Much to their surprise, Eino Partanen’s burial permit arrived well before Christmas. Some blessed, hard-working doctor who had a true calling for his work had managed to drop by the city’s central freezer long enough to have a peek at Eino and verify that he was, indeed, dead.
Margit was invigorated by the funeral preparations. She said she was a member of the Lean-to Co-operative, even though there weren’t any Lean-to stores any more, as it had merged into a larger retail chain long ago. But the Lean-to Funeral Home still existed and, wouldn’t you know it, continued to offer co-operative members a 10 per cent discount on its services, which put Margit in a particularly good mood. And since the offices of the Lean-to Funeral Home were just around the corner on Siltasaarenkatu, the plans for Eino’s funeral advanced as if it were a long-awaited party.
‘You’ll come with me when I go and arrange the details with the funeral home, won’t you?’ Margit asked Siiri.
Margit had grown so entwined with her husband that she didn’t feel confident on her own. She needed someone at her side to approve her decisions and doings, even when she was acting decisively. During their stint as refugees at Hakaniemi, she had latched onto Siiri for an emotional security blanket, and Siiri had nothing against standing at Margit’s side at difficult times. But Irma was hurt she hadn’t been asked along. She was used to organizing big family celebrations and would have loved being able to pick out sandwich cakes and casket trim.
‘I don’t need anyone aside from Siiri. There’s no need to turn it into a town meeting,’ Margit said rudely, and left Irma sipping her morning glass of red wine on her bar stool. Since Eino’s death, Irma had developed a new habit of drinking a small glass of red wine after breakfast, as if to counterbalance the evening whisky she partook at her doctor’s orders. Her morning wine set the blood circulating, and in addition she had heard it was wonderfully healthy.
‘It has flavonoids . . . they’re anti-aging compounds,’ she said. And before anyone could say anything to her about retarding the aging process, she laughed merrily: ‘It’s never too late to start looking after your health!’
All was quiet, calm and grey in the funeral home, as was befitting. The staff member who served them introduced herself as the director and spoke in a low voice, practically a whisper, and made generous use of passive forms in an apparent attempt to give a polite but not overly intrusive impression. At first Margit couldn’t make anything out of the woman’s consolatory, pronoun-free sighs, but this didn’t really pose a problem, as the task at hand seemed rather straightforward. First they chose the casket. An intriguing miniature display of the selection of coffin style had been arrayed on the wall. Siiri and Margit fingered the toy caskets inquisitively as the branch manager related what she considered interesting details about the product selection.
‘A classic casket in German oak is always popular. The very latest trend is this eco-casket, which is made without nails.’
‘Without nails? Won’t it fall apart?’ Siiri asked.
‘The eco-casket uses wooden dowels. They’re made in Nakkila from Finnish pine and are suitable for all sorts of crematoria.’
‘I’ll take whatever’s cheapest,’ Margit said, and Siiri remembered how they’d discussed their own funerals on a trip once and Margit had announced that she wanted a cardboard coffin. Unfortunately, the funeral home’s selection was not this extensive. The cheapest option was an apparently slightly un-ecological pine version made in Estonia of unfinished planks.
‘It’s a tad spare, isn’t it?’ Siiri felt compelled to remark, because without any fabric the coffin looked like a fruit crate.
‘Let’s throw in a black cloth to cover it. Something cheap, no draping or pointless tassels,’ Margit said. The branch manager raised an eyebrow that wasn’t an eyebrow, because she had carefully plucked out every hair from her forehead and painted brown lines in their place. Now these lines rose in bewilderment, because in Finland caskets were generally white.
‘Eino has to have black. He looked so handsome in a tux,’ Margit explained.
Next they needed to decide on the lining, which Margit thought was idiotic, because by this time her husband had got used to lying in a freezer drawer and it was doubtful that he expected much in the way of comforts during his few hours in the casket.
‘No lining, then,’ the funeral-home director whispered. ‘What about the pillow, shall we say silk?’
‘A pillow? What on earth are you going on about? We’re not putting a silk pillow in there just so we can burn it.’
