Until I Find You - Page 189

"Tell me about the 'Sweet dreams' part," Jack asked Hannele and Ritva in their beautiful apartment. It was growing dark outside; the lights shone through the dome of the Church in the Rock like a fire burning windows in an eggshell. (Jack remembered that he'd thought "Sweet dreams" was something his dad probably said to all of his girlfriends.)

"He's not four anymore," Ritva said to Hannele, who was shaking her head. "Go on, tell him."

"It's what your mom whispered in our ears before she kissed us down there," Hannele said, averting her eyes from Jack's.

"Oh."

Ritva had said, "Sweet dreams," to Jack, before she'd kissed him good night. "Isn't that what you say in English?" she'd asked Alice. "Sweet dreams."

"Sometimes," Alice had said, and Hannele's brave whistling had stopped for a second--as if the pain of the shading needles on her heart-side breast and that side of her rib cage had suddenly become unbearable. But Jack had been sure it was the "Sweet dreams" that had hurt her, not the tattoo. (Talk about a not-around-Jack subject!)

Jack told Hannele and Ritva about his mother's surprisingly long-lasting relationship with Leslie Oastler--not that Alice hadn't probably had other, lesser relationships in the same period of time, but her relationship with another woman was the only one that had endured. Were Hannele and Ritva surprised at that? he asked.

The two women looked at each other and shrugged. "There wasn't anything your mom wouldn't do, Jack," Ritva said, "not if she could have an effect--almost any effect--on your dad."

"After William, I don't think Alice cared who she slept with," Hannele told him. "Man, woman, or boy."

The black-and-white photographs on the walls of the apartment were mostly of Hannele and Ritva--many concert photographs among them. There was one of Ritva on the organ bench in the Johanneksen kirkko, where Jack had gone with his mother--this had been following a heavy snowfall, he remembered. Flanking Ritva on the organ bench were her two teachers--Kari Vaara, the organist with the wild-looking hair, and a handsome, thin-lipped young man whose long hair fell to his shoulders, framing a face as delicate as a girl's.

"My father?" Jack asked Ritva, pointing to the picture. William looked almost the same as he had that night in the restaurant of the Hotel Bristol.

"Yes, of course," Ritva told Jack. "You haven't seen his picture before?"

"What are you thinking, Ritva?" Hannele asked. "Do you imagine Alice kept a photo album for Jack?"

What Jack was unprepared for was how young his father looked. In 1970, in Helsinki, William Burns would have been thirty-one--a couple of years younger than Jack was now. (It is strange to see, for the first time, a photograph of your father when he is younger than you are.) Jack was also unprepared for the resemblance; William looked almost exactly like Jack.

Of course William seemed small beside Ritva and Kari Vaara. William was a small but strong-looking man, not slight but somehow feminine in his features, and with an organist's long-fingered hands. (Jack had his mom's small hands and short, square fingers.)

William was wearing a long-sleeved white dress shirt, open at the throat--the organ pipes of the Walcker from Wurttemberg rising above him. Jack asked Hannele and Ritva about his father's tattoos.

"Never saw them," Hannele said. Ritva agreed; she'd never seen them, either.

In the bedroom, Jack saw black-and-white photographs of Hannele's and Ritva's tattoos--just their naked torsos, the hearts cut in half on their left breasts. At least the tattoos were as he'd remembered them, but Hannele had shaved her armpit hair; her hands, folded flat above her navel, hid her birthmark from the photographer.

It was a mild surprise to see that they had other tattoos. There was some music on Hannele's hip, and more music--it looked like the same music--on Ritva's buttocks. Like the photos of their shared heart, these were close-ups--only partial views. But they were such different body types, Jack had no difficulty telling Hannele and Ritva apart.

"What's the music?" he asked them.

"We played it earlier--before you came to the church," Ritva said. "It's another piece William taught us, a hymn he used to play in Old St. Paul's."

" 'Sweet Sacrament Divine,' " Hannele told Jack. She began to hum it. "We only know the music, not the words, but it's a hymn."

It sounded familiar; perhaps he'd heard it, or had even sung it, at St. Hilda's. Jack knew he'd heard his mom sing it in Amsterdam, in the red-light district. If it was something his dad used to play at Old St. Paul's, it was probably Anglican or Scottish Episcopal.

The old scratcher's name almost didn't come up, but Hannele--pointing to the black-and-white photo of the tattoo on her hip--just happened to say it. "It's not bad for a Sami Salo."

Jack told Hannele and Ritva the story of the scary night at the Hotel Torni, when Sami Salo had banged on the door--not to mention how Sami's noticeably younger wife, that tough-talking waitress at Salve, had told Alice she was putting Sami out of business.

Hannele was shaking her head again--her short, curly blond hair not moving. "Sami's wife was long gone before you and your mom came to town, Jack," R

itva said. "That waitress at Salve was Sami's daughter."

"Her name was Minna," Hannele told him. "She was William's friend, one of your dad's older women. I always thought it was a peculiar relationship, but Minna had gone through some hard times--like your dad. She had a child out of wedlock, and the child died as an infant--some upper-respiratory ailment."

"Your father wasn't looking for a girlfriend, Jack. He was probably still in love with the Dane," Ritva said. "Minna was just a comfort to him. I think that's all he thought he was good for, to be a comfort to someone. You know, it's that old Christian idea--you find someone down on their luck and you help them."

Certainly Agneta Nilsson, who'd taught William choral music in Stockholm--and Jack how to skate on Lake Malaren--was an older woman. Maybe Agneta had been down on her luck, too; after all, she'd had a bad heart.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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