The Bodyguard (7 page)

School started with religion. The topic was the sons of Zebedee, which was one of Uncle Jari’s favorite jokes after he’d had a couple of beers. “Who was the father of Zebedee’s sons?” Would the teacher know the answer?

We built a snow castle during recess. Then it was time for math, where we practiced our times tables. They had always been easy for me; at home I sometimes played multiplication games with uncle’s matches. Next was arts and crafts, where I worked on a piece of embroidery. I could put it under Frida’s bowl. I had chosen yellow and dark-brown thread to stitch onto a light-brown piece of fabric. Other kids thought those colors were ugly, which just meant I had more supplies to work with.

I had been distracted again and suddenly remembered the doctor. I wouldn’t make a sound, no matter what sort of metallic objects they put inside me. I prepared for the pain by pricking the back of my hand with a needle. I could tolerate discomfort; I’d show that doctor.

When we were in the car, the teacher asked me all sorts of strange things, such as where did my uncle and I sleep, and whether we went to the sauna together to bathe. Did he kiss me? I told her that I usually got a good night kiss from him when I went to my own bed, and of course we went to the sauna together to save on heat.

“Do you sometimes kiss your uncle anywhere else, or just on the cheek?”

I thought about it. Yes, I had once kissed him on the hand when we played king and queen, but that had been years ago. My teacher was curious about this game and tried to get me to remember more. It had started when I had gotten a new red blanket, which looked like a king’s cape to me. I cut out a cardboard crown for Uncle Jari. We played this game for a bit, but then Matti had come over on his moped and that was the end of it. But kings’ hands had to be kissed, at least in fairy tales.

“Remember, you need to give the doctor proper answers. He’s the expert,” she told me when we arrived at the health care center, which was a low, wide white building near a tall factory chimney. A bit farther away the old quarry tower was visible; it looked like a fairy-tale castle. The nurse took me by the hand and led me down the hallway, asking for directions. The whole building smelled strange, kind of like our neighbor’s house.

The doctor was an old man with long white hairs growing out of his ears. I’d pull on them if he tried any funny business. A woman named Pirjo was also in the room; she occasionally dropped by our home to make sure we had enough food in the pantry. She was always nice to me, but Uncle Jari worried about her visits. If he knew she was coming over, he’d busy himself with cleaning and buying expensive meats and oranges.

They told me to wait while the doctor and the teacher stepped out for a minute. I looked around the room and noticed the weird bed-chair contraption that had horse saddle stirrups upside down on it. It looked funny. Then Pirjo and the doctor returned without the teacher and asked me to take my clothes off.

Was he really an expert? Doctors sometimes resurrected people, like Jesus had. He was a good man, this Jesus, but according to Uncle Jari, so much harm had been done in his name. Was I here because Jesus’s friend the doctor was trying to take the lynx away from us?

I decided not to protest and stripped down. My teacher had told me that God sees everywhere, so I assumed he saw under my clothes, too. Then why couldn’t the doctor see right through them, as well?

When asked, I explained away my scars with the cat story I had told earlier. He noticed the mark left by a needle, and I told him I’d accidentally pricked myself in arts and crafts class. He then asked me to get on the strange chair and started messing around with the stirrups. I was too short to reach them. He seemed to want to play cowboys and Indians, as he strapped my legs to the stirrups. Uncle had once read me a book about Delia, a white woman who lived with the Indians. In the story the Indians rode under a horse’s belly in order to fool the white people. This peculiar chair seemed like it was meant to trick me, too. I felt better when the doctor put a warm blanket on me.

“Just close your eyes and relax. You can pretend that you are in the sauna or on a warm beach somewhere,” he said calmly. He sounded nice. I didn’t dare close my eyes. I had to make sure he wasn’t going to inject me with truth serum. He was holding a metallic rod with a mirror on the end of it, just like the one the nurse had tried to use on me. He rubbed it between his hands. I didn’t like this game anymore, and I tried to pull my legs out of the stirrups. Pirjo just sat in the corner and stared—she wasn’t asked to join in the game.

“Hilja, honey, I need to examine you. If you won’t behave, I’ll need to tie up your hands as well. I can give you something to calm you down—then this won’t hurt.”

