New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus Europe 2011) (9 page)

I had sat down in the first free armchair to hand, beside the window, and I was staring out of it at the blinding snow. The sudden calm after those rousing songs came as an anticlimax: having been in a sense part of their group, having shared their emotion, I now felt more alone than ever. The Kämp’s usual bustle was not enough to keep my persistent anxiety at bay. My eye fell on my journalist friend, standing among a group of colleagues: he was holding forth in a language I did not know, putting forward his views in no uncertain terms, while another voice was raised in contradiction. I had no desire to throw myself into the usual journalists’ discussions, to pretend to understand sentences which remained impenetrable to me, doggedly to pursue each sound until I managed to dovetail it in beside another I already knew, and hence grasp its meaning. It seemed to me that I would never have the strength to do that again; I felt an irresistible desire to give myself up to silence and to solitude, to let the world make of me what it would, sending me to a painless death, like that of soldiers falling asleep in the snow. Folding up my jacket and placing it on my knee, I glimpsed the label with the words ‘Sampo Karjalainen’ and slipped my finger absently behind it. It was a small piece of fabric secured by four stitches of black cotton, as firm as the sutures of a wound: four stitches which were all that held my life in place. Perhaps it had been that military march which had sent my thoughts back to Trieste; those frightened soldiers, so like those with me on board the Tübingen, and those others in the woods. I had not forgotten Doctor Friari’s words; ever since my arrival in Helsinki, his advice had served as my rule of thumb, and had stood me in good stead. At first, it had seemed to work: as he had suggested, I had devoted myself systematically, indeed pigheadedly, to studying the Finnish language, I had allowed myself to be convinced that Finland was my country, that its people were my people, that those sounds were those of my own language. In moments of desolation, when my thoughts were at their blackest, I had stayed curled up before that flicker of hope, and so I had been saved. On such few clear days as there were, together with the pastor, I had gone to the headland at Katajanokka to see the sunrise, imagining that one day I too would be born afresh. It was not hard to give myself over to that universal need, the longing to belong. But my new adoptive identity remained a sham.

Each day meant starting again from scratch. The moment my attention lapsed, the moment I allowed my mind to wander, all the good work would be undone. The words stayed with me, my knowledge of the language became stronger and more rooted, but any sense of truly belonging to that place would have vanished. I had a distinct suspicion that I was running headlong down the wrong road. In the innermost recesses of my unconscious I was plagued by the feeling that, within my brain, another brain was beating, buried alive. The thought occurred to me that perhaps my sense of being permanently on the alert, my failure to immerse myself blindly in my new life, might stem from one single but serious omission. There was just one piece of Doctor Friari’s advice that I had failed to follow: namely, to give myself over to the search for a lover. Somewhere within me a shell had formed, as hard as stone and equally impenetrable; I could feel it, under my skin, as though I could touch it. It was the kernel of my new being. To crack it open, to offer it to someone else, meant jeopardizing even that little I had managed to build up, meant that those sixteen letters of my name might be blown away, scattered to the four winds. I who did not yet know who I was, how could I forsake myself so soon? Who could be worthy of my trust?

So there I was, lost in painful thought, hunched over my bundle of blue cloth, staring pointlessly into the distance, when a familiar figure took shape at the watery margins of my vision. I recognized its gait as it lingered on its right leg, body and neck thrust slightly forward, as though it were seeking permission to enter my thoughts. It was the nurse who had met me on my arrival at the hospital, the one who had introduced me to Koskela and whom I had never seen since.

‘Good evening! So it is you? From a distance, I wasn’t sure,’ she said, coming nervously forwards and making an effort at a smile.

‘Good evening!’ I answered, getting to my feet. I didn’t know whether to shake her hand, and she didn’t know whether or not to offer it. We ended up by exchanging something approaching a bow. My head was spinning, indeed I was probably reeling from too much alcohol; she must have noticed, and responded with a mixture of composure and embarrassment.

‘Where have you been all this time?’ I asked awkwardly.

