Until I Find You

The boy lay among her flash as if he'd just awakened from a tattoo dream. When Alice opened the door to Sami Salo, she stepped aside and let him walk past her into her world. He was a scratcher, as Alice had guessed; she knew he could never avert his eyes from her superior work.

"The deal is . . ." Salo started to say; then he stopped. He scarcely glanced at Jack--the flash had seized his attention completely.

Sami Salo was a haggard-looking older man with a gaunt, soul-searching expression; he wore a navy-blue watch cap pulled down over his ears and a peacoat of the same color. He was sweating from wearing his winter clothes on his walk up four flights of stairs, and his breathing was ragged. He didn't speak; he simply stared at Alice's best work.

Salo's favorite might have been a toss-up between Alice's Rose of Jericho and her Key to My Heart--the key held horizontally against the naked lady's breasts, the keyhole you-know-where. (The tattoo was unique among Alice's naked ladies in that the lady was not seen from the back side.)

To judge him by his defeated expression, Sami Salo was his own version of Man's Ruin. "The deal is . . ." Alice prompted him.

Salo removed his watch cap as if he were about to bow his head in prayer. He unbuttoned his peacoat, too, but he just stood there. He wore a dirty-white sweater under the peacoat; the faded-gray fingers of a skeleton's hand reached above the crew neck of the sweater, as if holding Salo by the throat. It was as bad an idea as any tattoo Alice had ever seen--or so Jack concluded from his mother's expression. It was a blessing that the rest of the skeleton was covered by the sweater.

Jack and Alice didn't see any of Sami Salo's other tattoos--nor was Salo in a mood to converse.

"The deal is," he began again, "I tell you about The Music Man and you leave town. I don't care where you go."

"I'm sorry your business is suffering," Alice told him.

He accepted her apology with a nod. Jack was embarrassed for the poor man; the boy buried his head under the pillows. "I'm sorry if my wife spoke rudely to you at the restaurant," Salo may have said. "She doesn't much like having to work nights."

His wife would have been the opinionated waitress at Salve, Jack guessed. With his head under the pillows, the four-year-old found that the adult world seemed a nicer place. Even Jack could tell that Mr. Salo was a lot older than his overworked wife, who looked young enough to be his daughter.

Their apologies stated, there was little more that Alice and Sami Salo needed to say to each other.

"Amsterdam," the scratcher said. "When I inked a bit of Bach on his backside, he said he was going to Amsterdam."

"Jack and I will leave Helsinki as soon as we can arrange our travel," Alice told him.

"You're a talented lady," Jack heard Salo say; he sounded as if he was already in the hall.

"Thank you, Mr. Salo," Alice replied, closing the door.

At least Amsterdam was a town on their itinerary. Jack couldn't wait to see Tattoo Peter, and his one leg.

"We mustn't forget St. John's Church, Jack," his mother said. Jack had thought they were on their way to the shipping office, but he was wrong. "That was where your father played. We should at least see it."

They were close to the sea. It had snowed overnight; the branches of the trees drooped with the heavy seaside snow.

"Johanneksen kirkko," Alice told the taxi driver. (She even knew how to pronounce the name of the church in Finnish!)

St. John's was huge--a red-brick Gothic edifice with two towers, the twin spires shining a pale green in the sunlight. The wooden pews were a dark blond that reminded Jack of the hair in Hannele's armpits. The church bells heralded their arrival. According to Alice, the three bells played the first three notes of Handel's Te Deum.

"C sharp, E, F sharp," the former choirgirl whispered.

The round altarpiece featured a tall, thin painting--the conversion of Paul on his way to Damascus. The organ was a Walcker from Wurttemberg, built in 1891. It had been restored in 1956 and had seventy-four registers. Jack knew that registers were the same as stops; he didn't know if the number of registers made a difference in how loud an organ was, or how rich it sounded. (Since William Burns had been demonized in Jack's eyes, the boy didn't have a consuming interest in his father's instrument.)

In Helsinki, on such a sunny day, the light through the stained glass sparkled on the pipes, as if the organ--even without an organist--was about to burst into sound all by itself. But the organist was there to greet them. Alice must have made an appointment to see him. His name was Kari Vaara, and he was a hearty man with wild-looking hair; he appeared to have, seconds ago, stuck his head out the window of a speeding train. His actions were marked by the nervous habit of clasping his hands together, as if he were about to make a life-altering confession or fall to his knees--the suddenly shattered witness to a miracle.

"Your father is a very talented musician," Vaara said almost worshipfully to Jack, who was speechless; the boy wasn't used to hearing his dad praised. "But talent must be nurtured, or it withers." His voice sounded like the lower registers of an organ.

"We know about Amsterdam," Alice interjected. She appeared fearful that Kari Vaara was about to reveal a terrible truth--something in the not-around-Jack category.

"Not just Amsterdam," the organist intoned. Jack looked at the Walcker organ, half expecting it to issue a refrain. "He's going to play in the Oude Kerk."

The reverence with which Vaara spoke was wasted on Jack, but his mom was glad to know the church's name.

"The organ there is special, I suppose," Alice said.

Kari Vaara took a deep breath, as if he were once more preparing to stick his head out the window of that speeding train. "The organ in the Oude Kerk is vast," he said.