‘Please, have a piece of coffee-bread,’ she offered.
‘What?’
‘There, on the table. Please take some.’
He hadn’t even noticed it. A plaited loaf of cardamom bread, its surface sticky with crushed loaf-sugar. She had already cut it into slices.
‘Thank you. It looks delicious.’
‘I didn’t make it, if that’s what you mean. It’s from the bakery.’
Yes, he thought, of course, everything has changed. You’ve better things to do than bake coffee-bread for me, and you want me to know it. Yes, that’s exactly what a young student teacher would do: she’d dash out to the corner bakery and then back again with the warm, greasy paper bag.
‘This is a very pleasant room,’ he observed. She came to the table, poured the coffee, looking down, and then suddenly looked up and smiled. But he dropped his eyes.
‘I’ve been very lucky,’ she said. ‘I have a friend called Magda, and I share this apartment with her. You’ll meet Magda, I think, if you’re staying in Helsinki for a while.’
So there were two of them in this one room. You wouldn’t think it was big enough. There weren’t even two beds. In his house Eeva had had her own room. Didn’t she miss the privacy?
‘That’s Magda’s bed, behind the curtain. It’s such a big room that you hardly notice the beds. All our friends are envious – and the rent’s quite reasonable –’
‘You deserve good fortune,’ he said in a low voice.
It was the first personal thing he had said, and he felt her stiffen like a cat.
‘I was glad to get your letter,’ he went on. ‘I’d be happy to help you in any way I can –’
‘But?’
‘Please, Eeva. All I mean is that I need to know what help you need. You say that your friend has been arrested. Do you know why?’
She put down her coffee cup. She’d gone very pale, and he noticed that the skin around her mouth was chapped. Her eyes were red with tiredness, and there was a spot at the side of her nose. Her hair was scraped back, lustreless. He took in these things, one by one, but they refused to make her less beautiful in his eyes.
‘For no reason,’ she said. ‘It’s never for any reason.’
He leaned forward. ‘Listen, Eeva. Don’t you believe that you can trust me? If I’m to help you, I’ve got to know more than this.’
Her fingers, which were lying flat on the table, quivered.
‘I have some schnapps,’ he said. He rose and fetched the little flask he carried in the breast pocket of his coat. ‘Have you a glass? No, please don’t get up. Just tell me where it is.’
‘In the cupboard, to the left of the stove,’ she murmured. She was paler than ever, and her forehead was sweaty. He poured a shot of schnapps into the glass and gave it to her.
‘Drink it. You’ll feel better.’
She screwed up her eyes, and gulped the stuff down. A few seconds later, colour flooded into her cheeks.
‘Does that feel better?’
She nodded.
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I don’t know, I –’
‘Try a little of this coffee-bread.’
She chewed a little of the sweet bread. Her throat moved, and she swallowed.
‘Just a little more,’ he urged.
Soon she had eaten the whole slice. She looked at him, surprised. ‘I do feel better. I kept getting a noise in my head, but it’s gone now.’
‘Yes. That’s from weakness. You mustn’t let yourself get so weak, Eeva. You have a duty to yourself as well as to – well, to anybody else.’
‘They took him away. I don’t know where he is.’
‘Haven’t you any friends who can find out for you?’ he asked, supposing somehow that there would be a network of the young hotheads, who all believed that they could bring about Finnish independence by the middle of next week, no doubt.
‘Don’t you have any –’ what was the word? – ‘contacts?’
‘Yes. I suppose so. I know people.’ She paused, sighed. ‘The Okhrana have arrested him.’
‘That’s what I thought when I received your letter.’ For he’d known immediately that Eeva wouldn’t be mixed up with common criminals. And it all fitted together: the way Eeva was, her education, her reading, things she’d said…
‘So it’s political,’ he said.
‘Everything’s political, to them. Even being alive is political.’
‘But they must have had a reason. Or a pretext, at least. People don’t get arrested for nothing.’
She looked back across the table at him. ‘You think so.’
‘Well, in spite of everything, there are laws to protect the innocent.’
But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he doubted them. Here in Helsinki, in Eeva’s room, he felt fusty and out of touch, like a man who had been buried in the forest for much too long. Life was moving on fast, but he hadn’t moved with it. All those new buildings, all those new people.
‘For you, maybe, there is protection. For a man in your position.
But that’s because you don’t rock the boat, and so they leave you alone.’
‘But your friend has rocked the boat?’
‘They think he has.’
‘Is there any truth in what they think? Is he an… an activist?’
She almost smiled at the way he brought out the word. ‘He’s done nothing wrong,’ she said at last.
‘Would you like a little more schnapps?’
‘No, I feel better.’
‘Eeva, don’t be afraid. If your friend has done nothing wrong then they’ll release him. Not immediately, perhaps. But if there’s no evidence – no proof against him – then all this will come right eventually.’
‘They make people tell them things,’ she said after a long pause, almost in a whisper. ‘Who they know and where they meet.’
A pang of fear shot through him. He’d thought of all this as a danger at one remove. But now he realized suddenly that it was a danger that might touch Eeva herself.
