What else.
All sorts of things.
My throat was dry.
The author fetched me a mug of water.
The service station waitress glanced at us.
I drank the mug down in three gulps and looked at the author, who was solemn and pale. I suggested a sandwich and some fresh air.
He obeyed like a child and went outside.
I got some time to think in peace about what I had told him. I found that I didn’t remember much of it and hoped the author didn’t either. I looked through the glass as he wandered around the car park smoking a cigarette the way people who don’t usually smoke do. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. I imagine my verbal diarrhea had found its way into his head and was sloshing around in there now.
I looked at the mute dictaphone, which without its red light looked insignificant, an abandoned box. It reminded me of Pekka’s first tape recorder, which he called a boom box and on which he played that long-haired people’s music. He got so into that music that it almost made me jealous. As if he had been cosseted in the music. Eyes closed lying on his cot without a care in the world about tomorrow. Or else he had so many cares that he had to escape into all that noise I guess. I pestered him about it for no reason. And then I latched on to the musicians’ appearance and judged the whole thing based on that. As a mother you always hope and fear that your own daughters won’t end up under the arm of one of those messy-haired men and die in a drug den, and, given that full-time fear, I didn’t have the energy left over to find out if there was any rhyme or reason to the music.
The author came in looking pained. He said it was a little irritating that I had said so much without the dictaphone. That was the idea, I reminded him, saying that the truth doesn’t change whether or not the machines are on. And not everything has to be written down for people to read—they have enough to carry with their own worries. That was something I had always wondered about in all this art stuff, that they have to go to so much effort to specifically dig up the worst things in life and make a big to-do about them when that energy could be directed toward describing good things.
The author said that his purpose was not to wallow in the darker side of my life, but that there also wouldn’t be any sense in keeping them covered up either. He thought the whole thing was a game of light and dark, that then in the afterglow of reading the book’s reader can mull things over and decide which one comes out on top.
I noticed that I couldn’t keep up with his notions, especially when I had already spoken much more than I should have. I made a sort of concession that from now on the author could write the more sensitive things I said into the story, but only from memory.
Let the dictaphone stay off when Salme is on.
We came to an understanding about this, but it wasn’t easy continuing about Helena, especially when the matter had taken new twists after the trial. I tried to think where I would start. It felt like everything started with Helena and ended with Helena.
It made me angry. I knew that I still had to tell all sorts of things for my money and trust that it would go into the book right. I was sure it wouldn’t. It had become clear that an author’s job is to invent, to exaggerate, to lie. The truth wasn’t enough for him.
But there weren’t any alternatives.
I hated the person whose fault this all was. If that one horrible thing hadn’t happened, I could be sitting at home with Paavo weaving rugs and raanuja. All sorts of things can happen to a person in life, but nothing as big as happened to Helena. Paavo and I had been near bankruptcy many times when they slapped those presumptive taxes on the yarn shop, but we got through our troubles since we had something else behind it all. And what was that something else? The children. It was for them that a person worked and toiled and pinched pennies. It was only just that their lives not be taken away.
The author waited for me to speak, but I didn’t know where to start. He suggested that he could present questions for me to answer informally, touching on changes in the economy and the progress of my children’s careers. I expressed my surprise that he would inquire about that in particular. He said that by answering some general questions we could get back out into more open water after the logjam Helena had caused. He presumed to say “we,” as if he and I were engaged in some sort of common cause.
Well, so be it.
The children don’t tell us much about their affairs. They all work in business and are always busy. When we call them, there is always roaring and hissing where they answer. I haven’t heard from Pekka in a long time, but I suppose he has moved from the computer store to somewhere bigger. At least he said he had his sights on getting a position in some big company’s … what’s the word? Operations management.
Of course it worries me sometimes, how they are getting along in their lives down there. Like my parents were worried about how I would get along. My mother was born in a smoke sauna and didn’t live long enough to see a computer. When I told her that Paavo and I were starting a yarn shop, she was shocked. She said, “Salme, you can rest easy if you work for someone else—don’t go building sandcastles with the bank’s money. People could stop knitting altogether soon and then what will you do, all that debt and shame hanging around your neck?” This is the pattern. The next generation is always doing things the wrong way. I haven’t understood everything my children have done either, like, for example, the way Helena went to sell ideas at a company with a foreign name.
The author interrupted to say that he didn’t intend to turn the dictaphone on for the whole time we were meeting. As he said this, he took a notepad and a pencil out of his pocket. I said that he needed to put those away while I was speaking as well. The author shook his head and reminded me that he had paid for goods that he would be taking with him in some form. I gave him permission to write, but decided to speak as fast as possible so he wouldn’t be able to get it all down.
The economy. My children’s careers.
