Pekka Malmikunnas stood in front of the mirror. He smoothed the bronzing cream on his face. He pressed the mustache on tight, and thanked the late Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles for a new opportunity.
Pekka turned sideways and checked his outfit one more time. Outwardly everything was in order. The rest depended on him.
Pekka had bought the black felt hat from a flea market, where in a junk box he had also found the mustache. He had borrowed the poncho from a friend from school, Pasi, who had a hippie past. Pasi had asked what he was going to use it for, to which Pekka had answered that his company was organizing a fancy dress party. Pasi had been curious to know about Pekka’s current life and job, but Pekka’s battery had suddenly run out in the middle of the call.
Pekka put the finishing touch on his outfit, a fringed shoulder bag he had filched from a corner in his big sister Helena’s hallway. He had been forced to remove the Ruisrock stickers and the peace symbol, a relic of the domestic Finnish hippie period he remembered irritating his father Paavo so much. In Paavo’s opinion, peace had been purchased in blood on a battlefield conspicuously lacking in hippies.
Pekka put a flute in the bag, looked one last time in the mirror and opened the door. The wind went under the poncho and fanned it up like a skirt. With his right hand he held the poncho down, and with his left he held the felt hat on his head. It was hard being a Peruvian.
There weren’t many people around the Three Smiths Statue, even though the department store next door was having its Crazy Days sale. Pekka remembered the long passageway that went from the warrens of the Makkaratalo straight to the high street. Tens of thousands of people walked along the passageway over the course of a day. Pekka went close to the exit of the passageway and set down his mother Salme’s small wooden basket, on the side of which he had written in small letters, I am musiccian from Peru and nw homelss.
Pekka raised the pan flute to his lips and blew. The thin, clear sound echoed in the mouth of the passageway, telling of the refugee’s longing for the slopes of the Andes, away from this cold land. Pekka attempted to communicate through his playing that this was serious, that if you didn’t drop some money in that wooden basket right now, the condor in the song would fall out of the sky and land on its face, terminally, that the bird had already fallen from its perch of earnings-linked unemployment payments, floundering somewhere up there in the heavens, beyond the reach of the social safety net, not over the Andes, but over goddamn Merihaka, and soon, if your conscience isn’t pricked, that bird is going to come over and bang on your head with his sharp beak and ask, “Anybody home? Any humans in there? You know, the kind who are always supposed to understand a neighbor in need, even if that neighbor is from somewhere far away and doesn’t wear the same kind of hat as you. This time he’s exotic, an Indian with a feather in his cap, flat broke, without even a reservation to go back to.”
A man dressed in a long winter coat and tracksuit bottoms, wearing a beanie with the logo of a bank stitched into it, stopped in front of Pekka, gawking with red eyes. He looked Pekka up and down and then came right up in front of Pekka.
“The fuck you’re an Indian.”
Pekka had prepared himself for all sorts of reactions and insults the prejudiced Finns might throw at him. That was the life of an immigrant. However, the claim made by the man in the stocking cap was sufficiently radical that it could not go unanswered. Pekka lowered the flute from his lips and sang, “I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail. Mmmm mmmm. Mmmm mmmm.”
Pekka could only remember one line from the American version, but he loaded that one phrase with so much feeling that the phrase nearly came to pieces at the end. He remembered from his childhood what the display designer Alfred Supinen had said as he watched Pekka and his friend’s circus show. “When you imitate a lion or a rabbit, it isn’t enough to look like them. You have to become them. The audience has to believe that Pekka is a lion and Jussi is a rabbit.” Pekka had understood Alfred’s words immediately and become a lion so well that Jussi had fled all the way out into the yard. And since then Pekka had treasured up Alfred’s words in his heart, remembering them now in his moment of need as the beanie man glared at him malevolently, questioning his identity.
Pekka sang the phrase three times, lifted the flute, played the nostalgic melody as expressively as he could, lowered the flute from his lips and said to the man, “Nachos buenos povertias.”
The man was silent for a moment and then said, “Sorry. I mean, never mind. I don’t have anything on me right now. Otherwise I would give you something.”
Pekka smiled sympathetically and took a map of Peru out of his pocket. On the upper part of it he had made a dot with a red felt-tip pen. He pointed at the dot with his finger, thumped his chest over the heart with his right hand and said, “Houm.”
The man nodded, patted Pekka on the shoulder and took a bottle of eau de cologne out of his pocket, offering it to Pekka, who shook his head. The man took a swig from the bottle, grimaced and said, “Los Kondor Paassa. Simon and Telefunken. Classic.”
Then the man tottered on his way.
Pekka sighed and started from the beginning.
The previous unfortunate encounter gave Pekka’s playing additional depth and made him feel even more Peruvian. He longed for the Andes, for gentle autumn rains, for his work as a herdsman, for his goat and for his beloved, who at this very moment might be selling her colorful handwork in the alleyways of Lima in order to travel to this northern land to be in the arms of her flautist.
