My name is Salme Sinikka Malmikunnas, and everything that I say will be printed word for word in this book. The author promised me this. In alarm, he even suggested that my words be printed in italics, which apparently emphasizes the importance of words. When I saw what he meant by italics, I immediately said that I didn’t want it. I’m already bent over enough without calling any more attention to it. I admit that I gave the author a little bit of a tongue-lashing over this, so he promised me heaven and earth. I might have been a little overexcited, since it was the first time I had seen or met a person like him.
First of all, and in partial defense of myself, I should say that I do not like made-up books or the people who write them. It has always irritated me that they are taken seriously, that people get so immersed in them and listen so carefully to the people who write them. I am now referring to the novels and other things on the shelves labeled “fiction” or “translated fiction.” It irritated me even more when Paavo and I found out that people go all the way to other countries to find these made-up stories and that people who have studied languages transfer these obvious lies over into our language.
I will not speak evil of nonfiction though, because that includes books whose very titles inspire confidence: The Birth of the Solar System. The History of Finland. Birds, Past and Present. Mammals (Color Illustrated).
And of course the encyclopedia.
We have that book too, and it has been a delight. We haven’t had to wonder if it’s true or if it might be some amateur’s clumsy fantasy or delusion. No matter what page you turn to, the mysteries of human life are revealed. Where do the starlings fly? What is the difference between a chimpanzee and an orangutan? How large and powerful a country was Sweden in bygone days, and from where do its prosperity, good humor and communal spirit come? Sometimes we forget about it, living right here next door, but you can check in the encyclopedia.
But no book tells what will happen next Tuesday or when Paavo and I go dark upstairs once and for all. What happens when the lights go out? In your head, I mean. Does some gateway open up, and what does it open on to? Since no one knows, we have all these alternative theories, the religions I mean. Just to be safe, I believe in all of the gods that they recommend in books, in magazines, and on television. Or, of course, not in the ones that you worship with a tuft of feathers on your head and rings in your nose. Paavo doesn’t believe in any gods. He doesn’t believe in anything he hasn’t seen. He didn’t even believe in Onni Suuronen before he saw him. I had to take him to another county by bus to see Onni riding his motorcycle like a bat out of hell around that wooden track. “He does exist,” Paavo kept repeating to himself on the return trip. “But show me Our Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father. Show me. You can’t,” Paavo said over and over. I said, as I have a million times in my life, “Not so loud. People will hear.”
You are wondering how I could have met an author—me, who does not respect authors of made-up books. It was a complete coincidence. Life has thrown all sorts of things in front of me, even though I haven’t gone looking for anything. It happened that my eldest, my daughter Helena, invited me to visit the capital. Usually I don’t go anywhere, but I agreed to this invitation because of a certain very sad thing.
It was October when I came to the capital.
The name of the station was Pasila.
Helena lived right nearby but said first thing on the platform that we couldn’t go to her house because there she would be reminded of it immediately. Helena suggested that we go to the book fair to start with. I wasn’t at all eager when I found out that, in addition to books, the people who write them would also be there. Helena pleaded, and I couldn’t stand to hurt my daughter’s feelings. Let me interject here that Paavo had stayed home, because he was temporarily mute.
They had built an enormous hall for their exhibitionism. There were at least three entrances. We went in through the biggest one and paid a total of twenty-four euros for two people. I thought that it would include at least lunch and coffee, but Helena said we didn’t get any food for that price, but that there was all the more nourishment for the soul.
The place was black with people.
It was an anthill.
Noise came from every direction.
Big platforms had been set up everywhere and on the platforms podiums to which the authors were led.
We stopped in front of one of the platforms. Above it was written in big letters “Katri Vala.” I don’t know that person, but soon some queen-bee-looking woman approached the podium and began oozing flattery, bumbling and buzzing around, practically rubbing up against the author sitting behind her on a chair. Doting and warbling. She sang his praises and blew him kisses. It was good she didn’t sit down on his lap. And in conclusion she reminded everyone about the discount they would get on the book at such-and-such a stand and on which stool this poor unfortunate soul would be sitting, happy to write his name in this unique work.
It was as good as a play, and after watching and listening to it without coffee and buns for an hour or two, I started longing for truth from the very bottom of my heart. Not that I’ve never lied in my life, but at least I haven’t put those lies between the covers of a book.
I talked Helena into going for coffee at a sort of little booth in the main hallway. I didn’t dare express my opinions to my daughter, even though I wanted to. Helena wanted to smoke. We were directed out through a large door, behind the building.
And there I saw him, the author, although I didn’t immediately recognize him as such with these eyes. He was just some man, sitting on a grit box, smoking a cigarette, glancing around nervously. I couldn’t guess his age because nowadays everyone is younger than I am. He looked like a maintenance man, and that’s probably why I started chatting him up. He answered my questions uncertainly, and I quickly realized that this was no maintenance man. They are energetic—this one was skittish.
Helena didn’t say anything. She was embarrassed by my talkativeness. Children are always ashamed of something in their parents. There’s no use being offended by it.
I said to the man that there wasn’t any need to play at being any smarter than he was. I could see he wasn’t a maintenance worker, but that didn’t matter. We could talk all we wanted since we were at a fair for lies, after all. Helena gave me the evil eye, but I stayed positive.
The man was a quiet sort, but that didn’t bother me, the wife of a mute. I said to him that if I were to write a book, I would start with nonfiction and write everything just as it is, not how it should be. I could write a book about crocheting or rug weaving or baking Boston cake any old day, but I don’t feel like it. And good books like that have already been written anyway. For example, Cooking for Every Home is the sort of book that there’s no reason to write all over again. I got it from my grandma and everything in it still holds true. I’ve bought a copy for each of my children, and they’ve never wanted for soups and roasts.
The man nodded. He was clearly a listener. Or he didn’t have anything to add. Helena was already trying to hustle me inside. Her cigarette was down to a stub. I found myself saying to Helena that she should go ahead, that I would catch up soon. Helena looked at me for a long time, gauging whether I was serious. I gave her a look that told her everything was O.K. I felt like talking to a complete stranger. It would give me a little vacation from Helena’s big thing.
