The morbid smouldering light and the skein of expiring stars were hardly seen through the snow-white curtains on the window. The hasteless ticking of the wall clocks and the tapping of the raindrops, falling on the glasses and roof, kept on singing their monoto-nous lullaby to me; I spent whole the previous day in the frosty thundering train and was deadly tired, but I just wanted to see him too impatiently and so for whole the night I was trying to chase the sleeping away, like if it"s been an obsessive flying insect. It was already about five o"clock of the morning, when I heard the key gnashing in the doorlock and saw the artificial dim light, poured from the corridor of that small shabby house. Several occassional sounds, most likely guessed than really heard, and then the silent soft steps followed them. I knew I needed to pretend to be sleeping, but that desire to see him was so much stronger than my mind, so, cautiously lifting my heavy eyelids, I tried to discover his features, to distinguish him. My roommate turned to be a tall raven-haired man of twenty five, not really older than that; the cold raindrops were falling down on his black knit sweater, and all his slender body was shivering in such a freaky relentless tremor, that he hadn"t even been able to strike a matchstick on the box. Finally he got so tired and annoyed that he threw the matchsticks and the cigarettes away on the vanity table, hidden in the dark corner... and then he suddenly turned around and dropped the irritated sight right on me: no, there could be no doubts that he understood I had been watching him during all this time. There was something strange, something unbearably heavy and torturous in his crystal turquoise eyes, looking straight through my skin, inside of my flesh: I"ve never dared to meet the sight like this before. Barely audible, he mut-tered something in the language, almost unfamiliar to me, and hastily walked away into another room.
* * *
The disturbing and disquiet sleeping succeeded to capture me finally - but only for three hours: I"ve woken up even before the hostess of the house invited us to have a breakfast. Hastily taking a look around, I saw his silhouette behind the weightless curtains: he was standing in front of the wide open window, deeply breathing the cold wet air and slowly smoking a cigarette. When he finally finished, he sat down at the small square desk, placed in the opposite side from my bed - and he hasn"t even deigned a glance to me.
- Good morning, - I pronounced silently, still hesitating of the lame way I was speak-ing finnish. He grinned without answering anything, and then began to write some-thing in the small shabby scratchpad. The time was extending painfully slow, the ar-rows of the wall clocks, as it seemed, initially slowed their progress and then finally stopped at all. I was watching the stranger, scratching the words, word by word, on the paper, for so long, - and I could see him starting breathing more and more fre-quently, could see the rhythmical pulsation of his blood in the veins in the temples, could see his morbid pale hands shivering. I guess fourty minutes have passed until he finally made a furious deep breath, threw the pen in the corner of the desk and ran his long semitransparent fingers in the black hair.
- Is something going wrong, isn"t it? - I asked cautiously, and looked at him with the sincere compassion: I thought we had so much in common with this young grieving man, and exactly because of it I felt so sorry about him. He could unlikely notice it, but nevertheless, he gave me his scratchpad instead of the answer, constrainedly watching each of my motions and gestures. I briefly flipped through those miniature pages, covered by all the different dates and the chains of sentences in finnish lan-guage; the lines were often interrupted right in the middle and sternly descended down, and the pressure meanwhile was so strong that each of the written words could probably be read also from the reverse side of the sheet. No, I"ve never known too much about the rules of graphology, still keeping their reign from the ancient days, but it was just so outrageously easy to understand how painful and sorrowful was the torture of a man, who left these inscriptions. The last page of the scratchpad saved the only short, written with the barealy readable script, poem:
"Your breath dessicates the waters of sea,
Destroys with the fire the cities of Earth,
Because you"re in love now... in love, just like me".
- But what does it mean? - I asked.
- It? - he answered my question with the question.
- "In love just like me"... what does it mean? What means being in love like you?
He lowered his head in a grieving frustration, took the scratchpad from my hands, torn the last page out of it and nervously crumpled it.
- I don"t know, - he responded finally. - I don"t know and I don"t want to know.
- Haven"t you ever been in love?
He quickly raised his head and flinched under my cold pricking sight. But I just wanted to hear his true answer, nothing else.
- No, - he whispered silently. - I"ve never been in love. And nobody has even been in love with me. I write about the things I don"t understand on my own. This poem is just a useless miserable delirium!...
- You"re mistaken.
- Am I mistaken? So you want to say you liked it?
