They walked to the door of the house and rang the doorbell. The person who opened the door had no time to react before one of them pushed his foot in the door and wrenched it wide open. They recognized the person from his photograph, but the person did not know them and was surprised when he saw them. In his life he had become used to surprising everyone and no one surprising him. For this reason he was unable to be hospitable and in his confusion asked them to leave. However, they did not leave because they had been forced to leave so many places so many times in their lives. And besides, they had a task to complete.
There were two of them, one dark, one light.
They told the person what the purpose and meaning of their visit was. The person said that there must be some misunderstanding, but they clarified the matter by recounting in detail what the person had done. The punishment he had received from the judicial system was incommensurate with what he had done and so they were forced to come to complete the job that society and the authorities had left unfinished.
The person backed against a black chest of drawers and said he would pay them anything if only they would leave. They said that unfortunately money had lost all significance as a means of payment in this matter.
The dark one sat down on the divan and looked out the window.
The light one ordered the person to sit on the sofa because speeches were in order before the procedure. He said that he might stutter a little at the beginning of his speech. If the person laughed, the dark one would hit him immediately.
The person sat and said he was interested to hear what they had to say. He was lying. He was not interested in anything other than his life.
The light one began.
You kn-kn-know that the ki-ki-ng-dom of heaven belongs to chichi-children.
The dark one checked to make sure the person did not laugh. The light one continued.
You know that this is the case, but you still act as if you did not know. When you offer money, you offend even more. In court you played innocent. You imitated an innocent person. I know everything about imitation, and I can say that you imitated poorly. If you imitate well, others believe you. A good imitator becomes the person he is imitating. But you cannot imitate an innocent person, because you don’t even believe it. You have to want to be what you imitate. Get me some water.
The dark one rose, went into the kitchen and came back with a water glass in his hand. The light one took a gulp from the glass and cleared his throat. He said that the dark one would take over from here and that the system would be the same: if the person laughed at the dark one’s poor Finnish, the light one would hit him immediately.
The dark one began.
The one who went away, not my own. Is in my heart, because blood is in family. There are troubles, small sorrows and big sorrow. Trouble is when sleep too long for work or wallet missing. Then is small sorrow. If own dog and it die, comes small sorrow. What is biggest sorrow, big of all? Do you understand?
The person listened, but was unable to answer. His gaze was fixed on the fish scissors the light one had taken out of his pullover and was turning over in his hand. The person was reminded of gills, bones and fillets and the crackling sound that comes when scissors crunch through a fish’s neck.
You no answer. No problem. We know biggest sorrow. It no see, no hear. It is. No matter what do, it is. How on earth make it away? No need answer. Soon you not able.
The person considered his alternatives, which he usually had at least ten of at any one time. Now they had shrunk to two, attack and escape. Both seemed hopeless. He had no weapon, and it was ten meters to the door.
The light one and the dark one sensed the person’s thoughts and sat down on either side of him on the sofa. They were quiet. Together with the person they achieved a silence so profound it was almost audible. The light one looked over the person and the dark one nodded.
They ordered the person to stand.
The person felt faint.
He felt like the legs had disappeared from within his trousers and the air from within his lungs.
The person felt a strong urge to defecate and urinate.
The dark one realized this because he had experienced similar urges in a similar situation in his previous life. It was not diarrhea—it was the language of the organism. The organism took the place of the brain, because in certain situations the brain stopped working. The organism spoke because the person had spoken all he had to say. The organism said: There isn’t much material in me because I haven’t had breakfast, but I want to eject everything from myself, even if it is just the sputum, the salts, the acids and all that mess that is left circulating in here even after everything has come out of both ends.
The person asked permission to visit the restroom.
The light one said he understood the need, but that it was not possible now, just like everything else. The person had played God, and in that moment lost the world of possibilities.
The person stood, swaying.
The light one asked the person to stand up straight, because the final speech was coming now, after which they would move from words to actions. He said that he had taken the exceptional step of writing this speech down. It was short and had been written by the next of kin.
The person rocked. The dark one took hold of him and lifted him up.
The light one cleared his throat, took the piece of paper out of his breast pocket and began.
“Life is taking and giving. You took my sister’s reason to live. You gave a reason to kill. We will not kill. We will take your reason to live. A draw. You sat nine months. We waited nine months. Our gestation period was the same length. It is time to give birth. The prognosis is for a child who is a man of few words. But hopefully he will be otherwise active and optimistic.”
The light one folded the paper and put it in his pocket, and then nodded to the dark one. The dark one grabbed the person and led him into the kitchen. In the middle of it was a round, wooden table. The kind they used to have in the back rooms of stores in the days when the store’s own butcher carved up pig and cow carcasses fresh.
The person began to scream. He screamed so hard that he lost the very last shred of his humanity and became an animal. He began to bite and kick. The light one hit him once on the cheek and ordered the dark one to give him the thick, silver tape. The light one said that he would now be placing Jesus tape over the person’s mouth, tape which had been developed for precisely these situations. The name came from the fact that Jesus succeeded at almost everything he ever tried until his Father intervened. You tried to play Jesus and his Father, God. As your reward and as a memento of a good effort, we will now put this tape over your mouth for a moment. When we get everything ready, we will remove the tape, but I can promise that afterward the screaming will stop as if it had hit a brick wall.
The dark one held him. The light one bound him.
Then the dark one took two freezer containers and a bottle of spirits out of a bag. One of the containers was empty. The other had some sort of liquid in it. He poured the alcohol into the empty freezer container and sterilized the fish scissors in the container.
The light one held the trembling person in place.
