New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus Europe 2011) (13 page)

At the Admiralty I was told that the minelayer Riilahti had been sunk by the Russians off Tiskeri on 23 August 1943; what remained of it, broken into two, had been located , and is currently lying at a depth of 70 metres. The twenty-four members of the crew all perished; their bodies had been recovered: all except for that of Seaman Sampo Karjalainen, which was still missing. The family had been given a commemorative medal.

The clerk at the Admiralty insisted on showing me a photo of the Riilahti, taken in the summer of 1940 during a naval review. The image of the ship moored at the quayside, with the Finnish flag flying and the sailors massed in the bow, reminded me of the Finnish merchantmen which used to arrive in the port of Hamburg. For me, each one was a piece of Finland. Their arrival had become a regular event, one which gradually came to punctuate the days in my calendar, the changes in season. In spring it was the Pyhä Henrik, which brought timber to Hamburg from Oulu and returned laden with machine tools; in summer it was the oil tanker Pietarsaari and in December the Petsamo, which supplied the ports of Kemi and Pori with grain. Not to mention all the others which called in at Hamburg en route to more distant places. Every evening I would mingle with the sailors when they gathered in the Finnish church, as though they were my family. I wanted to shake hands with each of them, and had to restrain myself from seeming too outgoing, for they themselves were reserved and solitary by nature. My heart lifted when I could render them some service: such simple medical assistance as I could offer made me feel that I was contributing to the well-being of my country, redeeming sins that I had not in fact committed and earning myself some possibility of return. Some ships had been plying the same route for years, and the captains knew me well: we had built up a relationship of mutual trust and respect. After a certain point, without my even having to ask, they would bring me bundles of newspapers. The crews who arrived during the Christmas period never failed to bring me some present or other: some bit of furniture or carpentry tool for the pastor, liquor and cigarettes for me which, although I did not smoke, I kept like so many precious relics. The captain of the Rosvo Roope, which shuttled between Helsinki and Hamburg every three months transporting iron ore, would unfailingly bring me the books I had asked for, together with some magazine or record for my mother. Hearing those Finnish voices in our Hamburg apartment lulled me into the cruel illusion that I was at home, but my mother seemed to be unaffected. She was half-German, but cultivated her Finnish side assiduously. With the help of those records and magazines she kept herself more or less up to date with the latest Finnish fads and fancies – only three months behind. I on the other hand was irritated by that artificial Finland; the music my mother would play incessantly on the gramophone aroused unwelcome memories in me. Yet, when I hear those tunes again today, it is the thought of her that wells up in my mind, and her ‘apartment Finland’ lives on again, as long as the song lasts, in empty rooms.

The letters which follow were copied into the notebook by the author himself. Although some parts are repeated several times, and others are underlined or quoted again elsewhere in the manuscript, it is to be presumed that, in one place or another, the letters appear here in their entirety. Despite having authorized me to publish them, Miss Ilma Koivisto, who wrote these letters, made it known that I should not reread the originals and asked to be allowed to keep them. I am respecting her request, and I thank her for her help in elucidating certain passages whose meaning was unclear to me, clarifying personal references and allusions which an outsider would not have been able to understand. I do not propose to dwell on Miss Koivisto’s feelings, but I must say that I was moved by the evident passion and sincerity which her words convey. If the author of this document had abandoned his pointless search for his past, and yielded rather to the pleasures of the present, perhaps his fate would have been different. Sometimes human thought gets lost in the warren of its own logic, becomes a slave to a geometry which is an end in itself, whose aim is no longer the understanding of reality, but the bolstering of some prior assumption. We are such monstrous egoists that we would rather destroy ourselves pursuing false truths than admit that we are on the wrong track. To shore themselves up against this mental aberration, many take refuge in faith in some supreme being who holds the key to all mysteries and the antidote to all suffering. In exchange for humility, God promises us knowledge, countering our painful multiplicity with his own soothing unity. But, if God existed, He would have made us in a different mould, either total prisoners of the matter from which he forged us, or else completely unshackled by thraldom to our minds: either his equals or his slaves. He would not have abandoned his creatures in this condition mid-way between damnation and beatitude, obliged to pursue divine perfection with the imperfect instruments of human knowledge. If God has need of our imperfections, of our limitations, then He is no better than we are. He is not God, but a demon, and all things proceed from His essential wickedness. In these times, it is true, it is easier to believe in a demon rather than in God. I, who have looked into the eyes of dying soldiers and glimpsed the world beyond, have seen nothing but pitch darkness. So, rather than imagining myself at the mercy of some spirit of evil, I prefer to believe that the universe is driven not by some all-powerful will, but by the random play of chemistry. The thousand substances of which it is composed clash and mingle each time they meet, and their reactions may be as measureless as a stellar explosion or as minuscule as electrolysis; as mighty as the splitting of the atom or as sublime as the flowering of a cherry tree. When everything has finally mixed and merged, when oxidoreduction is complete, when matter is made of nuclei as small as grains of sand but as heavy as this planet, and each electron is set upon its fatal course, then there will be peace in the universe. Peace and death.

