AS RED AS BLOOD
Written by SALLA SIMUKKA
Original title: Punainen kuin veri (Tammi, Spring 2013) Format: Hardcover Size: 134 x 213 mm Extent: 265 pages Sample translation of chapters 1-3
Young adult thrillers with an attitude.
Like Lisbeth Salander for the YA!
About the author:
Salla Simukka (b. 1981) is a translator and author of juvenile fiction. She has written several novels and one collection of short prose for young readers, and has translated adult fiction, children’s books, and plays. She writes book reviews for the newspapers Helsingin Sanomat and Hämeen Sanomat and the weekly Suomen Kuvalehti. In addition, she is associate editor at a literary publication for young people, Lukufiilis.
In January 2013 Salla Simukka was awarded with the Topelius Prize for her novels Without a Trace (Jäljellä, Tammi Spring 2012) and Elsewhere (Toisaalla, Tammi Fall 2012). Established in 1946, the Topelius Prize is Finland’s oldest prize in recognition of the best Finnish book for children and young people. These days, the prize is awarded for the best youth novel.
THIS SAMPLE IS PROVIDED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR PUBLICATION ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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As Red as Blood
Once upon a time in the middle of winter, while snowflakes soft as feathers fell from the clouds, a queen sat with her sewing by the ebony-framed window of her castle.
As she sewed and looked out of the window, she happened to prick her finger with the needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red droplets looked so delightful against the white background that the queen thought to herself:
“Oh, if only I had a child as white as the snow, as red as blood and as black as ebony!
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February 28th
Sunday
Chapter 1
The snow lay glittering white. Fifteen minutes ago a new, clean, soft layer had fallen on the old snow. Fifteen minutes ago everything had still been possible. The world had looked beautiful and the future flickered somewhere up ahead, brighter, calmer and freer. The future, for which it was worth taking a huge risk, betting everything on one card, trying to break free once and for all.
Fifteen minutes ago the light, downy snowfall spread a thin feather quilt on top of the old crusted-over snow. Then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started, and a ray of sunshine peeped out through a gap in the clouds. There had hardly been a day this lovely all winter long.
Now, from one moment to the next, more red was being mixed into the white. It was spreading, gaining ground, creeping outward along the snow crystals, staining them as it went.
Some of the red had fallen farther away, as speckles on the surface of the snow. It was such a vivid colour it surely would have shrieked about its redness if it had a voice.
Natalia Smirnova stared at the red-flecked snow with her brown eyes, seeing nothing. She was not thinking of anything. She did not wish for anything. She did not fear anything.
Ten minutes ago, Natalia had been wishing and fearing more than ever before in her life. With a trembling hand, she stuffed some banknotes into her genuine Louis Vuitton handbag.
All the while she was listening for even the tiniest rustle. She tried to calm herself down and tell herself that there was no emergency. She was the one who had planned everything. Even so, she
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knew that no plan is entirely certain. Just one little nudge could cause the entire edifice, carefully thought out over a period of months, to collapse and be ruined.
There was a passport and a plane ticket to Moscow in her bag. She wasn’t taking anything else with her. Her brother would be waiting for her with a hire car at the airport in
Moscow. Her brother would drive her hundreds of kilometres to a cottage that only a few people knew of. Her mother and three-year-old Olga, her own little girl she hadn’t seen in over a year, would be waiting for her there. Would her daughter even remember her? They would have time to get reacquainted with one another as they hid out in the cottage for a month or two. For as long as it took for her to believe she was safe. As long as it took for her to be forgotten.
Natalia had suppressed the nagging voice in her head that kept telling her she would not be forgotten. That she would not be allowed to disappear. She had convinced herself that she wasn’t that important and they’d get someone else to take her place in an instant. They wouldn’t bother to come and dig her out from her hiding place.
Every once in a while someone would disappear in these things. Along with some money. That was one of the risks in this business: it was sort of an unavoidable loss, like fruit that goes off in a supermarket and has to be chucked out.
Natalia hadn’t counted the money. She just crammed as much into her bag as she could. Some of the banknotes were crumpled, but that didn’t matter. A crumpled five-hundred- euro note is worth just as much as a smooth, crisp one. She could use it to buy three months’ worth of food, or even four, if she was really careful and miserly enough. It was enough to pay for one person to keep quiet for a sufficiently long time. Five hundred euros was the price of a secret for many.
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Natalia Smirnova, aged 20, lay on her front in the snow, her cheek against the cold surface. She did not feel the bite of the frozen snow against her skin. She did not feel the icy minus-25-degree cold on her bare ears.
