by Diego Marani
After Ilma’s departure, my life resumed its dubious normality. I swallowed the days down whole, like shots of koskenkorva; I had also started to resume my regular visits to the Kämp, and my occupation as general dogsbody. At times I would accompany my journalist friend on his expeditions around the city and the outlying countryside, together with an eccentric ambassador friend of his, visiting bombed-out villages and abandoned prison camps. As Ilma had predicted, everything was now sunk in yellowish mud. The streets were slimy canals down which our vehicle slithered, sending up spurts of mushy filth. Nature was slow to reawaken; in the fields, the trees still looked completely dead, and the huts where the refugees were lodged added further desolation to the landscape. The fact that the days were drawing out seemed to be serving no purpose; for weeks on end the sky remained smoky and louring, so near the earth that it too looked as if it were soiled with mud. In the time for which I could find no other use, I wandered round the city, calling on all the people called Karjalainen I found in the phonebook. Mostly, no one came to the door; or I would be shown into dark hallways to find old women seated stock-still beside the window, or frightened families who looked at me with alarm, fearing bad news. I went up the stairs of half-empty buildings, repeated my name and received blank looks in return. I unearthed dusty little worlds of people living buried in their own houses, with nothing but a bed, a table and a tea chest of potatoes covered with a scrap of sacking. I would be met by limp bodies whose reptilian movements spoke of long confinement; by absent glances, muffled voices. They responded to my questions with incomprehensible answers, repeating them in precisely the same words when I shook my head to tell them I had not understood.
One afternoon at the end of April I ventured as far as the new parts of Vallila, where the houses petered out and the roads crossed the railway to disappear into the open country. The day was mild and windy, the sky streaked with white. It had not rained for several days and the wind had at last dried out the ever-present layer of mud. The tracks of dried earth running across the fields looked like petrified snakes, with the odd military lorry lumbering along them, sending up a line of dust like a whip-lash trail of dynamite, glowing on the horizon. I was walking along a road called Teollisuuskatu, looking for number 456, which turned out to be almost the last house, near the brick buildings by the railway. It was a large modern apartment block, with stone balconies and small windows, the main door separated from the road by a stretch of grass. I went into a gravelled courtyard, lined with rows of closed shutters. A red-haired man was mending a motorbike by one of the walls, his tools spread out beside him on a scrap of cloth; he was kneeling on the ground and peering into the open engine.
‘Excuse me, I’m looking for the Karjalainens. Heikki Karjalainen,’ I explained.
‘Second floor,’ he said, pointing towards a flight of stairs; I could hear my steps echoing out through the courtyard as I climbed them. Seeing a brown-painted door bearing a nameplate carved with the words H. Karjalainen, I stopped and listened. A smell of musty cellars rose through the air; somewhere, a wireless was playing. I pressed the brass bell; the door opened a crack and an elderly man appeared.
‘Yes?’
‘Are you Mister Karjalainen?’
‘Yes.’
‘I need to talk to you. Can I come in?’
The man peered at me from over his spectacles, hesitating for a moment before he let me in. I found myself in the gloom of a shabby living room. The only window looked out over the courtyard; I noticed a crumpled newspaper lying on a threadbare sofa. The wall opposite the window was occupied by a dark sideboard, on which stood a ticking wooden clock, decorated with stags.
‘If it’s to do with Sampo, we already know,’ the old man whispered.
‘Sampo?’ I gave a start. It was only then that I noticed a shelf cluttered with sacred images in one corner of the room, lit by a little oil lamp, in whose flickering light I now glimpsed the black-edged portrait of a sailor in uniform. I took down the photograph and went up to the window. His jacket was identical to my own; or rather it had the same collar, but the buttons were metal rather than horn. The old man followed me, shuffling around the room.
‘Second Lieutenant Manner has already been. He said it happened on the twenty-third of August.’
I stared at that face as though my life depended on it, seeking some resemblance to my own: eyes, mouth, hair. Could it be me?
‘The twenty-third of August,’ I repeated as if in a daze.
‘Yes, the day my wife and I went to eat at Kappeli’s to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I remember it well. We should never have done it, I could feel it that same evening as we were getting on to the bus. Something just wasn’t right: that red sun on the sea, our long shadows on the cobbles in the square. When you have a son who’s on active service, you don’t go to a restaurant. We were eating baked salmon and rice pudding while our son was dying; and what place is there in this world for a mother and father who have lost their son?’
The old man left the question dangling in the charged silence of the room; he was looking towards the window, and the pale light from the courtyard was reflected in his thick spectacles; behind the lenses, his eye sockets looked like two reptiles in jars of formalin.
‘That news drove Leena clean out of her mind,’ he whispered, pointing towards the half-closed door of the next room. ‘She’s like one of those soldiers who’ve trodden on a mine and got off scot-free. You must have seen them: they just sit there like statues. They look perfectly all right, just like you and me; but they don’t see, and they don’t hear. They’re like the walking dead.’
