Helsinki Blood

36

We arrive home to an empty house. Jenna is out. A note on the table says she got bored and went exploring. There’s little to do except housework. The place has stood empty for a while and needs a good dusting. I’m not in the mood, and while my knee hurts less than it did before the cortisone, it’s still a pain in the ass to perform simple tasks with only one free hand, my cane always in the other.

I browse Arvid’s book collection instead. He-or maybe Ritva or both of them-was an ardent crime and thriller novel fan. Complete works by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, John le Carre, Graham Greene, Jim Thompson, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, and Mika Waltari. I decide to work my way through the whole 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain. That should keep me busy for a while. I settle down in what was Arvid’s armchair and start reading Cop Hater. The others wander in. Sweetness has been to Alko, bought a dozen bottles of kossu and a case of beer. Milo has been on his boat, working on his computer, I imagine writing his manifesto.

Jenna and Sweetness do what they do best, sit at the table and drink. They whisper the private jokes of young lovers and giggle. In a little while, everyone gets hungry, and by general consensus, we decide to go to a good restaurant. This trip feels more and more like a vacation than I thought it would.

We go to Wanha Laamanni. It’s only been a restaurant for a few years, but the building was constructed near the medieval cathedral around 1790. The menu is gourmet. Sweetness complains about the lack of steaks. As far as he and this place are concerned, it’s like lipstick on a pig. He turns up his nose at the snails in gorgonzola. Roast lamb, after a few aperitifs, pacifies him. For me, wild boar rillettes as an appetizer and a main course of charcoal-grilled Arctic char with choron sauce, saffron and fennel. Kate chooses salmon infused with the flavor of tar. She pronounces it inedible, so we trade. This should be the test for Finnish citizenship. If you enjoy the taste of tar, you pass. If you don’t, you should spend a few more years here until you do. I find it delicious.

Milo has to eat left-handed. He has a hard time keeping food on his fork. He has to learn to do almost everything in his life over again. I hope surgery repaired his carpal tunnel and radial nerve sufficiently so that he regains some function in his hand. Being disabled makes for a hard life.

After dinner, when the coffee and cognac arrive, Sweetness announces he’s talked to his mother and she checked his mail for him. He’s been accepted at the police college in Tampere and as a Russian-language student at the University of Helsinki.

Slots in universities and polytechnics are competitions. Often, six hundred people will sit down together and test for a position in a department, and only fifty will be accepted. The smart thing to do is to treat studying for the examinations like a job and apply to more than one department to increase your odds. Sweetness has actually done this. He now has a possibility to build a career that doesn’t involve beating the hell out of people.

I’m impressed and order champagne to celebrate: a bottle of Dom. I wonder if Kate considers where the money for these extravagances came from. They’re reminders of our various and sundry crimes that left Milo, Sweetness and me millionaires. Maybe she’s pushed it out of her mind and tells herself I’m wealthy from my inheritance from Arvid. It’s partly true.

Sweetness’s success is a bright note in a stressful, even frightening time in my life. I’m afraid my wife’s mental illness will cause me to lose her. I’m afraid that, in the end, I’ll lose my leg. I’m afraid for all our lives, least of all my own. And my friends are planning to change the course of Finnish history to save all our lives. I’m afraid of what will happen to all of us if they fail. Good news in this time of confusion and mayhem was much needed.

We walk off our meal and go home. This appears to be the pattern we’ll follow. Quiet days, good meals, long walks and early nights. For Kate and me and our relationship, my devout hope is that this pattern will be therapeutic and bring catharsis.

Milo invites Sweetness to go drinking with him. Jenna assumes she’s included. She’s not, and miffed about it. Sweetness cites a need for “guy time.”

Kate and I get ready for bed. I set an alarm on my cell phone.

“What are you doing that for?” she asks.

“Milo and I are going fishing early tomorrow morning.”

Fearful of upsetting her, I stick to my side of the bed and avoid anything that might be construed as physical contact.

We lie in silence for a while. “Don’t you want to touch me anymore? Are you so angry?” she asks.

I’m flummoxed. “Angry for what? I’m not angry about anything. I’m afraid you’re angry, and I don’t want to do anything to upset you.”

She lies on her back, arms at her sides, stares at the ceiling. “I left you when you were too weak to care for yourself. I was cruel to you on the rare occasions I saw you, refused to let you see your child very often, and then I dumped her on you so I could run to the other side of the world to turn into a drunk.”

I’m taken aback, wasn’t expecting this. “You were sick. You’re suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, so says Torsten. How can I be mad at you for being traumatized? And I was behind the trauma. I did many questionable things, some ugly things, some wrong things.”

“Your brain surgery made a mess out of you,” she says.

“Yes, it did.”

I don’t say that if I was put in the same situations now, I don’t know what I would do differently. I began with the best of intentions and slowly sank into the sewer of corruption. I always meant well. My biggest mistake was not understanding that I was being used, that my greatest flaw is naivete. I’m naive no longer. I know what I would change. I wouldn’t have let myself be manipulated and put in such positions in the first place.

“I told you to do those things,” Kate says, “I advised you to do the very things I came to loathe, the things that made me wonder who you are and where the man I married went.”

“You had little choice. You were scared, afraid I would die of cancer. It’s hard to say no to someone under those circumstances. And like me, you kept believing I could extricate myself from the corruption. We didn’t understand that would never happen. As it was put to me, ‘This isn’t a game you can just decide you don’t want to play anymore.’”

“Are you going to do things differently now?”

“Yes.”

“No more robbing drug dealers. No more taking money you didn’t earn. No more bodies dissolved in acid. You’ll become an honest cop again?”

I wish I could preface my answer with the absolute truth. After I make the people in my world safe again, I will return to honesty and abide by the law. “If I decide to be a cop again. I’m tired. I’m shot to pieces. I’m mentally and emotionally worn down. I may retire.”

“I’m done advising you. Do what you think best for yourself. Have I done such terrible things?”

“No.”

“Do you still love me?”

“Heart and soul.”

“Can we be a family again?”

“That’s my greatest wish.”

She scoots over and lays her head on my shoulder. “Good.” Within minutes, she’s asleep there, in an old and familiar position. It seems like centuries have passed since she slept there, and having her there again, I feel those years fall away from me in a kind of spiritual rebirth.