The Human Part

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by Kari Hotakainen


  One time a Polish film director was talking on the television. He had a difficult name, all “K”s and “R”s and “Z”s alternating over and over one after the other. He was chain smoking, and his face was pinched. He was clearly trying to speak the truth the whole time. He said that human sorrow comes from never being able to be the same age as one’s children. He spoke the truth.

  Paavo has gone without speaking for two months now. It means that I have started to talk to myself. Which is a bad thing. But apparently the amount of speech in a house is fixed. If one person stops completely, the other has to speak the full quota for the mute as well. In the very beginning speechlessness seems noble, but then the shine and the integrity wears off, and it just becomes off-putting. Paavo doesn’t notice it himself. But I do understand Paavo in this situation, even though I would like someone to talk to. This is Paavo’s way of getting over grief. I’m afraid of Paavo leaving before me. And he could leave, squatting mutely in the shed, watching the world with an evil eye. That sort of thing can open the door to cancer. I’m sure about this, and at least one doctor I know agrees.

  Glaring at the world won’t reduce the amount of evil in it. But how else but through gloomy and evil thoughts, by speaking evil, have the sages of this land risen to their positions? Or been raised. The people in the newspapers and on the television seem to want nothing more than to worship these horses’ backsides, whose opinions on every issue are as extreme and as dismal as possible. I’ve been listening to this one fisherman for years with my cheek resting on my hand to see if even one optimistic thought might come out of his mouth to light the path out to the sauna, but no, we just hear the same invocations of the end of the world and the same invective against the human race, so much so that nothing seems worth doing for a little while afterward. And that’s the problem with evil, that it’s just as disingenuous as perpetual goodness. Sometimes you’d just like to take these miserable, gloomy men in your lap and say, “Don’t focus on evil. Don’t deny goodness. Just go out into life and be dazzled.”

  There I go, all over the place. I meant to talk about the children.

  Paavo and I haven’t fretted over our children. There’s no point in that. With two daughters, if you start shedding tears in advance, you’ll start thinking your hankie was glued to your hand. Two boys evened things out. You don’t have to worry about boys in the same way. Paavo said once that if you have ladies and gents in your hand and a queen in your lap, you can leave the game feeling good. Paavo included Heikki in that phrase, even though we didn’t have him anymore.

  I’ll say one thing about Helena here in the middle, whether it’s on the record or not: the oldest child’s responsibility rests like a boulder on her shoulders her whole life. She was born bigger than the others right from the start, and that was not a good thing. As a young teenager she had a sort of serving disorder. Or if not a disorder, a temperament. She looked after the smaller ones, turning off lights, clearing dishes off the table, arranging hats and gloves. A servant’s childhood is short. Yes, I noticed how even as a young woman she sat in the corner, even putting on her make-up mechanically, not out of a desire to be attractive. As if the poor dear only had responsibilities, not privileges. Her nails were short. The others’ were red. It looked a little like when the other girls were staring off into horizon, our Helena was looking at the bus schedules. Every child of man should be allowed time for tomfoolery.

  All of our children are in business, even though we didn’t lead them in that direction in any way. Pekka and Maija are sales consultants. Before they were just salespeople, but at some point they became sales consultants. A thing doesn’t change a bit by switching its name.

  Pekka has worked in many companies, and has done well in all of them. He has done a lot of work on his stuttering. It isn’t easy to give sales pitches when you have to worry about how your words are going to come out. It pains my heart to think of the situations that boy has found himself in because of his handicap, but he has got along marvelously. A little while ago, he told us he was the general manager at a firm that sells computers. Previously he sold snowboards for a living. I didn’t know what those were, but when I saw one on the television, I understood that now children need to slide down the snow sideways. Pekka has finally started a family. Well, not quite a real one, but one of those blended families. He hasn’t come around to show us yet, but Maija told us. It made me think about how someone could get attached to children who aren’t his own, but I imagine it’s possible. Nowadays almost everything is possible, even if it looks impossible.

  Maija has had many jobs as well. Before people just had one job their whole lives. Maija said that she couldn’t even imagine being at the same place for her entire life. That hurt this lifelong button merchant a little, but I do understand something of the restlessness of these new people. Right now Maija is selling magazines over the phone. The negro, or, rather, the Afro-American multicultural person, I mean Maija’s husband, Biko, drives a bus. It’s hard wrestling with these niceties. Biko has learned Finnish quickly and now gets to drive people around the city in a blue bus. Apparently Biko is aiming for a position as a taxi driver. I think that’s dogs’ work, driving rich drunks from place to place in an expensive car, but I might be totally out to lunch about that.

  Helena is the highest up of the children. She’s become an actual marketing director. She works at a firm that has a long English name and sells ideas. Helena had to explain this to us many times. The firm doesn’t make anything and doesn’t sell things made by anyone else; but rather, they think about other companies’ business and then sell what they think to these other companies. It made my head hurt to listen to it, but Helena was patient and used our yarn shop as an example.