- Yes, I do. This poem is beautiful.
- It"s empty!
- It"s not true. Everyone who reads it can reveal the very own sense in these lines. You think it"s empty, but someone else can maybe notice his exact reflection here.
- Damn, you"re so foolish!... it"s just impossile to describe the things you don"t know at all!...
- But there"s nothing in whole the world we actually know well, isn"t it?
He tried to tell me something, but he got silent and just looked at me so cautiously and mistrustfully, like if he thought I could be dangerous for him... like if he"ve suddenly discovered everything from my past.
- I don"t want to talk to you, - he hissed with the sibilant whisper. - At all. You better turn on the TV or read a newspaper... do anything you want, but please, leave me alone!...
And without waiting for reply, he furiously threw a newspaper in my side, so, that the sharp borders of the printed pages did nearly cut my fingers. Aguess he wanted to hurt me, to cause the pain, but at that minute he hasn"t yet known that I"ve been always sur-rounded by the pain and so learned not to be afraid of it anymore. I only looked at him with the slight offence and then opened the first page of the newspaper. It was all taken by the single article and by the dozens of photographs, captured nothing but the ashes and the burnt corpses:
"IS THE BLOODY NIGHTMARE OF KERMEN FINALLY OVER?
During the last three painfully long months whole the Europe was helplessly watching the terrifying ritu-als of murder, committed by the mysterious "Lamias" in Kermen, a small town in the Sliven Province of eastern Bulgaria. Who those "Lamias" really were and why did they find their diabolic maleficent sect, what for? Sadly we don"t know too much about it. The members of that sect were twelve teenage girls, the eldest one of them was 18-19 y.o., presumably they all were born and grew up in Kermen. About thirty infants were murdered in that town and in the suburbs during the last summer. How? It"s still unknown. What for? It"s unknow too. Was each of those girls a religious fanatic, and what kind of sinister super-natural power helped them to disappear tracelessly every single time? It seems like nobody could find an answer to this question. Here is the only thing we can really prove today: all the sectarians perished (or were murdered by somebody unknown) during the freaky fire, absorbed the eastern part of Kermen. The results of the expertises aren"t yet available, so it"s impossible to determine, if the fire was caused by any kind of breakdown or by the intentional arson. To this moment, none of twelve bulgarian infanticiders was identified, but since the day of that fire the murders of similar ritual kind haven"t occured in Kermen anymore. The young families are still in fear for their newborn babies, but it seems like a familiar provin-cial serenity begins to return to their town. We say a prayer and we hope that the bloody nightmare of Kermen is finally over forever".
"Seitsemän Päivää., Љ14, 20.09.2004.
* * *
It was about ten o"clock of the morning, when we, reservedly thanking our hostess for a breakfast, got up from the table. It was raining above Helsinki during all the passed night, and it kept on raining now, so that even at the Sunday morning the smooth streets of this city were absolutely deserted. When returned from kitchen to the livingroom all the guests were allowed to visit, I saw my roommate standing in front of the opened window and wistfully staring somewhere into the distance, through the wall of rainwater. The cold gusty wind was roughly playing with his hair, and each of those touches reflected with the shiver on the fragile body of this young man. So I, holding my breath, was watching him this way for several minutes, until he turned around, right to me, perceiv-ing my sight on his skin like the pieces of ice, - and squinted so unkindly.
- The pies baked for breakfast today were really savoury, weren"t they? - I asked hum-bly, when our mutual muteness had finally become oppressively embarassing.
- These pies are actually called "lörtsy", - he answered drily and grinned with the un-masked contempt, scornfully. - And I had enough of time to eat my fill of them. In Olavinlinna you can order lörtsy in every single cafe.
- So you are from Olavinlinna?
He irritably, with the gaining fury, looked me all over, from head to toe, without saying a word; it seems like he didn"t want me to learn anything about him, even such a trifle like this.
- Yes, - he muttered really unwillingly, after the long strained pause - words seemed to be pulling out of his mouth with tongs.
- And have you ever been in Helsinki before?
- What does it actually matter to you?
- I"ve never been here before this week.
He quickly threw his pricking disgruntled sight on me and soundlessly swore.
- No. Neither have I.
- Maybe then we should have a walk around the city now?
- It"s raining cats and dogs during all the God damned morning.
- I didn"t think that you could fear the rain.
