Burnt Land

by Tua Harno

  “And Osla can’t get through to her, either?” It pained Martti to say the other man’s name—it made him feel small.

  “Osla’s going to be taking himself and his things and getting out of here. So.”

  Marja had sung Osla’s praises on more than one occasion. Martti had tolerated it to a point, but had hated hearing about Osla’s virtues. Now he was infuriated by Osla’s failure. He was supposed to act as the steadying influence in Minttu’s life, serve to buffer her from Marja’s mood swings.

  No, that had been Martti’s job.

  The rumble of dumpers could be heard from the pit’s roads again. The silence portending the blast had disappeared with the orange clouds of dust.

  “How bad are things?”

  “Bad.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “It’s pretty hard from out there, isn’t it?”

  Martti thought about Sanna again and what Sanna had said about his daughter. He felt completely inadequate. How could he bring up the divorce now?

  “I’m going to see if I can request some leave, a little longer than normal.”

  “Wow.”

  “If you think it might make a difference.”

  Martti wasn’t completely sure if he meant what he was saying; he had assumed Marja would dismiss the idea as unnecessary. But what was Minttu up to if she wasn’t in school?

  “Well, I don’t have the energy anymore, I can tell you that. I’ve babied and fed her for sixteen years now, and she is so ungrateful—”

  Martti cut her off, said he was going to try to arrange some time off. He could feel anger climbing up the back of his neck. How could Marja talk that way? Wasn’t that what all teenagers were like? He thought back to what he’d been like with Mom that summer after finishing his required schooling. He’d been different. And in some odd way, Martti reveled in Minttu’s daring to behave so badly.

  “It’ll be interesting to see if you actually make it here.”

  The doubt dripping from Marja’s voice stung.

  “I’ll let you know as soon as I know. Bye now.”

  He would be able to talk sense into his daughter; she was just rebelling against her mother.

  Martti called Minttu. The ring tone echoed and echoed. Minttu usually answered his calls.

  He tried to call Sanna, but she was equally unreachable.

  Martti looked at the open wound of the pit, the machinery working away, like ants dissecting a carcass. The mine’s network of roads grew day by day, the backward city disappearing within the earth rather than reaching for the sky. The hills turned to red rain, and the holes were so deep the bottoms remained unfathomable.

  20

  SANNA

  One of the first stories Sanna heard about the local tribe was their interpretation of beached whales.

  At first humans tried to chase off the beasts and drag them back to sea with ropes. But the whales wouldn’t budge, so the humans poured water over them to keep them from dying. But the whales snorted like self-important horses; they wanted to await death in peace, without their puny end-of-life companions. If the humans did manage to scare off a whale, the whale would just wait until night and climb back onto the sand under cover of darkness.

  In the end, humans understood that whales were like dolphins: unborn human children that had drowned in the rising tide at the beginning of time. The next time the whales beached themselves, the humans immediately split them open with their axes to free the imprisoned soul of the child, so it could join human society. Then they unloaded the whale like a ship, ate its flesh, and used its bones as tools.

  Did Ralda intend on splitting her and releasing her child’s spirit into the wind and the sand?

  Ralda was in the lead. Sanna was watching her guide’s back, the brown skin at her nape, the long shadow of her walking stick.

  “I have to go back,” Sanna started to say, but the words stuck in her throat to the point that she choked on them.

  Ralda still heard her; Sanna could see it in her back, the fact that she didn’t turn around. Ralda refused to listen to such sentiments. Sanna had promised to push through the exhaustion and her doubts.

  I’m going to stay here in the desert. She’s going to send me flying in different directions, lone crystals of sand flung here and there. Everything is a cycle. There’s no need to fear death because I no longer exist.

  Sanna shook her head. The heat made it hard to think, that’s what this was. She was too tired, she had to go back to be with other kinds of people, talk about other things, take part in everyday conversations.

  Maybe this is what happens when you don’t talk enough, when you’re away from the city.

