Dusk in Kalevia

by Emily Compton

  “Vesa.” She removed the spit-soaked cloth from between his teeth, and the ropes that bound his hands and feet. “Oh, Vesa, I’m so, so sorry.”

  He didn’t answer; he just avoided her eyes and worked his tongue around his mouth. As she squeezed in beside him, her shoulder brushed against his, and he pressed himself against the raw wood of the underside of the stairs, risking splinters in a desperate attempt to avoid contact with her body.

  “I tried to tell you, but I was too late. Please,” she begged in a hushed voice, listening to men arguing back and forth over the supper table. “Forgive me.”

  “Was this your plan all along?” Vesa’s words came out thick and slurred, his tongue blunted by hours of immobility. “Pretend to be all sweet and shit, and then...”

  “Vesa, I swear I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t have any idea who you were.”

  “I didn’t have any idea you were a damned traitor!”

  “Sssh! They’ll hear!”

  Vesa dropped his voice to a whisper. “So when we were together...?”

  Kaija could feel him shivering.

  “That was just between us.” She laid a hand lightly on his arm. Although she felt him flinch, he didn’t shake her off. “All true.”

  They sat side by side, neither saying a word, until Vesa stopped trembling and began to tear mouthfuls off of his hunk of bread.

  “All right,” he said at length, when he had finished his meager meal. “I believe you.”

  She felt a protective impulse stirring within her, along with a fierce desire to recapture the circumstances of their meeting, back when--once upon a time--a mad dash through a Vainola alleyway had felt like it could save them both.

  “Vesa, I--”

  A raised voice from the room cut her off. “Kai!” someone called.

  “I’ll be back. Just sit tight for now.” She gave Vesa’s hand a quick squeeze, and was glad to feel it returned.

  “I won’t let them hurt you,” she assured him as she scrambled out from under the stairs.

  As she replaced the board over the entrance to the crawlspace, she saw him mouth his reply.

  Too late.

  **

  It was after midnight when Kaija finally rose from her huddled vigil at the table. With the lamps turned low and the fire in the little brick stove banked, she had to squint to confirm that everyone else was asleep. She could hear the storm still raging on outside through the metal chimney pipe.

  It was finally safe to return to Vesa’s prison under the stairs.

  As she crept across the darkened bunker, she listened anxiously to the soft exhalations of the sleeping men as they drifted through fitful dreams. Kaija had volunteered to take the first watch, sacrificing a night’s rest in her exhausted comrades’ stead. They had responded to her as they always did--with vague praise for their dependable, quiet little brother, accepting her selfless offer without question or argument. To her relief, not a soul among them seemed to have realized the true extent of her fraternization with the enemy.

  When she eased the board back from the entrance to the crawlspace, she could barely make out Vesa’s sleeping face in the darkness; he looked more peaceful in repose than she would have imagined. She slipped through the crack and lay down beside him on the burlap sacks, breathing in the smell of meal and dirt.

  “It’s me,” she whispered as he stirred.

  “Kai...” Vesa, half asleep, nestled closer to her, his earlier hostility gone. “You’re back.”

  “We have to be quiet, or they’ll wake up.” She took off her coat and spread it over him, hoping it would provide some respite from the graveyard damp. “But I can stay a while.”

  As they lay together in the dark, they drifted closer, their limbs tangling, seeking each other’s warmth. Vesa’s face nuzzled into the hollow of Kaija’s neck, bringing back flashes of the same delirious excitement she had felt when they’d last shared a mattress. She felt ashamed of her desire in the face of his plight, yet her body, ignorant of the moral quandary, woke to his touch. Holding back in his embrace, she wondered if he felt a similar thirst for something more.

  “Have you forgiven me?” Kaija asked, at length.

  “No.” Vesa took hold of her arm across his chest and pulled her more tightly to him. “You’re just warm.”

