He did not look to one side or the other, or even in front of him, as he walked through the sagging gate and on to the dusty road. A young girl appeared unexpectedly before him, and they almost bumped into one another.
“Delina?” the stranger said again.
He knew that the girl would answer in the affirmative. She looked exactly the same as twenty years ago, and he guessed that the daughter was named for the mother.
The girl asked, with a good command of what was for her a foreign language, whether the stranger needed an expert guide, and quoted her daily rate. He did not want a guide. He explained that he had been to visit an old friend, but it did not interest the girl in the least, and she did not trouble herself to appear interested once she knew that she would not be paid for it.
The stranger walked back to the main road and wandered for a moment before he found the cafe on whose terrace he had sat with the volunteers. He ordered a coffee and had to wait for it for a long time, even though it was a quiet time of day. A woman who looked like an old whore finally brought the coffee and some cold water in a dirty glass.
“Delina!” someone shouted from the kitchen, and the waitress turned her head.
Then the stranger understood.
Nevertheless, he asked the waitress to sit down; said that he would like to ask her something, and gave her a bank note. The woman looked bored, lit a cigarette and scratched herself, but took the money swiftly and slumped onto the chair.
“Were you born here?” the stranger asked. “Are you married? How old are you?”
He could see that Delina-the-waitress felt his nosiness to be unnecessary, but she answered nevertheless. Yes, she was born in this village, and eloped with her husband to get married, and now she was thirty-seven years old. Her husband had died, knifed in the streets of the capital some ten years ago, good riddance. A bad man, who had beaten her a lot and drunk all their money. His name had been Zmiri.
The stranger was silent for so long that Delina got up to go, but she sat down again with a sigh when the stranger asked her to. There was something else he wanted to know.
“Do you know a woman who has the same name as you, who is the same age and who has moved away? Gone somewhere, studied?”
“There is one. She got a scholarship from some aid organization and left. She’s married to a foreigner. They come here sometimes.”
The stranger did not wish to meet anyone else in that village. He circled the buildings back to a path that led toward the nearest town.
On the way, he passed the graveyard, and all he had to do was cast a glance over the low fence to see yet another possibility. In the corner was a solitary grave whose inhabitant had died at the age of nineteen, eighteen years ago. And from somewhere there appeared, once again, a begging child, who was able to tell him that this Delina had drowned in a mountain lake.
The stranger had nightmares about Delina for the rest of his life, and he believed he deserved them.
Chronicles of a State
Olli Jalonen
Translated by David Hackston
Olli Jalonen is a renowned Finnish writer and the author of more than twenty novels and short story collections. He has lived in Finland, Sweden, and Ireland, and worked as a journalist, a publicist, and a scholar (all of which may have inspired the story to follow). Jalonen’s work has received many awards, including the 1978 J. H. Erkko Award for best debut novel (now known as the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize), and in 1990, both the Eino Leino Prize and the prestigious Finlandia Prize. In “Chronicles of a State,” an anonymous narrator relates the surprising story of his career, and an infamous politician’s rise and fall . . .
I have no reason to lie. There has never been a reason for me not to give my name.
But if someone here were to ask me who I am, then perhaps I should answer, quite simply, I am the man who wrote the history of the State of K, a book so well known that I need not say my name or give myself any greater introduction.
An abridged version was made for schoolchildren as soon as the book was ready to be published as a full-length history book. That complete version was eventually never published; it was shortened instead and given the same name as the abridged version. It had to be changed quite a lot and large sections of the manuscript were omitted the better to fit the book into the schools’ Know Your Neighbors series. The Modern Age. A Short Course for Intermediate Students.
Workbooks were produced, along with supplementary texts and interactive learning material, everything necessary was done, audio material was compiled and illustrations added to the text to form a single, gleaming package. It was very well received in schools. Over fifty thousand schoolchildren have had to read extracts from The History of K, or at least look at the pictures or take part in the activities.
And so I have never had to introduce myself further because people simply know who I am. They wouldn’t know my name in any case, because the publisher thought it wise, for reasons of layout and marketing, not to print the author’s name on the front cover or in any advertising, and eventually it was omitted altogether.
It doesn’t bother me. It isn’t lying.
You had to do something; there was no way of finding work in a foreign country. There are no benefits here for defectors from neighboring countries. Neither should there be. Some get by and some don’t, and those who don’t only have themselves to blame.
When I first arrived here, if you managed to get across the border—back then the checkpoints were still heavily guarded and the borders were secure—you were locked up in a special center for the duration of your interrogation and background check. In my case this took only three months, as I had been in such a high position previously. I had to turn every stone the authorities thought of. No matter, interrogation doesn’t bother me. Everyone has a job to do and is simply stationed where they are told.
