I am thinking too much of Kristiina and how she should be here. She was sorry enough for tears, I know and saw that. She promised on her soul to come to the next game if we go on. I heard that. But I am still not convinced. Her damned architectural bunch are on a three-day blitz to meet some deadline only a complete asshole like Jorma could care about. A sanctuary for battered children or some damned fool thing. Shit, if they put it up in Pomerania they'd have to add five floors and a morgue. I am thinking too much of Jorma, as well, still not convinced there is nothing there. And what I need to be thinking about is absolutely zero â my mind as clear as the next play.
I feel strange, slow, cumbersome. Methodical rather than magical. I know that this is apparent only to me. I play the position perfectly, but am useless to the team. I fail to anticipate a reversal in flow, and when the puck suddenly stops dead at our blueline, it is not me suddenly filling the empty space between it and their net with a break, but a circling winger from Lahti scooping the puck as I slide to block, the puck turning over me in slow somersaults until their centre baseballs it out of the air and it goes in off Timo's hip. The lights go on, the arena erupts and all look accusingly at Timo, failing to see the fault is mine, alone.
“Hakkaa päälle!”
Timo shouts as we exit for third period, down 3â1. Pekka shouts half-heartedly because he sees me look at him. So far not one has even earned the minimum fifty Finnmarks for a good hit.
Can Keening possibly be here in Finland to record the life of Batterinski and see but one terrible game? I am now glad Kristiina isn't here, but she has seen me play well so many times before. As for this Keening dink, I have no sense of him having ever seen me play before. Except on television, of course, but television is as badly suited to hockey as radio is perfectly suited to baseball. If he has seen me only on television, then he has watched a game I had nothing to do with. He has had his focus delivered to him. He has watched the puck and the puck alone, and that is about as close to what a hockey game is all about as is watching a paper boat float down a stream. It shows you where it's going, how fast, and what it is passing, but nothing of the undercurrents, the bottom structure or, for that matter, the life beneath. A player like Batterinski shows up very little on a televised game. But the true fans in the arena know he came to play.
It would not be right to leave Keening with this impression.
About halfway through the final period, with us down 3â1, Niemenranta, one of Lahti's better goal scorers, comes up across centre, slips the puck one way around Pekka and darts through the other, running on the tiptoes of his skates and looking for a play. I catch him flush before he regains his footing and he grunts and rolls up my back and over in a complete circle, landing square again on his skates, the skates catching and sending him headfirst into the boards, where he lies twisting. The arena is silent but for a single whistle. The referee has wisely called the play dead to tend to the player.
I skate around Orr-like, staring first at the ice, then up at the clock, as if I am working out an equation. Three goals go easily into twelve minutes and twenty-seven seconds. But I know in my heart it does not go at all, that we cannot win. Still, I am at least content with my own play, at last.
“Sakko,”
the referee says. Then very slowly: “You have penalty.”
Penalty?
I am not sure I hear him right but he points toward the penalty box and nods sternly.
“What for?”
He crosses his fists to indicate interference.
“What?”
I cannot believe it. In twenty years I have not delivered a cleaner, harder bodycheck. It is the perfect check to go out on, the perfect moment to be remembered for: Batterinski doing what Batterinski does best. And now they are denying it happened.
I look for help. The players are still around the Lahti player, but two of them have him rising now. He favours one leg, but whether because it is broken or just because the skate blade snapped on the fall I can't tell. Nor do I care.
“Pekka!” I shout.
He turns, John Wayne eyes raising in question.
“Pekka!” Find out what the hell's going on here.”
Pekka skates to the referee, who takes his approach as a personal affront, backing up with his arms folded over his chest and simply shaking his head in response to Pekka's questions. Pekka shouts at him and he shouts back, rolls back his sleeve and begins a countdown on his watch.
“He says you'll have a match penalty if you don't leave.”
“I'm not leaving until he explains what the fuck for,” I say.
“No way
that was interference.”
Pekka shouts back at him. The referee slaps his watch and signals a match penalty to me and backs to the scorer's bench. I cannot
believe
it! I skate after him but he turns, shakes his head and closes his eyes, shutting down on me.
“You don't have a
fucking clue,
do you?” I shout.
The eyes open and he stares at me, mouth trembling but arms folded firm.
“That was a perfectly fair check and you know it.”
“Bats! Forget it!” Pekka shouts.
“No I won't forget it! This asshole knows sweet fuck-all about hockey and I'm going to tell him so.”
“Go off,” Timo says, and places a glove on my shoulder.
“Fuck off!”
I scream at Timo, batting his hand down.
The linesmen are in to help now. I have lost. I take one final burst toward the referee and he backs so startled that he loses his footing and falls. The area screams like a binding beltsaw. I suppose
this
is my fault too.
I lean into him as I pass, speaking loud enough to carry through the whistling but slowly enough that he may understand.
“You dumbfuck Finn.”
What is the use of even staying to watch this fiasco? I kick through the penalty box, snap my stick in half on the boards, and walk straight through toward the dressing room, where a fat little man in a ski jacket hurries ahead to unlock our door. I step in and kick the door shut, muffling the whistles that will not stop for the rest of the game.
Why do they call it anger? There is fury against an opponent, which is something I enjoy, and there is frustration, which I despise. Yet they call it all anger. If what I had done out there was intentional I would sag in my locker and enjoy letting the fury wash through. And by game's end I would be as peaceful as a nun. But this, this keeps on growing. I kick and stomp and hammer my hands along the walls, but nothing works. I pick up Timo's new shipment of sticks from Koho and break each one methodically, but it does not help. I take out one of the practice goaltender masks and spring on it with my skates until it cracks like a rifle, but not even that helps. I kick through the bathroom door, smash a skate through the toilet seat, elbow the paper dispenser off the wall, cuff out the soap, lean on the sink until it collapses with the plaster from the wall and shimmies like a jack-in-the-box.
