Olli drinks.
She strokes his hair.
Olli can see that there is a menacing shadow approaching under the water. He tears himself away from the woman and makes as if to escape.
But the shadow is Aino. She rises to the surface and shakes the water from her hair. When she smiles, a gentle light radiates from her face.
Aino places a blue toy boat in Olli’s hands and whispers, “Look what I found, darling. Don’t let the mermaids take it away again. I had to make a dear sacrifice to St Anthony to get it back. But I have to go now. Our little boy is waiting all alone at the bottom of the sea.”
Olli tries to take hold of his wife’s hand, but she’s already gone.
Four days later, Greta sent another message. It seemed her writing wasn’t going well.
I’ve been spending a lot of time outdoors. The streets of Paris are filled with advertisements for my book. Yesterday I was walking on the Champs-Élysées and I saw five of them. People everywhere are reading it. I was in a cafe and a whole group of people at another table were in a heated discussion about it. They took the book’s ideas very seriously, which is flattering, of course. They were all dressed cinematically and striving in general for a deep cinematic self—you could tell from their conversation. The magazines here are filled with articles about how to cinematicize your life. It’s the newest fashion, a lifestyle that even has its own designated clubs now. I went to one yesterday. It had a rather strange, but exciting, atmosphere. I’m really happy that no one recognizes me from my author photos—otherwise I would never be left in peace.
A Guide to the Cinematic Life, in other words, is selling amazingly well. I sent the first pages of my new book to my Finnish publisher. They didn’t like them and suggested changes. I don’t quite know what to think. It’s depressing.
Olli offered Greta the same fatherly advice he gave to his own authors when they lost their inspiration. Of course, this time he knew that it was more pastoral counselling than genuine practical guidance.
But he left it in the message. He thought for a moment, then started to answer the questions she had asked in her first message. Yes, he was married. They had a child, and a joint mortgage.
What should he say about Book Tower? They published mostly children’s books but also some popular non-fiction, the kinds of things people bought as gifts, and read themselves.
Olli furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. He sounded sterile and distant. He should write a bit more openly, more personally. They were old friends, after all.
As far as the children’s books go, at the moment we have a bit of an oversupply and are actually trying to get rid of the most tired book series, and their authors, but we’re always looking for interesting non-fiction to add to our list, so that we can keep afloat as a mid-sized publisher. That’s actually the most worrisome item in my work life right now.
Olli read the last few lines several times.
He hoped they didn’t give the impression that he was trying to persuade a successful author to change houses…
He tapped on his desk, tasted the words, squinted and decided to delete the last sentence, to avoid any misunderstanding.
But his hand slipped, and a mischievous finger hit the mouse button, and the message escaped without revision.
8
TWO WEEKS LATER, Olli gathered the staff in the conference room. He filled his lungs with the venerable ambience and announced that, if all went according to plan, Greta Kara’s next book would be published the following autumn by Book Tower Publishing. He added that the contract wasn’t yet signed, so Antero shouldn’t start issuing press releases just yet, but they would definitely be putting a contract together as soon as possible so that everything was settled and the marketing rumba could be set in motion.
There followed five seconds of silence, analysis of his facial expression, searching for any possibility of irony or misunderstanding.
The applause lasted so long that Olli eventually had to cut it off.
Later that day Maiju appeared at Olli’s office door, perfumed and coiffed. She was wearing a white summer dress that showed off her long legs. Her fingernails were long now, and painted bright red. Her hair looked lighter.
“Don’t you ever say goodnight?” she cooed, in English.
It took Olli by surprise.
“Hello?! Veronica Lake?” Maiju said huffily. “The Blue Dahlia? According to The Cinematic Life, Joyce Harwood is a character I can use to get in touch with my deep cinematic self…”
“Right. Was there something you wanted?”
“It’s about Greta Kara’s book… Who’s going to edit it?”
“I am,” Olli answered.
He was at that moment writing an email to the book-fair organizer. There was going to be plenty of work to do in Frankfurt. It wouldn’t be easy to stand out from seventeen thousand other exhibitors from a hundred different countries. “Greta specifically requested it,” he added. “We’re old acquaintances, you see.”
Maiju was speechless. “What kind of book is it exactly?” she finally said. Olli could see that she would have asked for more information about her boss’s relationship with the famous author if she’d only dared.
Olli stopped writing, leant back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Hopefully a book as successful as her first one,” he said. “If it’s money you’re thinking about. It’s going to be a sort of city guidebook. We’re actually talking about doing a series of guidebooks. One for each city. At some point they could also be combined in one volume, once the concept is worked out.”
Maiju gnawed at a fingernail. A deep groove appeared between her brows.
“OK. A city guide. I don’t mean to be a drag, but hasn’t that already been done to death? What does Greta Kara have to add to the guidebook market?”
“Well,” Olli said, stretching. “The plan is to continue the filmic angle from her first book and adapt it to different cities of the world, large and small. That’s how Greta described it. Have you read the part in Cinematic Life where she talks about the different degrees of cinematicness in different locations and how to judge them? It’s a fun sort of mind game that was left a bit undeveloped, but it still has lots of potential. That’s going to be the starting point for the guidebooks. Instead of discussing the usual city sights, she’ll present the cinematic places, the kinds of places that haven’t been much written about, places people usually don’t know to look for. Magical, out-of-the-ordinary places where the atmosphere is especially concentrated, where life feels more meaningful. Greta and I have a working title of Magical City Guides, or Magical Travel Guides.”
He could see the gears turning in Maiju’s blonde head. “OK,” she said slowly, her eyes glassy, her tongue clicking. Her face took on an expression that had a touch of pure sexual arousal in it. “Magical City Guides… It sounds unusual. Unusual in a sellable way. I can imagine buying a book like that for myself. And I would certainly buy it as a gift for someone who was planning to go to that place. Nice work, Olli. What cities will be covered? I suppose she’ll start with Paris? There’s hardly a place more magical than that. Or Rome?”
Olli shook his head. “Actually no,” he said. “The first city she wants to cover is Jyväskylä, and its magical places.”
Olli’s announcement had been preceded by a two-week correspondence that was like two cats dancing around a hot bowl of oatmeal.
Greta had revealed that her publisher wasn’t warming up to the idea of writing the first magical city guide about Jyväskylä, even if it was the place where she’d spent the first seventeen years of her life, and was thus important to her.