The conversation staggered on. The funeral home’s agent wanted to dress Eino in his best clothes, but Margit announced that they’d been stolen ages ago from the closet at Sunset Grove. This made Siiri realize that her serviceable old funeral dress had also been swallowed up in the maw of the retrofit. She would have to buy new funeral wear, and it seemed a horrific waste, but Margit reminded her that she’d use it at least four times, since the rest of them would be following Eino and would need to be buried too.
‘Why would I be the last one to die?’ Siiri asked, and the branch manager cleared her throat in order to draw their attention to the glossy catalogue featuring a variety of funeral garb for the dead. She wasn’t surprised when Margit chose the cheapest one, the option that looked like a paper sheet without any extras.
‘The casket will be closed the whole time, won’t it? No one’s going to look inside,’ Margit said.
For the urn, Margit wanted a grey cardboard box, even though the agent tried to explain that these were mostly used for the remains of dogs. Margit was sure her husband had wasted away so much by the time he died that he’d produce less ash than the average canine.
‘You see such enormous dogs in this part of town, have you noticed?’ Siiri said, as the mood was already rather tense. ‘Real ponies! Imagine how much they eat in a day! More than the five of us put together.’
They were compelled to explain that ‘the five of us’ meant their little refugee community that was temporarily occupying an apartment in the Arena building. Siiri had already advanced rather deeply into her account, and although she didn’t go into the suspected crimes at Sunset Grove, the funeral-home director looked at her watch and started talking about the pastor, the music, the obituary, the catering and the estate inventory.
‘How awful, there’s so much to remember,’ Margit sighed, as the list was undeniably long.
They accepted the stack of brochures decorated with white flowers and promised to study them as they reviewed the responsibilities of kin with respect to funerals, and the funeral-home director didn’t have all day to sit there listening to them speculate about which one of them would die last. They could no doubt decide the details themselves, seeing as how they were all experienced buriers of loved ones. Margit announced that she would be holding the funeral service at Kallio Church, in which she had never set foot.
‘It’s closest.’
‘And it was designed by Lars Sonck, like the Tampere Cathedral and our very own Arena building. It might be quite lovely from the pews,’ Siiri exclaimed, as she had never been inside the Kallio Church either. Its tower formed the central element of the city’s horizon north of the Pitkäsilta, and you had a handsome view of it down Unioninkatu all the way to Kaivopuisto.
‘Right. So what day were you thinking?’ the brow-less woman asked, flipping through her desk calendar as if Margit ought to be happy if she could clear out thirty minutes for Margit’s husband’s final journey.
‘It doesn’t matter, just fit me in somewhere. My calendar is wide open,’ Margit said. Nor did she care which pastor led Eino’s funeral service, because she didn’t know any and didn’t much care for their sermonizing anyway. ‘As long as they can stand there and speak intelligibly.’
‘Do you mean soberly?’ Siiri clarified.
‘That, too, preferably.’
The funeral-home director swallowed a deep yawn and said the funeral home would pass on Margit’s wishes to the parish.
‘They’ll be in touch. What was the phone number?’
This was a ticklish question. Margit didn’t own a mobile phone, because she was hard of hearing and had never learned her way around them anyway. Siiri didn’t have one, either. There was the landline at the Hakaniemi apartment, oddly shaped and electric blue, and it had taken them a couple of weeks before they realized that it was a phone, but they didn’t remember the number, nor did they know in whose name the line was registered. They would be able to find Irma’s number from information, because there couldn’t be more than one Irma Lännenleimu in this world, but Margit didn’t want random pastors calling Irma about her private affairs.
‘That’s just going to get messy. Could the pastor pay us a visit at home?’ she suggested, and that was just fine.
‘Unfortunately, our time here has ended,’ the funeral-home director suddenly whispered, and true to her word, she drove them out of her office, even though they had only been sitting there for a little over an hour, and half the decisions had yet to be made. The stingy woman hadn’t even offered them coffee; in quality funeral homes they always did. Siiri and Margit exited, a little offended, and had to turn right back around, as Siiri’s walking stick had fallen behind the sofa and she had forgotten it there. The funeral-home director didn’t lift a finger to help Siiri fish the cane out of the awkward spot, just picked at her cuticles, looking concerned.