His almond-shaped turquoise eyes indignantly flashed. I have finally learned at that moment, that he was hiding such a furious hate to the word "fear".
- And so where are we supposed to go?
- Wherever you want to go.
- I want to go to my room, to lock the door with all the keys and to sleep there till the minute when you finally leave Helsinki.
- And I want to go to the Market Square.
There was something bordering on disgust, so clearly reflected in his shining sight after he realized the sense of my words.
- Where?!...
- To the Market Square.
- Do you really think that I"m looking like a man who would like to walk around the Market Square?
- No...
- I"m glad that you understand it.
* * *
The tower clocks have already struck noon, when we, trying to walk as faraway from each other as only possible (and maybe even further), reached the Senate Square. The silhouettes of the four monumental buildings, completing the ensemble, were emerging with the harmonious slender lines, hardly notable in the massive, dark grey veil of the rainwaters. The Senate Square was almost empty at that Sunday morning - there were only several occassional passers with the huge umbrellas above their heads, who were sliding in front of us, like the colorless shadows. The silence, pending above Helsinki like the heavy lead cloud, was only pierced by the measured hammering of the raindrops, and sometimes the shimmer of the car headlights became slightly visible through the wet fog. It seemed like whole the city was slowly descending into the long morbid sleeping, and it was frightening me, because during those terrifying last days of my life I was helplessly trying to set myself free from the webs of the same long morbid sleeping. And somehow I was absolutely sure, that my fellow-traveller also couldn"t win this game and couldn"t achieve his desired aim like if there was a spell of the strangest kind, always keeping him away from it. He was constantly trying to overtake me and to walk far ahead, just like if he got lost in the deepest thicket and now was obsessively looking for a familiar path.
- What"s your name? - I applied to him, trying not to take my eyes out of him even for a split second.
- What does it matter to you? - he muttered, paying no attention on me.
- Why do you always ask me the same question?
He stopped motionlessly and turned into a stone so suddenly, like if the bottomless abyss has yawned right in front of his feet, and turned around. I was slowly walking towards him, throwing my sight from his figuire to the dim, diffuse under the water streams lineaments of the University Library and back.
- Could you please let me know what am I supposed to do to make you leave me alone? - I heard his displeased voice, merging together with the music of the rain. - I just really can"t understand what are you trying to ferret out, what the Hell do you want to learn about me! And actually, what kind of damned accent you have? Where did you come from?!...
- From Bulgaria, - I answered peacefully, without even the slightest shade of offence or annoyance.
- From Bulgaria? - he repeated with the mock sneering amazement. - Is it the place where everybody always puts the fruits on the New Year Tree instead of the toys and glass balls, am I right? That"s all damned clear. You must be from Sofia or Varna, mustn"t you?
- No, - I kept on speaking with the same immovable equanimity, because I could easily ignore each of his mockeries, skip it past my ears. - I"m neither from Sofia, nor from Varna. I am from Kermen.
No, it wasn"t just an artless randomnicity that he forced me to read that article in the morning newspaper: It did really seem to me that his body began to shiver, like under the heavy painful kicks, and took a quick frightened look around, unwillingly trying to notice the silhouettes of those sectarians, of twelve little girls from Kermen, whose corpses were found in that cursed hometown burnt to ashes... he was trying to see them hiding on the Senate Square behind the shimmering wall of rain.
- My name is Eino, - he whispered to me finally, and his sight became momently filled with the poisoned unsheltered enmity. - Eino Viljami Nikke. Is it going to be enough for you or you still want to hear something else?
At the present moment, when I"m writing these sentences, it"s so hard for me to de-scribe, what kind of insane brutal fury was inflamed inside of me, in every body cell, by his heedless words; I was just trying to save the fragile calmness, using all of my very last strengths.
- Yes. I still want to hear something else, Eino Viljami Nikke... I want to learn what"s the real origin of all this inner evil you are trying to splash out on me. You"re just hiding something bizarre... and I want to find out, what exactly it is.
He stayed absolutely motionless, drowned in the horrible distraction, for several seconds, trying probably to decide what could be better for him: to remain silent like a fish or to reveal all the truth.
- Why do you actually think that I am hiding something? - he muttered with the fake, ridiculuously obvious, contempt, and the notes of approaching disturbance already could be clearly heard though the mask he tried to put on.
- Because it"s so easily seen in your eyes, - I answered strictly. - Your eyes are always searching for a path...
