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Twelve: Arvo
Twelve: Arvo
The passenger train was leaving behind the Mäntyharju station somewhat to the south of Mikkeli, slowly gathering speed.
Despite the opened-up windows, it tended to be pretty hot inside the carriage that was full of soldiers in their uniforms. In fact, Lieutenant Arvo Vaara felt like he was suffocating.
The next hand was dealt. Arvo looked at the cards he received, and cursed quietly in his mind.
Nothing.
The oldest son of Salomo Vaara was not a stranger to bluffing. In fact he was well-versed with most strategies one could employ in the game of poker.
But then if you constantly got fuck-all from the cards that were dealt to you, bluff would go only so far.
By all accounts, Arvo should have been hungry by now. The train had been on the move for many hours, especially after it had to wait for an extended time at Pieksämäki, to wait for a north-bound train that had fallen behind its schedule. For some reason today, the Finnish railway system seemed to be experiencing some real problems. What the cavalry officer felt was not hunger – it was weakness, energy being drained out of him.
He knew exatly why that was, and it was not just the fact that he had not really eaten all day. By now, he was 1800 marks down in the poker game that had gone on all through the trip.
Opposite him, Sergeant Karvonen looked at Arvo Vaara and licked his lips like a predator.
”Raise, 40 marks”, he said, pushing a small pile of notes and coins across the makeshift table. Two of the other men decided to fold then and there, and then it was again only Karvonen and Arvo.
The lieutenant looked again to his cards.
No, this time they were bad enough to even try to bluff.
”Fold”, he said, feeling a combination of humiliation and anger.
Karvonen winked to him and added the pot to his ever-growing pile of notes.
”Your turn to deal”, he said to the corporal next to him, turning his red face towards the lean younger man.
The corporal looked at both the sergeant and the lieutenant. He had won a few marks himself, but he appeared ill at ease. To Arvo it had looked like the young man was worried that the officer opposite was losing so much, sums that for him probably were huge. Now, he shook his head.
”I'm out, sarge. I'm feeling a little ill, to be honest.”
The sergeant smirked at him.
”Suit yourself. I knew you would not have the stomach for it when the stakes get higher”, he said, and then looked at Arvo.
”How about you, lieutenant?”, he asked, proffering he deck of cards towards Arvo.
Arvo just nodded and took the cards. There was really no option for him than to keep playing, to win back even some of his losses. To mitigate the damage.
And he had been so sure that today his luck would change.
As Arvo shuffled the cards, trying to kindle within himself some new hope about getting into that elusive winning groove, in the outside the fields had again turned into an everpresent forest view. In between the forested hills and valleys, here and there one could glimpse a shimmering blue lake reflecting the clear summer sky.
The train was now reaching normal speed, and there was a hint of fresh air coming in through the partially open window.
Arvo finished dealing the cards, and then picked up his hand.
He was holding three kings right away. It was hard for him not to smile.
Does this mean my luck is finally turning?
As the others also looked at their cards, their faces studiously blank, right then another man in a uniform barged into the carriage.
”It's a train!”, the man shouted, looking mightily shaken.
The gamblers all looked at the man, who in ordinary circumstances would have looked quite the respectable older gentleman with his pince-nez glasses and his greying mutton chop whiskers.
Arvo as well looked at the conductor with his mouth open.
”It is a train!”, the man repeated, his eyes wide, his face frozen in a mask of horror.
He had entered the carriage from the direction of the locomotive.
”On the same track!”, the man enunciated in a pitiful voice.
Then there was a tearing sound and Arvo was airborne, still clutching his three kings.
….
….
September 2009
The woman walked into the large hall, clutching her bag. To get this far, she had passed a gallery of old-fashioned kiosks selling food, small pastries of some sort and what she thought were traditional sweet rolls, coffee, flowers, newspapers, and of course mobile phone subscriptions. There was Televia, there was BearMobile, and then of course there was the ubiquitous orange smile of AT&T's Mobbo. The woman would have thought coming as far as Finland would have allowed her to escape Mobbo.
No such luck.
The woman weaved her way between businessmen in suits, a hugging student couple with backpacks and a swaying drunk who somehow looked like a war veteran.
He looks kind of like Phil, really.
The thought about her step dad was not something she wanted to have right now, so she started looking for the map of the platforms.
