by Diego Marani
A few days ago, Miss Koivisto suggested that we visit the air-raid shelter where the hospital staff would take refuge during the bombardments. I too was interested in seeing another of the places mentioned in the manuscript, in the vague hope of finding some trace of its author. We turned off the road and found ourselves in a dark space, littered with lumps of plaster and broken glass. Purely by chance, my torch picked out various names and bits of writing carved into the black tiles on the wall, and I suddenly felt deeply unsettled, my instinct telling me that I should instantly look away again. And yet, deep down, some deeply buried compulsion drove me to read each and every one of them, as though they might contain some secret. It was climbing the stairs, back into the white light of the road, that the memory flashed into my mind, that on the other pavement I suddenly recognized the barracks to which my father had been taken the evening they arrested him at the university. In my mind’s eye I saw again the ill-lit parlour, the guards standing around it, the wooden plank beds carved with threatening words, recently gouged resentfully out of the dressed wood like so many wounds, and my father looking at me wordlessly from the other side of the grille. It was meant to be a reassuring look, it was an attempt to inspire trust, but in fact that mask of bogus confidence would sometimes slip, leaving me alone, exposed to the full weight of his own fear. That was the last time I saw him; and, as though I knew as much, I remember how determined I was to slip my fingers through the mesh of the grille for one last clasp of his hand.
Dusk came early at that time of the year. The snow was not enough to light up the empty city, barred and bolted as it was, with all the windows dark. The main monuments, caged in by wooden beams, were reminiscent of the catafalques of some forgotten religion. The buildings in the city centre were empty, the ministries and government offices deserted, having been transferred to underground premises out of town. Although it was not yet at war, Helsinki was a city in a state of siege; the only people in its streets were hurried civilians and drunken soldiers. Fear oozed into the city from the frozen bay, lapping at the streets and squares. Death entered it with the trainloads of refugees, and spread throughout the smoke-filled lairs where the few remaining inhabitants had taken refuge. There was feverish talk of the latest news from the Russian front, of the siege of Leningrad, of the railway at Murmansk which no one had the courage to blow up. Some people cursed the war; the future seemed to be closing in on all sides, like the horizon around us. Each day seemed likely to be the last. This sense of doom was at its most tangible in the fug of the press-room in the Kämp, where I would take up my position in an armchair by the bar, among people I did not know. Together with the book of grammar Koskela had lent me, I would open up my notebook and start copying out words from the newspapers, while listening in on the conversations going on around me. Whenever some important army officer or civil servant entered the room, a small knot of journalists would suddenly form, shouting out questions and leafing through their notepads. I would slip in amongst them, listening to each question as though it were the one I myself would have liked to ask and staring firmly into the eyes of the person being questioned while he gave his reply. Although I had only the barest grasp of what was being said, I laughed along with the reporters, and shook my head to indicate that I shared their irritation when the replies were too evasive. They offered me cigarettes and glasses of brandy, which I accepted without a word of thanks, as though they were my due. When the hubbub died down and everyone went back to their seats, I too would settle down on a nearby sofa, open the Helsingin Sanomat and pretend to read.
