by Diego Marani
But if human beings were unacquainted with me, inanimate things on the other hand – gardens, trams and buildings – knew me well. I often caught myself addressing the curious-looking houses in Eira, with their rounded roofs and floral balustrades. With them, I didn’t need to worry about my pronunciation – I could greet them in Finnish like old friends. I would tell them where I was going, what I had been doing; they bore their names carved or painted on their façades, and I would speak them out loud. I felt particularly happy talking to the trees on the Esplanadi – after all, they were the ones that knew me best. But I talked to them under my breath, so that no one would hear me engaging so closely, and oddly, with another species. Beneath their branches, I felt safe; I found it reassuring to see that they were now so luxuriant, to know that they were well and truly alive in all their silent greenery. I felt their roots spreading beneath my feet, retaking possession of the earth which had been frozen for so many months, and this too gave me heart. Then the white nights came: punishing sunsets would slowly trickle into dawns as dense as drops of mercury. With that never-darkening sky outside, it was impossible to stay indoors. The night light flooded the city with its white silence, suffusing every room, however shut away, reaching down into the deepest cellars, unearthing people wherever they lay hidden and driving them outside. Wandering through the streets, crossing the bay from side to side, as far as the encircling forests, they set out in pursuit of the mirage of eternity which those undying days seemed falsely to promise. Goaded on by this same ungovernable lunacy, I too would go out to contemplate the disquieting yet majestic sight of darkness becoming light. I liked above all to walk along the beach, beyond the bay of Taivallahti. The sea itself seemed to be in thrall to that same magic. Perhaps this was the world of the heroes of the Kalevala; perhaps it had never come to an end, was still living on beside our own, visible only to shamans like the Pastor Koskela. Caught up in such fantasies, I imagined ships laden with warriors emerging from the sea, glittering and bristling with lances. I saw the tree trunks scattered on the beach as so many gruesome idols, the lightning flashing out at sea as the limitless wrath of the god Ukko. Those night-time hours, stolen from sleep, truly belonged to another era, another world, and you needed to be very drunk to embrace the sense of infinity they bore so numinously in their wake.
More than a month had gone by since I had received Ilma’s letter. Ever since that afternoon, I’d kept it in the inner pocket of my jacket, where I kept the handkerchief with my initials. I had reread it a thousand times until I had learned it by heart, and I had only to come across a verb, an adjective, even just a pair of prepositions in my notebook for a whole line of it to flash into my mind. I had asked Koskela about every single word I had not understood. I had made an orderly list of them in my notebook and, in order to be sure that nothing that Ilma had said escaped me, I had looked into their most far-fetched and most unlikely meanings. Time after time, before falling asleep at night, I had been tempted to reply. I had begun to sketch out a few phrases in my mind: ‘Dear Ilma, all that you say is true,’ I would begin, but could never go any further. I slipped the second letter to arrive into the same pocket as I had put the first, but a whole day went by before I could bring myself to open it. Only in the evening, after I’d filled myself with koskenkorva at the Kämp, did I walk to the hill in Kaivopuisto Park and there, under the tree of happy memories, now in full leaf, I unstuck the envelope and began to read.
Viipuri, 22 May 1944
Dear Sampo,
I am saddened by your silence, but all in all I am not surprised. Because I was presumptuous enough to think that I could help you, I thrust a friendship upon you that may have been unwelcome, and I must accept your rejection of it. In reality it is I who need you, and once again I misjudged matters. What you need is a past, whereas what I need is a present, something to distract me from the fear and anxiety with which I live. Don’t read these words thinking that I want to help you yet again. I am not asking for a reply; just let me write to you. With you – and in reality I know nothing about you except your name – I feel an unusual sense of intimacy which is somehow liberating and life-enhancing; it’s also something I’ve never felt with people I thought that I knew well. Thinking of you gives me a new lightness, lets me float free of the ballast of memory. Strangely, what you are so doggedly in search of drags me down, it is a form of slavery to which I cling. What others remember of us is in fact nothing more than the effect that we have had on them. We spend our lives brushing up against our fellow humans without ever really knowing them. Even the knowledge we build up of those people and things which are dearest to us is purely matter-of-fact; we know them as the entomologist knows the butterflies he has pinned on to a sheet of balsa wood. We can describe the colour of their eyes or hair, we know them from a distance as they walk through a crowd, their features are instantly recognizable, as is their characteristic smell, or voice. Their absence makes us feel some part of us is missing. Yet they are never truly ours: our wish to possess them in fact destroys them, denies them a life of their own. In our vain desire to soften the mystery of death, we seek to possess, to soak up as much life as we can, without realizing that in this way we are killing all that we think we love. Do you remember