But in 1964 everything is just beginning. Kerttu still wears her hair up in a beehive sometimes and coats it with hairspray from an aerosol can—a habit she will later come to disdain.
Kerttu is looking for something, she doesn’t know what. She’s restless and moody and overflowing and happy and she’s decided that I belong with her in everything she does.
She takes exams on five books at a time in political science, history, philosophy—sometimes books with ancient covers. She swears that one day she’ll shake the dust of this country off her feet and head out into the wide world.
But now, in May of 1964, she has sprayed hair and coal-black eyes, here on Liisankatu, and she’s looking at me eagerly.
“You’ll finally get away from Vieno. What kind of job did you get? Journalist? Interpreter? Or are you going to be a secretary somewhere? It’s not the best job, but secretaries have good opportunities for promotions.”
“No,” I say. “I’m going to be a nanny for a family.”
Kerttu’s expression freezes, disappointment creeping into her face. She had imagined something else.
“You don’t even like to cook.”
“I’m learning to like it.”
“Why?” Kerttu asks. “Why in the world would you?”
I hear my explanation: “Be serious. You know I need the money. You know I hate working at the hat counter.”
I haven’t asked my parents for money once since I moved to Helsinki. They wouldn’t have had it anyway. In fact they’ve got used to getting letters once a week with a couple of bills in them from my wages.
“It’s just a job,” I say. “I’m going to take care of the child while the wife is traveling for work.”
“Are you going to do the cleaning and the shopping?”
“Yes, I’ll do the cleaning and shopping.”
“See?” Kerttu says knowingly, popping a piece of bread in her mouth as if the gesture severs her from the conformity of this world. “You’re going to be a maid.”
“No. This is a real thing. It’s a family. They said they wanted me to be like a member of the family.”
Kerttu laughs bitterly. Defiance rises in me.
“They said I could have a room to use.”
“Are you going to move?” Her eyes darken.
I soften, go to her and hug her. “No. No, I’m not. I’ll just be spending the night there when she’s traveling. It’s easier that way.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a psychologist. A doctor. She studies children.”
Kerttu’s expression brightens a bit. “What about her husband?”
“Actually,” I say slowly, “I think he’s a little bit famous. He’s an artist.”
I tell her his name. She’s silent for a moment.
“Good,” she says. “I know him. He’s chummy with poets and people like that. He might be a man of substance. Good company, I mean. Or he might be a louse.”
“He didn’t seem like a louse.”
Kerttu sighs, smiles. “All right. You have my permission. As long as you don’t end up being a servant for the rest of your life.”
I STILL HAVE to call my mother and father. My mother doesn’t say she’s disappointed, although I can hear that she is. She’d hoped for better for her daughter. Instead she talks about the television my father’s bought. He got excited about the idea of a television when Mäntyranta won the gold medal in skiing. Before that he was against the contraption.
“What are you watching?”
“The test pattern,” my mother says. “Isn’t that exciting?” She’s quiet for a moment. “So you probably won’t be coming home for the summer.”
“We’ll see.”
My father says what I was afraid he’d say: “You could have done that.”
“Done what?”
He snarls the rest of the sentence out: “You could have done that here. Cook, boil porridge, watch the neighbors’ kids.”
I don’t care what he says, because I want to build my own world, by myself.
IN JUNE, A day before Elsa’s trip, I carry two suitcases over the threshold. Elsa is alone, the man has taken the little girl to the park.
She shows me my room. It’s small but pretty. There’s a view of the yard from the window—I can see a horse chestnut tree, already withering in the summer days, and two young apple trees. It’s a lucky beginning. There’s some kind of luck in it, though I don’t yet know what kind.
Elsa packs her things in her room, taking clothes out of the closet, folding dresses and jackets into a large suitcase.
She pats me approvingly as she passes. She’s giving me permission. I’m not a servant here, I can come into her bedroom.
“What are you going to do while you’re there?” I ask, emboldened by her familiarity. “What do you study?”
She says simply: “We study children. We’re developing a new form of therapy, a kind of play therapy.”
While she’s away she’s going to spend her days at a clinic where the air is filled with cries for help, hurt feelings, requests to be picked up, rages freshly created. But above all the clinic’s air will be filled with hope—Elsa’s sure of this—the inexhaustible hope that every child carries inside. Room after room of children playing in a circle, children taking naps, sitting in the laps of mothers at a loss for what to do. Some children happily absorbed in dolls and puzzles, others gazing glumly at the brick walls of the building. Elsa will pick up a crying child, rock the child for a while, write down observations. She can’t bear to leave a child unconsoled. There’s no demand for explanations from Elsa’s lap—it’s broad, accepting, unquestioning.
“Look,” Elsa says suddenly, grabbing a dress that’s hanging in the closet. “I’ve been trying to think who this would fit. It’s gotten too tight for me.” She lifts the dress, examines it critically, peers at me. “Do you want to try it on?”
