Copper Heart (5 page)

When I shifted my glance a couple of yards to the right, I saw Johnny’s wife, Tuija Miettinen. She gave me a crooked, slightly amused smile. We never liked each other. I was sure that Tuija had been jealous of my friendship with Johnny, even
though I was the only one with any real reason to be jealous. Tuija had been the one who hooked him, after all.

Suddenly I wanted out of there, away from the party, away from Arpikylä, away from myself. But just then the horns blared and the governor cut the blue-and-white ribbon. The door to the Tower opened softly, invitingly, and the crowd pushed me along with them up the dark stairway.

3

The Tower’s interior was dark and damp. Water dripped from the mortar gaps in the timeworn stone walls, and the steel-reinforced wooden staircase seemed to sag beneath the weight of the mass of people. As a child, I had been a little afraid of climbing the Tower. Was there any guarantee the stairs wouldn’t break? Could the whole building collapse? Or what if I fell off the top, right over the three-foot-high railing?

The climb went slowly because people were already making their way back down. The sweet stink of perfume mixed with a sulfuric smell emanating from the walls. Johnny and Meritta passed on their way back down, and Johnny smiled, his dark-red jacket sleeve brushing my arm. Ahead I saw Matti’s corduroy pants leg disappear through the hatch at the top of the stairs.

The view from the observation deck always gave me a euphoric feeling of freedom, even though there was nothing special about it—endless forest, here and there a lake reflecting the blue of the sky, the occasional patch of field with a black dot indicating the location of a house. In the summer, the view of the city was almost completely obscured behind the hill and all the tall birch trees that lined the streets. During my years in school, this view revealed a world beyond
Arpikylä, showing me the many different roads that could lead me out.

And, crazy me, here I was back again.

I went right up to the railing, playing the old “how far down do I dare to look” game. I saw Meritta Flöjt’s splotch of orange down below, but Johnny had disappeared. Some people seemed to have glasses in their hands, so after a few more seconds of jostling around up top, I headed down to hunt for a drink.

As I made my descent, I tried to think of what I knew about Meritta—other than that she was my old bandmate Jaska Korhonen’s sister.

Two main themes dominated Meritta’s work as a painter: muscular male nudes and various phallus and vulva symbols. Meritta’s male figures decorated the office walls of nearly every modern female CEO and politician in Finland who considered herself sexually liberated. Her paintings were undeniably fantastic, and the collection of pictures of ideal men that I used to keep on my dorm room wall included a few of Meritta’s reproductions clipped from magazines.

Meritta said she had come back to her hometown to paint because the surroundings were so exhilarating. The Tower projecting stoutly above the city and the underground mine shafts were perfect for her paintings. Tame versions of her work hung on the walls of city hall and the library, and the most presentable were even used in city brochures.

I remembered that she was about ten years my senior and had a child who was about fifteen years old. However, the child’s father, Mårten Flöjt, principal cellist for the Radio Symphony Orchestra, had dropped out of the scene several years before, when Meritta had returned to Arpikylä.

I had met Meritta a few times when her brother Jaska and I played in the same band, even though she had been studying at the Ateneum Art Academy in Helsinki at the time. Jaska had always acted sulky about his older sister, talking about how stuck-up she had gotten after getting accepted to the Ateneum. I doubted Meritta would remember me, but I thought I’d go say hi anyway. I’ll admit to being curious about meeting a woman whose opinions about so many things resembled my own.

The party was in full swing in the newly opened restaurant and in the courtyard, where Ella’s dance group was currently performing. I watched the performance purely out of obligation. When someone started playing a saw with a violin bow, I went inside to see if I could find anyone I knew.

One of the ore-milling buildings had been renovated to house the restaurant. A bar circled the inner wall of the fifty-foot-high hall, and later in the summer the developers intended to install a proper dance floor on the lower level. The idea was to turn the space into a kind of multipurpose gallery suitable for concerts and theater performances. The renovation and retrofitting work had to be burning ungodly amounts of money. I hoped Kivinen’s projections about the increased flow of tourists would pan out.

I found Matti and Johnny in a back corner on the lower level, chatting with Meritta and a fourth person who was concealed in the shadows. From a passing tray I grabbed a handful of potato chips and a glass of punch and made my way toward them. The light flooding in obliquely from the windows along the roofline fell directly onto Meritta’s dress, and for a moment she appeared to be engulfed in flames. Meritta laughed at something Johnny said, her voice ringing out over the drone of conversation and turning more than a few heads.

“Nice to see the sheriff here keeping us legal,” Matti said with a grin when I approached. “Do you know everyone else?” He turned to face the rest of the group.

“Johnny is an old friend, and how could anyone not know these lovely women,” I said, trying to sound playful.

“We’ve met before, haven’t we? You played in my brother’s punk band.” Meritta extended her hand. “Meritta Flöjt. I’ve been meaning to come pay a visit to our new lady sheriff. It’s a shame your post is only temporary.”

“Meritta wants more feminists around here to keep us men in line,” Matti said mockingly.

“Oh, the men around here aren’t all bad. Your uncle is a perfectly reasonable person.” It took me a few moments before I realized Meritta was talking about Pena. They were both on the city council. Meritta had been the first person from the Green Party ever to win a seat.

The fourth person in the entourage still hadn’t said a word, trying to hide between her cousin Johnny and the wall. The attempt at concealment was a little pathetic since Kaisa Miettinen was only an inch shorter than her six-foot-two cousin and stunningly handsome in her own right. For a javelin thrower, she was quite slim, which I guess was why the sports journalists had christened her the Javelin Fairy. Blonde curls extending to her shoulders and a shy smile emphasized her elfin, somehow sexless look. At least one person at
Sports Update
and another in the
Helsingin Sanomat
newsroom must have been infatuated with her, because news coverage about her was much more detailed than usual for female athletes. After winning silver at the previous summer’s World Championships, she had been named one of Finland’s best medal hopefuls for the European Athletics Championships in Helsinki and the Atlanta
Olympics. I thought Kaisa would have been at her training camp by now.

