by Diego Marani
Koskela would intersperse his speeches with long pauses, during which he would become suddenly motionless, as though entranced by his own train of thought. This gave me time to gather up such scattered remnants as I had managed to grasp and put them down on paper. Sipping my tea, I would leaf through the pages of the Kalevala, seeking out the words which I did not know but which I had heard in his account, so that I could ask him about them. I would also linger on the images. I noticed that the signs that gave physical shape to that ancient language seemed to have something in common with the characters described: drawn in Indian ink so that they looked almost three-dimensional, the tousle-headed heroes had nothing with which to express themselves except the words that lay around them: solid and dense, these words marched across the page in geometrical, almost military order, reinforced by the alternating rhyme schemes. I did not read the rhyme, rather I saw it, like reassuring embroidery made of the same three letters, bonding the lines together like an iron nail.
My own personal knowledge of our national epic has enabled me to reconstruct some illegible parts of the preceding text. The author was probably copying out sentences dictated by the pastor during his lessons: clearly, in his excitement, Koskela must have been speaking too fast for his still inexpert pupil to take them down in their entirety. As to Koskela’s dense reflections on language, here and elsewhere, I have been able to reconstruct them thanks to the substantial notes written on the back of the illustrations in his copy of the Kalevala, which I came across together with this manuscript. In an envelope glued into the jacket flap, along with sacred images and old Russian stamps, I also found various theological writings, indeed virtual dissertations, by the pastor which I incorporated into the manuscript where I felt that the author’s notes seemed to be referring to them. I too would have liked to have known the Army Chaplain Olof Koskela, and to have talked with him of the Kalevala and of God. His reflections often surprised me: if in some places I recognized the signs of his religious training, others were marked by an open-mindedness rare in a Lutheran Pastor. I do not know how old he was, but judging by the date of his edition of the Kalevala I inferred that he was just a little younger than my father; so that I cannot help wondering which side he was on during the civil war. His dislike for the Russians is only part of the story. Perhaps Olof Koskela was indeed a shaman; certainly he was one of the few remaining free spirits in this country at the time.
The pages which follow reproduce a series of dialogues; they are among the most indecipherable in the manuscript, full of crossings out, spelling mistakes and words in the wrong case. Sometimes it is not even clear who is speaking, and the responses are often incomplete, full of blank spaces. Clearly, this part of the manuscript was never corrected by the pastor, and I have been able to fill in the blanks with help from Miss Ilma Koivisto, indeed it was she who transcribed them. It was she who reconstructed the author’s descriptions of the landscape, and other of his thoughts. In the manuscript text the digressions which introduce and follow the dialogues are only roughly sketched in, barely hinted at by fragments of sentences, single words, heavily rewritten or underlined. Like buoys on the ocean of the page, they pointed me towards the flotsam and jetsam of conversations I had had with the author on board the Tübingen in the autumn of 1943. In this way, encrusted now with shells and overlaid with seaweed, the thoughts of which I am once more taking possession do indeed belong to me.