I had never thought of these things, at least consciously. Now I had to say something about them for money. Paavo and I hardly thought about work anymore—the yarn shop took and gave everything that we needed. The bottom line didn’t leave us with any debt, and there was enough profit that we could hold our heads high. It was just everyday small-business life, hand to mouth and out the other end. Living a life like that you don’t get a chance to raise your kids. They were always there in the middle of everything. They saw and heard everything, learning what they learned. Now that the end is in sight, I can say that I don’t believe in any kind of child rearing. At least in this country. Of course it is a different matter in countries where peace has prevailed uninterrupted, where people get to stand around next to the fields watching the oats grow, without any wars. Or in countries where the riches of nature force their way up out of the ground: oil, ore, gold, natural gas and whatever else. Just build roads and railways to them and then sell them to those of us with rocky fields and boys coming home with shock from the wars. In rich countries like that they can raise children, try different kinds of plants and cook more complicated meals. By saying this I don’t mean to relieve myself and Paavo of the responsibility for raising our children, but just to say that a country’s history has some significance.
Look at Sweden.
Once Paavo and I traveled by bus across the middle of it and good heavens was it tidy! Flowerbeds stretching on forever, the shoulders of the roads manicured just so, the yellow and red houses with fresh coats of paint, flaxen-haired children under the feet of carefree adults. And of course they had taken care not to be tied down by too many children, with only two in each yard. Out in the country in Finland in the old days, every family had at least three, and we had four before Heikki fell in the well. You can raise children—I’m not saying that—but there has to be some limit to how much you’re going to chase them around. And to human understanding. Humans aren’t that special.
I mean in terms of sense. When it comes to feelings we’re at the top
of the heap compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. They claim that horses, cats, dogs and cows feel some things, and they are supposed to have the ability to be hurt or to be happy, but I don’t see anything in that which would make them comparable to us. When you talk about feelings, humans are a ten out of ten. Nothing else compares to the concoctions we brew up. A human is perfectly capable of feeling shame, joy, sorrow, boredom, envy and jealousy all in one sitting.
But in terms of sense, humans are what they are.
And for this reason raising them is a bit hit and miss.
Children learn by example—it’s like running into a chair leg for them. And in a family like we had, they ran into small business. Even though no one ever used that word. The children just learned that we were in the workshop, as Paavo had a way of saying. And we were almost always there. And the children came there.
I mean they were brought up with the idea that a person really had to move for his bread. But we didn’t say it out loud. They could see it. Just like everything else in the economy in those days. The products we were selling were on the shelves, the money was cash and the credit ledger was a blue notebook. You could say that we only believed in what we could see. And we proclaimed that faith to the children as well. Unknowingly, I mean. Whether it’s sound doctrine, I don’t know. At the time it was the teaching and the custom of the land. All of our male relatives had made it through the war by the skin of their teeth, and there wasn’t any point in talking to them metaphorically about bread and fishes.
This all started with child rearing. Or the economy. It’s all one and the same life.
I looked at the author, who sat hunched over, writing as if his life depended on it.
The big graph paper notebook was filled with messy scribbling—my life.
“Everything starts in the middle and gets cut short,” Alfred Supinen said once. Paavo and I looked at each other, confused. Supinen explained that there is no clear plot in life. That we get dropped into the middle of life, we get startled awake and start to live it and then when we start to understand things, it gets cut short.
At first I was put off by what he said, but when I realized that Supinen didn’t mean anything bad by it, it started to make sense. Even though it did leave out God, whom my mother considered competent and able to arrive anywhere in the nick of time. Mother thought God’s influence extended everywhere, even though it didn’t show.
Paavo’s older brother Juhani came home from the war proclaiming at every opportunity that there wasn’t any God—there was just the Devil, who took Kauko Hänninen’s guts out of his stomach and spread them all across the Karelian Isthmus. I said to Paavo that it might be best not to invite Juhani to each and every family party. This offended Paavo, and he yelled about how we were glad enough to be living in our own country, but couldn’t stand listening to the opinions of the men who defended it.
In a way Paavo was right, but my heart broke for my mother each time Juhani would spend the first hour of the party or funeral sitting in the corner of the room before jumping up to condemn everything.
He even interrupted hymns. When we were burying Mum’s sister, and we were at the part where we sang “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide,” Juhani yelled out that the lords weren’t going to be spending the night because they were too busy butchering the working man.
Juhani’s anger was pitch black and frightening. Once when the children were playing in the garden, Juhani climbed on top of the playhouse and yelled, “Everyone knows how to hit. It takes a different kind of person to take punches!”
The children went quiet. What could they say to that?
Everything Juhani said came from a completely different world, but no one talked about psychological problems in those days. It would have been too much to start calling the boys who had been in the war crazy. Enduring horrible things like we did meant that when other problems came later, we didn’t know how to react to them or empathize with them, since the war and the price we paid for it was so fresh in our minds. You could see and hear the price tag in Juhani.
