The Last Season (15 page)

Lehtonen looks up surprised. He now must deal with me immediately. He crosses the blueline, dips his shoulder left and fakes a stick shift to the right. As I knew he would. He then double-shifts and does move to the right, and my shoulder is there to welcome him. I forget the puck, leaving it and Susi to Timo. I forget all but the pressure of my shoulder along his chest. I can hear his breath popping. We hit the boards and I dig in with my skates thrusting upwards, sending Lehtonen so hard against the glass that it warps back and jumps out whole from its side channels and into the first-row crowd.

How perfect for Kristiina. The Tampere bench is shouting but the referee doesn't have the guts to call anything. It is a perfectly clean check but, for Finland, an unnatural act. I look at the clock and it is 1:39 into the first period. I have my hit. I feel the calm in my blood. There remains a wonderful, growling murmur in the stadium, indecipherable but absolutely clear: the sound of amazement.

I would give anything to see Kristiina's face but I cannot look. To look would be to admit that it happened. A great hockey player is oblivious to his effect on the game. This I earned from Orr, the true master of distancing himself from what is going on on the ice.

The glass reinserted, the game continues, but it is not the same game. I have established myself and my territory. Now when Tampere comes up across centre they look for me, not daring to chance deceiving me with their eyes. And once I have their eyes, I have them. It's as simple as that.

But I cannot do everything. The larger ice surface makes control more difficult, especially in our own end when it seems to me there is a second rink grafted behind our net. We survive, barely, a power play by them when Timo goes off for tripping, though they keep us bottled up in our own end for virtually the entire two minutes. But we make it through, thanks to me blocking a half-dozen shots from the point. Then they draw a penalty trying to stop Pekka breaking up centre. I get five straight shots from the point but no one has the sense to tip them in. Christ, I wish Torchy was here — or even Danny Shannon, fat and bald, he could still show them a few tricks. I get an unbelievable sixth chance and just slap it blindly at the net. It goes off Kamppuri's stick handle into an upper corner. 1–0 for Tapiola. We have the lead!

In the second period they tie up the game. We go up 2–1 on a sweet shot by Pekka on his backhand, but immediately they get one back. The scorer is a big defenceman named Esa Välioja and after his goal — a floater from the point that goes in only because of Timo's screen — he skates backwards to centre ice, drops to his knees and begins somersaulting toward his own goaltender, who skates out to congratulate him.

This I despise. I hated Tiger Williams when he rode his stick like a damn horse. I hated Shack when he stuck his stick back down his glove like he was sheathing a damned sword. I hate all hot dogs, except, of course, Torchy. When Batterinski scores, it is like he's not even there. Same with Orr or Lafleur or Bossy.

When Välioja comes over my blueline in the third period I am ready. He somersaults again, but no goal is scored. I hit him like a mule, blindsiding him with his head down, and he hits the boards like a car accident. I don't even turn to see. I watch their box, and when the trainer comes onto the ice I know I have hurt him.

“
Kanadalainen vittu!
”

The tone translates for me.
Fucking Canadian
. I look up and Välioja's fat-faced defence partner is standing with his stick out, thrusting the blade at me. I straighten up and stare at him, the calm in my blood so thick now that I see everything in slow motion. Even the stick, rising and then falling, and then suddenly time changes gears on me and it is racing. Time is running from me! I know I am on the ice and I know there is a towel against my eye but I do not know how I or it got there. It feels like I'm back on the ship, floating, nauseous. I open my eye and stare up at Pekka, leaning over. He swims on me. I feel hands under me, lifting. My eye feels warm, except the warmth is not comforting: it burns with fear.

I want desperately to look now for Kristiina. Only now I cannot see.

Kristiina is not concentrating on her driving. The gears grind as she speaks. “I'm not so sure you should be going ahead with this.”

I grind, listening, slowly finding my own gear: a lie.

“I'm sure. The doctors said it looks far worse than it is.”

“Okay then. Let's go.”

