her teenage years to raising John and Mary, to her studies and to skiing. It had never entered her mind that she might not become a world-class ski champion. For her, falling had been a mistake, a kind of failure. Kate didn’t allow herself failure. She swore to herself that she would rebuild her life and never fail again.
When Kate completed high school, her perfect grades, high scores on aptitude tests and dismal financial situation guaranteed her college scholarships. She first studied at the Aspen community college extension of Colorado Mountain College, where she earned an associate’s degree in ski-area operations. Then she worked at a ski resort for two years, where she gained lower-level management experience.
By that time, in 2002, Kate was twenty-two, Mary seventeen and John sixteen. Kate wanted to continue her education. Randy was still a useless drunk, but Mary agreed to look after John until he graduated from high school. Kate got a scholarship from Princeton University. Randy died of liver failure about the time she completed her bachelor’s degree in economics. I think his death was a relief to Kate in a way, and that relief brought her guilt.
When Randy died, Kate had been in a steady relationship for two years and engaged for six months. She broke it off. She said something about her father’s death made her unable to commit. Kate graduated from Princeton with her master’s in economics. She returned to Aspen, this time as upper management at a ski resort, and after a year and a half was running the place. Profits doubled.
In spring 2007, Levi Center, Finland’s largest ski resort, located a hundred miles inside the Arctic Circle, asked Kate to interview for the position of general manager. John had moved to New York to attend New York University. Mary had dropped out of college to marry a doctor and settled in Elkins, West Virginia. Kate had no reason to stay in Aspen and decided it was time for a change.
In June of 2007, Kate traveled to Finland. The owners wanted Kate’s help in expanding the resort into a massive operation. The Arctic seemed exotic. They offered her a six-figure income. She took the job. She met me at a midsummer barbecue party. We were married nine months later. She got pregnant a few months after that, discovered she was carrying twins, but miscarried. I believe, for Kate, losing the twins was another kind of failure, something unacceptable to her. She wanted a clean start, to put all the sorrow and misery behind us, so we moved here to Helsinki.
But I had left Helsinki years ago for a reason. I was never happy when I lived here as a younger man. Helsinki reminds me of my failed first marriage and of a man I killed in the line of duty. Helsinki isn’t a clean start for me. Just old bad blood.
I don’t like big-city life. I don’t like the memories. I don’t like the so-called international atmosphere. Kaamos, the dark time, is short-lived. The light coming and going so fast depresses me. I miss the long Arctic darkness. Already now, in January, we have daylight from around nine a.m. until four p.m. This winter is nice, but most years it’s not cold enough in Helsinki, the snow doesn’t stick. Makes it like sloshing around in a bucket of shit all winter. I’m homesick for the North.
Kate’s eyes meet mine for a moment. She understands I’m trying to stop the argument and lets me. ‘I’m a little nervous about seeing them because it’s been so long,’ she says. ‘The last time I saw John was in 2006. The last time I saw Mary was 2005. They’re grown up now, and I wonder how they’ve changed. Still, who would have thought that three poor kids like us would have done so well. I’m running the best hotel in the city and John is becoming a university history teacher. Mary is a doctor’s wife. I more or less raised them. It makes me proud.’
‘You have a right to be proud,’ I say, ‘and I’m proud of you.’ I check the time, it’s a little after three. My therapy session begins at four. I’ve been attending counseling for eight months now, and dread it more and more as time goes by.
I hesitate. Apologies are difficult for me. ‘Kate, I meant what I said. You’re going to be a great mother. I was out of line and didn’t mean to imply otherwise. It just came out wrong.’
She squeezes my hand. ‘I know.’
Chapter 8
I limp through the snow toward my Saab. It’s parked near the taxi stand on Helsinginkatu. The street is nicknamed Raate Road, after the scene of a decisive and bloody battle in the Winter War, for the same reason that Vaasankatu is called Hunting Knife Boulevard. It has a bad reputation from bygone days, but not much real wickedness goes on here anymore. It’s true that Kallio has its fair share of the permanently unemployed that live on welfare and spend their days in räkälät – snot bars, as they’re called – drinking cheap beer, but most towns in Finland have their welfare drunks and dives for them to booze in.
I hear shouting down the street. As I close in, I see a man in front of Ebeneser School, a special-needs place for kids with dysphasia. The students there have speech disorders of one kind or another, difficulties with language comprehension or production, most often the result of varying degrees of brain damage. Some can speak but not write, others write but don’t speak. Very occasionally, a child will be able to sing but not speak.
The school is a beautiful off-peach Art Nouveau building constructed around the turn of the twentieth century, fronted by a chain-link fence interlaced with a growth of decades-old ivy, now wreathed in frost. I get closer and see that the screaming comes from a young man waving a half-empty bottle of Finlandia vodka. His rant is biblical and apocryphal in nature, and he has a bad speech impediment.
‘Thpawns of Thatan, damned at biddth, you have fawen fwom da Towew of Babel. Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!’
I get up close to him and look through the fence. Four little bundled-up children stand on the other side of it, terror-stricken but fascinated. I see no supervising adult. It pisses me off. ‘Listen kids,’ I say to them, ‘I’m a policeman. Would you please go inside.’
The guy bellows an incoherent howl and screams again. ‘Bettew dat you had nevew been bodn!’
They don’t move. I make shooing motions with my hands. ‘Run along now,’ I say.
They scramble toward the front door. The guy isn’t making any noise now, but he flails his arms, makes frantic gestures, waves the bottle and claws at his face.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘My name is Weejun. Away fwom me, thpawn of hell.’
‘Well, Mr Legion, why were you scaring those kids?’
He gulps a drink from the bottle, wraps his arms around himself, rolls his head back and forth and shakes. He’s coming apart at the seams. He shrieks like a hurt animal, then manages a shrill, understandable utterance. ‘To save deir souws! Dey awe damned unwess I thave dem!’
I’m tempted to ask him why, if his name is Legion, aka Satan, he wants to save the children rather than see them spend eternity in hell. Then I decide I’m not interested in the logic of the insane. My head throbs – hate boils up in me.
I grab Legion by the neck, smack his face against the snow-covered fence. It gives me a modicum of satisfaction, so I do it again. He’s a skinny little bastard, maybe a hundred and thirty-five pounds. I’ve been working out hard for most of the past year, since we moved to Helsinki. It takes my mind off the headaches. I bench-press more than twice his weight. He starts to cry, his knees start to give way. I grab him by the neck with one hand, hold him up by his head so that his feet barely graze the ground and look close at him. He’s in his mid-twenties and has a bad, close-cropped haircut that looks like a home job. His longish beard is unkempt. His coat, pants and shoes are neat and clean though. I’m guessing his parents
