Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 4

As he drifted into the first thin light of morning, Vesa refused to open his eyes. He began to perceive the ache of his body and the way his head felt like it was over-stuffed with poisoned sawdust, but he drew the sheets more tightly around himself and pretended these sensations were part of a lingering dream. He knew that if he acknowledged his return to consciousness, he would be forced to leave the warm bed and face whatever consequences waited for him in the day ahead.

He found he remembered the night before. He had heard people joke about drink erasing memories, but it was all there–slightly soft around the edges, rosy and perfect as though viewed through a bright window on a winter’s evening.

He had stepped out of the life he knew, and into a place so outside the scope of his experiences that even while it was happening it had felt like a dream. As the night wore on and he had drained his glass, everything had become a surreal escape orchestrated by his friend Kai. Vesa had enjoyed the newness of his mellow buzz, the unfamiliar stories, and then, as they sat side by side on the bed, a peculiar stirring within himself that he had never experienced around another boy.

It was enormously disconcerting. He found the girls at school exciting yet terrifying, and even the boys he tried to impress had never provoked any adolescent urges. What had come over him? For a while he had tried to justify it as a response to the rarity of platonic physical contact, and then he was concerned when it seemed to be more than that, and then he was so happy and drowsy with liquor that he had decided he didn’t care anymore.

It wasn’t merely a question of boys and girls. Kai was a new kind of person altogether, one who didn’t fit cleanly into the human sorting boxes he was accustomed to. Alto-voiced Kai, with slender, ink-stained fingers–stronger than him, and a source of confusing arousal. When Vesa had discovered her secret, one part of his mind had been genuinely shocked, while another part answered of course you knew. Looking anew at this person, he felt the same mix of respect, affection, and confusion as before.

Under the circumstances, he had been amazed that she’d allowed him to stay. They had fallen asleep talking in whispers, back to back on the thin mattress. He’d felt her body curled up next to him, humming with life like a little dynamo, magnetic in the dark.

Vesa sat up in bed and looked down at Kai’s sleeping face. He knew that his disappearance would have been discovered by now. He’d only planned on staying out a few hours, and had pushed the realities of the situation to the back of his mind. If he didn’t force himself to go now, things would become more difficult, and he couldn’t allow Kai to weather the fallout from his own transgressions.

He gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Bye,” he whispered.

She mumbled something and turned over in her sleep. He went to get his coat.

Vesa left the apartment building, and wandered out onto the avenue, his shins covered in snow. There was a bus stop on the corner; he looked at the line map, wondering if it would take him close to home.

For all he knew, the whole country was on red alert–calls placed on diplomatic hot lines, the chairman’s residence in an uproar. He tried to imagine it as he stood waiting for the bus in a street quiet except for the scrape of a shovel on a stoop down the way. He found that he couldn’t. Did they really care that much?

It was then that he noticed the car. It was long and black, and it slid around the corner with the unhurried grace of a predator. As it began to crawl toward him, he knew what it was hunting for.

Vesa walked in the opposite direction, refusing to acknowledge the car’s pursuit–but it soon drew up alongside of him. The driver rolled down the window.

Vesa had known a lot of government men in his life; the one who stared at him from the front seat was a remarkably perfect specimen.

“Vesa Uusitalo?” asked the officer.

“Aww, you came all this way to pick me up?”

“Get in the car.”

Vesa turned and ran.

Behind him, a guard whose dimensions put Mika to shame jumped out of the passenger side door. Before Vesa had gotten a hundred meters, he felt iron arms grab him from behind and crush him in a bear hug.

“Let me go, goddammit! Let me be!”

The colossus said nothing–he merely stowed Vesa under his arm and walked back toward the car. With his arms pinioned to his sides, Vesa was forced to endure the ignominy of being dragged along, scuffling and growling curses as his kicks bounced impotently off the guard’s tall boots.

Vesa knew he was being an idiot, and that this was just delaying the inevitable. He just didn’t want it to be over. Not yet. Worse than the pain of his head or his constricted ribs was the sinking feeling that once he got in that car, he would never see Kai again. He looked up and caught a brief glimpse of her window down the street. He wanted to yell out to her as he was unceremoniously tossed into the back seat.

