The Rhythm of Memory

by Alyson Richman

  Samuel grew slightly melancholy realizing he would never see this landscape in another season. He wanted once more to be the father who rode through the streets of Vesterås with his little girl strapped to the backseat of his bicycle, not the other way around. He wanted to again be able to love Kaija as he had that first year in Göteborg, with that same virility, and the same mad recklessness that had led them to the balcony of his tiny apartment with hungry passion. But he also realized that he needed to accept that there was still so much beauty around him. He did not want to spend his last days regretting what he would never have.

  “You look tired, Daddy,” Sabine said, her voice interrupting him from his thoughts. “We should head back to the inn.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “But only if your mother is ready.”

  They did not want to rush Kaija, who now stood in the center of the tiny, two-room house where she believed she had been born. Kaija imagined her mother giving birth in the sparse, wooden bed and holding her for the first time.

  She had no idea that she had been born on the very lake that made her heart still soar. She had no idea that her mother had cried nearly every night after Kaija was first taken, or that her mother’s young life had ended at the very place where her own had begun.

  Sixty-three

  MIKKELI, FINLAND

  JUNE 1985

  The old church’s copper cupola looked like a green cabochon, cut against the blue Finnish sky. Kaija did not want to go to the cemetery, but she did it anyway for Samuel’s sake. By this point, if Samuel wanted to trek across the Arctic, she would have agreed, no matter how implausible it seemed for a man in his condition. She wanted no regrets for him or her; she finally understood what her husband had tried to convey to her. He had a few more things left to do on this earth, including making sure that she was taken care of, both physically and emotionally, after he was gone. If he believed visiting her mother’s grave would begin her healing, she would follow.

  The cemetery was fastidiously maintained, which surprised Kaija at first because she wondered where all the people lived now. She thought of these proud people who had fought for their independence on skis, clad in white uniforms that blended in with the snow.

  The small wooden church with the domed peak recalled the architecture of a Russian church. She knew her parents were Russian Orthodox because she remembered the tiny relic by her brothers’ bed. And she knew this was the church where they had held her mother’s funeral because her father had pointed it out to her the first day she was returned in the winter of 1948.

  The cemetery was completely full. Rows of iron crosses lined the grassy hill. Red flowers marked the graves of lost soldiers. Kaija began to walk through the cemetery. She leaned down over each plot to read the names on the graves, wondering if she would eventually stumble on one that read Sirka Laakso and, if she did, whether there would be an adjoining one inscribed with the name Toivo Laakso.

  It was Samuel who finally found the names for her. He had walked only a few meters before discovering both of their iron crosses, rusted over from the years of rain and snow. But what he had not expected to find were the two other names beside the graves of Kaija’s mother and father, Viktor and Olavi Laakso, Kaija’s two brothers.

  “Have you found them?” Kaija called out to him, the hem of her red dress billowing in the wind.

  Samuel remained silent for a few seconds, his mind racing to think of a way to tell her. His reflexes were slower now, and before he could speak, she was already at his side.

  “Oh, my God,” she said as her trembling fingers covered her lips. “I knew about Viktor. He died before I returned home, and I have no memory of him. But Olavi too?” Her eyes started to well up with tears.

  “Olavi and Arvo found me by the train tracks that winter I was returned,” she said, her voice quivering. “When did he die?”

  She gazed at the dates and tried to do the simple arithmetic in her head. “Nineteen fifty-three…that would make him only nineteen!” She looked around to see if there was a grave for Arvo, but she found none.

  Samuel reached out to take his wife into his arms. The fragility of her husband’s embrace only intensified her pain. “Samuel, I can’t take this.” She wriggled out from underneath his arm. “Look at all this.” She pointed to the expanse of graves.

  “I know, Kaija.” He too looked over the field of iron crosses and blooming flowers. “I know.”

  “I feel numb, Samuel. These are the graves of my parents, my brothers, and I have little to no memories of any of them.”

  Samuel reached for his wife’s hand and he could see her eyes welling with tears.

  “For years I was angry. I believed my parents gave me up because I was a burden to them during the war.” She took out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “When I had Sabine and I held her in my arms, I had so much love in my heart at that moment. But as the weeks passed and I became even more attached to our daughter—anticipating her every cry, marveling at every gesture—I secretly raged at my own mother.”

  Her cheeks were now flooded with tears and she was holding on to Samuel’s trembling hand with all her strength.

  “I felt as though I was never loved.” She was trembling. “Because, how could my mother have possibly loved me if she gave birth to me, held me to her breast, and wrapped me in her arms and still…still sent me away?” She paused and took a deep breath. “I know that I could never have done that with our daughter, Samuel.”

  “I know. I know,” he said, trying to comfort his wife. “But there was a war going on, Kaija. And, in war, things are not black-and-white.” He took a deep breath. “They saved you.”

  Samuel looked up at Kaija and saw how her eyes were now rimmed in carmine, her delicate nostrils flaring slightly like the curved edges of a conch shell. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to hold her and fall to the ground, the two of them floating off into the watery lakes.

