Free The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman Page B

as Russians. Perhaps not. In any case, it is always a problem about Russians: when you go into it, they are so often something else; Ukrainians, Georgians, Asiatics, and, since 1939, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians, in so far as any have survived. You can look out from Helsinki over the sea to Estonia, but since 1939, you haven’t been able to go there, not just for the trip.’
    ‘Of course you can go there,’ muttered Rort.
    Again the old man ignored him.
    ‘All the time we were in Unilinna the sun shone by day and it was very hot, but in the evening a quite thick mist would rise, so that the temperature changed completely. The visitors would say it came off the lakes and look suspicious, but of course that wasn’t the point. The mist would have been there even if there had been no lakes. It meant that next day the sun was likely to shine again. It was elementary meteorology.
    ‘Mr. Purvis had some kind of an introduction to a man in Unilinna who was the equivalent of an estate agent. We went to see him as soon as we had moved into an hotel and had lunch. His name was Mr. Kirkontorni. He was quite a young man and he spoke English remarkably well. I remember wondering both how he had learnt so much and why. I couldn’t believe that he met more than two or three Englishmen a year, and the Americans had not then discovered Finland at all. He knew the Danziger family quite well and he had a list of properties for us to visit, with particulars all written out in his own English, including many comments that an English estate agent would have hesitated to put in writing. Not derogatory comments, just plain-spoken and unconventional.
    ‘We spent that afternoon looking at various places, and a large part of the following days, but all that won’t interest you. Mr. Kirkontorni apologised for being unable to come with us himself. He offered us a junior to go round with us, someone rather like me, but Mr. Purvis refused. The lad couldn’t really speak English, and Mr. Purvis always disliked the company of strangers on a job like this. We found our way about on a plan of the town which Mr. Kirkontorni lent to us. Mr. Purvis was vain about maps and insisted on keeping this one entirely to himself, though, having other things on his mind, he would have done better to have left the pathfinding to me.
    ‘Where the lad might have helped would have been with the people who occupied the various properties. Fortunately, Mr. Kirkontorni had been able to warn most of them that an English agent (as he put it) was coming, but there were still some who had heard nothing, or had not grasped the message , and we had several comic experiences. But the usual trouble was that the lady of the house had cleaned the whole place up especially for us, and even laid out a large meal on the table, with a clean, white tablecloth. There was a limit to what the two of us could eat and drink, especially as the lady often just stood or sat and watched us do it, and still more of a limit to the time we had, but of course we couldn’t be rude, and we fell more and more behind schedule, especially as not many of our hostesses had much English, though they all seemed to have a few phrases, like ‘Sit down’ and ‘Help yourself and ‘Very good’, which they said pointing to cakes and bottles. Another difficulty was that Mr. Kirkontorni had spoken of only one visitor, so that everywhere I came as a surprise. The main effect of that was to waste still more time. But we managed to get round most of the places on our list, even though we didn’t examine all of them as well as we might have done. At the end of the first afternoon, Mr. Purvis said that at least we should not have to spend much on dinner; and that couldn’t be denied.’
    The old man chuckled a little, and Dyson took the opportunity to buy him another drink.
    ‘Did you discover anything suitable?’ asked Jay, who had not said much earlier.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ said the old man, ‘and the