‘We nurses were mobilized, sent off to Mikkeli. We were supposed to have been going somewhere else, but we couldn’t leave because of the bombing. Now we are off to Viipuri – tomorrow morning, in a troop train, to organize the refugee centre there, and … Oh, I’m sorry … how stupid I am! I wasn’t thinking … I was forgetting …’ When she spoke again it was more slowly, pronouncing each letter of each word with the utmost clarity:

‘Mikkeli is a city – a big city – and, well, that’s where we were, but …’

She was using her hands to give an idea of the city of Mikkeli. I broke in, smiling:

‘Don’t worry, my Finnish is much better now. I don’t speak it well, in fact I speak it extremely badly, but I understand much more.’

She nodded in surprise.

‘Oh, but you’re right, congratulations! I wasn’t paying attention! You’ve even got a slight Helsinki accent!’ She was pressing her small hands together, desperately thinking of something to say.

‘How about you? Still in the visitors’ quarters?’ Traces of red from her earlier embarrassment still lingered on her cheeks; as she spoke, she tried to thrust an unruly tuft of hair back under the cap from which it had broken loose, falling over her eyes.

‘Yes, I’m still there. Bed number six, by the window!’ I answered, a false note creeping into my voice. In my mind’s eye I saw the six white beds on the red-tiled floor like six snow-covered tombstones.

She gave me an apologetic look, as though she felt personally responsible for my fate. Her green eyes had darkened slightly, as did her voice when she asked me:

‘Is Doctor Lahtinen back yet?’

Within one question, I sensed another.

‘No. Now they say he is in Petsamo,’ I said, without much conviction.

‘Perhaps he can’t make it back. Travel is a problem, what with all the bombing …’ she offered by way of explanation, though she herself did not seem to believe her own words.

‘That’s right. Perhaps he never will!’ I shot back with a bitter smile. But I wanted to talk of other things; or perhaps I did not want to talk at all. I was forcing myself to be sociable, and it was taking its toll. I would have liked to find a quick way out of the entanglement, but some strange compulsion led me to carry on.

‘Why don’t we sit down?” I suggesting, pointing towards a table.

‘That would be nice,’ she replied, but she sounded indifferent, nor did she make a move. She had blushed again and was looking down at her shoes, hoping I would not notice. I felt that she was regretting ever having acknowledged me.

She was a very slight girl, and fragile-looking, unlike most of the other nurses, who looked and moved like sturdy farmers’ wives. She slipped off her cap and folded it up on her knee, running one hand quickly through her hair. The shifting colour of her eyes meant that there also seemed to be something changeable about her face: one moment she looked like a shy girl, whom I could scarcely imagine dealing with bomb-torn flesh, the next she looked like a grown woman, inured to the sight of suffering. Outside, the wind had died down and the snowflakes were drifting lightly towards the windows, settling into the spidery network of ice etched on to the panes; given a sense of warmth by the yellow glow of the candles, their white veiling offered a sense of security which was hard to resist.

‘What lovely voices!’ I said, nodding in the direction of her fellow-singers.

‘Thank you! You’re very kind. But then we’re singing such lovely music!’ she answered. I noticed that she was looking around uneasily, in search of some safe spot to rest her gaze. When they met mine, her eyes veered nervously away, like those of some startled creature. I too was peering around me, wondering how I might put her at her ease. Because, by now, I wanted her to stay; I would have liked to drive off her discomfiture with my bare hands.

‘It is so good to sing: your lungs fill up with air, your blood runs faster, even your brain works better. That is how sad music becomes joyful music,’ I said lumberingly, tripping over every word. But I was not sure that she had understood, because I often get mixed up between
surullinen
and
iloinen
’ – sad and joyful.

‘Singing is the most natural form of music; and the oldest!’ she said distantly. I thought back to my lonely nights in Trieste, when I would repeat verses from songs I’d heard in the bars, quite without understanding them – just to have some words, any words, going through my head, anything to stave off the exhausting coming and going of my thoughts. Now I had a potential associate, someone to get to know, a friendship to nurture. But shaking off the crusty embrace of solitude entailed an effort.

‘Do you sing?’ she asked, taking heart.

‘Yes, but only as children do, to pluck up courage when I am afraid.’

‘And when are you afraid?’

‘Often. Above all when I am alone, when there is too much silence. I’m always afraid that it will last forever.’

