Secret Passages in a Hillside Town Read online

  Olli looked up. There were no angels, just a lot of falling snow. He smiled and walked inside. In a place like Paris or Rome or Budapest, under the right circumstances, you might even believe in angels, but not in present-day Jyväskylä. The city had become a monument to dull ordinariness.

  About forty people were gathered in the conference room. Greetings were exchanged. Olli talked with two recent appointees about cemetery maintenance and with three other members about the next meeting of the organizing committee. Olli Suominen—sweating the details. That had been his slogan in the parish elections.

  During the opening hymn Olli started thinking about his umbrella, which he had left on the coat rack. It was the only one he had left. He had to remember to take it with him. He had forgotten his umbrella at the last meeting and he’d never seen it again. A brand-new one. Maybe somebody had pinched it.

  Olli liked being part of things, but he got bored during the slow bits. While the others sang, he amused himself by putting his thoughts in the form of a prayer: Merciful God, ruler of the universe, who art in heaven: would you mind making sure that the most absent-minded of your creations—publisher and parish-council member Olli Suominen, who sweats the details—remembers to take his umbrella with him when he leaves, because lately he’s been spending altogether too much money on umbrellas?

  It crossed his mind that if he converted to Catholicism he wouldn’t have to bother God himself about the umbrellas: he could ask for help from St Anthony, who was, according to at least one theologian, pertinent to Olli’s umbrella problem. It seemed that Anthony of Padua had once lost his book of commentaries on the Psalms. Because of that deed he was proclaimed the patron saint of lost things. Which was the sort of saint Olli could definitely use.

  When the hymn was over the pastor cast his pious gaze over the assembled and reminded them that people should be grateful for all the good they received because the Lord worked in mysterious ways and what the Lord giveth the Lord can taketh away and so on.

  Olli dutifully began to feel grateful. After all, he had a steady job, in a position of responsibility that motivated him. He had his health, a family and a home whose faults really did seem to be starting to put the kibosh on his gratitude.

  Olli forced his thoughts away from remodelling and found himself thinking that if the Lord taketh away all sorts of things, could he be the one who had taken the umbrellas?

  As the pieties were nearing their end, Olli started to feel embarrassed at his childishness. He tried to get in a more businesslike frame of mind by thinking about his grandfather the notary and imagining the man scolding him, as he sometimes had when Olli was a child if he had done something inappropriate.

  It was, after all, inappropriate to be disrespectful even in his mind when others took their devotions seriously. Notary Suominen had once said that you shouldn’t allow your private thoughts any special dispensation just because others couldn’t see them.

  Olli genuinely liked the Church. It was a large, uncomplicated institution, which pleased him. He wasn’t particularly religious, but he wasn’t an atheist, either—he believed in God at least in theory, the same way that people believe in distant heavenly bodies, or in their own mortality, or in other things whose existence wasn’t in dispute. But he also didn’t let such beliefs disrupt his daily life.

  The meeting was called to order and a quorum declared. The reasons for any appointees’ absences were discussed and their proxies identified. The agenda was approved. When they started to choose who should inspect the minutes, Olli adjusted his tie and straightened his back so quickly that his vertebrae audibly crackled.

  When such roles were being delegated, Olli was usually recommended, and was often chosen. His manner was one that inspired trust. It ran in his family. He was a reasonably intelligent and capable man, just as his grandfather had been. The result was that he was needed in many endeavours, and when duty called, he didn’t like to refuse.

  Aino sometimes tried to rein him in. “You’re not the only person in Jyväskylä who can get things done.”

  Olli responded by quoting his notary grandpa: “A man has to carry out the tasks that fall to him with pride and humility. Otherwise someone somewhere might end up suffering in ways that he can’t predict.”

  Olli was the first one chosen to inspect the minutes. The second chosen was Ritva Valkeinen, a mother of seven sitting a couple of rows ahead of him. She turned and nodded to Olli.