It was snowing heavily as I left the hospital, one evening in late March. Walking as fast as I could along the Esplanadi, I heard what I thought was the sound of a piano playing, borne on a gust of wind, coming from the Kämp. Opening the door, I was met by the welcoming sight of a choir of uniformed nurses, standing before an audience that was, for once, quietly attentive. Shaking the snow from my coat, I too joined the crowd, taking my place in one of the back rows. The room was brighter than usual; there were lamps on the tables I’d never seen before, and various ornamental plants had been laid out at the foot of the little dais, itself covered with a red cloth bearing the emblem of the Lotta-Svärd. The piano had been moved into the middle of the room, and was being played by an officer from the frontier guards, who was wearing a uniform which was too big for him. The occupants of the front rows were mainly officers in regimentals, and ambassadors in tails; behind them sat the journalists, together with a group of soldiers wearing dark grey uniforms, with badges which I did not recognize, their chapped faces suggesting that they had just returned from the front. It was beside one of these that I had seated myself; he was listening to the choir as one hears mass, with his head bowed and his hands placed firmly on his knees. The red mark of a scar was visible on the nape of his neck, amidst the close-cropped hair. The heavy fabric of his uniform gave out a smell of disinfectant which reminded me of the piles of blankets in the laundry, laced with a scent of soap; his boots and belt smelled of recently applied polish. The waiters were handing round some warm drink which was very strong; I took a glass from every tray that came around, and it was not long before I was well and truly drunk, glowing with alcoholic warmth, which somewhat lifted my dark mood. In the crammed lobby, the show went on; the silence preceding each number became increasingly tense and grave; so still was the room that you could hear the trees on the Esplanadi rustling in the wind. The voices of the nurses rang out with a mellow softness which was quite unlike the martial tones that I was used to hearing; they rose beguilingly in harmonic scales, then dropped again in geometric spirals. Yet for some reason their songs seemed to inspire the audience with the patriotic fervour normally aroused by a military march. The final song left the soldiers around me positively incandescent, and they burst into applause where joy and fear mingled in equal measure. It was not one of the gentle popular tunes they had been singing previously, but a march which everybody knew. I myself had also heard it somewhere, I could not remember where. At the first notes, one soldier tossed his cap into the air, others turned to hug each other, shouting words I could not understand; then, to a man, they rose to their feet, took one another by the shoulder and added their own deep voices to those of the choir. It was then that I recognized the march: suddenly I remembered the night of the bonfires, the icy road and my unknown companions singing in the dark. Perhaps they were indeed the very same men: I had seen nothing of them but the glowing tips of their cigarettes in the chill darkness. Now I realized that the smells too were familiar: koskenkorva, tobacco, sweat. Although I did not know the words, I too began moving my lips in imitation of the man next to me; I too applauded and thrust myself forward into the crowd which had formed around the soldiers, some of whom were weeping. The nurses on the dais were visibly moved, and had fallen silent, to listen to the soldiers; they looked hot and tired, yet quite composed. They remained in their rows, hands clasped, feet neatly together. Once the soldiers had fallen silent and the applause had finally died down, the usual atmosphere returned. As people filed slowly out, pulling on their overcoats, the waiters replaced the chairs around the tables and pushed the armchairs back into place beside the windows. After exchanging handshakes and military salutes, the soldiers too picked up their greatcoats and left the room. I saw them climb on to a military lorry, its headlights lighting up the whole room as it executed a turn in front of the hotel. The soldiers in regimentals, and the ambassadors, disappeared into the waiting limousines and drove away. Seated at the tables in the back of the room, the journalists had resumed their usual prattle about military strategy; one or two were at the bar, finishing their beer. The usual little glasses for koskenkorva now reappeared, together with the ashtrays. Several nurses had stayed behind and were now sitting with a couple of officers at a table a little to one side, where tea and cakes were being served, rather than koskenkorva; they were talking quietly and gathering the crumbs up from the tablecloth.