No help, what she saw were just huge ads up on the walls of the big hall. Reciprocity, by Realism. Nuukat Nuudelit. Finn-Aero. There was an one billboard advertising the comeback tour of a British rock band, appearing in Helsinki in the Leijona Center, apparently. The woman could faintly remember seeing the lion logo on a big building on her way to the hotel the night before.
”Thank God I caught you”, the man in a suit and a dark overcoat had told her and looked at her matter-of-factly.
”I need to talk to you about the accident.”
The woman shook her head.
”The accident?”
”With the taxi, Miss Farrah. Are you all right?”
Nora Farrah shrugged lightly.
”I guess I am. Nothing appears to be broken. Why?”
The man pulled his hand out out of his pocket and held out a calling card in white, blue and black.
Nora took the card, feeling the expensive matte surface between her fingers.
”My name's Antti Jänö, and I'm with Fennia Legal. I wanted to ask you if you want to press charges... Against the taxi company.”
Nora looked at the man, who was handsome in the way a cookie-cutter young military officer might be. The man appeared totally, well, generic.
”The taxi company? No...”
She took a second to collect her thoughts.
”...I'd rather say it was the cops that were to blame for the accident, not the cabbie, so...”
Antti Jänö answered her words with a slightly crooked smile.
”I can't help you with that”, he said, nodding towards the card in the woman's hand.
”I told you I was with Fennia Legal, didn't I? We don't take cases against Helsinki law enforcement, for obvious reasons.”
Nora was not at all sure why it would have been obvious, but she just nodded.
”OK. Anyway, I just arrived to Finland, Mr... Jänö, and I am not about to sue anyone right now, thank you very much.”
The man in the suit and overcoat smiled and nodded.
”Thank you for telling me that, now I have an answer to give to my boss. Due diligence, you see.”
The man smiled again and again nodded towards the card.
”Don't hesitate to call me if you need any help with... navigating around Finland. Fennia's there to help, haha, like our ads tend to say. As a matter of fact – would you have a number I could call you if my boss needs any additional information?”
”No, sorry”, Nora answered, not feeling sorry at all, ”I don't have a Finnish 'phone yet. Like I said, I've just arrived.”
The man smiled again and nodded to her.
”Allright then”, he said and glanced to his right, apparently causing a similarly dressed man, albeit a bit older and scruffier one, to get up from one of the chairs behind him.
”Thank you for your time, Miss Farrah. Enjoy your stay in Finland. Good night.”
The man left with his... partner?... in tow, leaving Nora to stand there holding his business card.
Haluamme Auttaa Sinua[1], said a black and blue billboard up on the wall.
Fennia Security.
From time to time, she could hear a chime and then a woman's voice in Finnish, apparently announcing trains about to depart.
The sound of the announcements was tinny and pretty low-fi. The woman couldn't understand a word.
She walked on, passing a French fast food chain's outlet and a fat man in a blue overall, standing idly by some floor maintenance equipment. Then, finally, she found a route map. It showed several different railway lines in various colours, apparently representing different rail companies.
To be honest, she could not make heads or tails of it.
After a small while, she stopped an affable-looking man in his early thirties with a messy hair and thick glasses, a black and yellow scarf around his neck.
”Excuse me – do you speak English?”, she asked, and the man nodded.
”I need to get to Leppävaara. Is it the yellow line I need to take? Platform Four?”
The man looked at the big glowing chart for a while and then shook his head.
”No. The yellow line is RailSavonia. Long distance. What you need.... Is one of the companies serving the Greater Helsinki area. Like H-Rata, or PKS. It's the green line – Platforms Ten through Fifteen. Buy a ticket in advance... from a vendor or a machine.”
”Thank you.”
”Eipä mittään[2]”, the man said, making a mock military salute and taking off into the growing crowd.
Platforms Ten through Fifteen, the woman thought, the lower level.
Feeling a sudden urge, Nora Farrah glanced up at the vaulted ceiling of the big hall and saw small rays of light punching through the dirty old window panes, making up a pattern looking a lot like some constellation of unknown stars.
She kept the image on the top of her mind as she made her way down to the darker reaches of the railway station.
...
The escort is following a little bit behind
Making his own tracks
Fearing that he'll get infected with destiny
But that's what it's the least about
When I'm left alone, I know what'll follow
There's really nothing equivocal about it
I'm just somehow returning home
...
Notes:
[1] We Want to Help You.
[2] It's nothing.
...