I knew he meant the truth serum, so I promised to behave. I felt the metallic object slide into me, and although it wasn’t as cold as before, it still didn’t feel right. You weren’t supposed to put anything down there.

“Good girl,” he told me, like our neighbor praising his horse. The metal was pulled out and something rubbery and soft took its place, but only for a second. It hurt a bit, but I didn’t complain. I hadn’t said a word about Frida.

The doctor untied my legs and asked me to turn onto my belly. I did as I was told, although I was worried because I couldn’t see his hands. He touched my butt carefully, then pulled a blanket over me.

“Do you like living with your uncle?” he asked.

“Yes!”

“And you have some secrets, too. Does the secret have to do with his privates?”

“No! Who would have that kind of secret?”

I was disappointed. The nice doctor was a lunatic.

“Your uncle doesn’t hurt you?”

“No, he’s nice to me!” I got off the bed, still wrapped in the blanket, and gave him an angry look. “No matter what kind of truth serum you give me I’m not going to tell you! It’s our secret!” I was growing angrier and angrier for having been prodded and then asked stupid weiner questions. Only the dumbest boys at school talked like that.

“I told you that Jari Ilveskero is taking good care of her. I would have noticed if something was wrong,” said Pirjo finally.

The doctor let out a sigh. “Well, there certainly is nothing wrong with Hilja. Come on, Hilja, get dressed—I’ll have the nurse bring you ice cream from the cafeteria. What’s your favorite flavor?”

“Chocolate!” I blurted. We didn’t own a freezer, so ice cream was a rare treat.

The doctor left with Pirjo following close behind. Once I got dressed, I started playing around with the strange stirrup chair, pretending to be an Indian girl who the bad white men were trying to shoot with truth serum.

A nurse brought me the ice cream and a glass of orange soda, which I consumed while doing my homework. There was a knock on the door, and my teacher appeared, looking disheveled. Her eyes were red and her lipstick had spread all the way to her chin.

“Nobody is picking up the phone at your place. Do you know where your uncle might be?”

“He’s at the Hakkarainens, fixing up the barn roof.”

“Can you tell me which Hakkarainen? That’s a pretty common name around here.”

“They have a horse called Cutey,” I said, doing my best to be helpful. “I’ve ridden her twice, but she doesn’t like to wear a saddle. She won’t buck and try to throw me off, though, because we’re both good girls.” When I tried real hard, I remembered that Mr. Hakkarainen’s first name was Matti. My teacher said she’d take me home and Pirjo would follow in her own car.

Frida. I began to worry about her. Would Uncle have time to hide her before we all got there? The teacher and Pirjo musn’t see Frida. I felt sick all the way home, and once we reached our yard I started to cry. I ran to the backyard; Frida was not there.

“Hilja, can you please wait outside while we talk to your uncle?” asked my teacher. Uncle Jari came to the door and looked angry again. Oh, no, did he think that I’d told them? Instead, he smiled at me and was about to give me a hug when Pirjo told me to wait outside.

I walked to the sauna building to see if there was still warm water in the basin that I could use to wash myself. As I got closer to the building I heard the familiar meowing and scratching. Uncle had managed to hide Frida! I didn’t open the door to greet her in case she’d run outside. The clean laundry from Saturday was still at the sauna where we’d set it out to dry, so I put on fresh panties after I washed myself, just like I’d been taught.

My teacher called me back. Her eyes were even redder than before, and Pirjo looked like our neighbor’s dog after it had been scolded. Uncle Jari was still angry, too, but I could tell that he wasn’t angry at me. He hugged me tightly.

“I should sue you two! This girl has already had enough to deal with in her short life, so I’ll let it be this time. But you need to apologize to her, and make sure the nurse does the same next time she’s at school.”

Teacher knelt in front of me and stroked my cheek.

“Dear, dear Hilja. I was just doing what I thought was best for you. You read these terrible things in books and newspapers. I’m so sorry about the examinations; they were all for nothing.” Her crying terrified me.

“Please forgive me, Hilja,” said Pirjo. “I was just doing my job. We’re all on your side here.”

All this apologizing made no sense to me, but I supposed it was about their stupid questions and the cold metal object they’d put inside me. I forgave them, although I would have preferred to tell the nurse to get lost the next time I saw her. Uncle Jari said that after they were done apologizing, we would never bring this up again. Adults could be very stupid sometimes, and I had not done anything wrong.

