Kirsti Ellilä: Strange Love – short stories

Kirsti Ellilä : Strange Love (Outoa rakkautta), turbator 2008, 169 pp.

 

Coffee and a Bite

“Do you have a screwdriver with you?” Mona asked.

“Yeah,” Liisa murmured.

Water was pouring down the windows of the bus. The radio was playing let it rain all night long, let my love for you grow strong… The darkness of the city, that it was autumn, that there was a long winter ahead, and that she didn’t know what spring would bring brought Liisa to the verge of tears. She clutched her handbag in her lap, staring at the streams running down the window. Water was coming down so hard now that it looked like someone was standing on the roof of the bus spraying a garden hose.

“Show me,” Mona said. Liisa sighed and dug around in her handbag. At the bottom she found the orange-handled screwdriver. The handle had touched something hot once, melting a little and being scorching black.

“Will this work?” Mona asked.

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Well maybe they have Phillips cross-head screws on it.”

Liisa was dumbfounded. She hadn’t thought of that possibility.

“You’re a cross-head,” she said.

She poked Mona in the ribs with her elbow, and they snickered for a second. Liisa was delighted to see they were still able to laugh at the same things. Laughing was better than crying. They glanced at each other and burst out into loud giggles. They laughed so hard it made their diaphragms hurt, shaking their whole bodies. The geezer sitting in front of them turned around and was surprised to see two middle-aged ladies. He obviously thought they were ill-behaved, a disgraced to their sex and to their age group. They should have been more like the biddies who shot angry glances when younger people had the temerity to make noise. They weren’t supposed to be the ones giving offense by giggling when there was nothing in the world to giggle at.

“Cross-head,” Liisa snickered.

“Come on, it was part of the times,” Mona said, wiping here eyes.

A few years ago Mona had found religion, participating in church activities enthusiastically for a while. Liisa had been surprised about her friend’s change of opinion and was even a little embarrassed. How could a sensible person get mixed up in something like that? Liisa never could. Mona had gone to church every Sunday and to Bible study during the week and read spiritual literature at night, explaining to Liisa the miraculous way God had spoken to her. Liisa thought what Mona was doing was nonsense. Mona explained how she had prayed to God that her boss, who had been giving her trouble, would be offered an attractive job somewhere else, and Mona would be left in peace. Mona was a police officer and had been forced to endure her male boss belittling her professional skills repeatedly. But in spite of her prayers, The Boss stayed put like he was glued in place, tormenting Mona worse than ever with whatever happened to cross his mind.

Then one day Mona called Liisa to report receiving a miraculous answer to her prayer. In a sudden flash she had understood why she had a boss like that. How it was necessary for her spiritual development to live at the mercy of the whims of a narcissist.

“That isn’t an answer to a prayer,” Liisa had said indignantly “You’re just making it up! You’ve gone totally nuts!” They had ended up in a fight. Mona was offended because Liisa questioned her relationship with God.

Weeks went by without them speaking to each other. Liisa hadn’t dared to call Mona because she was afraid of her getting angry again. In the end Mona had called. She was on sick leave for burnout. She had cried to the doctor about what an impossible boss she had. The doctor said there was a name for the phenomenon: workplace bullying. At first Mona went on sick leave, but then she found a new job and gave off bubbling about God’s guidance. Soon she started to skip Sunday services. Nowadays she was pretty normal.

Liisa had been happy to get her friend back. They hadn’t spoken much at all about Mona’s religious phase. Cross-head was the first allusion to the topic. Liisa glanced at Mona. Mona smiled. Apparently she wasn’t hurt, and Liisa felt joy welling up inside her despite everything being so miserable. Perhaps they understood each other so well because each of them had a little crack in her life. Perhaps Mona understood Liisa because she had experienced what love makes you do, how it drags a woman under the keel and leaves her on the deck for people to gawk at.

The bus dropped them off next to a stone fence. Mona wondered how such big boulders had been arranged like that, so tightly on top of each other. People in the past sure had been skilled. Liisa didn’t have the patience to marvel over the bright green softness of the moss sprouting from the crevices in the rock fence, no matter how hard Mona tried to draw her attention to it. These days Mona was into macro photography, and the folders on her computer were bulging with digital pictures. Perhaps she wanted to concentrate on beauty because she had to face such ugly things in her work. Perhaps her religious fervor could also be explained by the harshness of her work.