When I was left alone there with the man, I had to introduce myself—I couldn’t be there otherwise. With a name, a person is at least connected to something. I gave the man mine, and he gave me his, which I’ve already forgotten. I said I was a retired yarn dealer. He was encouraged by this, and announced that he was an author. He followed this immediately by saying that he didn’t have anything to do at the fair this time, because he hadn’t published a new book.
I wondered why he had bothered to show up then. He said he had been given a free ticket. I asked if it wasn’t a little difficult to be at his workplace when he was unemployed. He didn’t reply.
It occurred to me to say what I thought about authors and made-up stories, but it didn’t feel necessary anymore. I asked when his next book would be coming—surely he was working on it. The author didn’t reply. He just quickly lit another cigarette. He held it with his thumb and forefinger, which told me he was not a regular smoker.
We observed a moment of silence. I had become used to that with Paavo, but silence with a stranger is different, loud almost.
I was already making to leave when he asked what sort of life I had lived. It isn’t proper to ask things like that of strangers, but somehow it didn’t feel intrusive just then. I said I had lived so much that I hadn’t had time to brush my teeth properly. I told him all sorts of things about this and that, jumping from one thing to another—I may have even used a couple of swear words—I just let it come at a sort of low boil, but I didn’t go into detail.
He wanted to know more.
I said that I wasn’t going to go telling any more just like that. I wasn’t going to make that mistake a second time. Once, sitting on a bench at the hospital waiting for Paavo’s test results, I told a stranger about my life. My burden was lightened, but in the wrong way. I was overcome by the feeling that something of my own life had remained with that other person.
Then the author made his proposal.
If I would tell him about my life, he would give me five thousand euros.
I had to sit down.
I was a little afraid.
Helena was somewhere in the crowd, and I didn’t have a mobile phone—I had left it with Paavo. I had never been offered five thousand euros for anything. The author said that I could think it over for an hour, perhaps with my daughter. I asked what on earth the author would do with my life. He said he didn’t have any life of his own and that he wanted to write one more book.
I was more afraid. I felt like saying, “Come on, everyone has their own life.”
I stood up. I didn’t dare stay sitting down to think about something so outlandish. The display designer Alfred Supinen always said that a person should think about difficult things standing up, and that for the most difficult things you should go out walking.
I thought the author was clearly insane, but there was no point in going and telling that to an insane person. They don’t have the same understanding of human nature as the rest of us, who know full well that we go insane now and then. A truly insane person lives inside his insanity like a pearl inside an oyster.
I said I wasn’t going to start selling my life, the only thing I truly owned, and that the author would be best off writing what he knew the most about—his own life. He claimed that there wasn’t anything to write about, that nothing had ever happened to him. I pressed him about how he had managed to write up until then if he didn’t have anything to tell and nothing had happened. The author claimed that it was perfectly reasonable to write ten books out of nothing, but no more than that.
It wasn’t my fault if he didn’t have anything to write, I thought—there wasn’t any sense in dumping it on me.
The author said that I could get all sorts of things in this world for five thousand euros, and my own life in hardcover into the bargain.
After that I had to say that I hated made-up books, and the worst thing would be for someone to make up my life all over again for some book. He practically flew into raptures over this, saying that was exactly what he had planned to do. He needed a good life as a foundation, and on top of it he would invent more, and the final result would be an even better life than what the one on the bottom had been originally.
To hell with that! Putting my life on the bottom, as if it were worse than the made-up one. And paying me five thousand euros for this disgrace. Suddenly if felt like a very small sum.
The author thought I was taking everything the wrong way now. My life wouldn’t be lost—it would be there underneath, a little like the soil under a beautiful planting. Truth and fiction would intertwine and together be more than they would have been separately.
His explanation just confused this old woman even more.
So that I would not become completely confused, I started thinking about the money. It’s a good thing to think about. It gives you a scale. People speak far too much evil of money. Sometimes it’s the only thing that clearly delineates people’s intentions.
I ordered the author to be quiet while I thought.
I counted in my mind all the good things I could get with that much money. The first things that occurred to me were new curtains, fixing up our old car, garden furniture, a winter fur coat, and perhaps a spa vacation. I didn’t beat myself up over all of the things that would bring me pleasure that came to mind before the most important thing, the thing that was weighing on my heart.
Suddenly everything was completely clear. I knew exactly what I would do with the money.
At the same time I decided that I wouldn’t tell Helena or Paavo anything about this.
As a former button merchant, I knew the value of money and understood that this was a seller’s market. There was only one life for sale here behind this building, so I decided to raise the price. I said it would cost him seven thousand euros. I calculated that with that much I could get all the good I wouldn’t have any possibility of getting otherwise.
The author became uneasy, saying he had already sold everything he owned to get the five thousand together. He raised his hands at his sides, claiming there was nowhere he could get two thousand euros more from. I knew from experience that a person could dig that kind of money from the frozen ground with his bare hands if he really wanted something badly enough. I remembered how Helena had squatted in a strawberry field for three sweltering weeks with a sore back to get to go see some filthy-looking singer at a hippie festival in Turku.
I told the author the price was determined by what I had seen and experienced and that for the price mentioned he would get a marketable, truthful life, the authenticity of which nobody would have any reason to doubt. I found myself falling into the pattern of speech of my old life, as if I were selling yarn, needles and buttons.
I was ashamed to raise the price, but I didn’t regret it, because the more I thought about my life, the more precious it felt. It was a result of my age and everything that had happened recently.
As a twenty-something just graduated from business school, I would have sold my life for a few hundred.
The author said I was taking advantage of his desperate situation by raising the price. I reminded him of our roles. He wanted to buy something that I wasn’t selling. I also emphasized that I didn’t know a single thing about his situation in life, but I told him there were bigger emergencies in this world than one author’s lack of inspiration. I also said that if the price felt too high, he could feel free to visit another shop. This time our price was firm—there wasn’t any wiggle room.
The author went quiet. As a former saleswoman, I recognized what was happening. The customer was playing for time. He knew he was going to buy, but was resisting finally giving in. He hated the salesperson, who had set a firm price for a product he had to have. He had to buy, but had to not buy. He had to want, but had to resist. In a situation like this, the salesperson’s job is to help the shy customer over the stream with dry feet. I didn’t have time.
