The Winter War

by Philip Teir

  ‘I still receive invitations to speak about that book, even though it’s been twenty-five years since it came out. In Finland the war marked all of us in such a fundamental way that we still turn to those years for answers to our problems. Sometimes it can be a little absurd. Last year a journalist phoned me to ask whether the war years could somehow explain Nokia’s recent decline.’

  Paul’s answer to that reporter was: ‘Of course.’

  ‘Personally, I think the real answer lies in the global market, and in Nokia’s case, the company simply needed to reinvent itself. At the same time, I think the fact that Finland is a young nation has affected how Nokia is treated in the media – criticism has been conspicuously lacking. When Nokia was strong, nobody bothered to dig around in what the company was doing, and that says something about what a powerful function Nokia served in terms of the national identity. Maybe there wasn’t enough vigilance. Finns have always needed a narrative to cling to, just like all small countries. When we joined the EU, we behaved much like a provincial family in a novel from the late nineteenth century. We agreed to everything just so we could marry into the grand landowner’s family. That’s okay, except that you also lose some of your integrity and set yourself up for a very big fall,’ the professor explains.

  In Paul’s opinion, the Finnish inferiority complex shows up in a paradoxical way in politics.

  ‘From an economic point of view, we’re one of the most financially healthy nations in Europe, and yet for a long time we’ve suffered from a lack of self-confidence because we consider ourselves poor – maybe not monetarily, but culturally. That’s why I was personally overjoyed when the Social Democrats showed some initiative with regard to the Greek question,’ he says.

  In the nineties Max Paul was frequently in the tabloids, thanks to his study on Finnish sexual practices, which was the hot topic of conversation in the autumn of 1994. Today he merely shrugs when asked about the study.

  ‘It caused a big stir, even though the results of the study weren’t exactly revolutionary.’

  Yet Max Paul is still preoccupied with the question: what is happiness?

  Why are you interested in such a worn-out topic?

  ‘It’s not really that strange. Everyone wants to know how to be happy, and I’m no exception. I link the whole issue to the choices that people have, and why we make the choices that we do.’

  The professor admits this may sound a bit vague. But he points out that these are issues that even Socrates grappled with in his day.

  ‘I think we still have a lot to learn from Socrates, and Aristotle as well, who viewed happiness as a constantly evolving condition. In other words, you can “be” happy without having to work at it all the time – much like democracy. It’s also exciting to look at the new aspects of psychiatry, and especially the neurosciences, which have made enormous breakthroughs even in the last ten years with regard to behaviour patterns.’

  According to Paul, those who speak of happiness are often viewed with scepticism – such remarks are better suited to self-help books.

  ‘I think that happiness and consumerism have become very much the same thing, and talking about happiness in any other way than as pure self-fulfilment seems oldfashioned. Unfortunately, we can’t get around using it, because it’s the only word we have.’

  One reason for unhappiness, according to Paul, is that we’re constantly confronted with an endless array of choices.

  ‘We think that we’ll be happy if only we make the right choices. That’s something that permeates every facet of our lives. For instance, at this very moment: what should I have for lunch? But when it comes to the really important questions – those that touch on the future of everyone – we actually have no choice at all. Decisions are made at levels far beyond our control. No one asked us, for example, whether nuclear power should be expanded in Finland.’

  You say that work can be a pathway to happiness.

  Is it possible to be the creator of your own happiness?

  ‘Rousseau said that it’s impossible to be consciously happy. You can only recognise your own happiness retroactively, after you’ve lost it. When you’re happy, you don’t notice it; if you’re aware of it, you can’t have it. Hannah Arendt says something similar: to rise up, you have to have been to the bottom. Life is really a continuous cycle of happiness and unhappiness; the one presupposes the other.’

  Are you personally happy?

  ‘Fate has been good to me. I’m in good health, and I have healthy children and grandchildren. And I have work that I enjoy doing. Complete freedom is not an ideal condition. And I say this as someone who lived through the 1960s. Freedom was the only thing we wanted. But today I realise that my father’s generation, which went through the war, in some ways had a less complicated view of happiness than my generation has. For them, change was a necessary means for achieving stability. For today’s young people, change is a goal in itself.’

  thirteen

  ‘AND BASICALLY, THAT IS WHY I’m here.’

  Russ turned over as he lay on the mattress on the floor. He’d been talking for almost an hour, explaining that after his conversation with Eva, he’d decided to book a plane ticket to Helsinki. He needed to see her again because he hadn’t said what he’d intended to say, what he’d gone to her flat to tell her. Then he launched into a long preamble about seeing Eva at the first class session, and how even back then he had decided that he wanted to get to know her better. During his rambling monologue Eva caught words like ‘in love’ and even ‘obsessed’, but she had a hard time taking in all the information because Russ spoke in such an incoherent way, almost like a witness to an accident who was still trying to sort out in his mind everything that he’d seen. But now he had finished and was silently waiting for her reaction.

  ‘You have to say something. Anything. I’m going to die if you don’t say something soon.’