The dark one took a pair of forceps and a drop cloth out of the bag and spread the cloth over the butcher block. He set the container on the edge of the butcher block and nodded to the light one, who kicked the person on the back of his knees, making him collapse into a kneeling position. The light one moved the person against the butcher block so that his whole head was on the block. Then he tore the tape off his mouth. First there was no sound, as if the person had lost his voice, but then one long, shrill sound came out of his mouth. It resembled the scream the light one had heard in his childhood coming from a broken fish trap. A curious seagull had got stuck in the trap and was screaming in such a thin, metallic voice that the distress had infected the light one, and he had run to his father.
The light one took the person by the neck and squeezed, extinguishing the sound.
The dark one nodded, giving the signal. The light one repositioned the person’s head and ordered him to open his mouth. The person opened it enough that the light one managed to push his right hand in against the upper teeth. He rammed his left hand against the lower teeth and lifted the mouth open, and lightning-quick the dark one pushed a piece of wood about five centimeters long in as a brace to keep the mouth open. The light one held the person’s head in place and warned him not to struggle, which would only result in unnecessary injury. He stressed that the operation would be over soon and that the person would then be able to continue his normal life.
The dark one put thin protective gloves on his hands, took the scissors, shoved his right hand into the mouth and drew the tongue out as far as he could. The person gagged. The dark one took the fish scissors and clipped off the part that the person had used up and no longer needed.
The light one released the thrashing person. The person fell onto the kitchen floor and lost consciousness. The dark one placed the removed part in the freezer container. It would be perfectly preserved in the special liquid for the necessary period of time. The light one cleaned up the mess and called the emergency number. He reported the address and the nature of the emergency. The dark one placed a towel under the unconscious person’s head. Blood flowed out of his mouth onto it.
They left the house and walked to the car. The dark one placed the freezer container in a cooler. They looked at each other and knew that they had done both right and wrong. They also knew that the thing they had done would bind them to each other irreversibly. They drove the first kilometers in silence. As they traded residential areas for motorway, the dark one suggested some calming music. The light one flipped through radio stations until he found a classical one. The announcer said that Beethoven’s “Piano Sonata Number Eight” is also called the “Sonata Pathétique,” and that it was now being played for them by a Hungarian pianist, András Schiff, who now lived in England.
The dark one asked the light one what pathétique meant. The light one said that if there was a tremendous amount of emotion that included a touch of self-pity and that the whole thing was on the verge of overflowing its banks, then you could call the surge of emotion pathetic. The dark one said that in that case he had been in a pathetic state a couple of times, but that he had never felt self-pity. He said that pathetic situations came along quite often as a bus driver. The light one said that he might not have succeeded in explaining the term properly, because it was French.
They listened to the beautiful, plangent, fast piece of music. The light one felt that at the beginning of the piece something shocking happened that forced someone to run away, and that it was this racing the composer had clearly painted in the piece. Then the running stopped and the fugitive put up his feet under an oak tree and listened to the warbling of the birds. The light one thought it was amazing that someone could play his life that way.
The piece ended, and the car was silent.
Then the dark one said that he wanted to meet this Beethoven. The light one said that he had died a long time ago. The dark one said that he didn’t think a person like that could die easily, and if he did die, the notes would force their way out of the grave and float up to the tops of the trees.
The light one said that the person there on the floor of the house was losing blood at a tremendous rate. The dark one ordered the light one not to worry about it—the ambulance would come quickly there in the city. The person would surely survive. The light one said that was precisely what he hoped.
He thought a person should live with his actions in this world. That was every person’s duty and lot in life. Even if there weren’t friends or family, there were always actions. They followed a person through life. They were faithful. The light one thought that this is sometimes forgotten in all of the rush and bustle of work. This person would come to see this if he survived. The light one hoped that the person would have his actions and their consequences with him every day for the rest of his life.
The dark one said that the light one’s actions in the world of work had been somewhat lacking as of late. The light one looked at him sternly and said that he was still searching for his permanent place in the commercial world and reminded the dark one that none of it had been for lack of effort. The dark one asked why the light one had not stayed at the computer company. The light one said that he didn’t have the patience to correct simple problems and answer simple authors’ questions about whether backup copies should be stored on a memory stick or a separate hard drive. He said that there had been one author in particular who had irritated him by pressing him about the origins of his unique last name. The dark one thought the author had just been doing his job. If they weren’t interested in details, they wouldn’t be authors at all. He thought that the light one could become an author and in that way make use of all of his recent experiences. The light one thought it was not a good idea. He did not believe that the feeling you get when you turn into a Peruvian street musician could be captured on paper. The dark one thought that it would be worth trying, because the perspective of an immigrant is always valuable.
The dark one said that his future was in taxis. In a taxi you can serve people and drive them from place to place and lift their bags and open doors. He thought he had been born to be a servant. It is a natural trait. It doesn’t have anything to do with servility, though. I want to serve, to create energy. A taxi driver’s job is the best in the world. A small, enclosed space, a couple of people to serve at a time—you can concentrate on them. You can demonstrate your skill. You get to act a little better than you are. And then as a last resort there were dustman jobs. Even if the end of the world comes, the dustmen will still have two more weeks of work afterward. Someone has to clean everything up.
The light one said that he still hadn’t found his place in the world. He said he had been driven by the wind and carried by cars. And there wasn’t necessarily anything wrong with that. Strength of will is overrated. The light one said he was nevertheless hopeful for the future, because entrepreneurship is mostly a way of life. Bumps in the economy would always bring certain things to a head and make everything look hopeless from time to time, but as the son of a small businessman, he believed everything would make a turn for the better in the end.
The dark one agreed. Everything will work out if you can stay on the sun’s side, even if everyone is singing about the moon and wanting to admire it, just the two of you. But without the sun there is nothing.
Then they were quiet again and listened to the hum of the road.