My words made her smile; clearly, they struck a chord. So as to have something to do with her hands, she had begun fiddling with one corner of her cap, rolling it up and watching it unroll.

‘Silence is music too. At school, our singing teacher used to say that silence in music is like white in a water-colour; it’s not a colour, but you need it in a painting. Silence is what is left around the patches of colour, and every painting … ‘

I kept my eyes on her, but I was not seeing her. My thoughts were chasing one another pointlessly, never catching one another up. Her voice trailed away, and she looked at me doubtfully, ill-at-ease again.

‘Perhaps what I am saying is too complicated? I’m sorry … You express yourself so well, I quite forget …’

‘No, no,’ I broke in, ‘don’t worry, I understand. Not everything, but enough. And when I don’t understand, I myself make up what I want to hear!’

Then she laughed, and the sound was like a match struck in the dark room of my memory. I had the feeling I was remembering an identical laugh; but it was only a feeling.

‘I like the image your singing teacher used,’ I went on. ‘Who knows, perhaps we could play pictures like symphonies, only we just don’t know it!’

‘You use words nicely, too,’ she said. ‘Now that you know it better, what is it that you most like about our language?’

‘What do I like about it most?’

‘Yes. A word, a phrase …’

‘Well, I know this may strike you as strange, but what I like is the abessive!’ I answered hesitantly.

‘The abessive? But that’s a case, a declension!’ she shot back in amusement.

‘Yes, a declension for things we haven’t got:
koskenkorvatta
,
toivatta
, no
koskenkorva
, no hope, both are declined in the abessive. It’s beautiful, it’s like poetry! And also very useful, because there are more things we haven’t got than that we have. All the best words in this world should be declined in the abessive!’

She burst out laughing, holding one hand in front of her mouth; but it was no good, because her amusement had spread to her eyes. I savoured the success of my witticism, felt a pleasant sense of warmth stealing over me.

I glanced out of the window. The journalists who were not staying in the Kämp were beginning to take their leave; I watched them setting off over the snow, shrouded in the white mist of their own breath, talking loudly and swinging their arms in order to keep warm. At that hour I too would usually be returning to the hospital: to my cold and empty room.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked in alarm, noting my sudden change of mood.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ I reassured her, shaking my head. ‘We were talking about music!’

She looked relieved.

‘Oh yes, music. What sort of music do you like most?’

‘Well, I’m no expert – I don’t go for anything difficult. Of the songs that you have just sung, I liked the last one very much.’

‘The
Porilaisten marssi? Pojat kansan urhokkaan?
But that’s a military march!’

‘That’s as may be. Anyway, the audience enjoyed it – it’s cheerful.’

‘The music maybe, but not the words!’ She was amused, and was still rolling her cap up into ever larger curls.

‘What are they about?’

‘About the homeland, about blood and those who are prepared to die,’ she explained gravely.

‘Will you teach it me?’

‘Well, there are more cheerful ones!’ she protested.

‘But that’s the one I want!’ I insisted. ‘If you speak slowly, I could copy out the words.’ I pointed to the notebook in my pocket, adding: ‘I’ll learn it by heart and then I’ll be able to sing it when there’s too much silence.’

She smiled; now I even saw a touch of tenderness in her eyes. She let her cap fall on her knee and placed her outspread hands upon the table; she clearly bit her nails.

‘Just as you like!’ she said, nodding in assent and looking around her, as though to check that no one was looking.

‘I don’t even know your name,’ I said, opening up my notebook.

‘Ilma,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It means air,’ she added.

‘Air?’ I repeated, amused.

‘Yes, like what you breath; or indeed what the weather is like.’ Once again she clenched her hands, so as to hide her fingers.

‘So when the weather is bad, could you say that today it’s bad Ilma?’

Clearly, no one had ever put it quite like that before.

‘Why not?’ she said, in some surprise. ‘But, above all, the name Ilma means freedom. Because it lets you free to be what you are, to go where you want: free as air. That’s what my father used to tell me. People called Eeva or Helena or Noora share their name with lots of others, so there’s something stale about it; but Ilma is always new, always pure.’