Joona looks at his watch. In three hours he will be conveying Salim Ratjen’s message to his wife.
He parks outside Valeria’s little cottage with its leafy garden and picks up one of the two bouquets from the passenger seat. The branches of large weeping willows touch the ground. The late summer air is warm and humid. There’s no answer when he knocks at the door, but the lights are on, so he goes around the back to look for Valeria.
He finds her in one of the greenhouses. The glass is misted with condensation, but Joona can see her clearly. Her hair is pulled up in a loose knot, and she’s wearing a pair of faded jeans, boots, and a tight red fleece jacket with mud-stains on it. She’s moving several heavy pots containing orange trees. She turns around and sees him.
Those dark eyes, that curly, unruly hair, that slender body.
It’s as if he’s gone back in time.
Valeria was in the same class as him in high school, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was one of the first people he ever told about his dad’s death.
They met at a party, and he walked her to the door. He kissed her with his eyes wide open, and can still remember what he thought: no matter what happened to him in the future, at least he had kissed the most beautiful girl in school.
‘Valeria,’ he says, opening the door to the greenhouse.
She keeps her mouth closed to stop herself from grinning, but her eyes are smiling. He hands her the bouquet of lily-of-the-valley. She wipes her hands on her jeans before taking it.
‘So you got leave to come and apply for an apprenticeship?’ she asks, looking him up and down playfully.
‘Yes, I …’
‘Do you think you’d be able to handle normal life when you get out? Working as a gardener can be pretty tough at times.’
‘I’m strong,’ he replies.
‘Yes, I believe that,’ she smiles.
‘I promise you won’t regret it.’
‘Good,’ she whispers.
They just stand there looking at each other for a while, until Valeria lowers her gaze.
‘Sorry I look like this,’ she says. ‘But I have to load fifteen walnut trees … Micke and Jack are picking the trailer up in an hour.’
‘You look more beautiful than ever,’ Joona says, following her into the greenhouse.
The trees are in big, black plastic pots.
‘Is it OK to lift them by their trunks?’
‘Better to use this,’ she replies, pulling out a yellow trailer.
Joona lifts the first walnut tree onto the trailer and Valeria pulls it backwards through the door and up the path. The bright green foliage trembles as Joona lifts the trees onto the trailer.
‘Nice of the boys to help out,’ Joona says after he’s put the pot down with a heavy thud.
They get more trees and put them on the trailer. The leaves rustle and soil spills onto the grass path.
Valeria clambers up into the trailer and shoves the trees further in so there’ll be room for all of them.
She gets down, blows the hair from her face, brushes her hands, and sits down on the towbar of the trailer.
‘It’s hard to believe they’re grown-ups,’ she says, looking at Joona. ‘I made my mistakes, and the kids grew up without me.’
Valeria’s amber eyes darken and turn serious.
‘What matters is that they’re back now,’ Joona says.
‘But I can’t take that for granted … considering what I put them through while I was locked up in Hinseberg. I let them down so badly.’
‘They should be proud of the person you’ve become,’ Joona says.
‘They’ll never be able to forgive me completely. I mean, you lost your dad at a young age, but he was a hero. That must have meant a lot, maybe not at the time, but later.’
‘Yes, but you came back. You could explain what had happened, the mistakes.’
‘They don’t want to talk about it.’
She lowers her gaze and a line appears between her eyebrows.
‘At least you’re not dead,’ he says.
‘Even though that’s what they told their friends because they were so ashamed.’
‘I was ashamed that Mum and I had such a hard time financially … That’s why you and I never went back to my place.’
Valeria turns her head and looks into Joona’s eyes.
‘I always thought your mum wanted you to date Finnish girls,’ she says.
‘No,’ Joona laughs. ‘She would have loved you. She had a thing for curly hair.’
‘So what were you ashamed of?’ she asks.
‘Mum and I lived in a one-room flat in Tensta. I slept in the kitchen on a mattress that I had to roll up every morning and tuck out of the way in the wardrobe … We didn’t have a television or a stereo, and the furniture was all old …’
‘And you had a part-time job in a warehouse – didn’t you?’
‘A lumber-yard in Bromma … we couldn’t have paid the rent otherwise.’
‘You must have thought I was very spoiled,’ Valeria mumbles, looking down at her hands.
‘You soon learn that life isn’t fair.’
38
Valeria sets off towards the greenhouse again, taking the barrow with her. They keep loading the walnut trees onto the trailer in silence. The past is drifting around them, dragging up old memories.
When Joona was eleven years old his father, Yrj?, a policeman, was shot and killed while on duty during a domestic dispute in an flat in Upplands V?sby. His mum, Ritva, was a housewife, and had no income of her own. The money ran out and she and Joona had to move out of their house in M?rsta.
Joona soon learned to say he didn’t want to go to the cinema with his friends, and he learned to say he wasn’t hungry whenever they went to a café.
He lifts the last tree onto the trailer, tucks one of the branches in, then closes the trailer door carefully.
‘You were talking about your mum,’ Valeria says.
‘She knew that I felt ashamed of our circumstances,’ Joona says, brushing his hands. ‘That must have been hard for her, because we really weren’t that badly off. She worked as much as she could as a cleaner, and we borrowed books from the library. We would read together and talk about what we’d read in the evenings.’
After putting the trailer away in the shed they walk up to her little house. Valeria opens a door that leads directly into the utility room.
‘You can wash your hands here,’ she says, turning on the tap of a large metal sink.
Standing beside her, he rinses his filthy hands in the warm water. She lathers a bar of soap and starts to wash his hands.
The only sound is the water running into the sloping sink.
The smile fades from her face as they wash each other’s hands.
They keep their hands in the warm water, suddenly conscious of their touch. She gently squeezes two of his fingers in one of her hands, and looks up at him.
He’s much taller than she is, and even though he leans down to kiss her she has to stand on tiptoe.
They haven’t kissed since they were in high school, and afterwards they glance at each other almost shyly. She takes a clean towel from the shelf and dries his hands and arms.
‘So, here you are, Joona Linna,’ she says tenderly, and strokes his cheek, tracing his cheekbone up towards his ear and messy blond hair.
She pulls off her shirt and washes under her arms without taking off her discoloured bra. Her skin is the same colour as olive oil in a porcelain bowl. She has tattoos on both shoulders, and her upper arms are muscular.
‘Stop looking,’ she smiles.
‘It’s hard not to,’ he says, but turns away.
Valeria changes into a yellow vest top and black tracksuit bottoms with white stripes.
‘Shall we go upstairs?’
Her house is small, and furnished simply. The ceilings, walls and floors are all painted white. Joona hits his head on the lamp when he enters the kitchen.
‘Watch your head,’ Valeria says, and puts the flowers he brought her in a glass of water.
There are no chairs around the kitchen table, and the counter is covered with three trays of bread rising under tea-towels.
Valeria puts some more wood in the old stove, blows on the embers, then gets out a pan.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asks, taking bread and cheese out of the pantry.
‘I’m always hungry,’ Joona replies.
‘Good.’