I had sat down in the first free armchair to hand, beside the window, and I was staring out of it at the blinding snow. The sudden calm after those rousing songs came as an anticlimax: having bee
n in a sense part of their group, having shared their emotion, I now felt more alone than ever. The Kämp’s usual bustle was not enough to keep my persistent anxiety at bay. My eye fell on my journalist friend, standing among a group of colleagues: he was holding forth in a language I did not know, putting forward his views in no uncertain terms, while another voice was raised in contradiction. I had no desire to throw myself into the usual journalists’ discussions, to pretend to understand sentences which remained impenetrable to me, doggedly to pursue each sound until I managed to dovetail it in beside another I already knew, and hence grasp its meaning. It seemed to me that I would never have the strength to do that again; I felt an irresistible desire to give myself up to silence and to solitude, to let the world make of me what it would, sending me to a painless death, like that of soldiers falling asleep in the snow. Folding up my jacket and placing it on my knee, I glimpsed the label with the words ‘Sampo Karjalainen’ and slipped my finger absently behind it. It was a small piece of fabric secured by four stitches of black cotton, as firm as the sutures of a wound: four stitches which were all that held my life in place. Perhaps it had been that military march which had sent my thoughts back to Trieste; those frightened soldiers, so like those with me on board the Tübingen, and those others in the woods. I had not forgotten Doctor Friari’s words; ever since my arrival in Helsinki, his advice had served as my rule of thumb, and had stood me in good stead. At first, it had seemed to work: as he had suggested, I had devoted myself systematically, indeed pigheadedly, to studying the Finnish language, I had allowed myself to be convinced that Finland was my country, that its people were my people, that those sounds were those of my own language. In moments of desolation, when my thoughts were at their blackest, I had stayed curled up before that flicker of hope, and so I had been saved. On such few clear days as there were, together with the pastor, I had gone to the headland at Katajanokka to see the sunrise, imagining that one day I too would be born afresh. It was not hard to give myself over to that universal need, the longing to belong. But my new adoptive identity remained a sham.
Each day meant starting again from scratch. The moment my attention lapsed, the moment I allowed my mind to wander, all the good work would be undone. The words stayed with me, my knowledge of the language became stronger and more rooted, but any sense of truly belonging to that place would have vanished. I had a distinct suspicion that I was running headlong down the wrong road. In the innermost recesses of my unconscious I was plagued by the feeling that, within my brain, another brain was beating, buried alive. The thought occurred to me that perhaps my sense of being permanently on the alert, my failure to immerse myself blindly in my new life, might stem from one single but serious omission. There was just one piece of Doctor Friari’s advice that I had failed to follow: namely, to give myself over to the search for a lover. Somewhere within me a shell had formed, as hard as stone and equally impenetrable; I could feel it, under my skin, as though I could touch it. It was the kernel of my new being. To crack it open, to offer it to someone else, meant jeopardizing even that little I had managed to build up, meant that those sixteen letters of my name might be blown away, scattered to the four winds. I who did not yet know who I was, how could I forsake myself so soon? Who could be worthy of my trust?
So there I was, lost in painful thought, hunched over my bundle of blue cloth, staring pointlessly into the distance, when a familiar figure took shape at the watery margins of my vision. I recognized its gait as it lingered on its right leg, body and neck thrust slightly forward, as though it were seeking permission to enter my thoughts. It was the nurse who had met me on my arrival at the hospital, the one who had introduced me to Koskela and whom I had never seen since.
‘Good evening! So it is you? From a distance, I wasn’t sure,’ she said, coming nervously forwards and making an effort at a smile.
‘Good evening!’ I answered, getting to my feet. I didn’t know whether to shake her hand, and she didn’t know whether or not to offer it. We ended up by exchanging something approaching a bow. My head was spinning, indeed I was probably reeling from too much alcohol; she must have noticed, and responded with a mixture of composure and embarrassment.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ I asked awkwardly.
‘We nurses were mobilized, sent off to Mikkeli. We were supposed to have been going somewhere else, but we couldn’t leave because of the bombing. Now we are off to Viipuri – tomorrow morning, in a troop train, to organize the refugee centre there, and … Oh, I’m sorry … how stupid I am! I wasn’t thinking … I was forgetting …’ When she spoke again it was more slowly, pronouncing each letter of each word with the utmost clarity:
‘Mikkeli is a city – a big city – and, well, that’s where we were, but …’
She was using her hands to give an idea of the city of Mikkeli. I broke in, smiling:
‘Don’t worry, my Finnish is much better now. I don’t speak it well, in fact I speak it extremely badly, but I understand much more.’
She nodded in surprise.
‘Oh, but you’re right, congratulations! I wasn’t paying attention! You’ve even got a slight Helsinki accent!’ She was pressing her small hands together, desperately thinking of something to say.
‘How about you? Still in the visitors’ quarters?’ Traces of red from her earlier embarrassment still lingered on her cheeks; as she spoke, she tried to thrust an unruly tuft of hair back under the cap from which it had broken loose, falling over her eyes.