A foreign land, a chilly spring
Natalia, you are freezing
The man had sung that song to her in his gruff voice, out of tune. Natalia didn’t like the song. The Natalia in the song was from Ukraine, but she was from Russia. She did like it when the man sang and stroked her hair, though. She tried not to listen to the lyrics. Fortunately, that was easy to do. She did know some Finnish and could understand far more than she could speak herself, but when she stopped making an effort and gave her mind a rest, the foreign words would get all muddled together, losing their meaning and turning into mere combinations of sounds that came out of the man’s mouth and droned against the back of Natalia’s neck.
Five minutes ago Natalia had also been thinking about the man and his somewhat clumsy hands. Would the man miss her? Maybe a bit. Maybe just a little bit. Not enough at any rate, because the man had not really loved her. If the man had really loved her, he would have sorted things out for Natalia, just as he had promised to do many times. Now Natalia was forced to sort things out for herself.
Two minutes ago Natalia had snapped her handbag shut. It was bulging with banknotes. She had tidied up quickly behind her and glanced at herself in the mirror in the front hall. Bleached hair, brown eyes, thin eyebrows and shiny red lips. She was pale. Dark circles under her eyes from keeping watch. She was about to leave. She had a taste of freedom and fear in her mouth. They tasted of iron.
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Two minutes ago she was looking her reflection in the eyes and raising her chin up.
She would take advantage of the circumstances to pull a fast one.
Natalia had heard a key turn in the lock. She froze to the spot. She could make out one person’s footsteps, then another and then a third. The Trio. The Trio were about to come in through the door. So she had no option but to flee.
One minute ago Natalia had been running through the kitchen towards the door to the terrace. She fumbled with the lock. Her hands were shaking so much, she couldn’t get the door open. But then, by some miracle, it did open and Natalia ran across the snow-covered terrace and carried on through the garden. Her leather boots sank into the snowdrifts, but she just kept going, not looking back. She didn’t hear anything. The thought crossed her mind for an instant that she might actually make it, she might manage it, to escape and win.
Thirty seconds ago there was a dull crack from a gun fitted with a silencer. A bullet pierced the back of Natalia Smirnova’s coat, then her skin, just missing her spine, and then tore through her organs and finally the handle of her Louis Vuitton handbag which she was clutching against her stomach. She fell forward onto the pure, untouched snow.
A red puddle spread out underneath Natalia. It ate up the snow surrounding it. The red was still ravenous and warm, but it was cooling down with every passing second. One person’s slow, heavy footsteps approached Natalia Smirnov as she lay in the snow. She did not hear them.
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February 29th
Monday, in the small hours
Chapter 2
The Trio tussled with each other by the door. They all wanted to be the first one inside.
“Hey, give me some space so I can get the key to go in the hole.”
“You can never get anything to go in the hole.”
Laughter, shushing, more laughter.
“Now just wait. That’s it. There goes the key. And turn slowly. Very slowly. Wow. This is really amazing. I mean, can you believe that a lock will open with just one turn of a key? That somebody invented a system like that? If you ask me, that’s the thirteenth wonder of the world.”
“Just shut up and open the door.”
The Trio pushed on the door and barged inside. One of them nearly fell down. The second one started to emit little high-pitched squeals and laughed when he heard his voice echoing in the huge, empty space. The third one racked his brain and punched a code into the burglar alarm, one digit at a time.
“One… seven… three… two. My God, it was right! This is the fourteenth wonder of the world. That you can stop an alarm by punching in some numbers. My God. Now I know what I want to be when I grow up. I’m gonna be a locksmith. That’s a proper job, right? I mean, somebody can do stuff with locks in their work? Or else I’m gonna be a security guard.”
The other two were not listening. They were running down the empty, dark corridors, shouting and sniggering. Then the third one went to join them. Their laughter bounced off the walls. It was left to travel up and down the stairs.
“We’re the greatest!”
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Greatest. Reatest. Atest. Test. Est. St. T.
“And massively, bloody rich!”
Then they barged into each other on purpose and fell to the floor. They rolled around, giggling. Made angel shapes against the stone floor. Then one of them remembered.
“We may be rich, but our money’s dirty.”
“Oh, yeah. Dirrrty money.”
“We should go into that darkroom. That’s the reason we came here.”
