Pyynikki

Once, when she had climbed up the steep hill along with a bunch of out-of-town friends to get on top of the Linnamäki mountain, where the wooden watchtower guarded the village – it was the sort of place where she always climbed with friends from out of town – she had taken in the landscape consisting of lakes and forests in all directions, as far as the eye could see, and burst into quiet, subdued tears. If you could see inside me, this it what it would look like, she had said so quietly the words were mere breathing, and, luckily, no one had seemed to hear her ridiculously emotional whispered confession.

She was sitting on one of the Viennese chairs at a café, just by the window, with her back to the rest of the place. It was her spot. It was that moment in spring, when, without it actually being springtime yet, nature, the wretched scoundrel, brought out its worst. It completely lacked all the signs of spring, signs that in a month or so would wake the hell up all Finns back to life and to smile, perhaps even to scream out loud a little out of the happiness of living, to pick branches with fluffy white and gray buds into vases at the kitchen table, to lighten their clothing, to step a bit more lightly as if to show their gratitude and applause the sarcastic old trees around them.

Now, the bare bones of the trees appeared strangely naked, obscene even, with water dripping from the tips of the branches, the steel gray of the day grinding itself against the bark, the foul-smelling ditches and banks bursting with garbage and waste; the odor of dog feces was at its worst at the spray-painted underpass. The earth was a washed-out brown-gray, not quite yet the pastel green that would mark the coming age of growth, nor was it the fiery, autumnal bronze, but simply a gray mass, speckled with disgusting sludge made out of what had once been the fallen leaves from the autumn and winter gone and some small pine cones that looked like tightly wound knots here and there.

Sun, the bearded, persistent old stalwart, was completely overcast by avalanches of clouds: only a faint silver coin was gleaming behind the layers and layers of gray. The shadowy, hilly spots were still totally frozen over, so if one was wearing her rubbers, she was on a constant alarm for possible tumbling. Only the most persistent walkers, the so-called Clint Eastwood -types, most commonly middle-aged ladies, alone or in twos, their rouged mouths in a thin, concentrated line, bothered to venture out into the colorless, flavorless day of spring avant spring.

Suddenly, the sun checked himself out momentarily from behind a thick curtain of clouds, straight on the pages of the book Mrs. Dalloway was reading. He was quick to hide again, but the small bundle of rays, a promise for the wet, gray days to end very soon, if she just waited a little bit longer, if she just kept her patience, made the whole day a little brighter.

At the next table over, two Russian men were eating their donuts and talking leisurely. One looked exactly like Anton Chekhov, goatee and all, sitting in front of his house in Yalta, wearing his pince-nez glasses. The other was so breath-takingly beautiful, Mrs. Dalloway had a hard time to quit staring, an activity which was both awkward and humiliating, considering the two men were sitting at her five o’clock. But having her neck ache like hell tomorrow was a small prize to pay for such immense handsomeness. She could picture the scene with N. at home:

“Look. I’m leaving you and running off with Dmitry. I’m so sorry.”

“What fucking Dmitry?”

“Dmitry, Dmitry, you know? Anton’s buddy.”

“Have you gone completely insane?”

“Try to understand. Think Ryan Gosling in Drive if you need to rationalize it.”

“I knew it! I never should have taken you to see that movie.”

“Now hold it right there, mister! Take that back immediately!”

Now, once more, she was gazing at the enormous mass of clouds, made momentarily brighter by the sun. The bare bones of the trees were sighing in dry wind that shrunk the largest puddles on the path a little. For some reason, she thought of how as a child, she had stretched her neck as far back as the backseat of the car would allow, to see the glowing Hämeenkatu, the bright white flowers and whinnying horses on both sides of the street, and, later, the seals and Tweety bird. She would ask father to wake her up when they were on the Lights Street. Now it felt so lame and somehow mind-numbingly level-headed that the light bulb figurines were going to be taken down, replaced. The little girl inside Mrs. Dalloway, watching the dancing lights through the windshield, in awe of the cream-colored shining orbs, got a hold of her, and for a moment she felt an urge to write an angry letter on the matter to whom it may concern. When she had squinted, the hundreds and hundreds of light bulbs had looked like an ocean of stars.

The ancient murmuring pine trees as her company she descended into town, taking the driveway proper. Whenever she would pass the playfield and its tall red picket fence, hearing the hurrays and go-go-gos or the sound of the bat hitting the ball just right from the other side of the fence, or seeing men and women stepping outside through the small gate with gear bags on their shoulders, then the gravel pathway of the Aleksanteri Church, surrounded by very old maples and ornamental gravestones, observing people returning from work or going to school, dog walkers, joggers, elderly couples on their daily stroll, city employees in their mandatory neon vests, scrubbing the headstones and railings clean with a rag from rust and other accumulated dirt, she thanked her lucky stars to be able to live here, at this moment in time.

