Burnt Land

by Tua Harno

  “I met Marja when I was working in Sweden. I had been at the mines for six years by that point, mostly in Canada, and I had seen what it was like. Marja was from around Sodankylä, and I thought she’d be a reason to spend more time there. When Minttu was born, I stayed there to work, but there was already a lack of trust between us. It was a relief for everyone when we stopped trying.”

  “Didn’t the divorce feel like failure?”

  Sanna shook the blades of grass from her palms and lowered her head to Martti’s shoulder, saw the tree rising high above them, its branches covered in green and silver leaves that trembled in the wind.

  Martti thought for a moment before answering. “I decided I’d leave for Africa that year if I found work there. I’d wanted to go to Africa for as long as I could remember.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought if I never worked in Africa, I’d be cheating myself. Canada and Lapland never approach you. In Canada and Norway the sky is so open it explodes—you think it’s going to burst from the vastness, a sky the size of Antarctica. But the African sky is cloudy and alive, like a swarm of black webspinners that lands on your shoulders, by your ears, to whisper to you.”

  “Even now?”

  “Yes, that’s my dream. I don’t know why I want my farm to be there specifically. But I can’t escape the feeling, either.” Martti hesitated, eyed the grass stains on his trousers. “When I was young I used to divide up everyone into people who traveled and people who stayed at home.”

  “And nowadays?”

  “People who’ve been to Africa and people who haven’t.”

  Martti tossed this out so glibly that Sanna waited for him to continue.

  “Maybe Russia is like that for some people, maybe South America, I don’t know. All I know is how it affected me, and I can see it in others. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you’re there long enough it’s almost impossible to avoid.”

  Sanna sat up. “What’s the it?”

  Martti reached out to caress her face and didn’t answer.

  The bay fronting the Swan Brewery was dark blue; Perth’s skyscrapers were clustered to the left. Evening had fallen, but the cars continued to race past. A white commuter train sped northward across a bridge. Sanna thought about the incessant announcement about closing doors that was repeated at every station. What was it based on? The idea that there might always be someone on board riding a train for the first time?

  She realized that Martti had answered while she was staring at the train. She had wanted to ignore his words, didn’t want to hear them, didn’t want them to mean anything, couldn’t stand that he felt that way.

  “You don’t have it.”

  What, so I’m not broken? I’m not shattered enough for you? What do you want from me, some abyss, something horrible? Sorry, I’m just a thirty-year-old from a Western country who’s going through a crisis. I split with the guy whose child I’m carrying, and my relationship with my father is distant, and and and. I’m sorry I’m not more for you, Sanna wished she could say, but she didn’t know how. She turned away.

  Martti grabbed her. “Sanna, that’s a good thing. That’s your idealism. I love that about you. I can see that you’re restless, but—”

  “But what? You know what, as a matter of fact I hate bullshit like that. Of course you’ve allowed yourself all kinds of things after what you’ve been through over the years. Are you even divorced? You guys are still married, aren’t you?”

  Martti let go. His arms hovered in the air for a moment, then dropped. Sanna moved out from under them.

  “Of course you are.”

  “She lives with another man. You’re not going to catch me cheating. That’s not what’s going on here.”

  “So then why are you still married?”

  After the blazing day, the evening felt lukewarm and humid. How insane it all was. Here she sat with a married man from Lapland in the middle of a park in an Australian city, the sky completely out of reach, the ravens croaking in the darkness. Where did the assumption that birds were supposed to be quiet at night come from? How did she have an instinctual understanding of that, even though she had only ever lived in the city? Is it one of those questions you ask as a child? Why don’t they sing at night, Mom? They’re sleeping, now you go to sleep, too. Is that where it came from?

  “What would it accomplish? More paperwork. We’d have to sell the house, and—” Martti was still talking about his marriage.

  “What if it were just clearer?”

  “Do you feel like something is unclear?”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t have anything to do with Marja.”

  It felt odd saying the name, and thinking about the woman that Sanna somehow pictured as being so much older than herself, and older looking, too. Of course Marja would be beautiful or at least average looking; Martti’s daughter looked nothing like her father.

  “What, then? Sanna?”

  Sanna hugged her knees to her chest, pointed at the brewery, and asked if Martti knew the building was cursed. The restaurant there had closed down due to lack of business. The site was sacred to the local tribe. An Aboriginal man had appeared at the construction site every night in protest. He stood there, undaunted, singing the ancient sacred songs of his people with his eyes shut. He held to this moment of prayer for sixteen years, long after the building was completed.

  “Repetition and longevity, that’s what made it significant,” Martti said. “They’re the only things that give meaning to anything.”

  “How many years would have been enough? Would we have been impressed by three?”

  “So he prayed there until he died?”

  Sanna nodded.

  “That’s the meaningful part,” Martti said, “doing something until the day you die.”

  “Like loving another human being?”

  Martti was silent.

  “I thought I wanted to be with Janne forever. I didn’t know if it was love, but I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to prove that it’s possible to last until the end. Unlike my parents, unlike any of the couples we knew.”

  The wind rustled through the park, which had emptied of other visitors.

