Burnt Land

by Tua Harno

  He emptied the contents of his backpack onto the bed. Seven yellow safety shirts. He wouldn’t be needing them anymore. Dad used to wear his various company uniforms when he went hunting. Martti remembered their neon-orange glare among the fall colors; the blazing rowanberries had paled in comparison. But the oversized coats had underscored how small and wrinkled Dad’s face was.

  Among his belongings was the book Sanna had given him, that goddamn Hemingway. Martti opened it. A long blonde strand of hair stood out against the blue of the flyleaf. He quickly shut the cover, afraid the hair would fall out, even though he didn’t want to think about Sanna and the park and everything that had seemed possible then.

  33

  SANNA

  She lifted her eyelids with her fingers to make sure she would actually wake up. All she saw was white, no matter how desperately she pulled at her upper lids. Eyes shut, white; eyes open, white. She remembered going blind, but when that happened everything was gray.

  Then the dull horror: Sanna felt her belly and it wasn’t there anymore—the bump that slid around and that she had finally learned to touch and smile at when it answered her. Nothing. Sanna felt the skin give, utterly soft.

  Sanna screamed. The scream escaped her and filled the space. She wasn’t screaming anymore, the room was screaming, she couldn’t turn it off.

  If I’m in a hospital, someone will come. But she was still on the stairs of the donga, because no one came. She heard the screech of metal, felt the plank steps beneath her give. She let go, as if falling backward into sleep.

  The sticky opening of eyes, the beige room, Mom sitting next to the bed.

  Sanna saw the IV, the partway open venetian blinds, something green swaying outside. At the window’s edges she could make out blue sky, full brightness. She heard the air-conditioning, the electronic tap of the machines on the nightstand.

  “Mom, where did you get the money to fly here?”

  “Ville lent it to me. Said there’s no hurry to pay him back.”

  A lump formed in Sanna’s throat. “Tell him that was a really nice thing to do.”

  She smiled at Mom. It was a good thing if her brother and mother had made up—they’d have each other, and Mom would finally get to be a grandma.

  Then she remembered again and tried to wrench herself up. Her body wouldn’t obey. She had tubes going into her arms. She tried to touch her belly.

  “Where is it? Mom, I had a baby, where is it?”

  “Calm down, Sanna.”

  Ville entered the room.

  “Ville, where is it?”

  Mom and Ville exchanged alarmed glances, some sort of negotiation between their eyes. Ville told her she needed to calm down.

  “Why can’t you tell me where my baby is?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Ville said.

  “But what happened? Ville, you have to tell me.”

  “Sanna, stop it.”

  “I can’t find it, Ville, it was here and I can’t find it.”

  Her throat was sore.

  “Sanna, don’t touch it like that—”

  Ville grabbed her and held her wrists firmly. Sanna felt as if her hands no longer belonged to her. They could be removed without a drop of blood, snapped off like branches.

  “I’m not sure I believe you’re really here,” Sanna said to Ville, after watching her brother for a while.

  Ville looked like he’d been crying. Sanna wasn’t sure if all this was happening in the past or the future. She loved Ville so much, had she remembered to say so out loud? She’d been so angry with her brother for being such a snob. Sanna wanted to say she was sorry, that it didn’t make any difference.

  “It’s all right, Ville,” Sanna said, and her brother cried, in spurts, the lump that was always inside him, like an Adam’s apple blocking his throat.

  “I must be dead,” she said to Ville, who kept crying.

  Her brother tried to touch her hand, but he needed his palms to wipe his face and stop the tears from bursting out, as if his sadness were a thread, and each sob ripped the seams apart.

  Sanna looked at him. Her brother looked so young, just like a little boy.

  “You’re not dead,” Ville finally managed to say. “Neither is—” He shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Yes, it’s alive, it’s actually in better shape than you are. Or—well, the doctor will fill you in.”

  Sanna waited. She became aware of the bump under the blanket. Her stomach—it was still there. A teeny-tiny bump.