  Olli had seen Marcel Carné’s Port of Shadows at a meeting of the film club a couple of months earlier. Before Ritva Valkeinen turned back around her face lit up. She smiled at him, and for a couple of heartbeats she stopped being the God-fearing mother of a large family and looked very much like Nelly, the character played by Michèle Morgan.

  When the meeting ended the group emptied out into the courtyard. The snowstorm had stopped and snowploughs were rumbling down the streets. Olli said his goodbyes, exchanged a few words of conversation, laughed at the others’ quips, wished them a final good evening, crossed the street and started walking home. The snowy slope of the Ridge rose up on his right. Figures flitted through the shadows of the pines—joggers and dog walkers.

  Olli gave a start when a black and white cocker spaniel came trotting down the hillside. It walked past him into the street, as if going to fetch something, then went back up the Ridge, kicking up snow as it went.

  When Olli reached the Normal School he turned onto Oikokatu, then stopped in his tracks and shook his head.

  The umbrella! That meant that…

  He’d thought he had taken the umbrella off the coat rack, but now he wasn’t sure. He retraced his steps to see if he had dropped it. He didn’t see it anywhere on the street.

  When he got back to the parish house, everyone had already left. The umbrella was locked inside. Well, he could pick it up tomorrow. Or maybe he should just buy another one. It wasn’t a very good one anyway.

  Besides, as Maiju had once said, buying umbrellas was sort of a hobby of his. Some people, like Maiju, buy shoes. And Olli was constantly buying new and better umbrellas.

  On Friday morning Book Tower Publishing had its all-staff meeting. Afterwards Olli started his lunch hour with an ibuprofen and a walk down Puistokatu.

  The linden trees along Puistokatu were dark and bare with winter. Looking at them gave Olli a heavy feeling. The gritted snow crunched under his feet. The darkness tired him. It was hard to believe that these were the same trees that cast their heady warmth and green glow over the street all summer. Now the only green was on the advertising banners that read A Guide to the Cinematic Life.

  The ad drew Olli’s thoughts to the book business. The staff had explained at the meeting that although the children’s books were selling steadily and getting good reviews and winning prizes, increasing expenses and growing competition meant that the house needed to improve its sales figures. They couldn’t leave the future of the business to what they made on Emma Bunny. Olli’s task as publisher was to shift their emphasis to the non-fiction division and acquire a best-seller, or better yet, several. Otherwise they would need to undertake an overhaul and think up some new initiatives.

  After the meeting Vilho Torni, the founder and lead shareholder of the company, had put a hand on Olli’s shoulder and given him some fatherly guidance.

  “Olli, you know better than I do that what sells nowadays are books in series for school-aged children. At the moment Book Tower doesn’t really have any. Harry Potter, that’s what the kids are eating up. When I was a kid I read boys’ adventure series, and my son read the Famous Five. He always made sure to get every new Famous Five book as soon as it came out and have it on his shelf. Did you read Enid Blyton’s books? No? A pity. You missed out. Unrealistic pulp quickly cranked out, but they’re the reason I founded Book Tower. I wanted to offer children more picnics and secret passages and wholesome adventure, real escapism. But maybe animals showing each other their genitals will have to do, if that’s what the people want…”r />
  Olli knew the Famous Five books, of course. He just didn’t want to think about them.

  3

  OLLI FREQUENTED THREE different umbrella shops.

  Two of his favourite shops were in the city centre, the third was halfway down Puistokatu.

  He liked going to the shop on Puistokatu because it was the prettiest street in town. The name of the shop, Jyväskylä Umbrella, was painted on the glass door in small gilt letters. The shop space was more like a closet than a room and the narrow shopfront was hard to spot if you didn’t know what you were looking for. No more than three normal-sized customers could fit in the shop with the seller present “as long as everybody is careful with their hygiene and doesn’t mind being at close quarters”, as the shopkeeper put it.

  The shopkeeper was a woman with golden hair and sad spaniel eyes. Her name was Maura. Her age was hard to guess; she was a confusing blend of fifteen and fifty.

