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Grandma to wake up.”

4
    S HE WAS RIGHT on time, rang the doorbell at one o’clock sharp, as arranged. Martti had a doctor’s appointment.
    What else would he do? Wander on the beach, sit in a cafe, eat a doughnut? He didn’t know. The thought flashed inside him, caused a pain in his chest. This was what his life would be when Elsa was gone. Irresolutely planning out his days.
    She was smiling shyly. She looked so much like she did when she was five years old and came to visit.
    The nursery had been their granddaughters’ domain. After they were born he and Elsa had got the old toys out of the attic and decorated the room as it had been when Eleonoora was little. The bed, the dollhouse, the toy box, everything.
    Their favorite doll was Eleonoora’s old one-eyed Molla. It was worn from play, had been mended, dragged along behind a sled, fed ice cream and strawberries for many summers.
    Once Anna had taken Molla home without asking. Elsa had asked her about it the following week.
    She had lied about it without blinking, said she didn’t know anything about it.
    I called your mother, Elsa said. Molla’s at your house. How do you think she got there?
    I don’t know, Anna said. Maybe she walked.
    Dolls can’t walk by themselves.
    Maybe she can. She might be the kind of doll that can walk!
    She convinced herself of her own lie so seamlessly that it made him and Elsa smile.
    A child’s reality is made of dreams and play. A lie can weave into the mix imperceptibly. Or maybe that was what reality was like for people in general. Dreams, play, lies.
    He let the familiar thought—it sometimes felt like anguish—come to him: what else has my art been, after all?
    Anna seemed to have given up play now—she was a woman all of a sudden. Martti had noticed the change last fall when the whole family went out for dinner. She had just come back from Paris, came hurrying around the corner in high-heeled shoes, smiling, tanned.
    â€œWho are you?” he had said. “My granddaughter has disappeared and been replaced by a parisienne !”
    Anna had found pleasure in Paris, he was sure of that. At the restaurant she ordered wine, and as she sipped from her glass he thought, It happens anew all the time. There’s always some who are young and convince themselves that this has never happened to anyone before them. They believe that their lives, their own joys and sorrows, are extraordinary. That their own love is stronger than other people’s. They believe it will never be their lot to feel the days weighing on them. And they may be right. The young have the whole world, and they toss it away without a thought because they’re impatient for other, ever newer worlds.
    He would have liked to say to Anna: Make a home for yourself in your carefree days. They’re dreams, but you don’t have to wake up yet. Ten years and you’ll start to wake up, five more and you’ll struggle against the awakening, ten more years and you’ll be content with what you have. It’s not a bad thing, far from a misfortune. In fact it’s a new form of happiness, and you’ll cherish it like all your other happy feelings. More and more you’ll have moments when you feel the world is offering itself to you like a gift. But it won’t be the same. You’ll look at the world like a painting, and time will have framed it, the experience of time, and you’ll enjoy it in a different way than you did before.
    â€œI WASN’T ASLEEP.”
    Elsa was standing in the bedroom doorway. She’d heard their conversation.
    She smiled a little. “Honey,” she said to Anna. “You came. We can make some cardamom buns!”
    â€œDon’t overdo it,” he said.
    Elsa scrunched up her nose. “If you keep up that forbidding tone I’ll swim to Seurasaari.”
    â€œAll right,” he said. “Make cardamom buns. Make two batches, if you