  But Eva had no idea what to say.

  It was actually rather sad that it had come to this. She had hoped that they could be good friends, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen. He had practically just declared that she was the love of his life.

  What should she do? She felt so confused.

  She wished she could have talked to Helen. About everything, actually. But there had been no chance for that all evening, since Russ was here, and she felt responsible for him. Of course she did.

  Eva couldn’t help feeling a stab of jealousy when she saw her father talking to that young journalist, Laura, later in the evening – he was leaning in close, and she was laughing. Eva wished that she too could have been that happy, but she had felt obliged to sit next to Russ. She was possessed by a dream-like feeling that the world was about to split apart, although no one else could see it.

  Katriina had made up beds for them in Eva’s old room, which looked as if she was still living there. The walls were painted the same old-fashioned green colour that she’d chosen when she was in secondary school. Next to the window hung a Nick Cave poster, and on the windowsill stood an ugly ceramic sculpture that she’d made in middle school. The bed was the same, and stored inside an old wardrobe standing against the wall – the wardrobe from her paternal grandmother’s house in Kristinestad – were all her old LPs. As a teenager Eva had collected vinyl, buying a lot of records from Black & White in Hagnäs and from Keltainen Jäänsärkijä on Urho Kekkonensgata. The wardrobe also contained a plaster model of her teeth before she got braces; a box of cassette tapes in which she’d kept marijuana during the summer after her second year in secondary school; several old textbooks; and a shoebox filled with old letters from middle school, mostly from her cousins in Österbotten.

  ‘Thank you,’ Eva now said. ‘And I really mean that. Thank you for telling me all this. I’m very … flattered. What else can I say?’

  ‘You could tell me how you feel. Do you share my feelings at all?’

  ‘Sure. I like you. Definitely. But you’re more like a …’

  Eva had i
ntended to say ‘brother’, but she caught herself.

  ‘What I mean is, I’m not sure I’m ready for a relationship right now. I’m … I have a lot of things I need to work out.’

  ‘I can be very persistent.’

  ‘Obviously. You flew here, after all.’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Russ, I’m sorry, but could we talk about something else?’

  ‘Of course. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay. What do you want me to tell you?’

  ‘Tell me anything.’

  ‘Well, I’ve just told you that the only thing I can think about is you.’

  ‘Something else. Tell me about yourself. I don’t know anything about you.’

  Eva was actually too tired to talk, but she couldn’t fall asleep when there was so much tension in the air because she was expected to respond to what Russ had just revealed. She didn’t want to think about anything at all. She’d slept badly for the past few days, and having Russ in the same room was not the most ideal situation, but Eva couldn’t bring herself to explain to her mother why she would have preferred to sleep alone. Apparently Katriina hadn’t fully understood that Russ was not her boyfriend.

  ‘Eva, I realise this whole thing may be a bit sudden. You don’t even know me.’

  ‘That’s true. I don’t really know you. So talk to me. Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she said, even though she wasn’t sure that she was particularly interested. She’d had a few glasses of wine and could feel the soft bed enticing her towards sleep. There had been too many people at the party for her to have a real sense of being back in Finland. The flat looked different when it was filled with guests all dressed up; it was almost like being in a film.

  ‘Yes, one sister. She lives in Brighton and works in a restaurant. Married with three kids, even though she’s only twenty-six. She had her first child at the age of nineteen.’

  ‘Have you always been interested in art?’ asked Eva. ‘I mean, even when you were little?’

  ‘I was a very timid child. I cried when I had to go to nursery. I remember that my mum took me there on the Tube, and I refused to hold her hand because I didn’t want to go. One day I tried to run away, so she just left me there on the platform. I panicked and thought I was going to die, but she was standing behind one of the pillars the whole time. “That’s what happens when you refuse to hold my hand,” she told me. Talk about methods of childrearing.’

  ‘Where’d you grow up?’

  ‘In the East End of London, but it was different back then. Before all this gentrification shit. My mum and dad split up when I was eleven. So I’m one of those children of divorce who creates art to mend the hole in his heart.’

  Russ laughed. He lay on his stomach, staring at her. His eyes shone in the dark.

  Eva fixed her gaze on him and asked, ‘Are you really thinking of quitting the art school?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you made other plans?’

  ‘To be perfectly honest, my original plan was to become a rock star. I know that sounds ludicrous. I’ve never even played an instrument, but I wanted to impress the girls. Art isn’t really sexy in the same way, but there’s less competition. Have you ever been to a gallery opening? These days eighty per cent of the guests are women. That means four women for every man. Even better would be taking up acting. All the theatre audiences are women. The only men who go to the theatre have been dragged there by their wives, or else they’re gay.’

  Eva rolled on to her back and stared up at the ceiling. She could hear someone walking about in the flat. Probably her mother, cleaning up. She wondered how long her parents would leave her room untouched before deciding to redo it.