It was in the Kämp that I finally became friendly with a German journalist, although perhaps he was rather an acquaintance than a friend. We would greet each other and sit together without speaking, as though we had no need of words to understand each other. He must have pieced together his own version of my story from the few words we had actually managed to exchange. I knew that he was a journalist, and that he was German: that was enough for me. Hearing him talk his language, on the telephone or with some diplomat, I was reminded of the weeks I had spent on board the Tübingen, of the merciless blue of that sea, so different from the desert of ice that lay before Helsinki, of the radiant vision of Trieste and the kindly attentions of Doctor Friari. Since any attempt at conversation required an extreme effort, we had tacitly decided to abandon any further deepening of our friendship. After all, in that doom-laden atmosphere nothing seemed to have a future and friendship, like love, served merely to pass the time. For me, not having to talk was always a relief; but his presence reassured me, gave me a sense of warmth. I would pretend that I had ended up sitting beside him by pure chance; with my notebook, pencil and newspaper, I liked to imagine that I too was a journalist, but I kept this piece of make-believe to myself. He would glance at me out of the corner of his eye, and seemed to have understood everything about me. One night the lobby of the Kämp was strangely deserted; he was sitting typing in a corner, next to the piano, I was in an armchair trying to put off the moment of returning to the hospital for as long as possible. I had drunk and smoked too much and was about to fall asleep, when I heard him whistling a tune which I must already have known. Without realizing it, I began to sing: ‘Davanti un fiasco di vin, quel fiol d’un can fa le feste, perche xe un can de Trieste, e ghe piasi el vin!’ He turned round, intrigued, breathing the smoke from his recently discarded cigarette out through his nostrils. I raised the empty glass I was still holding and repeated that one verse of a popular drinking-song I’d heard so often in the beer-houses in Trieste. Smiling though disconcerted, the journalist offered me a cigarette and made some surprised comment in German. I shrugged, pointing to a print of a ship which was hanging on the wall. From then onwards he took to calling me ‘Trieste’, and that was how he introduced me to his colleagues. He had realized that I was not in fact a journalist, but apart from some vague questions about Trieste, he had never asked me anything. He observed and respected the mysterious notebook in which he saw me scrupulously taking down the words I would underline in the Helsingin Sanomat; without guessing the secret thread that ran between them, he had nonetheless sensed that they were not taken entirely at random. Seeing that I spent most of my time wandering around without anything to do, at first sporadically but then increasingly often he began to use me as an errand boy, sending me to the post with telegrams, to the Hotel Torni to pick up messages or buy him a newspaper, rewarding me with the odd mark and the occasional cigarette. He made his requests known to me by means of an extremely effective range of gestures, backed up by his personal brand of international German: ‘Trieste, bitte, telegramm presto zum Post!’ he would say, without taking the cigarette from his mouth. When he left for the front at the beginning of June, other journalists employed my services. So, as time passed, everyone at the Kämp knew me, even though they knew nothing about me. The Kämp had become my home from home; I felt less anxious there, and my jacket was just one blue sailor’s jacket hanging among others.
New Finnish Grammar
‘They’re looking for people to help with the bonfires. Tonight’s the night.’ I was the only person in the room, lying stretched out on my bed and staring at the ceiling, but the pastor had come into the visitors’ quarters on tiptoe and had spoken in an undertone.
‘The bonfires?’ I asked.
‘The army’s putting great piles of wood together to the north of the city. Tonight, when the Russian bombers come, our men will set fire to them. It’s a trick: they’ll think they’re seeing Helsinki going up in flames, and that’s where they’ll drop their bombs!’ he explained, taking my jacket off the nail and throwing it towards me.