- They are! - he screamed these words out so suddenly and so loudly, that I unwillingly flinched. - ALWAYS SEARCHING, BUT CAN"T EVER FIND! And do you know why?! Because the the thing they are searching for just doesn"t exist in reality! There"s no other path except the one I followed and keep on following!...
- So there"s the only one path existing?
- Yes, the only one!
- For all the people of the world?
- For all the people of the world!
- Then why there are six billions of destinies in this world instead of the only one?
He wordlessly descended on the wet asphalt and covered his head under the hands. I was so sure that he couldn"t be able to notice though anything around himself, but, at the very same moment when I stepped closer to him and tried to touch his shoulder, he ful-minantly rose up on his feet and punched me out. Just a couple of the accidentally cruel words gave him into the complete, borderless reign of the despair, and the awareness that it could be nobody"s fault but mine, caused the unbearable pain.
- Tell me about your past, - I asked him so silently that could hardly hear myself. - Please, tell me about your past so that it could finally stop tormenting you.
- The only thing you should know about me is that my life story will be finished right after you finally leave me alone and get away from Helsinki...
- You"ll be forced to wait for too long: I had a one-way ticket.
He angrily clenched his fists and made a deep, painful and broken breath.
- Three weeks ago my parents were killed in the car crash on the central highway of Olavinlinna, because my father was dead drunk. He drank so much at that evening because he was an alcoholic, a goner, completely wasted and hopeless, and he"s al-ways been dead drunk, during all the time I could actually remember him, do you understand? And also he got dead drunk because my mother was exposed and fired from canteen she worked in for stealing money and food... money and food we"ve never had because my father was a drunkard!... even if I could sell our house with all the furniture, it wouldn"t anyway be enough to pay to all the neighbours my parents owed money to. Those people were coming every single day, for several times, and they were threatening me... and then, someone from them probably learned, that I hadn"t and could never have the needed sum... and they simply burned our house to ashes, trying to revenge and to expose their hate. I barely could climb out of the win-dow to save myself from fire... so were you following the same path, weren"t you?! - he shouted indignantly straight to my face. - Were you?! Answer me, god damn you!...
- My life has nearly broken off in the fire, same as yours, - I pronounced soundlessly, and I saw that the wild goldish sparks in his eyes finally began to disappear. - But tell me everything till the very end.
- I"ve never had a friend, because nobody wanted to be a friend of a drunkard"s son, who couldn"t find a money even for a breakfast in the school buffet... they were al-ways calling me a psychopath, and they could see that it had always been a truth. And yes, I knew on my own that it had always been a truth... because I was living in my tiny locked world... I was hiding there from them and I didn"t let anyone cross it"s borderline!... almost anyone... except my only real friend, who understood me and loved me. I mean, I thought, I was sure that she understood me and loved me. But when I knocked on her door and tried to tell her about everything happened, she simply asked me to go away and to return here nevermore. She told me it could be so much better for me if I wouldn"t save myself from fire...
- Save from fire, - I repeated reflectively, insensibly playing with the secret thoughts and acutely staring on Eino. There was a silence, once more gaining it"s destructive power, between us. He was looking back at me, helplessly trying to determine what was I thinking about, and then he simply gave up and shortly answered:
- And do you know what the fire really is?
- I know. It"s the heat that always breathes with frost.
He raised his thin black eyebrows in amazement, because he could never dare to imagine, that one day I"ll ask this question just like he"s been always answering it.
- That"s right, - he nodded. - It"s a frost of death. It"ll keep on haunting you every-where until finally it finally achieves you, like the predators achieve their preys.
- Haven"t you already deserved your salvation from it?
- No. There"s no salvation from it. At all.
- Why not?
- Because this week I was diagnosed with cancer. And nobody can help me now, not even our God... but I just don"t want to turn into the puppet: the death in the mor-bid delirium is the most shameful death. I want to die, being still unbowed and rebel-lious against everything around...
He suddenly became absolutely silent and lowered his head. I remember, how painfully I wanted to see him, but the muddy veil of rainwater was hiding his face from my sight... but I was able to thank God, because behind that veil my heartsore companion at least couldn"t notice the tears in my eyes.
- You know that your life was given by God and must be taken away by God, Eino. Don"t make any decisions instead of Him, otherwise you"ll be forced to regret about it. Believe me, I know for sure...