The author said he was going to accept the price, but that he needed extra time for the two thousand. I didn’t want to wait for the money for long, so I asked him a very personal question. “Have you really and truly sold all of your property? Isn’t there something left sitting in a corner that you could bear to give up? An old chest of drawers or a lumpy glass vase designed by some celebrity?”
The author denied owning anything anymore that he could give up for two thousand euros, but he thought his publisher might give him an advance on the upcoming book if the content seemed promising.
I agreed to the delay, and we made an oral agreement for the payment of the five thousand. I put out my hand. His handshake was firm. Just as I had extracted my hand, Helena walked up.
I felt guilty, as if I’d just committed a sin, even though I had made an agreement that would end up benefiting Helena. Helena asked why on earth I had stayed outside for more than half an hour. She had had time to start thinking all sorts of horrible things. I felt like saying I’ve just made a big sale, all for your good, but I just said my how time had flown chatting with this craftsman about the stairway renovation we’ve talked about so many times at home. I shot a glance at the author to tell him not a word now about the agreement we just made.
Helena tried to hustle me inside. I said I would be there in two minutes. Helena asked what I needed the two minutes for. I said that this carpenter here is from a village near ours, and I still have to work out the details of the remodel with him.
Helena said she would wait in front of the Mikael Agricola platform.
The whole train ride home I thought about selling my life. Did I do right or wrong? At the yarn shop I never needed to think about questions like that, because I knew that the customer would get a sweater out of the yarn, and that we were getting the difference between the wholesale price and the retail price. Everyone stayed warm.
Now all sorts of dark thoughts were running through my mind. They have a name: “moral questions.” God left them to us, since he doesn’t have time to be everywhere. I wasn’t used to thinking about such things, because Paavo and I had lived a rather straightforward, simple life. Sitting there in the window seat, I thought, now, Salme, you’ve taken what they talk about so much in the business papers, a “risk.”
But turning back wasn’t an option—it would have been against my nature. I remembered how once Paavo and I bought a big lot of violet and orange yarn at wholesale on the risk that people might not be ready for a whimsical color palette. We were selling that batch for a long time, but I never once thought about returning the yarn or selling at a loss. That would have been a mortifying concession to drab colors.
I bought a coffee and the most expensive pastry in the restaurant car. I wanted to celebrate that for the first time in my life I had sold something that could not be touched. I knew from my children and having watched this new world from the sidelines that there were many invisible goods for sale, but I could never have imagined that I would be charging for such a thing myself.
You always want to tell the people closest to you about big things that happen to you, but this time I couldn’t. After returning home, I told Paavo that given the circumstances Helena was doing well and that I had come up with a way to improve her situation. Paavo nodded and disappeared into the shed.
I felt like crying. I didn’t have the nerve to weep indoors, so I went into the back yard. Water came from my eyes, but I didn’t make any sound. In five minutes I was back in dry, working order.
I called the author from our shared mobile and we arranged a meeting for the following week at a certain out-of-the-way service station between our village and the capital. I explained to Paavo that I was going on a trip with my raanu group. He bought it. I had taken little trips to neighboring counties before with the other members of the weaving circle at the community center.
The author counseled me to be as open and talkative as possible at our upcoming meeting. Apparently a book is a sort of cross between a cow and a pig that swallows huge amounts of life, which it then ruminates, softens up and digests. As a result of this process, out the other end pops a solid, compact mass packed in natural intestine, a high-quality organic sausage ready for the reader. I didn’t like his metaphorical language, which brought to mind awkward, even embarrassing thoughts, but I promised to tell him his money’s worth.
I was afraid, sitting there at that table in that ugly service station with a small coffee and a dictaphone in front of me, but the fear was moderated by the two-and-a-half thousand euros sitting in a neat pile next to the dictaphone. The author said that it was best to take the money off the table so the service station staff wouldn’t get the wrong idea. I felt like saying that given how far things had gone already, I wasn’t interested in anyone’s wrong ideas, or even their right ideas.
The author looked me in the eyes and said, “The dictaphone is on now. Give me your life.”
And I did.
I told the dictaphone everything, exactly how things have gone. I described precisely what my life, Paavo’s life and our children’s lives have been like. There weren’t two words together in there that weren’t as true as true can be, so I would think it would be painless to write it down. No one could miss the mark writing such a clear account. No one could write it wrong.
My name is Salme Malmikunnas, and I have four children. One of them died when he was four years old, but he is still my child. I have one husband, Paavo. He always has been my husband, and he always will be, even though he doesn’t talk right now. We had two girls and two boys. We had that kind of luck. Unfortunately, one went and rode his tricycle into the septic tank. The service men had gone for a smoke and left the cover open. And he had to ride just there. I can’t speak about it, because the words lift him up and sit him right down here at this table, and I start to think about how old he would be now and what life would have had in store for him. I’m sorry, but I’m going to keep you there in that hole for now, Heikki.
Here at the beginning I was going to say what the difference is between a lie and the truth. A lie sticks in your head. It’s like a migraine. The truth, on the other hand, is like a boomerang. It hits you in the forehead, wakes you up nicely, and then continues from there off to the horizon. Truth doesn’t belong to anyone. I say this because I’ve had bad experiences with lying. I hope the author will take this seriously. If I start to lie, I disappear almost completely. It’s a sort of vanishing, lying is. The outlines disappear and before you know it you’re in a big whiteness, i.e. nowhere. The boomerang knocks you on the forehead and takes you back to the world of color.
But it isn’t possible to understand a person completely. Paavo and Alfred Supinen and I talked about this a long time ago. According to Alfred, a human being is a long, symphonic piece of music. You have to listen to the overture, the principal theme, the crescendos and the finale, and then when the piece is over, there is still the silence. You have to listen to that too. Alfred thought that a person continues on even after he dies. Alfred didn’t mean this in the Christian sense of a second life, but rather in the sense that the person remains in our memories.
It’s difficult to speak about your own children with outsiders, because you love them so impossibly much. But I feel like I can tell a dictaphone.