‘Pleasure meeting you, see you soon!’ Margit waved at the woman, who stood waiting at the door to close it the second they stepped out, even though it was only two in the afternoon. The silly thing; in her line of business, they were the clientele she should have been after.
Back at home on the sofa, they related their adventures to the others and distributed the funeral home’s brochures. Anna-Liisa delved into a pamphlet that said you could turn a loved one’s ashes into a diamond. The brochure was illustrated with images of smiling people wearing brilliant-cut blue stones in necklaces, bracelets, rings.
‘This is macabre,’ Anna-Liisa muttered.
‘I think it’s a rather fun idea,’ Irma exclaimed. ‘I’m wearing my husband on this finger and my mother on that one, and over here on my other hand I have my father, that’s the biggest diamond because he was a very heavy man, and this little one here on my bosom is . . . let’s say my cat!’ Then she started missing her dear old Veikko again, but once the catering brochure was in her hands she forgot her husband just as quickly as she had remembered him. ‘Oh, what delicious-looking cakesies, they’re making my mouth water. Let’s order lots just to be sure; I want some of this caramel cake at least, and Sachertorte. How big is your family, Margit?’
None of them knew anything about Eino and Margit’s immediate family, let alone extended relations. It turned out that Eino’s family was actually quite large, but Margit didn’t care for their company. She claimed it was an ‘in-bred mutual admiration society’, and it didn’t take much to deduce that Margit felt like she wasn’t good enough for them. Her own siblings were dead, and she hadn’t stayed in touch with their children.
‘What about . . . Do you two have any children?’ Siiri asked tentatively. After all, this was a matter that required clarification as well.
‘Eino does,’ Margit said. A long silence followed. Anna-Liisa read the estate inventory advertisement, Siiri poured more coffee for all of them, and Irma racked her brains trying to think of a polite way to proceed in this matter, which was growing more interesting by the minute.
She finally settled on: ‘Are Eino’s children bastards?’
‘Some are,’ Margit answered matter-of-factly. She told them Eino had been married to another woman when he was young, before he and Margit had met at a workplace seminar. A torrid, blazing passion had immediately sparked between them, and even now Margit’s cheeks started to glow as she remembered the early days of their shared life.
‘As you know, having a forbidden love adds to the excitement,’ she said, as if they had all jumped in the sack with married men as young women. She fanned her breast with a headstone brochure to cool herself off and remembered all the strange places, hidden from the eyes of the world, where they had urgently practised sex.
‘All right,’ Anna-Liisa cut off Margit’s description, which had grown rather detailed. ‘I’ve never experienced the pleasures of forbidden love, but I still haven’t engaged in amorous behaviour in the presence of others.’
That put a stop to Margit’s reminiscences. They were silent for a moment, until Irma started thinking which operas pertained to Eino and Margit’s story. Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, of course, but would Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier or Verdi’s La Traviata also apply? She wasn’t sure.
‘The Marschallin is married, so she would be Eino, and Margit, you would be the young Octavian. In La Traviata, Violetta and Alfredo are both free, but she is from the wrong class, and didn’t you say that Eino’s family has never accepted you, so I was thinking that might fit the bill, too. Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, on the other hand, would not be suitable, because that blockhead Pinkerton consciously bamboozles the poor girl, and I don’t believe we can accuse Eino of that.’
Irma looked at them, eyes aglow, proud at having come up with what she felt was such a good topic of conversation. But Anna-Liisa couldn’t care less and Margit couldn’t hear, so Siiri felt it was her obligation to comment on Irma’s suggestions.
‘Why don’t we pick a story with a happy ending. I’m afraid we won’t find too many in operas.’
‘Of course we will! The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville, and all kinds of others. Of course I can’t remember anything else at the moment. Shuffle and cut, now I’ve got it: Rossini’s Cinderella, of course.’
Suddenly Margit was upset. As it turned out, she had heard everything and didn’t see what Irma’s frivolous operas had to do with her life with Eino, their dramatic love story, which had sprung out of sheer lust and matured into a deep affection once Eino’s first wife finally understood and stepped aside, taking the children and every penny Eino owned.
‘We didn’t necessarily want to know all this,’ Anna-Liisa said. ‘The original question was regarding your and Eino’s children, which is not, in my opinion, an unreasonable enquiry, considering the length of your marriage.’
