True by Riikka Pulkkinen Read Free Book Online Page A

years when he started drawing. The worst bombing of Helsinki came in February; his mother lay on the bedroom floor and refused to get up. He hid under the table, afraid, crying for his father.
    When the bombing had stopped, he had nightmares. Their servant—Irja was the girl’s name—bought him paper and a stick of charcoal on the black market and said, Draw them, maybe it will help. And he drew them.
    THE FATHER OF the meek family took his wife’s hand. The older boy held a Spider-Man doll tight against his chest, the littler one had the same kind of toy in his clumsy hand.
    The girl who had been flirting at the tram stop affected a bored expression. Martti saw her glance at the sensitive boy. The boy looked away—clearly a crush.
    Emotion came, unhindered.
    All the aspirations people had, their unquenchable hope, their tenacious faith in the brightness watching over the resonance of the May evening, the diligence with which they wrote and published the daily free newspaper and distributed it in its plastic pockets on the trams and subways; all these things awakened a sudden overflowing tenderness in him.
    This is where the world is, with all its strangeness and triviality. This isn’t a painting; it’s the world, naked, within even his reach.
    THE HOSPITAL WAS a familiar entity, like an organism. He walked down the corridor, stepped soundlessly through the sliding doors, and checked in at reception. He became a heart, lungs, circulation, liver, psyche.
    He sat in the waiting room. The others waiting there were detached from themselves, from their lives; a youngish mother with an obviously feverish but lively child, a bald, middle-aged woman, probably a cancer patient. And an old man, like him, with perhaps exactly the same worries.
    He sketched their poses, out of habit.
    The nurse came to tell them there was an hour wait.
    â€œYou can wait in the cafeteria if you like.”
    He got up, walked back down the corridor. He saw a few very sick people. A woman lying in bed with an IV, serpentine veins gleaming through her skin. The sight of her didn’t upset him, although Elsa came to mind, what was coming. He made eye contact with the woman and nodded. There was still hope in her eyes.
    People are willing to endure almost any agony merely to have a few more ordinary days. Maybe just a hundred. Or ten. Or two, if that’s all they’re going to get. One day when they can get up, walk out a door, make a note of the weather and plan their lunch or who they’ll meet, or cherish the mere idea of a walk through town.
    He went to the cafeteria, bought a coffee, sat at a table and looked at the people. The people at the next table were talking about a trip to the countryside. One of them was sick—which one? He looked at both of them. There was a baby in a bassinet. Maybe they were here because of the baby.
    He found himself dreaming of taking Elsa one more time to Tammilehto. Maybe they would sleep in the sauna again, see the morning, make coffee, the way they used to.
    â€œMay I sit here?”
    It was the bald woman from the waiting room. She smiled, pointing at the chair in front of her.
    â€œI love the end of May,” she said. “Don’t you?”
    Martti felt it silly to use such a strong word as “love” with a stranger. But it was true. Of course he loved these days, these spacious, green rooms shaped like expectation. He thought for a moment about whether to use the formal te ,as she had. She was beautiful. Eyes like pools, arching lips. But obviously sick, you could see it in the sheen over her feverish eyes, her collarbones that showed beneath her skin like two conductor’s batons.
    He used te ,because of her illness. Or maybe her beauty.
    â€œYou must wish you were outside, then. It’s a beautiful day.”
    â€œI’m dying,” she said. “Could you tell?”
    She looked him in the eye calmly, stirring her coffee. This was a zone