  Maura had a habit of telling her regular customers anecdotes that were sad and sometimes harsh. But they would turn comic when she came to the climax of the story, put on a radiant, fake smile and took a couple of dancing steps.

  Olli had once said to her that she was a real charmer. She replied, “Thanks, Mr Suominen. Actually I was voted the favourite girl in the class when I was at school.”

  “You must have been proud.”

  “Then the teacher scolded the class and told them that they had voted wrong, that the prize shouldn’t go to me. She decided the little statue of the smiling girl should go to a kid named Kirsi who had no sense of humour but always sat in the front row with her hand in the air and got tens on every test.”

  Olli stepped into Jyväskylä Umbrella. The clock ticked. Maura with the golden hair smiled from behind the counter, which was a metre and a half from the door. Her breath smelt like salmiakki liquorice. She said hello and asked if she could help him find anything. “Perhaps this reasonably priced, small, black one? They’re three for the price of two today. It won’t cost you too much money if you happen to lose it.”

  Olli smiled and browsed through the merchandise hung on the walls. “I was thinking of something of a higher quality this time,” he said. “Something more special. An umbrella that can really protect you no matter what the weather. Maybe even an expensive one.”

  The woman took out a thick catalogue, set it on the counter, and started flipping through it.

  “This has some interesting selections that I’ve been thinking of giving a try in the shop. As you can see, they have aerodynamic umbrellas, flamenco umbrellas, a variety of art umbrellas, maps, ninjas, barometers. If you’re looking for an umbrella that’s good protection from the weather, would something like this interest you? It has to be ordered from abroad, though, and it can take months for delivery.”

  She laid her finger on a dome umbrella.

  Under the photo was a description: This umbrella is a classic Chantal Thomass design. A dome-shaped umbrella with a black pinstripe fabric, edged with a wide border of fine black net with a black ribbon trim, reminiscent of stocking tops and garters.

  Olli stared at the photo, electrified. It was a style of umbrella quite different from what he was used to using, or seeing in the shops, but at the same time strangely familiar.

  He tried to remember where he had seen one like it. In some movie? The Umbrellas of Cherbourg? Singin’ in the Rain?

  He told her he wanted the Chantal Thomass design, baffled by his own excitement.

  4

  EVERY SUNDAY, if it wasn’t raining, the Suominen family would go for a walk. They would circle the Ridge, go to look at the anti-aircraft guns at the foot of the observation tower, and spend some time at the Mäki-Matti playground. The boy rode in the pram. Olli would push him up the hill and Aino would push him down the hill.

  Once in a while, when Olli noticed that the light was just right, he would take pictures for the family photo album.

  Sometimes Aino wanted to take the pictures, but Olli’s SLR camera was too complicated for her. Even when Olli adjusted the settings so that all she had to do was point and click, her pictures were bad. She didn’t have an eye for photography.

  On their most recent walk, Olli had taken dozens of photos. He had brought the whole memory card in to be developed but only some of them ended up in the official family photo album.

  When the pictures came back from the shop, Olli arranged them into two piles on the table in the living room. Successful photos were in the smaller pile, unsuccessful ones in the larger. Aino came in, picked a couple of photos out of the large pile and admired them.

  Olli informed her that those were the photos he intended to throw out—the good photos were in the other stack.

  Aino didn’t see any difference between the good photos and the bad photos. According to her, some of the so-called bad photos were better them many of the ones that Olli thought were the good ones.

  Olli had patiently tried to explain what made a photo worthy of the album and what made for a bad photo—you had to be able to notice the lighting, the mood, the framing, the effect of the depth of field…

  Aino had interrupted him and said that it was obvious he didn’t know the first thing about family photos. Then she had scooped up the larger pile of pictures and announced that she was going to start her own album.

  Olli pushed the pram. Snow had covered the street overnight, and it clung to the wheels. His hair grew moist under his fedora and his thick wool coat was stifling. He loosened his scarf, puffing like a horse.

