Burnt Land

by Tua Harno

  Janne had been wine-warmed, and Sanna had smiled and joined in the conversation, but she could feel the plaster mask on her face, and inside her the words crawled toward her nostrils and her eyes like ants desperate for air: I want to die, I want to die, I want to die. Sanna had continued smiling, looked at Janne and wished she could draw something out of him that would save her, but Janne’s eyes had been inscrutable.

  “Wouldn’t your child be happy out here in the desert with us?” Ralda asked, which conjured up an image of a laughing child, sand crusted in his hair, running barefoot and eyes shining, pointing out a wedge-tailed eagle in the distance.

  “Of course,” Sanna conceded.

  It was a mirage, and that’s why she allowed herself to see it and then let go.

  But eventually, her earnest child would be sitting at a birch-wood pulpit, hair trimmed, drawings with a name scrawled in big letters crushed at the bottom of his heavy, jostling backpack. The laughing child of the desert was something to watch on TV. It was not for them. Why not? She didn’t know exactly, but she clearly was coming up against her limits.

  Ralda touched her shoulder. “This is the point where it’s difficult to change your thinking. But try. Think about living without your parents, without your expensive apartment, without worrying about your appearance or whether you’ll find a job. Life without all that sludge of human contact: racism, envy, jealousy, the horrible things people do to their children. It’s completely possible to live free of all that.”

  Sanna’s head was ringing; Ralda smiled at her. She didn’t know whose dream Ralda was talking about. Sanna wanted peace of mind, but was this what it looked like? Houses where no one lived anymore that the desert would eventually swallow?

  That evening in the tent, Sanna lay down on her side and pressed the mesh material of the tent with her finger. If only cool water would drip down, like when she was a child, coaxing the water through the fabric during a rainstorm. The flashlight hanging from the top of the tent swayed, the bright light running up and down their bodies.

  Of course it was possible to live a different kind of life, but she hadn’t wanted anything as radical as staying in the outback. She remembered what Martti had said about his constant moving. The opportunity to travel from continent to continent and to live in different places meant that you could live many lives during one lifetime.

  “People cling so readily to their environment, or the environment clings to them. They assume the shape of the mold they’ve been poured into,” Martti had said. “In a new place, nothing’s set in stone yet. You get the chance to grow into a different person from the outside in. And that’s what you’re doing.”

  Maybe.

  What kind of person would she grow into, alone out here with Ralda?

  Sanna’s ears thrummed, as if she could hear the rush of her own blood. The day had drilled the heat into her skin, and it was still radiating from her. She crawled out of the tent to cool off. Overhead, the frosty glass canyon of the Milky Way looked as if it could lift her up and swallow her. She understood how the past and the future were a constant presence for tribes that wandered the desert. Gazing at the heavens made you feel like you were witnessing the creation of the world. The heavens arced down to the surface of the earth, black and inviolate, and the stars floated, some closer and some farther away, some bright and burning steadily, others winking with the foundering flame of a dying candle.

  Ralda stepped out of the tent and stood at her side. She turned Sanna toward her and stroked her drawn face. Sanna felt as if she could hear the woman’s thoughts, hear Ralda saying that they still had a long way to go, a very long way.

  Where? Sanna thought.

  Trust me, Ralda’s hands said, stroking her hair.

  Sanna closed her eyes and leaned against her. She sensed a cold turn in the air, a cool black sigh.

  19

  MARTTI

  Martti thought he was seeing things when he came across a child on the footpath leading through camp. She was the size of a fire hydrant, and looked like one, in her threadbare T-shirt and white helmet, and she stared at him like a little soldier.

  “Hi, who are you?”

  The girl didn’t answer. She was wearing plastic shoes and double-striped sweatpants so pilled they were velvety. Her brown-stained shirt looked as if it had been pulled out of a fire.

  Martti looked around. The child scratched her belly button. The stumps of her fingernails were black. She squealed, having ripped open a scab, dyeing her fingers with bright-red blood.

  “Hey, hey, hey, don’t do that.”

  The girl drew back when Martti stepped closer.

  A gaunt woman emerged from the side door of the canteen. It was the worker who had shown up to take the dead girl’s place. She bowed apologetically from a distance, keeping her eyes lowered. The girl whimpered as she watched the woman approach. The woman stepped up, stammered something to Martti, and then started hauling the child off toward the dongas.

  “Hey, wait a minute.”

  The woman looked up, revealing a long face. Two pale scars, one at her upper lip, the other at her eyebrow, stood out against the skin. Piercings, perhaps, once upon a time. She squinted at Martti, and recognition flickered across her face, then vanished. In their safety uniforms, all the men looked the same.

  “You have your daughter here with you?”

  “I have permission.”

  Her thin lips tightened around her teeth, and her gaze remained steady although her hands were trembling. Martti had never heard of anyone having a child at the camp. Minors were strictly prohibited from entering the pit. He had occasionally reflected upon what effect it would have on the place if children were allowed to stay with their parents. Children and the elderly were the only moral restraints in the world today; people behaved differently in their presence. It would do them all good to see more children around the camp, but this wasn’t a good place for anyone.