‘Yes, I’m still there. Bed number six, by the window!’ I answered, a false note creeping into my voice. In my mind’s eye I saw the six white beds on the red-tiled floor like six snow-covered tombstones.
She gave me an apologetic look, as though she felt personally responsible for my fate. Her green eyes had darkened slightly, as did her voice when she asked me:
‘Is Doctor Lahtinen back yet?’
Within one question, I sensed another.
‘No. Now they say he is in Petsamo,’ I said, without much conviction.
‘Perhaps he can’t make it back. Travel is a problem, what with all the bombing …’ she offered by way of explanation, though she herself did not seem to believe her own words.
‘That’s right. Perhaps he never will!’ I shot back with a bitter smile. But I wanted to talk of other things; or perhaps I did not want to talk at all. I was forcing myself to be sociable, and it was taking its toll. I would have liked to find a quick way out of the entanglement, but some strange compulsion led me to carry on.
‘Why don’t we sit down?” I suggesting, pointing towards a table.
‘That would be nice,’ she replied, but she sounded indifferent, nor did she make a move. She had blushed again and was looking down at her shoes, hoping I would not notice. I felt that she was regretting ever having acknowledged me.
She was a very slight girl, and fragile-looking, unlike most of the other nurses, who looked and moved like sturdy farmers’ wives. She slipped off her cap and folded it up on her knee, running one hand quickly through her hair. The shifting colour of her eyes meant that there also seemed to be something changeable about her face: one moment she looked like a shy girl, whom I could scarcely imagine dealing with bomb-torn flesh, the next she looked like a grown woman, inured to the sight of suffering. Outside, the wind had died down and the snowflakes were drifting lightly towards the windows, settling into the spidery network of ice etched on to the panes; given a sense of warmth by the yellow glow of the candles, their white veiling offered a sense of security which was hard to resist.
‘What lovely voices!’ I said, nodding in the direction of her fellow-singers.
‘Thank you! You’re very kind. But then we’re singing such lovely music!’ she answered. I noticed that she was looking around uneasily, in search of some safe spot to rest her gaze. When they met mine, her eyes veered nervously away, like those of some startled creature. I too was peering around me, wondering how I might put her at her ease. Because, b
y now, I wanted her to stay; I would have liked to drive off her discomfiture with my bare hands.
‘It is so good to sing: your lungs fill up with air, your blood runs faster, even your brain works better. That is how sad music becomes joyful music,’ I said lumberingly, tripping over every word. But I was not sure that she had understood, because I often get mixed up between surullinen and iloinen’ – sad and joyful.
‘Singing is the most natural form of music; and the oldest!’ she said distantly. I thought back to my lonely nights in Trieste, when I would repeat verses from songs I’d heard in the bars, quite without understanding them – just to have some words, any words, going through my head, anything to stave off the exhausting coming and going of my thoughts. Now I had a potential associate, someone to get to know, a friendship to nurture. But shaking off the crusty embrace of solitude entailed an effort.
‘Do you sing?’ she asked, taking heart.
‘Yes, but only as children do, to pluck up courage when I am afraid.’
‘And when are you afraid?’
‘Often. Above all when I am alone, when there is too much silence. I’m always afraid that it will last forever.’
My words made her smile; clearly, they struck a chord. So as to have something to do with her hands, she had begun fiddling with one corner of her cap, rolling it up and watching it unroll.
‘Silence is music too. At school, our singing teacher used to say that silence in music is like white in a water-colour; it’s not a colour, but you need it in a painting. Silence is what is left around the patches of colour, and every painting … ‘
I kept my eyes on her, but I was not seeing her. My thoughts were chasing one another pointlessly, never catching one another up. Her voice trailed away, and she looked at me doubtfully, ill-at-ease again.
‘Perhaps what I am saying is too complicated? I’m sorry … You express yourself so well, I quite forget …’
