While falling asleep Saturday night—at the same time Arnie was digging his snow hole—something Max Hamilton said when she’d gone to him for help was niggling at Louise—something about a fundraiser or raffle. She’d rejected it out of hand because she could think of no gimmick or major prize to motivate people to buy raffle tickets. What about other ways to raise money—like a bake sale? She laughed at herself. She could just see Natalya at a bake sale. What had worked back home? There were different kinds of raffles. What about those fundraisers where people tried to guess the number of marbles in a jar? Or like at the lumberyard when everyone tried to guess the point spread of the Nebraska-Oklahoma game. A point spread in a big game—what about the time difference in a race—Arnie and Mikhail’s race!
She sat up in her bed, sleep banished. The orphanage could sell tickets, call it a raffle. The buyers would guess the difference in time between Mikhail and Arnie. The person guessing closest to the time difference would win a prize. And the prize could come from a portion of the money generated by the ticket sales. Self-funding!
She was so excited about the idea that the first thing Sunday morning she composed a press release and spent the rest of the morning pounding out several carbon copies on the little Raleigh portable typewriter that she’d had since college. She realized that she would have to get the press release to the papers by evening if she was going to make the morning editions.
She finished the press releases and was over at Kaarina’s flat just before noon. She needed her to translate the release into Finnish, and she was also eager to show Kaarina what she’d come up with to help the orphanage.
Louise had expected it might take a little salesmanship to get Kaarina on board, knowing the whole concept would probably be foreign to her, and perhaps seem a bit crass. Enthusiastic salesmanship, however, was Louise’s forte, and in the face of the failures of the door-to-door donation effort, surely Kaarina would see the raffle would be a far better money raiser.
She delivered her very optimistic, well-thought-out pitch, then handed Kaarina the press release, asking her to translate it into Finnish.
Kaarina read it. When she finished, she looked up and Louise detected a fleeting furtive look, quickly repressed. “Has Natalya seen this?”
“Not yet. I’ll take it over to her this afternoon before we go to the papers with any changes she might want.”
That elicited a mild grunt, quickly followed by another question on the old topic. “What makes you think this will work?”
“It’s done all the time, in America.”
Kaarina looked again at the press release in her hand. “This isn’t America,” she murmured. “What if we don’t sell enough tickets to cover the prize money?”
Typical Finnish pessimism, Louise thought. “I can make up the difference. Arnie won’t mind. But I think we won’t have to worry about that.”
Kaarina nodded. “How do we sell the tickets?”
It stopped Louise for a moment. Then she said, “Through the newspaper stands. Use the same distribution as the papers, they sell the tickets and collect the money. They can claim it’s their contribution to the charity drive.”
Kaarina took that in.
“We can make a lot of money for the orphanage,” Louise said. Money always worked with Arnie’s relatives.
Kaarina was showing a hint of a smile. “And we put this in the newspapers, and … “ she paused. “This could generate a lot of excitement.” She smiled more broadly. “And some good money.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“Maybe we need some time to get ready for this, what do you call it, raffle, before we take it to the newspapers.”
Louise grew urgent. “We can do all the tickets this afternoon. But, if we don’t get this to the papers by this evening, we’ll miss the Monday morning editions.” Knowing Kaarina had bought the concept, Louise focused on the need for speed. “There are only so many days left in the race. We can’t waste a single one of them.”
“What must we do then?”
“We just need to print tickets. Do you have a mimeograph machine?”
“No. But the church has one.”
“Do they have a typewriter that can cut a stencil for it?”
“Why would they have a machine without being able to cut a stencil?”
Louise fought her annoyance at being treated like an ignorant child. “Can we go to the church now?”
Kaarina went to get her coat.
The rest of the day was a blur of securing the use of the mimeograph machine, designing and making the stencil, cranking out several hundred sheets printed with multiple raffle tickets, then cutting them out and numbering them. Even Kaarina was uncharacteristically enthusiastic, joining in designing the tickets and flyers. While Louise was cranking out pages of tickets and cutting them with scissors, Kaarina translated Louise’s press release into Finnish. Everything was ready to go just before dark.
“I’m taking the press release over to Natalya now,” Louise said. She was putting on her coat and mittens as she spoke.
“Do we have to?” Kaarina asked. “What if changes make us miss some deadline?”
“It’s a joint US–Soviet Union project,” Louise said. “We need to loop her in. At the very least, just to be courteous. I don’t think she’ll change much, if anything.”
Kaarina shrugged at this. “I suppose so. But you yourself said we can’t lose a single day.”
Now instead of having to drag Kaarina along, she was having to slow her down. “Don’t worry,” Louise said, pulling her wool cap down over her hair. “Just wait here. I’ll get right back if we need to change anything. Then we can go to the papers together. I’ve done this lots of times. We just need to get there two or three hours before press time.” Louise smiled excitedly at Kaarina. “We’re going to make a lot of money when we sell all those tickets.”