My last words obviously alerted him, and he gave me a sign, begging to tell this story till the end.
- Millions of sinners are wandering all around the world. Don"t follow them. God isn"t blind at all, no matter what people get used to say. God is simply waiting, when you...
I couldn"t continue this conversation, because once again I felt the cold breath of fire on my skin, just like if everything turned to be so different from reality and at that freaky night I wasn"t lucky enough to escape from the traps. Eino was silent for a dreadfully long time, looking through the streams of the water and through my body, and then he suddenly pronounced:
- What"s your name?
- Apate, - my voice sounded like if I was signing my own death warrant with this damned name.
- What kind of name it is?
- "Apate" means a deception. I got this name after my second Epiphany.
- Second Epiphany?
- Yes. The church has chosen quite another name for me.
- How?
- Renata. Reborn again... this is my real name. But nobody calls me like that anymore.
- Why not?
I couldn"t find the suitable words for my answer.
- Do you really want to know?
- Yes!...
- The just take a look...
Deeply breathing that heavy wet air, I took off my velvet cloak, that"s been already drenched throughout, to bare the right shoulder - with the dark red, scorched like a brand stamp, letter "L" on it.
- Lamia, - Eino whisprered, and his wide open, turquoise eyes reflected the panic fear. - Lamia... you...
- Yes, - I replied, still staring at him. I was shivering, I was soaked to the skin, but at that minute I couldn"t even feel the cold. - Lamia. The infanticider from the town of Kermen. But none of your finnish newspapers has actually revealed the truth about us. We didn"t kill thirty infants. We killed fourty seven. There were infants and their closest relatives.
I didn"t receive any answer - only the monotonous knocking of the rain and my com-panion"s sight, glassy because of horror, instead of it. I knew that: each pair of eyes, stuck on me like on something miraculous and unknown, firstly reflected only that contempt and disgust. And then nothing but the fear remained, nothing but the absolute horror, and it"s always been like that, during all those nineteen years. But... I was dreaming about the hit that could break the locked circle, smash it to pieces, - already fcor twenty seven days.
- How could it be possible? - Eino muttered perplexedly, splitting the chain of my ob-sessive thoughts. - That fire... you all perished in that fire... all twelve!...
- You shouldn"t know anything about it., - I said with the sorrow I"ve never heard in my voice before, and I tried to embrace my companion, but he made a quick step back and stopped me with the nervous gesture. - Yes... it"s going to be better this way. I"ll leave Helsinki this Tuesday, at the early morning. I can pay off with the hostess right now and rent another room for these two days... and you can come back home. We"ll never see each other again, and soon you"ll forget everything... but if you decide to stay...
I became wordless and caught his interrogative sight on myself right next moment. This sight forced me to complete my sentence:
- ... then you"ll become the first and the only man alive, who could hear the confes-sion of Lamia.
He"s made his mind with the speed of lightning.
- I"ve told you all the truth about myself. Now it"s your turn... Renata.
Renata... I felt so thankful to him because he simply called me exactly like that.
- Do you actually know though something about Kermen?
Denying it, he shook his head, without saying a word.
- It"s such a strange town. So beautiful... but people who are happy there somehow don"t want and don"t try to share their happiness, and people who suffer there always keep their pain deep inside, until the day when it breaks the chains and takes the control above them. Do you know who Lamia really is? It"s the name of the greek princess, so mesmerizingly beautiful, that even the supreme god fell in love with her. But the olympians hated her and murdered each of her little children. Then, being so filled with envy and jealousy, they turned her into a monster and precipitated her in the heart of Tartarus. She could only come out of that abyss at the late night - to steal the infants from mothers and to drink their blood.
- Jesus...
- Yes, the children of Kermen were all murdered by twelve Lamias. Twelve young girls, with no differences from those young girls who were mocking you in Olavin-linna... they haven"t been as beautiful as Lamia. They haven"t been born in the royal family, they"ve been simply the daughters of local market traders, pauper like the church mice. And they have been living not in the heart of a huge city, but in the si-lent and motionless province. But each of them has been similar with Lamia - be-cause they all were destined to redeem the sins they even haven"t yet committed. No, their fathers have never been the drunkards, and their mothers have never tried to steal the bread... everything"s been much more worse, as they simply didn"t remem-ber about their daughters. They"ve never talked to them about anything, never tried to teach them something, to share with them something. Standing next to them, those people were acting just like if they"ve always been all alone... and because of it they couldn"t understand the truth... till the very end...