If only they could still remember what had actually happened before. The events were like a haze from which individual images emerged like flashes of lightning. Someone being sick. Others skinny-dipping in a pool. A locked door that shouldn’t have been locked. A broken crystal vase and shards that injured someone’s foot. Blood. Music blasting too loudly. Oops, I did it again. A forgotten hit someone wanted to play on repeat. I played with your heart, got lost in a game. Someone sobbing uncontrollably, snivelling, not wanting help. A floor slippery with spilt rum. Smelling pungent and sweet at the same time.
The remembered images refused to line up in a logical order. Who had brought the plastic bag? At what stage? Who had opened it, put their hand inside, snatched it back and licked their finger? When had they realised?
Ought to get something. Right away. Now.
“You guys got anything left? I feel like popping another one.”
“I’ve got these.”
Three buttons. One for each of them. All at once, they put them on their tongues and let them dissolve in their mouths.
“That’s got a kick. Oh yeah. Nice kick.”
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In the darkroom. Dark. Then one of them switched the light on.
“Let there be light. And then there was light.”
Plastic bag on the table. Bag open.
“Ugh, bloody hell, that stinks.”
“Money doesn’t stink. Money has the scent of wealth.”
“That’s a ridiculous sack.”
“And we’re going to share it equally.”
“This is so brilliant! Nothing like this has ever happened to me. I love you guys. I love the entire world.”
“Don’t start snogging. I’ll lose my concentration and get all horny.”
“We could have a shag right here.”
“You can’t have a shag here. We’re gonna start the clean-up job now.”
Water into the proofing trays. Banknotes into the water. Then they hung up the clean notes one by one to dry.
“This is what I call money laundering. You hear me, this is what I call money laundering, for real.”
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February 29th
Monday
Chapter 3
“Time to wake up! Wake up! Up! And if I were you, I wouldn’t even think about hitting Snooze!”
A growl filled Lumikki Andersson’s ears. That growling voice was unfortunately familiar to her. It was her own voice. She had recorded herself shouting as her alarm tone on her mobile phone, because she thought it would get her out of her warm bed better than anything else. It worked. She actually didn’t think about hitting Snooze.
She sat drowsily on the edge of her bed and glanced at the Moomins calendar hanging on the wall. Monday, February the 29th. Leap year day. The most useless day in the world. Couldn’t they have made it an international holiday? It was unnecessary, at any rate.
Maybe if they did, then people wouldn’t have to do anything sensible or productive.
Lumikki stuck her feet into her blue hedgehog slippers and trudged into the kitchenette. She measured out water and coffee into the moka pot. She wasn’t going to make it into the ranks of the living this morning without a strong espresso. It was still dark, way too dark to be awake. Even though the snow was piled high in drifts, it didn’t reflect much light. The darkness wouldn’t let go for ages yet. It would keep a stranglehold on the northern land until well into
March.
She hated this part of winter. The snow and freezing temperatures. Too much of both. Spring was not even lurking around the corner. Winter just kept going on and on, giving no hope that it would end, congealing everything into lethargy and boredom. It felt cold at home, it felt cold outdoors and it felt cold at school. Paradoxically enough, sometimes it seemed as if the only place that didn’t feel cold was in a hole in the ice on a lake, but you couldn’t spend all day
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there. Lumikki pulled on a big grey sweater and poured some coffee into a cup. She went into the only proper room in her studio flat to drink it. The room measured a princely seventeen square metres in size. She curled up in a worn-out armchair and tried to warm herself up. There was a draught from the window, even though she had plugged the gaps around it last autumn.
The coffee tasted of coffee. She didn’t want anything else from it. She couldn’t stand any of the sickly sweet, weird chocolate-nut-cardamom-vanilla coffees in the world. She liked her coffee strong and black, liked things to be as they should be and her flat to be a flat.
Her mum had been shocked the last time she visited Lumikki’s place. “Don’t you want to decorate in here at all? Make it look like home?” No, she didn’t. Lumikki had been living in that flat for a year and a half. Nothing besides a thick mattress on the floor doing the job as a bed, along with a desk, laptop and armchair. The first few months her mum had insisted on buying
Lumikki a bed and bookcase, but Lumikki stubbornly refused her offer. Her books were stacked up on the floor. The only ‘interior decor item’ was the black-and-white Moomins calendar. Why would she bother with any nest-building? There was no playing around with fancy Nordic designer furniture here. The studio flat was just a place for her to live during her school years. It wasn’t a home in the sense that she would have thought about putting down roots there for a long time.
Once she finished school, Lumikki would be free to go anywhere she liked, and she wouldn’t need to stick around missing anyone or anything.