Viipuri, 12 April 1944

Dear Sampo,

This is the first peaceful afternoon I’ve had since we arrived, and I am taking advantage of it to write this letter. We’ve been having a hard time of it. Our arrival in Viipuri was eventful, to say the least. It took us several days to set the refugee centre to rights – everything was in a state of utter neglect. The hospital is short of everything, including staff. We are expecting a delivery of medical equipment, but we also need blankets and camp beds, and fuel and goodness knows what else. We’re in a permanent state of alarm; we’re not far from the front, and those in the know say that there could be a Russian attack. Plans have already been made to evacuate the place, if necessary. Several families of peasants who’d been evacuated came back with the thaw; they’ve moved back into their farms, which they had abandoned after the Winter War, and they refuse to leave them yet again. They won’t even come to collect their rations, they’re so frightened of being kept here in the refugee centre. They say that the Russians have no reason to attack, that Viipuri is no concern of theirs. Some days ago we saw the last German divisions retreating, walking down streets between silent crowds. Apparently the Germans are now drawn up at Uhtua. Anyway, too far away from here to alarm the Russians. The second regiment of coastal artillery arrived at Viipuri yesterday, on its way through. The soldiers camped near the hospital; they were singing the
Porilaisten marssi
. And so I thought of you. I am taking the liberty of addressing you in the familiar form, because otherwise I couldn’t speak as frankly as I would like. I behaved stupidly that night we met at the Kämp. War does strange things to time, it distorts reality. In war, everything seems temporary, transient. Perhaps that’s why I felt the need to say things to you that I would have kept for a later stage of our friendship, had there been one. I was selfish – thinking only of myself. I’d only just told you my name, and already I was going all out, telling you about my silly adolescent games. It’s partly to do with the fact that I’m a Red Cross Nurse, I just take it too far. I simply can’t stop wanting to be of help. You know, something struck me the very day that you arrived, that January morning when I showed you to your bed in the visitors’ quarters: the fear in your eyes. It wasn’t the fear that I was used to seeing, the sort you see in the eyes of soldiers who are mortally wounded, or of the father who has lost his son. It was a fear beyond all reason, not rooted in this world. I still remember how you looked at me, seated on your bed, when I turned to look back at you as I walked down the corridor. I felt your pain and I wanted to be of help – another example of my urge to help others, cost what it may. That’s why I went to see Koskela, to ask him to keep an eye on you. When I saw you at the Kämp, I felt reassured. I thought that you seemed better, that you had settled in, found your place among us. But I hadn’t yet seen your eyes. The moment I got closer, I saw that that same fear was still there, as strong as ever. Then I was impertinent enough to think that perhaps some gesture of affection might break through that paralysing shell of pain. I hadn’t yet understood that yours was a different kind of suffering. I’ve been thinking about it these last few days. It must be terrible not to have a past, not to remember your own childhood; and even worse not to be able to share this suffering with someone else. Because no one has ever come back from the place you’ve fallen headlong into. For me, my childhood is an old photo I always carry with me, just a close-up of when I was a gap-toothed ten-year-old little girl. But the dress I’m wearing in that faded old photograph, the rather hazy background with our big old country house, they are a mine of memories which leap out to greet me every time I look at it. I understand how painful such a lack of memories must be, how awful it must be to have nothing but emptiness behind you. But perhaps it is a mistake to keep on searching for a past which has now completely disappeared. After all, the past is in fact the only wound which always heals – indeed, it does so on its own, without any help from us. Is this compulsion to seek out traces of your past self really so strong? Would it not be more helpful to work patiently at filling in real time – that time which is left to you – building up a new memory for yourself brick by brick, as one might put it? An interfering friend might help to distract you from this obsessive search for something which has gone. Please write to me. Tell me how you spend your days. Tell me about Koskela’s sermons. Does he still get so wound up? Tell me about Helsinki, now that spring is here. Has the new grass started coming up? Is the Esplanadi coming into leaf? Next month, the berries will be ripening in the woods. If they give me permission to come back, we’ll go and gather them together.