The dress is a pretty one, ordered from a seamstress. It’s a little old-fashioned, but grown-up, the kind of dress that you need wisdom and experience to wear. I want to try it on. I want its gentleness, its dignity.
Elsa watches me undress. There’s still a sisterly quality between us, a mutual approval, perhaps a hint of guidance.
She zips me up, opens the closet door to show me the mirror. The dress is a little too big—the bust is an empty dome.
“Look, it almost fits you,” Elsa says smiling. “It’s just a little loose. You can take it to a seamstress, have the seams taken in a few centimeters.”
IN THE EVENING I try on the dress again in my room. I put it on carefully, stepping into it like a mold. It’s a little too big, I don’t completely fill it.
I look at myself in the narrow closet mirror.
I look like a copy, a slightly absurd imitation. Something needs to be done. I’d have to be something more, but I don’t know how. The horse chestnut tree in the yard looks sinister in the dark as the lights go out. I lie awake for a long time and try to listen for noises. If the man and his wife are doing anything—and why shouldn’t they, this is their night to say good-bye—they’re doing it silently.
“SO,” ELSA SAYS.
She drinks her coffee standing up. Then she gives me a look as if to say, are you ready? It’s seven o’clock, bright sunrise.
We ricochet around the kitchen awkwardly, uncertain as rolled dice. The little girl gets worked up. She knows that something new is about to happen. She runs from one room to the next, climbs from my lap to Elsa’s, from Elsa’s to her father’s.
He’s quiet, avoiding my gaze. Later I learn that it’s a habit he picked up as a boy when there was more than one woman present, a habit he hasn’t shaken. When his mother would invite friends over, he would sit at the table with the women, see their bosoms heaving, those breathtaking mounds, and
turn his face to the window.
A stolen glimpse, as if through the crack of a door: light flooding through the window, covering everything in a bright haze, but the women continue their murmuring talk, the light dances in their hair and on the pearl buttons of their sweaters. Their breasts are sublime and their smiles hold unspoken secrets.
He decides to go to his friend Lauri’s house tonight. Maybe he’ll call up his whole gang of buddies and they can go out somewhere for the evening. He doesn’t intend to spend silent hours in these rooms with me. He’ll give the child a good night kiss and walk out the door. That’s what they’re paying me for. To sleep in these rooms, so he can go where he wants.
When the front door is opened, the little girl bursts into tears. She knows that her mother is leaving. She runs to the living room and hides under the coffee table.
“Oh, little one,” Elsa says, standing in the doorway. She goes into the living room with her coat on, shoes on her feet, takes the girl in her arms one more time, rocks her quietly, and whispers something in her ear not meant for anyone else to hear.
I wonder how I’ll ever be able to bend like that, to give the kind of consolation that Elsa knows how to give. Uncertainty squeezes me as small as a fist.
The girl finally agrees to come out from under the table. She has her rag doll with her. She walks to the door, humble, with the doll, which is as big as she is, in her arms.
Elsa embraces the little girl for a long time in the street, in front of the car, as the suitcases are put in the trunk. She’s not sure for a moment whether to hug me or shake my hand. She decides on the hug.
“You can take my daughter,” she says.
I take the little girl in my arms, she presses her head against my shoulder, squeezing the doll under her arm, no longer looking at her mother.
The man glances at me. I nod. They can go. Elsa smiles a little before opening the car door. When they’ve left, the girl asks me to put her down. I strike a mild-mannered pose. I’m on my own now.
“So.” The word echoes through the street, making me feel again like an imitation. “What would you like to do? We can do anything you like.”
“Let’s go to the park,” the girl says.
That doesn’t sound hard. We can go to the park and look at the fountain. Or maybe I’ll take her to the seashore, show her the ships. We can buy some ice cream, ride the tram. We can name the trees that we see, dig in the ground with a stick, maybe see a worm, give it a name, too—Pekka, perhaps—and hope out loud that it finds whatever happiness can befall a worm.
“Molla’s coming, too,” she says.
“Good,” I say. “Molla’s coming.”
Only now do I really look at the girl. It’s been a long time since I looked at a child so closely. Pure is the word that first comes to mind, but not in the sense of being free of dirt—it’s something else, something fresh. Her eyelashes are surprisingly long, her eyelids plump, her nose looks soft, rising from her face like a ripe berry. She already has distinctive expressions, but sorrow hasn’t yet found its way onto her face, I can see that. Seeing it is unlike any other seeing—seeing something that doesn’t yet exist, but that you know is coming.
I’ll be the one to draw sorrow on the little girl’s face. I don’t know this yet, and I don’t yet know that she’ll survive. I won’t survive as well. She’s the one who will draw sorrow on me. She’s the one whose disappearance from my life will leave me limp, so that I lie on the floor for days without moving, unable to get up.