Liisa opened the creaky iron gate. Its wet handle felt chillingly cold in her hand. She paused for a moment, looking at her chubby hand, how warm and soft it was. But one day it would finally grow cold, and no one would ever touch it again, would never gently caress it.

“Isn’t it extraordinary how warm people are?” she said. “The heart keeps the blood moving and keeps the person alive, but it can also just up and stop, with no warning.”

Mona threaded an arm through Mona’s, and they set off arm-in-arm along the gravel path, on either side of which old, knobby maple trees glowed blood-red.

“Closeness is a wonderful thing,” Mona said quietly. “The best thing there is.”

“But it always ends,” Liisa said.

“You still have the memories though.”

There were still the memories, but right now they kept her only as warm as the iron handle of the gate. Besides that, there was a blotch on the memories too, and Liisa cringed to think of it. Had it really been her acting that way? But she wasn’t like that at all. Maybe it had only been a dream, an illusion. She almost wished that now.

A gabled roof loomed behind the trees. A couple of lights in the yard had burned out. That was why it was so dark. They snuck closer, staying in the shadows of the trees. A bright light shone over the door, illuminating the stairs. Liisa picked up a rock and threw it. The first rock cracked against the door, making a loud clattering as it fell on the metal grate. The second rock hit home and broke the light. Darkness fell.

“Are you going to fine me for that?” she asked Mona. Mona giggled. She was probably nervous too, even though she had gotten used to being in all sorts of strange situations as a police officer.

Liisa had been forced to use every rhetorical device at her disposal to convince Mona to come. Liisa had simply had to come here, but she couldn’t come alone. She wouldn’t have dared, and besides, she wouldn’t have been able to get in without Mona. But of course Mona was taking a serious risk.

“I really appreciate this,” Liisa said. Mona shrugged her shoulders.

She waited for a little while, and when everything seemed quite, they sneaked to the door. Mona dug a bundle of metal doodads out of her bag and started to test which of them would open the door most easily.

“Just think if we get caught. A policewoman breaking and entering—you’d be in for it,” Liisa said.

“Quiet, I’m concentrating,” Mona said, turning the picklock. She seemed like she was listening to the lock with her whole body.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first police officer to switch over to the wrong side of the law,” Liisa said. She was simply incapable of being quiet and waiting. She was too excited. She could taste iron in her mouth, as if she had eaten the cold iron gate, the handle which she could still feel chilling her fingers. As if the coldness of the handle had left an imprint on her heart, branding her with cold iron. She felt the scar pulsing within her. She quickly found a paper tissue in her handbag and pressed it to her eyes, drying them. A click came from the lock.

“Take that,” Mona said.

She let Liisa in and then followed after.

While they were fiddling with the lock, the rain had let up for a moment, but now it surged again, lashing the roof panels so fiercely it seemed like they might take flight. That would be something, if the wind took the roof off. Liisa turned on her flashlight. Coffins lined both sides of the hallway. There were coffins upholstered in gray and coffins upholstered in white. There were wood coffins made of oak and pine and alder.

“Do you know which one of those it is?” Mona asked.

“Seija said she bought a simple, straightforward pine casket, because Erik was a simple, straightforward person,” Liisa said, wiping her eyes.

But was Erik really simple and straightforward? Liisa felt like Seija hadn’t understood her husband at all, hadn’t seen his soul. Erik was complicated and confused, like artists often are. Erik was a photographer by profession, taking pictures of children going to confirmation, high school graduates, and wedding couples. He was still always able to find new, surprising perspectives on this grindingly routine work, and his portraits often contained some little idiosyncrasy that made them interesting. Liisa had understood him much better than Seija. The two of them, Erik and Liisa, understood each other. Together they formed a little two-person universe that no one else was allowed into, not even Seija.

Liisa shined her flashlight on the coffins. The wood ones were easy to pick out, but which of them were pine? In the end she settled on a plain coffin at the back of the room. She thought it looked simple and straightforward, one that Seija might have bought for her husband. She took the screwdriver and started to inspect how to get the coffin open.

“Hey, we don’t even need a screwdriver!” Mona said. “It has wing nuts!

How portentous. Sometimes when they were making love, Erik would call Liisa his wing nut. You are my angel, he had said, my winged one, my wing nut. Liisa had thought she would rather be a wing nut than an angel. Anyone can call his lover an angel, but it takes an artist to come up with fun phrases like wing nut.

