I am an actuary.
And I feel acutely aware of this fact right now, sitting in a chilled car in Rastila for three hours on the trot. It is a cold and dark night. The landscape has been stripped of all life: leaves from the trees, people from the streets, lights from the windows. I think of actuarial mathematics and how much it has taught me over the years about the stochastic nature of human behaviour. When carefully defined, insurance mathematics is simply an application of mathematics and data analysis whereby the mathematician assesses the probability – the risk – of any given event, in order to define an insurance policy that will be economically viable for the insurer. When we exclude the final insurance payment from the equation, we are left with a highly functional method of approaching any matter or event. Including – and in particular – tonight’s events.
I have parked the car around one hundred and thirty metres from the entrance. The gates leading into the campsite and the area immediately around them are very well lit, so distance shouldn’t be a problem. And it won’t be easy to identify me sitting in my car, which is partly hidden behind the lorry parked in front. My problems are more internal; they are the culmination of conflicting wishes and expectations. Even in this respect, mathematics can help us. It doesn’t care about our wishes and expectations. It doesn’t approach my problems emotionally or by in any way colouring reality. It tells us the truth, unflinchingly and unequivocally. And right now it doesn’t even take forty minutes.
It happens in the early hours, at twenty-one minutes past one.
I recognise the car from the bonnet. A red Toyota Avensis. The car glides forwards, slowly and surely. Bumper, bonnet, front tyres – and the driver sitting behind the wheel. The car continues inching its way forwards, then comes fully into view – towing a caravan behind it. The red car pulls the yellow-striped caravan right out into the road, the short convoy straightens itself up and starts making its way towards me. The sections of the road are at a diagonal to each other and there’s a crossroads in between. The car and the caravan slowly take the slight incline, arrive at the crossroads then turn left, or from my perspective, right. Towards the end of the curve, the car is only about twenty metres from me. The streetlamps are bright, and I can see the driver’s profile, clear and photogenic and shaded like a silhouette.
My own brother, Juhani.
Running away.
And taking all the variables into account, it’s all too logical.
Strictly speaking, the moment is only brief, but it feels distinctly longer, as if all the hours I’ve spent waiting were in fact part of this same, inevitable event.
An insurance company knows that, among all the people it insures, there will always be someone who enjoys mountain climbing, motocross, jumping from tall buildings or swallowing burning torches, but a good insurance company will even insure a person like that. This person’s risks are taken into account in all the other policies, where the greatest risk is falling asleep on top of the remote control. Probability does its job, the risks are all accounted for. All we have to do is recognise this fact.
And, when all is said and done, who do I know better than my own brother?
In his own way, he’s like a Swiss clock. And right now, as I see his pale features and his hunched, slightly agitated driving position, it makes me sad. I calculated everything, and I knew what he would do. There’s nothing new about this. Nothing about him has changed. The equation gives the same answer every time. This time, my only uncertainty was about the order in which everything would happen, and in this respect the help of Pentti Osmala – via Minttu K – was crucial. Right now, the thought that I am doing this in Juhani’s best interests and to save the park doesn’t soothe me as I watch his lonely nocturnal flight and think of him ending up somewhere in the woods, in a faraway campsite where he will…
…soon get himself into new and as yet unknown difficulties.
And there’s something about this thought, as the car pulls out into the road, that’s almost a little comforting, hopeful even. Juhani will continue being Juhani. I wish I could flash my lights at him, wish I could make him stop. I wish we could talk things through, that I could make him understand what I’m trying to do. And that as a result of this conversation he might change his ways and together we could look for a way out of our current predicaments.
But mathematics and the laws of probability don’t care about what I want. Juhani, the car and the caravan have turned all they need to. The convoy straightens itself and disappears into the night.
Instinctively I am about to bid him farewell, but I can’t seem to make any sounds at all. There’s something caught in my throat, something filling it up.