And while I’m here, with an author sitting in front of me, I should also say we could have done without all those war books. They became such a burden. As if the truth wasn’t enough of a cross to bear that you had to go making things up to add to it. It was a hard thing for Juhani when The Unknown Soldier came out and then they had to go and make a movie about such a fairy tale. Juhani got really upset about the book and said he had never guessed amidst all the blood and tattered flesh that there were such humorous, quick-witted men living in the next dugout. “That boy Linna has quite an imagination,” Juhani said. “They must not be too busy at the mill if he has time to be reinventing the war during working hours.”
The author stopped his pen and began defending Väinö Linna. According to him, Linna gave a face to the war and the men who fought in it. I said I could give him Juhani’s phone number if he wanted to talk in more detail about who provided a face and who provided a mask. I also said that although Juhani was in bad shape, basically a prisoner of his bed, he would get up for this discussion.
The author said that he wasn’t about to start arguing with a war veteran who had given all he had for us, but that he would gladly tell me what Linna’s depiction of the war was all about.
I said I knew without him telling me. It was about making the war something other than it was. War is killing. Period. An onion is an onion even if you pour honey over it and wrap it in tissue paper.
The author stood up, raising his voice. No one could say that Linna poured honey over things or wrapped the world in tissue paper.
I raised a hand. The author sat back down on his chair.
The waitress glanced at us.
I suggested that we proceed with my life and leave our discussion of what kind of life Linna invented for our broken boys for later. The author said that was fine by him. And added that it wouldn’t hurt for me to stick to the truth in my own story and leave out the honey and tissue paper.
I stood up.
I stood there, unable to speak.
I sat down.
I stood up again.
No one had ever spoken to me that way.
I said that this session was over and that I didn’t need any more money.
The author appeared calm. That made me even angrier.
The author said that I had lectured him several times about truth, but that I hadn’t stuck to it myself. I answered that he had one minute to justify that accusation and that after that I was walking out of that place and never coming back.
The author said that he had run into a Malmikunnas about a year before and claimed that I had modified the truth a bit, but said that he understood completely, because every parent sees his or her children through the eyes of love, not truth. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with this. Everyone tries to build his career to the best of his ability, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. And every child protects his parents from worry and care.
It made me feel like vomiting to hear talk like that.
I knew the author didn’t have a family and so had no concept of what it was like to watch a child’s life from the outside. I fidgeted with the good luck charm hanging from my handbag that Sini had crocheted and tried to think what to do.
Nothing.
Alfred Supinen always said that the worst thing was not to be able to do anything. There was nothing to be gained painting yourself into a corner—there should always be an open door. Well said, Alfred, but then you didn’t have a family.
My grief started coming back. Just a few months ago everything had been good, the children in good jobs and well fed like ducks in a row. Now I was sitting at the corner table of an ugly service station accused of twisting the truth.
I started to collect my things.
The author stopped me by putting his hand on my shoulder. I flung the hand away.
The author begged my pardon for his choic
e of words and swore he held my truth in high regard even though Pekka had caused him to doubt it.
I felt dizzy. It felt bad for a stranger to say the name of my only living son out loud.
The author said he had taken his computer to be repaired at a certain shop, and that the machine had been worked on by a man named Pekka Malmikunnas, who, according to what I had said, should have been the general manager, not a repairman.
Is that so?
I didn’t know what else to say straightaway, but after drinking my glass of juice, I did.
If my son is a repairman, then why don’t you write him as a general manager like Väinö Linna would have done, eh? If they had to embellish the war, then let’s embellish peacetime as well! Give him a new life. Don’t leave my son languishing in the repair shop. Make up a proper position for him!
The waitress started walking toward my shout.
The author told her nothing was wrong and that we were just trading opinions. I corrected him, saying that we weren’t trading opinions, we were trading lives. And this gentleman right here is going to make my son’s life completely different in exchange for money. The waitress shook her head and disappeared into the kitchen.
Silence fell.
I tried to hate Pekka, but in vain. Then I tried to hate the author and myself, but nothing came of that either.
I gave up. I didn’t have the energy anymore.
I told the author he could go ahead and turn on every dictaphone in the world and write whatever he wanted, that it would suit me just fine so long as I got to hear my eldest daughter laugh one more time before I died.
I don’t know if it’s even possible anymore. Right now it feels like it isn’t. Paavo will speak again—I know that—but I’m not sure about Helena laughing. A person is built to withstand everything and then nothing at all. There is a limit somewhere. You have to know that limit. And now I do. Now, Author, you’ve had your lot, and I’ve had my fill. I will talk to you for one more hour and then afterward I will leave here with that money and go home, and we will never meet again. You can live in your world making up new lives, and I will live out the rest of this life of mine. I wish you all the best. I do not think ill of you, because I have learned in life that evil is catching and good floats in the air. Go ahead and turn on the dictaphone. I’m going to tell you what kind of sendoff our Pekka got for his teenage years, and maybe you’ll understand his current situation better.
The Human Part Page 11