The oldest of my children is Helena. No, no. This isn’t going anywhere. I’m going to have to skip over Helena for right now, because of the big thing that happened. The dictaphone will have to do without that for now. I can talk about it separately. What’s the saying? Off the record.
Of the boys, Pekka was born first, and two years later came Heikki, the one who isn’t anymore. Then a few years went by, and Maija arrived.
Pekka was wild and free, and he enjoyed life because there was already one small person in the house. Our first born, Helena, was born to responsibility, and you never get over that feeling. That was why Helena moved away from home as soon as possible. Pekka embraced life as if it were a toy. He resembled a puppy, toddling from place to place, falling on his face, blowing his nose and then continuing on. That animation only went away later, when he started listening to strange music and got caught up in those thoughts of his. Did he start thinking about his dead brother or what? It’s anyone’s guess. It’s peculiar how a person can disappear, even though he’s still in the same house. He even disappears from himself, not knowing how he should be, sad or happy, angry or gentle. Pekka was everything all at once. There wasn’t any way to tell him, though. Once Paavo did, and Pekka moved into the forest for two days. He came back out with his stuttering problem. A problem like that, and just before puberty. Stuttering separates you from others at just the age when you start looking for connections. Of course, we tried to love Pekka out of his speech defect, but according to the doctor, love isn’t always enough. It left such a deep mark on him that as an adult he still stutters when he gets into a flustering or stressful situation. He doesn’t recognize it himself, but I can hear it. When the money spigot opened up in the late ’80s, all that came out of Pekka’s mouth was broken words. And the same thing a year later when we entered the recession. Again his throat chopped everything he was explaining over the telephone into little pieces. I’m ashamed to say it, but I read his state of mind from his stuttering.
More light flooded from Maija than from the others, just like there was an incandescent bulb behind her eyes. It felt like all love flowed over Maija like liquid honey. All children should be able to be born last. Helena and Pekka surrounded Maija and kissed her so much that for a long time she must have thought the world and our living room were paradise. And sometimes they were. When the children were all asleep when they were small, Paavo and I would sit in each other’s arms on the sofa and whisper about our bliss as if using louder voices would break it.
I guess I could go ahead and say a little about Helena when she was small. When you’re really looking forward to something, some of that expectation can be transferred into the thing you were waiting for. We wanted a child so badly that when we finally got one, we didn’t quite know how to rejoice over her, having had to be so terribly afraid and anxious. That fear and anxiety are definitely visible in Helena. She was a serious, skittish child. She would sit up suddenly at night and look at us, the lamp and the nightstand clock with her big eyes. As if she were checking to make sure everything was true, that everyone was still alive. She would make mud pies, but wouldn’t chant “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man.” When any adult came to visit, she would go and hide under the table and peek out from underneath. Alfred Supinen tried to coax her out, singing, “I found my gal in Karelia, found her small and sweet, hey, hey.” But our gal stayed under the table. Helena laughed so little that for a while we thought she didn’t like this life at all. I remember when her laugh came. On the television she saw a little man who was walking, rocking back and forth, with a little hat on his head, running into door jambs and long boards that construction men were carrying on their shoulders It was that Chaplin guy. When the program ended, Helena said, “Again.” If they had films on cassette back then, we would have bought all of Chaplin’s inventions for Helena. Then later came Laurel and Hardy, but she didn’t laugh at them at all. No one in our family did. I hated those men. There wasn’t any variety in how things went wrong. It was always the little one sobbing and the fat one hitting him on the head with a newspaper. Life isn’t like that. Sometimes the roles change.
Helena grew up by accident. When you have lots of children, you don’t realize that the first one is suddenly at the door, even though she was just sucking at your breast. One day she said seriously, “I’m leaving now.” There was no rebellion or anger in her voice. It was just that serious undercurrent of hers. At the train station, Paavo and I had no idea how to be. A person isn’t prepared in any way for her child to become an adult. Nor for her child to be taken away—not completely, but piece by piece. She looked out the gray window of the blue train, newborn and young woman in the same face.
Now I’m jumping from one topic to another. The dictaphone is good, because I don’t even notice it. Paavo always says I can’t stay on one topic, that I’m always moving on to something else in the middle of everything. Paavo can stay on one topic for a long time. His record is probably four years. Now he’s going for a new record. The event this time is muteness.
So, Pekka had the speech impediment. He tried to be good at something else. There’s research about this. I read in a medical book that if a person has some physical defect, let’s say he doesn’t have a left hand, then the right hand will grow really, really strong. The strength of the left transfers into the right. Just like blind people have extremely sharp hearing. So our Pekka was a stutterer and started to make up for it by copying people, the way they walked and their postures. Whenever a visitor came over, Pekka would sit quietly and look at him. When the visitor had left, Pekka would go over and sit in his place and begin to imitate his movements. He was talented and knew it. The other children watched like it was theater. It was better than television. When the stuttering let up once he was older, I secretly thought he might become an actor. Pekka found his place in business, which we are of course proud of. There isn’t a direct need for the imitator’s skills in that field, but you do need to be able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
Opposites attract. This isn’t my own idea—it’s the truth. Maija is full of light, so she had to seek out darkness. She was so impossibly fascinated with people’s dark sides. It started with bottle spinning, and then came all the spiritualism nonsense, and then to top it all off, she took up with a negro. I’m using the word “negro” here, and if the dictaphone will last, I’ll get this all out of the way right now. If the author sees fit to use the official name later, something like African-American, then let him, but let’s go with “negro” for the rest of this session. And besides: from their first meeting the negro called Paavo “paleface.”
Yes. Well. Our life changed a lot twenty years ago when Maija wrote saying she had found a love and would like to come and show him to us. When Maija stepped out of the train on the arm of a black man, Paavo leaned against me for support and whispered that we should turn back.
I dragged Paavo along, and we walked toward them. Maija smiled and said that here was her love. He was as black as pitch and looked like a spirit being. His eyes burned red in the darkness of his face and he held our daughter under his arm as if she were prey he had captured. He said something in English. Maija translated that her love had never visited the Finnish countryside before. Paavo said that he would do well to remember his first impressions carefully, because he wouldn’t get a second chance.
