As White as Snow (2 page)

For a while, Lumikki’s mom and dad had wanted to keep her at home in Riihimäki, north of Helsinki. They’d even pushed to give up her tiny apartment in Tampere, but Lumikki wouldn’t hear of it. She spent all spring delivering newspapers to cover the rent, convincing her parents to keep the apartment “just in case.” For the first few weeks, though, there was no point trying to get them to let her stay there overnight. Lumikki just accepted the situation and took the train all the way to Tampere for school every day. Gradually, her parents saw how impractical the commute was, and Lumikki started slowly moving her things back to the apartment. One overnight there turned to two, two turned to three, and eventually, in May, she announced that she would only be dropping by Riihimäki every once in a while. Period. Her parents didn’t say anything. How could they have stopped her? She was practically an adult, after all. Lumikki could pay the rent from savings and her small student stipend if she had to.

After school ended, Lumikki wanted a break. She booked a ticket to Prague, looked for an inexpensive room in a hostel, packed her backpack with just the bare necessities, and left.

The moment the airplane took off, she could feel the relief in her gut. Time away from Finland. Away from her parents’ constant anxiety. Away from the streets where she sometimes still flinched when she saw a man dressed all in black. Lumikki had spent her whole life fighting fear. She hated fear. As she walked off the plane at the Prague airport, she felt the heavy chains loosen their grip. Her posture straightened and her steps became surer.

That’s why Lumikki was happy. That’s why she turned her face toward the sun, closing her eyes and smiling to herself. Breathing in the scents of Central Europe. Digging through her backpack, she pulled out a postcard of the Charles Bridge lit up at night. She decided to write a quick note to Elisa, who was “Jenna” now because she and her mother had changed their names. That was the only way for them to stay safe after what happened with Elisa’s father. Lumikki still thought of Elisa as Elisa, though.

They lived in Oulu now, in the north of Finland, and Elisa was studying cosmetology. She wrote to Lumikki from time to time to keep her up to date. In the last letter, Elisa had written about finally visiting her father in prison and how it hadn’t felt as bad as she had imagined it would. It had been important to see her dad. In her letters, Elisa sounded surprisingly calm and a little more mature than before. The events of the winter had forced her to grow up and take responsibility. She couldn’t be daddy’s little party girl anymore, and
surprisingly, that seemed to fit her much better than her previous role. Lumikki was pleased that things were going so well for her, given the circumstances.

Actually, Elisa had made this trip possible. She’d sent Lumikki a thousand euros from the thirty thousand thrown into the yard before turning most of the rest over to the police. Lumikki told her parents that she was paying for the trip from her savings, but Elisa’s gift meant she didn’t need to touch them. It felt good to get the blood money used up and out of the secret compartment in her dresser where it never seemed to leave her alone.

Suddenly, a shadow fell over her face. The scent of incense with a hint of hemp soap overpowered the general smell of the city. Lumikki opened her eyes. Next to her stood a girl in her twenties wearing white linen trousers and a loose, long-sleeved shirt made of the same material. Her brown hair was done in two braids that wrapped around her head to form a crown. There was uncertainty in her gray eyes. The girl fingered the worn leather strap of her shoulder bag, which was the color of cognac.

Lumikki felt mild irritation.

She had seen the girl a few times before. She’d been watching Lumikki, apparently thinking she wouldn’t notice. They kept visiting the same tourist spots and crossing streets around town at the same time. The girl looked a couple of years older and was also on her own. Probably some sort of hippie looking for a traveling companion to sit with in parks drinking warm, cheap red wine and discussing the deep interconnectedness of the universe.

Not that there was anything wrong with that, but Lumikki had come to Prague specifically to be alone. She didn’t want any new friends.

When the girl opened her mouth, Lumikki had already planned what to say. It would be brief, polite, and cold. Cold always worked.

Despite the hot weather, though, by the time the girl reached the end of her sentence, a different kind of cold had crept up Lumikki’s spine and given her goosebumps.

“Jag tror att jag är din syster.”

I think I’m your sister.

I am your blood. I am your flesh. You are my blood. You are my flesh.

We are one family. We are mothers and fathers, parents and children, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles and cousins. Through us flows the same blood and the same faith, which is stronger than the mountains and deeper than the seas. God created us as one family, members of the same holy congregation.

Let us take each other by the hand. Sisters and brothers, our time will soon come. Jesus is calling us, and we will not hesitate to heed his call. We do not fear. Our faith is strong.

Our faith is as white as snow. It is pure and bright. It leaves no room for doubt. Our faith is like the light that will blind the sinners with its strength. Our faith will burn them even as the stubble of the field is devoured by fire.

We are the family that will always be one. We are the Holy White Family, and our patience will soon receive its reward.

The girl’s eyes scanned the café tables, the patio umbrellas, the faces of the tourists. Her slender, white fingers stroked the surface of her glass of ice water, drawing lines in the moisture condensing on it. She had only taken one sip, while Lumikki had already downed two large glasses of water along with her small cup of black coffee.

They had settled on the overpriced tourist café in the courtyard of the castle because there wasn’t anywhere else decent in the area. Lumikki’s mind was stumbling in circles. She didn’t know how to formulate the dozens of questions jostling for attention in her head.

