The Dedalus Book of Finnish Fantasy

by Johanna Sinisalo (Translator

  The Secretary General called me at the studio straight after the news broadcast and said that, from the State’s point of view, words like this were absolutely right given the current situation. I thanked him like an imbecile. But as soon as that short and one-sided conversation ended, I knew that things could no longer be like this. I mustn’t, mustn’t thank people, mustn’t do favours for which other people can take the credit, and all in the name of the State.

  I simply knew this for a fact. From that day onwards my path was marked out. You can’t see the future, but you can look far ahead.

  As the situation throughout the State worsened by the day, eventually the Secretary General had to be changed. Things all happened the way they should. The head of channel two became the new Secretary General. This of course suited me fine, because such a decision would never have been made without the reflected light of The Truth Show, and I knew very well that the new Secretary General would remember this as long as he was in office.

  I was promoted first to the position of head of programming at channel two and later to a position directly beneath the Secretary General, where I was to control all State broadcasting and all channels.

  The situation was such back then that we couldn’t afford to risk a thing. We had to establish a body to unify the content of all scheduled programmes, and I was that body.

  I kept my own programme, but now it only ran once a week. I began prerecording sections in the office studio and storing them ready in the archive, suitable for a variety of different occasions but so that they looked like live broadcasts. It isn’t lying, because you don’t always have to visit a place personally when you already know exactly what is happening.

  Rather, knowledge is when at any given moment you know what is right or good. Or at the very least what is appropriate.

  When I received the promotion and was moved into the Secretary General’s office as chief controller I had to learn to know far more. In such a position, as the head of all State channels, you simply can’t be ignorant of anything. You must be able to respond quickly and say what is right or at the very least what is good for the State. Of course, this all varies depending on the particular instance in question and the constantly changing circumstances. So if, say, the given circumstance is the climate, then the instance in question will be that day’s weather. Then of course you also have to dress accordingly. If the suit fits, then it is right.

  For anyone to talk to me of change would have been pointless. In a new position like this the need for change was natural, because you had to learn to know more. You won’t find summer roses blossoming in the snows of January. There’s no use floating around in the past relying on your imagination.

  I’m no longer in contact with those who saw fit to talk to me of change. In fact, it’s for the best. In my new position I certainly couldn’t have been seen to take a personal interest in my former friends’ business over other people’s. I finally removed The Truth Show from channel two and ordered it to be shown once a week on all channels simultaneously. This way programming became far more balanced. Staff at the Secretary General’s office thought this a very sensible solution too, because it helped ensure the wide reception of certain important decrees.

  Despite this, there were some people who saw fit to criticise me for such rational thinking. I just let them talk and listened patiently. It’s a good way to treat your staff; let them vent their anger, then they’ll be humble again for a while once they realise that they ought to be ashamed of what they said. And if they are not humble, there are other means.

  In difficult situations like this you need to take decisive action, and the situation throughout the State was far from good. The air temperature was cooling because of the clouds of smog and soot particles drifting across the striped sky. The entire energy system had to be reorganised by regulating and rationing consumption and by collecting red hot earth from the reactor area and packing it around heat-retaining units.

  So even though everything was getting worse all the time, we had to give the impression that things were in fact improving. This was part of my new job. I had to play the State optimist, even though I was aware of so much.

  When I was transferred to the position beneath the Secretary General my workplace moved into the head office building. The Secretary General’s offices were on the eleventh floor. At that time my office was four floors lower, on the seventh floor. Even from my window you could see the sky in the north and the north-east, and how the reactor zone was marching closer by the week.

  Nothing was done about it and no one seemed to take responsibility for anything. I began to talk about these matters very discreetly amongst a small group of trusted friends. Whenever appropriate, I reminded people that I would remain loyal and faithful to the Secretary General, even though I had no faith whatsoever that he would be able to turn things in the State around.

  All these plans were merely talk within small, closed circles, and none of it was meant to get out in any way, but, of course, eventually it did. That very day, when I first heard the rumours of calls for reform amongst the leading factions of the security police and the army, I went up to the Secretary General’s office on the eleventh floor and told him of the rumours I had heard, and a little more besides. The Secretary General looked concerned and, for the very first time in a matter of such importance, he asked my advice.

  I had already developed an appropriate proposal. I suggested creating a new, more expansive task force, one with a far greater mandate. If we take the initiative ourselves and place an axe on the table, it’ll knock the wind out of the sails of anyone grumbling, I said. The Secretary General then asked me to lead this task force. Naturally I agreed because of the benefits this would bring the State, but I suggested that alongside this new assignment I might also continue as chief controller of the television and broadcasting network. The Secretary General thought this a very sensible idea indeed.

  I moved my office up to the tenth floor. From the windows you could see even more clearly the blazing skies, the governmental district and far out across the State.