Erik knew how to be romantic and playful at the same time.

Now suddenly everything was simple and straightforward. Liisa didn’t feel like crying anymore, and wasn’t frightened. She had to do this. It was that simple, and there wasn’t anything strange about it. She held her breath as she took hold of the lid of the coffin.

“Help a little. This is heavy,” she said. Together they lifted the lid away and carefully lowered it to the walkway.

Liisa could sense that Mona was tense too. Mona had always said that Erik was extremely handsome and a real gentleman. She had always understood Liisa’s feelings, even though she couldn’t approve of the relationship. Liisa couldn’t approve of the relationship either, and she had pushed Erik away time after time, appealing to his marriage. Erik should leave Seija—then they could have a chance. Erik had promised to get a divorce, when the kids were a little older. He said he wanted to keep the family together for the sake of the children. Yeah, but I’m not the kind of woman who goes running around with married men, Liisa had said. And I’m not the kind of married man who goes running around with other women, but then I met you. What can you do? Erik had answered, looking her in the eyes the way only Erik could, lingering so long that his gaze felt like it penetrated right to the pit of her stomach.

Liisa started to get a little dizzy. Oh Erik.

But the corpse lying in the coffin wasn’t Erik after all.

“Wrong guy,” Mona observed. “Screw it shut.”

As they closed the coffin, Liisa hoped she wouldn’t have to open and close every coffin in the mortuary. It was surprisingly hard on her wrists, and every muscle in her hand was tense, shaking like it was about to cramp up.

“How about that casket over there,” Mona said, pointing to one at the end of the hallway. “That one’s pretty simple.”

They moved on to the coffin Mona had indicated. It had wing nuts too. Liisa had clearly been misinformed when she had been told that coffins have screws.

She concentrated for a second before starting to fiddle with the wing nuts again. “We’re crazy,” she muttered.

“No,” Mona said. “You’re crazy. I’m just helping you.”

The second coffin was bolted shut even more tightly than the first, and Liisa had to twist with all her might. Mona watched from the side, ready to come to her aid. She was strong. When she was younger she had exercised diligently, but still kept herself in shape. She had even done a little body building and had some success at the local level, but then given it up despite encouragement from certain of her friends. She could still make a coin dance on her abs if she had to.

“I can get it. I have to do this,” Liisa said when Mona offered help.

In the end she got the lid unfastened. Before they lifted it off, she closed her eyes and concentrated for a moment. Oh, let it be Erik. Otherwise this will take all night.

She pushed the cover to the side and looked. A hot flash ran through her. She remembered another night a couple of weeks ago when they had been out for a drive, even though of course Erik should have been home, in bed next to his wife. But he hadn’t wanted to go home, so they had driven around, black landscapes flying by. They had been contemplating their relationship, or, actually, Liisa had been contemplating it. How had they gotten here, how had she gotten here. What would people say if they knew? Liisa thought of her mother. She was over seventy years old and had always lived an exemplary life. In the morning when she woke up, she aired out the room and made the bed first thing. The coats in the closet hung on their hangers organized by color. The piles of linens could have been arranged with a ruler. Liisa had been raised with the belief that things should be kept in their proper order. Everything had its own box. Every day had its own schedule, which had to be stuck to. You had to work, go to the store, and only put dietitian-recommended, healthy foods in your cart. You had to look after your personal hygiene. You had to be polite. You had to fit in and live like a respectable person among other respectable people.

It sounded sensible, but living up to all that decade after decade was hard. Liisa’s mother had done well at it. Liisa didn’t remember her mother ever doing anything out of the ordinary. It was impossible to imagine her mother secretly seeing a married man, kissing him passionately in a dark park late on a weekday night when all normal people were already at home asleep.

It was important to keep things in their proper order, every detail in its own box. But Liisa hadn’t done very well at that. She had met Erik and things had immediately gotten mixed up, and her head had filled with dreams that she was never able to control.

