Deep River

by Karl Marlantes

  About a week after that event, Aino was startled by a firm knock on the front door. She opened it and there stood Oskar Penttilä holding his hat and some flowers.

  “I came to pay my respects,” Oskar said. “It’s all over the district. About the baby.”

  Aino felt a rush of excitement. She knew it wasn’t just because of the dead baby that he’d come. “I’ll show you where he is,” she said. She took off her apron, smoothed her dress, and made sure her stupid braid was at least presentable, then led Oskar to the cherry orchard. Matti had carved a little headstone from a river rock and had placed it on the grave. Oskar put the flowers next to it. The two of them stood side by side, saying nothing.

  “It was good of you to come,” Aino finally said.

  “This baby died because of capitalism.”

  “He died because of the cold,” Matti’s voice said from behind them.

  Aino turned on him. “Matti. We don’t need your commentary.”

  Matti just grinned. “You mean you don’t want me standing here saying it. You shouldn’t be out here alone with him.”

  Aino took in a deep breath, flaring, but Oskar only looked at Matti very solemnly. “I know your brother is in America and you’re responsible for Aino.” He looked at Aino. “Of course, he’s right to be here.”

  Aino watched Matti swell with pride, her annoyance with him for protecting her reputation fading. She looked into Oskar’s eyes, loving him.

  3

  The gardens began producing food by June, and the threat of famine was no more. The summer was warm with just enough rainfall, and the harvest of 1903 was good enough to produce a little cash in addition to plenty of food to make it through the winter. In the cities and towns, however, inflation was rampant. Real wages fell by 20 percent and the workers’ unrest was growing, only to be met by Russia’s sending more troops to keep things in check.

  Every month or so a letter came from Ilmari, usually about four weeks after it was written. Aino loved the strange stamps with their round cancellation mark: “Knappton” curved around the top and “Washington” curved around the bottom. Knappton stood on the north side of the Columbia River, fourteen kilometers south of Ilmari’s new farm on the heavily timbered south shore of Deep River, a coastal river that ran parallel to the Columbia, separated from it by a range of hills. Knappton was about two hours from the farm by foot. No road existed. She imagined Knappton as a beautiful port city on a magnificent river. Ilmari wrote that the Columbia was eight kilometers wide at that point. On its south shore was a huge city called Astoria, Oregon.

  It was still hard to believe. Ilmari had 160 acres of prime river-bottom farmland that he’d gotten for free! Ilmari had written that there was a law called the Timber and Stone Act entitling every person to 160 acres of prime timberland for just two dollars and fifty cents an acre. Ilmari had staked out his 160 acres about twenty kilometers north of Deep River and sold it to a timber company for five dollars an acre, leaving him four hundred American dollars. Ilmari had used that free money to buy the same amount of land on Deep River from a family that had gotten their land for free twenty years earlier under another law, called the Homestead Act.

  Ilmari’s 160 acres was sixty hectares, four times the size of their farm in Finland, which Tapio and Maíjaliisa had worked on for years and was owned by a rich aristocrat. There were no aristocrats in America—and the government just gave the people free land. The United States must already be a socialist country!

  To be sure, Ilmari made it clear that carving a farm out of wilderness was backbreaking, exhausting work. It seemed the trees were big. He’d sold some of his Deep River timber to both clear the land and get cash to start a little blacksmith shop where he earned more cash making tools, shoeing horses, and repairing equipment for logging companies. That, however, had left stumps over two meters high and four and a half meters across that had to burned out to make way for civilized farming. Well, Aino thought, the free land was probably real, but as for stumps two and a half meters tall and four and a half meters in diameter, Ilmari was having them on. In addition, he’d written that it hardly ever snowed. Aino was way too smart to be taken in by this. She remembered similar wild tales of Yukon gold that had swept the district when she was eight.

  Ilmari made no mention of marriage or even women. All he wrote about was clearing those damned trees, some steamboat that maybe was going to start service from Willapa Bay to the end of tidewater, where a little Finnish community called Tapiola had formed, another reason Ilmari had moved to Deep River. Many of the Deep River farmers were from families in the Kokkola area. The first structure Ilmari built was a sauna, which he lived in while he worked on his own house. Other Finns in the area helped with what couldn’t be done alone. Everyone worked together, for the good of everyone. Aino was convinced, now, that socialism had truly flourished in the new world.