Maija started to cry. I had to take over the situation. I felt faint, but I didn’t let myself be overcome. If I’ve learned anything, it is forgetting myself. The world is what it is. And this time it was big and black. I whispered to Paavo that whomever our daughter has chosen, we will welcome him into our home. We walked to the car, loaded the bags and set off driving. Only humans are capable of silence like that.
I looked in the rearview mirror. I saw Maija’s tears and black fingers stroking my daughter’s hair. I would have liked to break those fingers and stop time and the car, but the road just went on. It always does. You can get off if you die.
We came into the yard, and Paavo walked into the bedroom and didn’t come out all evening. The next morning he gave Maija a piece of graph paper and walked to the shed. A whacking sound started. He was chopping wood. He always split wood when his world was broken. I knew my husband, and I said to Maija and the black man that we should eat breakfast now without him. I asked Maija to tell the black man that every ingredient of a balanced human diet was represented on the table and that we could feel just as comfortable together as we wished.
The black man took everything and lots of it. I thought that was a good sign. A clear display of appetite engenders trust. Maija just sobbed, not managing to eat anything. It made me feel sorry for her and irritated me at the same time. She was my child of light, and she had chosen a black man from a distant continent. These two things were true, and it was also true that I had gone to a great deal of trouble over the scrambled eggs, porridge, cold cuts and fresh bread. The importance of food in easing distress is enormous. I’ve spoken about this with all of my children, both together and separately, reminding them that Paavo and I had lived in a world where there was no yogurt, no muesli, and none of those lovely croissants that leave butter and flaky chips of dough on the corners of your mouth to accompany your tears.
I said to Maija, “Now we’re going to eat well, and then we’ll have a long, hard talk. You’ll get to translate a lot of questions into that foreign language. We’ll sit in soft chairs and talk. We’re white and he’s black. We’ll start from this truth and not be afraid of anything. Dad will chop wood, and we’ll talk. Silence isn’t golden, it’s scrap iron.”
Maija didn’t say anything. She just held out the piece of graph paper her father had given her. It said, “You took a black man. Give me a call sometime.”
What galled Maija the most was that he had the nerve to write about calling even though he knew well enough that Maija didn’t have a telephone.
I took the piece of paper and said I would be back soon. I went to the shed, interrupted Paavo’s swing in midair and ordered him to set the ax aside for a moment because I had something to say. I showed him the paper, crumpled it up and said, “First come thoughts, then the alphabet. On this paper the order is backward.”
I returned to Maija and the black man and said that Paavo would be coming for breakfast in a week. Maija smiled and said that her love had a name, Biko. Pronounced with as soft a “B” as possible.
And it did come softly from Maija’s mouth. I asked her to translate that Paavo and I would have to get used to the new situation and that getting used to something can take a while. Biko opened his mouth and out came who-knows-what for a long time. I asked Maija to translate as honestly as possible. Biko wanted to say that he was fully aware of the influence of the color of a black man on his surroundings, but that he had not been able to choose the color; if he had, he would have rather chosen red, the color of love. Biko also said that he intended to love Maija no matter what, in every condition, before anyone and everyone, even in the middle of Finland. Wood can be chopped and tears can be shed, but his love was and would remain.
I made up an excuse to go into the kitchen and then came back with new eyes and said that we haven’t had much chance to practice diversity in this country, since the youth of one generation was taken up with wars and that of the next with coping with the aftermath, that because of this we had to proceed with slow steps, but looking each other in the eye the whole way.
The most important thing to me was and is that he loved and loves my daughter. I said to him, and Maija translated, that this country isn’t finished yet, even though it has been built up a lot. It isn’t ready for a person of your color, since it’s only just suitable for us grays. You’ll have to get used to all sorts of things. If you’re the touchy sort, you’ll be offended the whole time. Grow a thick skin. But not so thick that you can’t feel a person’s hand through it.
Biko nodded and told how he came from a country that won’t be finished for a long time, where a person’s life costs as much as a chicken drumstick does here. He also said that it was best to think of one person at a time, not whole nations.
Out of a whole nation he had chosen our Maija, and I had to live with that fact. In this world I’ve never had a shed I could run to away from my troubles.
It was a big job to get Paavo to speak that time. I forced myself to speak to him constantly. Even though he didn’t respond for a long time. I didn’t give up. I was a peace negotiator just like our President Ahtisaari.
One evening Paavo came out of the shed and said, “Well, show me the picture then.”
I took the picture I had taken myself out of my handbag. In it, Maija and Biko sat side-by-side, and they had that glow in their eyes. Paavo knows that glow—it comes from love. Normal eyes glisten with tears and exhaustion, but the eyes of love have a unique luster, similar to sautéed onions. Paavo said, “Maija has her own life.”
The dictaphone was spinning, but my head had stopped.
The author noticed the silence and turned the device off. He suggested taking a break. I realized I was dreadfully hungry. The life I had been telling had eaten up my energy. The author fetched me a big glass of fresh juice and a ham sandwich. I felt like bolting it down like at home, but I paced myself under unfamiliar eyes.
It felt strange to talk about my life and to think that it could fit into the belly of the small dictaphone. Around the author’s neck was hanging the same kind of memory stick I’d seen on Helena. Apparently it could fit so many words that no one would have the time to write that much in his entire life. Helena said once that there should always be at least two backup copies of work things. The technical wonders of this world are completely incomprehensible to me, but this I know: they don’t change the fundamentals of a person one bit. There aren’t backup copies of sorrows and joys.
The author was already tapping the dictaphone with his finger. I ignored his impatient gestures. I had to digest the sandwich and juice before I could go on. A hungry person can say anything. I wanted to talk turkey.
I thought about what I had said and what I had left unsaid. I realized that I didn’t remember my life in order—everything was a gloop in my head, a little like that frozen reindeer haunch Paavo’s friend carved pieces off to fry up that time. I tried to remember now what I had already carved off and what was still attached, still frozen.
I nodded to the author. He nimbly moved his finger to the button, and the dictaphone started recording.