  “Sanna, what I was trying to say is you’re not cynical, even though a relationship like that easily could have hardened you. I don’t understand how it’s possible that you’ve stayed so sensitive and trusting. But it’s the best thing about you.” Martti stroked her hair. “Are you going to be OK on that trek?”

  Sanna looked away; the train tracks were no longer visible. Her eyes couldn’t make out the leaves and the branches of the bushes anymore; all the tree trunks were black.

  “I don’t want to go.”

  “So don’t.” Martti turned her head until she was facing him. “Seriously. Don’t go. I know this sounds crazy, but Sanna, this is special. Feeling this way.”

  Sanna looked him in the eye. “I was really depressed when I came here.”

  A smile flickered across Martti’s face. Sanna smiled back.

  “Of course I don’t seem that way now. I’m with you and I’m happy. But I have to get balance back in my life, so I can, you know—” Sanna indicated the child.

  “Can’t we work on that together? All I’m trying to say is that guide of yours doesn’t strike me as totally competent. Going off into such extreme conditions when you’re pregnant is dangerous.”

  “You’re the one telling me this? The African adventurer?”

  “I know what I’m talking about, Sanna. Believe me. And if you feel at all unclear about things, I can start the divorce proceedings tomorrow. I just haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe exactly because of what you said, it’s like signing off on your own failure.”

  Sanna was confused. Why was she feeling so complete, like she had everything she needed here? She had to wake up. To realize that Martti was not some solution to her life. How trustworthy was he? No sensible, independent woman would change her plans. She had to be capable of doing things on her own. />
  “I’m coming back. So I don’t understand, or I mean . . .” Sanna searched for words and justification, as much for herself as for Martti.

  Martti looked at her, concerned.

  “I’ll come back to you. I promise. I just want to do this, you know, so I can prove to myself that I’m capable of doing something on my own.”

  Martti’s eyes were sad, but he nodded in acceptance. He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a lighter. He handed it to Sanna.

  Sanna took it, stunned. It wasn’t at all like the red Colt lighter he had used in Kalgoorlie. This was gold and heavy, like a piece of jewelry. She fingered the brilliant stones embedded in it.

  “Are these real?” she asked.

  Martti nodded. “I’m not giving it to you. It’s collateral. I want you back from there alive. Since you have to go.”

  “I thought you didn’t like diamonds. Is there a story behind this?”

  Martti conceded there was.

  “Tell me,” Sanna asked, leaning against him again.

  Martti cleared his throat. “Once there was a man who wanted to give the woman he loved a gift. He went to the goldsmith and asked him to set the diamonds in the shape of a constellation that’s only visible in the southern sky, because the man had fallen in love with the woman at the edge of the outback, when they were both far from their homeland, the night he showed her the Southern Cross.”

  Sanna gazed at the lighter, at the pattern formed by the stones.

  “So this is some piece of junk you picked up at a souvenir stand. And these are plastic?”

  Martti laughed. “Probably glass or zircons. I bought it while you were browsing around that used bookstore.”

  Sanna shook her head and smiled. She reached up to give Martti a kiss.

  “Thank you. I’ll guard it like a treasure.”

  The sound of a car carried from the distance. The park was closing for the night and they would have to leave soon, but neither one of them moved. Martti held Sanna tight, the way you hold someone before everything ends, when you’re on the verge of losing someone. When the other person is always there, you’re free to touch them more casually, more lightly.

  Sanna wanted to shake off this sense of fatality. She rose, slipped her feet back into the shoes waiting on the grass, and made as if to pick up the blanket. But Martti didn’t budge.

  “Sanna, I love you.”

  A helplessness crept into Sanna’s eyes. Yes, she knew, and she believed it, too, but she didn’t know what it meant.

  “Somehow I love you, too,” Sanna said, “but that doesn’t change anything. I have to go on this journey and you have to go back to work. And if there’s something there”—an obstinate demand filled Sanna’s voice and eyes—“then it’s going to have to survive this separation.”

  That night at the hotel, Sanna didn’t want to sleep. She gazed at Martti, then past the now-dark bend in the river, the long white drapes like fluttering sails that had come loose from the rigging. She thought about her day in the park, the encounter with Ralda. Why had she been so hostile, not the warm, cheerful Ralda Sanna knew?

  Sanna turned and laid her head against Martti’s chest. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply.

  For once I don’t want to think about anything. I just want to be. This is where I belong.

  16

  Sanna rang Ralda’s doorbell; she could hear birds singing through the door. Ralda was probably out back and the birdsong carried through the house. Sanna tried the handle; it wasn’t locked. She hesitantly crossed the threshold.

  Black, yellow, white, and red were repeated in the paintings covering the walls. At the end of the long corridor, past the artworks, hung a photograph of Ralda’s parents. An Aboriginal person who had originally appeared in it had been cut out, because it was forbidden to view images of the dead.

  “You can’t say their names, either,” Ralda had explained. “I’ve been thinking I should cut out Mom and Dad, too, since they also honored that tradition.”

  Next to the photo there was a black-and-white studio shot of Ralda, her official university portrait. Sanna had seen it on the dust cover of Ralda’s book. The lack of color underscored her pure white eyes in her slightly titled head, each ray of the iris distinct, the photo so detailed it seemed to breathe. Sanna gulped as she stared into the face.