‘You think he might talk about you? Incriminate you?’
‘Oh no,’ she said at once. ‘No. Not Lauri. I’m not worried about that. Besides, if they’ve got a file on him, they probably know about me already.’
‘But you can’t stay here, if that’s the case.’
She shrugged. ‘Why not?’
‘My dear child, don’t you realize that you could be arrested yourself?’
‘Moving to another apartment wouldn’t prevent that. Anyway, I can’t afford to move.’
‘But listen. Listen, Eeva. That’s not the only alternative. No, please, you must listen to me. This is too serious for us to play about. Don’t you understand that you could be arrested and taken away, and then it would be impossible for me to help you?’
He saw her flinch at the words, although she tried to hide it. Eeva would be very afraid of being taken away. This was the right line to take with her. He must go ahead, he must be ruthless in using her fear to protect her from herself.
‘You can come home with me. Listen. They won’t follow you there. Who cares about an old doctor living in the forest? It’s only if you’re here in Helsinki, putting yourself in their way, that they’ll even think of taking action against you. People do it all the time, don’t they – they go off to the country and wait until everybody’s forgotten about them.’
Her face was mute, stubborn, but there was something there that convinced him she was listening. He took a deep breath to calm himself. It wouldn’t do to plead with her, she wouldn’t respect that.
‘Just for the time being, Eeva, until things calm down. I’m not going to ask you what group it is that your friend’s involved with. I don’t know what kind of people he associates with, and I don’t need to know.
‘But they’re mistaken, to my mind. Terribly, criminally mistaken, even if it’s with the best will in the world. You can’t turn the world upside down without unleashing forces that you c
an’t control. When you’re young, you think that if you change the world, then people will change, too. But they won’t. They can’t. Things have to happen slowly. It’s like the healing of a wound, you can’t rush it. Little by little, with time and medicine and care, it begins to get better… if you’re lucky, and depending of course on the seriousness of the wound. That’s what our country is like too; our whole society. We’re wounded, of course we are. But you don’t heal a wound by driving a knife into it, or shooting a bullet into it. You don’t and you can’t.’
An image sprang to his mind. A young man, working at the Nordström mill, years ago, in old Nordström’s time. He’d slipped, and his thigh had been laid open almost to the bone.
What a job that had been. For a long time he’d privately suspected that it might come to an amputation. But he’d said nothing and allowed no one to mention the word. He’d put the fear of God into old Nordström, and made sure the boy had clean bedding, a clean mattress, good hot broth, and as much pure water as he could drink. It was slow, so slow. The wound closed, then opened again. How that boy used to stare up at him, his eyes leached with pain. He didn’t have any family.
But they got him through it. Emil, that was the boy’s name. Young Emil. He remembered so well the desperate patience in that boy’s eyes.
‘Don’t you understand, Eeva, that it’s not weakness to go slowly?’
‘We go so slowly that we’re almost standing still.’
‘Almost. Almost. But not quite, Eeva. I know it’s easy for me to talk, because life has been good to me. But look at how your own life has changed. You cannot want to throw it all away now. You must let me help you. I’m not asking you to go backwards, and return as a servant. Everything would be quite different.’
He stopped. The thought of how it might be, with Eeva in his house, constricted his chest. Eeva, sitting in a chair by the fire in a dress like the one she had on now, reading, studying, and looking up as he came in. They might talk about his patients. With her intelligence and insight, she would see straight to the heart of a difficult case. Perhaps she would like to learn to play the piano.
She would play well, he was sure of it. There were certain Mozart piano sonatas that he could almost hear, blossoming under Eeva’s fingers. The heavy curtains would be drawn, but before they went upstairs he would open both curtains and shutters to gaze out at the trees in the moonlight. That cold winter moonlight that smelled of snow and drew the wolves from the north east. She would stand at his side, breathing lightly. Before they went upstairs…
‘You could change the rooms. Re-paper them if you liked. Everything would be as you wished.’
She stared at him in astonishment.
‘You see, I’m asking you to marry me.’
She got up from her chair, pushed it in under the table and stood behind it. Her fists were clenched at her sides.
‘To marry you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you love me.’
Her voice pealed out. She looked pale and frightened, but he believed he saw a flash of triumph in her face. She hadn’t believed in him before. She’d thought he only wanted to make use of her.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
But as the words left his mouth he knew it was already too late. She was shifting away from him. It was like nightfall: one moment you can look into the forest and see each separate trunk and branch, the next they’ve vanished into the thickness of dusk. She was with him, connected to him, and then she was not. She was gone from him. He heard an intake of breath, but she didn’t speak. She was measuring her words, thinking how to answer him.
‘But I have to think of Lauri now,’ she said carefully, at last, as if she were showing a child how to share a toy.
He poured more schnapps into the glass she had emptied, looked at its quivering, slightly oily surface absently for a moment, then drank it down. There, that was better.
Everything was over. Don’t think of that now. Strangely, he felt quite light, and free. He took a little more schnapps. There was Eeva’s face, hollow with worry and weariness. Now she was worrying about him, as well as about the boy.