  How long had they been walking now? Eighteen days?

  Solitude meant either punishment or enlightenment. Sanna no longer could tell which one was being imposed on her, either by Ralda or the desert.

  She woke up to the tent collapsing on them. The fabric on her face and mouth made it feel like she was suffocating. All her old nightmares about being buried alive rushed to mind.

  The stakes had been torn out of the ground. Ralda said it was a sandstorm. The wind snapped, and the sand rose from the ground and condensed into dark patterns, a swarm of millions of locusts. They couldn’t eat outside. Ralda told her things would be easier in a cave.

  Or if we weren’t out here in this goddamn desert, Sanna thought.

  Ralda told her that the tribes recognized the winds by the way they smelled and how fast they moved. “The gentle spring breezes and the harsh winter winds that brought the cold. Before long your skin will know them, too.”

  Yes, her skin had grown more sensitive, as if a layer had peeled off. Her hairs, like antennae, could sense the tiniest fluctuations in temperature.

  “And then there are the black winds that only blow among the living during evil times,” Ralda continued. “The dark winds that whisper underground, fingering the roots and wrapping themselves into serpents’ tails. They smell of damp and rot and can be seen flying across the desert and diving back into their caves.”

  Why was she talking about caves? Sanna wondered.

  Walking in the howling wind was as hard as trying to think in it. Moving was like trying to walk at the bottom of the sea. The sand hurled itself into her mouth if she opened it, and the wind filled her. She was like a wailing organ pipe, a hysterical, incessant march playing in her head. The sand rose toward the heavens and she could see no line between earth and sky. Sanna questioned the necessity of walking into the wind. Would they be buried if they waited for it to die down before they moved on?

  The storm continued, a blizzard of sand, and that night they couldn’t light a fire.

  “It’s just as good uncooked,” Ralda said, pouring grains and nuts into some water.

  The wind tore away her words as soon as they flew from her lips. Sanna saw Ralda saying something but couldn’t hear what. She had unwrapped her scarf and was using it to shield her face. The sand crystals stung as they struck the insides of her nostrils and eyes. Ralda handed her a plate; Sanna ate underneath her scarf and could hear the munching inside her head. She could feel the grit in her food and she almost laughed in spite of her rage and exhaustion. She was done with this place. She wanted to go home.

  She thought as long as Martti was at the airport waiting for her, she could postpone thinking about where home would be. Her haven was a man without a home.

  “I wish this goddamn wind would stop blowing,” she roared.

  “It will stop when I want it to,” Ralda said.

  “Then could you please ask it to stop now?”

  Sanna didn’t think Ralda was being serious, and she certainly didn’t find the joke particularly funny. Ralda looked her in the eye. Sanna’s scarf whirled around her and painfully smacked her in the face. Then the wind died.

  Sanna could hear the air stand still, how the rustling and whining had died abruptly. Ralda nodded without averting her gaze from Sanna. Then she stood and too
k the camp stove from her backpack.

  “Maybe we’ll heat it up after all. It will be more filling that way.”

  Sanna just gaped at her. Now that it was quiet, her ears were ringing.

  Without asking, Ralda had taken Sanna’s plate, too, and poured the cereal into the pot. Sanna was dumbfounded that the smell of food wasn’t making her hungry. They ate in silence, and it took a long time before Sanna’s restlessness faded.

  “I know I probably shouldn’t ask this . . .” she said.

  Ralda smiled understandingly. “You want to know when we’ll get there?”

  Sanna nodded apologetically. She also wanted to ask about the wind but didn’t dare. It would mean she was crazy, or it involved something so unnatural she didn’t want to know about it.

  “Are you afraid you won’t be able to tell? Or that our journey will end before you’re healed?”

  Sanna gulped. Her throat felt dry. Yes, of course, ridiculous fears, Ralda had thought of everything.

