‘Please don’t be angry,’ Miss Joutila said. Her voice quivered. She was sniffling.
‘Do you understand what you do! You make everything wrong.’
There was a crash. Something broke as it was flung onto the floor.
Pia was frightened but she couldn’t move. Miss Joutila was weeping.
‘I’m sorry, Vadi. I didn’t know, I…’
But Kovtun didn’t let her finish. ‘I tell you what you do. You talk to this Englishman again. You tell him you sorry, very sorry. You were stupid. And you do not, hear me woman, you do not say my name!’ There was a bang. Kovtun must have hit something. Pia held her breath. Then, Kovtun continued in a more gentle tone, ‘Leena, dusha, you want to live in England with Vladsislas and his beautiful daughter, yes?’
‘Yes.’ Leena’s voice was so low Pia could hardly make out what she said.
‘But this man try to stop us, see?’
Leena sighed, ‘OK, I’ll talk to him again and tell him I was mistaken.’
Later when Pia came out of the gym hall, Heikki was waiting for her in the corridor.
‘Pia,’ he called when she tried to walk past him. Heikki took hold of Pia’s arm and said, ‘Please, can we talk. We could go to the Rixi Bar?’
‘Ok,’ she said. Iain would be outside by now, and would follow them. She felt safe knowing that. ‘But, instead of Rixi, we’ll go to my place, OK?’
‘Sure.’
Heikki seemed meek as a lamb. He followed Pia rather than taking hold of her and leading as he usually did. They walked out of the school building, picking up their coats from the lockers. Neither spoke. Outside, Pia scanned the street, but couldn’t see Iain. Then she remembered what Iain had told her and took off her scarf.
‘What are you doing?’ Heikki asked. ‘It’s bloody freezing out here!’
Pia said nothing, but continued to scan the people on the street. No sign of Iain! She took Heikki’s hand and ran to the tram stop. The number ten was just pulling up. Pia felt for the key in her pocket and decided she’d take Heikki with her to the Council. At least there they would be safe.
Pia and Heikki got out of the crowded tram at Erottaja.
‘I thought we were going to yours?’ Heikki said as their feet hit the pavement. Pia didn’t reply. Her heart pounded hard against her jumper as she looked up the hill towards Ullanlinna. A few people were hurrying down the slippery street and along the tree-lined South Esplanade. The lights of the Happy Days Café seemed bright against the grey sky. Where was Iain? Without his protection Pia felt vulnerable.
Pia and Heikki were standing at the zebra crossing waiting for the lights to turn to green. Suddenly she couldn’t bear it any longer. She took hold of Heikki’s hand and ran against the red light. A car sounded its horn, narrowly missing them. A man, standing on the opposite side of the street caught Pia’s eye.
‘Why are we going there?’ Heikki asked, nodding at the Council building. ‘Just follow me,’ Pia said and took a few steps sideways and hurried past the man. Please don’t let him grab us, she thought and glanced back. The man moved towards the edge of the curb. Pia took a deep breath in and ran to the heavy door of the Council building. She took the key out of her pocket and went to open the door but it gave way. Thank God, Pia thought, it’s unlocked. She glanced back. The man was now on the other side of the road, hurrying towards Stockmann’s.
The woman at the reception to the Council made a phone call before she allowed Pia and Heikki inside. Pia had to show the key that Iain had given her. Heikki raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Once inside one of the outer rooms, which looked like a library, the woman asked Pia in perfect Finnish, ‘Would you like a hot drink? Tea, coffee?’ She smiled and looked almost friendly. Her demeanour had changed after she’d put the phone down.
‘Yes, please, coffee’ Pia said. Heikki nodded. Suddenly Pia was starving, and as if the woman had known this, she brought something to eat with the two cups of hot drinks. There were English sandwiches on a blue patterned plate, soft white bread filled with ham and cut into small triangles.
The woman closed the door and Pia and Heikki sat in a corner of the dark room smelling of old books, with a low table between them, and started eating. Pia picked up a sandwich and looked at Heikki. His shoulders were hunched, he didn’t seem as confident as he had done the last time he was here. Pia wished Iain could see him like this. With his head bent, eating his sandwich, he glanced at Pia, but didn’t say anything.
‘I saw you talking to Sasha outside the school this morning.’
Heikki looked up and bit his lip.
‘She warned you about me?’
‘No!’ Heikki nearly shouted the word. Now he’d gone bright red. Did this mean he was lying? ‘Look, Sasha and I belong, belonged,’ Heikki’s voice got higher and for a moment he looked embarrassed rather than sad or angry, ‘or rather it’s our parents that really belong, to the Pioneers.’
Pia looked at Heikki. ‘The Communist thing?’
‘Yeah, well it’s kind of fun, they do camps in the summer and discos for us older kids.’
‘So, you and Sasha…?’
‘We’ve known each other since we were babies.’
‘You never said.’
‘Belonging to the Pioneers isn’t exactly cool at the Lyceum.’
Pia thought about what the Old Crow’s reaction would have been if she’d known, and nearly smiled. ‘But how did you keep it a secret? And why? I thought you lot were proud of your beliefs.’ Pia couldn’t believe she didn’t know this about Heikki. There was a girl in the year below her who everybody knew was a Communist. She wore grey clothes and always had sweat marks under her arms. Nobody spoke to her. Pia’s grandfather had fought Stalin in the war and her grandmother hated the Russians. She’d told Pia they wanted Finland to belong to the Soviet Union, to lose its hard-fought independence. If the Communists had won the civil war, or if Finns hadn’t fought so hard against Stalin, she said, there’d be no Finland. The country would be like Estonia or Poland. There’d be food shortages, bad clothes and everyone would work in large factories earning little money, and live in huge, cold blocks of flats. Pia wanted to say all this to Heikki, but she wondered if it would have made any difference. ‘Communism is like a disease, once you get it, you can’t be cured,’ her Grandmother had told Pia.
Heikki was quiet. He leant back on the low chair and ran his fingers through his hair. Normally Pia would have wanted to kiss Heikki, seeing him do that, but now she was strangely unaffected by the gesture.
‘I didn’t think you’d understand,’ he said after a long while.
‘You’re right,’ Pia said, ‘but that’s not important now. Tell me, without lying,’ Pia emphasised the last word, ‘what you were looking for in Anni’s father’s desk?’
Heikki’s face was serious, ‘Nothing.’
Pia considered Heikki. He looked Pia squarely in the eyes. He seemed sincere.
Maija closed the door behind her and plonked the two heavy shopping bags on the hall floor. She’d been so preoccupied this week she forgot to shop for food on Saturday and had to go all the way to Valintatalo, the only store that was open on Sundays.
‘Pia!’ she shouted. Her room was empty. Maija glanced at her watch. It was nearly two o’clock. The rehearsals were supposed to finish at lunchtime. Where was the girl?
Maija wished she’d accompanied Pia to the training session. They could have shopped together afterwards. She had wanted to, but didn’t want to be the over-protective mother. Besides, what could possibly happen to Pia at school? But now, Maija started to wonder if Jukka Linnonmaa had been right after all. Maija dismissed his warnings about the Communist conspiracy President Kekkonen was heading. She knew he was a right-wing activist. Sitting opposite Linnonmaa at the Happy Days Café, in the middle of a harsh Helsinki winter, Maija had felt the same fear she now knew made her leave the Customs. But surely it was highly unlikely that Pia’s new boyfriend could be involved in something similar. She’d politely listened to Linnonmaa for a while and then told him she had to get to work.