We piled into the lorries, which then drove off, lights dimmed, towards the forest further inland, along a track of frozen snow. It was pitch black; the snow gave off no reflection, and the dark sky loomed above us. Suddenly we stopped, deep in the woods; the whole column waited in silence, scanning the sky. I couldn’t see hair or hide of the pastor, but I sensed that he was n
ear me; I recognized the unmistakable smell of his overcoat, which smelt of musty paper, as did the sacristy. We carried on walking until we came to a large clearing, where groups of men were already at work around large heaps of cut-down trees; there were also several tractors, and dray-horses. The lorries drew up in a circle; we clambered out and formed a line, to be handed axes and saws. Then we were divided into teams, and each was given a task. I worked for hours in silence, unable to make out the faces of my companions. I recognized them by their movements, by the way they walked across the snow. The pastor was wearing a cap with the earflaps unfastened, so that they swung around with his every movement, making him look like one of the magicians from the Kalevala that he would show me from his illustrated version. Our team’s task was to drag the trunks into the clearing after they had been cut down and roughly trimmed by other soldiers in the forest. We would saw them up into bits, then another team would come to collect them and pile them up. The exhaustion, the sweat, that whole clearing swirling with the men’s white breath, those bodies working in silence, all gave me a sense of peace, of harmony. I was no longer alone, no longer an outsider. I was among my own people; I was working with them to protect our land. It was a powerful feeling; it lent strength to my right arm as I drew on the great toothed blade which bit so effortlessly into the flesh of the wood, as though it too was eager to bolster that surge of concerted energy. The pastor must have noticed, because he came up behind me and slapped me on the shoulder. The earflaps swung around, and I could imagine the expression on his face, although I couldn’t see it. A whistle halted us in our tracks; the tractors turned off their engines and we all ran into the woods, then waited in silence. Shortly afterwards we heard a rumble, followed by several explosions: they were bombing Helsinki. Orders were barked out; a tanker emerged from the woods and began to douse the piles of wood with naphtha; the lorries formed into columns, in preparation for departure. I followed Koskela’s earflaps, then found myself seated next to him, puffing and sweating. No one said a word; the only sound was my companions’ laboured breathing. The column started up. Before we turned into the woods, a gigantic burst of flame lit up the whole clearing, then bounded skywards. Suddenly the faces of my companions leapt out of the darkness, each with its own fear, its own amazement.
We did not make for Helsinki, but headed north-west. After some time the whole column drew up on a road in the woods, and waited; a sergeant handed out cigarettes, and passed round a bottle of koskenkorva. Most of the soldiers had climbed out of the lorries and were listening to the sound of the bombs, trying to work out where they were falling. Then suddenly we heard the sound of an approaching rumble, increasingly clear, and loud. The Russian planes were right above our heads, we could almost hear the throb of the pistons, the metallic whirr of the propellers. The ground was shaken by several powerful explosions; the soldiers were becoming uneasy, some were running along the column looking for officers. Then the rumour spread.
‘It’s working!’ someone shouted.
‘Hurray!’ we all shouted back.
Then the sound of singing rang out through the dark woods: voices previously held in check were now set free to rise upwards, soft and buoyant. It was as though all Finland were singing, as though the same song, delicate as glass, was rising from each woods, each lake, each far-flung house of that vast land. Restrained and gentle as it was, it seemed ill-suited to that night of war; and yet, ever more solid, ever more convinced, it flooded every last corner of the forest, leaving no place or heart untouched. Behind us the sky was aflame, the Russian bombers were flying above our heads but did not see us, and we, bareheaded now, beneath them in the woods, were singing: ever more loudly, louder than the planes, louder than the roar of the lorries as they moved off again, and our voices rose to a shout, our song became a battle cry. Now the rattle of bombs was all but drowned out by the sound of a marching song, its rhythm marked by the stamp of our heavy boots upon the ground. We were no longer afraid of being taken by surprise, indeed we wanted them to hear us, we wanted to fling those words of strength and outrage in their faces. I didn’t know them well, but I managed to grasp the drift of those songs and imitate their sounds; I opened my mouth as though to drink in the music which was pouring down on me, fully to share the magic of that rhythm. The tune throbbed around me as though it were in my very veins, and even the distant flames seemed to move to its racked dance.
It was dawn by the time we were back in the city. We knew that Kotka had taken a bad hit, but Helsinki had been left relatively unscathed. There were a few hours until the morning service, but both Koskela and I were too excited to think of sleep; instead, we retired to the sacristy and allowed ourselves the luxury of burning a few large logs, and making tea. The room was filled with the fragrant scent of woodsmoke.