It was a commonly known catch phrase, that whoever lived outside New York City must be somehow kidding. This was akin to how Mrs. Dalloway felt about her city. In Finland, anyone who was living somewhere else must be out of their minds. The redbrick holy building, with its multiple corners and towers, its shadowy nooks and window ornaments the shape of daisies, radiated noble tranquility. Grandma and Grandpa used to walk by here every day, she thought. Right here is where Grandpa carried the huge blue buckets to bring to father, so that he would fasten them on his car in the best possible way, to bring back home to Pyhäniemi, and those two huge buckets would stand underneath the rain gutters, for years and years, for decades those buckets would stand underneath the rain gutters, and thousands of liters of water would be scooped from them with a plastic scoop, or a deep green watering can would be dunked inside their ice-cold bellies for a refill.

She stepped inside the pleasant dimness of the second-hand bookstore smelling of dust and old books, said hello to the proprietor and ventured in the back, to the latest releases with the words For Your Review stamped on the first page, then to the DVD section, then downstairs. 

Two hours could easily go by as she took in the books. Every volume, every spine, every cheap paperback, a thirtieth or so edition, on the rotating display, would be whispering to her: Here I am, at last you came to take me home, you’ll never guess what secrets I have to tell you, you just wait, my love, you who can appreciate my leafed-through, cut-and-pasted pages speckled with gravy, my spine bleached, almost colorless, from years in the sun, the small notes written in the margins with a pencil – no? Well okay, that’s fine, because I am virginal like the sacred lily on the breast of Saint Mary! Yes, come closer, we have what you need, we have what you want, the classics from the Tammi Yellow Library, oh yes, we’ve got aplenty, and you don’t have this one or this one, and hello, there is the praised adventure tale from the Spanish contemporary writer you were dying for as summer reading! And here, here are the most beloved art books, poems the names of which you can never bring back except in dreams, let me take you just a little bit further, you will not be sorry, I promise, look here, an interesting and inexpensive guidebook on herbology, here the Carpelan you were looking for, here a short story collection you simply cannot pass, and here, here in the back corner, books in English, my love, your language of choice and of love, yes, my love, I know what you want, I know what you need, just follow me a little bit deeper and I shall fulfill your deepest, darkest passions, your eternal thirst for knowledge, your lust for dusty pages, your romance for books, yes, yes, let it happen, feel it, want it, no, don’t wait, time is the killer, do it Alex, do it now, I can take it, fill me up, I want it, yes, Alex, do it, do it now![1]

Blushing and agitated, Mrs. Dalloway picked up a couple of interesting looking paperbacks, retreated, eyes akimbo, behaving as if she was up to no good at all, ran up the stairs, and payed for her books.

Mrs. Dalloway adored biking, and when she really let go downhill the ridge, braking reluctantly at the more dangerous intersections, she was filled with an unspeakable love and tenderness for both the sport and her own childlike enthusiasm for it. Whenever she got on she felt rejuvenated and still expected every time to be as good as the first time. Of course, not every day was a good day for riding; sometimes the light just would not turn green, every single motorist was just dying to park his car right in front of her, the grannies swung curses at the sound of her ringing bell, the dog walkers swooped up their roccos or scooters or little mimis with the most reproachful look on their faces, the line at the grill, Vaakon nakki, circled all the way to the driveway, the alternative partyers crowded the entire front of their pub, smoking with a vengeance, spreading their hands in studded leather jackets as they loudly explained to their mates some anti-system issue that was both classless and free, and the headwind kept blowing so hard going uphill that a cheery jogger, wearing a wide grin on his face, easily passed the panting Mrs. Dalloway, struggling on her damn bike.

But most days were good riding days, and she would proudly pedal her three-gear Solifer past the pet shop and the flower mart and now empty space that used to sell structure gel nails. A couple of gentlemen standing in front of the pub Pulteri raised the corners of their mouths a little, the grannies allowed for her to pass without swinging a fist at her - wasn’t it weird that the fist-swingers were most commonly elderly women, while the older men in their green knee-high rubber boots, with two enormous canvas-covered feet growing from inside their mouths, would raise their hand in a hello if one helloed them first - the dogwalkers smiled back, tightening their grip of the leash a tad when Mrs. Dalloway smiled at the dog, and the sun, the giddy old leg-pulling devil, was kind enough to stay hidden behind a thin wall of clouds instead of shining right into her eye, as he was setting somewhere behind Ylöjärvi to pester the bikers there trying to cycle against the sinking rays.

She had the few volumes from the second-hand bookstore and a bottle of Chateau Pech-Latt pressing against her in the backpack. She would, for a change, make risotto for dinner.

---

[1] Jack Nicholson as Daryl van Horne, to Cher’s Alexandra, slightly modified, in George Miller’s The Witches of Eastwick.