  The shouts of children echoed down from the west slope of the Ridge. They were sledding.

  Aino wondered why in the world Olli hadn’t dressed more sensibly. “You should have put on a tracksuit like me.”

  “I don’t have one,” Olli said.

  “Yes, you do. I gave you a windproof one for Christmas. The blue one.”

  Olli remembered and knew he was in trouble. “That’s right, you did. I wonder what happened to it.”

  “I would be happy to help, but unfortunately I don’t know where it is now,” Aino said. “I noticed in February that it was in the box where you put all your old clothes to drag out to the donation bin.”

  They continued walking. The happy shouts of the children accentuated the tense silence. Aino’s face twitched. They passed the playground without speaking.

  There were four little boys and a girl stretching their heads over the playground fence and spitting on the ground. They looked up and stared at Olli expressionlessly.

  One boy looked familiar, as did the girl with blonde hair flowing out from under her knitted cap. Olli waved at them with a friendly smile and the little girl whispered something to the others.

  The children looked scornfully amused and Olli felt cold. Then he realized where he knew the boy from. He looked like a childhood picture Olli had of himself on a shelf at home. And the girl reminded him of a friend from years ago, who was of course a grown woman now.

  When they reached the conservatory, Aino’s mood changed. The tension disappeared, she forgot their quarrel, took a breath and started chirping about everything under the sun.

  Sometimes Olli found this taxing. But at the moment it was a sign of forgiveness, and he accepted it gratefully. Olli didn’t like quarrels. They made his blood pressure even higher than it already was and gave him a stiff neck.

  Aino talked about the macaroni casserole waiting in the refrigerator, the apple pie she had baked for dessert, and how they should get home on time because there was a lot of laundry to do, and besides, she still had to go through her pupils’ exercise books, make a call to a colleague, and prepare next week’s lessons before tomorrow. Then she mentioned that she’d been awakened during the night by Olli’s snoring, and he apologized. She told him that someone ought to change the bedding; it was quite dusty and the boy had been eating rye crispbreads in bed. Olli humbly promised to take care of it.

  Aino wondered aloud when they had last cleaned. “But then when would we have had t
ime, since you have your meetings and other goings-on in the evenings and I’ve got my work, too, plus taking care of Lauri…”

  Olli made a quick budget calculation in his head and suggested that they hire a cleaner. He was still thinking about the blonde-haired girl he had known long ago.

  The weather seemed to be getting colder. His breath was steaming and he didn’t feel hot any more. In fact he felt chilled.

  They came to the soccer field, surrounded by a chain-link fence. Olli touched his camera and scowled. It was hard to find picturesque places in Jyväskylä.

  “A cleaner?” Aino’s stride faltered for a moment. “That would be nice, of course, to not have to clean… But no. I don’t want a stranger mixed up in our life.”

  Then she poked him in the ribs with her mitten and demanded, “Hey, have you read that book I gave you on our anniversary? Or did you toss it in the recycling bin?”

  Olli told her that he had spent two evenings reading A Guide to the Cinematic Life. Aino was pleased. He added that he thought the book was very interesting.

  Aino was delighted.

  They were nearing the swimming hall now. Aino slowed down, grew serious and started to tell him about a dream. She’d had the same dream for two nights in a row, and thought it was caused by the cover of the book she’d bought him.

  “I’m getting home from work, and I notice that a pear tree is growing in the garden. It’s shading the house. You’re inside the house, sitting and watching a video of Casablanca and eating a pear. I ask you to cut down the tree before it falls on the house. You turn to look at me and then I notice that you’re crying. You cry so many tears that the house fills up with steam, until rain starts falling from the ceiling. This doesn’t bother you, because you’re sitting under an umbrella. When I woke up, I had to go downstairs and make sure we didn’t have a leak or any water damage. I looked outside, too, to make sure there wasn’t really any pear tree there.”