‘Why pretend?’ Lotta continued, her voice firm. ‘Karl’s in Stockholm, and I’m glad of it. It’s all gone too far: I’m really beginning to wonder if he’s quite all there. Come with me,’ she said, as if she’d reached a decision. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’
He got up from the table, dropped his napkin, and followed her. She picked up a shawl she’d thrown over a chair, and wrapped herself in it.
‘You’ll need your coat, Thomas. Wait here, I’ll fetch it, and I need to get a lantern.’
The temperature outside had risen slightly. After nights of hard frost, it was getting ready to snow, he thought. There were no stars, and the air was still. All day the sky had been a heavy iron-grey, tinged with yellow. A sky loaded with snow, wanting only a touch to make it fall.
‘This way,’ said Lotta. Light spilled on the path from her lantern, and the shadow of her cloak swung wildly one way and then another. Her face was set.
‘But Lotta,’ he said, as they reached Karl’s workshop, ‘do you think we should go in here, when he’s away?’ A man’s workplace was private. He would have hated anyone to go into his surgery, and move his things about, and read his books.
‘I told you, I’ve something to show you,’ she said, producing a key and unlocking the door. She found a switch, and light flooded the workshop.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s got everything here. He had a generator for the workshop before we had electricity in the house. And his bed, his stove, his books and pictures. Everything he loves is here. Wait.’
She was fumbling behind a green velvet curtain. There was no window behind it, he knew that, only an alcove.
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice muffled by the curtain. ‘It’s still here. I thought for a moment he might have taken it with him. But even Karl’s not crazy enough for that. Not yet.’
‘But what is it?’
‘Look for yourself.’
The brass rings rattled as she drew back the curtain. There it was. A sculpture. Its lines were elongated, slender, delicate. For a moment he couldn’t identify it, and then he saw it was a sculpture of a girl, half life-size. Or perhaps it was a boy? It possessed the extraordinary grace that some boys have at sixteen or seventeen, before their muscle thickens. But the figure was not life-like. It wasn’t like a real body at all, but the idea of a body that had been unlocked from a man’s mind and turned to wood. The figure lay on its back, head turned to one side as if lost in sleep. The wood ran like water, dark and silky with touch. The sculptor had not marked the sexual organs, and the shallow curves of breast and hip might have been either female or male. But somehow that only made it more intensely erotic. He couldn’t help himself, he put his hand out to the wood, then he caught the flash of Lotta’s anger, and drew back.
‘That’s what he does. All the time. He thinks I don’t know. He thinks he’s so clever.’
‘I didn’t realize that Karl could carve anything as good as this.’
‘When he wants, he can do anything,’ she said bitterly. ‘But Thomas, I think he’s ill. I really think he is mad. He sits here for hours, stroking, touching – that thing. It’s more real to him than any of us. It’s all he wants.’
‘But he didn’t take it to Stockholm,’ said Thomas, trying for humour.
‘He thinks it’s safe here,’ said Lotta.
The tone of her voice troubled him. ‘Lotta, you wouldn’t –’
‘Why wouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I? Can you imagine what it’s like, to live with a man who only wants a piece of wood?’
‘Then you shouldn’t live with him,’ said Thomas suddenly. ‘You’re right. Why should you live like this? You deserve better, Lotta.’
She looked at him, and a small, very sweet smile touched her face.
That smile has been there in Lotta all the time I’ve known her, he thought. I must have seen it before, but I can’t remember.
‘No, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I can’t leave him. It’s my duty to stay with Karl. This is where God has placed me. And besides, I haven’t the courage. What could I do, away from here, away from all my friends?’
‘You could live with Erika. You know how fond Erika is of you.’
‘No, no, that wouldn’t work. Erika is fond of me precisely because we’ve never lived together. You have to be realistic, Thomas, at our age.’
‘At our age,’ he repeated gloomily. ‘Really Lotta, you talk as if we’re already dead. Pull the curtain over, let’s not look at that thing any more.’