  That winter, old Musti died. Aino and Matti buried him next to the dead baby in the cherry orchard, saying nothing to each other.

  Two weeks after the burial, Aino was awakened by Matti holding a wiggling mass of warm fur, the slight smell of urine, and a wet tongue over her face. He dropped the puppy, a little female, and it flopped its way clumsily across the quilt, little tail wagging as though it would fall off. Aino hugged the puppy, looking up at Matti, striving to maintain her dignity. The puppy started yelping, as if jealous of Aino looking at Matti. Aino snuggled with it beneath the quilt.

  “Oh, Matti,” she said.

  Matti nodded his head in recognition of her thanks. “What will you name her?”

  At that moment, the puppy flopped her way to the edge of the bed where she crowed at Matti like a little rooster, tail vibrating.

  “Laulu, because she sings.”

  In February 1904, the Japanese destroyed the Russian fleet off Port Arthur, Manchuria. Finnish radicals increased agitation for reform and independence. Finnish men in large numbers began refusing to show up for military service. The czar wouldn’t compromise, and the Russian governor general of Finland, Nikolai Bobrikov, met agitation with force, making arrests in large numbers.

  The increasing unrest in the area brought in a cavalry unit. The Russian army base just south of Kokkola had no room. The troops were to be quartered with the Finnish farmers. For free.

  The family stood in a silent, sober line outside the house as the detachment of Russian troopers looked down on them from astride their horses. Laulu started a high-pitched howling, squatting down on her hindquarters and backing away from the horses, only to dart forward and repeat the action. Aino gathered Laulu up in her apron, quieting her.

  The officer in charge entered the house without asking. He emerged from the house and shouted two names. A sergeant and a corporal dismounted and looked inside as the platoon rode off.

  The two cavalrymen and the Koskis stood in uneasy silence. Aino watched Matti struggling for control, his right hand just short of where his puukko, the traditional man’s knife, hung from the back of his belt encased in its wooden scabbard. Tapio put a hand on Matti’s shoulder. “Sisu,” he whispered. “Show them nothing.”

  The Russians entered the house. The sergeant came back outside and sauntered over to them, smiling. The corporal remained at the door, looking slightly embarrassed. The sergeant pointed to himself. “Kozlov.” Then he pointed to the corporal. “Kusnetsov.” Then he pointed to Tapio, raising his eyebrows. Tapio smiled and blinked. “Kozlov,” the sergeant said, again pointing to himself. Tapio smiled broadly. The sergeant cursed.

  Realizing he didn’t speak Finnish, Aino said quietly, “We should show Kozlov the cherry trees.” Tapio shot her a quick glance. “Koz” was the Russian word for “goat” and cherries poisoned goats.

  Kozlov, having heard his name, looked at Aino inquisitively, but Aino went as passive as the rest of her family. Rolling his eyes at the family’s stupidity, Kozlov shouted to Kusnetsov and they led their horses to the barn.

  Maíjaliisa marched into the house and found
one of the Russian’s gear thrown on top of her and Tapio’s bed. She spat on it. Tapio sighed, took out his handkerchief, and wiped it off, sadly shaking his head at her. She knew he was right, and this made her even more furious. She grabbed her pipe from the mantel and stomped outside. Aino found the other Russian’s gear on her bed.

  Tapio and Maíjaliisa moved to the loft, Matti and Aino to the barn.

  A cold routine settled in. Maíjaliisa had food on the table for the Russians in the morning. When they left, she would put the family’s breakfast on the table. Dinner was around noon, normally the largest meal of the day because it had to fuel work until dark. With the Russians eating both breakfast and supper, however, dinner got smaller. The carefully hoarded sugar was gone within two weeks. Sergeant Kozlov loved his sugar. Evening supper was served separately, the same as breakfast.

  The corporal, Kusnetsov, tried to be pleasant. It was clear from the way he watched Aino that she was attractive to him. This pleased her, but she treated him with cold civility.