‘It’s all right, my dear Eeva,’ he said. His tongue moved thickly in his mouth. ‘We’ll forget about it. We’ll be as if those words had never been spoken.
‘Now, we must think of what I can do to help your friend. I haven’t a large acquaintance in Helsingfors, but I’ll do what I can. I have an old friend who always tells me that he has the ear of the ear of the Tsar.’
‘The ear of the ear of the Tsar?’
‘He knows Bobrikov. Not that it’s any recommendation, as far as I’m concerned.’
‘Bobrikov!’
‘Yes. Our Governor-General, you know. The great emissary of our Great Neighbour.’
‘I know who Bobrikov is.’
‘I don’t doubt that, Eeva. I’m not boasting of this second-hand acquaintance, I can assure you. And I can’t promise anything. Probably my old friend will turn out to be the smallest of small herrings, making himself sound big to a know-nothing provincial doctor. But he’s the only possibility I can think of. At least, I can try to find out what’s going on. You’ll tell me all you can? You’ll trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘At any rate,’ he said, moving on quickly, ‘I doubt that they’ll think of arresting me. An old country doctor with mud on his boots,’ he joked, trying to lighten her expression.
‘It’s very good of you,’ she said, and although her voice was colourless he believed that she meant what she said. It was good of him, and goodness was all he had left.
He would go to the hotel, and straight up to his room. He would fall onto the bed and make himself sleep at once. He would not eat or bathe or undress. He could feel the dark waiting for him, just behind his eyelids. If it was impossible to sleep then he would lie there quietly, without moving or crying out, until morning came. Time would pass, that was what time always did, not being able to help itself. Whatever happened, morning would come in the end. He would shave and bathe and put on clean linen and go downstairs. Tomorrow would have the great virtue of not being today.
He must talk to Eeva about the boy. He would take down all the details quite calmly, as if they were symptoms that might lead him to a diagnosis. And then tomorrow, and the next day, and for however many days it took, he’d try to find out what was really going on. He would do everything he could to help Eeva, and his conscience would be clear.
‘Eeva,’ he said, looking straight into her eyes for the first time.
They were as wide and light-filled as he had imagined them, but they were not unfocused. She was looking at him, and her eyes were full of tears.
31
Eeva knocked on Sasha’s door, but there was no answer. Now what could she do? Everything had been leading up to this moment.
‘You’re really going?’ Magda had asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Apparently he’s been holed up in his room since he got back from Turku, not seeing anyone. Hannu went round and couldn’t get an answer. But he was sure Sasha was at home.’
‘Why?’
‘Just a feeling.’
‘Did he try the door?’
‘He didn’t say.’
A sudden crazy thought leapt in Eeva’s head. Lauri hadn’t been taken away at all. It was all a lie. He was there, in that room. Sasha had done something to him. Holed up. A shudder of horror went through her body.
But no, it couldn’t be true. A comrade with contacts in the Okhrana administrative offices had confirmed Lauri’s arrest. She must not let her thoughts go crazy like this. She must keep in control, whatever happened, or she would lose sight of what was real and what was not.
‘Listen, Eeva, I’ll come with you.’
‘There’s no need for that.’
‘I really don’t think you should go on your own.’
‘What’s going to happen to me? Besides –’
‘What?’
Magda frowned. She wanted very much to come with Eeva. It was because she wanted to protect Eeva, she told herself. Eeva was vulnerable. But there was another factor that Magda barely even voiced to herself. She did not like couples, and however much she disguised this fact from herself by being generous, or by keeping out of the way so that ‘Eeva and Lauri have time to develop their friendship’, as she put it to herself, there was a bright, buzzing sense of excitement in her now that Lauri had been taken off the scene.
But if there was an inner betrayal, then there must also be a chivalrous readiness to do whatever Eeva needed Magda to do.
‘If you’re gone more than an hour, I’m coming straight over,’ said Magda firmly.
‘I won’t be that long.’
Magda pushed her papers together.
‘Eeva, you know what Sasha is. Or rather you don’t know, none of us knows. That man is a mass of possibilities.’
‘I wish Lauri had never met him.’
‘Yes, but it happened. Sasha did like Lauri, that was genuine. They’d never have become so close otherwise, because Lauri was no fool.’
‘Magda, don’t, please don’t talk about Lauri in that way, as if everything’s finished –’
‘Oh Eeva, I’m so sorry, I’ve made you cry.’
Magda jumped up, knocking her papers to the floor, ran to Eeva and took her in her arms. Eeva stood awkwardly, unyielding.
‘There now, I’m so sorry. Listen, it’s going to be all right.’
It was what Magda didn’t say that counted. Magda never lied. She didn’t say that it would be all right because Lauri would come back.
‘It’ll be jamfedora, pet, you’ll see,’ said Magda, rocking Eeva’s stiff body in her arms.
‘Jamfedora?’
‘Don’t worry, it’s nonsense, something my mother used to say to cheer us up when we were sad. It’s not even German. Just nonsense, a family thing.’
‘It’s nice.’
‘I used to think that when I had children, all the things my mother used to say would come back to life again. That’s the way it goes, isn’t it?’
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