He moves into a new apartment, which his parents have paid for after selling his childhood home near the frontier. Moving help is provided by his older brother, who doesn’t recommend buying yellow curtains He buys yellow curtains. He is happy. He is happy. He is happy.
The days go by in silence, until the women’s association comes knocking and informs him that disturbances are not tolerated in the building. Then the super and his wife drop by to inspect the apartment. One day the neighbors find noise troubling, the next day silence – it’s suspicious, after all. You’ve been warned. He just wants to be left in peace.
He must be mentally ill to some degree, because he engages in a conversation at a cafe with a stranger about the misogyny she has encountered and with his father about his childhood, while in the meantime his uncle sells a hotel in eastern Finland and an anonymous young man buys a gun with the intent to kill. He moves to new addresses, where he wakes without having gone to bed and notices that he is not himself, nor is his home always his home.
Stabbed for Complaining About the Noise (Melusta valittanut puukotettiin) does not have one single overarching theme; instead, it is a sampling from one first-person narrator’s life that, as with most lives, contains a variety of themes and motifs.
SCENE 1
(Diary Entry March 2, 2003)
I've moved to a new apartment, Koskelantie 35 D 20.
We own it: my parents bought it for me after they sold my childhood home in Reijola.
My older brother was helping yeasterday.
He knows electricity, he helped me a lot, and most importantly, he knew what and where Ikea is.
He took one look at me and my cardboard boxes and said let's go there.
We bought two bookshelves, two ceiling lapms and yellow curtains.
"Don't get yellow," he said.
"Get black, or white, but not yellow, " he said.
I bought yellow.
I said to him, "Thanks, now this looks like a home."
Now this looks like a home, not a warehouse.
I'm happy.
I'm happy.
I'm happy.
Translated by Nely Keinänen