  If, for example, your yarn shop were in trouble, customers declining and cash flow drying up, and you couldn’t figure out why, then our firm could ponder this for you. Is the selection too narrow? Is there something wrong with the company’s logo? Is the firm’s visual image behind the times? Is the staff sufficiently energetic and understanding of modern people? Then when we get to the heart of the problem, we would create a new corporate image for you, which might mean a new general look or an expansion of your product ranges, or we might focus the need for change on some other specific area.

  This clarified things, although at the same time it offended me. I said to Helena that our business image was just fine and would continue to be so, because time couldn’t dull the beautiful sign Alfred Supinen had painted for us thirty-five years before. Paavo said that the most important thing in a button shop was that the products are in order and that the salespeople resemble the customers both in manner and appearance. Helena said she had used a familiar example so the thing we were talking about could be understood. She didn’t mean to say that our business belonged in any way to the target audience of their firm.

  In plain Finnish, Helena’s firm sells something that can’t be seen with the eye, and this separates me and Paavo from this world. Not that we oppose change, but that’s just the way things are: Paavo and I have fallen by every possible wayside. And so it should be. There’s no point in hanging on if your thoughts have already let go. The important thing is that the children can hang on at least until the next bend in the road.

  I started to get tired and asked the author to check the dictaphone to see if there was enough life on it for this time. The author said that yes, this was quite enough to get him started and that then he would make up more himself. I didn’t like that idea, but I didn’t feel like making a fuss. My strength was almost spent, and I found myself thinking of Paavo and home.

  We arranged our next meeting and shook hands. I made sure the bundle of bills was safe. It was my first wages I didn’t pay taxes on. On the way home, I thought about Paavo, my life, the children. And the taxman.

  THE MIDDLEMAN

  The author transcribed Mrs. Malmikunnas’ words from the dictaphone to paper and read them through carefully. For the first time, he h
ad something real to write about. The problem was just how to convey the woman’s life to the reader, who in the end would decide whether it was worth reading and whether the author had succeeded in transferring the life he had bought into printed form as something vibrant and interesting.

  The author remembered from his childhood how difficult it was to carry a dead dragonfly home in one piece from his grandmother’s house.

  He had been sitting in the back seat of the small car between his siblings, holding the dragonfly cupped in his hands, protecting its delicate, transparent wings. He had got out of the car awkwardly and walked carefully up the stairs to his attic room. Only then had he dared to open his hands. A small piece of one wing had broken off. Life can’t be moved from one place to another completely unharmed.

  It was in this frame of mind that he wrote a letter to the seller.

  Dear Mrs. Malmikunnas,

  I thank you for the life which I did not have before our meeting. This is a big opportunity for me, and I hope I will be worthy of your sacrifice. I just wrote everything down on paper from the dictaphone, and now I will start writing the book itself.

  I am afraid, but not afraid. I am at the same time king and subject. That is what writing is. A king rules lands and territories. A subject bows to the earth and notices the tender shoot rising from the ground. When writing, you have to be general and specific at the same time.

  Perhaps it would be good at this juncture for me to enlighten you a little about why I wanted your life in particular. The writer’s profession is very old. Before printed literature, there were oral stories, tales told around the evening fire. The best teller was the best author of that time, even though the profession itself did not exist. And what is a good teller like then? Someone like you. When I was listening to you there behind the conference center, I realized that was exactly how I wanted to do my telling, if I could. This is difficult to explain, but I can pick out a good teller like a bird-watcher might recognize a rare breed after hearing just a short snippet of the song of the bird in question. My choice was also made easier by the fact that you were serious the whole time. You didn’t try to entertain me, so I was entertained. A good teller never tries anything.

  So, I have to start the book. This is of course made more difficult because you will read it one day. At our meeting, I got the impression that you would not like for me to add anything extra to your account.

  Unfortunately, I cannot promise this, because the bare truth, no matter how genuine or personal it might be, is unpleasant to read. Now, do not misunderstand. I will try to illustrate with an example.

  The whooper swan, the Finnish national bird. Imagine that one is sitting on the bank of South Harbour in Helsinki. We see it from afar, from the terrace of the Palace Hotel. Behind the swan is a cruise ship bound for Sweden. We see a picture of a beautiful swan sitting on the bank. Our own thoughts move to the swan—we might even imagine ourselves being the swan for a moment. Up to this point, everything is true, clear and beautiful. This picture is one produced by a human, from there on the terrace of the Palace.

  But then there are also other truths.

  For example, the swan’s truth. It may not necessarily feel like a national bird, especially when we remember that it was persecuted until the 1940s. It might think, here I sit, but how long will I be allowed to sit in peace? When will I have to fly some inordinate distance to somewhere there is more food? Again those people with their shouting and taking pictures of each other with their cameras. I wouldn’t take pictures of them if I had a camera. I would take pictures of rocky isles and headlands, late in the evening and early in the morning. There is a seagull wheeling about. I know what can splash down on me out of its other end. My days are unpredictable.