But Lotta didn’t do so. Instead she just stood there, staring at the carved figure as if it were a puzzle she couldn’t solve. ‘The absurd thing is,’ she said at last, in a low voice, ‘that in a way I’m jealous of Karl. He’s got something that means so much to him, and nobody can take it away from him. If I destroyed this sculpture, he’d only make another. Karl’s got what he wants.’
‘And you haven’t?’
‘You know that, Thomas,’ she said, even more quietly. ‘You know that. And there’s nothing to be done about it, not by you, not by me, not by anyone. Why does God place us on this earth? To test us. To try us. To see what we can endure, and still be faithful.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Yes. To see how much we can endure.’
‘I’m sorry, Lotta.’
‘Good heavens, Thomas, it isn’t your fault. Your friendship – You know that our friendship means a very great deal to me.’
‘And to me.’
Lotta pulled her shawl around her, and straightened her shoulders. Briskly, she caught hold of the edge of the curtain and drew it across the alcove. The brass rings rattled vigorously.
‘There. That’s enough of Karl’s nonsense. I can’t think why I wanted to show you. Well, we all have our moments of weakness.’
‘We most certainly do. Lotta dear, you’re shivering. This place is as cold as a tomb. It can’t be good for you. Let’s get back to the house.’
*
Already, big soft flakes of snow were falling. They stuck to the cold ground, prepared by nights of frost.
‘Lift the lantern, Lotta.’
She lifted it, and they looked up as they’d used to look up when they were children, into the whirling spirals of the first snow of winter, coming faster and faster, falling onto their eyelids, their lips, their cheeks. The flakes seemed to be drawn to the lantern light like moths. Yes, when they were children they would run about with their boots ringing on the hard earth, scraping up handfuls of the first snow and throwing them at each other. It was the metal tips of their boots that made the ringing sound.
In the morning everything will be covered, he thought. Everything will be smooth and mysterious and full of light. That morning after the first snowfall! How he used to wake up to strong white light on the ceiling, and he’d jump out of bed in ecstasy and stare at the white garden without a single footprint in it. It wasn’t happiness, it was ecstasy so strong that his living body couldn’t contain it, but must run and rush and leap and punch the air until he fell headlong into the snow like an angel with his wings open.
And he was still here, with the same house around him, the same garden and birch-groves and stream, the same forest. But all the people who had made his life then were gone. Imagine if someone had told him when he was that little boy: One day they’ll all be dead, your mother and father and old Katariina, and even the wife you’re going to marry, who’s still a little girl… one day they’ll all be dead, and you’ll still be alive.
If you put it like that, it sounded incredible. But it all happened slowly, and so it was bearable. Indeed it was absolutely normal, and what life did to everyone. You mourned people, you missed them, and as they faded from your life others replaced them. Only sometimes – now – the dead seemed so close, so real, more real than anything he could touch. As if they’d been secretly present all the time, just waiting until the snow began to fall and they could reveal themselves. He could almost hear the excited screams and shouts, the
ringing of the boots.
Lotta was part of those lost times, and she would always carry them into the present for him, so that wherever Lotta was, those times would be close. Lotta would never let the present break away from the past, any more than she would smash a piece of family china. That was her gift. If Karl didn’t understand it yet, he would when she was gone. He would mourn Lotta’s gifts, when she was no longer beside him.
‘Dear Lotta,’ he said, ‘if you won’t leave him, you must at the very least go on a long visit to Erika, and make Karl realize what his life would be like if you weren’t here.’
She laughed. ‘No doubt he thinks it would be a great deal easier.’
‘Then he’s deceiving himself. He may not know it, but he depends on you, believe me. Without you here, Karl would be lost. He’d sit in that shed until he froze to death.’
‘You were urging me to leave him a minute ago.’
‘That was for your sake, not for his. Now, let’s go in.’
25
Sasha had vanished. It was Sunday now, and he’d been gone since Thursday morning. Or at least, Thursday was the last time Lauri had seen him.