  One evening, Aino was picking up the two Russians’ plates and Corporal Kusnetsov gently touched the top of her hand. She jerked it away and Matti leaped to his feet from where he was saddle soaping a harness next to the fire. His hand went behind him, touching his puukko. In one swift movement, sending his chair clattering to the floor, Kozlov pulled his revolver, a formidable 7.62 Nagant. He smiled at Matti and pulled back the hammer. Kusnetsov spoke to Kozlov, nodding his head toward Matti, seemingly saying, “He’s just a boy.” Kusnetsov raised his right palm apologetically to Aino and said, “Anteeksi,” pardon me, in Russian-accented Finnish. Aino stalked out of the house. Kozlov holstered his pistol and resumed drinking his heavily sugared tea. Matti picked up the harness and followed Aino outside, his face white with rage and humiliation. He was gone until chores the next morning.

  4

  Midsummer’s Eve arrived. Aino made a new dress for the dance on the hand-cranked sewing machine that Ilmari had shipped from America. Maíjaliisa made her redo the first version because it was too tight. After getting her mother’s approval on the second try, she secretly tightened the dress again by hand. She’d also made small adjustments to her light cotton corset. All the mothers were constantly harping at their daughters not to pull their corset laces too tight because it was unhealthy; corsets were for modestly supporting their breasts and making their clothes hang right. All the daughters knew that if you pulled the laces tighter it accentuated your curves and made for a far greater overall effect. All the mothers knew that all the daughters knew this.

  Knowing her dress fit perfectly, Aino jumped into the back of the cart covered in her longest shawl and quickly snugged down with her back to the driver’s bench, where Matti was driving, her mother squeezed between him and her father.

  As soon as they reached the tanssilava—the dance site on a huge expanse of glacier-exposed flat rock several kilometers east of Kokkola—the shawl was crammed between the pillows, along with her glasses, and Aino bolted, holding her skirt up so she could run. Tapio and Maíjaliisa looked at each other quizzically. “Voitto,” Matti said. Maíjaliisa looked heavenward and Tapio shook his head, smiling. The three of them walked to join the dancers. Many of these were older men and women in traditional clothing, the young people as well as many of the adults in their Sunday clothes. Children played boys chase girls and vice versa at the edge of the tanssilava; a slightly older group played kick the can in the soft light of the midnight sun.

  One of the young people in his Sunday best was Aksel Långström, at his first dance without his parents. Not yet fourteen, he’d come with his older brother, Gunnar, who was commissioned to watch out for him but who, to Aksel’s delight, had immediately abandoned him. Aksel was the last child of four. His mother would have died birthing him, had his father not skied and run over thirty kilometers to bring back the best-known midwife in the district. The woman had saved his mother’s life, but not her ability to bear more children.

  Aksel had been fishing with his brother and father for years already. It told, not only in the dark, tanned face that framed brilliant blue eyes but in shoulders that stretched the Sunday tunic his mother had sewn for him just six months earlier. His Sunday trousers showed a two-inch gap above his shoes. The Långströms were Swedes, the descendants of Swedish settlers from several centuries past. Aksel, like most Swedes, although just coming into manhood was already as tall as most grown Finns.

  His mother had tried to teach him the rudiments of the waltz, hambo, and schottische in the weeks leading to Midsummer’s Eve, humming and singing the music, as there were no instruments in the house. Farm chores, however, and helping his father with the fishing didn’t leave a lot of time, so Aksel hung back shyly by the refreshments table. He watched the dark-haired girl with the beautiful figure who could dance like the wind ruffling the water. Aksel loved his sisters, but they were literally pale in comparison with this girl. Her black eyes flashed.

  The combination of longing and sheer joy in watching her, combined with his shyness, kept Aksel eating by the table until he thought either his heart or his stomach would burst. She was getting a lot of attention from the sons of merchants and prosperous farmers, most of whom were still in school, just as she probably was, putting her out of his reach. He’d been taught to read and write by the church, but school was beyond the family’s means. She’d been dancing a lot with that socialist, Oskar Penttilä, who was in the same political club in Kokkola as Gunnar, a club Gunnar had asked Aksel to keep secret. But now, Penttilä, who must have gone to get the girl a drink, because he had a glass in each hand, was talking animatedly with a group of young men, including Gunnar, ignoring her. Aksel could only shake his head. There she was, a beautiful girl, wasted while those idiots talked politics.