Love,

Ilma

I had found this letter on my bed, when I went back to the dormitory to collect my notebook for my lesson with the pastor. It was the first time I’d seen my name on an envelope. It looked good, written there in black ink; so good that I almost didn’t want to open it. I did not immediately understand all that I read. I rushed excitedly from one line to another, looking for words I knew and skipping those I felt I would be able to decipher later. Sometimes a few letters were enough to tell me all I needed to know about a verb and then a whole line would dance before me, the words opening out one after another, letting the meaning shine through. But often whole sentences remained unclear, clouded by very little words, like so many padlocks obstructing the flow of meaning. I read all that I could, then I curled up on the bed, holding the unfolded sheet of paper firmly in my hand. Weak sunlight fell through the window, slithering across the floors right up to the beds. The room was flooded with perfect silence, like still water, through which my body was slowly surfacing. Those words were bringing every part of me to life, enlarging me through their magnifying lens. Ilma had called out to my grief, had given it a name, and it was answering her call.

‘I was expecting you. Are you not feeling well?’

It was Koskela; he was standing in the doorway.

‘No, I’m fine, I’d just dozed off. I’m all yours.’

I got off the bed, picked up the notebook and straightened the blanket. The pastor pretended not to notice as I stuffed the letter into the pocket of my jacket. Then, without asking for any explanation, he answered the questions I put to him about the bits I had not understood, copied down into my notebook.

‘Today we’ll have our lesson in the open air. I want to show you something,’ he said, striding off with his hands in his pockets. We went out into the road, came to the Suurtori and went down to the wharf at Katajanokka. The day was mild and colourless; a pearly light fell from the white sky, casting no shadows.

‘There’s something you need to understand: the frontier on which this war is being fought does not just divide two peoples, us and the Russians. It also separates two different souls. Sister souls, it’s true, but tragically at odds on one essential point: the idea of the world to come. And for man, a mortal creature who lives a fleeting life upon this earth, the world to come is all-important.’

We had crossed the Katajanokka Canal in front of the presidential palace. Now we were climbing the hill on which the Uspenski Orthodox Cathedral stands. I tried to keep up with the pastor as he climbed the steep slope, the better to understand his words.

‘That’s typical of the Russians,’ he said, stopping at the main door. Luckily he was out of breath, and this forced him to speak more slowly.

‘Look how solidly it’s built. Their truth is as heavy as stone, as conspicuous as those gilded domes, massive and down-to-earth. They named this church after the dormition of the Virgin. That’s a myth of their own making, to spare the mother of God the brutal shock of physical death: it makes death into one endless sleep. A noble ruse, it’s true. But if death is sleep, the world to come is just a dream, a fleeting vision.’

I did not know what
katoavainen
meant but, since he pronounced it next to
näky
, or vision, I could hazard a guess. I repeated the two words to myself to bind them to one another in my memory. We went into the church. The walls were crowded with images, the floor was elaborately worked and the altars were laden with gilded candlesticks, so that the cold light falling from above seemed to have a warmer glow, to be less harsh. We were surrounded by a circle of saints who looked down on us benevolently. Beneath each holy image, candles shone, their stems as slender as those of flowers. The steps leading to the niches were covered with red carpets. Elaborate brass lamps hung from the marble columns. We took a few steps in silence. Walking ahead of me, the pastor pointed to one picture, then another, then to the domes, with their coloured mosaics with scenes from the Old Testament. When we came out, the dull light hurt my eyes. The ethereal city stretched out below us, aloof and uncaring. We went down again towards the market square.