When Lauri left for work that morning Sasha was still asleep. Sasha had said nothing to indicate that he was going away, but that evening he didn’t come home. At first Lauri thought maybe there was a meeting that Sasha had forgotten to tell him about, and it had gone on so late that Sasha had slept on some comrade’s floor. There was always a meeting. But there was still no sign of Sasha on Friday after work. They were due to go to the sauna together: they always did, and then relaxed with a few beers afterwards. He asked around in a few bars, but nobody had seen Sasha.
Sasha was a grown man, well capable of taking care of himself. But late on Friday night Lauri suddenly got worried that he might have been picked up by the police. He knocked on the neighbours’ doors, giving nothing away, but no one had seen or heard anything. But that’s the way of neighbours, thought Lauri. When there’s trouble they make sure they don’t know anything.
Lauri saw Hannu next morning, smoking on a corner, watching a gang of kids scream along the street in a game of tag. Hannu looked as if he’d like to join in. He had one of those boyish faces which stay the same until well into the late twenties. Lauri leaned against the lamp-post, watching as a kid tripped in a pothole, pitched forward and lay there bawling until he got hauled up by one of the others. And then off they went together, arms over shoulders, to sit on a step.
‘Seen anything of Sasha this last day or two?’ asked Lauri casually.
‘No. Where’s he been?’ For Sasha was always off somewhere.
‘No idea. I haven’t seen him since first thing Thursday morning. He didn’t say he was going off anywhere, did he?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Nor to anyone else either, as far as I can make out.’
‘You’d know, if anyone would,’ said Hannu. Suddenly his tone became more serious. ‘You look worried. You thinking he might of been picked up?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Could be, but I don’t think so. Not our Sasha. He’s too –’ Hannu made a quick little movement with his hand, weaving it in and out. ‘Listen, Lauri, I’d get on to Fedya if I were you.’
‘Right. I’ll get over there.’
They talked in quarter voices, like professionals. One of the first things you learned was not to whisper. Hannu even threw back his head and laughed loudly, as if Lauri had come over to tell him a joke. Maybe Hannu took the whole thing a bit far, Lauri thought. As far as he could remember, his father and Pekka and all the rest of them didn’t use to carry on like this, as if they were on stage.
Fedya didn’t know where Sasha was. Didn’t even know he was missing, but he was sure there was nothing wrong.
‘If he’d been picked up, we’d know. There’s a system.’
‘A system?’
Fedya frowned with a touch of self-importance that Lauri didn’t like. All right then, he thought, so you know something I don’t. Keep it to yourself, then.
‘See you,’ he said, and left.
‘Lauri!’
‘What?’
‘Don’t worry You know our Sasha. If anyone can look after himself…’
Lauri walked fast down the cold streets. Somehow those two encounters had irritated him more than he’d have thought good comrades like Hannu and Fedya could irritate him. As if the pair of them were playing a game, and enjoying it.
It was only fair to say that Sasha played games, too. Sometimes he behaved as if the act of pretending to be what you weren’t – or pretending not to be what you were – was the most important part of the ‘political education’ he was always on about.
Lauri walked faster. His irritation suddenly switched to anger, but he wasn’t angry with Sasha now, or Fedya or Hannu or any of them. No, the person who deserved his anger was himself. What kind of a friend was he, thinking such things just at the time when Sasha might be on important Party business, taking risks Lauri didn’t even know about? Some friend. Some comrade, he thought, almost taking pleasure in the indignation that swelled against himself and seemed to resolve all his doubts. Loyalty, that was the thing. Even if you didn’t understand why something had to happen, you were loyal.
By Sunday morning, Sasha still wasn’t back. Lauri woke as usual, into the Sunday quiet and winter darkness. He’d slept late, worn out after a heavy week and some beers the night before. There were his boots on the floor, where he’d kicked them away. If Sasha had been there, he’d have put Lauri’s boots neatly alongside his own. Sasha didn’t like mess and untidiness.
How quiet life was without him. Sasha talked like a Russian, not like a Finn. Every thought that went through his mind was worth turning into words. Fair enough, since he was Russian. Sasha talked, and Lauri listened. He would never have missed Sasha saying he was going away for a few days. He hadn’t said anything, and that was what was so strange. And where could he have gone? Nobody knew.
