The Saviour of Lasnamäe

And then one evening Kiira phoned and straight out said hello from Vova and said that Vova had invited her, Natalya, to his flat. Natalya felt a stern coldness envelop her heart and with the same sternness in her voice replied quickly that she no longer wanted to hear anything about Vova and she would never do that job again…

“Calm down,” chided Kiira, “don’t be so touchy! Vova’s not asking you to come to work, his wife’s back at it, she’s bellyaching about it but she’s back at it – money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s just that there’s a punter, just the one, who won’t go with her any more and just wants to see Natalya, just meet her and that’s what I, Kiira, on behalf of Vova, am now trying to arrange – although it’s not directly any responsibility of Vova’s and it’s nothing to do with Kiira. Nothing at all. But you have to meet people halfway when it’s an emergency like this.”

At that Natalya’s heart escaped her stern grasp as if it had slipped loose, and then started to flutter.

“I don’t know…” she murmured, bemused, when Kiira persisted, “I don’t want to, I don’t have time for any punters… I have my own job…”

But Kiira kept on cajoling – there was nothing to fear and nothing indecent, all you’ll do is sit down for a while, have a cup of tea, a chat. The punter just wants to chat, get things clear, I can come with you if you like… Natalya listened through a fog of sound filling her ears, and her body was being washed now by waves of heat and now by waves of cold…

And so she agreed to go to Vova’s on Thursday evening – Thursday had to be convenient for the punter and at the same time she was calm, there were no other punters, she could sit down calmly and have a cup of tea…

The three days before Thursday evening – as well as the whole of the day on Thursday – felt like a terribly long journey on an express train: her feelings hurtled through her, ever changing, like pictures flashing past a train window – happiness, trepidation and unexpected, unfounded sadness, and fondness and suspicion… They all hurtled around inside her while she had to sit in her place at a work bench or distractedly choose food in the shop or peel potatoes at home… Sometimes she smiled privately but tried immediately to wipe it away… And she sensed that everyone else was happier and was smiling all the time, and Sofia had started to laugh again and chat and seemed to have forgotten about the rat and those horrible boys who more likely than not had taken her money – or probably would have, if she hadn’t given it to them… Better not to think about them.

Natalya had intended to wear the same silk blouse with the red and gold flowers but then began to waver – she’d already waited once in vain. She dressed simply in a black skirt and her grey sweater; it was a tidy sweater, solid, and when all was said and done she wasn’t going on a date, was she? At least she mustn’t make that kind of impression. Even so she dabbed some perfume behind her ears, on her wrists, under her arms… The perfume was ancient, the one she’d brought back from Crimea. She used it only a couple of times a year, when she went to the theatre with Sofia to see the ballet, The Nutcracker or Swan Lake. She always tried to go to the theatre once a year with Sofia, and sometimes also when she was struck with a yearning for the warm, blue, sighing sea… But she tried to be careful with it, she wouldn’t be able to afford anything like it these days. Yet the scent in the bottle firmly stoppered with a cork had lasted nevertheless.

Vova and his wife Ira had stowed the tea table in the living room between the deep easy chairs and the sofa. A beautiful bouquet of flowers stood in a vase on the table, providing shade to a brandy bottle, glasses, teacups, a flask and a bowl of biscuits… In one of the easy chairs sat Jaakko – the Finn, her very first punter, who was cold and greasy like a lizard and looked like one too – bald and colourless. He stood up quickly, as soon as Natalya came through the door, but then just stood there by his chair, ill at ease.

Vova offered Natalya a seat and she sat down because she felt her legs growing suddenly numb and didn’t understand. Jaakko? Why Jaakko? What was the Finn’s part in all of this?