My husband Paavo and I had a button shop. We called it that even though the sign outside said “Malmikunnas Yarn Shop.” The sign was made of thick, white plywood, and the name was written on it in calligraphy by the display designer Alfred Supinen, who we had hired from the city and who was endowed with artistic gifts. Paavo and I were able to watch while Supinen wrote slowly and then moved back a few meters and squinted, checking the writing. Supinen said that writing four letter “A”s the same required exactness from the artist, because the letters also had to become living human creations. And indeed, as we watched we understood that there are two worlds: this visible one and the other one, which only a few ever get to peek into. Paavo was absolutely certain that if Alfred had been born in a warm southern European land, he would have become a world-famous painter whose works would have been discussed in hushed tones in well-lit galleries by people holding tapered glasses. But in this cold land the brushes stiffen and the paint freezes.
But it wasn’t exactly like that. Perhaps Alfred didn’t have a burning need to paint on canvases after all. Or maybe he did, but didn’t know how. We’ll never know for sure, since he cut everything short.
Alfred hanged himself in a cellar with a thick piece of cord. To the frayed end of it clung a yellow piece of tape that said “Saastamoinen Wholesale.” It looked bad, the piece of tape. Alfred said two weeks before his suicide to Paavo, “It’s all the same no matter what paint pot I put my brush into—it always comes out gray.” He was depressed about a world that had changed without consulting him. The wholesaler had given notice that due to technical innovations the need for display designers was declining. Alfred didn’t stay around to see the change.
Display designer. That name leaves out the most important part: beauty. A display designer makes the world more beautiful, or, if not the world, at least he makes shops more beautiful, so it’s easier for people to come inside. I’m sure that some of our first customers came inside thanks to the beautiful sign.
Yarn, buttons, needles, pins, postcards, lace, ribbon and zippers. We might have had other things too. I don’t remember. But that was mainly what we sold to people—useful things. We provided something that people needed. This may sound like belaboring the point, but in the ’60s and ’70s we each had to fight against the idea that every merchant was a thief and a predator. We took the money left over between the wholesaler and the customers. Is that a dirty trick? What do you say, Author? Nothing. Exactly. It shuts you up. No? Paavo and I could withstand the barrage, but it was hard for the children. When you get made fun of as a child, when the other children call you the spawn of a butcher or a robber baron, it leaves a mark. An invisible mark, and that’s the worst kind of all. You can’t see it, but you can feel it. I could sense it in my children then, and I still do now.
And Paavo and I didn’t always stay calm either. It happened like this: by this time Helena was starting to think she knew a little something about how the world worked, and she brought a friend over to visit. Her friend was a little older and had already been to visit the big cities. She was one of those more aware young people. She put a record on the player called “A Plate of Guatemalan Blood.” On it they sang about oppression and fighting, and especially about opposing evil exploiters from foreign lands, as well as homegrown ones too. It was tough for Paavo when he realized that the singers on the record were the same ones he had seen on television specifically disparaging all business people, praising the communist movement with all hearts. And there was his own daughter humming along with her eyes closed to the melodies of the spoiled brats of the urban upper class. I tried to intervene, but Paavo already had that look. His eyes narrow, he clears his throat and his hands shake. He was in the zone, as some theater director said once on the T.V. Paavo went and tore the record from the player with such force that the needle scratched a streak across it. He went to the window, threw the record into the snow and said, “I threw it—I’ll pay for it.”
This led to crying, and a good while went by before Helena agreed to come out of her room. Paavo spoke to Helena about it later. He sort of tried to put his words in a row like delicate stones, saying, “Dear, we need to make our living from the shop, and it isn’t like we start exploiting the working class first thing in the morning. Your parents work a pretty hard day and if you look at it from a certain perspective, you could say that we are in the working class, more or less, but there isn’t anything to be gained by getting the communist movement mixed up in this, and there isn’t any point in writing lamentations about it—the fruit of that movement is a country full of prisons and Siberias—I just mean how about we live our life selling yarn and buttons and then once we get close to the grave look at what the bottom line is, whether your mother and father are exploiters and blood-suckers and bourgeois devils or just the plain old salt of the earth that you sprinkle on your porridge and apparently on wounds too, and if that friend of yours wants to talk more about it, that’s fine, since there are other colors in life besides black and white: there’s socialism and its everyday version, the one the social democrats like Koivisto and Sorsa and the labor movement are pushing—that’s a perfectly sensible operation that a small-business man like me can understand, and you don’t need any Guatemalan blood for it—a plate of soup from blueberries you picked and boiled yourself will do just fine.”
He had to be quiet for a long time after that, and of course Helena didn’t know how to even begin responding. Every now and then Paavo’s cork pops out, but this time he was making perfect sense.
Money is one of those things people in this country don’t know how to relate to. You shouldn’t seek it, and you shouldn’t have it, but at the same time everyone should get some, preferably the same amount. Ideologies and religions probably get scraped together just so people won’t have to talk about money all the time. We didn’t get any more of it in this life than anyone else. You have to practically wave the evidence from the taxman in front of people’s faces for them to believe. They’ve come up with enough forms in this country for small-business people to fill out that you’re lucky to make it to work between filling them out. I respect money, because I know how tight it is. You have to look for it under rocks. First you lift the rock out of the way, and then you start scraping at the rocky ground with your bare hands. With bloody fingertips. And scabbed knees. The moon glowing in the sky would find Paavo and me still bent over scrabbling for our treasure. And out it would come, wretched and dirty, but when we would polish it, it would start to shine. We would schlep the lump over to the taxman, who would whack off his piece with a golden billhook, and then we would carry it home and hit it with a forge hammer until it split it into four pieces. With the first we would pay for our house, with the second for the electricity and water, with the third for food and clothing, and the fourth part, that we would be really strict with. If we put it toward a car, then what kind? Not a Mercedes, because people would start to whisper. If we put it toward dressing ourselves up, the same thing. You have to be gray in a gray country. So it is that one quarter of all money isn’t fit for anyone, not for yourself, not for others. It just gets stuffed in a sock, away from the sun and prying eyes. It irks a bit that, as a yarn seller, in a certain way I was helping to create those socks, at least indirectly. Money is supposed to circulate, just like all good things. It has to be in movement so everyone can catch a glimpse of it. But how can it get out of that sock all by itself? Everything is based on circulation. Gypsies, the sun, laughter, luck. They all move around, and rightly so. The poor money molders in corners and sock drawers so no one can be jealous of anyone else.
