TH02 - The Priest of Evil (19 page)

After all, he was utterly alone. He didn’t have a single colleague, no boss or staff, no one with whom he could discuss the problems of writing and how he could make it flow better. He had never belonged to writers’ cliques, it was as if he dared not feel part of such a thing; on
the other hand, the other post office workers had always considered him first and foremost a writer. Kikka was all he had, and he knew all too well that dumping his problems on her day after day would ultimately kill their relationship.

According to the screen there was now only a minute until the train arrived and he moved closer to the edge of the platform, perhaps even dangerously close, though he always moved back in time. He stretched out his neck and stared in the direction of the train. He wanted to see how beautiful the lights looked as they shone yellow against the tracks long before the train itself came into view. Even the sound of the wheels was pleasant: a steely cry like that of a frozen lake as a crack kilometres long sears through the ice.

Still he had the feeling that he was being watched! He spun around sharply, but didn’t catch anyone looking at him. Close to him stood a woman rather like Kikka, who looked back at him, slightly taken aback, and beyond her a dishevelled old man with glasses. There were lots of others too, dozens of people in a jostling crowd just like every morning at this time, but none of them were looking in his direction, let alone openly staring at him. Seeing the woman reminded him that he had promised Kikka to deal with the problem that same day. He absent-mindedly pursed his lips together, reached for his mobile and reluctantly began walking back towards the escalators. He dialled the number.

‘Moisio,’ his father answered the way he always did, making certain it sounded like the name of a manor house or a royal court.

‘Good morning, it’s Mikko.’

‘Good morning indeed. You haven’t called us for a while.’

‘I’ve been working really hard. And there are so many other things going on too… Can I come round?’

‘What day?’

‘Well, now if that’s OK…’

‘Your mother and I are going to the market for some caviar. Why don’t you come over this evening and join us for some blinis?’

‘No thank you. It’s actually rather important…’

‘We would have to change our plans entirely, of course. Wait a moment.’

He heard his father cover the mouthpiece with the palm of his hand – everything softened – but Mikko could still hear him shouting to his mother, who was clearly in another room. ‘Mikko’s insisting on coming round. Do you mind?’ His mother replied, and although he couldn’t quite make out the words he detected her familiar, somewhat irritated tone of voice. He began to feel uncomfortable, as though he were wearing a shirt that was too tight, making it hard to breathe, and he could feel his armpits dampening, streams of sweat trickling down his sleeve.

‘Come if you must,’ said his father. ‘But we can only wait an hour. Your mother has a hair appointment at ten.’

‘Thank you… Can I bring you something?’

‘No, don’t bring anything.’

‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

‘That’s a quarter past eight.’

‘Yes, thanks again,’ he said and decided to walk to Eira so that he wouldn’t have to wait in the stairwell. He decided to go past the Market Square and buy some flowers, even though last time his mother had simply left them unopened on the draining board and the time before that she had inexplicably had a severe allergic reaction to them.

‘
Arberata et constatellum
,’ he thought, somewhat amazed, for surely no penniless folk could afford to live in this part of the city. What could an impoverished writer living in a tiny flat in Kallio possibly be doing in a place like this? He stopped at a pedestrian crossing at the intersection of Kapteeninkatu and Tehtaankatu and looked carefully to the left. From this vantage point he could see that Mikko Matias went into the fourth door along. The place had to be a familiar one, as he had clearly known the door code.

Who could he have been visiting? His parents, he guessed straight away. And if only one of his parents were still alive then it was his mother, as no man would take his own father a bunch of flowers. It must have been something very important – he had seen on the platform how the writer had hesitated and changed his mind at the last minute. There was
something almost amusing about the whole episode – he would never know quite what a lucky decision that had been, for although Maammo had not appeared to him that night, he sensed that the situation was so critical for the Coming of the Truth that it was nothing less than his duty to carry out the sacrifice.