‘Fire! Iron and fire! These are the only things that count in war! You whose name is Sampo – did you know that you are born of fire? Sampo is a sacred word for the Finns; the whole of the Kalevala revolves around it. No one can say exactly what it was, no one has ever seen it, because it has been destroyed. It might have been the pillar which held up the earth, and whose collapse for ever cut us off from the place we came from. Legend has it that the Sampo has three lids, which are made from the tip of a swan’s wing, the milk from a barren cow and the seed from a head of barley. It could have been made only by Ilmarinen, the smith god who had already forged the ‘lid of heaven’, together with the planets and the stars. The queen of Pohjola had promised her daughter in marriage to the runoilija (poet) Väinämöinen, if he procured the Sampo for her. He gave the offer close consideration: the queen of Pohjola was the powerful ruler of the land of ice, and her people had tried to invade the fertile plains of Kaleva on more than one occasion; marriage with the daughter of his longstanding rival would at last bring peace to the two peoples. Furthermore, a young princess would give new life to his old blood, sapped by the passing of the years. The great runoilija wanted to ensure a radiant future for his people; for their sake he was even willing to forego the Sampo. So Väinämöinen instructed Ilmarinen to go to the kingdom of Pohjola, to render this great service to the queen of the land of ice. The faithful Ilmarinen obeys the orders of his lord. Arriving at the court of Pohjola he promptly sets to work, and on the first day the breath of his bellows coaxes into life a golden arch with a silver apex. it was most beautiful, it was prodigious, but it was not what he wanted, and the smith casts it back into the fire. The next day what he produces is a boat, completely red but with a golden stern and copper rowlocks, and clearly this is not the Sampo either. The smith persists: after drawing a golden-horned heifer from his forge, its forehead strewn with stars and the disc of the sun upon its head, and a plough with a golden ploughshare, a copper shaft and a silver tip, at last, on the fourth day, it is truly the Sampo that emerges from the flames. Ilmarinen is exultant: he places three mills beside it, one for making flour, one salt, and one gold. The magical Sampo, which will give men light, has been created. As a reward, the queen of Pohjola will offer her splendid daughter in marriage not to Väinämöinen, but to Ilmarinen. For this powerful ruler had already understood that Väinämöinen was a man of the past, from the time when the world was made of water and men were fish. The future lay in iron, and in the fire which melted it, turning it into the magical Sampo!’
‘So, do you sense the power, the truth that lies within this story?’ the pastor asked me as he poured the tea.
I took the cup from him, my hands still red with cold. I had grasped the bare bones of it even if much escaped me, above all those strange words, those fantastical objects whose shape the pastor outlined vainly with his hands: I had never seen anything like them. But I had been captivated by seeing the sounds forming themselves in his mouth, to be turned into words, then melt away. When I could not understand them, I listened to them like music, a fascinated witness to their fleeting life. How many words were needed to bring a man to life!
Meanwhile, a smoke-laden warmth had bui
lt up in the church. Hanging above the stove, Koskela’s overcoat and my jacket were drying, giving out a smell of naphtha. Without caring whether I was following or not, the pastor had begun to speak again.
‘When you can read the Kalevala you will be a real Finn; when you can feel the rhythm of its songs, your hair will stand on end and you will truly be one of us! Look!’ he added, opening the black leatherbound volume on the table. ‘These are not just words! This is a revealed cosmogony, the mathematics that holds the created world in place! Ours is a logarithmic grammar: the more you chase after it, the more it escapes you down endless corridors of numbers, all alike yet subtly different, like the fugues of Bach! Finnish syntax is thorny but delicate: instead of starting from the centre of things, it surrounds and envelops them from without. As a result, the Finnish sentence is like a cocoon, impenetrable, closed in upon itself; here meaning ripens slowly and then, when ripe, flies off, bright and elusive, leaving those who are not familiar with our language with the feeling that they have failed to understand what has been said. For this reason, when foreigners listen to a Finn speaking, they always have the sense that something is flying out of his mouth: the words fan out and lightly close in again; they hover in the air and then dissolve. It is pointless to try and capture them, because their meaning is in their flight: it is this that you must catch, using your eyes and ears. Hands are no help. This is one of the loveliest things about the Finnish language!’