Paavo and I were very amused by the first rich person in the world who showed it. He had been selling things to people door to door for his whole life, putting everything in a sock. But one day he dumped the paper out of the sock, put the sock on his foot and went to the big city to buy an American car.
The rich man’s name was Toivo. I won’t say the family name so you won’t be able to go spreading these tidings of joy, which would inevitably turn to tears along the way. If people were to find out where he lives, someone would go around and slash his tires even though it has been twenty years.
Toivo drove about the countryside in a wide-brimmed hat and a white suit, smiling broadly. He parked in front of our shop and got out slowly, like plump people do, but he was deliberately calling attention to the idleness and unhurriedness he had worked and slaved to achieve. He came inside, looked over the merchandise and said he didn’t need anything but had to have something beautiful, just like himself.
Toivo fingered the laces and the roll of velvet we had ordered for the gypsy-king’s wife. I said we could only sell one yard of the velvet, but more of the lace. Toivo said that a yard of velvet would do. It was going in the car, on the passenger seat, for him to rest his free hand on nicely as the automatic transmission saw to the forward motion. I wrapped the velvet up as Toivo wandered around the shop in his white three-piece suit, the fobs of his pocket watch jingling. When he walked out the door, Paavo and I looked at each other and then out through the display window as the car swung onto the road and disappeared over the horizon as a white dot.
Now, I don’t mean that Toivo was an especially dignified person, that he was better than anyone else, but he was like a breath of fresh air from some other world, a little like Alfred Supinen. At the time they were showing “The Amazing World” on the television, or was it “Wide”? It was the only program where you could see anything even a little bit fascinating or colorful. Toivo evoked images of a peacock or penguin. I thought it was good they existed in their own way, and Paavo agreed. There was something self-satisfied and gaudy about them, but not in a way that takes away from anyone else. Or it does, of course, in the sense that it is a hard thing for nature’s other creatures, the rhinoceroses and crocodiles and all the other animals made with the Creator’s other hand, to watch such good-humored types saunter about.
I told the author to turn the dictaphone off for a moment. I said I was going to the restroom. I looked in the mirror and asked myself why I had started talking about money. I’ve seen that it doesn’t pay to talk about that. The ones who talk about it the most have the least, and I don’t blame them. And the ones who talk the least have the most, but I wouldn’t encourage them to be more open either.
Talking about money makes you feel dirty, even though there’s nothing wrong with the instrument itself. In this country you can only speak freely about the weather, which is the same for everyone—bad.
I decided to wash my face of the matter, since my hands weren’t an option. I had sold my life, and I was paying for it now with shame. I took some soap from the pump bottle, rubbed it over my face until it was white and then tried to massage the shame out. Washing your face always helps. It’s a strange thing. It probably comes from the fact that life happens in a person’s head, and the face is the windscreen of the head.
I walked back over to the author and nodded. “Roll tape.”
You can never tell what a child will turn out to be. I mean their profession, not their final character. We have a clear system: make your life your own—we will love you. The children went out into the world and got on. That was the time in the world when there was work for everyone who wanted to do it. Then came the time when Paavo and I didn’t understand anything anymore. I don’t know if the children understood it either, but they had to live in it.
What I know of life, I write down on postcards and send it to my children. They believe in the written word, and even if they didn’t, they could never claim afterward that they hadn’t heard or understood what I was saying. There are four kinds of cards: one has a lake, the second has winter, the third has fall and the fourth has our village high street. The lake picture was taken from the sky, up where Paavo and I went in a small plane in 1970. The same sky is still here, but with modern cameras it has become too sharp. The human eye works in generalities—it isn’t meant to pick out every wisp of cloud. Modern pictures make my head hurt.
The children expect the cards. If one doesn’t come for two months in a row, the youngest will ask why on the corded phone. I always say that I will send a card as soon as I know what to write on it. You have to think carefully. Figuring things out isn’t always easy. The state of understanding I’m living in now has taken more than seventy years to develop. People ripen slowly.
I’m not running out of cards, even though the shop closed. I took the cards from there, but nothing else. The yarn, the ribbons, the buttons, the snaps, the elastic, the scissors, the needles and everything else I left, bidding it a fond farewell, but I emptied out the whole shelf of cards from beside the door into a big bag.
One night I counted the cards. I have a total of 657 lakes, winters, autumns and high streets. I’ll run out of things to say before I run out of cards.
I’ve noticed that children’s heads are so shiny and slippery that nothing seems to want to stick in them. Perfectly clear instructions and advice are forgotten in a matter of months. How many times do I have to write on the back of each of the four landscapes that it isn’t a good idea to talk to yourself in the city or at work? People clearly draw conclusions immediately about those who mumble to themselves. Of course, geniuses and artists are another matter, but Paavo and I didn’t raise our children to be that incoherent. If you absolutely have to talk to yourself, you can do it at home or in a public restroom stall, but I would consider the general rule to be: talk to each other or with people.
It was bad when all the children moved away from home. People should be given one more child to last them to the end. To be able to watch something grow again. No one is going to feel like growing flowers forever—it’s all the same: sprouting, leafing out and flowering. But a person is such a strange, wonderful thing that you can easily put fifty years into it. A child gives you a sense of scale and time. When our youngest was confirmed, we knew we would have to leave soon ourselves. The greatest injustice is that you only get to be face-to-face with them for twenty years, if that. Then they visit you with their boyfriends and girlfriends and have turned into people. A child and a person are completely different things.
One time a Polish film director was talking on the television. He had a difficult name, all “K”s and “R”s and “Z”s alternating over and over one after the other. He was chain smoking, and his face was pinched. He was clearly trying to speak the truth the whole time. He said that human sorrow comes from never being able to be the same age as one’s children. He spoke the truth.