  “I thought we’d be doing something.” She searched for the words. “Something besides walking across the outback.”

  Ralda’s eyes were penetrating. “Does it feel to you like that’s the only thing we’re doing?”

  Sanna shook her head. She didn’t know exactly what the desert was doing to her, but she’d noticed its effect on her body. Her thighs were aching, her calves were stiff and tight. The tip of her nose was peeling, and the backs of her hands were burnt.

  The trek focused all her thoughts on the present moment, on continuing. It was almost impossible for her to achieve such presence otherwise. As she wandered she was only conscious of what was happening in the moment. But if all she thought about all day were the next step, food, and rest, how was that going to heal her? Or had it already happened, had she walked herself to wholeness?

  Sanna felt joy weakly burbling up inside her, until she remembered her longing and guilt. She hadn’t been healed of her desires, and she didn’t know how she would make up to her child for what she had done. Martti and the baby forced her to think, to feel beyond the present moment, one moment with fulfillment, the next with fear.

  “Sanna, we’ll do other things when it’s time.”

  Of course. Ralda had witnessed this cycle countless times, a person searching for inner peace whom she tested and eventually brought here. Out here, you were broken down with every step, until in the end you were nothing but sand Ralda might release from her fingers to be carried off by the wind. There were no more sad thoughts, because the only thing that existed was the silence of the desert.

  Sanna had started keeping her distance, didn’t join Ralda at the fire, made sure she didn’t roll up against the other woman’s sleeping bag at night in the tent. Back in Perth, Sanna had been confused to discover she’d found Ralda’s touch slightly arousing, although she’d never been attracted to women before. But here, where every minute of existence was doled out sparingly, greater intimacy felt impossible.

  We need other people around, Sanna thought. How else can we find someone to be with?

  21

  MARTTI

  Martti hit the gym with Jake, pumped iron until his arms refused to obey and his legs were too weak to walk. The woman who had taken the dead girl’s place was also there, her long, limp ponytail dangling like red yarn from the back of her head. She looked like a stick figure on the stepper. Martti turned away, put off by the sight of the scrawny arms and legs, the kneecaps taut against the skin.

  Jake gazed longingly at Eva.

  “You know she has a kid, right?”

  “Of course,” Jake snapped.

  “And?”

  Jake didn’t respond; he bit his bottom lip and forced out another bench press.

  “You wanna head to the patio after this?” he asked.

  Martti was surprised, but agreed. He couldn’t remember ever having seen Jake at the wet mess. But here they were now. Jake’s mouth twitched nervously before downing his beer in one go. He rotated his head and cracked his neck. Martti sighed and looked up. A gloomy brown tarp roofed the patio. He lowered his gaze to the horizon, to the pale stars twinkling there.

  “How old do you think I am?” Jake asked out of the blue.

  Martti turned and eyed him and his totally smooth baby face.

  “Twenty-five?”

  “Thirty-two,” Jake said. “You know why?”

  Jake was older than Sanna. Was Sanna really that young anymore?

  “I can stand being alone when I’m not working. If you always have to be around other people out here, you’ll end up an alcoholic. Or like Stacey.”

  Martti shrugged. There were so many routes to alcoholism. But Jake appeared to have given the matter serious thought. The kid clumped his foot down from the bench and said good night.

  He had made it halfway across the patio when he noticed Eva coming up the stairs. Martti saw Jake’s footsteps slow, but he stayed the course and exited. Eva shyly walked over to Martti’s table, said she didn’t really know anyone here yet. Martti gestured for her to take a seat. He’d noticed the others avoiding her, and the child made her stand out.

  “Where’s Lily?”

  Eva smiled. “You remembered her name.”

  “There aren’t too many kids around here.”

  “Lily’s sleeping. I-I can’t stay long, even though she’s a sound sleeper.” Eva’s hands trembled nervously around the pint glass. “I just wanted to, you know. Talk to someone. A grown-up.” She batted her eyes and stroked the tabletop.

