Copper Heart by Leena Lehtolainen Page A

Hopefully Koivu was coming from Joensuu again to help with the interviews, because I wanted someone to bounce ideas off of.
    Ella’s family lived in a slightly run-down wooden house right on the edge of the sinkhole zone. The house was originally one of the homes the mining company built for its workers, and was intended for two families. Ella’s husband, Matti, had turned half of it into an art studio by pulling down some of the interior walls. The yard with its unmowed grass was a permanent art exhibit for a group of steel sculptures created during a period when Matti was obsessed with “giving material form.” This was a departure from the standard themes of his paintings—triangles and cubes. Typically, he painted these shapes in distinctivethree-dimensional arrangements that made recognizing his work fairly easy. I had received one of his paintings as a present on my thirtieth birthday.
    After knocking, I walked in without waiting for a reply. The children, Ville and Viivi, were sitting in the living room watching
The Moomins
cartoons. Ella was busy with something in the kitchen, and Matti was nowhere in sight.
    “Morning! Tea?” Judging by her bedhead and the wrinkles in her nightgown, Ella had just woken up.
    “Sure. Is Matti still asleep?”
    “No, he’s been in the studio since eight. I don’t know whether he slept at all given this whole Meritta thing…” Ella crossed the kitchen to close the door. “He’s barely done anything but cry since he heard.”
    “Were they that close?”
    “They’ve known each other for at least fifteen years. They studied together at the Ateneum.” Ella poured me a cup. Her tea was usually much stronger than I preferred, so I mixed in a good amount of milk.
    I always forgot that Matti was ten years older than Ella and me. He was so childlike somehow. Ella and Matti met at the Workers’ Academy, where Ella had been studying to become an arts administrator and Matti was teaching painting. Ella, who had never been the type to fall head-over-heels for anyone, would have accepted a marriage proposal from Matti the very next week.
    Matti was a nice guy. He could be a bit frivolous, but I got the impression that was just an artistic role he was playing. He was a talker, and sometimes even I had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. Usually he was brimming with enthusiasm for some scheme or another. Although he was a respected artist,he was still eager to teach and help out at the Finnish Artists’ Association. The young students at the local art school and the community center painting circle were lucky to have such a qualified teacher. And Matti enjoyed teaching and organizing art camps, which were a good counterbalance to the solitude of painting.
    Ella drank her tea silently while I sipped mine and wondered desperately how to start the conversation about the brooch. I was sure Ella had been wearing it when I was joking about pouring punch on Johnny’s head. And at that point, the Tower had been locked.
    “Hey, Ella, the night before last you were wearing a Kalevala brooch on your folk costume. My sister’s birthday is in a few weeks, and I was thinking she might like something similar. Could you show it to me?”
    Ella looked at me as if she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, but then she stood up and went to go look for the piece of jewelry. From the living room I could hear Little My laughing hysterically on the television and Ville and Viivi joining in. I hated the sugary-pastel Japanese animation of
The Moomins
, which were so ubiquitous nowadays I was surprised they weren’t being printed on toilet paper. Identifying the wistful optimism of Tove Jansson’s original characters in these bubble-gum versions was difficult.
    Ella came back empty-handed. “I can’t find it. Last night I washed the blouse that goes with the outfit, so the brooch might be in the washing machine.” Ella nodded toward the bathroom, where I could hear the rumbling of the