During these investigations we were given food and one set of clothes: a pair of straight trousers, a flannel shirt, underwear, and brown walking shoes. In the first few years I used them rather a lot, as I was collecting material for the history book and had to live from hand to mouth with the savings I’d brought when I left.
When I started putting the history together, I began very far back in time. That’s the way to write a history, if it’s done well that is, building up piece by piece from the foundations right to the top, the way people used to build strong brick houses back in the olden days.
Writing about events a very long time ago simply isn’t very interesting, I was advised when I showed the publisher my first version of the manuscript—no more than a synopsis in fact. No, I said and immediately tore out almost ten thousand years from the beginning of the book.
I concentrated instead on what I myself knew and what I had experienced in my own life and what I felt was otherwise important. This made sitting around in archives a far easier task, as familiar decades, names, and images were already in some sort of mental order and there was no need to double-check everything or qualify information with footnotes or references.
Many excellent photographs still existed from those decades. All the most important events had been documented impeccably. Back then every photography studio and agency had had plenty of resources and enthusiasm. In retrospect, even the landscape looks slightly more luscious. Buildings were smaller and there was no need for thoroughfares as wide as a runway, not even on the main roads leading into the capital. There were charming little parks and long, empty beaches for which the State of K was renowned abroad. Tourists still flocked there, and there was no need to restrict people’s coming and going due to any exceptional circumstances.
That was perhaps the golden era. It was as though the country had grown year upon year, the number of people and factories and almost everything else besides increased steadily, the State became richer, its power around the world grew and as a nation it grew from the inside until finally it was worthy of its name. Why shouldn’t I have concentrated more on those golden yea
rs?
The publisher only wished to leave this period in the manuscript by way of contrast, so that previous times could serve as something of a colorful background to the bleakness of later events. We have to shepherd the younger generation very carefully indeed; a disaster or an attack of this scale is not at all possible here, but it is a healthy and chilling reminder to see it happen as close to home as in our neighboring country—perhaps this can be an important lesson for our youngsters today, I was told at a meeting of acommittee whose function it was to standardize teaching material as I was presenting the outline of my book.
By way of contrast, all the good of those years was condensed into five minutes and three double-page spreads after which, without any explanation of the various factors leading up to the events which followed, that whole peaceful era of growth and development was cut short with a documentary report:
“Thus far there is no more specific information about the chain of events in the northeastern reactor zone. A crisis group, established alongside the research committee, does not rule out any possible explanation. The fusion silos may have been the target of a large-scale enemy strike or a contained attack. Technical protective structures around the reactors may have collapsed. The accident may have been triggered by the sudden destruction of data in the operating systems. At worst this may be a case of an uncontrolled release of accumulated gas inside the fusion reactors themselves, otherwise known as helium cancer. The State news service stresses that citizens have no need to fear for their lives or their health. The accident is localized and has been contained entirely within the northeastern reactor zone.”
I was probably the best person to write The History of K, or at least the sections dealing with these particular stages in its history, as I watched events unfold both inside and outside the northeastern zone. When the accident occurred—or the attack or whatever they eventually decided to call it—I was working as a journalist for Channel Two and had just come back from the reactor zone. I had been carrying out a series of interviews for an item about farming entitled “Pure Food.”
A number of farmers had been relocated in sectors within a given radius of each of the seven fusion reactors in order to put the wasteland to use and to capitalize on the excess heat given off. People were so skeptical about any food originating from these farms—over 70 in number—that details of the origin of any produce had to be changed before it could be distributed to retailers.
When people at Channel Two started asking for volunteers to investigate the accident at the reactor, I simply felt I was the most suitable to go. I had just returned from the zone, I knew my way around and had many contacts there. In the last few years visas were seldom granted, and permanent residents were not permitted to travel outside the zone.
I finally convinced the channel’s director and my superiors. I signed a voluntary consent form and a confidentiality agreement, checked a car out of the depot, took an array of broadcasting equipment and set off through the State towards the northeast.
There was very little traffic. The closer I came to the zone the fewer cars I passed, while traveling in my direction there was no traffic at all. At the beginning of August, when I had first gone there to interview the farmers, I had passed a steady flow of lorries from the aluminum and steel factories near the border. Now even service stations were shut, though luckily I had taken a full canister of fuel with me.
Not once did I have to go through routine inspections on the northeastern motorway. On the slip road there were only a handful of deserted checkpoints with security cameras hidden in black boxes high up on the lampposts.
It had been a week and a day since the events in the reactor zone. Problems in energy distribution had begun to emerge, power cuts and heating failures. At the darkest time of night people said they could see a faint glow on the horizon in the north and the northeast, like a cold, gossamer fire. If fire can be cold, that is; I remember pondering this question while on the road.