Jaakko had been a regular client who’d visited at exactly the same time, once a week, no more, no less. He never made any sound – except for his rhythmic, increasingly rapid breathing that stopped suddenly and he left as quietly as he arrived, quickly, almost in shame. For some reason Natalya even felt gratitude towards him – that she could forget him, that she could imagine that he wasn’t really a person, just a rubber robot that she could completely erase from her life – like an unpleasant film, she could just turn the telly off or switch channels… And now she was especially offended that that grey, cold, greasy lizard was occupying the space that belonged to her lovely, warm, tender Dmitri Dmitrievich – what he had to say to her could not be of importance. Perhaps he was going away forever and just wanted to say goodbye; perhaps he already had a family or God knows what, but not under any circumstances should he have been… in his place… She might have guessed as much, she should have realised beforehand, she should know by now that everything in this world was wicked and nothing else, wrong and no two ways about it. It was all a mockery.

“Yes, Natalya Filippovna,” said Vova, “this bouquet is for you. Jaakko chose it just for you, for the wonderful, fleeting moments he spent with you…”

Natalya could no longer hear what he was saying. She felt that Vova was a grey lizard too of the same ilk, only stronger and more execrable for that reason; as if none of them were people – not even Kiira and Vova’s wife Ira. And this room around her was not a place for people, it was some kind of lair for all the animals that had lured her here into a trap. And she burst into tears – how much from offence and how much from despair, she did not know.

“There, there,” Vova tried to calm her by patting her on the shoulder, “it must just be the shock… Have a swig…”

Natalya brusquely pushed away the glass that Vova was offering her; the brandy spewed into her lap and the damp stain on her clothes suddenly divided her in two – on the one side she was crying inconsolably, but on the other she saw and heard everything and followed attentively, yet calmly, with the superiority of an adult at a children’s performance. Not condescendingly, but with understanding empathy, as if she were looking over her own shoulder, as if it was not her own self, but Dmitri Dmitrievich, or as if they were both one and were trying together to calm the Natalya who was crying in the easy chair. But their consoling efforts were different from Vova’s, they would have regarded all the people there, including the unhappy Natalya in the easy chair, in the same way, as little creatures, perhaps as slightly foolish little creatures, but strangely each one as lovely as the rest, even though some of them looked a bit like lizards.

“Why is she crying?” asked Jaakko in Finnish, worried.

And Kiira shrilly replied in Finnish, “Onnesta! Aiva onnesta!”

Although she no longer really knew which Natalya she was just then – Natalya realised she understood what Jaakko was asking. It was just that she didn’t understand Kiira’s reply – onnesta – that must mean õnnest – “for happiness”, mustn’t it? But she wasn’t crying for happiness, so? Or perhaps the Estonian for the Finnish word was õnnetust– “unhappiness”… Just what was it they were saying? Kiira could speak every language, because she had to sell stuff all the time and she said that she had to be good at something and that something was selling, and if she didn’t know a customer’s lingo she’d learn it all right, even Chinese if more Chinese started coming here, just so she could flog them stuff… Never mind that Sofia always said that Kiira spoke all languages the same… and suddenly Sofia was here, and she no longer understood whether the person crying at her right shoulder was herself or Sofia; herself and Dima or Sofia and Dima, and how she now thought of him simply as “Dima”, and how she could think and feel so many things at once and so differently at once.

“How’s about that then?” asked Vova. “How about that, dear Natalya Filippovna? Jaakko is just saying that he can’t sleep with anyone any more – except you. He just can’t get it up for anyone else.” Vova spoke with emphatic deference, addressing her formally, although it sounded somehow quite pompous, as if he had Natalya under interrogation somewhere and was accountable to higher powers. “Just think, Natalya, how much worry and pain you’re causing another human being because of that.”

Those words cleared her head; she was suddenly herself again. The tears stopped as if they had never been shed, and she looked at the Finn with surprise: he was a completely ordinary person. And genuinely worried, helplessly worried.

“I will never sleep with anyone for money again,” said Natalya, surprising herself by the manner in which she said it – with such certainty and calmness, as if she knew that she would never need to do that again.