But nothing helps. Frustration has no cure. I have done my job perfectly, as well as ever before in my career, and one single son-of-bitch has said it is all wrong. He has called me a liar. He has seen something that did not happen. He has penalized the reputation, not the man. He has wronged me, and if he were in here I would set the record right by standing on his jugular until the hollow ground worked through. And when his last air bubbled up and out the cut throat I would look down at him, blow his own whistle and give him an extra ten minutes, just so he could feel it all over again, the miserable bastard.
It is the morning after and Erkki is sitting behind his desk looking remarkably relaxed. There are no nails in his mouth, no twitches, nothing. I cannot believe it.
“Look at this,” he says, and hands me a piece of paper with meaningless numbers and Finnish typing. “We made a profit in our first year of operation. I doubt that any team in Finland has ever done that. Most of them are heavy losers.
“You haven't built your rink yet, Erkki. Don't forget that.”
“Aha, but that is just the point, Felix. Now we will get our rink. I've just come from the board of directors and they are most pleased with our season.”
“Bullshit.”
“I'm serious.”
“They're not upset we lost out?”
“They're businessmen, Felix. They look at the year's overall performance. And you know better than anyone how far we've come. Nobody said we'd be anything but last when the season started, did they?”
“Sounds like you're starting to take some credit for it all, Erkki.”
“Well ... why not? We're a team.”
“You didn't want to pay to have winners, remember?”
“But I did pay. And I'll tell you another thing too. I paid for last night.”
“What about last night?”
“The toilet. The sink. Two doors. A mask.”
“I tripped.”
Erkki laughs. Strange, this. “Yes, I'm sure. It's not important.”
I sit down, completely perplexed. This can't be Erkki the Jerk. He sounds almost reasonable.
“What's going on here?” I ask.
Erkki smiles at me, his pie face rippling into meringue smiles, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, mouth all leering at me in delight. “I think it is about time you and I became proper friends, Felix. After all, we're in this together. When one prospers, the other prospers.”
“Are they going to keep my contract?”
“Of course they are. I told you they were very happy with our performance.”
“Our?”
“But there's a hitch, right?”
“I'm sorry. A....?”
“Something you have to discuss with me, right?”
“What makes you think that?” Erkki asks, the first temptation to pop a nail in his mouth showing through the smiles.
“You called me in. You wouldn't do that just so we could announce our friendship.”
“Well, there is a small matter.”
“Which is?”
“The board of directors has been fortunate enough to arrange for an exhibition game in Leningrad. The board of directors is very high on this idea. They think it would help promote better relations between our two countries. And they have asked me to ask you if you could keep the team together for two more weeks. All expenses will be covered and all salaries extended, of course.”
A
Batterinski
go to Russia? Not on your life. Jaja would twist in his grave so hard he would bring down Black Donald Mountain.
“I'm not a fucking Communist.”
“Nor are we Communist, Felix. But we have to live beside the Soviet Union just as you have to live beside the United States. We may not like it, but there is nothing we can do about it. This would be good for relations.”
“What's in it for them?”
“Who?”
“Your goddamn board.”
“As I said, good relations.”
“Come on, Erkki. Don't bullshit me.”
“Well, it is large market, of course. And we do a great deal of trade in kind. Not money, but trade. You know?'
“Fish lures for what?”
“Wood. Other things we can trade better. Oil. Iron ore.”
“And we're to soften up the Russians, is that it?”
“No. That is not it. You are simply to go and show what a fine team you are.”
“Which is why you're sucking up to me, right?”
Again, the perplexed look. “I'm sorry?”
“You know precisely how rotten the team is without me.”
“Well, it would be preferable if you did play.”
“But still, you're worried?”
Erkki closes his eyes and leans back, sighing. “We can't possibly have another incident like Sweden, Felix. It would have terrible results for us, and not just in trade.”
“But you can't afford to leave me at home.”
“We don't want to leave you at home. Particularly you.”
I smile. Of course â what could please the Commies more than to stick it to another Canadian? “Then you must be petrified.”
“Not at all. I have a deal with you, okay?”
“What deal?”
“I will pay for your girl, Kristiina, I think it is, and she can come with us.”
“Of course. A bribe to chain the animal. “If I promise to be good.”
“Yes.”
“Let her bring her friend Pia.”
“Only one. Yes.”
Keening has been hounding me for time before his flight and so I take him to the Viisi Pennia. It is a stroke of genius. In the three hours he sits with his tape recorder and a continual supply of Koff beer, courtesy of the Batterinski tab, I tell him everything he needs to know. We go over “Canucklehead” until he finally has it straight. I tell him all about Sugar. I straighten him out on the McMurtry report by asking him the obvious question: What can some academic from Ontario possibly know about big-league hockey? Say their universities are in trouble â do they come to Batterinski or Schultz or Moose for an answer? I guess not.
Eventually, Keening leaves, carrying me in the tape recorder. If nothing gets erased by the metal detector, in a few months from now I will have my say. I will be described sitting happily in Viisi Pennia while every Finn hockey player who comes in pays homage to the great Batterinski. Almost as if it was planned. Which it was. A photographer will shoot me in Leningrad â Keening has some arrangement with
Sanomat
â and soon enough I will have the truth out about Batterinski.
I don't know whether to put it at the start of the scrapbook or the end.
Kristiina's reaction is not what I had imagined. She is in the bathroom, throwing up. On the phone she said she had the flu that is going around and asked me not to come over, but I had to tell her. Leningrad, I said.
Sanko
, she said. Pail. And reached for the plastic bucket beside the chesterfield.