‘What’s that? Gone off to the villa and left you here alone?’
Siiri couldn’t believe her ears. Anna-Liisa seemed oddly unperturbed as she related this recent twist in her life, although she looked pale and grave. She must have been struggling to maintain a brave face.
‘There are so many of his former wives and children there that I can’t go. They’ll look after Onni at the villa, and I’m sure he’ll be much more comfortable there than here.’
Irma was burning with curiosity: ‘How many of these former wives are there?’
But Anna-Liisa wasn’t in the mood to answer. She simply snorted to indicate that the Ambassador’s holiday was not an appealing topic of conversation and Irma might as well accept it.
Luckily, the card table was still in its place. The wall next to it was covered in plastic with a handy-looking zipper running down it. There was a hole in the wall, and the demolition crew kept stomping in and out through the zipper, forever interrupting Siiri’s, Irma’s, Anna-Liisa’s and Margit’s game. The big television in the common room was wrapped in plastic, the magazine racks and books had been taken away, and the residents had an impossible time finding any space for themselves in this madhouse. They were required to keep the doors to their apartments open, and the construction workers marched in and out, ripping out kitchen cabinets one day, measuring the placement of electricity outlets the next. Sometimes they simply spun around in the middle of the room, grumbled something that sounded like Eugene Onegin, and left.
‘Like doctors!’ Irma realized. ‘The only difference being that these men walk in and out, while you have to crawl to the doctor’s office yourself, no matter how old and sick you are. Why don’t doctors here in Finland make house calls the way they do in France, where my cousin lives? Or like on British TV?’
More than once, lunch had been cancelled with less than two hours’ notice. A note had simply appeared next to the elevators and in the corridors that read: Lunch canselled today, do too the retro fit. Anna-Liisa had found temporary stimulation in these announcements, and, to Siiri’s pleasure, held brief lectures on the appropriate use of commas and quotation marks, the confusion caused by misspellings, and the historical development of compound words. More often than not, these notes reached their intended recipients too late, after Sunset Grove’s hunger-prodded residents had already shuffled down to the lobby to wonder where their food was. Sometimes Director Sinikka Sundström would make a personal appearance to apologize for the situation, but more often than not this thankless task fell to Pro Tem Head of Residents Care Miisa Sievänen. She would inform them that lunch would be served as soon as the water was turned back on, in all likelihood 4 p.m., to which the hunch-backed veteran Tauno replied that only an idiot ate lunch an hour before his supper, especially when all that was being served was porridge. The pro tem head of residents care would pass out flyers for restaurants in the neighbourhood and the price lists for Helping Handz, a private home-care delivery service. While everyone understood that Director Sundström and Pro Tem Head Sievänen were not to blame for the unexpected water cuts, it was difficult to pull much good cheer out of one’s positivity pouch, as the director had advised.
‘So there I was in my birthday suit, with my hair lathered, when I realized there was no water coming out of the shower-head,’ Margit told the others. Now that it was over, she was able to laugh at her tragedy, which had climaxed in two men in suits from the construction company marching into her apartment to measure the placement of the ventilation ducts. Margit had asked them to bring her water, but they had run off in terror.
‘I must have looked frightful!’ Margit howled, shaking her head. She’d had to sit and wait for two hours with the shampoo drying on her head before the shower started working again.
‘And what do you think of these dry doo-doo boxes that our Jerry was advertising yesterday?’ Irma asked.
‘You cheated,’ Anna-Liisa growled. She clearly saw Irma slip a card under her bottom.
‘Aren’t we playing cheat? We should play that one of these days, too; it’s such a fun game. I always played it with my darlings when they were young. Oh, those were lovely times! Look, what an idiotic card I got. What would you have done with an ugly old king like this, if you had picked it up?’
‘It fits your own canasta, Irma,’ Anna-Liisa said tiredly. She was somehow listless and downcast, and it was no wonder. Siiri was so disturbed by the Ambassador’s stunt, abandoning Anna-Liisa in the middle of the retrofit, that she had a hard time concentrating. What if things were steaming up between Onni and one of his ex-wives?
‘They have running water and a toilet, too, beautiful tiles and everything,’ Anna-Liisa sighed glumly. These were luxuries that residents of Sunset Grove could only wistfully long for.
‘Are you ladies planning on taking the poop jars Irma was just talking about?’ Siiri asked, to shift the conversation away from the Ambassador’s villa. She hadn’t been completely convinced by Jerry Siilinpää’s animated presentation last Tuesday. Waxed locks quivering, the young man had introduced them to composting toilets meant for temporary use in urban settings, which he claimed were easy to use and didn’t smell bad. Even emptying them was a ‘piece of cake’, which was why the residents would be privileged to take care of this operation themselves. Compared to the campground latrine Siilinpää was offering, the outhouse at any summer cabin sounded like the height of luxury.