Goodbye! I think I love you!

With that, the car door slammed in his face, cutting off his view. Even in the midst of his despair, something stood out to him as odd as they accelerated down the avenue.

There were no door handles on the inside.

**

Kaija woke to the boy leaving. The soft touch of his hand on her shoulder left her with a tightness in her heart, but she knew he couldn’t stay. Dozing, she let him go, since trying to delay his departure would make it more painful.

“See you soon,” she murmured, surfacing long enough to bid him farewell.

She lingered at the edge of sleep for a while, nuzzling into the comforting soapy scent of his pillow, until she was jarred fully awake by noises from outside.

She wrapped a blanket around herself and peered out of her one, tiny window. There seemed to be an altercation down at the corner. She thought she recognized the uniforms of State Security; she wiped the condensation from the glass to try and get a better view. What she saw next made her gasp in horror.

It was Vesa, being manhandled by a State Security officer. She couldn’t hear what he was shouting, but she didn’t have to. It was over for him; that much was clear.

As his voice faded away, she didn’t feel sad or angry–just overwhelmed by the certitude of failure. This was the way life was, and she had been foolish to think otherwise, even for a short while. She had warned herself over and over not to care, not to get involved with other people, and she had slipped up. Just this one time, she had thought. Just once.

How wrong she had been.

Kaija knew that she had to leave now. She had liked this apartment, and her comrades at the printshop–but from the looks of it, that part of her life had just been put to a messy end on the street, as the boy who could have been her lover was dragged into an unmarked car. Once they had kept him awake for a few days in the interrogation room, they’d know every detail of the previous night, and there would be a knock on her door and a black car waiting outside.

She began to search for a bag, taking only the necessities. She didn’t really own much, anyway.

Goodbye, desk where she wrote all night. Goodbye, door that locked. Goodbye maiden-heart, doomed never to beat again.

It was time to join her brothers.

Goodbye. Goodbye.

**

Chairman Uusitalo’s son was missing. Although the Chairman’s outward manner was calm as they went through their morning briefing session, Demyan could feel the anxiety hovering around the man like a thundercloud, lightning firing out of every nerve. Demyan alone knew that the chairman was a hairsbreadth away from tears and the assured political destruction that would bring; the man strained to pretend that “Find My Son” was just a simple item on his agenda.

Demyan watched Chairman Uusitalo’s impassive face. Behind it was a looping memory, repeating over and over like a skipping record.

He’d last seen Vesa yesterday morning. The boy had tried to ask him something, and he had ignored him. Now he would never see his son again.

Ugh, thought Demyan.

He hoped the kid would turn up soon, partly because the Chairman seemed like a decent man, but mostly because this unfortunate incident had put a damper on Demyan’s own plans. The bulk of State Security was out looking for the boy, and he was forced to wait indefinitely for them to bring in someone much more important. It was all immensely frustrating.

When the meeting adjourned, the Chairman asked to speak with Kuoppala privately; Demyan, as he was wont, took advantage of his privileged position and invited himself along.

“Have you found anything?” the Chairman asked once they were alone in his office.

“Nothing so far, but I’ve mobilized agents in every district.” Kuoppala answered, his face furrowed with genuine concern.

Hello, what’s this? wondered Demyan. Why the hell does Kuoppala care? The man seemed completely out of sorts and nearly as worried as the president. It merited investigation, since it wasn’t like Kuoppala to trouble himself over the fate of another human being. Just as Demyan prepared to make the dive, someone knocked at the door.

A guard entered and whispered something in the Chairman’s ear. The Chairman looked shocked, then relieved, and then angry, his face cycling through emotions until he finally got the words out.

“They’ve found him.”

Vesa was waiting in an antechamber, his chair flanked by two stone-faced guards. He rose as his father approached, and Demyan was struck by the brazen fire in his eyes.

Was this the same dogged boy he’d seen a few days ago, kicked around by life and accepting it? What had caused this sudden rebellion to flare up in him?

