Silence

SILENCE

JAN COSTIN WAGNER

Translated by Anthea Bell

PEGASUS CRIME

NEW YORK

For Niina, Venla, Ninne and my parents

P
ROLOGUE

Summer 1974

T
he time came when they got into the little red car and drove away. Before that, they’d sat in the shade inside the small flat for a long time. For hours, days, weeks.

At first Pärssinen had had to entice him, spend time persuading him to come in. Later he himself used to knock at the door, then Pärssinen would open it and he would sit in Pärssinen’s flat looking at the dappled sunlight on the floor, concentrating on Pärssinen’s voice. A soft, monotonous voice that suddenly cracked now and then, only to go on, barely audibly, next moment.

Sometimes he had raised his head to try meeting Pärssinen’s eyes, but he couldn’t, because Pärssinen had been looking past him, speaking to the wall. Then he would lower his head again, close his eyes and go on concentrating on Pärssinen’s voice.

After a while Pärssinen would take a roll of film out of one of the containers, switch on the projector and, while the film ran, Pärssinen would at last fall silent.

While Pärssinen sat in silence he himself had stared at the screen, moving his hand slowly up and down in his trouser pocket, and out of the corner of his eye he sensed that Pärssinen noticed, but that became less and less important, and first Pärssinen had laughed, then, a little later, he had joined in and the moment came, after a few weeks, when they drove off.

Pärssinen had said, ‘We’ll be off now,’ and he had not replied. Pärssinen had placed the film in its container, put the container away on the shelf unit, then he had stood up and said again, ‘We’ll be off now.’

He thought he remembered that for a brief time – he didn’t know just how long but it couldn’t have been more than seconds – he went on sitting there. He even thought he remembered a flicker in Pärssinen’s eyes, a moment of uncertainty. Briefly, Pärssinen had doubted him. But then he too had got to his feet, feeling an ache in his lower body as he followed Pärssinen out of doors.

The sun had been hot and Pärssinen’s small red car was grubby with the dirt accumulated over months, maybe years. They had got in.

In his memory he saw Pärssinen sitting at the wheel. He didn’t see himself in the passenger seat. During the drive Pärssinen started talking again. Hectically, insistently. He had run quickly through the plan once more, summing it all up, while he thought about the film and a certain particular scene, a specific situation in that film, then he had felt that it would soon be over, it was only just beginning but it would soon be over. And Pärssinen had said they were going to go through with all that shit now, at the same time taking his eyes off the road to look fixedly at him. For a moment, the moment he might have used to wriggle out of it, Pärssinen’s eyes met his.

After that he had looked through the windscreen at the dry road, with the sun baking down on their red car, and he’d thought of that particular scene in the film, seeing it in his mind’s eye, imagining what it would be like to act it out for real, and Pärssinen had slowed down, muttering to himself when he saw something out there at the roadside, muttering, then shaking his head and saying, ‘No, that won’t do,’ without any further explanation of why it wouldn’t do.

Then Pärssinen had begun cursing to himself, had driven right out of the city, and he had felt that Pärssinen knew what he was doing, although Pärssinen had assured him he’d never done such a thing before and only their friendship, their meeting, their finding their way to each other, as he had once put it at the very end, had shown him that it must be done, it damn well had to be done some time, there was no point in denying that, they’d do it, they’d do it together. And while Pärssinen drove along the country road he had felt that the time had come, it was going to happen now, whatever
it
was, and he had imprinted the scene from a film he’d just seen on his brain, until he realized that nothing else played a pan in this, and any kind of explosion would come as a relief.

Pärssinen had turned off the road, clapped him on the shoulder and signed to him to look a certain way, through the window on the driver’s side.

He had seen what Pärssinen wanted to show him and Pärssinen had slowed down, moaning. Humming to himself or moaning, he didn’t exactly know which, hadn’t known at the time, but anyway Pärssinen had slowed down, looking alternately ahead and in the rear-view mirror, then finally stopped the car, put his hand on the door handle and said, ‘Ready?’

Then – he remembered this very well – he had replied, ‘What do you mean?’

Pärssinen hadn’t reacted to that, except to say again, ‘Now!’

Pärssinen got out of the car and he had seen him walking off, calmly and purposefully, and at that moment he’d understood that it was over, that it was all over, even as it was just beginning, and Pärssinen had pushed the girl off her bicycle, dragged her into the field, and he hadn’t seen either of them more, only the bicycle lying on the path with its handlebars wrenched round the wrong way.

He too had got out of the car, and he must have walked twenty or thirty metres to the bicycle path and the bicycle lying on the ground, although he couldn’t remember the seconds he had spent walking those few metres.

First he picked up the bicycle.

He straightened the handlebars.

Then he went a few steps into the field and looked at Pärssinen, who was lying on top of the girl. He saw Pärssinen’s bare buttocks and the girl’s legs. Pärssinen was saying, ‘It doesn’t matter, go on, go on, go on, mmm …’ The girl said nothing, probably because Pärssinen was holding her mouth shut. Pärssinen was strong. Small but strong.

He stood for a while waiting for it to be over. And then it was over. It was all over.

‘N … no. Please … no, no, don’t, don’t do that,’ he said after a moment.

A little later Pärssinen got to his feet and pulled up his trousers. ‘Shit,’ he said. He was sweating.

The girl lay perfectly still, staring at Pärssinen.

‘Shit,’ said Pärssinen and as he was trying to work out from Pärssinen’s face what Pärssinen meant by that, he was thinking that it was over, and Pärssinen bent over the girl and closed his hands round her throat.

The girl hardly reacted.