‘I don’t suppose we have any choice? Or are you planning on allowing yourself to become constipated?’ Irma asked and told them about her cousin, who had gone ten days without defecating and was then taken to hospital for a rather laborious evacuation. ‘So yes, I’d rather have a cat box in the corner. Isn’t that one better than that pickle jar you had in the basement during the 1970s, Anna-Liisa? Anna-Liisa?’
Anna-Liisa’s head had drooped, and her cards had slid to her lap. The other ladies panicked because Anna-Liisa looked sick, not sleepy. Siiri stood up and took hold of Anna-Liisa’s wrist: a strong, rather rapid pulse. Siiri was relieved.
‘She’s not dead.’
‘Is that supposed to be good news?’ Margit asked, continuing to play, since it was her turn. ‘I’ve been thinking quite a lot about euthanasia lately. What do you ladies think, should people be allowed to decide about their own death?’
‘Heavenly days, you do ponder difficult questions in the middle of this chaos! Why would anyone bother doing retrofits if we all started killing each other during them? Or ourselves? Anna-Liisa, wake up before they shovel you into an ambulance and cart you off to the hospital!’
Irma had stood, and she and Siiri were able to shake Anna-Liisa enough to rouse her. She was still pale, and her eyes wandered for a moment, but then her usual stern gaze sparked in them again. At that instant, the zipper in the plastic wall opened and three angry-looking men marched past, carrying moving boxes.
Anna-Liisa was instantly on high alert. ‘Who was that? They weren’t wearing neon vests or coveralls. Those were not construction workers!’
Complete strangers had been tramping in and out of Sunset Grove with increasing frequency lately. It was impossible to say who was there to work and who was there to make off with the residents’ belongings. Or medication. They had learned through the death of that sweet boy from the kitchen that their daily pills were valuable drugs.
‘That Weasel Tail claimed that every employee would have a tag around his neck with his name on it. All their names should also be on some bulletin board,’ Anna-Liisa griped. ‘I’ve never laid eyes on any bulletin boards in this mess; we’re drowning in packing plastic and tape here. It’s like we’re some . . . some . . . I don’t know what. I don’t suppose even chickens are stored vacuum-packed for months on end at a temperature of eighty degrees, are they?’
‘His name is Siilinpää: Hedgehog Head, not Weasel Tail,’ Siiri said. Having a chance to correct Anna-Liisa was a rare pleasure.
‘Maybe broilers? Or chicks, in those incubators?’ Irma suggested cheerfully. ‘With the Ambassador vacationing at his luxury villa and all the other men dead, Sunset Grove has turned into quite the hen house. Cluck cluck!’ Irma did a rather skilful chicken imitation, although crowing like a rooster was her bravura.
‘A distinctly unproductive incubator, I’d say,’ Anna-Liisa remarked leadenly, gathering up the cards that had fallen into her lap. Irma shouldn’t have mentioned the Ambassador and his summer villa just when the sight of the suspicious visitors had perked Anna-Liisa up.
‘Did you think those gentlemen with the boxes were thieves?’ Siiri asked, to smooth things over.
‘How should I know? They certainly didn’t look like construction workers. Perhaps they were someone’s relatives, although that seems far-fetched. No family members ever set foot in this place.’
‘Not all the men are dead. Eino is alive,’ Margit said abruptly. She had stopped playing and absent-mindedly slipped the cards she was holding into her handbag.
‘Margit, those are my cards!’ Siiri cried.
‘Eino is in a dementia ward somewhere in eastern Helsinki. All residents of the Sunset Grove nursing unit were moved there. If anyone’s in storage, it’s him, not us. I don’t remember the name of the place, it was some sort of home too, or even a nest . . . wait, the SquirrelsNest, all one word, capital S, capital N.’
Anna-Liisa shrieked in horror.
‘I’ve only been to visit Eino once, and that time I went by taxi. But I can’t be taking a taxi back and forth to Itäkeskus every week. Maybe it’s best I don’t go, it’s so sad . . . Oh dear, here I go, crying again . . . I’m sorry . . . it’s such an awful thing to see, when the love of your life is unrecognizable and helpless . . . Dirty, too, and smells foul; I have a hard time bringing myself to get close, and I don’t know what to do with myself while I’m sitting there at his bedside, but I have a bad conscience all the time since I haven’t been to see him . . .’