  From the very first days everything became crystal clear to me. A constant flow of issues and decisions made their way up to the head of the task force, and I had great confidence in myself; I knew which direction to steer the State in order to get through the present adverse situation with as few casualties and sacrifices as possible.

  I increased inspection and surveillance at every level to ensure that dissent and opposition were not allowed to gain a foothold. In exceptional circumstances such as these, basic rights have to be compromised for the general good. Only once people have accepted this fundamental principle can they become fully integrated members of society, but if they won’t accept it they’ll be left on the outside, in opposition to everyone else.

  All manner of trouble-makers and revolutionaries were moved out of the cities and resettled near or inside the reactor zone. There was plenty of work available measuring pollution and fallout, or in various purification and clearing up operations. And of course much of the workforce was sent to harvest foodstuffs and transport them back to the cities. The fields had died back and the soil left barren after the farmers had gone and the weather had turned cold so suddenly, and so this workforce had to be instructed in how to gather food in new ways, harvesting year-old self-germinated wheat, mushrooms which grew in the cold, potatoes left in the ground, mutated crops and lots of other items people weren’t used to gathering or eating – or certainly not for the last hundred years.

  Because organising mass food distribution in these changed circumstances required a great deal of work, we had to find a suitable workforce. In a relatively short time, life in the State became much calmer and less crowded, as the worst of the grumblers and doubters and the entire antisocial, undesirable part of society was sent to do useful labour near or inside the reactor zone.

  From within my small conversation circles I got rid of anyone I felt I couldn’t trust one
hundred percent. Several people’s careers possibly came to an abrupt end over nothing, but as the head of a task force like this you just can’t be too careful. The security forces have to be unified behind you like a bar of pure steel.

  At the same time I watched my back and announced new decrees and orders, all formally in the name of the task force, and I was constantly using the State channels and broadcasting network to help me convince people that I alone was behind all these new measures.

  My orders were all good. They were firm. People couldn’t possibly have been unclear about the fact that things were not going well, but now at least they had the assurance that matters were being dealt with and that people weren’t afraid to talk openly and frankly. And once life in the cities began to calm down and the streets became quieter, it was impossible not to notice that something positive was finally happening.

  For three weeks I appeared in all news and current affairs programmes on every channel talking about the present situation and defending the new restrictions and orders. I left legislation about all citizens’ compulsory security service up to the citizens themselves. In due course an opinion poll was conducted via all channels.

  Over 98 percent of people voted for the option Yes: I wish to be involved in protecting the general good.

  When I was named the new Secretary General the following week, by this point it was nothing but a formality. The former Secretary General had been on negotiations abroad and had decided to stay there. I transferred a suitable amount of money to cover his pension and sent him one of the embassy staff, whose job was not only to help him write his memoirs but to ensure that no potentially damaging claims or columns about the State of K began spreading through our neighbouring countries.

  The very day I became Secretary General I gave a speech to the citizens on all channels. The speech features in my history book too, or rather the most important parts can be found in the supplementary material. After all, I couldn’t very well censor myself out of the Chronicles of K altogether.

  ‘Almighty God, who art in Heaven, give this nation the strength to bear its suffering, give the fully integrated members of the State of K the courage to endure this strife, give us a common will and an unselfish mind. Let us find strength in unity, though ordeals be sent to test us. God of Heaven and Earth, give me the strength to lead this State through the trials and tribulations beyond our control set upon our path.’

  This is how I began my first speech as Secretary General. I had isolated two ways in which I could establish my power quickly and effectively. It was important to speak directly to the citizens and to focus on strengthening morale.

  There is no nation as weak as one which is empty within. As Secretary General I wished to impose meaning on people’s lives.

  I decided to give religion an important role in leading the State. Both cults and the church were given more air time, but their message was unified. Preachers had speeches written for them at the Secretary General’s office. A few of the cults didn’t accept this as the only sensible method of ensuring the general good of the State, but they were eventually banned, their preachers prosecuted or exiled without charge, and members of their congregations separated from one another in small communities in the north, far away from the cities.

  I gave the security organisations increased powers of authority, though naturally I still had a perfectly realistic idea of their work. Their job within society is not to protect, it is to guard. Plucking out weeds, that’s how I defined the job of the investigative police, whilst giving new orders about the role of the security services in these changing circumstances.

  Whenever a new law or a regulation was qualified with the phrase ‘changing circumstances’, it was like trying to float in a rocky waterfall. There was already chaos everywhere, and I was in the middle of it all. The striped horizon was blazing furiously day and night. All State information was brought up to the Secretary General’s office, but from the eleventh floor windows you could see just as well and just as clearly that the horizon was ablaze. Every week the north-east and the north edged their way closer. You didn’t need statistics filtered through numerous different bureaus to tell you that. From such a height you could see that, behind the stained sun, a chill was marching forward; deep frost and a white aridity.