  She felt his breathing fall in sync with her own as her fingers toyed delicately with the buttons of his uniform jacket. Overwhelmed by a strange emotion creeping through her, she finally realized that despite all odds, what she was feeling was the barest inklings of happiness. This boy in her arms--she given up all hope of ever seeing him again. Yet here he was, miraculously alive.

  But for how long?

  “I’ve got to get you out of here,” she whispered in Vesa’s ear.

  “How?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “Sometimes I think I’m the unluckiest person in the whole world,” Vesa sighed.

  Kaija bristled. What did he know about hardship? She would have gladly switched places with him, even offered herself up to his captivity in the hands of her mortal enemies, if that could erase her own past.

  She was suddenly angry with him, but reminded herself that there was no way for him to know. If his current trauma outweighed every tragedy in his young life, then he hadn’t lived through half of what she had.

  “The world has a lot worse to offer,” she began.

  **

  April, 1950

  Kaija was tired out from the mysterious spring cleaning. The previous day she had helped her parents sweep the floors, return items to their drawers, wash the dishes, and fold the clothes in a hurry. Afterward, her mother had departed with little fanfare. She had simply put on her coat and hat and left, but not before she had hugged both Kaija and her father for a very long time.

  The next morning, the work continued, even in the absence of her mother. Kaija grudgingly tidied up her belongings in the loft where she slept.

  “But why?” she asked as she shelved her books. She was already reading novels--science fiction and adventure stories starring daring young Pioneers--and she loved the way their spines made a neat rainbow line across the bookshelf.

  “Because we’re going on a trip,” her father told her, resting a huge hand on her head. “Your mother went on ahead, but we’ll meet up with her when we get there.”

  “But it isn’t even summer!” She frowned at the implausible idea of her literature teacher mother abandoning her classes to go off on holiday, but the stern expression on her father’s face convinced her that he was telling the truth. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? Does school know?”

  “No, sweet--not yet. This holiday had to be something of a surprise.” He smiled down at her, but it was different from his usually jovial grin--a thin, forced simulacrum of a smile that did nothing to reassure her. “We’re leaving early tomorrow morning.”

  “Do I need to pack, or...?”

  “Don’t worry about that. Let’s just make sure we don’t leave a mess.” Kaija’s father paused, rubbing his stubbly beard as he looked around the tidy cottage. “We probably won’t be back for quite some time.”

  That night, she went to bed dressed in the next day’s clothes, ready to leave quickly on their unexplained journey. As her father tucked her into her carved wooden bed, he promised that he would wake her when it was time to go. Despite her dismay at his melancholy, secretive behavior and mother’s sudden farewell, she trusted them both, and eventually accepted the strange situation, snuggling down under the duvet with contented exhaustion. The last thing she remembered was her father as he turned to climb down the ladder from the loft, looking at her with a tender sadness that she had never seen in all her seven years.

  In the small hours of the morning, she was jolted awake by a violent pounding on the door.

  “Open up! Police!”

  She heard her father’s footsteps cross the floor downstairs, and his polite, dazed greeting as the door slammed open
. Boots thundered across the hall.

  “Can I help you?”

  “You’re all under arrest!”

  Kaija gasped. What was happening? She wondered briefly if she was dreaming, but the dim loft felt too real, too solidly familiar over the drama happening below.

  “There must be some mistake...” Her father sounded infinitely bewildered, using the same tone he took when he read the voice of the bumbling sidekick in a bedtime story.

  She peered through the bars of the railing and watched half a dozen uniformed men systematically tear the cottage apart. Two of them grabbed her father, wrenching his strong arms behind his back, and he did nothing to resist them.

  When she saw one of the officers head in the direction of the ladder, panic set in. She scrambled backward and managed to wedge herself beneath the bed, just as she had done during thunderstorms when she had been small and foolish. She now felt the way she had then--terrified of a great destructive force that was out of her control. This time, however, it was in her house, coming for her. This time it was real.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Kaija saw the man come over the edge. He stood up to become a pair of huge boots that tramped slowly down the length of the loft, leaving prints of spring mud along the floorboards she had helped her mother clean.

