Secret Passages in a Hillside Town

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PUBLISHER OLLI SUOMINEN spent the rainy days of autumn buying umbrellas and forgetting them all around Jyväskylä. He also accidentally joined a film club.

The club was screening twenty films that winter. In early September they showed François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, which made an impression on Olli. After he saw it he amused himself by looking for women who reminded him of Jeanne Moreau—on the street, at his publishing house and at meetings of the parish council. In the meantime he lost umbrellas—three of them on the worst day.

In October Olli was in his office munching on an apple, fell asleep in the middle of a bite and dreamt until he was awakened by the sound of the telephone. It was a call about a book fair he was planning to attend. Outside the window he could dimly see the rain-drenched park around the old church and the people scurrying through it. After the phone call he ate the rest of the apple and tried to recapture his dream. All he could muster was a trace of melancholy, a feeling that had lingered in his mind over the past several mornings.

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