The man took Olli by the arm to keep him from falling.
“You seem to be in quite a hurry, Mr Suominen,” the man said. It was the principal, who was also a member of the school board. Olli took a breath and apologized. The men shook hands in a show of mutual respect. Like two honoured city leaders who each in his own way and of one accord uphold the civic culture of this, the Athens of Finland—that was how one of the jokers at the Jyväskylä Club once put it. “You might have spoilt your fine bouquet,” the principal continued. “What’s the occasion? Is today your wife’s birthday?”
Olli told him it was his anniversary. The principal congratulated him. Olli thought about dinner, which was probably already on the table, his wife and son picking up their cutlery at that moment.
The principal lifted his chin, gave Olli a serious look, and said in mock sternness, “Mr Suominen, I hope you have bought your club membership.”
Olli shrugged, smiled, and said, “I’ve been very busy…”
The principal laughed. It was the same old joke every time Olli saw a member of the Jyväskylä Club. The last time had been two weeks earlier when the principal invited him to the club for a meal and a cognac with the higher-ups of the city.
While he was there it was explained to him, once again, that club membership was not only an honour but a civic and social responsibility, and that he shouldn’t put it off any longer. With all hesitation drowned in a snifter of Delamain, Olli had promised to take care of the matter at the first opportunity. The next morning, however, it hadn’t felt quite so urgent.
The two men wished each other a pleasant evening and parted. As Olli continued on his way he noticed that the pavement in front of the school was well gritted, and for that he was happy.
The Suominen’s house was in Mäki-Matti, a verdant residential area on the far side of Harju Ridge. There were three possible routes home from the publishing house. The easiest and safest was also the dullest. That was the route Olli took, because he wanted to be home before Aino and his son got up from the table. He crossed the market square and walked down Harjukatu along the lower slope of the Ridge.
Harju Ridge was Jyväskylä’s most important landmark. If you stood at the summit and looked south-east, you could see over the city streets as far as the lake and beyond. Olli passed the new school annexe, a red-brick colossus where teenagers studied for university entrance or for a profession. It looked like a prison. The sign in front read “MUNICIPAL–REGIONAL EDUCATION DISTRICT”. It sounded ugly and bureaucratic to him, and brought a scowl to his face.
Boys in billed caps and girls dressed in black were standing at the bus stop. Olli strode past with his brow furrowed.
He didn’t like the walk home from here. It lacked all atmosphere. Jyväskylä nowadays had too many out-sized structures that tired the eye; oppressive, purposeless spaces; roads and tracks laid in the wrong places; buildings with no personalities; erasures of history.
In cities like Paris or Budapest, your senses opened to take in experiences, but Jyväskylä nurtured dullness. Olli had spent the best summers of his childhood in Jyväskylä, but the city in his memories was more beautiful, larger, magical.
He turned left at the corner of the school. On his right was a car park, and beyond it a small city park—although it was really just a paved square. It looked like it had fallen randomly where it lay. There was a flea market there on Saturdays. Most other days it was full of skateboarders practising tricks. It had several step-like structures, a fountain and a massive signpost that marked the distance and direction to Jyväskylä’s various sister cities: DEBRECEN. ESBJERG. ESKILSTUNA. FJARđABYGGđ. YAROSLAVL. POTSDAM. POZNAŃ. STAVANGER. MUDANJIANG. Presumably there was in each of these cities a sign that pointed to Jyväskylä. Olli found the thought depressing.
At last reaching the end of the long school building, he came to the first houses of Mäki-Matti. The Ridge with its street lamps, footpaths and benches rose up on his left. Runners and dog walkers flitted by among the trees.
On the top of the Ridge was the observation tower stretching up to the sky like a prayer from the city fathers and mothers: Our Father who art, perhaps, up there in heaven, do not forsake Jyväskylä, but give us this day our daily vision, mission and development strategy, and a little relief from budget deficits!
Every summer Olli went at least once to the observation tower with Aino and the boy. They rode the elevator to the restaurant, bought bowls of ice cream with chocolate sauce and looked at the view: the downtown streets, the lake, the little people swarming around the stadium, the wooded suburbs that surrounded the city.
Olli thought about dinner. It was Tuesday. Potatoes and hamburger gravy.
They had lived at their present address for ten years. Before that they’d lived in a two-bedroom apartment, their first shared dwelling. When Olli was given the post of publisher and Aino got her job at the school they took out a loan and bought a house at the top of the Ridge.
It was an expensive house, but brighter and roomier than their apartment, and in a lovely neighbourhood. “Have we really earned a house like this?” Aino exclaimed with tears in her eyes the day they moved in, and Olli laughed at her childlike joy. They dashed from room to room, holding each other by the hand, and made love on the pile rug in the kitchen. Olli had bought the rug as a gift for Aino when she was living in a sublet room in a pensioner’s house.
Seven years later a little boy just learning to walk had diarrhoea on that rug. As Olli carried the rug out to the bins Aino had said very sensibly, “That ratty thing. A family with kids needs a kitchen floor that’s easy to clean.”
As the years passed, the house revealed its little failings. Aino didn’t mind them. And Olli tried not to think too much about them. A person should be positive.
For instance, the slope of the wood floor at the south end of the dining room didn’t really bother him once they adjusted the legs on one side of the table. They could replace the floor later, once the boy was bigger and they’d paid off more of their home loan and Olli had the time to arrange it all. And if they didn’t hang any shelves or pictures on the living-room wall, they didn’t really notice that it leant in by about three centimetres.
Sometimes as Olli lay in bed waiting to fall asleep and listening to Aino snuffling in her dreams, the flaws in their house would circle in his mind like houseflies. It was a comfortable, pleasant house. Aino found it pleasant, anyway, and so did their son. Olli tried to. He just felt that when the place was built the horizontals weren’t quite made horizontal, or the verticals vertical.
The builder seemed to have been missing his spirit level and measuring tape. Sometimes when Olli thought about this inattention to detail it made him so angry that he had to get out of bed and go to the kitchen for a glass of milk. The kitchen had been remodelled properly, and neatly. It was a sort of temple of clarity for Olli, where he could, on nights like these, regain his peace of mind.
The house had a little metal gate in front. When you went through the gate it squeaked open and slammed closed. In the yard were five currant bushes, three apple trees, a rowan and, at the moment, a metre of snow, with Aino’s flowerbeds beneath them, waiting for the spring. A narrow path led to the front door. Olli came through the front door with the bundle of flowers under his arm, smelling the aroma of food. He hung his things on the coat rack, took off his fogged glasses and stuffed them in the breast pocket of his shirt, and went into the dining room.