Ever since that incident I have been afraid of doctors, so the checkups I needed to have for the army or work were excruciating. Occasionally, I have nightmares about being tied to the stirrups at a gynecologist’s office. Only through learning judo and other martial arts did I finally convince myself that I was safe; that nobody would ever again abuse my body so easily. When I first had an IUD inserted, it felt like there was a strange object inside of me, but at least it prevented another unwanted object from appearing—a baby.

The cabin provided sweet solitude from my memories. There were no ghosts from the past, no people to protect. I finished my beer and rummaged around for a bottle of tequila I’d bought the summer before. I dipped a glass rim in salt. It would do me good to have a few drinks right now. It had been only a week since I’d left Moscow, and I would have paid a large sum to go back in time to stop Anita from entering the furrier, to convince her that we didn’t have any more time to try on coats. I would have given anything not to have the death of a human being on my list of transgressions.

7

It was almost eleven by the time I woke up. The rain had shrouded the cabin in gray, with speckles of bright-green moss shining through the veil. One glance at the half-empty tequila bottle on the counter and I knew why my head felt so heavy. I took off my pajamas and stood outside in the rain, where only a black woodpecker or an elk might be watching me.

My moment of peace ended when my phone rang. I rushed back into the cabin and saw the call was from an unfamiliar number. When I answered, I could only hear humming at first, then a couple of words in French, and finally a friendly voice speaking in Swedish. Monika.

“Hey there, Hilja, still sleeping?” she asked.

Mozambique was in the same time zone as Finland, and most likely Monika had already been working for hours. I was cold, but I didn’t dare hang up to get dressed in case she wouldn’t be able to call back again.

“I just got your e-mails. The Internet service is pretty spotty here and I’ve been so busy. We’re in the middle of a huge toilet building project.”

“You’re building toilets now? What happened to cooking?”

“I still cook a bit, but how can I focus on food when people don’t have proper restrooms? Anyway, how are you doing?”

Monika’s move to Mozambique had been a relief in a way—I had let her get too close. From the bits and pieces I had told her, she’d tried to put together the story of my past and on occasion it had gotten unbearable. I just hadn’t been ready to remember everything yet, no matter how many times Monika told me it would only do me good. But now she was thousands of miles away, on a completely different continent, so I would let myself speak freely.

“I feel like shit. It’s like a mental and physical hangover.” She’d called on the prepaid line; I doubted the police would be listening in. “I’m here at the cabin, trying to open Anita’s safe. She left it to me, in cas
e . . .
”

I started crying. Fuck. I couldn’t get weepy right now.

“Shouldn’t you give the safe to the police? Surely they can figure out how to open it.”

“The police? They’re useless! They and the Moscow militia both claim that Anita was shot by some drunkard who then died of alcohol poisoning.”

The line was crackling and it was hard to hear what Monika was saying. Then the call ended. I stood staring at my cell phone until I noticed I was covered in goose bumps. I managed to get my underwear, jeans, and a T-shirt on before the phone rang again. This time, Monika’s voice was clearer, as if she were right next to me.

“Some homeless drunk shot Anita?”

“Of course not! It was definitely ordered by Valentin Paskevich. You remember, Anita’s former lover—they used to come to the restaurant. Paskevich’s men threatened me by voice mail, too. But the police think the case is closed. Or at least the militia thinks so. The constable at the National Bureau of Investigation didn’t quite agree, but what can he do? What can anyone do?”

“Get in touch with Helena! She knows how the Russian militia works.
Un moment, je vien
s
. . .
” Monika’s voice grew faint.

“Helena who?”

“Representative Helena Lehmusvuo. She used to come to Chez Monique, as well.
Oui oui, je viens—
I’m sorry, I need to go. Some sort of catastrophe.”

Monika was gone and the phone didn’t ring again. I put on a sweater over my T-shirt and brewed black tea as strong as I could make it. The oatmeal and tomato juice with plenty of salt and black pepper rejuvenated me, although I could still taste the tequila in my mouth.

