Available Dark: A Crime Novel (Cass Neary) by Elizabeth Hand Page A

figure that was double what I would have imagined. Anton was willing to pay 1990s art-world money, considerably adjusted for inflation. “A cash transaction,” Ilkka added.
    Again, I kicked myself for not demanding more money from Anton.
    We reached the main floor with its long white corridor like a tunnel in a dream. The handwoven rugs muffled our footsteps. Downstairs, surrounded by the familiar clutter of camera equipment, I’d almost forgotten where I was.
    Now I felt unpleasantly aware that I was in a foreign land where I knew no one, trapped in a silent house where photos of the dead radiated power, and the living drifted side by side without speaking.
    Finally we reached his office. Ilkka spoke to Suri, and I waited in the hall until he returned.
    “Suri will help you find something for lunch,” he said. “I’ll let her know when I expect to be back for dinner and if Anton will join us. We can talk more then. I am looking forward to it.”
    Unexpectedly, Ilkka rested his hand upon my shoulder. For an instant I saw my own face reflected in his wire-rimmed glasses. “Thank you, Cassandra. It is easier for me to let them go, knowing that you have seen them. It is our gaze that keeps them alive. But it is terrible, sometimes, to have that as a gift.”
    He squeezed my arm and left.

 
    8
    “Come in, please.” Suri smiled and waved me into Ilkka’s office. “It’ll take me just a minute to finish up, then we can get something to eat.”
    I looked around while she fiddled with her computer. Wooden filing cabinets covered one wall, beneath framed copies of magazine covers and pictures of Ilkka with people like Isabella Blow and Franca Sozzani. Covers from Vogue Italia, Elle, Women’s Wear Daily; plaques for the Iconique Societas Award and Kontakt Award. A painted antique cupboard held odd ephemera on its upper shelves, high enough that small children couldn’t reach them: old pop-up books showing Red Riding Hood being swallowed by the wolf; hand-colored pictures of Bluebeard from a Victorian toy theater. A fragile copy of Der Struwwelpeter opened to a lurid illustration of a girl in flames. Had this guy ever seen the Disney version of anything?
    I picked up a stack of vintage postcards—some sort of macabre Christmas cards, dating to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Every one featured a leering devil doing something unpleasant to a child—stuffing a boy into a burlap sack, brandishing a handful of sticks at a shrieking girl. In some pictures, the devil’s feet were cloven; in others he wore stylish shoes or hobnailed boots. Saint Nicholas accompanied him in a few images, but more often the devil cavorted alone. The same greeting was printed on every card. GRUSS VOM KRAMPUS! I fanned them out as though they were a fortune-telling deck.
    “What are these?”
    “Ah, you found Ilkka’s collection.” Suri laughed. “Those are old Krampus cards. He buys them on eBay.”
    I held up a picture of a devil riding a broomstick, his long tongue coiled suggestively. “But what is that?”
    “You don’t know Krampus? He travels with St. Nicholas and beats bad children. You know, to make them behave.” She laughed again. “I think it must have worked; he’s very scary.”
    “Finland must have a lot of traumatized kids.”
    “Oh, he’s not Finnish. German—no, Austrian. Maybe both. Here we have Father Christmas with his reindeer because, you know, this is where he lives, on Korvatunturi Mountain in Lapland. The Finns invented Father Christmas—all of it, with the reindeer and the little elves and the snow.”
    I pointed at the cards. “But not this?”
    “No, not Krampus. That is Ilkka’s taste.”
    “It’s a little strange.”
    “Ilkka is interested in old things, especially rituals about the dead.”
    “Like the bog boy?”
    “Yes. And Pyhäinpäivä, what we used to call Kekri—All Saints’ Day—the end of harvest, before winter comes. People would visit the cemeteries, because