  ‘My mum and dad hate each other,’ she said. ‘For as long as I can remember, they’ve slept in separate beds. I wonder why they stay married. I mean, Helen and I have both moved out. And they hardly spend any time with each other. I don’t think Dad is home much, and when he is, he holes up in his study, pretending to write. And Mum works herself to death, even though she hates her job. I hope I’m never like the two of them.’

  ‘I think they seem great. Your mother arranged the whole party for him, and you don’t do things like that for people you hate. It would make me really happy. And your dad is cool. He showed me his library and all the books he’s written.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Uh-huh. While you were doing something else.’

  ‘That’s so typical of him. As soon as somebody new turns up, he drags out all his old stories. Don’t listen to what he says; just ignore him if he starts blabbing a lot of bullshit. And besides, he was drunk tonight.’

  ‘I enjoy listening to people. I think it’s fascinating to hear what they have to say. Your mother also talked to me before you arrived. My family were never big talkers. Mum basically brought me and my sister up single-handedly. Even though Dad lived with us before the divorce, he was almost never home. Whenever he did come home, he was always furious because he claimed we’d touched his stuff. But he was an alcoholic. My mother was really crushed when she found out I wanted to be an artist. I guess she thought that’s what had turned my father into a drunk. He wanted to do something great, but he never could decide what that might be; it was one of those impossible dreams that he carried all his life. I think my mother wanted me to be a doctor.’

  For a moment neither of them spoke. Then Eva said, ‘For as far back as I can remember, my parents have always encouraged me. Dad bought me art supplies when I was in middle school. An easel and everything.’

  ‘But that’s what I was saying. Your parents seem really great.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Eva thought that Russ might be right. Maybe she should talk to them about her situation. Was there any reason why she had to go through the whole thing alone?

  She sat up and looked at Russ.

  ‘How could you afford to fly here? Wasn’t it expensive to get a ticket on such short notice?’

  ‘I borrowed the money from my flatmate. Don’t worry about it. He’s got plenty of money.’

  ‘What kind of work does he do?’

  ‘He sells drugs,’ said Russ, as if it were a perfectly ordinary profession.

  ‘What kind of drugs?’

  ‘To be honest, I don’t really know. Party drugs, mostly. But it works out fine. My rent is cheap.’

  Eva noticed how tired she was.

  ‘Russ, mind if we turn off the light now? I need to sleep.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ he said and got up to switch off the table lamp.

  Eva realised that he’d probably lie awake on the mattress, hoping that she’d crawl under the covers next to him. But she had no intention of doing any such thing. She was not attracted to him, and even if she was, she hadn’t even considered having sex after finding out she was pregnant. She suddenly thought about a book she’d discovered in their summer cottage in Kristinestad when she was a kid. She and Helen had taken turns reading it. The book was titled The Evolution of Human Sexuality, with chapters on topics such as: ‘The Female Orgasm: Adaptation or Artifact?’ and ‘Copulation as a Female Service’. She’d had an idea how an orgasm would feel long before experiencing it personally. That book made sex sound as if it caused people to revert to some sort of bestial state. The author claimed that the first criterion for making men attractive to women was good health – a flawless complexion, decent hair, straight teeth and symmetrical facial features.

  Eva felt that the culture had truly surpassed human evolution in that regard. She couldn’t remember ever being attracted to a man who could be called ‘decent’. She’d always had a weakness for slightly cruel men, those who looked like small-time criminals. And maybe that was what had attracted her to Malik – the sense that he was unreliable, so she didn’t have to invest her own emotions in the relationship. It was different with Russ. He was like a little puppy. If she ever slept with him, he would
consider it an act of great love, and a promise that they’d spend their lives together.

  To Eva’s surprise, she heard him snoring. She imagined Russ as a kid, standing on the Tube platform. She pictured a frightened little boy with dark hair. She had an urge to lean down and caress his forehead, but instead she put her hand on her belly. She knew there was no chance she’d be able to feel even the slightest movement inside, but she couldn’t help pressing her hand to her belly, as if the tiniest sign of life might make her change her mind.

  fourteen

  WHEN EVA WOKE THE NEXT morning, Russ was not in the room. She found him in the kitchen with Max and Katriina. They looked as though they were enjoying each other’s company so much that she suspected it was some sort of trick, that the whole thing was a joke, like the one perpetrated in the Truman Show film. Eva felt sick, just as she had done every morning for the past two weeks, but she had learned that the nausea would subside if she had something to eat.

  So she sat down at the kitchen table, pretending the scenario was the most natural thing in the world. And in some ways it was, since it was only a few months ago that she was living here at home. Back then she’d always eaten breakfast with her father before he left for work at nine thirty. Katriina never joined them for breakfast, since she got up at seven.

  ‘I’m thinking of coming to London,’ Max now said. He was wearing a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms, and his hair was tousled. He seemed pleased with life, even though he’d loudly protested about celebrating his birthday. At what age did people become content with their lives? At fifty? In that case, Eva longed to be fifty. She longed to feel carefree and not have to bear this everpresent sense of shame because she didn’t measure up, because she was in somebody else’s debt. When her father was her age, he’d already written his doctoral dissertation.