She had been terrified and elated at the same time. She had been alive, but at what price? What if people found out, if her mother, brother, and other relatives found out? Liisa shuddered when she thought of her brother’s wife. Now there was a vulture, pushing her nose into everyone’s business. Sister-in-law. Liisa recognized in her sister-in-law someone who would have liked to live a wild life, having sex with strange men, getting drunk on sweet wines, and lounging in bed until midday languidly accepting her eager lover’s endless caresses, but she couldn’t do anything like that because it wasn’t proper, and so she could pick out from a distance if someone else was doing it. Liisa felt like her sister-in-law could smell if she had made love to Erik in the last week.

When there were bitches like that around, you had to think about how long a relationship like hers and Erik’s could be maintained. Lately she had been thinking about it constantly, even on that night when she saw Erik for the last time. They had gone off driving, and she had said that a change had to happen sometime, because life couldn’t go on like this forever. She wasn’t that kind of woman, the kind who’s always willing to be the other woman, thus condemning herself to remain outside of organized society.

Perhaps she was exaggerating a bit explaining it like that to Erik, but she really did suffer being the other woman. Being a mistress wasn’t her style.

Erik had held onto the steering wheel, watching the road. They were driving in the country, and during hunting season a moose could jump onto the road at any time. Once Erik had run into a moose, leaving a permanent scar not only on his forehead but also on his soul, because he had been forced to stand there next to the dying moose for more than an hour waiting for the police, who finally came and put the moose out of its misery. Erik didn’t want to experience something like that again. He had scanned to the right and left intently as Liisa dissected her feelings, her hopes and fears. Then Erik had suddenly said, “What a strange feeling.”

“What do you mean,” Liisa said, confused.

“I don’t know. All of a sudden everything’s just so bright and light feeling.”

And then Erik’s head had lolled back, sinking trustingly against the headrest. His gaze was fixed on the dome light, which of course was not on right then.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Liisa had asked.

Erik had remained silent. Fast as lightning Liisa had grabbed the wheel, eased her leg over the gear stick, and pushed on the brakes. Actually, at first she had pressed the gas, and the car had shot ahead into the oncoming lane. It had been a lucky thing there wasn’t anyone else on the road.

Liisa had squeezed in next to Erik and driven the car to the hospital. It had been an agonizing trip. Now and then she had slapped Erik on the face, trying to wake him up. At the hospital she had been forced to come up with strange explanations for why she had been out and about with Erik at that time of night. Luckily, at hospitals, just like at police stations, they’re used to everything. The hospital had called Erik’s wife, and Liisa had managed to leave before Seija arrived.

Erik had experienced a cerebral hemorrhage. It had been so bad that he had died without regaining consciousness. Liisa hadn’t seen Erik after standing blinking in the green-glowing hospital entrance watching the hospital attendants carrying him in on a gurney.

This had left her soul aching with regret. She had been so alarmed that she hadn’t even had the sense to say goodbye. People always want to say a decent goodbye. You can’t let someone go just like that.

Liisa looked at the man resting in the coffin. And there he was, cold and motionless. It hadn’t even been two weeks since they had been cavorting on the sofa in the studio, on the same sofa where couples sat to have portraits taken on their golden wedding anniversaries. She remembered his supple thighs as they spread her legs apart, the crooked hairs that grew on those thighs and tickled and scratched the sensitive skin on the insides of her legs. Then it had irritated her that a man couldn’t shave his legs. Smooth legs would have been somehow cleaner and less bestial.

Now she was annoyed that she had let something like that bother her.

She thought about Erik’s cold thighs and longed for the moments they had spent pressed in each other’s arms. Would the hair on his legs still be so wiry, or would death have smoothed it out? She felt like shoving her hand down there and feeling. Why was she thinking things like this? This was supposed to be solemn moment.

“He would have been really handsome if he had dressed a little differently,” Mona said. “Why did he wear those stupid short windbreakers. They weren’t at all flattering for his build.

“Seija was in charge of how Erik dressed,” Liisa said.

“Seija should have asked for some help from a style coach,” Mona replied.

They giggled. Style advice wouldn’t be any help anymore.

“He looks peaceful,” Mona observed.

“He finally got away from Seija,” Liisa said. She felt like crying again.

Mona shook her head.

“Five years. At our age time goes by in a flash, but five years is still a pretty long time. I was just able to wait. Wait and hope. People are so stupid. But we were so good together, you know. Even though all we had was a hurried, stolen moment now and then, those moments were all the more important for being so brief. Erik loved me in his own way, you know.”

“So you say.”