He stepped closer to the wall and only then did he realise why the place made him shudder: this was the same street corner where several years ago two police officers had been murdered. He felt something more, someone else had died at this crossing too, and the image of a little girl and a tram flashed through his mind, followed by a strip of pitch-dark night and bright explosions. Perhaps someone had died here in the bombings during the war, but the matter did not interest him any further.

He was only interested in Mikko Matias. Primarily this was because never before had he managed to build up such a complete picture of a sacrificial victim. For him they had been nothing but a blurred mass of greed and filth. However, Mikko Matias was gradually becoming a person to him. Nonetheless, he too lived in sin and lechery, so this would not affect his plans in any way.

In some ways Mikko Matias had the same amenable nature as his former son. He had clearly felt the presence of Maammo, but had not been able to say where it had come from. Every now and then he had glanced around as if he were looking for something, and on the Esplanade he had even popped into a pharmacy, pretending to buy something, when in fact he had simply stared out of the window to see if anyone walked hesitantly past the door, or if someone might follow him inside.

And that sensitiveness had produced a very rare phenomenon. At several points the writer’s hands had been surrounded by an aura, a bright shining like those in Kirlian photographs. He had only seen this once before. He had met a shrivelled old woman who was able to cure people’s ailments with herbs, or by touching them with her bare hands. Perhaps Mikko Matias’ aura was somehow linked to his profession – after all, writers quite literally work with their hands.

For the boy, the death of the man who was once his father and this sudden change of plans might be difficult at first. But he would soon
recover; more than ever before he would need a father figure in his life, and he knew exactly how this could be achieved. In any case the boy would not be able to grieve the death of his former father for long. His feeling that the boy’s own sacrifice would be very soon indeed strengthened with every minute that passed. He was still only missing one thing: a location, a stage. Maammo had not yet given him the smallest clue as to where it should take place. Unless this too were some kind of test through which Maammo wished to shore up his loyalty.

He leisurely walked the twenty or so metres to the tram stop and waited, looking every now and then at his watch. He was good at waiting, experienced. Nothing could be more demanding than standing in a draughty station for hours on end handing out leaflets, waiting to see an expression of interest – let alone thanks – spread across those impenitent faces.

And what he was now waiting for was something very interesting indeed: how fascinating would the swirl of the spirit be as it left the body of a writer.

The brass letter-box was embossed with the word ‘
L
ETTERS
’. As a child Mikko hadn’t understood what it meant, but now he realised that the gap was too narrow for the newspaper and that was why the delivery boy had always stuffed it beneath the door handle. The letter-box had been polished so that it shone like gold, and so had the handle and the bell. It had always been like this, and seemed like it always would be. How strongly that same letter-box was associated with Mikko’s earliest memories.

He glanced at his watch – it was exactly quarter past eight – and quickly ran through how he should broach the subject of money. It occurred to him again that they were after all his own mother and father, not gods who decided who could and could not live.

He knocked on the door, instinctively so that it sounded neither too strong and arrogant nor too timid and quiet, and through the door he could hear his father clearing his throat and getting up from his armchair. The floor
creaked beneath his feet the way it always did. Then came the sound of his father’s heavy footsteps approaching the hallway. His father had always been an imposing man, and he still was; not only because of his size and manner, but because of his status too. He was an economist by trade and had spent his entire working life in the service of numerous banks, in positions so important that his word alone had been crucial in devising income strategies and even in finalising the details of the national budget.

His father pressed down the handle of the inner door. It still made that strange metallic creak which aroused an old, indistinct sense of fear in Mikko. As a child perhaps he had associated this with coming home, late for dinner yet again, and being forced to fetch the belt hanging in the kitchen doorway. The sound was also associated with his mother or father returning home; he could never tell what mood they were in, he had to read it from their gestures, their expressions. A certain type of expression could mean another night of hell, a night spent prying his father’s fingers off his mother’s neck, or keeping him away from the gun cabinet – or even wrestling him off the window ledge. Would he jump this time? None of their relatives or neighbours had suspected a thing, the façade had been immaculate.