I am glad to be in the passenger's seat. This way, if I stare straight ahead she will not see the fat man's work. My right eye is swollen shut. Under the small bandage on the side of it are twenty-seven stitches, nineteen inside which will dissolve, eight on the outside which will be removed in a couple of weeks. I was damned lucky. So was the team — we managed to hold on to the tie.

Twenty-seven more puts me over the two hundred mark. That's respectable. I remember Derek Sanderson saying his father used to cut out the stitches and store them in a jar, and when he'd collected a hundred of Derek's stitches he threw them away, saying Derek had proved himself. Not like Poppa. Every time I got a stitch he'd tell me it didn't pay to fight. Bullshit it didn't. Every stitch I took brought me one step closer to the National Hockey League.

“Are you in any pain?” she asks.

“No.”

“You're awfully quiet.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About your game?”

“Feels good. Our first point.”

“You can sit there like that and say it
feels
good?” she says, smiling.

I half turn toward her with a smile. She is smiling back, but the difference between our two acts is so immense they should not even have the same word. I must look like a geek. Kristiina looks stunning, the sun playing through the window on her hair, the Lapland sweater all blue and red and purple and white and dazzling in the morning light, mesmerizing in what it holds.

How odd all this is. Her date, her car, her cottage, her plans. I feel weakened by it all.

“I imagine you've been up this road a lot,” she says.

“Yes. But I like the drive.” It is not the same, though. No loud bus this time, no laughter around you, no music — “Queen” in the rear fighting with “ABBA” in the front — and no Erkki gobbling up his fingers. This time I see the drive. I see the young boys ice-fishing as we go over a bridge. I see the skiers. I see an old man burning brush from a road clearing. He stands like Poppa, leaning over the fire as if he is chewing it out.

We pass several parked cars, people removing their equipment from the trunk and their skis stabbed into the bank on the side.

“Think you're ready for that?” she asks.

“Sure. Why not?”

“The doctors didn't say you couldn't?”

“No. I'll be playing Wednesday's game, too. So don't worry about me. I'm fine.”

“Great.”

“What is it, rope tow or chairlift?”

She laughs. My laugh “Cross-country, silly. Nordic. Not downhill.”

Oh my God — winter tennis!

Kristiina's father, thank heaven, is not here. He's pretty well my size but he must be a fairy. I am in his fishnet underwear, his yellow-and-green-checkered plus fours, his purple-braided kneesocks, his yellow corduroy waistcoat and his green fluorescent toque. Kristiina says I look smashing. I say smashed.

It is hard for me to appreciate whatever pleasure it is she takes from this sport. Kristiina's only advice is that I pretend I'm walking like Groucho Marx, but I still slide backwards on the slightest knoll. She is far ahead of me, a flash of pure white corduroy, pink stockings and toque, a high backward kick that looks from here as if she is falling on her face, but which ends up producing a long smooth glide until her next kick. She has waxed the skis and abandoned me, which I am in a way grateful for — a true athlete hates nothing so much as instruction.

Her bottom drives me on. To get her kick she must shift it quickly and the result is a fascinating shimmer that pulls me along like a magnet. I kick and scramble and hammer my poles into the snow and her bottom stays gloriously in sight. But I am tired. For a sissy sport I feel exhausted already. I must have lost more blood than I realize. She heads up a long, twisting, pine-covered hill, climbing first sideways, then herringbone, then slamming her skis onto the trail for grip and moving straight ahead. I feel like I'd be better off carrying my skis but cannot let her see me, so I struggle on and eventually the trail flattens and comes out onto a magnificent view of the lake and surrounding hills. The snow glints harshly on the eyes. Or in my case, eye.

“Come over here!” Kristiina calls. She is just beyond the larch, on a better outcropping. I try my best to ski over gracefully and do, but am forced to stop by stabbing my poles ahead and leaning into them, and this causes me to stumble and almost fall. Kristiina laughs. Her cheeks have lost their whiteness; they seem cooked now, pink-orange like the flesh of lake trout. There is a light, delicate frost on her upper lip and chin. I would kill to thaw it with my tongue.

“It's beautiful,” I say. I cannot say more. I have no breath.

“You can see a good part of the lake from here,” she says proudly.

“What's it called?”

“Paijanne.”