Siiri hugged Margit, who trembled as she sobbed. Irma urgently searched for her lace handkerchief, and no one knew what to say. Was this what had been on Margit’s mind when she brought up euthanasia? That Eino would be better off dead? Perhaps she hadn’t been talking about herself or the rest of them; they still had their health and their marbles and had the gall to complain about a retrofit while others had no hope. Siiri was ashamed of her stupidity. And yet it still chagrined her that Margit had pilfered part of her deck. Would she ever get the missing cards back? Once again, Irma read her mind.
‘We can play cheat with an incomplete deck; you don’t need all the cards for that,’ she whispered as she gathered up the remaining cards. ‘All right, my chicks, where were you planning on eating lunch today? What if we all went to the Sunset Grove canteen in honour of the fact that it happens to be open? Or have you all ordered meal delivery? My darlings tell me that it’s scandalously expensive, but since they don’t have time to bring me food, they paid for it for me. Treated me, the loves. Which was very sweet of them; they didn’t need to do that, seeing as how I have quite a nice pension. My widow’s pension and the various funds Veikko set up for me with an eye to old age, the sweetheart. He was such a good man, of high ethical calibre. Oh dear, how I miss my Veikko! My sweetheart lying there in his grave, I mean in that miserable urn behind that marble slab. That’s where I’ll end up, too. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t mourn selfishly like this; Margit’s situation is much sadder, since her husband is still alive. But we could go to the French restaurant on Laajalahdentie for lunch one day, couldn’t we? We have to make sure we stay stimulated; we don’t want to rot away here like boneless chicken breasts from the Low Price Market. They’re vacuum-packed, aren’t they? Have you ever noticed the unpleasant smell that wafts out when you open the package? I’d already thrown several in the bin because I thought the meat was spoiled, until finally I had the nerve to take the package back to the store. I complained that they were selling spoiled meat, and that’s when I learned that it was the packaging gas, nitrogen or something, they say it’s harmless but keeps meat from rotting. Is that what they’re pumping in here too? Jerry explained that the dust won’t get everywhere, because they’re going to use a vacuum or something to underpressurize the entire building. Did you catch what he meant by “underpressurizing”?’
‘Unpressurization is a technique that creates an air-pressure difference between a sealed space and the surrounding environment,’ Anna-Liisa said, with a promising correction of posture. ‘An air pump directs the air out of the room under construction through a hose, or so-called sock, creating a difference in air pressure; this exiting air travels through a filter that collects impurities. This purified air is then blown outside the sealed space, in other words here, where we spend our days. Of course this doesn’t imply that we won’t suffer from dust at all. I’m not nearly as concerned about televisions and our other plastic-wrapped belongings as I am about risks to our health. Cement dust is exceptionally fine and exposure to it entails a substantial risk of contracting lifelong asthma.’
Irma perked up as if she were already writing a complaint to the Loving Care Foundation, which ran Sunset Grove: ‘Yes! Asbestos is life-threatening, and at the beginning of the retrofit Siilinpää said something about asbestos. What did he say?’
‘I just remember him talking about action items and drawing arrows,’ Siiri said.
Margit had stopped bawling and had pulled herself together. ‘Maybe I should bring Eino here. I wonder if life-threatening dust would be the simplest solution to everything?’
‘Lifelong asthma, is that what you said? I doubt anyone considers that much of a risk when the victims are over ninety. But can you die of asthma? Is that the opportunity Director Sundström and Jerry Siilinpää were lecturing about? Döden, döden, döden.’
‘Not everyone here is as old as we are,’ Siiri said. ‘That tattooed lady doctor lowers the average age quite a bit.’
‘Why does she have that ugly needlepoint all over her body? She’s a beautiful woman, but she has an anchor on her neck and snakes on her shoulder; it gives me the heebie-jeebies.’
‘Perhaps she likes anchors and snakes.’
‘Could we please finish discussing the dust?’ Anna-Liisa smacked both hands against the baize tabletop and looked at her friends, her dark eyes flashing. ‘Has anyone else had a constant cough and intermittent trouble breathing? Sometimes I cough so much at night that I can’t get any sleep. There’s no doubt in my mind it’s because of this retrofit, and that’s why I made myself an appointment at the health centre tomorrow. If they find asthma, I am going to hold Sunset Grove responsible.’
‘And you might die!’ Irma cried, coughing before she could laugh. Suddenly all their throats prickled. First Irma started coughing, then Margit, then Anna-Liisa, and eventually Siiri. They coughed so hard that their throats ached. This was, of course, rather amusing, and a moment later their choral coughing had devolved into giddy guffaws that perplexed the men marching past with the moving boxes.
‘These old bats aren’t playing with a full deck,’ the first one said.
‘So much the better for us,’ his companion muttered, picking up the pace.