  “But of course we won’t know for sure until the baby’s born. The stress and the lack of nutrients might have—”

  Ville blinked furiously.

  “But it has a heartbeat?”

  Ville smiled. “Yes, it has a heartbeat and it hiccups. Your stomach jumps when it does.”

  During the daytime, she slid lightly between waking and sleeping. Ville or Mom was always right there, stirring from their phone or newspaper, giving her a questioning look.

  “I’m just making sure,” Sanna said. “I’m just making sure you’re there.”

  She didn’t know how much time had passed, but then she woke to the nurse raising her into a sitting position. Liquid had appeared in the white paper cup on the tray attached to the bed.

  “It’s a salt-and-sugar solution. Let’s see if you can drink it.”

  The straw split the skin on her lips. Sanna tried to place it in her mouth so the only thing it touched was her tongue. She sucked some of the solution into her mouth and swallowed, coughed, and tried again. The nurse encouraged her.

  Sanna fell back asleep, and maybe it was the next day when they brought in more of the drink. She felt hungry. The nurse said that that was a good sign. “Maybe we can remove the drip soon. We just have to be sure that both of you get enough nutrients.”

  “Ville, can you and Erika take the baby?” Sanna asked, after the nurse left the room.

  “Let’s just concentrate on getting you back on your feet,” Ville said.

  Sanna looked at him, considered her own freakish state. It was touching that her brother thought she was still capable of something.

  “Ville, I almost killed it before it was even born, it’s pretty clear that—”

  Ville turned away and said, “Sanna, you’re going to take care of it yourself, you’re going to be a mother.”

  Sanna was too exhausted to form sentences. She would have to try again later.

  “Besides, you told us we’re so cold blooded we couldn’t even raise a reptile.” Ville tried to lighten the mood, but started to cry. The words broke at the wrong spots; his breathing jumped between them like water gurgling the wrong way down the drain. “Why did you go into the outback with some complete stranger?”

  Sanna didn’t know how to comfort Ville; she had no defense.

  She wondered how many years they had faced off and shouted that they didn’t understand each other at all, although it wasn’t true; they understood each other all too well. They just didn’t want to accept each other’s choices, or the reasons for them.

  And now, here, when Ville truly did not understand Sanna, he still loved her. He mourned the thought he had almost lost her with an all-encompassing roar, and Sanna couldn’t understand herself how his love could overcome his incomprehension.

  Sanna’s bed was rolled out of the room and down the corridor to the elevator. She started to panic that Ville and Mom wouldn’t know where she was.

  “This won’t take long,” the nurse promised.

  She wasn’t one of the nurses Sanna recognized, which made her even more wary. They took the elevator up many floors, and that was a slight relief, at least they weren’t moving her anywhere by car.

  The nurse opened the door to an office where a female doctor with a bob sat at a computer. The ultrasound machine was by the wall. Sanna gulped. She knew the baby had been examined as soon as she was brought to the hospital, but she couldn’t remember anything about it.

  “We’r
e going to have a little look,” the doctor said, squeezing out the gel.

  The ointment was freezing. Sanna gasped. And then the white noise, the thumping, as if a horse were galloping, and Sanna was startled because the creature on the screen was moving quickly.

  “Did you already know?” the doctor asked.

  Sanna shook her head. “But go ahead and tell me.”

  “Looks like a girl.”

  A section of the brain appeared on the screen; Sanna didn’t understand all the words but they sounded beautiful: cerebellum, medulla oblongata. And then they examined the heart, that was where the sound of hooves was coming from. The pulse was over 140. The doctor asked if Sanna could see. Sanna saw, but she was concentrating on the sound of the frantic running, the bubbles, the child slipping away like liquid.

  The doctor laughed. “She’s playful, this little person, doesn’t want to stay still, even for our examination.”

  The doctor said that the size of the womb didn’t exactly match the number of weeks, but that was to be expected. Everything seemed to be more or less fine with the baby.