  The woman stood there, as if waiting for Martti’s permission to excuse herself. He nodded at her. The child walked in front of the woman, dragging her feet. Martti thought there was something peculiar about the girl; perhaps she hadn’t developed normally.

  “It’s a temporary solution. Don’t worry. It’s not your responsibility,” his boss said when Martti asked him about it.

  “But why? What’s the story?”

  “It’s a charity case. She doesn’t have anyone in town to look after the kid.”

  “Does she know why the position of a canteen girl opened up? You think that’s some indication as to whether this is a good environment for a child?”

  “I got the impression that even this camp is a better place than wherever they came from.”

  Martti asked one of the secretaries in Perth to buy the girl some clothes, a few toys, and dishes and utensils. They arrived on the next flight. Martti examined the undersized shirts and pants, exactly like the colorful ones Minttu wore so long ago. This is what would be hanging from the clothesline after Sanna’s baby was born. Martti cut off the price tags and tried to fold the clothes neatly, but after seeing the clumsy piles he just crammed them back into the plastic bag.

  He spotted the woman behind the service line at the canteen; the kitchen uniform was like a gargantuan pair of white overalls on her, the ugly hairnet like foam from a bubble bath. Martti felt sorry for her, and the words caught roughly in his throat. She went back into the kitchen through the swinging doors. Martti stepped into the dining room, figuring he would have something to drink before he delivered the gifts. Next to the beverage dispenser stood the big rumbling ice-cream freezer, the kind they had at ice-cream shops. The scoops stuck out like palm trees in the sand. Martti smiled as he remembered the brouhaha that had ensued when they had cut the number of flavors. Brawny, bearded men complained, in all seriousness, that chocolate, vanilla, and caramel weren’t enough, that they had to have strawberry and melon, too. Plus a sprinkle dispenser.

  In his childhood home they’d had a big c
hest freezer for reindeer meat. The ice cream stored in it sprouted frosty spikes and tasted like cold water and milk, the Eskimo bars tasted like wooden sticks, and the Popsicles stuck to your lips. To Martti’s mind, all of it was infused with the blood and iron from the carcasses. He remembered the time Mom had been expecting Dad home for the weekend and bought two cartons of vanilla ice cream. Mom had told Martti that these were straight from the store and couldn’t taste like reindeer meat. She had scooped the ice cream into a big glass serving bowl she set out in the middle of the table. The idea was that it would melt to the perfect consistency by the time Dad got home. Mom had forbidden Martti from touching it—they would enjoy it as a family. Dad never showed, the ice cream turned to white soup, and Mom dumped it over her head the way you emptied the pail of rinse water over your hair in the sauna. The ice cream was like soap in Mom’s eyes; she squeezed them shut, blindly set the bowl back down on the table, and fumbled her way out of the kitchen and into the bathroom.

  Martti realized he was gripping the bag of children’s clothes so tightly that his knuckles were white.

  He circled around the serving line, through the swinging doors, and into the kitchen. The skinny woman was standing at the dishwasher. It was as hot as a steam bath in there; her face looked poached. She eyed Martti uncertainly. The rumble and roar of the machine made it hard to hear.

  “I just thought . . . since there’s nothing here for children.”

  The woman opened the bag, and her mouth slowly curled into a crooked smile. She blew her nose.

  “Thanks.”

  “I just guessed the size. Hopefully they fit. How old is she? Three? Four?”

  The woman nodded.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Lily.”

  Martti noticed that the woman’s irises were a clear gray, but otherwise her eyes had a yellowish tint. Her teeth were bad, and wrinkles lined her face. The black edges of tattoos peeked out from under her white collar and sleeves.

  “Thanks,” she repeated. “I’m Eva.”

  Martti nodded and wished them welcome. He hoped they would feel at home. It was nice having a kid in the camp. The woman wiped the sweat from her face.

  “Where is she now?”

  Eva gave Martti a perplexed look, and he turned around. Lily was sitting on a platform of stacked plastic pallets, playing with sheets of paper towels. Something about her quiet game, the paper dangling like the wings of dead birds, saddened Martti. He didn’t know why. He said hi and she glanced at her mom, who nodded. The girl gravely returned Martti’s greeting, and his throat tightened. He felt the sweat dripping down his neck and turned to leave. Now it was his turn to feel the woman and child watching his uncertain gait. He remembered how disconcerting it had been that first time he’d seen Minttu studying him. That moment had marked the end of the era when he could observe his daughter’s back and slender neck, her unself-conscious play, her words spoken in a private language. That moment when Minttu turned her gaze to him, even before she knew how to ask, “Dad, what are you doing?”

  Martti felt like he had been at the mine for half a year, even though it had only been a month. He was counting down the days until Sanna’s trek ended.

  A day here lasted at least three days; the 4:00 a.m. wake-ups and the heat slowed down the hours, making them drag on and on. The sun never budged, the day didn’t pass. He had missed Sanna a hundred times already, was sick with how badly he missed her, of how his concern for her made him moody. Where are you? Martti scanned the sky above the craggy hills. When are you going to call?