When he took a step in Pärssinen’s direction, Pärssinen was standing up again and he said, ‘Shit, now we’ll have to get rid of her,’ and, when he didn’t reply, Pärssinen specified, ‘Make sure she disappears. We have to get rid of her, understand? Give me a hand, you arsehole.’

He stood there watching Pärssinen as he dragged the girl along the bicycle path.

‘Help me, can’t you?’ said Pärssinen and, when he didn’t move, because he couldn’t, Pärssinen laid the girl down, went to the car and drove it closer to the place where the girl was lying and he himself was standing.

Pärssinen got out of the car, crouched down, seemed to concentrate for a moment, then hauled the girl upright with a jolt, letting her drop into the boot. He closed the boot, threw the bicycle into the field and said, ‘Let’s get out of here!’

He stood there looking at the bicycle in the field.

‘Are you just going to stay here, or what?’ called Pärssinen from the car, hammering and kicking at the passenger door.

He went to the car.

He got in.

Pärssinen started the car. They drove for a while in silence. The sun was shining brightly. Not another car in sight.

After a while Pärssinen turned off down a woodland path. ‘I know this place,’ he muttered. The girl. He thought of the girl’s legs. She had still had her shoes on, she was lying in the boot. ‘I know this place, there’s a lake over there,’ Pärssinen had said, steering the car through the woods along increasingly narrow paths.

On the way home Pärssinen said nothing, and sweated. He had smelt the sweat, he could still remember the smell. Pärssinen was sweating as he’d never seen anyone sweat before, his grey shirt was drenched and sticking to his body. He himself hadn’t been sweating. He’d been shaking. He’d felt cold. Anyone looking attentively at them would have been sure to notice the remarkable difference, one of them sweating and one freezing, although they were driving in the same car, but they met no one, so there was no one to notice them and feel surprised.

He had sat beside Pärssinen in the car, had begun to recognize the buildings moving swiftly past, the streets they were driving down, and he had thought of the girl. Of the moment when Pärssinen let her drop into the water and sink, and of a scene from Pärssinen’s film that had nothing to do with it, but he simply couldn’t get it out of his head, although it was all over now and he hadn’t done anything, because he hadn’t touched the girl, hadn’t even touched her, he was sure of that, he’d refused to lift a finger to help Pärssinen.

Pärssinen had driven on and he had seen a summer’s day on the other side of the windscreen.

When they finally arrived, when Pärssinen had stopped the car in the car park next to the big concrete building among the trees, he had got out, leaving the sweating Pärssinen sitting there, he had gone up to his own flat and immediately began flinging everything lying around into his travelling bag, as well as all the stuff from the cupboards and drawers.

He looked at the time, gave himself twenty minutes, put everything that wouldn’t fit into the travelling bag into bin bags, emptied the fridge, threw away the food, it was all going into the garbage container in several bin bags, which he lined up beside his travelling bag; he stripped the bed and stuffed the bedclothes into another bin bag, and then he went down. He had had to make three journeys, down into the sunlight and up again to the shade of the flat; he’d been freezing in sun and shade alike, and as if from a great distance he had seen Pärssinen hosing down the tyres of his car, so intent on his task that he didn’t even notice him.

He had watched Pärssinen working away in the flickering sunlight while, with deliberate movements, he dropped the bin bags one by one into the big container.

There were some people about by now, they’d passed him coming and going, had stood around somewhere, not wanting anything special from him: the old lady, the lush who lived next door to him, carrying her shopping and talking to herself, and Susanna, the girl from the building opposite – he’d often thought about her and sometimes dreamed of her – she had passed him with two other girls. The three of them had said a cheerful hello to him, the kind of greeting you’d expect on a fine summer’s day.

The girls were giggling and said they were just back from the lake – a different lake, and not far away – Pärssinen had been scrubbing the boot of his car and polishing it all up, without raising his head.

He had gone back into the building after the girls, who had been wearing swimsuits and had wet hair and were barefoot, although there were often broken bits of beer bottles lying about on the asphalt, he’d thought of that as he went upstairs step by step. Then he closed the front door of the flat behind him, went to the phone book and called a firm to come and take away the bed and the rest of the furniture, and dispose of it.

It hadn’t been easy to get the man to understand that no, he wasn’t moving house, he just wanted to get rid of furniture he couldn’t use any more, but after a while the man got the idea and assured him he’d be there first thing next morning.

After that he’d looked out of the window at the trees and the sky for a bit, and through the glass he could faintly hear the vacuum cleaner that Pärssinen was using to clean his car.

He went round the little flat again, filling a final bin bag with what was still lying around. He did it several times to make sure it was really empty. Then he had gone out into the white corridor, closed the door, heard it latch shut, left the key for the removal men and went down into the sun.

He’d thrown the bin bag into the container. Pärssinen had been crouching on the back seat of his car, removing stains that weren’t there, couldn’t be there because the girl had been lying in the boot, nowhere else. But there’d been no stopping Pärssinen, and he had gone up to the car and said, ‘I’m leaving now.’

Pärssinen had straightened up and stared at him. ‘She bled. Shit. The boot’s all over bloodstains, and I think the back seat …’

‘I’m leaving now,’ he had repeated, seeing surprise spread over Pärssinen’s face, the surprise he was feeling himself, astonished as he was by the total calm surrounding him. His travelling bag was slung lightly over his shoulder, the sun was warm and he hardly heard what Pärssinen said.

‘I’m leaving now. We won’t be seeing each other again,’ he had said and looked briefly at Pärssinen’s open mouth. Then he’d turned away and gone to the bus stop. The bus came after a few minutes, he bought a ticket and sat at the back.

The grey building that was nothing to do with him soon disappeared from his field of vision and, as the bus turned into the main road, giving him another glimpse of the car park, the small red car looked like a toy.