A middle-aged, well-dressed man stopped in front of Pekka. He listened intently and then took a wallet out of his breast pocket and placed a twenty-euro note in the wooden basket. Pekka had fantasized about perhaps collecting such a sum by evening. As he stared at the note, Pekka played a couple of wrong notes, after which the man dug another ten euros out of his pocket.
“Sometimes playing off key is irritating, but sometimes it increases the believability of the distress. This was a case of the latter. The piece is good, but I’ve heard it approximately six hundred times now. My route to work goes right by here. The additional payment obliges you and your countrymen to diversify the repertoire. I have already become sufficiently familiar with the flight path of that particular bird,” the man said, smiling and walking on.
Pekka attempted to keep his spirits up, despite his first two listeners having commented on his identity and repertoire. Pekka knew he was a pacesetter, a pioneer who would be forced to blaze his own path through the unbroken snow. He considered himself to be the first native Finnish immigrant, and in this sense his lot was even harder than that of regular newcomers, most of whom received a sympathetic reception from the authorities because of the civil wars raging in their native lands.
Pekka had discussed this issue with Maija and Biko, who had not understood Pekka’s perspective at first, but after listening for a moment, Biko had been forced to acknowledge the logic of Pekka’s position. In Pekka’s opinion, Finland had become so different and strange in the last ten years that even a Finn could feel like an immigrant. We had been producing our own refugees for decades. Most Northern and Eastern Finns had been forced to move from their birthplaces toward the El Dorado of the South, not to mention the wartime evacuees.
Whenever he spoke of these things, Pekka had to emphasize that he was in no way anti-immigrant—he just felt that his fate was similar to theirs. Minus the exoticness bonus. Pekka was as Finnish-looking as anyone could be, and for that reason he could not appeal to the maternal or paternal instincts of empathetic people in his work. Next to Biko’s pitch-blackness, Pekka’s whiter-than-whiteness seemed insignificant.
An immigrant had to adjust to constant changes and the wishes of unfamiliar people. Because of this, Pekka made a concession to the previous passer-by and conjured “Guardian Angel” out of his flute, hoping it would bring the amount he had earmarked for a new mustache. The one he had now itched, and he had to constantly press it more firmly onto his skin, sometimes even in the middle of a song.
“Through the wilds of the world the lamb doth roam, a lovely angel guiding her home. The journey is long, no home is in sight, but the lovely angel walks at her right.” Pekka wanted to show the Finns Peruvian hospitality by playing them a hymn that had been used to put hundreds of thousands of Finnish children to sleep, regardless of whether they or their parents belonged to the church. Pekka had last heard the piece at his big sister’s house, when Helena had hummed it to Sini as she was falling asleep. Pekka had been shocked by how gloomy the piece was, because the only thing that protected the child in it was an invisible, imaginary being. Pekka had felt a seething rage toward the author of the song. If several generations had been lulled to sleep by whispering such a dark nursery rhyme, then was it any wonder there was no comfort or reconciliation to be found in the jungles of divorce and labor contract negotiations when the subconscious was pealing, “Wild is the wood and rocky the road, slippery the footing and heavy the load”?
Pekka tried to interpret the piece in such a way that the listener would have to fear for the child in the pitch-black forest. He made his voice break on purpose and gave the impression that the flute was weeping for the child.
An older woman stopped in front of the wooden basket and lowered her bag to the ground. She concentrated, listening with her eyes closed. When Pekka blew the last breath of the angel, the woman took a one-hundred-euro note from her bag. She flashed it at Pekka and asked quietly in English if the young musician could come to her apartment and shepherd her into her final sleep with his flute. Pekka answered that he did not have the necessary professional proficiency. He was just a poor street musician from far-off Peru. The woman said that death does not concern itself with birthplace or professional proficiency. It simply comes and collects its due. But it would be nice to leave here with a pleasant flute accompaniment and the features of a beautiful man as the last thing reflected in her eyes.
Pekka hesitated. But not for long. One hundred euros was an appalling amount of money. He couldn’t turn it down, even though the new task was daunting, especially given his repertoire. In addition to the condor and angel songs, all he knew was Jaakko Teppo’s “Hilma and Onni,” to which he didn’t think he could do justice on the pan flute.
Pekka agreed.
The apartment was in a fashionable part of the city. The living room opened onto a view of the sea. Somewhere out there on the horizon was Estonia and all of Old Europe. The woman stamped out of the kitchen carrying a serving dish with savory hors d’oeuvres and confections. She sat down on a velvet divan and invited Pekka to go ahead and remove his outerwear. Pekka could not take the poncho off, because he remembered that under it was a Päijät-Häme Banking Cooperative T-shirt. Pekka said he was fine the way he was.
He was trying to control himself, even though he would have liked to stuff all of the delicacies into his mouth, recognizing them as the creations of expensive bakeries. He contained himself, taking only a cream puff and a meringue confection. The woman watched Pekka eat and poured a red drink into two delicate glasses. She said that before death it was good to take a glass of vodka and lingonberry juice. Pekka declined, saying that he hadn’t had any alcohol since he left his homeland, because he feared it would return his thoughts to the Andes and make him lose his grip on the challenges of his new homeland.