  “Where are you?” The boots came closer, one creaking step at a time, until they stopped centimeters away from her face. “Come on out. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Kaija clasped her hands over her mouth and held her breath, pleading with whatever forces controlled her destiny that he wouldn’t look under the bed.

  “Gotcha.”

  A huge face, distorted by malicious glee, appeared beside her; so great was her terror that she couldn’t even scream. A hand snaked out and scrabbled at her face and hair. Nauseous with animal panic, she tried to retreat, but found herself already pressed against the wall, trapped as the man’s hairy hand closed around her neck. Her vision went white as he dragged her out, her windpipe agonizingly compressed. He held her aloft over the railing; she choked as her feet paddled the empty air, in full view of those below.

  “I found the kid!” he yelled. “Catch!”

  “Kaija!” her father screamed, a voice of pure horror.

  The officer dropped her. For a terrible second, she was falling through the air, her heart contracting as weightless dread wiped every thought from her mind.

  She was caught roughly in the arms of another policeman.

  “You crazy shithead!” the man shouted up at his comrade as he dropped Kaija casually to the floor. “Quit horsing around!”

  Kaija curled up and squeezed her eyes shut, gasping for a breath of air. No one was crushing her throat anymore, but the pain wouldn’t stop and the air wouldn’t come. She was drowning on the floor of the family home while white sparks flew behind her eyelids.

  “No, stop! She’s only a child!”

  She forced her eyes open and saw that her father was crying now, the tears streaming into his beard. She had never seen him like this--her strong, gentle father who towered over everyone, reduced to a whimpering mess. Leave him alone! she tried to shout, but her voice was gone, and all she could do was cough and cough until she thought blood would come up.

  They ignored her. “Where is she?” the chief policeman shrilled at her father. “Where is your wife?”

  “Visiting family in Savonlinna.”

  “You’re lying!” The chief pushed Kaija’s father down and aimed a sharp kick at his stomach. He paused, and then added in a vicious tone: “Of course we already know where she is--they caught her at the border!”

  Kaija could see the moment the strength went out of her father. He didn’t say anything else; he just lay there with the officer’s muddy boot in the middle of his back, ignoring the police ransacking his home, his eyes dimming with pain as they stared at her across the living room floor.

  It’s a lie! Kaija realized, a rebellious satisfaction blooming in her burning chest. They didn’t catch her or they wouldn’t be so angry!

  She suddenly felt a fierce pride for her mother, sure that she had braved countless dangers and was now beyond the clutches of these fiends. Her mother had done it. She was free.

  Kaija was still mute and helpless as they dragged her father toward the door. She strained at her wounded vocal chords, trying to call for him--trying to scream to her father, her dear father, to let him know that hope remained. Their eyes met for a moment as he glanced back over his shoulder.

  “Kaija!” he sobbed, and then he was gone.

  She never saw him again.

  **

  “They took him to some gulag up north,” Kaija whispered. She struggled to keep her voice down as she remembered the night that had ended her normal life.

  “As a child of defectors, I wound up at a state orphanage where I got the shit kicked out of me on pretty much a daily basis. Not just by the orphans, either--mostly by the jerks who ran the place.”

  She heard Vesa sniffle in the dark, and felt his arms tighten around her.

  “No use crying over it now,” she continued. “When I got the letter a few years later that told me my father was dead--it just said that he’d died in prison--I was pretty much finished. I would’ve had nothing to live for if not for one thing.

  “One of the older boys in the orphanage told me about some people who could get information about defectors over the border. His parents had been executed during the purges, and he was the one who first led me to the Forest Clan. Pyry was my best friend, like a brother to me... He kept me alive by telling me my mother was probably living in Helsinki.” She paused. “I wanted to be just like him.”

  “What happened to him?” Vesa asked.