‘Well well,’ said his father – he always said that – and proffered his massive fist. They shook hands like strangers, but still it was the closest contact they ever had. ‘Come in.
Dear,
Mikko has arrived.’

His mother appeared in the living room doorway. She always seemed to be suffering and decrepit, and though there was nothing wrong with her physically, she had taken every available test at every hospital in the city. On the surface she was in tip-top shape: her blouse gleamed, it must have been of pure silk; she wore thick, golden rings on her fingers and bracelets on her wrists, so many pieces of jewellery that any sense of good taste was long gone.

‘These are for you,’ said Mikko as he handed her the bunch of roses. This time he had unwrapped the bouquet on the forecourt.

‘Dear me, I don’t know why you bring me these things. I’ll only come down with some reaction or other.’

‘Come on through,’ his father said. He was wearing a suit, a white shirt and tie. ‘Take your shoes off first.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Mikko muttered humbly, and he could hear his mother go into the kitchen, but couldn’t make out the sound of her opening the cupboard with the vases, nor could he hear the water running. Something was gnawing away at him. He remembered that whenever he had brought his parents signed copies of his books they had never so much as touched them, telling him instead to leave them on the table; and afterwards they never even mentioned them. He wondered whether they’d bothered to read them at all.

‘Sit,’ his father ordered, gesturing towards the sofa. Coffee had been laid out on the round Chippendale table, the same one that as children he and his sisters had been forbidden to touch so as not to smear it with fingerprints. Only Marja had dared to touch it in secret, and because their parents had never established which of them was the culprit a collective thrashing had followed. His mother appeared from the kitchen and sighed quietly. Mikko knew why too: to demonstrate what a nuisance his sudden arrival had caused.

‘You said there was something you wished to discuss,’ his father began. This too was more than familiar to Mikko; they never exchanged any kind of pleasantries, and although he had planned what he was going to say in advance, he was suddenly confused, lost; perhaps partly because he had never before thought to ask his parents for anything.

‘Well, I’m in a bit of trouble… It’s to do with Cecilia.’

‘Your father and I knew from the start that nothing would come of that marriage, but of course you wouldn’t listen.’

‘It did last eighteen years…’

‘Your father and I have been together for fifty happy years.’

‘Yes,’ he stammered. He wanted to say more but kept his thoughts to himself.
You’ve been together for fifty years of hell, constant nagging and bickering; it’s a miracle your children are capable of having relationships with other people at all.

‘Have you still not been able to sort things out with that Cecilia of yours?’

‘This is about Matti actually. Sanna and her friend have moved to a flat in Vesala, so now Matti is going to move in with me.’

‘And how is that possible? As far as I understood it there were clear conditions regarding this in your settlement.’

‘Yes, but in real life not everyone follows those agreements…’

‘I always said that woman was greedy and malicious.’

‘It’s not about that… The fact is that I can’t live in a one room bedsit with another person and write at the same time.’

‘Write?’ said his mother incredulously. ‘You haven’t written a thing in seven years. I tell you, creativity and other such nonsense all comes to an end sooner or later. One day you’ll simply have to accept it.’

‘That’s right,’ his father croaked. ‘It’s the natural way of things, once you’ve fallen from the top it’s impossible to climb back up there.’

Mikko felt very awkward indeed, so much so that he could feel a churning at the bottom of his stomach, as though vomit were rising upwards, the acrid taste tickling the back of his throat. What an idiot, why did I come here, he thought. I still haven’t got to the point.
Do you remember whipping me whenever we went to the countryside, Mother? First you would strip me naked and command me to bend over a chair, then you’d start whacking me with birch branches; first on the back of my legs, then on the front. The blows would get higher and higher, and you would only stop once you had struck my penis. Did it give you some kind of satisfaction?