Paavo has gone without speaking for two months now. It means that I have started to talk to myself. Which is a bad thing. But apparently the amount of speech in a house is fixed. If one person stops completely, the other has to speak the full quota for the mute as well. In the very beginning speechlessness seems noble, but then the shine and the integrity wears off, and it just becomes off-putting. Paavo doesn’t notice it himself. But I do understand Paavo in this situation, even though I would like someone to talk to. This is Paavo’s way of getting over grief. I’m afraid of Paavo leaving before me. And he could leave, squatting mutely in the shed, watching the world with an evil eye. That sort of thing can open the door to cancer. I’m sure about this, and at least one doctor I know agrees.
Glaring at the world won’t reduce the amount of evil in it. But how else but through gloomy and evil thoughts, by speaking evil, have the sages of this land risen to their positions? Or been raised. The people in the newspapers and on the television seem to want nothing more than to worship these horses’ backsides, whose opinions on every issue are as extreme and as dismal as possible. I’ve been listening to this one fisherman for years with my cheek resting on my hand to see if even one optimistic thought might come out of his mouth to light the path out to the sauna, but no, we just hear the same invocations of the end of the world and the same invective against the human race, so much so that nothing seems worth doing for a little while afterward. And that’s the problem with evil, that it’s just as disingenuous as perpetual goodness. Sometimes you’d just like to take these miserable, gloomy men in your lap and say, “Don’t focus on evil. Don’t deny goodness. Just go out into life and be dazzled.”
There I go, all over the place. I meant to talk about the children.
Paavo and I haven’t fretted over our children. There’s no point in that. With two daughters, if you start shedding tears in advance, you’ll start thinking your hankie was glued to your hand. Two boys evened things out. You don’t have to worry about boys in the same way. Paavo said once that if you have ladies and gents in your hand and a queen in your lap, you can leave the game feeling good. Paavo included Heikki in that phrase, even though we didn’t have him anymore.
I’ll say one thing about Helena here in the middle, whether it’s on the record or not: the oldest child’s responsibility rests like a boulder on her shoulders her whole life. She was born bigger than the others right from the start, and that was not a good thing. As a young teenager she had a sort of serving disorder. Or if not a disorder, a temperament. She looked after the smaller ones, turning off lights, clearing dishes off the table, arranging hats and gloves. A servant’s childhood is short. Yes, I noticed how even as a young woman she sat in the corner, even putting on her make-up mechanically, not out of a desire to be attractive. As if the poor dear only had responsibilities, not privileges. Her nails were short. The others’ were red. It looked a little like when the other girls were staring off into horizon, our Helena was looking at the bus schedules. Every child of man should be allowed time for tomfoolery.
All of our children are in business, even though we didn’t lead them in that direction in any way. Pekka and Maija are sales consultants. Before they were just salespeople, but at some point they became sales consultants. A thing doesn’t change a bit by switching its name.
Pekka has worked in many companies, and has done well in all of them. He has done a lot of work on his stuttering. It isn’t easy to give sales pitches when you have to worry about how your words are going to come out. It pains my heart to think of the situations that boy has found himself in because of his handicap, but he has got along marvelously. A little while ago, he told us he was the general manager at a firm that sells computers. Previously he sold snowboards for a living. I didn’t know what those were, but when I saw one on the television, I understood that now children need to slide down the snow sideways. Pekka has finally started a family. Well, not quite a real one, but one of those blended families. He hasn’t come around to show us yet, but Maija told us. It made me think about how someone could get attached to children who aren’t his own, but I imagine it’s possible. Nowadays almost everything is possible, even if it looks impossible.
Maija has had many jobs as well. Before people just had one job their whole lives. Maija said that she couldn’t even imagine being at the same place for her entire life. That hurt this lifelong button merchant a little, but I do understand something of the restlessness of these new people. Right now Maija is selling magazines over the phone. The negro, or, rather, the Afro-American multicultural person, I mean Maija’s husband, Biko, drives a bus. It’s hard wrestling with these niceties. Biko has learned Finnish quickly and now gets to drive people around the city in a blue bus. Apparently Biko is aiming for a position as a taxi driver. I think that’s dogs’ work, driving rich drunks from place to place in an expensive car, but I might be totally out to lunch about that.
Helena is the highest up of the children. She’s become an actual marketing director. She works at a firm that has a long English name and sells ideas. Helena had to explain this to us many times. The firm doesn’t make anything and doesn’t sell things made by anyone else; but rather, they think about other companies’ business and then sell what they think to these other companies. It made my head hurt to listen to it, but Helena was patient and used our yarn shop as an example.
If, for example, your yarn shop were in trouble, customers declining and cash flow drying up, and you couldn’t figure out why, then our firm could ponder this for you. Is the selection too narrow? Is there something wrong with the company’s logo? Is the firm’s visual image behind the times? Is the staff sufficiently energetic and understanding of modern people? Then when we get to the heart of the problem, we would create a new corporate image for you, which might mean a new general look or an expansion of your product ranges, or we might focus the need for change on some other specific area.
This clarified things, although at the same time it offended me. I said to Helena that our business image was just fine and would continue to be so, because time couldn’t dull the beautiful sign Alfred Supinen had painted for us thirty-five years before. Paavo said that the most important thing in a button shop was that the products are in order and that the salespeople resemble the customers both in manner and appearance. Helena said she had used a familiar example so the thing we were talking about could be understood. She didn’t mean to say that our business belonged in any way to the target audience of their firm.
In plain Finnish, Helena’s firm sells something that can’t be seen with the eye, and this separates me and Paavo from this world. Not that we oppose change, but that’s just the way things are: Paavo and I have fallen by every possible wayside. And so it should be. There’s no point in hanging on if your thoughts have already let go. The important thing is that the children can hang on at least until the next bend in the road.
I started to get tired and asked the author to check the dictaphone to see if there was enough life on it for this time. The author said that yes, this was quite enough to get him started and that then he would make up more himself. I didn’t like that idea, but I didn’t feel like making a fuss. My strength was almost spent, and I found myself thinking of Paavo and home.
We arranged our next meeting and shook hands. I made sure the bundle of bills was safe. It was my first wages I didn’t pay taxes on. On the way home, I thought about Paavo, my life, the children. And the taxman.