  And then there is still the bias related to our eyesight. We are looking at all this from the terrace of the Palace and can’t tell that in fact the swan is sitting on the railing of the third deck of the cruise ship and headed on an overnight trip to Stockholm.

  In short, the whooper swan needs to be depicted from at least three different perspectives: from far away, from close up and from the bird’s own perspective. A picture created in this way is called a story, and, as we see, there are many truths within the story.

  We will meet once again in one month. By that time, I will have accomplished something, but it is better for me not to show you the unfinished work. This I can promise, that everything you told me will be included in the story in one way or another.

  I will probably start with Helena, even though you only told a little about her and were hiding something big.

  Best wishes, A

  A week later, the author received a postcard from Salme Malmikunnas with a lake scene on one side and the following text on the other:

  Dear Author,

  I am not a whooper swan. Weave your story with that in mind, and do justice to my life and my children. I don’t care so much about honor.

  Salme

  POSTCARD, HIGH STREET

  Well now, Helena!

  Don’t rise above everyone else. You’ll run out of air and start feeling dizzy. Eat butter and drink red milk. Or at least blue. Don’t touch the light ones, or you’ll float away. Stay on the ground. Like a mushroom. But don’t put yourself down. That makes no sense either. Your dad made enough Karelian stew yesterday to last for days. This is a hint.

  Your mother

  THE NEGOTIATOR

  Helena Malmikunnas was from a home the size of your palm. Now she was standing on the rooftop terrace of a high-rise, from which she could see so far into the distance it wasn’t any place at all. She didn’t have a sense of scale anymore. She had lost it somewhere along the way, probably in the late ’80s. If someone asked her the price of a liter of milk right now, she wouldn’t have remembered, even though a company she represented had bought a regional dairy in Satakunta yesterday.

  Helena couldn’t get a grip on anything. The granite railing of the terrace looked like clay; the clouds moved unpredictably. In her tall glass was something green and an umbrella. A brolly, Mom would say. Come on down from there, Dad would say.

  The people from the firm walked by her laughing with tall glasses in their hands. Gulls wheeled over the bay. Someone stopped in front of her and was about to say something, but then moved on.

  Helena squeezed the granite railing. It felt like the only thing that held true. Granite. A good, safe word. She felt like pressing her cheek against it, but she didn’t want to draw attention. Yes. Draw attention. Although most of the business conducted in this city was based on that, on someone being the first one to press her cheek against the granite, drawing attention and coming up with a way to charge for it. Capitalism is made up of momentary enthusiasms. Any whimsy can be called an insight. Go ahead and draw attention, but only if you can charge for it.

  Helena knew she would have to join the other people soon. The whole industry was based on that. They talked about networking. That was the only concrete concept in the industry. And now Helena was realizing she had already been in the net a long time.

  Suddenly she remembered the time as a child Dad took her with him to check fishing nets. Dad lifted the dark, restlessly tossing net into the base of the rowboat. Fish wriggled and flopped. Their eyes stood terrified on either side of their slimy heads, looking at Helena in empty accusation. You took us out of the freedom of the water to gasp for breath in your miserable world. You’re going to hit us on the head with a club and then your father will congratulate you for being such a big girl. Helena retreated to the other end of the boat. Dad said, “You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll knock them out with this club, and then we’ll go and cook up some perch soup.” In the middle of the net, Helena saw a lifeless, half-eaten fish—it looked like a roach, but ragged. It was caught by its gills, but in some way it belonged to the same group as the wriggling ones, and now as she stood and held the granite railing, Helena felt like that roach, badly tangled in the net, half eaten.

  B
ut these were feelings that no one can avoid who works over-long days in a tall building so soundproofed that neither the din of traffic nor the angry words down on the street can penetrate it. Everyone cringes sometimes in the middle of company parties, thinking, what am I doing here, even though I wanted to be here? What are those gowns and jackets walking by, jiggling full of flesh and water? Where is that jingling and jangling coming from—from those tall glasses or from the overheated brains that have been stressed all autumn with new ideas, people, memoranda, working groups and endless meetings, in the middle of which everyone, at least once, has found herself staring at a lifeless bread roll resting on a high-design, wooden serving dish, between the halves of which rest ham hacked into slices, sucking the last juices out of a curved piece of red pepper?

  Helena she had to shake these feelings within fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of privacy at a party on a rooftop terrace is the maximum—after that you have to return to your co-workers and clients and demonstrate, once again, that you are able to be not only a person, but, more specifically, a unique individual. That’s a difficult job for a person who would like to be staring off into space, to lapse into silence and whatever other lovely states of being there might be. Helena did not think she was a unique individual, even though uniqueness and individuality were trumpeted with a megaphone from the front door of nearly every company. Helena’s view was that they had been successful because they currently had enough customers who had the same kinds of ideas as they did.

 

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