Home wasn’t at her parents’ place in Riihimäki, either. She felt like a stranger there these days. Objects reminded her of things she’d much rather forget. They certainly entered her mind, her dreams and her nightmares often enough.
Her parents had taken a strangely inconsistent view towards her moving away from home. Sometimes it seemed like it came as a relief to them. It was true that the atmosphere at
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home was often strained, but it always had been. At least for as long as Lumikki could remember.
She had never managed to figure out what caused the tension, since her mum and dad didn’t have any noticeable arguments, and she didn’t raise her voice at them either. As her move approached, her mum and dad would occasionally give her long hugs, but that was strange and awkward, because that wasn’t something they normally did in their family.
After the hugs, her mum would hold Lumikki’s face in her hands and stare at her for a strangely long time.
“All we’ve got is you. Only you.”
Her mother would repeat that, looking as if she might burst into tears at any moment. Lumikki was starting to feel hemmed in. When she had finally got her things moved to
Tampere with her parents’ help and shut the door after they’d gone, she felt as if a heavy load had been lifted from her shoulders – a load she hadn’t even been aware she had been carrying.
“Now, are you sure you’re going to be able to cope here?”
Her mum always asked that. Her dad took a more practical view.
“The girl will soon be an adult. She’ll have to cope,” he said in Swedish.
And Lumikki was coping. Better with every passing day.
A tired-looking girl was reflected in the bathroom mirror this morning. The caffeine was too slow to take effect in her system. Lumikki washed her face with cold water and tied her brown hair back in a ponytail. Her parents had chucked a name at her that didn’t correspond to reality. Lumikki’s name was the Finnish-language version of Snow White, the fairy tale character.
Only this Snow White’s hair wasn’t black, her skin wasn’t gleaming white and her lips were not remarkably red. She could get her reflection to match her name with some hair dye and makeup,
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but she didn’t see any reason to do so. Her reflection was good enough, and she wasn’t bothered about other people’s opinions.
Lumikki thought for three seconds about what to wear to school. Then she decided to keep the grey sweater on and put on a pair of jeans. Then hiking boots, a black woollen coat, green scarf and mittens, grey woolly hat. A Fjällräven rucksack on her shoulder.
Hunger gnawed at her stomach. There hadn’t even been so much as light in the fridge. The light bulb went a couple of weeks ago and she hadn’t bothered to replace it. Ought to get a breakfast roll – or two – at the school’s coffee bar. And definitely more coffee.
She encountered a familiar din at the school door. Everyone was busy and needed to announce how busy they were. Sparklingly witty, brilliantly creative high-school kids learning communication skills. Lumikki knew it was a nasty thing to think, but some mornings it was harder than usual to stand all the brightly coloured clothes, dramatic gestures, and personality and originality expressed within implicitly agreed limits. There was gratitude beneath Lumikki’s irritation, though.
She was allowed to attend this particular school. She didn’t have to be in Riihimäki any more. She had applied to this specialist arts academy to get away from there. It could have been difficult for her parents to agree to let her move to Tampere otherwise, but a coveted place at a top academy was a good enough reason. During her first few months at her new high school, Lumikki did feel as if she’d made it to paradise. That feeling subsided a bit once high-school life became routine and she began to see a lot of jealousy, fakery, acting, boasting and uncertainty behind all the happy smiles.
Fortunately, besides the din there was also a surge of warmth in the school building, which brought Lumikki’s frozen-stiff limbs back to life. She new that a ruthless prickling would
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soon start as her blood started to circulate properly to her fingers and toes. She should have crammed two pairs of woollen socks into her boots. Lumikki flung her coat and hat onto the coat rack and hurried downstairs to the dining room and the adjoining coffee bar.
“What’ll it be this time, with veggies or plain?” the dinner lady knew to ask as soon as she saw Lumikki.
“One of each,” she replied. “And a large coffee.”
“And no need to leave room for milk,” the dinner lady laughed as she filled the disposable cup up to the brim.
Lumikki sat down at a table in the coffee bar and let the warmth slowly take over her extremities. Ouch, ouch, ouch. There really was no escape from the prickling. She held her hands round her cup of coffee for a moment and then bit into a sandwich. The veggie roll was large and tasty. Ripe tomato and crisp pepper. Lumikki was a vegetarian when she was the one paying. She didn’t buy meat with her own money. When other people were paying and cooking, she did eat meat. Maybe it was a bit hypocritical, but it was practical.
Three girls rushed over to the next table. Blonde hair bounced. Short, dark hair was tousled. Red locks were fiddled with. YSL’s Baby Doll, Britney Spears’ Fantasy and Chérie by Miss
Dior gushed into the vicinity.