‘Or did this all happen just before you moved to Sunset Grove?’ Irma asked with a chuckle.
‘Yes, Eino had three children and some grandchildren from his first marriage, but he hasn’t really been in contact with them. I don’t have any children. I never needed anyone else in my life except Eino.’
‘And then . . . there were still these . . . other children?’ Irma asked.
‘Yes. Eino acknowledged two others with two different women. But I’ve forgiven him everything.’
‘Like the Countess in the Marriage of Figaro. What fun! So we’ll be having a big funeral!’ Irma exclaimed.
Margit didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to invite any of Eino’s relatives to the wedding, but the others felt that she couldn’t discount the deceased’s relations, at least his children. They convinced Margit to draw up an inexpensive and straightforward death notice, single-column and without poems, for the Monday paper. It would include an invitation to the funeral and memorial service formulated in such a way that readers would gather it was going to be an intimate affair. They spent some time thinking of a discreet way to word it. Irma suggested: ‘Only those close to the widow invited’, but the others found this inappropriate. In the end, the notice read: ‘A small, modest affair.’
‘It has to read “modest”. I’m not about to start feeding that clan of gypsies,’ Margit said.
‘And you’re not going to put “my dearly beloved agronomist”,’ Irma verified.
‘Of course not. I’ll just put “Beloved” with a capital B.’
After momentary conferring, it was plain that the memorial service would be held at the Hakaniemi apartment, but they would let a catering company take care of the modest refreshments. Siiri in particular was relieved. She’d been worried that, because Margit was arranging the memorial service for the love of her life on a budget, and a tight one at that, she might have expected them to prepare the refreshments together, which would have meant Siiri handling them on her own from start to finish. It would have been the death of her.
‘Anna-Liisa! Anna-Liisa!’
The Ambassador was calling from his room in a surprisingly powerful voice. He was in bed for the fifth day straight, with a fever that would drop and then inevitably rise again. He had refused any treatment; he was too exhausted to go to the health centre and he didn’t want a private doctor called in, even though Anna-Liisa had gone through a lot of trouble to find a doctor who belonged to the same Masonic lodge as he did. But he wouldn’t stand for either. It was starting to alarmingly look as if, now that their household had recuperated from in-home care, they would be learning palliative care the hard way.
They rose as one when they heard his call, except Margit, who kept reading her crematorium brochures. They made the trek to the Ambassador’s round bed, as it always put a smile on his face to see his harem, as he liked to say.
‘Onni, dear, we were just planning Eino’s funeral,’ Anna-Liisa said, to cheer up her ailing husband.
But the Ambassador didn’t appear to hear. He was worryingly confused, and a touch seemed to indicate that his fever had risen higher than ever. Anna-Liisa wiped her husband’s brow with a cool towel and tried to get him to drink. His breath was rattling now, and he tossed his head from side to side, refusing the juice. They stood there stock still, not knowing whether they should stay to support Anna-Liisa or give the couple some time alone.
‘Anneli, please forgive me,’ the Ambassador said, and mumbled something none of them could make out. His eyes remained shut, but he grabbed his wife’s hand in a powerful grip. Anna-Liisa looked at Siiri in alarm, and Siiri took a couple of steps closer.
‘Forgive me, Anneli . . . your jewellery . . . it wasn’t supposed to happen this way . . .’
Irma’s senses sharpened at this, and she moved up right next to Anna-Liisa, who didn’t appear to understand what the Ambassador was talking about. He no longer shook his head strangely as she stroked his forehead, but he kept his eyes closed and squeezed his wife’s hand with both of his.
‘Calm yourself, Onni, it’s all right. I’m here.’
‘The boys were just supposed to take care of the money . . . your jewellery . . . it was a horrible mistake . . . I beg your forgiveness, Anneli.’
‘He’s confused,’ Anna-Liisa said, to Irma and Siiri’s disappointment, as they were eager to hear more of the Ambassador’s revelations. But Anna-Liisa was extremely agitated and didn’t want them standing there, bearing witness to her husband’s unconsidered, feverish ravings. Grim-faced, she drove them from the room.
‘We’re going to be alone now. This could be his last night.’