She raises a pole and points down toward the near shore with it. “See. There's the cabin.” I look and, from here, it looks much improved, more like an illustration in a children's book. There is smoke rising from the fire she set and more smoke coming out of the sauna by the edge of the lake. Closer up, it is just a primitive cottage. No floor insulation, no ceiling tiles, cheap pine panelling, a musty smell. Back home it would be magnificent hunting cabin, or a poor man's cottage.

“Our sauna waits us.”

“I need a drink.”

“A sauna first. Come on. I'll race you back.”

She is gone, the skis whispering away from me, teasing down the rise and in through a pocket to the coverage of the pine trees. I have no choice but to chase. I push off and my skis fall into her grooves, sighing. I feel the air moving fast into my bandage, stinging.

When I get to the cabin Kristiina is nowhere in sight. Her skis stand in the snow to the side of the sauna, poles beside them with gloves hanging empty in the straps. There is now more smoke coming out of the sauna than the cottage, so I can only presume she has stoked up the fire even more. I sweat just thinking about it.

“Kristiina!”

No answer.

I put her father's skis beside hers and take only one step, my foot breaking through the snow in those funny, long-toed boots and pitching me forward onto my elbows in the deep snow. I am glad she has not answered. I am glad she has not seen.

The sauna is divided into two sections, a small dressing room and the actual sauna, the two areas separated by a thick, unpainted birch door. The building smells of birch, hot and sweating. I check first in the dressing room and her ski clothes are
all
there, hanging from a large wooden peg.

“Kristiina!”

Nothing.

I am trapped. She must be able to hear me in there, but chooses not to. What I want to know is not where she is, but what she is wearing. I have brought my bathing trunks with me, expecting the sauna, but they are in my suitcase up in the cabin. Can I break in on the daughter wearing the father's fishnet underwear?

“Kristiina!”

Nothing.

I think I hear her little laugh, but can't be certain. I have no choice but to step out of her father's clothes, keeping on his kinky shorts, and hope she rescues me somehow. But there is nothing. I step out and jump across the cool hallway between the two rooms and knock. No answer.

“Come on, Kristiina — are you in there?”

Laughter is my answer.

“Now, I'm coming in. All right?”

Nothing.

I push open the birch door, leaning in, but the sauna is filled with steam and my one good eye winces in the heat. I enter and the heat boots me solidly in the chest. My lungs fill and turn to fire. I expel, but the replacement air is even worse. I blink, rub my eye and look again.

Kristiina is inside, sitting on the upper ledge, her legs crossed,
naked
. In the air she seems partly vapourized, but it is no dream. She is dimpled with sweat, the beads running high and thick and round along her shoulders, sliding thin and long and runny down and off her breasts. I feel like something more powerful than steam has hit my lungs. She is smiling at me, welcoming me. No, she is laughing at me, and she points to my drawers, to her father's drawers. I turn, step out of them awkwardly, open the door and toss them across the hallway into the door of the dressing room.

“I didn't expect you to be bashful,” she says.

“I didn't expect you to be so naked.”

“Come on. Up, beside me.” She pats the plank beside her and I step up into a mightier blast of hot air and settle down. The air seems cooler as I sit. She shifts over, her bare skin against mine. I cannot speak. I watch instead as she picks up the wooden dipper from the bucket and splashes more water onto the rocks. It strikes like gunpowder, the steam exploding off the rocks into the air, bouncing off the roof and punching me again in the lungs.

“Enough! Enough!”

Her laugh. “You'll get used to it.”

“I doubt that,” I say.

“It's good for you. It's
löyly
.”

“It's what?”

“
Löyly
. The vapour. It's very good for you, they say.”

“Who are they?”

“Finns. Everybody.”

“I don't believe it.”

“You will.”

For ten minutes she continues to throw on the water. Then she tosses some liquid from a small bottle and the smell of birch intensifies. I lean back and relax, watching the sweat rolling unevenly through the hair of my chest, dashing down my belly onto my thighs and then dropping onto the planking. It feels good. My eye is giving me no trouble, and each time I breathe it is as if I am sloughing off waste, being cleansed. I feel fine.