To Be Continued
Twelve: Arvo
The passenger train was leaving behind the Mäntyharju station somewhat to the south of Mikkeli, slowly gathering speed.
Despite the opened-up windows, it tended to be pretty hot inside the carriage that was full of soldiers in their uniforms. In fact, Lieutenant Arvo Vaara felt like he was suffocating.
The next hand was dealt. Arvo looked at the cards he received, and cursed quietly in his mind.
Nothing.
The oldest son of Salomo Vaara was not a stranger to bluffing. In fact he was well-versed with most strategies one could employ in the game of poker.
But then if you constantly got fuck-all from the cards that were dealt to you, bluff would go only so far.
By all accounts, Arvo should have been hungry by now. The train had been on the move for many hours, especially after it had to wait for an extended time at Pieksämäki, to wait for a north-bound train that had fallen behind its schedule. For some reason today, the Finnish railway system seemed to be experiencing some real problems. What the cavalry officer felt was not hunger – it was weakness, energy being drained out of him.
He knew exatly why that was, and it was not just the fact that he had not really eaten all day. By now, he was 1800 marks down in the poker game that had gone on all through the trip.
Opposite him, Sergeant Karvonen looked at Arvo Vaara and licked his lips like a predator.
”Raise, 40 marks”, he said, pushing a small pile of notes and coins across the makeshift table. Two of the other men decided to fold then and there, and then it was again only Karvonen and Arvo.
The lieutenant looked again to his cards.
No, this time they were bad enough to even try to bluff.
”Fold”, he said, feeling a combination of humiliation and anger.
Karvonen winked to him and added the pot to his ever-growing pile of notes.
”Your turn to deal”, he said to the corporal next to him, turning his red face towards the lean younger man.
The corporal looked at both the sergeant and the lieutenant. He had won a few marks himself, but he appeared ill at ease. To Arvo it had looked like the young man was worried that the officer opposite was losing so much, sums that for him probably were huge. Now, he shook his head.
”I'm out, sarge. I'm feeling a little ill, to be honest.”
The sergeant smirked at him.
”Suit yourself. I knew you would not have the stomach for it when the stakes get higher”, he said, and then looked at Arvo.
”How about you, lieutenant?”, he asked, proffering he deck of cards towards Arvo.
Arvo just nodded and took the cards. There was really no option for him than to keep playing, to win back even some of his losses. To mitigate the damage.
And he had been so sure that today his luck would change.
As Arvo shuffled the cards, trying to kindle within himself some new hope about getting into that elusive winning groove, in the outside the fields had again turned into an everpresent forest view. In between the forested hills and valleys, here and there one could glimpse a shimmering blue lake reflecting the clear summer sky.
The train was now reaching normal speed, and there was a hint of fresh air coming in through the partially open window.
Arvo finished dealing the cards, and then picked up his hand.
He was holding three kings right away. It was hard for him not to smile.
Does this mean my luck is finally turning?
As the others also looked at their cards, their faces studiously blank, right then another man in a uniform barged into the carriage.
”It's a train!”, the man shouted, looking mightily shaken.
The gamblers all looked at the man, who in ordinary circumstances would have looked quite the respectable older gentleman with his pince-nez glasses and his greying mutton chop whiskers.
Arvo as well looked at the conductor with his mouth open.
”It is a train!”, the man repeated, his eyes wide, his face frozen in a mask of horror.
He had entered the carriage from the direction of the locomotive.
”On the same track!”, the man enunciated in a pitiful voice.
Then there was a tearing sound and Arvo was airborne, still clutching his three kings.
….
….
September 2009
The woman walked into the large hall, clutching her bag. To get this far, she had passed a gallery of old-fashioned kiosks selling food, small pastries of some sort and what she thought were traditional sweet rolls, coffee, flowers, newspapers, and of course mobile phone subscriptions. There was Televia, there was BearMobile, and then of course there was the ubiquitous orange smile of AT&T's Mobbo. The woman would have thought coming as far as Finland would have allowed her to escape Mobbo.
No such luck.
The woman weaved her way between businessmen in suits, a hugging student couple with backpacks and a swaying drunk who somehow looked like a war veteran.
He looks kind of like Phil, really.
The thought about her step dad was not something she wanted to have right now, so she started looking for the map of the platforms.
