I tell her about the Filippov murder, the Silver Dollar death, about Arvid Lahtinen, about the accusations against him, and about his connection to Ukki. Again, I lie by omission, and don’t tell her about passing out on Arvid’s floor.
Kate rolls toward me and lays her head on my chest. “You haven’t told me much about Ukki.”
“He was a good man. I loved him. And my grandma, too. They were kind to me.”
“You shouldn’t worry about it then. Mass murderers aren’t kind to children.”
Couldn’t they be? “I just want to know the truth about him, for good or ill.”
“Why? If he was a good grandpa, what difference does it make what he did in wartime?”
A good question. I haven’t asked it of myself. The answer is apparent. “It’s my nature. If he took part in the Holocaust, I won’t love the memory of him less. I just need to know.”
“Yes,” she says, “you’re like that. Life would be easier for you if you weren’t.”
She’s more right than she knows.
“Do you have to get up early tomorrow?” she asks.
“Yeah, to see Jari.”
“Let’s get some sleep then,” she says, and snaps off the light.
20
Rescuing John meant I had to leave my car in the police garage overnight. I get up and leave early to fetch it, then drive to the hospital. In the waiting room of the neurology polyclinic, I browse household cleaning tips in a women’s magazine. The reading selection here leaves much to be desired. The polyclinic radiates sterility, but I stand instead of sit. The last time I took a seat in a public medical facility, when I left, my clothes smelled like piss.
Jari calls me into an examination room. He sees the gunshot scar on my face and flinches, but doesn’t comment on it. The last time we saw each other was three Christmases ago. He’s aged since then. His hair is grayer, he’s thinner. We share a quick brotherly hug, he tells me to sit down. I describe my headaches. He types the symptoms into a computer.
“On a scale of one to ten-one being mild discomfort and ten being the worst screaming pain you can imagine-how would you rate your headache at the moment?” he asks.
The pain is dull but nagging. “About a three.”
“You say that the problem started about a year ago, but that you’ve had a constant headache for three weeks.”
“Yeah.”
“Would you describe the headaches as increasing in severity as well as duration?”
“They’ve gotten a lot worse over time,” I say.
“On that one-to-ten scale, how would you rate the worst episodes?”
I picture all my teeth being drilled through to the roots without anesthetic as ten. “Eight.”
“You’ve always been laconic,” he says. “I think you’ve been through some intense suffering. Why did you wait so long to have this taken care of?”
“I saw a general practitioner six months ago. She gave me extrastrength Tylenol and something she called a pain diffuser. She said they give it to people with chronic problems, for instance, who’ve lost limbs but still feel pain in the missing parts. I took it for three days, and it helped the headaches but made me so stupid that it was hard to speak. I threw it in the trash.”
“Does the Tylenol help?”
“It used to. Not anymore.”
“Are your nerves so bad that you can’t eat or sleep?”
“I’m a little off my feed, but I eat. I can’t sleep.”
Jari has me track his finger back and forth with my eyes, checks my balance and reflexes, a few other things. He runs his fingers over the scar on my face, tells me to open my mouth. He looks inside with a medical penlight. “The bullet took out two back teeth,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have chronic pain or any paralysis as a result of the wound?”
“Just some stiffness in my jaw and minimal paralysis. My smile is a little crooked.”