“But he was a good man, and Seija needed him. He couldn’t leave Seija. It’s kind of silly, but that’s the same reason I loved him so much. He was a man who didn’t want to break the promises he had made. He had promised to live with Seija, and that’s what he did,” Liisa explained.

“Maybe. But he still broke a promise by screwing you,” Mona said.

“Don’t use words like that!” Liisa said, horrified. “How can you talk about screwing in a place like this. Have you no shame!” She was amazed that Mona could be so tactless The top of the coffin was off and there was an audience of corpses listening!

“I’m sorry, but screwing seems like exactly the right word to me,” Mona said dryly.

Liisa imagined that Mona’s voice would be just as dry if she got a call to a home where a man was in the act of beating his wife. Nothing humans did was foreign to Mona. Nothing surprised her, at least not the dark side of humanity.

“I understand that for you this is about grand feelings, but in the eyes of a outsider he was just a man who was cheating on his wife with you,” Mona said. “I’m not moralizing. I understand that things like this happen. I’m just stating the facts. Perhaps you loved each other, but it certainly would have hurt his wife if she had known. And you were stupid for sacrificing five irreplaceable years on him.”

Liisa looked at the man resting in the coffin. I will be the last person to kiss you, she thought. Me, not that self-centered wife of yours who you tried to protect right to the last. She bent and pressed a kiss on his lips. Their coldness surprised her, even though she had expected it.

“You obviously don’t have the faintest idea how perverted that looks,” Mona said.

Liisa took a small mirror out of her handbag and fixed her hair. While she was putting on some lipstick, Mona turned on her camera, complaining that the battery light was blinking.

“Unbelievable!” Liisa exclaimed. “How can you be so stupid not to charge your battery for this!”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Let’s just get this over with,” Mona said.

Liisa slipped her arm under Erik’s shoulders and lifted his head out of the coffin. She pressed her head against his cold cheek. Mona shook her head.

“This is sick,” she said.

“I don’t have any pictures with us together,” Liisa said. “He would never even agree to come with me to one of those passport picture machines even though I asked. He owes me at least one picture with us together.”

The flash lit up the dark room. Mona checked the screen now and then to see how the pictures were coming out. “That should do it,” she said.

“Let me see,” Liisa said, lowering Erik’s head gently back to the lace-trimmed pillow.

They examined the pictures and observed once again how good looking Erik was. He had distinct features that hadn’t sagged even in death. His nose was straight, his cheeks high. His eyebrows were strong and even, without any overlong hairs sticking out revoltingly. Even the expression of his mouth had remained. It had a sort of slyness to it. Somehow it was even more apparent now than it had been when Erik was still alive.

It was a shame that the flash made the pictures somehow dismal, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Of course the surroundings this time were also a little dreary, but natural light could have softened the austereness of the mortuary. But that would never be available in this windowless space, especially not in the middle of the night.

“Close the lid up so we can get out of here,” Mona said urgently.

“One more thing,” Liisa said.

She looked in her handbag for a picture. Erik had taken it of her, not all that long ago. In the picture Liisa lay naked on that same sofa where the married couples posed, blissfully unaware of the games that had been played on the very same spot.

“What are you going to do with these pictures?” Liisa had asked.

“Keep them as a memento,” Erik had said.

“And if Seija sees?”

“I’m not going to take them home. I’ll hide them and look at them when I’m old, and you don’t love me anymore. These pictures will help me remember that I lived once,” Erik said.

Liisa was happy that Erik felt alive with her. A woman could be proud of herself if she got a man to feel that way. But she still didn’t really understand what had gotten her to pose naked for him. She didn’t think of herself as a woman who went around showing off her crotch. One certain man was something different, but anyone might see a photograph.

But that moment had been magical. They had made love feverishly and told each other how lonely and hopeless life would be without the other’s presence. Then Erik had looked at Liisa affectionately and told her how beautiful she was. He had said he wanted a picture to remember her by, and Liisa had wanted a picture of herself in which she was being looked at through the adoring eyes of a man in love. She had rested languidly, cheeks flushed in the afterglow of lovemaking and let Erik photograph.

“Make me one picture and you can keep another. Then delete them from the memory card, OK?” she had said.

“Of course,” Erik had said.

Erik had given her the picture the next day. Liisa had hidden it on a bookshelf in her Bible, thinking that no one would ever happen to flip through it. Every now and then she got the picture out and looked at herself thinking that is how he sees me, so bright, so open. He must really love me deeply.