  “I...don’t know. One day, he was just...gone.”

  “Oh, Kai...”

  “Kai is my father’s name. My real name is Kaija.”

  To her surprise, she felt herself start to cry when she said it, the tears hot spilling onto Vesa’s jacket as he held her. She stroked his face and discovered it was wet with tears of his own.

  She was suddenly desperate to let go of all the sorrow bottled up inside her--the misery she had suppressed in her stoic battle for a greater cause. She gripped him, shaking, and wept into his shoulder, relinquishing years of pain into the solid comfort of his arms.

  She sobbed until she exhausted herself, and then simply lay against Vesa’s chest, listening to the beat of his heart. A strange calm descended on them. She felt lighter somehow, empty and clean, transported far away from the little hole at the center of the lion’s den.

  “Kaija.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Kaija, I need to tell you something.”

  “So tell me.”

  “I think I’m in love with you.”

  Her mouth opened in surprise, her chest tightened with hope. Elation prickled at the edge of her tumbling thoughts.

  “Even though I’m an enemy of the state?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who kidnapped you? Who wants to destroy everything your father stands for?”

  “Um...I mean...” His voice hardened. “Y-yes. Yes.”

  She kissed him lightly at first, then again, deeper, tasting the salt on his lips. For a moment, neither of them moved, poised in a delicate equilibrium, and then he pulled her back down to him. Her lips tingled as her tongue shyly explored his; she fumbled in the dark, forgetting everything but the boy beneath her. Her tense body melted into him as she breathed through his mouth, her pain eased by the heat of his skin. When they parted, her mouth found his ear, and she whispered to him the only words remaining.

  “I loved you from the day I met you, Vesa Uusitalo.”

  **

  Kaija sat at the table, periodically shining her flashlight beam on the cheap windup clock that counted out the minutes until she was supposed to wake up the rest of the men.

  Once Vesa had fallen back asleep, she’d felt a languid calm come over her--her ignored exhaustion
. It had been torture to force herself back awake and leave him breathing softly in the dark, but her brothers couldn’t discover that she’d abandoned her post to sleep in the arms of their hostage.

  As the time crawled by, she stared into the darkness and relived the kiss in her mind. How had she made it to seventeen without ever having done that? She had thought about it often, of course--fantasies fed by books and the chaste kisses in the cinema--but none of it had prepared her for the physical immediacy of the real thing. The way it had filled her senses, her blood rushing hot and fast though her body as the taste-scent-touch of Vesa consumed her... It had been wonderful, and she hoped it would happen again.

  First, however, she had to remove the chance of Vesa’s life being used as a bargaining chip. Her chest tightened as she realized that he needed to go alone; escape would only be possible if she freed Vesa without anyone knowing she was involved, a daunting “if” that rumbled like a storm cloud through her head. No, she would stay with her sworn comrades, protecting Vesa from within the ranks of the rebellion. She berated herself for dreaming about kissing when she had gravely dangerous plans to make.

  But try as she might, no plan seemed remotely workable. Letting him out through the main hatch would be too noisy, and would no doubt wake everyone sleeping below. Even if he managed to slip through, he would still be trapped by the blizzard, forced to struggle through the snowy woods with no guide--and they were far from civilization. She knew she couldn’t stop the Forest Clan from hunting him, and if she even tried to stall, she ran the risk of them suspecting that she’d directly aided his escape...and she would be as good as dead.

  As Kaija agonized over her decision, she glanced at the clock and realized her watch had ended long ago. Grabbing a tin cup from the table, she banged a spoon against it until groans came from the bundles of ragged blankets around the room.

  “Wake up, it’s morning.” She lit a lantern as the men rose blearily from their bunks.

  Klaus clomped up behind her, scratching his belly through his old flannel shirt. “How’s the prisoner?” he asked.

  Kaija’s heart performed some strange acrobatics, but she survived with her deadpan exterior intact.