Kaisa’s eyes were the same as Johnny’s: bluebell colored with flecks of gold surrounding the irises. At the same height and with similar slim, muscular builds, they could have been twins. But Kaisa was a good ten years younger than Johnny. Her eyes lacked the tired circles, and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth disappeared with the smile that created them. Johnny, on the other hand, was looking more worn-out than usual.

“Couldn’t we finish the painting next week?” Johnny asked Meritta, apparently continuing the conversation my arrival had interrupted. “I promised to help my dad reroof his house this weekend. And Kaisa shouldn’t be letting her muscles stiffen up posing since she’s got the Grand Prix coming up.”

“Kaisa doesn’t have to pose, just you. I want to capture Kaisa in motion. For your portrait I want to show almost every follicle of hair on that beautiful body…” Meritta turned to me again. “I’m doing a series of panels I’m calling Apollo and Artemis, and Kaisa and Johnny are my models. Pretty perfect specimens, don’t you think?”

Both Johnny and Kaisa seemed self-conscious, so Matti and I turned the conversation to the renovation work on the Old Mine.

“I think the best thing is that we’ll get to go in the tunnels again,” Matti said. “The feeling down there is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced. You’ve painted down there, haven’t you, Meritta? Are those ones done yet? And what lighting did you use?”

“I used old mining lights called jack lamps. All of the paintings are in Helsinki on sale in my gallery. Strange I forgot to invite you to come see them before I shipped them off. I painted
them almost right on the edge of the cave-in area, which gave everything an extra eerie ambiance. And I liked going down there just for the adventure,” Meritta said with a grin.

“Well you won’t catch me going down there,” Johnny said almost angrily. “You know the city had to close half a street and empty all the houses because the ground there is still slipping toward the shaft, right?”

“Of course I do. But that’s just one part. The rest of the tunnels are fine.”

“At least that’s what the geologists say,” Matti added. “Have the rest of you been down there?”

“In school,” Johnny, Kaisa, and I said nearly in unison. In ninth grade I went on a field trip to the mine with our guidance counselor. We had been told to bring rubber boots to school, and before we entered the elevator, the engineer leading the tour distributed yellow helmets to everyone. I was a little disappointed that the helmets didn’t have the headlamps I had seen in pictures.

Just the elevator ride a few hundred feet down the shaft turned the weaker-kneed students a sickly shade of green. Down below, the tunnel walls loomed in on us. The worst thing was the darkness. Even with the lights on you could still sense it. And then there was the silence, broken only by drips of water falling from the ceiling. Everyone automatically started whispering. And then from somewhere nearby came an explosive drilling sound, answered by another one farther off, making the walls seem to shake and the ceiling appear on the verge of crashing down…

I remembered resurfacing aboveground. The wind had felt deliciously dry, the sound of sparrows miraculous, the sun seemed brighter than it ever had been. The boys gaped at each other with looks of “I’m never working down there.” That
night I called Uncle Pena and asked him how many years he had spent in the mine. When he answered more than ten, I hung up astonished.

Sounds of tinkling glasses came from the swarm of people near the bar. A moment earlier Seppo Kivinen had walked past us and climbed the stairs, and now he stood stiff as a statue in his copper-colored suit.

His unamplified voice echoed in the cavernous room. “Ladies and gentlemen! Friends! I thought I wouldn’t have to say anything tonight, that this amazing space would do the talking for me, but c’est la vie…I would just like to say how truly happy I am to see the Old Mine full of people and life again. The ore under these hills has brought wealth to Arpikylä for more than eighty years now, and despite a recent small hiccup, I believe it will again. I grew up here, at the base of the Tower in fact, in the subsidence area on Lavakatu. My father worked in the mine for thirty-seven years. I hope the reopening of the mine tunnels and the museum can serve as a tribute to him and everyone like him, whose work and sweat built this town. A toast to those brave men!”

Kivinen seemed genuinely moved. Meritta was biting her lip, but I wasn’t quite sure whether she was touched or amused.

“I’m empty…” Matti said, staring at his glass glumly. “Shall I bring everyone another round?”

“No, I have something I need to take care of,” Meritta said and vanished right after Matti left for a refill. Suddenly I was glad Kaisa was there with Johnny and me. Talking about sports was easy, and Kaisa didn’t seem so shy anymore.

“I prefer training here at home,” she said. Her perfectly preserved country dialect was in cheerful contrast to the rest of her polished image. “There ain’t no traffic here, and the field and
weight room are always free. And especially now, with the games here in Finland, it wouldn’t make no sense going to Portugal or somewhere and getting my muscles too used to being warm.”

“I’ve been helping out as a sort of assistant coach lately, since Kaisa’s real coach lives down south in Vantaa and can’t be here all the time,” Johnny said. “Or at least I operate the video camera so Kaisa can watch footage of her throws later.”

“I could probably only throw it twenty meters,” I said. “How far can you send it, Johnny?”

“Have you seen my mom?” a young, angry voice suddenly asked from behind Kaisa. When the speaker came into view, I saw a frighteningly skinny girl; a shaved head and baggy sportswear emphasized the concentration camp prisoner look.

“I left my fucking keys at home. Johnny, don’t you have keys to our place?”

“Why would I?” Johnny seemed genuinely bewildered.

“Mom always gives one to the guys she screws. There’s gotta be dozens of keys to our house strewn across the world. Aren’t you up to bat right now?”

“What the hell are you talking about, Aniliina! I just model for your mom.”