. Samppa shook his head so vigorously that I was certain I could hear his feathered earrings whooshing in the air.
‘That’s confidential,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t tell anybody else what you say at my surgery.’
‘Surgery?’
Samppa quickly scratched his temple and didn’t answer right away, so I managed to ask my next question.
‘You mean your current job?’
Samppa looked pained. ‘Think of it this way, I’m providing a service,’ he said eventually.
‘Samppa. If you can’t talk about Juhani’s affairs, surely you can talk about your own? What service are you providing, exactly?’
‘My surgery,’ he said quietly.
‘But you work here. You’re paid a monthly salary. You should be doing the job you’re paid to do. You give the children various themed sessions. That sort of thing.’
‘That could change,’ he said, and I sensed a new weight and determination in his voice.
‘Did Juhani promise that you can open your own surgery once he starts running the park again?’
Samppa was silent.
‘Juhani appreciates my holistic approach to play,’ he said after a pause. ‘The kind where adults can experience the healing powers of play too. Grown-ups’ playtime. It’s a form of therapy I’ve been developing. I suggested I should have the chance to refine this new therapy in practice, full-time, and Juhani said that sounded fantastic.’
‘And who will do your regular work, then?’
‘Juhani said everything will work out once—’
‘He starts running the park again,’ I finished the sentence for him.
Samppa said nothing.
I stopped on the threshold of Minttu K’s door. I could hear her snoring and caught a warm, acrid note of alcohol and grapefruit in the air. She was fast asleep on the short, dark-red sofa in her office, in a particularly uncomfortable-looking position and still wearing her jet-black, tight-fitting blazer. I didn’t walk into the room, and Minttu K’s passed-out whiff wasn’t the only reason I changed my mind. I could imagine what Juhani had promised her: the doubling of the marketing budget and a pipeline from the Hartwall brewery giving her an unlimited supply of lonkero on tap.
I wondered whether I should try talking to Kristian, too, and decided against it. I already knew enough. And everything I knew led to one and the same place.