WE WALK TO a busier street and I’m flooded with a whole slew of threats. Maybe she’ll get scared on the tram and start to yell. Maybe we’ll be run over by a street sweeper or a car. Maybe she’ll get lost and I’ll end up shouting her name till I’m hoarse.
Suddenly she’s mute.
I can’t look at her, don’t speak to her. How does it feel to have her see me whole?
She doesn’t see me. She’s two and a half years old—she doesn’t see anything about me except that I’m an adult, a virtual stranger, a woman whose uncertainty is growing second by second.
I want to protect her from every possible loss. I notice myself thinking that we can never cross this intersection, that it would be better to run to the arch of a building entrance or a bomb shelter, to hunker there for the rest of our lives or at least until her father comes home, thinking that I have no intention of putting the little girl in any danger, of shattering her face into unrecognizability.
The girl interrupts my growing dread by taking hold of my hand.
Her hand is amazingly soft, it feels springy and plump. Her grasp is light. I had already forgotten this trust, which all children share, because they don’t know any different, the belief they have from birth that everything will be all right. At some point in their lives it’s lost in a moment, inevitably. If they’re lucky, it comes back again. Someone comes and takes them in their arms, wrapped in a blanket, in a bedroom, or reaches an arm under a table, and they relearn what was inevitably lost when they lost their childhood.
But the little girl hasn’t lost anything yet. She’s saying to me, with her whole being, that I can protect her. She’s not afraid of the trams clattering by, or the cars or the people or seagulls or falling trees or death, because she believes that I know how to protect her.
And as the seconds stretch out and the cars drive by and she doesn’t let go of my hand, I begin to believe her. It’s so simple. Her faith gives me faith. I squeeze her hand and don’t intend to let go. I won’t.
“Mommy says to look both ways when you cross the street.”
“Aha. Well, Mommy is right.”
I see a glimpse of her soft neck, pale, white, a bare spot between her coat and the downy fringe of her hair. I want to put my hand over it, to protect it. It’s saying in all its dim luster that nothing bad can happen as long as it’s not afraid to be so naked and vulnerable.
“You can buy me some ice cream,” the little girl says.
“Maybe I will,” I answer, and now I’m not afraid of anything, either.
8
SHALL WE GO to Seurasaari?” Elsa said suddenly.
They were on their way back from their usual drive.
“I don’t want to go inside yet, I really don’t,” she said coaxingly. “Maybe I could go for a swim.”
“A swim? You’re not serious. I won’t let you go for a swim.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll freeze to death.”
Elsa gave him a meaningful look, her eyebrows raised. He realized his slip and they both burst out laughing.
“All right,” he agreed. “We can have one more outing.”
“Let’s pick up some tea from home,” Elsa mused. “And a blanket.”
They brewed the tea in the thermos. Elsa packed two large swim towels, wearing an impish grin. It was already late, past ten, only a few joggers passing by. The sea borrowed its color from the sky. The power plant loomed in the distance, flaming orange in the last rays of the setting sun.
It had been a warm day, but it had rained in the afternoon. Now, as the sun sacrificed itself slowly to the night, everything seemed to float in a pink mist.
There was a swimming cove at the first curve in the road—a boulder beach, with sand closer to the water’s edge. A pair of swans nodded to the rocks at the shore’s edge. They were like water lilies, floating silent and still.
There were no chicks to be seen. You could hear some geese farther south, in the middle of the island’s bay, thrashing around in the water, the birds’ annual pageant.
The sun was a ball of orange enmeshed in graffiti gray.
“What kind of sky is this?” Elsa asked.
This was a habit of theirs. He noticed the colors. Elsa would ask for them, for the light, the sky’s identifying features, and he would tell her.
“Carefree clouds,” he said. “Like they’ve forgotten that there ever was anything serious.”
“And the moon?” Elsa asked, pointing at the sky, where the moon was just resolving into a faded crescent.
“The moon is shy,” he said.
“You know, I love how romantic you are, even if it has gone out of style.”
Elsa stopped, looked at the sun, looked at the rippling water.
“I think I’ll go in.”
“Really? You mean to do it, then?”
“Who’s going to stop me?” Elsa said, looking at him defiantly. “What if this is my last chance to swim? I suppose you want to deny me that pleasure?” She said this with a smile.
“I guess not,” he said.
She walked to the shore, using a cone-covered pine for support on her way to the water. She took off her clothes—coat, shoes, pants, shirt, finally her underwear—without any shyness.
Martti glanced around instinctively. There was no one to be seen. He felt joy and terror at the same time. This seemingly muddle-headed, skeletal woman, in whom I can still see the outlines of my love, intends to go swimming, because the idea grabs her. I won’t stop her—I’ll go after her if it looks like she can’t make it. But I won’t try to stop her.
Elsa glanced back at him once more at the water’s edge, as if seeking encouragement for her waywardness in his gaze. Then she stepped into the water.
A pleasurable little whimper escaped her lips: the water was cold.