Red Boots

Venla Mäkelä

Copyright 2018 by Venla Mäkelä

For Tom – thank you!

1

One night about six months ago the sawmill where I had worked over fifteen years, since my mid-twenties, caught fire and burned to the ground. I can imagine the early shift workers, arriving around five in the morning, stunned, seeing it all in flames. I myself got to work around nine a.m., and by then the place was basically gone. I couldn't even get that close to the mill as the road was blocked by the fire department, but I've been there since, and it's just an enormous blackened field now. Only two storage barracks are still standing, their vinyl parts, like door and window frames, melt grotesquely droopy.

And just like that I was unemployed.

I had loved working at the mill. It was a small family-owned business that produced sawn timber, and had grown and flourished over the years. Hattula Sawmill, over ninety years old. The future looked bright, we had customers all over Scandinavia, central Europe and Russia. There were twenty-nine employees.

I never worried; every day was interesting. I worked in the office, sorting out orders and dealing with customers and shipments and general this and that. There was not one asshole in that place (or perhaps just one, and even him I'd rather describe as complex - but more of him later). A miracle, right? How many places have you worked where there's not at least one total jerk that you have to skate around to get things done? We were like a well-oiled engine. The offices had a scent of fresh wood chips and pine sap. It was quiet and loud at the same time. Cosy but outdoorsy. Just perfect.

The fire completely destroyed the recently updated computerized machinery and buildings and timber worth millions. Even with the insurance covering most of the damage, to get a business like that up and running and the customers back takes years. The shocked owners, Teija and Reijo Hattula (Teija's grandparents had founded the mill) told the employees they'd keep us updated but that we should all try to find something else as soon as possible. Their daughter, my good friend Paula, found a new job in Espoo. Some employees moved to the capital, Helsinki, where most of the jobs are, and a few found work at other small sawmills in other towns. Some changed careers, going back to school to become nurses or teachers. Two of my colleagues retired, two years early - not too bad if you have savings and grandchildren and cats and dogs and horses. I didn't have any of those things.

I was looking for work. I thought I'd easily find an office job, at least part-time. I actually imagined I'd get the first job I applied for, I had been so coddled, oh boy, I really thought I was the best office worker ever. I cringe when I think how naïve I was.

I live in Finland, in Lahti (which means bay), a town of a hundred thousand people in the lake district, about one hundred kilometers north of Helsinki. It's beautiful, with the bumpy hills of Salpausselkä where there are excellent ski paths, and woods and lakes. It's one of those towns that didn't develop around one large factory, but was born because of great waterways. It's relatively new, mostly built after the second world war. There are tons of cookie cutter apartment houses from the sixties and seventies - if you do an apartment search on the internet you basically see the same layout fifty times with different furniture. It can be handy if you need let's say a new kitchen, just pick one you like and replicate it. The old wooden houses have almost all disappeared by now - I heard that at some point in the fifties people felt it was shameful that the town center still had two wooden buildings, a church and a library, and these were swiftly torn down. Yes, bulldoze down that embarrassing old church! And the library, eww, what an eyesore! (I don't actually know, maybe they really were ugly, but I doubt it.) And unfortunately, like in many towns in the late sixties, Art Deco era buildings were knocked down to make way for new sleek offices. Horrifying. Also, they basically went from wanting apartments in the town center to wanting only offices in the town center to wanting more apartments in the center to wanting no apartments but just offices over the years. It's been a real seesaw. So, Lahti downtown is quite bland in the seventies, eighties glass-and-metal style. But the Vesijärvi harbor area has some old buildings left, and also beautiful contemporary architecture, and there are a few twenties gems downtown too, like the gorgeous red brick town hall designed by Eliel Saarinen.

If you've always had a job you won't quite understand unemployment. You just won't really get the desperation. I wasn't prepared for it at all. I felt as if I had pummeled down a tall ladder and found myself just lying there, astonished. After the fifteenth application with no response or a curt, hurtful sorry but you're not quite what we are looking for I started to panic. I still had about eight years left to pay my apartment - one of those cookie cutter condos - and my savings were fast evaporating. I had never taken savings that seriously anyway. Sure I had read those finger-wagging "you should always have six months' rent on your account, in case"-articles, but I thought it meant other people, not me. Not me.

Three days to go until I'm forty. An unemployed, almost-forty-year-old - how sad. This is the day I buy my red boots.

2

Wednesday, crisp and sunny. September can be glorious, with all that orange and yellow fluttering in the trees, with some green still intact. At two in the afternoon I had a job interview at Wingforest, a company that manufactures plywood and cardboard, in Hollola, five miles west from Lahti, and it took me about forty minutes to get there by bike. I don't have a car.

I thought that my background at the sawmill was a serious plus, and Klaudia Hakkarainen, a perky woman in her mid-thirties, was warm and cheerful. Her hair was up in a loose bun, and golden ringlets bobbled on her temples while she went through my short CV. I assumed the job was basically mine. I could see how Klaudia and I would become great friends, toasting with thermos mugs by the campfire at one of those company team spirit outings (which we seldom had at the Hattula sawmill, since there was no use trying to improve our team spirit as it was just always great).

We're busy indeed and it looks like we're just getting busier and busier, Klaudia said, slightly out of breath, deep dimples on her rosy cheeks. Plywood is back in fashion, young designers have rediscovered it! If you notice, the chair you're sitting on is made of plywood!

Oh-

Try and make it squeak! she said.

A bit confused, I writhed on my seat.

More! she said, her ringlets nodding with her head.

I made a few vigorous wriggles, my corduroy pants making an almost perverted swishing sound.

See? Klaudia said, cupping one ear with her palm. No creaking whatsoever! It's just one large, curved plate on firm legs. The Sibelius Hall just ordered these for their new cafeteria!

That's great, I said.

And the lamp! She pointed up.

I looked up. A curvy lamp constructed of paper-thin plywood dangled above my head. I nodded, trying to seem very impressed. Klaudia nodded too, looking content, placing one hand on her soft round belly as if it was she who had birthed the whole company, or at least the lamp.

I said, And I'll be fine with any extra work too, of course. Filing and data entry, if needed. Even payroll and taxes. Making coffee-

She nodded. Right, in a smaller company like this everyone indeed chips in if they see something that needs to be taken care of.

Yeah, if I notice something is not up to standard, I'll fix it, I said and then quickly added, Not that I think your company wouldn't be up to standards!

Klaudia smiled. Great! Great! She paused, still smiling, and I thought she was going to shake my hand. So. Tuija Nurminen, who has been part-time here, is the first in line for the bus, so to speak. It's just that we're required to interview more than one person.

I felt physical pain somewhere below my lungs. Once again I had been just one in the pile to make the statistics look better. I felt like such a tool for having had my hopes up. I felt shrunken, worthless, like a moron.

So terrible to have to interview people one can't hire! Klaudia said. Keeps me awake at night! And isn't it just desperate to be forty and unemployed, just terrible. She paused, a sympathetic pout on her face.

I had one of those smiles you plaster on so that you don't burst to tears. I'm only... 'm not forty yet, I said.

Right. But it's tragic, nowadays, to be over twenty-two. And she wrung her small plump hands together for a moment, indicating deep despair. Then she got up and said, But I really wish you everything good, from the bottom of my heart!

I got up and managed a nod. She bent down to pick up a small plastic bag, a neat knot on top of it. She handed it over her desk. Would you mind taking this tiny bag to the trash bins? Outside, right at the corner, if you take the side door. She let out a giggle, light as little bells. Otherwise my lunch leftovers will stink up the room, our cleaner is really careless!

I took the bag from