No help, what she saw were just huge ads up on the walls of the big hall. Reciprocity, by Realism. Nuukat Nuudelit. Finn-Aero. There was an one billboard advertising the comeback tour of a British rock band, appearing in Helsinki in the Leijona Center, apparently. The woman could faintly remember seeing the lion logo on a big building on her way to the hotel the night before.
”Thank God I caught you”, the man in a suit and a dark overcoat had told her and looked at her matter-of-factly.
”I need to talk to you about the accident.”
The woman shook her head.
”The accident?”
”With the taxi, Miss Farrah. Are you all right?”
Nora Farrah shrugged lightly.
”I guess I am. Nothing appears to be broken. Why?”
The man pulled his hand out out of his pocket and held out a calling card in white, blue and black.
Nora took the card, feeling the expensive matte surface between her fingers.
”My name's Antti Jänö, and I'm with Fennia Legal. I wanted to ask you if you want to press charges... Against the taxi company.”
Nora looked at the man, who was handsome in the way a cookie-cutter young military officer might be. The man appeared totally, well, generic.
”The taxi company? No...”
She took a second to collect her thoughts.
”...I'd rather say it was the cops that were to blame for the accident, not the cabbie, so...”
Antti Jänö answered her words with a slightly crooked smile.
”I can't help you with that”, he said, nodding towards the card in the woman's hand.
”I told you I was with Fennia Legal, didn't I? We don't take cases against Helsinki law enforcement, for obvious reasons.”
Nora was not at all sure why it would have been obvious, but she just nodded.
”OK. Anyway, I just arrived to Finland, Mr... Jänö, and I am not about to sue anyone right now, thank you very much.”
The man in the suit and overcoat smiled and nodded.
”Thank you for telling me that, now I have an answer to give to my boss. Due diligence, you see.”
The man smiled again and again nodded towards the card.
”Don't hesitate to call me if you need any help with... navigating around Finland. Fennia's there to help, haha, like our ads tend to say. As a matter of fact – would you have a number I could call you if my boss needs any additional information?”
”No, sorry”, Nora answered, not feeling sorry at all, ”I don't have a Finnish 'phone yet. Like I said, I've just arrived.”
The man smiled again and nodded to her.
”Allright then”, he said and glanced to his right, apparently causing a similarly dressed man, albeit a bit older and scruffier one, to get up from one of the chairs behind him.
”Thank you for your time, Miss Farrah. Enjoy your stay in Finland. Good night.”
The man left with his... partner?... in tow, leaving Nora to stand there holding his business card.
Haluamme Auttaa Sinua[1], said a black and blue billboard up on the wall.
Fennia Security.
From time to time, she could hear a chime and then a woman's voice in Finnish, apparently announcing trains about to depart.
The sound of the announcements was tinny and pretty low-fi. The woman couldn't understand a word.
She walked on, passing a French fast food chain's outlet and a fat man in a blue overall, standing idly by some floor maintenance equipment. Then, finally, she found a route map. It showed several different railway lines in various colours, apparently representing different rail companies.
To be honest, she could not make heads or tails of it.
After a small while, she stopped an affable-looking man in his early thirties with a messy hair and thick glasses, a black and yellow scarf around his neck.
”Excuse me – do you speak English?”, she asked, and the man nodded.
”I need to get to Leppävaara. Is it the yellow line I need to take? Platform Four?”
The man looked at the big glowing chart for a while and then shook his head.
”No. The yellow line is RailSavonia. Long distance. What you need.... Is one of the companies serving the Greater Helsinki area. Like H-Rata, or PKS. It's the green line – Platforms Ten through Fifteen. Buy a ticket in advance... from a vendor or a machine.”
”Thank you.”
”Eipä mittään[2]”, the man said, making a mock military salute and taking off into the growing crowd.
Platforms Ten through Fifteen, the woman thought, the lower level.
Feeling a sudden urge, Nora Farrah glanced up at the vaulted ceiling of the big hall and saw small rays of light punching through the dirty old window panes, making up a pattern looking a lot like some constellation of unknown stars.
She kept the image on the top of her mind as she made her way down to the darker reaches of the railway station.
...
The escort is following a little bit behind
Making his own tracks
Fearing that he'll get infected with destiny
But that's what it's the least about
When I'm left alone, I know what'll follow
There's really nothing equivocal about it
I'm just somehow returning home
...
Notes:
[1] We Want to Help You.
[2] It's nothing.
...
To Be Continued
- DrakonFin
- Word Count: 1.8k