  He remembered how he’d decided he would never wait for anyone again. It was the night he’d refused to go looking for his mother, defiantly told himself morning would come regardless. His courage had melted on the way to school as he held his breath and kept his eyes glued to the ditch; every canister and rock momentarily looked like the back of a head, the cloud-tatter reflections in the stream like Mom’s long white coat.

  He called Marja from the blast barrier. He’d decided beforehand to phone during the day; there wouldn’t be the background racket from the terrace or the lonely silence of his donga that would make it impossible to end the call. Martti stared out over the blast site as the alarms blared. The explosive charges were white, as if someone had painted small crosses on the ground. A children’s cemetery.

  There was nothing unreasonable about asking for a divorce; this had gone on long enough. But Marja didn’t answer.

  Martti saw a couple of square yards secured with pink tape at the side of the road. The tape was used for marking sacred areas. Sometimes these sites were small, but even in those cases you often saw a tree or a stone there. This one was a taped-off void.

  There were a lot of sacred spots in the hills, and they had been excluded from the mining claim. Still, Martti knew that if a vein of iron ran beneath one, eventually the entire hill would be blown up. The dig was about four miles long now, but only about three hundred feet deep. The ridges on either side made it look deeper.

  The shock wave reached the barricade. Martti saw the orange sand rise and surge toward him in enormous waves, like rust-colored rain. He gazed at the flapping pink tape. What good did it do when the earth around it disappeared?

  Martti walked over to his car. He had to make sure all the charges had detonated. He drove to the site, where a mountain of earth had risen. That’s what happened during blasting—no holes were formed, the earth just broke up so it could be excavated.

  He climbed up on the pile of sand, the acrid smell of explosives scraping the insides of his nostrils. He strode around, his boots leaving sharp, distinct footprints in the soil. The fuse shreds were like the trash from a Mardi Gras parade. All the charges had gone off. He announced from his car radio that the barricades could be taken down.

  The head of the blast team had also been inspecting the mound. Martti wasn’t sure if he was out there for his own benefit, to make it look like he was doing his job. They were behind schedule, and really needed to do a blast a day. Millions and millions of tons of earth blown to bits. Martti remembered Sanna’s horror at the detonations, but iron needed to be mined. “How would we live without it?” he’d said.

  “But in such massive quantities? I just can’t wrap my head around it. That rock is nonrenewable,” Sanna had said. “I understand that iron builds the skyscrapers in Asia, but I can’t help thinking that accelerating production has to eventually stop somewhere. What happens when the earth is nothing but craters and skyscrapers?”

  “There will always be something else,” Martti had replied.

  “You think so?”

  “Our farm, at least,” Martti had said, then told her where he’d buy the chickens and seedlings, even described the ornamental patio chairs where they’d relax at night.

  Sanna had smiled at his dream.

  “You’ll come live there with me, won’t you?” he’d asked.

  “Yes, if you want us to.”

  Martti imagined children roughhousing under the hammock, plowing their hard heads into his back as they ran past. Yes, he had pictured more than one child.

  Sanna’s lingering absence reverted his plans to the dreams of a lone miner, a fantasy that gave men the motivation to work but would never come true. Maybe all those dreams, everyone’s dreams, would crumble regardless, because the world couldn’t sustain them.

  Come back, Sanna. I need you so I can believe in my dream. If you’re in my life, I’ll be able to live it right.

  He called Marja again. Was this the third or fourth time?

  “You must have something important on your mind,” she said, sounding ill when she answered.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I’m on sick leave.”

  “So you’re sick?”

  “What do you want? Having trouble reaching Minttu? She only answers the phone when she feels like it nowadays.”

  The anger in Marja’s voice caught Martti off guard.

  “I was calling about som
ething else, but is there a problem, with school or some boy trouble? Is she drinking?”

  “Take your pick. First she dropped out of high school, then she dropped out of her nursing assistant program. She thinks if she gets a summer job at Kevitsa, they’ll take her on permanently.”

  “Kevitsa?”

  “That new nickel mine.”

  “They don’t hire minors.”

  “You think I haven’t told her that?”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “What exactly would you have done? Sent a hunk of rock for the mantelpiece?”

  Martti’s voice was hoarse with fury. “So she’s not in school. What does she do all day? What’s she planning on doing for the next two years?”

  “Sleep. Marry her phone. And she doesn’t even talk on it, like normal people.”

  “Goddamn it. Is she home now?”

  “My guess is no.”

  “Is she or isn’t she?”

  “No, she’s not.”

  “Did you even check?”

  “Her moped’s not in the yard.”

  “And?”

  “She left last night.” Marja’s voice buckled. “Osla and I had a little argument.”

  Martti was at a loss for words. He and Marja had argued, too, shouted until the corners of their mouths stung. Minttu had trembled and cried, white faced. He thought all that would come to an end when he moved out.

  “How bad was it?”

  Marja sighed. Martti wondered what she looked like these days. In the past, Marja used to hug herself when she was sad and hunch over, as if the sorrow were vomit she was holding in.

  “She threatens to move out every chance she gets. That’s the crowd she’s hanging out with. I can’t get the same answer out of her twice. She’s constantly changing her mind.”