my tree in Kaivopuisto Park? There are many ways of seeing it: you can regard it as a network of lymph vessels, of veins, of roots teeming with sap, linked up to a living nucleus which, through the breathing leaves, establishes and maintains a flow of matter between earth and sky, between inert matter and air. But you can also reduce it to a pure number, make it into a law of chemistry which governs the way things decompose and are transformed. In both cases, different though they are, that tree will still be something outside ourselves, something we are observing, something we know, perhaps, but with which we do not have any relationship. Establishing a relationship, that’s what we’re talking about: agreeing to move towards the other without taking possession of them, without making them conform to what we expect of them. That’s what I’d like to do with you. Only with you could such a relationship be possible – for the simple reason that there is nothing I can steal from you. When two people meet, they immediately want to ‘declare’ their past, as you declare alcohol and cigarettes at a frontier post: they want to ‘clear’ it, to put it at the disposal of the new relationship on which they are embarking. But that’s not the right way to go about things; it’s simply a rather presumptuous way of claiming a right to the other person’s past by scraping together memories which are not our own. You yourself have no past, so you have no memory to put at anyone’s disposal. My tree of happy memories, on the other hand, is a monument of self-centredness, a weight which drags me down. Did you ever go back to it? It must be all in leaf by now. There you are – I belittle it and then immediately wish I hadn’t done so! Without someone else beside us, watching us live, we might as well be dead, and there is no point in plundering the past in the vain hope of wresting its treasure from it, because that is treasure that cannot be spent, counterfeit coinage no one will accept. Life has to be spent right away, consumed on the spot, while it’s still warm, like the grilled whitefish and spring onions you get on the market square. Have you been to the market? Are they selling flowers there yet? Last summer, there was always a little old woman selling flowers near the place where the ferry from the islands comes in; never more than two or three bunches, tied up with string, which she’d put into margarine drums filled with water. I always liked to buy a bunch – not so much for the flowers themselves, but to see the smile that would light up her eyes when I put the coin into her hand. Here, spring has not brought much of a let-up: the flowers in the fields, the new green of the woods, the tang drifting in from the open sea, driving away the stench of the dried mud – they can’t do much for us. In fact, all this light is an insult to our black fear; we no longer have the dark to hide away in. The Russians are so near that on windy nights it’s as though we could hear their voices through the rustling of the leaves. We expect to se
e them leaping out of the woods – first one by one, then in their droves, in silent cohorts, as multitudinous as only they could ever be – then spreading in their hordes throughout the city. Perhaps it’s this sense of vulnerability which makes me so unguarded, so open to new possibilities. It’s at moments like this, when there’s nothing more to lose, that we feel the need to love every human being around us as though they were a part of us, as though our people were a single body and each of us one of its muscles, its limbs, its organs. Sampo – you whom I do not know – today I want to ask you not to forget me, not to abandon me. If you don’t want to write to me, at least think of me. I’ll know that you are doing so, and that will be enough. It will help me get through these hard times, to keep alive the dream that one day I may find you again.
With all my love,
Ilma.
Recognizing her writing brought me comfort. Written in that hand, even the words I didn’t know became almost comprehensible. I had not known that hyönteistietelijaä meant entomologist, but it appeared almost next to perhosia, meaning butterfly, so I could make the link. I even wondered whether Ilma had tried to construct her metaphors using words she thought that I would know. Of course I sensed her bitterness; it was quite clear that she was hurt, and I felt a deep pang of shame, a sudden desire to reach out towards her and offer my help, or at least write back to her. But then everything would get sucked back into the soft abyss of my inertia. To reach out to her meant coming out into the open, taking possession of a destiny I did not feel to be my own, a destiny I felt I was usurping. My lot was to be found wanting; I had to do penance for my name, wherever that might take me. I resealed the envelope and put it back in my pocket. The tree of memories rustled above my head, the silvery veins of its leaves caught in the light as they moved. I carried on sitting there, lost in thought; indeed, I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up I could no longer distinguish between my thoughts and my dreams. How much time had gone by? Stiff with cold, I looked in the direction of the wind: to the west, the sea had become almost black, as though it had drunk up the darkness which the sky was lacking. Lightning flickered in the distance, but there was no thunder. In the amber-coloured light, the city below me was waking, without having slept. Exhausted by lack of sleep, I was breathing heavily. The windows of the houses looked like bruised eyes, the empty streets were corridors choked by polluted air. A red gash, short but deep as a wound, had opened up in the colourless sky to the east: dawn. Or Viipuri, burning.