Sasha knew everyone Lauri knew, although Lauri had realized some time ago that he certainly didn’t know everyone Sasha knew. But that was fine. They didn’t live in each other’s pockets. Who’d want that anyway? They were men, not boys.
All the same, Sasha was by far the closest friend Lauri had ever had. But even as he said that to himself, it struck false. For there was Eeva, shining in his imagination with her own steady, mysterious light. She hadn’t seemed mysterious at all in the days when they’d curled up in bed together. She’d felt like part of himself, no more special than his arm or his leg. He’d taken her for granted, but surely that wasn’t wrong? It was like taking your own arm or leg for granted. It didn’t mean that you didn’t value being able to spoon soup into your mouth, or walk.
She’d been ordinary, but during the years he hadn’t seen her she’d grown mysterious. He watched and watched her now, but he still couldn’t make out what she was going to do next, or what she was thinking about. And yet the Eeva who was closer to him than he was to himself was still there somewhere, within this girl in the green dress. He had to believe it. There were moments when he was sure of it.
It was these two things together that made a barrier: her mystery, and the dearness that lay behind it. He could have dealt with either of them separately, but together they made Lauri stiff and silent. He was always thinking of what he should have said to her, immediately after she and Magda had gone off together. When the past came up, as it couldn’t help doing sometimes, he’d go and say something clumsy that he didn’t mean, and feel her withdraw from him. And there was no one who could help him. Magda wasn’t inclined to do so, you could see that straight away.
He caught sight of Eeva across the street one evening, getting off the tram, looking at the ground to make sure she wouldn’t slip. She was frowning slightly, holding her skirt to keep it out of the dust. The sight of her seemed to rush into every corner of his mind and stop his thoughts. She didn’t even see him.
Best not to think
about any of it. Sasha would be back soon. And in one way – a way that Lauri wasn’t too proud of – it was a relief to have a breathing space. The more he thought about that conversation with Sasha – ‘talking about Bobrikov’ was how he phrased it in his own mind – the more fantastic it seemed. ‘Talking about Bobrikov’ drew a veil over that fantastic, dreamlike conversation about bombs and bullets and poisoned umbrellas. It seemed unreal now. Like a dream, or something he’d invented. He almost wanted to bring up the whole ‘talking about Bobrikov’ subject again, just so that Sasha could laugh and say, ‘You didn’t really swallow all that crap, did you? Lauri, Lauri, when are you going to stop being so politically naive? That’s not the way things are done.’
To kill a man, Lauri thought. He could imagine doing it in anger. Yes, if he saw a man knock down a child, and seize the lump of bread in her hand, he could do it. Or if someone tried to hurt Eeva. He wasn’t going to pretend that he didn’t have that anger in him.
He got up and began to walk quickly around the room. He felt hot, restless. But what Sasha was always saying was that you had to act on the basis of what you knew. It wasn’t right to base your actions on your emotions. You must analyse the situation objectively, until you found the correct response to it. In fact it was not up to one individual to carry out such an analysis. It was a collective responsibility. Lauri couldn’t help smiling as he remembered the relish with which Sasha rolled out words like ‘objective analysis of the situation’ and ‘collective responsibility’. Somehow, Lauri could never use those words himself. They didn’t belong to him, and he felt like a fraud using them, no matter how much Sasha nodded approval.
But if someone was trying to hurt Eeva…
Instantly the picture jumped into his mind. It was Eeva, backing against the wall with her bundle. They’d come to take her away. It was for her own good. A new life, a better life.
She was very pale. He wanted to fight the man with brass buttons down his front, but Eeva whispered, ‘Don’t, Lauri, or they’ll take you away as well.’ Lauri’s father was already in prison, and Big Juha was standing there scowling at Eeva as if he hated her. Lauri knew he scowled because he couldn’t do anything, and had to let them take away the daughter of his dearest friend. But did Eeva know that?