  The nurse rolled Sanna back to the elevator. She was dumbfounded. She didn’t deserve this. The world was so good it was unfair. She clenched the ultrasound printout, the images in the paper accordion as blurry as pictures of stardust. She yearned to share these pictures with Martti, like she yearned for him. But she didn’t know how to ask for him. Sanna felt it wrong to meet him here in the hospital. She needed to heal. And she was afraid that Martti would be angry with her, though she knew he’d melt as soon as she told him what had happened. But where would they meet, and what would happen then?

  “I wanted to clear my head for the baby, so it wouldn’t have a sad mother, but it all went wrong. I don’t want my child to have to suffer any more than it already has.”

  Sanna looked at Ville, who’d been waiting for her in her room.

  “Well, if that’s anything to go off of, I’d say you’ll make a fine parent.”

  “Were you listening? I can’t do it alone,” Sanna snapped.

  “You won’t have to do it alone,” Ville said. “Why don’t you come stay with us for a while? Robby wakes up a hundred times a night, anyway, crying babies don’t bother us.”

  Sanna looked at Ville. “Really?”

  Ville nodded. “You’re welcome at Mom’s, but we have more room. And all kinds of baby stuff.”

  For a second, Sanna felt like a completely different person, a person capable of doing it. But that’s not the sort of family they were. They weren’t some big close Italian clan where aunts and cousins could live under the same roof.

  “Janne and Dad thought an abortion would have been a better solution,” she said.

  Ville blinked and looked away before he answered. “Sounds like Dad. That’s what he thought about me, too, originally.”

  Sanna gasped.

  “It just came out one time when we were skiing. There was another nice confessional moment that night after the sauna. He also told me to have as much fun as possible before I got married. Nothing before that counted.” Ville shook his head. “You’re the only child he wanted. Sari wanted to have a kid, too, well after she turned forty. Dad refused. Their fights were epic. I was pretty sure they would break up.”

  Sanna looked at Ville sympathetically. Her head was buzzing. This information explained something, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.

  “Dad must have been disappointed I turned out like this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like this,” Sanna smiled. “Even when he wants the kid, he doesn’t get what he was hoping for. He gets a splotchy humanist trying to pretend she’s an economist.”

  Ville laughed. “It’s so tough to figure out. You have to know yourself thoroughly to know for sure whether or not you want kids. And if you’re pretty certain someone’s going to take care of the kid regardless, why not give it a shot, just to be sure.”

  “Janne didn’t want this child, under any circumstances.”

  “I think Janne knows himself well enough to say that.” Sanna was stunned. Ville nodded. “That’s been clear since Robby was born.”

  “Erika isn’t going to want me to stay with you guys, just so you know. You can’t haul in a mummy like this and leave it on her sofa without asking.”

  “Oh, she’s not going to let you near that sofa as long as your skin’s weeping and the baby’s spitting up milk. You’ll be staying on the floor of the laundry room—if you’re lucky, that is. The other option is she’ll start decorating a room for the two of you and you’ll be spending the next two months running around shopping with her. You’d be amazed at the number of cute little boutiques that sell baskets and colored soap, and Erika knows them all.”

  The corners of Sanna’s mouth twitched; it hurt her cheeks to laugh.

  “It’s a girl,” she said.

  Ville nodded. He already knew.

  She felt a little like when they were young, when they came up with something together. Like eating molasses straight from the jar, not just tasting a spoonful in December when Mom made gingerbread cookies.

  “If they sold mini ATVs for kids in Finland, would you buy one for Robby when he turned four?”

  “Of course,” Ville said. “Where can I get one?”

  “No, Ville!”

  “You can give your own kid pine cones to play with.”

  “I mean it!” Sanna said, laughing.

  “So do I. Come stay with us.”

  Ville’s words filled Sanna with a new sense of safety, though she thought the only person she’d want to stay with was Martti. But Ville’s offer made her feel more independent; she had a choice.