  She nodded. “I know, Samuel. I know.” She looked around at the sea of graves again. “Finally, I see the sacrifice that they made for me. I could have been buried under one of these iron crosses. A victim of starvation or a stray bullet.”

  She was crying into the hollow of his chest, gripping the cotton fabric of his shirt and fingering the buttons with trembling hands.

  He pulled her close and stroked her hair.

  “You’ve been the most wonderful mother to our daughter. The most loving wife…” His lips were close to her ear and she could feel his warm breath on her neck. “Your parents acted as we would have, Kaija. We both know, no matter the great heartache it would have caused us, we would have done anything to spare our daughter pain.” He pushed her back and gazed into her green eyes. “Your parents sacrificed a great deal when they gave you up, but they did it because they loved you.”

  She turned her face up to Samuel’s, her lips trembling as they managed a slight curl. “Finally,” she whispered, “I can see that clearly.”

  Sixty-four

  VESTERÅS, SWEDEN

  JULY 1985

  Sabine could barely look at her father. It was as if she were staring at the premonition of his death. After school, she would go to her parents’ room and find him lying in the bed surrounded by his books, a tray of barely eaten food resting beside him. Amid the starched white linen, his head propped up by the pillows her mother had fluffed only a few hours before, his eyelids swollen and his face sunken. The dehydrated flesh hanging from a protrusion of bone.

  She held his hand in the beginning of his bed rest. Those long fingers, the knuckles veiled in a web of a few downy, black hairs. But the coldness of his hands made it almost unbearable for her now. She wanted to rub them, hold them between her palms, and massage the life back into them. But it was no use.

  Sabine wasn’t with him the night he died. Kaija stayed at the hospital, never leaving her husband’s side, holding the hand that had caressed her, loved her, swept back her tears for so long. She held his palms against hers, his eye veiled in sl
eep and hazed by the painkillers. And she too closed her eyes, fighting back her tears to remember him as he would have wished. That first day in Göteborg, when she drew him in profile, marveling at his dark skin and thick black curls. He was the man beside her, not the skeletal impostor who slept in a hospital bed, the smell of ammonia clinging to his skin.

  She was not aware of the exact moment he left her. She could not remember the last time his hand had felt warm to her. But when the nurse came in and placed her hand on Kaija’s shoulder, whispering that her husband had passed on, she felt herself go numb. The thought that he would never physically return, that she would have to live her life drawing upon her memories, was too painful.

  “Samuel, Samuel,” she whispered over and over, until she no longer had the energy to speak.

  She had stopped wearing her crucifix nearly a month before because she felt betrayed.

  In one of his last lucid moments, Samuel had noticed its absence, as she hung over him like a perched seagull.

  “Where’s your necklace?” he asked her, his white hospital gown accentuating his monklike face.

  “I’ve taken it off, Samuel.”

  “Why would you do such a thing?” he asked as his saffron-colored fingers reached for the gap in her blouse.

  “Well, it certainly hasn’t brought me…” She paused to correct herself. “It certainly hasn’t brought us any luck, has it?”

  “There’s no such thing as luck. There’s no credibility to superstition.” She saw that even though his lips were parched and cracked, he was still trying to smile.

  Kaija gave him some ice chips, carefully placing them in his mouth.

  His eyes were shining now, and he didn’t seem to notice the morphine dripping into his yellow forearm, now so tender and patched in blue it looked like a bruised banana.

  “But faith is important, Kaija.” His fingers reached toward hers.

  He closed his eyes for a moment as his wife reached out and took his hand, squeezing his fingers tightly in her own.

  “I too have lost my parents, Kaija. I’ve also lost an entire family—cousins, aunts, uncles…all of them perished in the war.” He paused and tried to wet his cracked lips with his tongue. “And, yes, I will die soon. But still, I have faith.”

  “What faith, Samuel?” she said, shaking her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What faith? We never kept a Christian or a Jewish home. Maybe we’re being punished for that!”

  “Punished? I don’t think so, my love. I have faith that you and I will always be together. That even in death, you will not be able to get rid of me.” He was straining to laugh, his brown eyes crinkling as he squeezed her hand. “I have faith that my daughter will grow up and be a woman with great strength and character…like her mother.…I have faith that she will know right from wrong. That the lessons that we taught her over the years will guide her and that she will make us proud.”

  However, one of the last things he wanted to say, he could not say aloud. So he said it silently. In a quiet, precious moment of a dying man, he acknowledged the only other woman who had been in his life, however briefly, besides his wife and daughter. Without uttering a sound, said only between him and his God, Samuel asked for forgiveness. He prayed that Salomé was happy, that she had made peace with herself and her family.

  Kaija had to decide whether to bury Samuel in the Jewish cemetery in Stockholm or in the one at the Vesterås church. He had never expressed his wishes to her, so she was left alone with the final decision—to bury him in the traditions of his forefathers or to bury him in a Christian cemetery close to his wife and daughter.

  She knew that the Jewish cemetery would forbid her and Sabine from ever being buried alongside Samuel. Neither of them had ever converted to Judaism. She would have, had Samuel asked her to. But burying Samuel in a pasture full of iron crosses and carved angels seemed wrong as well.