  It was sent by God to rape the earth. That was the message a prophet of the Ash Cross cult tried to spread as a broadcasting preacher. I was forced to do something about it because no one else would. There’s no need to frighten people like that. For humility to flourish there need only be an appropriate level of fear. If there’s too much, what will flourish instead is anger and repression. Anger is difficult to control. It’s like boiling earth, a quagmire. A society built upon anger cannot make any moves. Anger has to be dealt with early enough in order to channel it properly. It can be used effectively, but it has to be kept at a manageable level, dominated by fear.

  The eleventh floor is over thirty metres from the ground. From up there everyday things on the ground look very small. Unity Square down below would sometimes fill with swarms of people – despite the fact that this was supposed to be one of the most closely guarded government districts in the State – but from a height of thirty metres it makes no difference whether there are a hundred people down there or a thousand.

  Often I would draw a chair up to the corner of the large windows and gaze out, down into the square at support rallies organised by the army and the investigative police or out to the north-east and the striped, glowing sky, which by now had spread and already engulfed both the north and all of the east.

  If people aren’t willing to see, they won’t see anything. In a new place everything looks perfectly clear at first. You know exactly what has to be done. Then your eyes grow accustomed and your mind goes numb. You’re at once awake and asleep, and whilst you’re awake you’re making sure that no one disturbs you whilst you’re asleep.

  If I made a mistake, then it was this. When you no longer have the will to see, then you certainly won’t see a thing. There’s no mention of this mistake in my history book, or anything else about the final stages of my reign, for that matter.

  I’m not a saint, and I’m not stupid. Omitting things isn’t lying. I have no reason to lie. I’ve never had a reason to lie, neither in the State in K nor here. But then again, who would be mad enough to nail themselves up for nothing?

  Someone so much bigger than man can’t hide his handiwork, Father would say when things happened that were almost beyond his control. Or was it that some things are bigger than you and me?

  Every April without fail the stream would flood the garden and my sister and I would try to row across the yard. She was so light that she could row a plastic sledge all the way to the flagpole at the other end of the garden, but it took a couple of planks and some styrofoam to carry me. The water was a grey colour from the clay in the garden and shone, it was like a mirror in which you could see your face and behind that the great clouds in the sky.

  I don’t suppose I would ever have gone to the zone to report on events if Eeva and Aspi hadn’t been settled there. Young couples were asked to go there to farm the wasteland in between the reactors, so-called Pure Food Farms were established more to help create a positive image than because they reaped any great economic benefits. That was over twenty years ago now. Eeva and Aspi’s two daughters were born there.

  I first went there to do a report on farming, then after the reactors had been destroyed I volunteered to go back and report on the news. Eeva and Aspi’s younger daughter Taira had died. No one who had been living in the zone was allowed across the border back into the State. I would go and visit Eeva, Aspi and Ireina whenever I was up there reporting, and take them food and money. This could have got me into a lot of trouble, as any form of contact with the zone was forbidden, but I still visited and took them money every now and then.

  Aspi was employed as a dirt transporter when hot earth began being moved from the reactors to the a
reas surrounding the heat-retaining units. By replenishing the hot soil, energy could be transferred to other areas of the State. Aspi was put to work with others who had lived in the zone and those sent across from prisons. Transporting dirt required a large workforce: work was conducted in three shifts a day, seven days a week.

  Eeva joined the Ash Crosses and on the command of some prophet cremated all those who had died in the reactor explosions, dug up those already buried and burnt them, committing their bodies to fire and air.

  I can’t be held responsible for what happened to Eeva and Aspi’s family. How could anyone have helped them when even keeping in contact was forbidden and strictly controlled? Of course, reporters are even more closely guarded than others, and once I took on a more powerful position I could hardly be seen to favour my own relatives. The law is the same for everyone, and I couldn’t be responsible for bringing a shadow like that upon the Secretary General’s office, let alone upon myself.

  You can’t do everything you want. People who had lived in the zone were simply not granted permission to leave, it was nothing to do with me, it was a question of general order and security. Eeva and Aspi didn’t understand anything beyond themselves and with their constant letters and requests they put me in a very awkward position. As if it was all my fault, or as if I alone could have decided their fate. In fact, this couldn’t have been further from the truth.

  After the devastation, the zone wouldn’t even have existed for the rest of the State without me and The Truth Show. There would have been nothing but emptiness. The wind would have howled behind the border, but there would have been no one there; there are never people on the other side, just disturbance and problems. As long as people continue talking about something, at least it exists. But when people don’t talk about it, the wind just howls and the north-eastern sky is aglow day and night with aurora borealis, and even that is explained away as protuberances of the sun, and the power cuts and the lack of heating are what they are: nothing but terrorism or the work of the enemy. Without State publicity the north-eastern zone would have disappeared altogether.