The thought moved her and gave her confidence that it was worth continuing to wait, to hope.

“What are you up to?” Mona asked.

Liisa took Erik’s hand and bent his fingers so she could push the nude picture between them.

“So he has something interesting to look at on the other side,” she said.

“You’re even nuttier than I thought,” Mona said. “And what if his wife wants to say goodbye to her husband one last time after the funeral? Then she’ll see that!”

Liisa stared at the picture sticking out from his fingers. Mona was right of course. It was probable that Seija wouldn’t open the coffin again. She had had time to say goodbye to her husband many times over, and unbolting the coffin was a big job. But it was possible of course that the coffin would be opened again before the funeral.

She took the picture from the corpse’s hand, lifted the covering over his torso a bit and pushed the picture under. Mona shook her head. Then Liisa bolted the coffin shut and they made their exit from the mortuary. The rain had stopped again. The night was clear and crisp.

Liisa’s eyes smarted. She had been staring at the computer screen for hours trying to solve a problem with a client’s web page when a familiar ping told her she had new email. She sighed and opened the message. Mona had sent her a link. The message field said: I ran into this online. What is this about?

Liisa clicked the link, which opened to one of the Internet’s innumerable porn sites. This was a site where people could send photos of themselves, awarding each other points for the shapeliness and size of their genitals, breasts, rear ends etc. Usually the people on the site had been photographed in such a way that their faces were not visible. Only Liisa looked straight at the camera, her face perfectly recognizable.

Liisa stared at the picture for a minute. It took a while before she understood what had happened. That she was bare-crotched on the Internet.

She turned off the computer and went out onto the balcony. For a moment she really thought about jumping. That would be easiest. But then she sat down and forced herself to breathe the humid autumn air deep into her lungs. Let it rain all night long, let my love for you grow strong…

She thought about what had happened. What could have happened? There weren’t very many possibilities, really just one. Why had she been so stupid? Doubly stupid. First she had let herself be photographed that way. Why had she done that? She was a sensible, respectable person who had always wanted to live like other people lived. She wasn’t at all like those bestial, shameless women who were constantly showing themselves off in the magazines and on the Internet, trying to one-up each other. Tears started to well up again. She had only wanted a relationship, a normal life with the man she loved, but it hadn’t worked out. But she had taken it anyway, whatever she could get, and started a relationship with a married man. She couldn’t do anything about it. She had fallen in love and in the incandescence of love acted incautiously.

Her second stupidity was to leave the picture in the coffin. So that Erik could supposedly look at her loveliness in the eternities. Liisa groaned in disbelief at her own idiocy. Of course Seija, the bitch, had opened the coffin and found the picture. What reason could his wife have had for putting her hand under the sheet? There really were all sorts of loonies in the world.

She called Mona, who was expecting her call. Mona was sympathetic and calm, of course. In her work she had run into stranger things. “I’ll look into this a bit. Just try to keep yourself together over there. I’ll call back soon.”

Mona didn’t sound at all surprised. Things like this must be commonplace for the police.

Liisa walked in circles on the balcony. People were watching her from the windows in the building across the way. First from one, then from another. Finally there were three people standing in their windows watching her. What was their problem? Didn’t people have anything better to do than stare out their windows?

Liisa jumped when the telephone rang. It was Mona. She said the site was maintained by some Lithuanian group. She was making peaceful overtures in that direction, asking that the picture be removed from the website. But it might be that the request wouldn’t bear fruit and that they would have to pull out the heavy guns, and even that wouldn’t necessarily help because people might have already saved the picture of Liisa on their own machines, if they had thought it was sufficiently appealing. The picture might take on a virtual life of its own.

“You were stupid letting him take a picture of you like that,” Mona said.

“What’s wrong with that woman?!” Liisa said with a snarl. “She could have let the poor man rest in peace and not go rummaging through his coffin! Don’t you think Seija’s off her rocker?”

Mona didn’t reply. Liisa clutched the phone against her ear so hard it hurt.

“Well, say something,” she said insistently.

“There is also the possibility that Erik put the picture online,” Mona observed.

“Never! Why would he have done that?”

“I think you’re a little too trusting when it comes to men,” Mona said.

“Yes, but Erik…”

Liisa didn’t know how to continue. Mona was quiet too, only tapping her ballpoint pen on the table.