Kaarina looked at her and solemnly said, “Yoh, I think we will. I’ll make more tickets while you’re gone. Make even more money.”
Louise smiled broadly. Kaarina had clearly been sold on the idea.
Louise hurried over to Natalya’s flat, full of energy. After signing in with the man at the desk, she nearly bounded up the stairs to Natalya’s floor.
A puzzled Natalya opened the door. “Louise. What are you doing here?”
“I’ve got this fabulous idea for raising money for the orphanage.” She nearly waved the press release in Natalya’s face. “I’ve got to talk to you about it.”
Looking puzzled, Natalya ushered her in.
“Kaarina and I have been working all afternoon making tickets,” Louise said, taking off her coat. “This has to get to the papers tonight, so the article will come out first thing tomorrow.”
“Tickets?” Natalya asked. “Slow down.” She took Louise’s coat, hat, and mittens. Then nodding at the paper in Louise’s hands, she said, “And, what is this?”
“It’s a money maker, that’s what it is. We’re going to have a raffle,” she said, proudly.
“What is a raffle?” Natalya asked.
“You have a really great prize. Then you print tickets with numbers on them with stubs that have the same numbers. You sell the tickets, each one for just a small amount of money. But people can buy as many as they want, making their odds of winning better. Sometimes you just put all the tickets into a big container and draw one out, but sometimes you have a guessing contest and people write their answers to the contest on the tickets and they can win that way.”
Natalya nodded, keeping silent.
“But to really raise money, you need to sell a lot of tickets, and to do that you need some sort of publicity idea that can be advertised, like in the papers.”
“And, what’s our prize? And how do we pay for it?”
“That’s what’s so great about my idea. We sell the tickets and use some of that money as the prize. The orphanage doesn’t have to put up any money ahead of time.”
Natalya looked skeptical.
“It’s done all the time in America,” Louise said.
“It kind of sounds like something for nothing.”
“That’s why it’s so great!”
Natalya took this in. “So, what is the publicity idea?”
“With every ticket you buy, you guess the time difference between Arnie and Mikhail. Think of it.” Louise was talking fast in her excitement. “Two war heroes, friends and allies, making money for a joint Soviet-American orphanage project. Every day the papers can run stories about who’s ahead and by how much time whenever anyone catches sight of them.”
Natalya gasped. “No. You must not.” Her hands had gone to her face, covering her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. “Has anyone seen this?”
Louise was stunned by the reaction. Her excitement quickly devolved into an uneasy feeling she’d done something wrong. “Only Kaarina,” she answered. “Why? What’s wrong?”
Natalya shook her head in disbelief, then, as if talking to a child, she said, “Misha is a Hero of the Soviet Union. What do you think Comrade Stalin or Comrade Beria will think if a Hero of the Soviet Union is beaten by a degenerate, soft capitalist American?”
“You know Arnie isn’t …”
Natalya cut her off. “Of course, I know Arnie isn’t. But that is the image our government wants our people and particularly our new allies in Eastern Europe to believe. You send that, that …” She pointed her finger at the press release as if accusing it, accusing Louise. “‘Publicity’ to Finnish newspapers and it won’t be a race between Arnie and Misha, it will be a race between my country and the capitalist West. Even the pro-Soviet papers will portray it that way.”
“So,” Louise almost said, “so what,” but checked herself. She was aware that Natalya wasn’t just upset, she was frightened.
“If Misha loses—in front of the whole world,” Natalya’s voice had become soft with fear, “Stalin will be humiliated. At best, Misha will be tortured and sent to the gulag for collaborating with your husband and any number of other offenses. More likely, they’ll kill him—after they torture him.” She let that sink in. “And I will be sent to the gulag as the wife of a traitor and my children raised by the state, forever tarnished by being the children of traitors.”
Louise realized Natalya was trembling.
In a whisper, Natalya said, “You have no idea what they can do to you.”
Louise felt like a fool. It was as if she’d woken from a dream to some heretofore unseen reality. In her naïve enthusiasm for her brilliant money-raising idea, in her desire to look good to Kaarina, she’d made a serious blunder, not seeing the world through the eyes of women like Natalya and Kaarina. Their world was very much more frightening than the protected world Louise had, before coming to Finland, believed was normal.
“I’ve been an idiot,” Louise said, quietly. “I’m so sorry. Of course, I won’t take this to the papers. We can come up with something else.”
Natalya was silent, uncomfortably silent.
Then she said softly, “Luckily, no harm has been done.” She smiled. “Would you like some tea?”
When Louise got back to the church, it was dark. Kaarina must have gone home. Maybe she’d stayed too long having tea. Anyway, there was no urgency. The whole idea of a raffle based on the race’s time spread had been scrapped. Suddenly weary, she walked back to the flat. She consoled herself that at least all the raffle tickets had been made and went to bed, turning over other ideas of how a raffle of some kind might still be used to raise money. The bed felt cold. She missed Arnie.