Autumn seemed to have arrived sooner than normal. It was as if there were more brown leaves on the trees than the previous year, and fewer yellow ones. Who can say which leaves are right and which are wrong? The grass is still growing but winter will come eventually. Snow claims the grass, and it is no more. But then grass reclaims the snow, and winter is no more. Or is it so? I remember thinking like this as I drove onwards. Of course, with many years of hindsight all this seems like an omen of what was to come, but back then they were nothing but scattered fragments of thoughts, and it felt somewhat overwhelming to see the forests and verges turn more autumnal by the hour.
A being so much bigger than man can’t hide his handiwork, Father would say when things happened which were utterly beyond anyone’s control. Just like in April every year when the stream would flood the garden. My younger sister and I would take the red plastic sledges left by the front steps and try to row across to the flagpole at the other end of the garden. Above the yard the water was always the greyish color of clay, its surface speckled with shining colorful patches where naphtha and petrol for the aggregate unit had spilled from their tanks during the winter.
Bigger than you and me, Father used to say about his cancer, and went on to live with it for another ten years, at least; he was always moving the deadline forward slightly. First it was when Eeva started school, then when Eeva had turned twelve so that Mother wouldn’t have to take on such a burden. Then when I had finished school, though he didn’t quite make it that far.
I drove along the motorway lost in thought. Everywhere around me dusk began to fall, though according to the given sunset time it should have been light for a good few hours yet. A thin mist had formed across the sky but the sun could still be seen clearly through it, a dim orange glimmer nowhere near the horizon.
The sky was not darkening, it was becoming dusky. As if a matte gauze had been drawn before the sunlight.
I could hear a distant humming, and above the horizon there appeared a pale, shimmering patch of light, a glow. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it no longer dispersed in the northeast.
A lorry with a trailer sped past, heading back towards the cities. Its cab was concealed with a darkened windscreen and on its left side all the lettering and paintwork seemed to have been burnt off, leaving the metal plating scarred and rusted.
Soon after this I was forced to slam on the brakes. The road appeared to be blocked. An enormous pile of scrap metal was spread across both carriageways. I tried to drive around it and along the embankment. An electrical current ran through the body of the car. Outside there was a crackling sound and the smell of burning.
I drove past without stopping. A delivery van had fallen on its side. It seemed to have been caught inside an electric field. Sparks flew forth and struck the road. Nothing but a heap of metal, charred and burnt, fire-damaged pieces of platform and cargo, and probably several bodies too.
When I switched on the radio I heard a crisis-council bulletin on the news claiming that human casualties had been avoided altogether in the reactor zone, collateral damage was minimal, and life within the immediate proximity of the so-called accident site had gone back to normal. The so-called accident site, said the newsreader. I was puzzled by that expression. By now I was so close to the zone border that there was no mistaking the dimmed sky and the strange gusting wind; it was clear that across the border something on a very large scale had taken place, something irreversible. And as for the lorry with its side burnt off and the delivery van lying across the road, they weren’t simply “nothing.”
Throughout the rest of the journey I had to drive through those electric fields; the car motor kept choking and cutting out, but it would always start again. Once I had arrived at the edge of the zone I stepped out of the car and tried to listen for any sounds beyond the ridge.
A high ridge surrounded the entire reactor zone. Before construction of the reactors had begun, an additional protective layer had been built on top of this ridge. Evidence of trucks transporting eart
h could still be seen—a clear line cutting through the terrain below—though these churned patches of soil already nurtured a covering of small plants and bushes. Above the shifted soil, the color of the ground was different too: lighter stone and gravel, as if the coast of the Yoldia Sea had been moved and transplanted into the middle of the forest. On either side of the northeastern motorway stunted forest plants covered the ground until about ten or so meters from the ridge.
There at the top you could look down into the zone. For I long time I stood on the spot, unable to do anything but stare, as I hadn’t prepared myself for such widespread devastation.
From the bottom of the ridge farming plains stretched out towards the first three of the reactor’s silos—or what was left of them. The outer walls of the silos had all collapsed. The enormous external pipes of the spiral-shaped cooling system had been ripped apart and the water cisterns and deuterium tanks lay in piles of shredded and twisted steel, aluminum, and titanium. A dirty mist hung in the air, everywhere except directly above the defunct silos, which still glowed like bright orange furnaces. The light was so bright that you couldn’t look at it directly.
Nowhere was there the slightest sign of life. Both the roads leading to the reactors and those to the farms were empty and everything on the surrounding plains was quiet and motionless.
Something like this had never been predicted. Risk analysis and calculations based on theoretical scenarios had consistently shown almost negligible probability of any accident. In all the material I found while sifting through piles of literature and archive sources for my history book, I never once came across a statement to the contrary. Presumably other ways of handling the same data did exist, but only select statistics were ever made public.
Standing at the top of the ridge, looking down on the destruction below, I was a different person from the one I am now; it was so long ago. Now I understand more—or so it seems—but back then I thought I knew exactly what was right and what task then awaited me.
It Came from the North Page 14