Four hours later I came out for another cigarette and everything looked as though the moving was over. The big truck had left and the cars looked more cautiously parked, even though some of them were still parked on the small road making …let’s say a bit difficult for some mothers with prams. Actually, one of the mothers -obviously with twins in one very sophisticated pram, looked really puzzled till she decided to turn back and follow another way. However people seemed to have a lot of understanding; nobody really complained, all of them accepting that this was part of the moving.
Most of them were now sitting outside the apartment building, despite the cold, all dressed in heavy jackets and coats with hats, scarves and gloves and all carrying a makkara rapped in kitchen paper in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. It’s really funny the small details you notice in cases like that. For example, they were drinking a Finnish beer called ‘Karhu’ which in Finnish means ‘bear’. I’m not a real lager drinker myself and somehow I don’t have the best opinion of the Finnish beers, but I suppose there must be something good about this one since it seems pretty popular among the locals or …it is just the cheapest, which somehow makes more sense!
Now remember that it was winter and in Finland winter means dark. People say good night sometime early-November and they are waiting for the sun to rise again sometime in late-April/beginning of May, which means the time our new neighbour decided to move it was dark and of course all the lights in the neighbourhood, including the small ones on the street, were on. Yet, even under this light I could see a thick line of yellow mustard on top of every single sausage! The strange things people notice sometimes! The new neighbour was the only one without a makkara, just a bottle of beer, and she really looked frustrated with the neurotic way she was moving around, talking with everybody, moving things or checking something.
I suppose when all these people help you voluntarily to move house doing all this physical work you feel somehow obliged to make sure that they are fine and that they know how thankful you feel and a thank you accompanied with a cheers never hurts. That itself is frustrating and she was obviously trying her best. She was definitely small and it was really funny watching her moving around her guests and friends like a bee among flowers which is a very exaggerating image when you picture it in the middle of winter in Finland. I think her bright yellow jumper was serving as an inspiration for the vision.
Marc called me to ask something about the next day’s project so for a bit I was too bothered with the telephone call and my cigarette that was nearly burning my fingers thus I missed what happened in the neighbourhood and when the telephone call was over, hopefully with Marc happy with my answers, some of the cars were moving away while my new neighbour was loudly thanking and goodbyeing everybody. And this is when I noticed him; he was standing in the shadows with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Away from everybody. A shadow himself, and he looked like he was there just watching. Everything.
Strange!
“Moi Leena!” one of the drivers said and then the woman with the colourful jumper ran to them and gave them something to take with them.
So, now we had a name as well. Funny, all these years in this country I had met only one woman with the name Leena and she was the sister of a very close friend and suddenly in just a few weeks I had two Leenas in my own neighbourhood! Nothing special with the name even though a long time ago I had read a book about names and people and how much the name reflects the personality of the person. A lot of rubbish really but that period I was flirting that girl and she thought that this was really …scientific so I read it. I missed our third date and she never called me again, well I would have avoided her anyway, for an unexplained reason I don’t like women called Susan just to give some kind of base to her …scientific research!
Soon the only ones left were Leena, my new neighbour, a young woman with a very funny hat and the man in the shadows. He was still smoking, I could see the small red flame and a couple of times I had the strange sense that he was looking at me, like checking me out. Then I decided that I’d had enough of smoking and the cold was killing the last bits of my curiosity, so I turned inside when the man suddenly moved. He said something to Leena and moved quickly to a white dirty van.
He stopped before opening the driver’s door and checked around giving me another long look while i was standing one foot inside the house and then with a sudden move his left hand opened the van’s door.
I don’t know why this man gave me the shivers and what made it unpleasant. Something red shined when he opened the door. He moved fast, jumping in start the engine and sped off fast, something quite stupid in a small neighbourhood street.
Later in the evening I had my last cigarette of the day and I was glad to see that there was still light in my new neighbour’s house. I don’t know why but this new entrance in the neighbourhood was giving me the sense that we were alive, you know like an organism where the cells are moving all the time. I looked at the sky but there were no stars. I missed seeing the stars. Living in a country where it is all cloudy in the winter and bright sunny during the summer is really funny the things you miss and even when the sky is clear you cannot see all the stars and the galaxies you would be able to see in the night sky anywhere in Mediterranean for example!
Read all the Helsinginkatu 10 chapters in order, HERE!
Thanos' Pulp Fiction 