  She was going to have to face the living Ralda.

  Ralda was sitting cross-legged in the garden, her face toward the sun.

  “Namaste,” Sanna said.

  Ralda cracked one of her eyes and smiled.

  “The return of the prodigal daughter. Hello, love.”

  “How are you?”

  Ralda put her hands together at her heart in a sign of gratitude and bowed forward until her nose touched the ground. Then she rose and unfolded her limbs. She was short, but her wiry hands and legs made her look taller.

  “Same as ever, becoming more enlightened by the day. How are you, was he wonderful?” Ralda hugged Sanna and kissed her behind the ear.

  Sanna didn’t know where to start. It felt like words would just tarnish and trivialize what she had experienced. Ralda waited a moment, then reached over to pour some water from a pitcher she had left in the shade.

  “Should we go for a walk?” Ralda asked when Sanna didn’t respond.

  Ralda told Sanna to go out through the gate and wait for her out front. She came out in her sneakers and a ball cap, and locked the house with a remote, like a car.

  “It feels so good being with him. I feel calm,” Sanna said.

  Ralda gave her a knowing look. Sanna blushed and turned toward the shore. Farther out, the turquoise sea deepened to dark gray.

  “It’s great that you’re happy, but is this really what you’re looking for right now?”

  “I wasn’t looking for him. He just happened.”

  “Like Janne, once upon a time.”

  Ralda’s way of pronouncing the foreign name drew Sanna’s attention to the fact that Ralda remembered it. How carefully she’d listened.

  “This is a completely different situation.”

  “Is it? If I remember correctly, you were very unhappy then, too—”

  “I was in high school!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sanna. All I’m saying is, haven’t you already tried to heal yourself with a relationship? It doesn’t work. The same nightmares continue to live on inside you, even if it feels totally different this time.”

  They arrived at the beach path. Cyclists hurled past, hammer-thrower thighs encased in cycling shorts. There was a breeze off the water, but it was still very warm, and there was no movement in the stunted shrubs lining the road, except for the grains of sand rolling among the thirsty roots. Transparent orange trash bags had been set out next to the thoroughfare.

  “It would be good if you let go of him mentally. Maybe you need a bridge like that to let go of the past, but don’t build a future one toward him.”

  Ralda’s words hurt, even though Sanna had reminded herself over and over how uncertain everything was.

  “When are we leaving?” Sanna asked.

  Ralda reacted to the change in Sanna’s tone. She steered Sanna to the edge of the path, so they wouldn’t be in the cyclists’ way. The sea crashed and frothed against the rocks. Ralda tried to make eye contact with her, and when Sanna agreed to look her in the eye, she felt as if she were being locked into them.

  “Sanna, this sort of falling in love is extremely typical in your situation. You’re searching for depth and meaning, and when you fall in love a single person can fulfill all your needs. But it won’t do you any good, just the opposite. It’s going to harm you.”

  Sanna bit her lip and nodded imperceptibly at a couple walking past. They were pushing a stroller; the child in it was waving a neon-green shovel.

  “We’re leaving when I can arrange a ride to take us to the starting point. It might take a couple of weeks.”

  “A couple of weeks!” Sanna cried.

 
She wanted to leave right away, have something else to think about and do, a change of scenery. She already missed Martti so badly it ached.

  Ralda hugged Sanna for a long time as people walked past.

  “Forget about them,” Ralda whispered. “We’re here, we’re allowed to be here.”

  Sanna blew her nose and nodded. Her chin was crooked awkwardly against Ralda’s collarbone. Electronic music thumped from the headphones of passersby.

  Ralda suggested that they walk around a playground they could see in the distance and then return to the house for lunch.

  “Are you hungry now? You’re eating enough, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Sanna assured her. “He, Martti, had a really positive attitude about the baby. Or that there’s one on the way.”

  “It’s easy now,” Ralda said, “but it’ll be different when all your attention is focused on the child. Will he be as eager to support you then?”

  Ralda seemed irritated that the conversation had turned back to Martti. Sanna decided to wait for a little while before she mentioned him again.

  “What do I need to bring on the trek?”

  “Nothing special, normal gear. You’ve been hiking before. Bring warm clothes. It gets cold at night. I’ll take care of the food and the water. But Sanna.” Ralda stopped walking. “Are you 100 percent sure you want to go?”

  Sanna said she was.

  Ralda studied her closely. “You can’t bring your phone, that’s absolutely critical. You need to be able to focus.”

  Sanna was stunned, but nodded acceptance. Ralda knew what she was asking.

  The day before their departure, Ralda woke up Sanna and told her to get in the car. They took the freeway out to another suburb. Ralda pulled into a big parking lot with a green fence running along one side.

  “Where are we?” Sanna asked.

  “You’ll see.”

  They walked along the fence and came to a gate with a sign of an eye inside a triangle hanging above it. They stepped through the gate into a large lush green space. Wooden buildings dotted the edges; one housed a vegan restaurant. In the middle of the garden was an artificial pond with little gray ducks swimming in it.