“Well, let’s see what happens,” she said finally in the official tone she used when talking to clients. “Maybe they’ll take the picture down, and you’ll just get off with a scare. Are you going to be OK?”

“I’ll be fine,” Liisa said, although she wasn’t so sure.

That night Liisa had to take two sleeping pills.

Even through her sleep she remembered that something horrible had happened.

When she woke up in the morning, she couldn’t believe it was true. Things like this didn’t happen. She had always been so sensible and taken care of all her responsibilities.

Liisa got up and padded over to the computer. She navigated to the porn site hoping things had mysteriously worked themselves out over night and the world was on its proper course again, the picture gone, but in vain. There she was on the sleazy page, a misty smile in her eyes, spreading her legs to everyone who had the time to look.

You could also comment on the pictures, and some comments had already been left about her. Most of them were in English, and she didn’t entirely understand what they said, thankfully. There was also a Finnish comment thrown in. “That’s quite a bush. Might be a good idea to shave it a bit. Someone could get lost in that.”

She was overtaken by a previously unimaginable sorrow. Losing Erik was nothing compared to this. Numb with distress she continued to surf. Penises and women’s crotches swarmed before her eyes, swollen and shiny. She had always tried to live so meticulously, so that no one would have anything to say against her. How grotesque that she of all people had ended up as one of the living mannequins in this disturbed world where vulvae were exposed with reckless abandon. These people knew no shame. Nothing was sacred to them.

Her email pinged to indicate new mail had arrived. She clicked it open. The message’s subject was: Hey, Beautiful! You look pretty fine. How about a little of this? Below there was a link. When Liisa clicked the link, it opened a picture of a gigantic purple penis. The owner clearly had his finger on the pulse of the times, because all his extra hair had been carefully shaved off. This is revenge. Liisa understood that clearly now. It wouldn’t be enough for Seija to put the picture on one single solitary dirty website. She would spread it around. She would practically devote herself to destroying Liisa’s reputation with one small—and ultimately rather innocent—photograph.

Liisa noticed Seija’s puffy eyes when she opened the door. It had been a couple of weeks since the funeral, and she was still on sick leave. She hadn’t dressed, instead traipsing around her messy apartment in a flowery bathrobe. “Oh, hi. This is a surprise,” she said when she saw Liisa.

She didn’t invite Liisa in. She just waited so see what Liisa had to say. Liisa pretended that she didn’t notice Seija’s reluctance, stepping past her into the cluttered entryway, where the floor was covered with a pile of shoes. Seija and Erik had three children, all of whom still lived at home.

“I should have called you,” Seija said in a dull voice, “but lately things have been a little, you know…”

“Yes, that’s why I came, Liisa said. “Please accept my condolences. It’s a shame.”

Seija shrugged and snorted weakly. Liisa could see that Seija was skilled. That was how she had kept Erik in her clutches. She was a brilliant actress.

Liisa looked around the living room. “Are the children at school?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Seija said. “I haven’t had it in me to go back to work yet.”

She shuffled into the kitchen and started making coffee.. The water surged in the pipes as she rinsed the pot.

Once they had been friends. That was how Liisa had gotten to know Erik, through Seija. They had been friends like young people are. Their relationship was short-term and bumpy. When their roads diverged for practical reasons, the friendship faded as well. Then when Erik and Liisa found each other in a romantic sense, of course there had been a new reason to keep a little distance.

Once they had run into each other in the city. We should meet, Seija had said. We really should, Liisa had replied. Then each of them had continued on her way and the matter was forgotten until they ran into each other again, trading the same artificial words without any intention of ever putting them into practice.

Of course Liisa had felt guilty about fooling around with Seija’s husband behind her back. It wasn’t pretty no matter how she thought about it. “Thanks for coming by,” Seija said, putting the cups on the table. “This has been a tough time.”

Liisa eyed Seija. Her chutzpah was unbelievable. Nothing in Seija’s expression exposed what she had been doing the last few days.

“Would you like some bread? I can thaw some from the freezer.”

Without waiting for a response, Seija opened the freezer door and took out a long loaf of coffee bread.

“Stop it,” Liisa said.

Seija set the bread listlessly on the table.

“Stop what?”

“This act!”

Seija rubbed her forehead.

