Free Birdbrain by Johanna Sinisalo Page A

if you actually want them.
    Inside the cabin an Israeli guy was boiling up some pasta. Of all the equipment in the world, this first-rate amateur was carrying a three-litre aluminium pot, the kind you use in your own kitchen. And he was wearing a long-sleeved white cotton shirt.
    The most impractical colour and fabric you could possibly imagine. Once it gets wet it loses any advantageous qualities it ever had. The shirt would take a lifetime to dry.
    What were these people doing? Or what did they think they were doing?

 
     
     
     
     
    It’s usually baked beans or fish fingers or yoghurt or something like that. Sometimes there’s a slice of some fancy ham or a jar of something that’s obviously cost a bit. A length of liver sausage or something else soft can do the trick in the toilets in a department store or café ; or you can drop an egg down a hole, somewhere it’s impossible to get it out, and hope it cracks. But mostly I just look at ’em. Imagining what they would’ve done with this or that food.
    People are always turning their backs on their shopping bags. When they’re packing another bag or waiting for the bus or looking through the bus window waiting to get off.
    Five fingers and Bob’s your uncle.
    If there’s a driver’s licence or some other photo ID in the wallet; I check to see what someone that buys tinned pineapple or granary toast actually looks like. What kind of kids they’ve got. Gormless idiots mostly. And I take the money, too.
    If there’s something halfway decent in the bags, like cake or chocolate, I might even eat it.
    Once I found a pair of expensive leather gloves; they’d just been bought, receipt still attached and everything. Too small for me, and I could’ve swapped them with that receipt for ones that fitted better. But if I need leather gloves, I tell the old man my hands are cold, and before you know it I’ve got three pairs, and one of them’ll probably have fucking mink lining.
    You need to call him Dad. Works every time. Just start off with ‘Hi Dad.’ Honest, that word’s like magic; it’s hard not to laugh when you see it in action. After that it’s easy to tell him that such-and-such a policeman was a sadistic fucker, or the woman in the shop was a paranoid menopausal bitch. You need to look at him with your head tilted a bit to the side, with the left eye slightly forwards. Don’t smile too much, or he’ll say there’s nothing funny about it. Then again, if you’re too serious he’ll think you’re worried or afraid. When he’s having a rant, you need to look at his lips and sometimes his eyes and nod and try to kill time.
    I left the whole fucking lot in the foyer at the cinema.
    Kenu always tries to leave the bags at the station or in the bank or some place where people notice an unattended bag pronto. Said he’d once watched from the sidelines while a police bomb squad crawled up to a black leather bag with pincers in their hands, only to find nothing but a sack of potatoes and a porno mag.
     
     

TASMANIA
Surprise Bay to Deadman’s Bay
Wednesday, March 2007
     
     
     
     
Heidi
    A few hours after leaving Surprise Bay we come to a fork in the road leading to Osmiridium Beach.
    ‘Some idiots try to divide the leg in two by spending the night over there,’ Jyrki says, pointing his hiking pole down towards the beach. The spot is almost an hour’s walk away.
    Although I can hardly deny that this would be enough for one day, thank you very much, I realize that setting up camp and killing the hours until it’s time to go to bed would bore us both to death. It feels almost macho to continue on our way without giving the matter a second thought.
    Naturally everyone who embarks on one of these hikes has to bid farewell to all normal ways of keeping themselves entertained. Of course you can’t force an adult to give up their mp3 player, a gadget that weighs only a few grams, but the chuckle of disdain that Jyrki can give in just the right way when