The Story of My Face Read Online Free Page A

would lead: here, to Elojoki. I know all this, but it isn’t worth going into.
    And naturally, I don’t tell her about Christina’s visit: she’d probably come straight out and drag me home.
    â€˜I am living my life,’ I tell her, ‘I promise you. There are different ways to do it,’ I remind her.
    â€˜Sometimes I think you are doing this to punish me,’ she says, coughing violently, making no attempt to muffle it, so as to let me know she is smoking again, because of the stress I’m putting her under. But I won’t be blackmailed.
    â€˜No, I’m not,’ I tell her.
    â€˜Have you got everything?’ she asks, hoarser still. ‘Did you pack enough of your cream?’
    â€˜Absolutely,’ I tell her. ‘Please don’t worry. You? The flat?’
    â€˜All right.’ She blows her nose loudly.
    â€˜Take care,’ I say.
    â€˜You too –’ and she adds, suddenly mucus-free, utterly perplexed: ‘But Natty, what on earth do you think you are doing there?’ She hangs up before I can even try to explain.

3

    It’s not been the easiest of arrivals, but perhaps that’s appropriate, since Tuomas’s wasn’t either. ‘I knocked on the doors and was sent away,’ he says in his Notes . ‘But I stayed. The Parish turned its back on me, but still I stayed. I had Work to do here, though I was still far from knowing what it was.’
    The pastor’s house or pappila is basically a large bungalow, though there is a row of tiny windows in the attic, one above each of the larger windows below. Right in the middle of the long side there are steps to a large wooden porch, which has double doors and generous windows to either side of them. This is a kind of extension to the main hall – I haven’t been inside yet, but you can see right through. There are low cabinets under each window, symmetrically placed lamps, three doors leading off in the principal directions, a striped rug on the floor. Tuomas must have stood in that hall, with the elderly maid, Ulla.
    She told him the pastor was out and took him to the sitting-room, where he waited so long that he fell asleep. He woke to find standing over him a huge man in equally huge black robes, perhaps the oldest man he had ever seen, white-haired, white-eyebrowed, bearded: the pastor. His hands were curled into arthritic fists and his eyes, asymmetrically surrounded by irregular, elephantine folds of skin, seemed to both dissolve and burn at the same time. The pastor said nothing, but reached out and took Tuomas’s letter of recommendation from the Bishop, then carried it away into his study and closed the door. Eventually the old woman came back.
    â€˜Tuomas Envall, the Pastor of Elojoki has asked me to tell you – with respect, since he is sure that the mistake is not of your making – that he does not require assistance. He will make this clear to the Bishop. Meanwhile, there is a house in the garden where you can stay. The stove is lit. Your meals will be taken here.’
    First, he cleared a path through the compacted snow and ice of the pastor’s garden, and each day, after his private prayers and meditations in the little house, he took himself along and into the main house for the first meal of the day, at which he would enquire as to whether there had been word from the Bishop, then repeat his willingness to help in any way, however humble. Day after day, Esko Lehtinen, who clearly had something wrong with his throat (yet did nonetheless manage to make himself understood, in a voice half-whisper, half-shout, to others, and in church), looked past him and said nothing. Likewise, the house servants, the employees of the church, the tenant farmers, those members of the congregation whom Tuomas was able to meet – all of them refused to exchange with him more than the absolutely necessary formalities. . . . The information he gave about himself