“Not for money,” Vova explained, “not for that… Of course he’d be willing for money, like before, if need be… But he wants you, the full package. To marry you!”

“But I don’t,” said Natalya, surprised, “but no! I don’t love him. Not in the slightest.”

She cast her eye over Jaakko at length and found she no longer understood: the repulsion had gone. There was no love, but there was no repulsion either. There was a chill in her heart.

“Oh Natalya, Natalya,” said Vova, “love is for the young… For children! But you and I should look at life with our feet on the ground. Jaakko, you see, is a simple worker, but he earns more than some of our government ministers and when he retires he’ll have no worries. Finnish pensioners can travel. Just look at us – if we’re even lucky enough to draw a pension, it’ll only ever be enough to keep the wolf from the door… If you’re with him you can be a lady and your worries will be over.”

“I don’t want to,” said Natalya determinedly, “I want to keep my job, that’s not negotiable!” But she wondered what were they talking about it for, she and Vova, because what was the point of travelling or money any more?

Now Jaakko became alarmed, shook Vova’s arm, asked something, Vova explained something to him then Kiira chimed in too. Natalya understood not a thing. Not because she’d understood nothing of the languages they were speaking, but because she was no longer trying to listen or understand anything. She just sat there, disinterested.

Vova then set about explaining again, trying to bring her round: “Jaakko says that you can do anything, live just as you like, you don’t have to invite him to your home, or come here, he’s bought a lovely little pad here and he has another flat in Helsinki… It’s small, but he owns it…”

“But why isn’t he married?” asked Natalya and felt that she wasn’t asking out of stubbornness or nosiness, but just as if she were a doctor addressing a patient, trying to make a specific diagnosis.

Vova translated her question with a sigh, but Jaakko replied dutifully, quietly, as if explaining his problem to the doctor.

“He was married,” Vova now translated what Jaakko had said, “but his wife left him. He says he’s a boring type of a bloke – women don’t fall for men like him… He’s not expecting you to love him – if only you can indulge him…”

Natalya glanced at Jaakko, but then they caught each other’s eyes. The look in Jaakko’s was gentle, humble, concerned – a look that stopped Natalya in her tracks. That was how Dima had looked at her, Dmitri Dmitrievich, when he’d said “pray for us, pray for all of us…” Natalya burst into tears again, whether from despair or sheer surprise that warmth was again flooding into her heart. Vova no longer rushed to console her, but merely turned to Jaakko. The three of them put their heads together, Vova, Kiira and Jaakko, and discussed something at length among themselves…

Then Vova turned to Natalya again, patted her on the shoulder and said softly, rapidly, “Kiira’s explained that you have a daughter, but Jaakko said that that doesn’t matter, he has two sons, both grown up. Kiira’s explained that you live only for your daughter, that she was the only reason that you ever did the work you did here for us… But Jaakko said that it’s completely understandable for women to live just for their children and that he won’t interfere with that, he wouldn’t disrupt your lives, he’d have no idea how to bring a daughter up… He doesn’t know a thing about women – he wouldn’t have the cheek to disrupt your daughter’s life…”

“Kiira said that you have a dream, that you liked Crimea, being by the warm sea… But Crimea isn’t what it used to be in our day. There’s a war in Crimea these days – they might not be fighting at the moment but everything’s in turmoil and it’s poor – there’re no spas or holiday accommodations there any more… But Jaakko says that there’s warm blue sea elsewhere – in Greece, Italy… There’s a rocky island in the middle of the sea, Capri, it’s even more beautiful than Crimea, and the water there is like a precious stone, clear and limpid…”

Natalya lifted her gaze again and looked directly at Jaakko – his eyes were clear and light… But somewhere in the innermost depths of those eyes she saw looking back at her the same yearning, the same sadness that moments before had again flooded through her being like the spring rain…

“Oh Lord,” she thought in bewilderment, “oh God, could I really? Could I really settle for him and not end up despising him?”