I’d find Helena Lehmusvuo through information provided by the cabinet. Right now I was in no shape to get in touch with her, but I did make a call to find out how to reach her assistant. I really could have used Internet access again. Typing a long e-mail on my phone was excruciatingly slow, and I had no patience for it. I turned my phone off and left it in a locked box while I checked the shed outside for anything I could use to create an explosive. All you needed was gasoline, baking powder, and eggs, but the result would be more like a little bang than a controlled explosion that would break the lock on the safe without harming its contents. The lock was supposed to be secure. I’d need to think of combinations that Anita may have used. She had to have some mnemonics.

I still had her house keys on me—Laitio had not asked me to hand them over. The police had probably been there to search the place before they had talked to me. But had they been able to scrutinize the place like I would? The house was not a crime scene, so they may not have secured it. I knew its security system inside and out. The maid lived off-site and wasn’t there often. And anyway, some of my junk was still at the house, so I had a legitimate reason to go. I made a mental note to visit the Lehtisaari residence.

I put on my rain gear and walked out of the cabin with a basket and a mushroom knife. Despite the weather I found plenty of mushrooms to pick. I also ran into a couple of campers at the Hiekkamäki campground. I’ve never understood the desire to spend one’s holidays so close to other people, where private family disputes become public and everyone is aware of your eating habits. Because of the campground, at first I had doubted whether renting the Degerby cabin was a good idea. I knew I couldn’t escape from other people completely, but so far, at least, there was no one camping on the cliffs behind the cabin.

I made sure that the rowboat that came with the cabin was still docked on the shore, and I scooped rainwater out of it. A swan glided on the surface of the rainy lake, not paying any attention to me.

I walked back to the cabin through the forest. I didn’t notice the carcass until I was a couple yards away. It was pressed into the ground and so fresh that there was no smell, although the flies were already buzzing around it. The deer’s coat was wet from rain and blood, its eyes expressionless and empty. Elk season had not yet begun and I doubted that poachers would just randomly shoot at animals in an area so full of vacationers. The deer was only a couple dozen yards away from the road, so I supposed someone may have run into it and thought it survived. Or maybe it had died of old age or a disease.

There was a fourth possibility, which I confirmed as I stepped closer to the deer: it had been killed on purpose, but not by shooting. The neck wounds were undoubtedly the work of a lynx, and it had had a chance to fill its belly with meat. There were broken twigs and blueberry bushes all around; the deer’s antlers had been shattered in multiple places during the viscious fight.

Legally speaking, I should have called either the police or the gamekeeping association, who would have argued that the dead deer belonged to whoever owned the land, usually the local hunting club. I disagreed. The deer belonged to the lynx, who had hunted it down. Maybe it was a mother with hungry cubs.

My scent could have rubbed off on the deer, so I stepped away from it. The animal had died in a fairly open area—the forest would be teeming with mushroom hunters this time of year, some on the hunt with their dogs. Usually people avoided picking wet mushrooms and berries, so at least the lynx had the rain on its side.

I checked my surroundings. It wasn’t easy to find tracks on the forest floor, which was mostly covered by rocks and small bushes, but I finally found a couple of familiar-looking paw prints. Slightly farther away I spotted light-yellow hairs that had been ripped off during the battle.

I’d felt the presence of a lynx at the cabin, and thought I’d seen its amber eyes flash in the light of my head lamp when I’d climbed to the top of the cliff to watch the storm unfold. In the past, people had told me they’d seen lynx near the river, and tracks could be found on the sea ice, as well as a few miles east in Koppernäs, where lynx had hundreds of acres of untouched lands and piles of rocks for dens. There was enough for them to eat—deer and hares—but there were also dogs, whose restless barks would carry the news from one house to another as soon as they’d detect an elk or a lynx nearby.

Sensing the lynx’s presence helped me to focus. The animals were able to sit without moving for long periods of time, so still that they’d be camouflaged and almost invisible. Although the rain kept getting heavier, I walked in the forest for hours, thinking. Once I got back to the cabin, I set the mushrooms out to dry before I gave Saara Hirvelä, Helena Lehmusvuo’s assistant, a call. I only managed to reach her voice mail, so I left a request for a call back and mentioned that I had worked with Anita Nuutinen and that Lehmusvuo and I had met before.