I stopped talking, trying to swallow the salt ball of tears in my throat, and then, ex-changing the grieving glances with Eino, added:
- Till the very end they couldn"t understand that their daughters were the infanticid-ers... till the very end they couldn"t... can you believe that??...
He looked at me so helplessly, because he couldn"t really believe it had been possible to give any answer to this question.
- These girls have never been the close friends, - I continued, - but at that day they were gathered by the freaky unknown power, that was in thousand times stronger than friendship. They didn"t even need to say any words, because they all took the very same decision and the very same time. It was the moment when everything"s be-gun. Every night they stole and murdered an infant, and every time the same power was teaching them to do it another way to confuse and to deceive, every time the same power was hiding all the traces they may leave... and they just kept on mur-dering as it was their way to protest and to rebel against everything: against the indif-ference they needed to face from the only close people, against all the destined mockeries, insults and hits, against their own doom and hopelessness... and most of all, against the thing that those infants, so ordinary, so usual, anyway had the chance to become much happier, than their murderers... their murderers had no such chance. Never...
I perceived how constrainedly he was searching for the fanatic sparks in my eyes and waiting in fear for that moment, when he would be able to see Apate in front of himself - instead of Renata. But Apate"s been already long time dead - just he hasn"t yet learned it.
- There was no such day during this summer when we didn"t receive a message about another one ritual murder, committed in Kermen, and it would be going on even till the present moment... but at the last decade of August one of Lamias herself be-came a mother. She was the eldest of them, and during the second epiphany she got a name "Vida", or "the one who sees". Their damned union couldn"t exist without her. She was in the absolute despair, because she knew what she would be forced to do - but she just couldn"t dare to agree on it. Apate was astute enough to unravel each of her terrified thoughts and intentions, and she exposed Vida, she revealed everything to another ten Lamias, because during all the nineteen years of her life she was surrounded by the ribalds, the blackguards and the nasty rabbit-hearted in-triguants... and so Apate hated such people with all her heart. But nobody from La-mias believed her at that day: they only said that they had been right when they called her "a liar". And at that moment Apate understood that she had just come back ex-actly to the same point she once began her way from, and for the first time in her life she felt really terrified and heartsore. At that night everything happened exactly like she was imagining: Lamias came to take Vida"s newborn daughter, and she let them enter her house, then locked all the windows, all the doors and burned it. And while Lamias were flouncing in the fire, helplessly trying to save themselves, Apate was movelessly standing aside and begging the death to come, because the life she still could keep inside had no sense anymore.
- And so she died?
- Yes. She was the only one Lamia, who wasn"t burn alive in that house, but she died anyway. There hurricane winds are always rushing above the eastern part of Kermen, and at that night they were playing, throwing the fire in the different sides, so that soon all the neighboring houses began to burn. Apate died, but Renata was born in-stead of her. Now she has to find her path once again, but she"s not the one from Lamias anymore... and if you anyway agreed to listen to me, Eino, then just promise me not to make any decisions in a hurry and to think a little bit more. Who told you that it"s going to be the end? Death could be a beginning of new life, couldn"t it?
* * *
I didn"t intend to wait for another one confession from Eino and I simply left him alone, face-to-face with himself, right after our conversation. We must never meet each other on the same path - never again. I didn"t know whether he was planning to stay in Hel-sinki or to come back in Olavinlinna, and he also didn"t know where I was about to leave... he didn"t even know, where did I spend the last hours of Sunday and whole Monday. I only came back to the flat we were renting in some hours before the depar-ture, to pay off with the hostess. Our room was empty: Eino enjoyed wandering around the city till the very morning, secluding himself with his own thoughts and even playing with them - I know this for sure because I often act exactly the same way. But, even standing under the cold autumn rain in tens of kilometers away from this place, he found the way to tell me goodbye. Packing my humble luggage, I found the note, wrapped for several times and lying on the desk:
"Do you know what they told me yesterday? They told me it was a medical mistake. Wrong diagnosis. They told me it wasn"t a cancer tumor and I will be able to keep on living. If we wouldn"t meet each other here in Helsinki, would they actually have enough of time to let me know that I wasn"t doomed to die? I don"t believe I would be able to hear them. You were right, however... death could be a beginning of a new life... thank you so much, Renata".