The woman moved both glasses in front of herself, drank each dry at a single gulp and sighed. Then she lay down on the divan and told how she had been sober for the first seventy years or her life, but now, when all of her contemporaries had died, she had decided to give alcohol a chance.
She put four one-hundred-euro notes on the round smoking table and said, “The first is for playing, the second is for being here, the third is for falsehood and the fate of the fourth will be made clear later.”
The woman introduced herself as Mirjam and extended her hand. Pekka, startled, said his name was Pablo.
“Well, now, Pablo,” Mirjam said suddenly in Finnish. “You aren’t Pablo, and I’m not Mirjam. I’m Mirja. The M at the end I got from the county, but the rest I got from Kontiola, my late husband. He was so rich that he didn’t really know how rich he was. I am the daughter of a small farmer from Suomusalmi, who lives in her ex-husband’s flat waiting to die. You are what you are. I’m not going to judge you or torment you. You’re beautiful and you play well. That’s enough for me. Could you play me something popular?”
“I don’t know. My repertoire is rather slim. I think all I know is one piece by Jaakko Teppo.”
“Is it popular?”
“Not really. Although it is a catchy tune.”
“I’ll pour more booze. Well now. Lay it on me.”
“By the way, my name is Pekka.”
“Is that so? Go ahead.”
Pekka felt strange playing under his own name, but after getting past the opening theme of “Hilma and Onni” and on to the chorus, he felt himself relaxing. The flute interpreted their story with a Peruvian flavor, but maintained the pining feeling of the piece.
Mirja was swilling down big shots of the red drink and would occasionally close her eyes. When the flute belted out the melody, underscoring Onni’s ultimate fate, Mirja opened her eyes and pushed three of the notes in front of Pekka.
“That wasn’t exactly a pop song. It was some sort of Latin American or Spanish-flavored love song, but that’s fine. Would you like to earn the fourth hundred?”
Pekka nodded. Mirja filled her glass. The neck of the bottle clinked against the edge of the delicate glass.
“I want proof that I shouldn’t die yet. I want a reason to live. Do you understand? I am a poor girl who got rich by accident. I didn’t know what all Gunnar owned. This apartment and the cash in his second account and all sorts of stocks. We lived in the suburbs in a little two-bedroom apartment when Gunnar tripped on that young people’s board with the wheels under it. It spun the old man upside down and landed him on his head. I’m so poor I have a hard time being rich. Well now. Listen to Mirjam going on again. Well, will you give me a reason to live? I want to see a young man naked and draw my conclusion from that. If it moves me in some way, it’s worth living. If it doesn’t, I’ll get another bottle like this from the cupboard and Gunnar’s sleeping pills. Would you do me this service for one hundred euros?”
Pekka didn’t know what to say. Saliva dripped from the mouthpiece of the flute into his palm. He stood up from the chair and walked to the window. Seagulls were making wide, sweeping arcs, ending at a large rock where they stood screeching. Then one shot back into the sky, tossed about this way and that like a directionless, sharp-angled piece of rubbish and then tucked in its wings and fell like a big white bullet back to the same rock it had left from. Pekka didn’t know what he should do. For money a person will make rubber boots, dig ditches, build mobile phones, sell snowboards, care for children, drive a taxi, play a flute. We do things for money, and then we leave our money behind. That’s how things go, if they go right. Some people even take their clothes off for money. That’s nothing special, but when he woke up that morning, Pekka hadn’t prepared himself for a task of this kind.
Pekka closed his eyes and decided. If the seagulls are still on the rock when I open my eyes, I’ll take off my clothes for Mirja and give her a reason to live. If the seagulls are gone, I’ll walk out with my clothes on, and Mirja can sleep.
Pekka opened his eyes. The seagulls stood on the rock, screeching.
Pekka walked in front of Mirja and took his poncho off. The bank T-shirt looked stupid now—in the morning it had just felt practical. He took it off with effort, not making the gyrating motions common to these situations. Now he was bare above the waist, the tan line from the bronzing cream was clearly visible. He took off his trousers and kicked them into a pile on the floor.
A person isn’t even close to naked with his socks on. But when Pekka took off his socks, he was as naked as he had ever been. You don’t even notice being naked with a person close to you, but when Mirja looked Pekka up and down and down and up, Pekka felt like every part of him had been suddenly touched without permission.
“Will you turn around a couple of times and then walk like a cockerel around the room?” Mirja said.
Pekka turned around. He thought for a moment about cockerels and the way they walk. He had imitated any number of people and animals in his life, but he had never played a cockerel. He extended his neck as far up as he could, pushed his backside out, bent over slightly and began to walk a little jerkily, at the same time rocking his head from side to side as crisply as he could.
When the rooster had completed its circuit, Mirja raised her hand. The rooster stopped and straightened up into Pekka. Mirja gave Pekka the hundred euros.
“Pablo, Pekka and cockerel. I thank you for life.”