Back in town, I learned that the Russians had attacked the Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus: the dreaded counter-attack had begun. The Kämp was in a state of ferment. A number of journalists and reporters were ready for the front; gathered together in the press-room with their luggage, they were impatiently waiting their turn for a taxi. In the bar, the newsreader was listing the places already under attack and the enemy formations and Finnish regiments involved, all in a suitably martial tone. A small crowd had come in to listen. At each name, faces darkened, some people were weeping, others were staring blankly and silently into the middle distance. Hotel porters, bar attendants, telephonists, all had deserted their posts to cluster round the loudspeaker; even the waiters had stopped moving among the tables. I too got caught up in the excitement, joining the knots of people commenting upon the latest news. A reporter with a camera round his neck came in, shouting. A rumour promptly circulated to the effect that a German ship with anti-tank shells had come into the port, and others were expected. A few nights earlier, I myself had noticed that a vessel bearing the flag of the German navy was moored alongside the quay in the harbour at Pohjoissatama, indeed I had stopped to inspect it more closely; it reminded me of the Tübingen. The photographer who’d just come in said he was convinced that German troops were about to land in Finland to launch a counter-offensive on Leningrad, but several officers who were standing outside the main huddle intervened to put paid to that rumour, explaining that here we were talking about military aid: Germany was arming Finland against a Russian attack, as had already happened in the first years of the war. An elderly man standing beside me made certain observations concerning this piece of news, shaking his head the while, then wandered off; someone made a disobliging comment. I too wanted to have my say, and found myself suddenly strangely talkative. I said that German aid was manna from Heaven – I was very proud of that expression, which I had learned from Koskela. A young man behind me came forward to declare himself in agreement, and this served to embolden me further: quickened by my excitement, the sentences built themselves up mechanically in my mind, the right words presented themselves effortlessly and I was amazed to hear myself pronouncing them; my Finnish was no longer a blend of sounds now spiky, now indistinct. Even if I still had trouble with my cases, the phrases which now came out of my mouth were clear-cut, well-turned. People were listening to me, some were nodding; for a moment I felt capable of chairing a meeting, but then I was distracted by other voices and abandoned my new-found role of orator to return to my more normal line of duty, helping some foreign journalists to explain to a taxi-driver where they wanted to go, telling some new arrival where the Russian attack had taken place, explaining to another what they were talking about at the bar. Then, propelled by another surge of excitement, I found myself wandering about the streets. A long column of troop-bearing trucks had formed on the Esplanadi, near the market square; youthful faces were peering out from under the tarpaulins. Bemused and baffled at having been thrust by history into the midst of such momentous times, they greeted the passers-by with a mixture of gravity and delight. The rhythmical sound of the engines, the metallic din they made in that square, normally so peaceful, was reminiscent of the hammering of cannon on a battlefield. Despite the bright sunlight, the city seemed to be in mourning; people were wandering aimlessly about the streets, drawn to any commotion, any crowd, scanning the light-filled streets, retailing accounts of unlikely events which they themselves did not believe. I wandered around for quite some time, as aimless as the rest, idly drawn to any group I came across. Some hours later I went back towards the market square, where the traders were packing up their stalls, tarpaulins swollen by the mild sea breeze. I sat down on the quay, away from the crowds, near the point where the ferry left for the islands; I was breathless with exhaustion, and the sun hurt my eyes. I would have liked to go home and sleep, but the very thought of the visitors’ quarters made me feel uneasy: I wouldn’t have been able to bear the smell of the disinfectant, the silence, broken by slight noises, the distant clatter and above all the daylight and attendant shadows on the walls. Looking again towards the square, I saw Ilma’s flower seller leaning against a bollard, surrounded by her improvised containers. That was a pleasant surprise: I bought a bunch of wild flowers, watching her carefully as I handed her the coins, but I did not receive the expected smile. She thanked me humbly and lowered her eyes to stare at the cobbles, embarrassed by my insistent gaze. Truly exhausted now, I decided to go back to the hospital anyway. To avoid going straight into the visitors’ quarters, I decided to put the flowers on the altar in the chapel; it wasn’t yet mid-day, and the place was empty. There too the sunlight created a mood of misplaced optimism: usually sunk in smoke-filled gloom, the veining of the wood was suddenly revealed, like that on a delicate skin unaccustomed to light. I went into the sacristy and took out some sheets of writing paper I’d found in the Kämp. ‘Dear Ilma’, I began to write; but there I stopped; weariness drew my head down to the table, and I slept.
I did indeed find several sheets of writing paper in the middle of the notebook with the Kämp’s letterhead, bearing different dates and just the words ‘Dear Ilma’, gone over several times to the point of tearing holes in the paper, always a sign that the writer does not know what to say next. Only one bore any other words: ‘I know you’re right, but I …’ written in a hesitant hand, then nothing. Only a heart of stone could have been left untouched by words like those in Miss Koivisto’s letters. I wonder whether the
author of these pages had fully understood their meaning. But the careful copyings out, the lists of verbs and nouns, the constant repetition, in other parts of the notebook, of expressions taken from her letters, give me cause to believe that in fact he did. Indeed, I am convinced that at a certain moment that man was actually preparing himself to write some reply. Perhaps he was discouraged by the difficulty of expressing his feelings in a language he had by no means fully mastered. But some things can be said quite simply, and sometimes a postcard with a simple greeting means more than a love letter. What is more likely, as Miss Koivisto herself maintains, is that that man was so obsessed by his search for his own identity that he was really at his wits’ end. After Koskela’s departure, left entirely on his own, the author of this document gradually lost all contact with reality. What is more the pastor, who must have been aware that his pupil was entertaining vague thoughts in connection with some woman, seems to have done nothing to encourage him to pursue them further, nor to support him in his efforts to forge for himself the sort of everyday life which turns the makeshift into something more permanent. Koskela was already caught up in the delirium which was ultimately to lead him to his end. The way he talked, his vision of the world, his merciless cynicism were already pulling him in the direction of his final choice, setting him on a path which was bound to lead to self-destruction. So Miss Koivisto’s poignant words fell upon stony ground, that of a mind unravelling; his attempts to answer her may have been his last moments of lucidity.