“Jag måste kanske försöka förklara . . . ,”
the girl said uncertainly, barely above a whisper.

Yes, please do explain.

Lumikki stayed silent, deciding to let the girl tell her own story. No leading questions.

“
Jag har . . . kan jag prata engelska? Min svenska är lite . . . dålig.
”

By all means, speak English,
Lumikki thought as she nodded. She noticed that the girl spoke with a strong Czech accent. Swedish was not her native language. There had to be a reason she had addressed Lumikki in Swedish, though.

“My name is Lenka. I’m twenty years old,” she said.

Lumikki looked at her fingers, which continued their nervous movements on the surface of the water glass. On her left hand, a faint depression ran around her ring finger, as if she had worn a ring for a long time and just recently taken it off.

Lenka said that she had lived her whole life in Prague. She’d lived with her mother until the woman died when Lenka was fifteen. In an accident. A fall into the river at night.

Lenka’s voice grew thick. For a few long moments, she stared over the tourists’ heads toward the church, then eventually resumed her story.

“Since then . . . other people have taken care of me. Now I have a new family.”

“Are you married?” Lumikki asked.

Lenka shook her head violently.

“No, no, nothing like that. They are just good people who took me in. Do you believe in goodness?”

The question came so suddenly and with such earnestness that Lumikki had to buy time with a sip of coffee before answering.

“I believe in good deeds. And good intentions.”

Lenka looked her straight in the eyes. Lumikki didn’t know how to interpret her expression.

Was it contemplative or belligerent? She wished Lenka would get to the point, but stopped herself from rushing her.

As if she’d read Lumikki’s mind, Lenka said, “When I was small, my mother wouldn’t tell me anything about my father, even though my pestering must have driven her crazy. ‘You don’t have a father,’ was all she would say. I knew that was a lie. Everyone has a father. When I turned ten, my mother sat me down. Eleven years earlier, during the summer, she’d met a tourist. He was from Finland and spoke Swedish. His name was Peter Andersson.”

Lumikki felt cold again, even though the sweltering air swaddled them like an electric blanket. Automatically, she started searching Lenka’s face for her father’s features. Was there something similar in her straight, narrow nose? Her dark eyebrows? The line of her jaw? At moments, she could almost see her father’s face flickering in front of Lenka’s, but then the vision would disappear.

“According to my mother, the relationship was brief and intense. The man had a wife in Finland. I was a mistake, of course, but my mother decided to keep me. She didn’t tell the man—I mean my father—anything at that point. It wasn’t until I was two that she sent him a picture of me.”

Lenka paused for a moment and took a greedy gulp of water. Lumikki felt as if her chair were rocking under her. She was hearing Lenka’s words, but having a hard time processing them. Her father had another daughter. Here. Her older sister.

“My father wanted to meet me, but Mother refused. For years, he sent letters, cards, pictures, little gifts, and money for us. She never replied in any way and so, eventually, the letters became less frequent. Finally, they stopped altogether. Mother told me about my father, but not about the letters. I found them myself when I was twelve. Mother had hidden them in a box in the closet behind some sheets. I only got a few minutes to look through everything before Mother walked in and flew into a rage. She accused me of snooping behind her back. She grabbed the box and emptied the contents into the stove, burning everything up. I spent the whole night crying.”

Lenka spoke in a dull, reedy voice, but the trembling of her hands betrayed that saying these words wasn’t easy for her. For a long time, she sat silently, clearly not knowing how to continue.

Next to them was a boisterous group of Italian schoolchildren. The boys were chugging Cokes, competing to see who could belch the loudest. An American couple complained loudly about how confusing it was trying to convert euros to dollars and figure out whether they were really getting a bargain. Lumikki registered all of this, but the sounds felt as though they were coming from somewhere far away, from another dimension.

Lenka’s story was like a puzzle piece falling into place and filling a hole Lumikki had felt as long as she could remember. She had always known, sensed that her family was hiding something. There was something big that no one would talk about but that sometimes filled the rooms of their house so
densely it was hard to breathe. Her father’s tenseness. Her mother’s sad, wet eyes. The conversations that cut off abruptly when Lumikki entered a room.

But still, Lumikki had a hard time imagining anything like this about her father. Peter Andersson was such a restrained man, so controlled and beyond reproach. A lot of people had a public face and private face. At home, they could show the sorrow and exhaustion and regret they really felt. With their families, they could laugh and relax. Lumikki had always felt like her father only had a public face. He was always the same, wherever he was. The shell around him was strong and thick.

Could her father have had a torrid liaison in Prague? Was her father even capable of that kind of passion? He’d never said a word about visiting the city. It was strange. You’d have thought he would have given her advice about where to visit and what sights not to miss.

Lenka was talking about a Peter Andersson whom Lumikki didn’t recognize. That didn’t mean anything, though. It was entirely possible that there were sides to her father Lumikki didn’t know. Do we ever really know anyone else? Even the people closest to us?

“When Mother died, I thought I would never learn any more about my father. All I had was a name, Peter Andersson, and the fact that he lived in Finland and spoke Swedish. The name was common enough that it didn’t help at all. Then I saw you.”