  He struggled with his shyness. Should he ask her to dance? The sun had dropped below the horizon far to the northwest, making high clouds glow in shades of orange against a soft, light-blue sky. The cold, unblinking luster of Jupiter hung above his head, so bright he felt he could touch it. His star, however, was warm-orange Arcturus at the foot of Boötes, the man who chased the two great bears around the sky. Arcturus was always there for him, summer or winter. He looked for it in the cold nights on the boat and in the cool mornings and evenings of the long summer days. The planets came and went. Gunnar had caught him talking to it one night on the boat and kidded him about it but never told anyone. What was between brothers was kept between them, just like Gunnar’s club.

  Aksel looked up at his star, stood a little straighter, and said to it, “This is it.”

  Aino thought a man was coming toward her, but when he came into focus she saw that he was just a boy, good-looking and obviously on his way to being big, but thirteen or fourteen at the oldest. She had seen him arrive with Gunnar Långström, a comrade of Voitto’s, so he was probably Gunnar’s little brother. They did resemble each other.

  The boy just stood there swallowing. Maíjaliisa had told her about this power that women have over men—and had also told her about misusing it. “It’s like that Swede’s new explosive. It’ll move mountains, but you get careless with it and it will get you into serious trouble.” Serious trouble for Maíjaliisa always meant the same thing: getting pregnant. Aino attributed it to Maíjaliisa’s seeing the heartbreak of out-of-wedlock deliveries, which her mother helped with even though Aino was quite sure Maíjaliisa would never help with abortions.

  She smiled at the boy. “You’re Gunnar Långström’s little brother, aren’t you?” She said it in Finnish, even though she spoke reasonably good Swedish. Swedes had settled in Finland centuries earlier and Finland was ruled by Sweden until it was ceded to Russia in 1809 after a bloody war, so a sizable minority spoke Swedish.

  The boy nodded his head. The Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking communities kept pretty much to themselves, but with written material in both languages being common as well as increasing literacy among the younger people, it didn’t surprise her that Aksel
had picked up some Finnish.

  “Aksel,” he said. More silence. “Aksel Långström.”

  She could have made fun of him for the obviousness of that last remark, but she smiled at him instead. “My name is Aino.”

  “Like in the songs.” He answered her in Finnish.

  That was good. “Yes.”

  “She killed herself rather than marry old Väinämöinen,” he said.

  That was verging on impressive.

  “She was beautiful.”

  Aino could see that his cheeks were flushing. She glanced over at Voitto. Trying not to squint, she could just make out that he was talking to people and appeared to be holding her drink. Obviously, he’d forgotten her. Voitto gestured with one of the drinks, spilling some of it. It must have reminded him why he’d gotten it. He turned toward her. Perfect.

  “Are you going to ask me to dance or not? It’s a waltz. You can waltz, can’t you?”

  The boy nodded vigorously, then thrust out his hand. It was the first time she’d ever seen adoration in someone’s eyes. It surprised her how much the warm rush of it pleased her, even coming from someone just out of childhood. She took his hand. He escorted her properly to the inside circle of the dancers already circling the dance space. He then took her right hand in his left, placed his right hand in the center of her back, and holding himself erect in the dancer’s brace of someone who had been taught something about dancing, moved smoothly into the flow.

  Aino smiled, her eyes just able to peer above the boy’s shoulders, checking that Voitto was watching them. He was. Her father had taught her how to dance, and many dark winter Saturday nights had been spent with him and Ilmari alternating on the kantele, her mother dancing with the boys and her father with her. To dance on any other day of the week would have been considered frivolous. The band was playing “Lördagsvalsen,” or “Saturday Waltz,” an old Swedish tune and one of her favorites. She knew Voitto was watching and she gave herself over to the feel of the boy’s strong arms holding her against the centrifugal force, the harmony, and the pulse of the three-quarter-time music, the Nordic twilight with its few bright stars above them, the two of them whirling beneath it as one being. She merged with it all.