“My head’s gonna explode if he treats me like I don’t exist again today. Thinks he can do whatever he wants with me at parties, but hardly says hello at school. Hard to believe that bloke’s already eighteen.”
“My head’s gonna explode anyway. I shouldn’t’ve had those last few drinks. I don’t even know what was in them.”
“Look, we just had some drinks.”
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Mock-horrified expressions. Wide eyes.
“What, you don’t mean …?”
“You must have been blind if you didn’t notice Elisa’s pupils. And things got really agitated.”
“She always sounds really agitated when she talks.”
“This was like to the power of a hundred.”
Glancing around. Three heads together, whispering. Lumikki drained her coffee cup and glanced at the clock. Another ten minutes until the start of lessons. She got up, taking her plain roll with her. She couldn’t be bothered to listen to the issues of the perfume mafia at the next table, and the stench was becoming unbearable.
Girls focused on their appearance who planned to apply to law school or the School of Economics. They came here to the specialist arts academy because you had to have good marks to get in and because they were ‘like, really creative’.
The great artists and even greater intellectuals, for whom the school was a way to be visible.
The mathematical geniuses, who always looked a bit lost.
The ordinary and average ones, who filled the corridors, clogged up the staircases, formed long queues in the dining room and all looked, sounded and smelled the same. No one would remember their names in future years. No one remembered them even now.
The nice, smart ones – they were there too. And Lumikki didn’t normally look down on the others. For many, their role was just a safety disguise that they put on before the start of the school day to find their place among hundreds of others. She didn’t blame the gang for that.
Still, she had decided on her very first day of high school that she would not agree to fit into any
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category, would not consent to be dumped into a reference group that others would use to make assumptions about her.
Lumikki had observed the formation of divisions, groups and cliques with mild interest and a touch of amusement. She had stayed on the sidelines, on the outside. But she wasn’t some weirdo loner who slunk along the walls dressed all in black. People remembered her name.
Lumikki Andersson. Finland-Swede from Riihimäki.
The one who considered her opinion on every issue.
The one who got top marks in physics as well as philosophy.
Who played the part of Ophelia in a way that made a couple of teachers furious and the rest deeply touched.
Who didn’t take part in any of the school-wide campaigns or events.
Who always ate on her own, but never looked lonely.
She was a piece from another jigsaw without its own place, but which could surprisingly fit into almost any place at all.
She wasn’t like the others. She was exactly like the others.
Lumikki reached the door to the darkroom and glanced around. No one in sight. She went into the vestibule and closed the door behind her. It was dark. In a well-practised movement, she opened the door to the darkroom. Her hand knew the distances already. Impenetrable darkness. Silence. Peace. Her own moment before the start of the school day. Resetting herself.
Recharging. A daily ritual that no one knew anything about. This habit was both a recollection of the past and a part of the present. For many years, Lumikki had been forced to look for hiding places because she was afraid. Finding secret nooks and safe havens had been a vital necessity.
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These days it wasn’t a matter of fear but of a wish to find her own space, even in a place that was shared by everyone. The darkroom was her pocket of freedom where she could collect her thoughts for a moment before she stepped into the talk, sounds, opinions and feelings of others.
Lumikki leaned against the wall and stared into the blackness with her eyes wide open. She emptied her mind, one thought at a time. The easiest thing was to get rid of mundane, largely trivial thoughts that revolved around the axis of the next maths lesson, might go shopping after school, maybe body combat class in the evening. Now even surface noises refused to disappear from her mind. Something was bothering her.
The smell.
The darkness smelled different than usual. She couldn’t get a grip on the smell. She took a step forward. Something brushed against her cheek. She jumped back and then switched on the red safelight.
A five-hundred-euro note.
Dozens of five-hundred-euro notes hanging up to dry in the darkroom. Were they real? Lumikki reached out to touch the nearest note. The paper felt genuine, at least. She saw there were no photos developing in the proofing trays and switched on the normal light.
Note up to the light. There was a watermark, the same image that looked complete against the light. The security stripe and hologram were in their proper places as well. If these banknotes were not real, then they were extremely well-made forgeries.
The liquid in the proofing tray was slightly brownish. Lumikki put her finger in it.
Water.
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She looked at the darkroom floor and saw there were reddish-brown stains on it. She looked at the corner of the banknote that had the same reddish-brown on it. She knew immediately what it was that seemed odd in the darkroom.
The smell of dried blood.
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