  But instead of talking, Eva just sat there drinking, casting the occasional glance at Martti, waiting for something. Martti didn’t know what he was supposed to offer her. He was on the verge of saying he had a daughter, too, but decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t want to talk about Minttu right now.

  After countless attempts, he’d finally gotten Minttu to pick up the phone. Her tone was lighthearted as she assured him things were under control. She just didn’t like high school—one of her teachers had had something against her. And she hadn’t made any friends in the nursing assistant program. But there was nothing to worry about.

  “So what’s your plan?” Martti asked, sweat beading on his forehead.

  “What’s the rush? I have my whole life ahead of me.”

  “How do you plan to support yourself?”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize you and Mom were going to throw me out on the streets.”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, but—”

  “But what?”

  “You promise everything’s OK? You know you can tell me anything, right?” Martti said, able to hear the pleading in his voice.

  “Sure. Don’t you worry, Martti.” Then the call had ended, and a second later a message arrived: Battery dying, sorry, call u later.

  Martti tried calling right back, but Minttu didn’t answer.

  After Eva went back to Lily, Martti stayed on the patio alone, staring at the lawn next to the mess. It had to be artificial grass; there was no way grass that green could grow here. Plastic on sand. The desert would have been beautiful in and of itself—all the colors were contained within it. The sand burnt, but its shadows provided an enveloping coolness, tempting you to dip a hand in.

  Sanna would understand.

  He became aware that someone was looking at him and turned his head. Ned, the Aboriginal Rights foreman, was sitting across the table from him. He had a thick beard and glittering eyes. Martti felt like he had been caught in a private moment.

  “You know anything about routes across the outback? Poem paths or something?”

  Ned’s expression changed.

  “I’m not remembering the name right, some kind of trail. I have a friend, maybe out near Kimberley. She’s on a trek.” The final word sounded as silly as a mining town prettified with plastic grass.

  Ned nodded, scratched his forehead. “On walkabout?”

  “Something like that. A couple of weeks.”

  Ned looked alarmed. “This t
ime of year?”

  “Yes, yes. Songline! She’s walking along some songline.”

  Ned looked even more concerned. “She going to see the Wandjina paintings?”

  “I don’t know what she’s going to see. She’s trying to find herself. Or inner peace. Balance.”

  Ned chuckled, but his voice was tense. “Pretty brave, heading out there.”

  Martti had seen pictures of the Wandjina paintings: images of divine human-like figures with enormous eyes. They had spawned theories that extraterrestrials had visited the area.

  “Those places and pictures are sacred,” Ned said. “Who’s taken her out there?”

  “Some spirit guide.”

  “Not one of us?”

  Martti shook his head. “A researcher, from Melbourne? If I remember right.”

  “Tell her to come away from there. It’s dangerous.”

  Yes, Sanna, it’s dangerous out there. Come back, goddamn it. You’ve already been wandering out there for three weeks.

  Martti stood, waved good-bye to Ned, and sauntered out from under the tarp and over to the lawn to gaze at the stars and watch them fall to earth.

  An apologetic recording echoed from Sanna’s phone.

  Martti called Minttu. “Is now a suitable moment for Your Highness?”

  “Are you drunk?” Minttu asked.

  “No.”

  “Is there something you want?”

  “I want to talk to you! There’s a summer trip in it for you. Some weekend wherever you want. It’ll be fun, won’t it?”

  “Can I bring a friend?”

  “No, just you and me. A father-daughter trip.”

  Minttu covered the receiver; Martti could hear her talking to someone.

  “We’d have fun together, wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we, Minttu?”

  “You’re drunk.”

  Martti closed his eyes, restrained himself. “Minttu, we have fun together, don’t we? Like last time in Helsinki.”

  “A couple of hours at the airport and some mall. Yeah, that was a real blast.”

  “So what do you want, then? I’m all ears—” he slurred.