“Sorry, I’m pretty medicated. I can’t sleep. I’m taking sleeping pills and tranquilizers. Everything is fuzzy. I have to try for the children’s sake, but honestly things are miserable. I’ve practically abandoned the children.”

“I know what you did! Take the pictures off the Net now!”

Seija’s mouth opened.

“What pictures?”

Liisa burst into the living room.

“Where is there a computer here?”

She opened the doors into each of the other rooms. In the boy’s room of course. Erik had said once that his son was a nerd. Liisa turned on the computer. It seemed to take an eternity. Seija looked more tired and indifferent than surprised.

“I’ll put the coffee on. We can just sit and drink and have a nice quiet chat.”

“Stop screwing around!”

Liisa was enraged by how calm Seija was, even though it might just be a result of the medication. She Googled the porn site and soon the screen was filled naked women.

Seija was shocked.

“You’ve gone stark raving mad,” she said and returned to the kitchen. Liisa followed.

“Don’t try to play ignorant. You put my picture on that porn site,” she said. “You found it in Erik’s casket and put it online to get revenge. You’re an animal!”

Seija shook her head. “From what casket?”

“Erik’s coffin. You couldn’t let him rest in peace.”

Seija raised her hand unsympathetically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. You’re insane, sick.”

Liisa pushed her. “Come look!”

“Stop it!”

The fuzziness seemed to have left Seija. She stood up straight. She pushed Liisa back.

“You think I didn’t know about your relationship, but you’re wrong. I knew the whole time. Erik told me everything. Don’t look so surprised. He always told me everything, in detail. You weren’t his first woman, and you weren’t his last. But you were the most stupid. That I’ll grant you. He used women, love-sick idiots like you. He flattered them, took pictures of them, supposedly as mementos, and they always consented to everything. Even the primmest housewife took it all off in front of his camera, with her pants around her ankles if Erik asked. If your smutty butt pictures ended up online, don’t blame me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.

“You’re lying,” Liisa hissed. “You’re lying.”

She grabbed the frozen coffee bread and swung it at Seija’s face. The bread wasn’t very heavy, and she didn’t get very much force behind the blow, but her attack came as a surprise. Seija staggered, hitting her head on the sharp edge of the trendy rolling island in the corner of the kitchen as she fell.

Seija let out a small, broken sound and then lay silent on the waxed pine floor. Liisa stared, breathless. Then she sneaked into the boy’s room and turned off the computer. Just to be sure she wiped the switch with a handkerchief. She grabbed the coffee bread from the kitchen and left the apartment.

Later that evening Mona let her know that the administrator of the porn site had agreed to remove the picture, but that of course didn’t solve the problem completely because they couldn’t know who might have downloaded the picture from the site onto their own machine and possibly forwarded it on.

“Luckily you aren’t the youngest, hard-body babe around, so it’s unlikely your picture will be a runaway hit—no offense intended,” Mona said.

“Thank you,” Liisa said. “You’re a true friend. Will you come over for coffee?”

Mona came an hour later. They drank coffee in the living room and watched The Bachelor on TV. All of the female contestants were stupid, so the world was clearly as it should be again.

“Good bread,” Mona said. “You don’t get this much anymore. Real, traditional Finnish coffee bread. Did you make it yourself?”

“I got it from a friend,” Liisa said.

They drank their coffee in silent mutual understanding. Something from the past crossed Liisa’s mind.

“Back when you got religion,” she said. “You had had some sort of secret love thing going on, hadn’t you?”

Mona glanced at her.

“Better not to talk about it,” she said.

On the television, one of the Bachelor contestants was admitting once putting an ugly picture of a friend online as revenge for the friend flirting with her boyfriend.

Liisa noticed that Mona had stopped eating. A piece of bread hung forgotten between her fingers. There were a few crumbs on the corner of her mouth. Her eyes were glued to the woman on the television, who was babbling about this little joke she pulled when she was young, laughing blithely.

“How did you happen to find my picture online,” she asked.

“Don’t think so much,” Mona said. “The most important thing is that it’s gone.”

They looked at each other. Liisa realized that of course there was a reason why Mona didn’t want to talk about her relationship. Seija might have been right about what she said about Erik’s dealings with women. Perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to think so much. Or talk.

Liisa pushed the plate closer to Mona.

“Take some more. It’ll get stale if we don’t eat it.”

Translation by Owen F. Witesman