  In the end, she chose the church cemetery. For even though the crosses were incongruous with Samuel’s faith, she believed that he too would not want to be separated from her in death. That, like man and wife who slept beside each other in life, they would rest next to each other in death.

  So, on a rainy day, Kaija and Sabine buried Samuel on a grassy knoll against a dark, Nordic sky.

  The funeral was attended by over fifty people, many of whom Kaija and Sabine had never seen before and whose faces melted in with the rain. Mother and child placed red flowers on the mound of fresh earth before slowly making their way to the car.

  In the distance, they did not see the dark-haired woman, cloaked in a black coat and a lime green scarf, who waited until they had departed. Who kissed the lilies she carried before placing them carefully on Samuel’s grave.

  Sixty-five

  VESTERÅS, SWEDEN

  SEPTEMBER 1994

  Every photograph, every gift she had ever given him that had made it to Sweden, he put in boxes and placed in storage. Even the old silk pouch she had embroidered for him years before, he packed far from sight. He signed the divorce papers that arrived in the mail and never tried to arrange a meeting with her to discuss the dissolution of their marriage. He felt so empty, so emasculated, that for the first time in his life, he no longer had any words.

  Octavio had accepted the job of movie projectionist because he thought it was the most appropriate one offered to him. He could admit to himself that he enjoyed sitting behind the winding reels of film and watching another man play out the roles of lover, hero, and artist. At this point in his life, it was easier to sit there and watch someone else do all the acting. Octavio knew that he had already played his most important role nearly twenty-five years before, and never again would anything be as meaningful to him. He didn’t even have a script back then, but he had played his part with all his heart, convincing Father Cisneros to help him rescue Salomé.

  Now as he touched the American film with his finger, the film delicate and translucent, Octavio smiled. Loading reel after reel for a theater filled with restless Swedish teenagers brought him a strange sense of comfort. He was spending his middle-aged years as a voyeur of sorts. An observer of everything around him and a partaker of almost nothing.

  A few times after Salomé and he had divorced, he’d contemplated telling her how he had convinced the priest to help him, and how together they had persuaded General Martinez to gain her release. But in the end, he chose not to. So now he was back where he was when he’d first discovered Salomé, loving and admiring her from afar.

  Still he was different from that young man who had gazed upon that beautiful, seventeen-year-old girl from his balcony so many years before. Then he had only seen the world as a good place, where the pure of heart could live and love. But he had since seen things that had changed him forever. Those men in the black van—bloodied and beaten—were enough to ensure that he had recurring nightmares. He could only imagine what they had done to Salomé.

  He had eventually exhausted himself by trying to pretend that all could return to the way it once was; that with a few sugarcoated words to Salomé and a flurry of kisses, he could erase the things that had gone terribly wrong.

  Now he saw things more clearly. Perhaps it was the reflection brought upon by old age. Perhaps it was living alone for all these years, for he now saw all the mistakes he had made. He had been cowardly in not letting the pieces fall between him and Salomé. He wondered if he had allowed them to completely break, without constantly trying to mend them before they were allowed to shatter, would the two of them be together now in their golden years?

  Since the divorce, they had maintained their friendship not only for the sake of their children, but also for themselves. Salomé could never abandon Octavio completely. They were bonded by something stronger than marriage. So although they had failed to find a way to work through their troubles, Salomé was still the great love of his life.

  At one time he had tried with all his heart to forget her. He couldn’t believe that she had allowed him to walk out of the ho
use without even calling him back. He had thought she would follow him, rush out after him, throw her arms around him and say she was sorry for isolating him. He thought she would never let him just walk away.

  But those were the days when he’d believed that his life would mimic a script. Where a happy ending was promised to him, because he naively believed that love would conquer all.

  When she failed to follow him, he had been so hurt that he’d vowed never to return. He tried to rid his mind of her. So he took all the mementos he had of Salomé and packed them away.

  At one point, he even tried to date other women. But as much as he wanted to forget her, he couldn’t maintain the facade of being interested in a woman who clearly couldn’t measure up to Salomé. So gradually, as the years passed, he accepted his ex-wife’s overtures of friendship. He realized that it was foolish of him to pretend that he could erase her from his heart. She was the mother of his three beautiful children. She was his first and only love.

  So he would wait for her, as he had done so many times when they’d tangoed in their living room. When he would release her so she could twirl around, and he would remain—waiting for her with an extended hand.

  Sixty-six

  VESTERÅS, SWEDEN

  NOVEMBER 1998

  Over the years, Salomé often replayed in her mind the day Octavio had walked out. She knew that he had yearned for her to stop him and tell him that she too wanted their marriage to work. That they could not let what had happened in Chile separate them and destroy their love.

  But she hadn’t been able to do that then, as their lives had diverged too much since their arrival in Sweden. And Salomé had also felt a burning desire to start the next stage of her life alone. As Samuel had suggested, she needed to find herself again, and she thought the best way to achieve that was on her own.