I turned on the news. There was a report about the Russian operations in Georgia and speculations about how Georgia’s potential NATO membership would affect global politics. Uncle Jari had always been interested in politics and was vehemently against Finland joining the European Union. When we officially joined, he burned the Finnish flag in our yard in protest. Then again, he’d fortified himself with quite a lot of moonshine before that. Later he explained that the flag was damaged and therefore wasn’t usable anymore, so it had to be burned out of respect. That same day he went to Kaavi to buy a new flag.

Before my uncle became my legal guardian, he had been in trade school, learning construction. For four years he traveled around working on construction sites before he had to settle down with me. I can’t really remember what it was like before I lived with my uncle; I have a few hazy recollections, but I could never tell which were real and which I had made up. There was an apartment building, and from its window I could see a garbage truck. I’d remember the smell of mashed potatoes, hot dogs, and fish sticks. The red shoes clonking on the wooden floor, the soft red lips on my forehead. The red on the floor, all over, that smudged my pajamas and seeped through my pants, the red flame in my dad’s eyes.

Monika was the only person I’d told about all of this. Now I banished the memories by thinking about the dead deer. I didn’t have a camera with a telephoto lens—which was a pity, since the lynx wouldn’t come close if it could smell me. I’d rather let it eat in peace than disturb it just to make myself feel better by being close to my soul mate.

I did what Uncle Jari would do. I took a nap, and soon I was in that state between sleep and consciousness, just like on the Moscow train. I was at the building door again, waiting for Anita. She stepped out, and someone immediately hit me. When I came to, Anita’s cream-colored silk scarf was on the street next to me, but she was nowhere in sight. I awoke with a start when a squirrel ran across the tin roof. Was my dream a memory, or just my foolish hope that the scarf had ended up with me for some innocent reason?

My phone rang after six p.m., and although it was from an anonymous caller, I decided to pick it up. A familiar voice was on the line.

“Hello, this is Helena Lehmusvuo. My condolences. Were you there when Anita Nuutinen was shot?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Of course it’s a load of crap that some homeless man shot her. We’re dealing with bigger players here. Had she given you a night off?”

“I don’t think we should be talking about this over the phone.”

“Yes, you’re right. Can we meet? Are you in Helsinki or near Kirkkonummi any time this weekend?”

Lehmusvuo lived just outside of Helsinki in Kirkkonummi and had been voted in as representative for the Uudenmaa region, which contains the capital city and its suburbs. I suggested that we meet there, so she invited me over to her place on Friday night. This bought me some time. Of course, once she heard the story, she’d probably blame me for what had happened. But at least on my way to Kirkkonummi, I could drop by the library to check my e-mail and do some more research online. The next couple days, however, I could take it easy and focus on getting into Anita’s safe.

I ate a mushroom omelette and wrote down possible codes for the safe while I waited for the sauna to heat up. I tried all the ones I’d warned Anita against: her birthday, her daughter’s birthday, backward, forward, and mixed up. My social security number, bank account number, our passport numbers, all the phone numbers that had some connection to Anita, including Valentin Paskevich’s official phone number. None of them worked. I went to the sauna to stretch my muscles and relax, assisted only by a beer and a bit of tequila. Then I watched the ten o’clock news, but there was nothing on Anita. I read a tattered
Anne of Green Gables
I found in the cabin until sleep pressed my eyes shut.

A flock of loud cranes woke me up at dawn. I went to the bathroom, had a glass of water, and tried falling asleep again. I was lying on a field of moss, the spring sun warming my body. My uterus could not take it any longer; I had to push, and a bloodied lynx cub appeared from inside me. It rooted around for my nipple. Before it reached its target, another cub emerged, just as energetic as the first, and found my nipple. I felt my milk flow to their hungry mouths, their damp fur cooling my belly. Then a third cub appeared, just as hungry as the siblings. I thought I would not be able to feed it but as I looked down on my belly, I saw myself covered in fur, with two more nipples. The third cub grabbed the nipple right below my heart and began to suck on it. All four of us purred. I knew I would wake up soon, but I tried to prolong the dream. I was sad to return to reality.

Monika had decided that she wouldn’t bring any kids into the world until everyone had enough to eat. My motivations weren’t quite that pure. I just thought I wouldn’t make a good mother. I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t get tired of the child and drive him away like a mother lynx does to her cubs when she is in heat.