  The nurse who’d brought in the drink unrolled Sanna’s bandages and checked the burns. Her face was grave, but she said the wounds looked the way they were supposed to at this stage. There would be scarring.

  “The important thing is we found you in time.”

  Sanna had seen herself in the mirror when the doctor had asked her to stand. Her shorn hair had fallen out, and only a few patches remained on her scalp. Her teeth thrust out, unnaturally large, below her shrunken nose and cheeks. The burn marks on her face were coin-sized lesions. She could see her fingertips, which were black. Sanna could feel the wounds itching and oozing. The skin at her shoulders and shoulder blades had chafed off in strips. She remembered trying to pick out the sand and twigs, and it had felt like her fingers were sinking into wet flesh. She hadn’t been thinking clearly at that point anymore.

  Her breasts had condensed into swollen nipples, dark with pregnancy. The nipples themselves stood out like black eyes against her otherwise pale chest, and beneath them her belly glowed white. The bump showed when Sanna stood but nearly vanished when she lay down. The skin on her thighs was etched with thousands of crisscrossing wrinkles, and her knees looked smudged with soot. Her feet were white from her soles to her ankles, since the hiking boots had protected the skin, but it looked like the bones had been crushed in her nail-less, mangled toes.

  She couldn’t hide the scars any more than she could hide her pregnancy, and unlike Ville and Mom and the nurses, who felt sorry for her, Sanna was pleased. It wasn’t that she wanted to punish herself, but that she no longer needed to hide or pretend anything anymore. Everything was visible.

  Dad called Ville and asked to talk with Sanna. Sanna held the phone awkwardly against her tender shoulder; the bandages had been removed from her palm, but the skin was still covered in open sores.

  Dad said he’d told the mining company what had happened. “I explained it in a way that made it sound like a car broke down. In any event, you can finish your thesis after you recover.”

  Sanna hadn’t thought about the whole thing and was astounded by her dad’s matter-of-factness. His tone of voice implied that she’d gotten mixed up in something he found embarrassing.

  Sari wanted to talk to her, too, and said that both of them had been horribly worried. Sanna assumed
Sari had heard his businesslike tone, too, and decided to intervene before the phone call ended in a fight. That’s probably how things worked for them: Sari handled emotional communication on Dad’s behalf.

  She rolled her eyes as she handed the phone back to Ville.

  “Dad was really worried about you,” her brother said. “I’m pretty sure he would have flown out, too, but his heart’s been acting up.”

  Sanna didn’t know what to say. How was Ville able to react so calmly to Dad, aware as he was of Dad’s flaws as a father?

  “Shouldn’t we get you your own phone, anyway?” Ville asked.

  Ralda had probably buried hers somewhere in the desert. Sanna was sad and furious about the message from Martti she had lost, about Ralda’s high-handedness.

  “And where’s the rest of your stuff?”

  “At her place.”

  Ville gave Sanna a questioning look, and she shrugged uncertainly. She dreaded the thought of going back to the house, although there had been no sign of Ralda since Sanna’s escape. Search and rescue had scoured the vicinity of the cave, but there had been no trace of a tent, or even a campfire.

  “The cave is an important addition to the Wandjina paintings,” the police officer in khaki uniform had said.

  Ville had stood at the end of the bed, listening gravely. Mom was perched on the lip of her chair, looking to Sanna for confirmation that her presence was allowed. Sanna, nauseated, had been unable to focus on what was being said.

  “It would have been a major event in a researcher’s career, making a find like that. Did she want to keep it to herself? With the spring, you could theoretically live there, if you knew how to hunt,” the police officer had pondered out loud.

  He had two clear Ziploc bags with him, and they had been spread out on Sanna’s covers. She immediately recognized the contents: one contained Ralda’s bracelets, the other her own hair.

  “These were hanging from the branch of a tree some distance from the cave. It’s a custom of theirs. It looks spooky, people’s bodies in trees in unnatural positions, as if they’ve been speared upright there, but that’s not how they mean it. They think it’s beautiful.”