I looked around me in some disquiet, running my eyes over the room – the sideboard, the sofa, the marble table – in search of some familiar object.
‘What … what exactly happened to Sampo?’ I asked.
‘Second Lieutenant Manner said it all happened very fast. A torpedo. The Riilahti listed, caught fire and sank. All dead; but they never found Sampo.’
‘Never found him?’ I asked sharply. Noting my sudden agitation, he looked me straight in the eye for the first time.
‘Did you know him? Was he a friend of yours?’
‘I … I am called Sampo Karjalainen!’ I burst out, clutching the sailor’s portrait in both hands.
At that moment a shriek tore through the silence of the room: an old woman in a dressing-gown appeared at the door, walking towards us with staring eyes and shrieking ‘Sampo! Sampo!’ I retreated to the other side of the table in alarm.
‘Leena! Calm down! Leena!’ repeated the old man gently as he tried to restrain the woman; after a few moments she collapsed on to the sofa, fixing me with a frightened stare and whimpering.
‘Leena! What’s got into you? The gentleman won’t do you any harm, he’s just come to pay us a visit!’ He turned back to me, pulling a chair out from the table.
‘Please, do make yourself at home! What a fool I am, I haven’t even asked you to sit down! We have so few visitors, you see, I’m out of practice. Now, let’s make a pot of tea! Eh, Leena? A nice cup of tea for the gentleman! A cup of tea, that’s what we need,’ said the old man, opening the sideboard and setting teacups, saucers and teapot down haphazardly upon the table.
‘Let’s talk about Sampo,’ he added, carrying on talking as he went into the little kitchen, where I could hear him striking a match.
‘Sampo liked to have tea with us when he got back from work. Always cheerful, that boy! He would sit just where you’re sitting now, and tell us all the latest news.’
Pinned to my seat, I couldn’t take my eyes off the old woman; rocking from side to side, she stared straight back at me, repeating the fateful name under her breath. I could read it on her lips, as they opened and closed, soundlessly, non-stop.
‘Then he would go and have a wash, get on his motorbike and go into town. He bought it with his savings, you know. A German machine, a fine piece of work! That was all he was interested in. Now we’ve sold it to a neighbour
. What good is a motorbike to us?’
The old man now appeared holding a steaming teapot, which he put down on the table; the steam wafted through the room, and now there was suddenly a smell of old soup, of cigarettes forgotten on some painted surface.
‘He worked as a lathe operator, did you know? And he’d found a good job – with Abloy, quite near here, the firm which makes locks.’
I picked up my teacup absently and put it down next to the photograph of Sampo Karjalainen which the old man had left lying on the table.
‘But his real passion was for his motorbike; whenever he had a moment he would go down to polish it. On summer evenings he’d take it out to the stretch of grass in front of the building and stay there listening to the engine, looking at the smoke from the exhaust. Then he’d drive off into the blue yonder, and that was the last you’d see of him! Isn’t that right, Leena?’
The old man had sat down on the sofa, next to his wife, holding her steaming teacup, stirring it slowly and helping the old woman to take sips from it, which she did from between half-closed lips; no sooner was her mouth free than she persisted with her endless muttering.
‘Leena’s taking tea with us, aren’t you, Leena? Just like when Sampo was here, making us both laugh. And could he make us laugh, that Sampo! Telling us about his friends in the factory, those two brothers, do you remember?’
The clock on the sideboard ticked on quietly in the silences between his broken sentences; from the courtyard came the sound of an engine backfiring.
‘Only Sampo could make that thing do what he wanted. Isn’t that so, Leena?’
I suddenly felt sick: in need of light, fresh air.
‘I really must be off!’ I exclaimed, pushing the cup away, walking backwards towards the door and turning the handle.
The old man shuffled after me, but did not try to stop me leaving. He blinked behind his spectacles, staring at a gap in the balcony as he spoke.
‘Sampo, please be careful with that motorbike. Don’t drive too fast, and don’t be back late; and don’t drink too much, either, Sampo! It’s dangerous!’
I left without bothering to close the door and rushed down the stairs. On the pavement outside, the red-haired man was doggedly kicking the start pedal of the motorbike; the engine would turn over for a moment, spark briefly into life and then become flooded. A ray of sunlight falling through the main door lit up the dust and violet smoke suspended in mid-air over the pit of the courtyard. I went out with relief into the airy street, into the wan evening sunlight and began to run; I did not stop until I had left the place well behind me, stopping at last amidst the ruins of a bombed-out factory, where I sat down on a low wall, closed my eyes and breathed deeply, until my head began to spin.
At the bottom of this page the address, Teollisuuskatu 456, the date, 23 August 1943, the name of Second Lieutenant Manner, and of the ship, the Riilahti, have been noted down in block capitals, with a line drawn round them. Next to the name of the ship the author had pencilled in the word ‘minelayer’, and a question mark.
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 Tree of Happy Memories
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 wickedn
ess. 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.
