Travelling Light Read Free Page B

empty.
    “Now let’s have a little drink,” said Juksu to Jonny. “But we’ll have to do without glasses, if your wife will excuse us. You don’t say much. Everything okay?”
    “Just fine,” said Jonny.
    I had a feeling I ought to go and let him stay there with the three of them. I turned to Vilhelm and said politely, “It’s really nice here. I like people who don’t take life so seriously.”
    “You’re very young,” said Vilhelm. “But you have a wonderful grandmother.”
    We had a drink together and then suddenly Jonny spoke up excitedly. “I was listening to what you were saying, that we can’t expect to have everything in life, but still you have to expect something, I mean expect something incredible, from yourself and from other people… You have to set your sights high because it always turns out a little lower, if you know what I mean – like with a bow and arrow…”
    “That’s it exactly,” said Keke reassuringly. “You’re absolutely right. Look, here they come. I like boats.”
    We took another swig from the bottle as we watched the fishing-boats slowly approach the quay. Two drunks wandered up. “Hi, Keke,” said one of them. “Oh sorry, you’ve got company. Got any cigarettes?”
    Keke gave each of them a cigarette and they walked on. Up in the spring sky the dome of the cathedral rested like a white dream over the empty square. Helsinki was indescribably beautiful, I’d never realised before how beautiful it was.
    “The Nikolai Church,” said Juksu. “They have to change everything. So now they call it the Great Church. It’s idiotic, it doesn’t mean anything.” He let the empty bottle slide into the water and said as a kind of afterthought that they can’t even write decent poetry any more.
    By now the night was as dark as it ever gets in May, but we still didn’t need any lights.
    “Tell me something,” I said. “What do they mean by perception?”
    “Observation,” said Vilhelm. “You see something and suddenly you recognise some old idea or, better yet, some new idea.”
    “Yes,” said Keke. “A new idea.”
    I was feeling cold and suddenly angry and said eightieth birthday parties were a really stupid idea.
    “My dear,” said Vilhelm. “It was a proper party, and a beautiful one in its way, but now it’s over. Now there’s just us sitting here trying to think.”
    “What about?” said Juksu.
    “About ourselves. About everything.”
    “What do you suppose Grandma’s thinking about?”
    “No one knows.”
    Vilhelm went on. “For instance, about this business of maybe fifty a week. They run themselves ragged. And still they only have time for the young ones, the bastards.”
    “Who?” I asked.
    “The art critics. Fifty shows a week.”
    “And no one asks any more,” Keke said. “We’re over and done with. We were critiqued long ago.” He thought for a moment. “My bum’s getting cold. Let’s make a move.”
    As we walked further along the quayside, he asked me what I wanted from life.
    I hesitated. Then I said, “Love. Security, maybe?”
    “Of course,” he said. “That’s right. In a way – for you at least.”
    “And travel,” I added. “I’ve got this real passion to travel.”
    Keke was quiet for a while and then he said, “Passion. As you can see, I’ve lived quite a long time, which is to say I’ve been working for quite a long time, which is the same thing. And you know what? In the whole silly business, the only thing that really matters is passion. It comes and it goes. At first it just comes to you free of charge, and you don’t understand, and you waste it. And then it becomes a thing to nurture.”
    It was awfully cold. He was walking too slowly, and I was freezing.
    Then he said, “You lose sight of the picture. I think we’re out of cigarettes.”
    “Not a bit of it,” said Juksu. “Philip Morris – Grandma shoved them in my pocket. She knows what it’s like.”
    Keke went over to the other two men.