“Hei, Chairman,” Vesa said.

Chairman Uusitalo slapped him hard across the face. It rang like a thunderclap.

“You stupid, stupid boy! What were you thinking?”

“I wanted to get out for a while. Take a walk.”

“All night? Of all the impudent…!” The Chairman caught himself and lowered his voice. “Right now, rebel forces are threatening the safety of our citizens. For all I knew you were dead.”

“Like you would care.”

The enraged Chairman raised his hand again, but seemed to think better of it, and so there was a standoff. He and his son stood off with red faces and black looks.

“Where’s Mika?” Vesa asked through gritted teeth.

“Mika failed. Mika’s gone.”

The boy’s nerve finally broke. He began to shiver, his eyes darting from face to face, looking for someone to deny it.

“No,” he pleaded, his voice rising with panic. “No, it’s not his fault. You can’t do that.”

“As the leader of Kalevia, I assure you I can.”

“It was me–all me. You can’t execute him for–”

“Don’t talk nonsense! He isn’t going to be executed!” Chairman Uusitalo spat the word in an angry burst. “But damned if he’s going to be a guard after this debacle.”

The Chairman seemed to sag. All the rage and anxiety that had been fueling him fled, and now he looked ten years older, just a father relieved to have his son home after a long and sleepless night.

“I named you Vesa for a reason,” he said quietly. “Back then, I didn’t know I would be the leader of this country, I just chose a name that had a future to it. Vesa–sapling–I hoped that you would grow up into something great.”

He shook his head and drew his only child into an awkward embrace, while the boy stood frozen, seemingly mortified by the attempt at tenderness.

“Son. Don’t ever do this to me again.”

Sapling.

In that moment, the word clicked in Demyan’s head.

Demyan felt his lips curl crazily, alight with the joy of this miraculous breakthrough. He had half a mind to shout “Eureka” and dash off madly into a cliché.

By sheer luck, part of the astrological mystery had been solved. He had found his tree.

Thinking back, it made sense. If the Chairman represented Kalevia, by extension, so did his son; thus this boy, barely sixteen, grew within the orbits of power. As the Chairman continued his lecture, Demyan’s mind raced frantically as he searched for a scheme to insinuate himself into the life Kalevia apparently revolved around.

The Chairman pulled back his son and held him at arms-length. “You won’t leave home,” he ordered. “Not even to go to school. You must stay here until we find you a new bodyguard.”

There.

This was his chance.

“I’ll do it,” Demyan said.

The entire room collectively took a sharp intake of breath. Even the stoic guards seemed taken aback.

“That is clearly outside the scope of your duties,” said Kuoppala, furious.

The Chairman frowned. “A KGB officer? Rather unorthodox…”

“Now hear me out. I got my start as a bodyguard to the politburo–I know the ropes.” Demyan turned on the charm, his voice low and exceedingly smooth. “Just until you find someone more suitable.”

Demyan met Chairman Uusitalo’s eyes and began to work him over. Shadows coursed through the hollows of his subconscious, flushing ready-made terrors out into the open.

He could trust no one. They were all after him, weren’t they? Rebels, saboteurs, the capitalist wretches in the West… Even his own government was full of insidious backstabbers, waiting eagerly for his failure. But it wouldn’t be enough for them to destroy him–no, they wouldn’t stop there. They would rip his family from him, take the very last thing in this world he loved…

Demyan blinked his dark eyes, the very picture of fidelity and valor.

Unless…

“I can drive him to school in the morning on my way to the State Security offices. It won’t interfere with my work.” Demyan murmured the words calmly, hiding the euphoria as he leeched hope from the man’s mind.

It left the Chairman shaking. “Let him, Kuoppala,” he said, slowly nodding his agreement.

Kuoppala opened his mouth, then swiftly shut it; Demyan could feel the man’s helpless rage. The Chairman’s word was law. Demyan savored the sweetness of denying something to his enemy.

Vesa shot Demyan a sullen glance. Demyan smiled back at him, a newly minted bodyguard.

The stars had aligned.

To be continued in Chapter 5.

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