The Beggar and the Hare

My translation of Tuomas Kyrö's novel Kerjäläinen ja jänis (The Beggar and the Hare) will be published by Short Books on March 6, and is available for pre-order as a hardback or a Kindle download.

The Beggar and the Hare

Tuomas Kyrö's novel Kerjäläinen ja jänis (The Beggar and the Hare, 2011) is at once a homage to the better-known book by Arto Paasilinna, Jäniksen vuosi (The Year of the Hare, 1977), and an affectionate pastiche of it. Kyrö takes the theme of "man and animal" and turns it into a satire on the life of modern Finland, with its uncertain position between an affluent and introspective Scandinavia and an impoverished but outward-bound Eastern Europe. The novel's great virtue lies in its author's ability to go further and convert this local drama into a human comedy, where elements of social and political strife become part of a universal moral tale.

Here's an excerpt from the early part of the book, in my translation:

From Kerjäläinen ja jänis [The Beggar and the Hare] by Tuomas Kyrö

[pp. 29-33]

Yegor Kugar was a professional in the security sector whose career began in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Later on the artificial Union filed for bankruptcy, but that change of affairs had no effect on Yegor Kugar’s life and deeds – at least not of a negative kind. Regimes may fall, but the security police remains. The security police is the regime. From Kugar’s professional point of view the nosedive of the Bolshies was actually a positive event, one that improved the state of the markets. Unstable domestic politics and power vacuums always mean brilliant new opportunities for those with no shortage of nerve and testosterone. 

“I brought the poppy flowers of the mullahs to the nouveau-riches of my own land. A briefcase full of opium, several briefcases full of banknotes. Our kind of agricultural subsidy. That way the level of my income rather swiftly reached that of my clients. I bought a Nokia mobile phone the size of a beer-crate but couldn’t use it to call anyone, as there weren’t any network towers in our neck of the woods yet.”

   At first Yegor sold sackfuls of poppies, then opium, but having been brought up on the street he soon realized that the longer a small businessman works up his raw stock the fatter his wallet will be. With his takings Yegor Kugar bought what every newly-rich motherfucker throughout the world buys: an outsize four-by-four. It might also suit the tramcar-riding intelligentsia to find out what it feels like to go rolling along in one’s very own bulletproof, family-car-eating Hummer.

   Yegor needed a temporary residence for vacations, so he bought a floor of the former Party members’ apartment block. When the heroes of the Great Patriotic War on the floor above complained about the noise, Yegor bought that floor as well and moved the heroes out to the street. In his new home Yegor Kugar celebrated his own ego, the good sides of his time at the summit of world history in the company of presidents, sports stars and the bearded, pointy hat-wearing radicals of the Orthodox Church. An endless shindig, like the one in Yegor’s favourite book The Dirt, which describes the everyday life – or rave-up – of the band Mötley Crüe. For in Yegor’s eyes two beings were superior to all others: Vince Neil and Joseph Stalin. Yegor himself puts it like this:

“I’ll tell you straight, as it’s important if you want to understand my character and don’t just want to stick me in the slammer. I’m mad about fucking. It’s the only way I know to get the shit out of my head when I’m under this goddamn stress all the time. Fucking is better than fighting, no? At first I never did drugs myself because I knew it would immediately bugger the stock records and the sales chain follow-up.

   “What’s the alternative? Drinking puts you out of action for several days. It’s better to empty your head with fucking.

    “Two weeks of business, two weeks in my pad with Miss Uzbekistan. There are all kinds of broads in the world, of all races, sizes, smells and tastes. There are the Pam Andersons and the Armi Aavikkos, but there are also the junkies, the halfwits and the Alla Pugachovas. There are the semi-uglies who are also hypersexual marvels in an easy-going sort of way. There are the seventeen year-olds who look like women of thirty and there are the forty-seven year-olds who’ve kept their resale value. There are the rump roasts who are bigger and lovelier than the sum of their holes. And there the ones who are just holes, for whom I was equivalent to money, drugs and connections, in other words a hole through which they could sniff coke with NHL hockey players. But fun was always had on both sides, until it got embarrassing, at which point I’d tell the girls to go, and order new ones. It didn’t seem possible that such a life would ever end.

   “I just can’t sleep alone, I need someone beside me, it doesn’t matter who it is as long as she has a good body. That’s how it is with the women back home, but over here the ladies have been let into the labour market, they have too many opportunities to let their bodies go and quit wearing makeup.”

Yegor Kugar wanted more serious challenges in his life, and so he expanded his business activities from drugs to arms. A market was offered to him on a plate: hostile armies. The most important thing was that the conflicts were ongoing, that no peace negotiations were started, that the situation did not become normalized. As long as the hostile army was within binocular range and antagonistic, one could trade drugs for arms.

“Shitistan, Blackanistan and blah-blah-blah. I got my supply of happy dust from the tribal warlords, paid cash in Kalashnikovs. Then, just for form’s sake, a little skirmish with the same crew, and at the same time an application to HQ for leave, which was granted of course as I slipped in some powder as a sweetener.

    “The problems began when the enemy side began to tighten up their morale. Worst of all were the separatists, read B-league fundamentalists, read clerics. They’re an obstacle to free trade, a bit like your social democracy here. They scared the pants off me, because they weren’t scared of us at all. Kind of like the Finns during the Winter War: let the Russkies bring their millions of tanks, we’ll mow them down with our bows and catapults. In place of fear and flight they had hate and faith. Extremely dangerous. I respected them and despised them. But goddammit, if they’d gained such unlimited power, why on earth did they go on living in caves and ruins? They made threatening videos, took hostages and muttered their holy scripture, though they’d have done  better to make music videos and build swimming pools in their basements with pole dancing, billiard tables and drink cupboards.

    “I realized that they didn’t know much about fucking, either. That they could only get it up when they were able to rape someone. Their male cousins.”

Katariina

From Katariina, by Marisha Rasi-Koskinen

1.

First I hear the sound. It’s a repeated sharp click followed by two rhythmic thumps. Click thump thump like the soft drum of a heart. When I see her, I see two furiously treading legs, around which the hems of a skirt are entwined. Hair that sways to the rhythm of the heart and descends in a ball. Hair behind which the sun gleams.

Click thump thump.

The legs stop. The skipping rope hits the wooden surface of the landing with a single empty blow and stops at the toes. The rhythm remains. Thump, thump, I think, though the sound is gone now. She looks up and I see her face. I see the serious eyes, the freckled cheekbones and narrow lips. There is something familiar about her, it is just that I do not yet know what.

“You,” she says. “Where did you spring from?"

She doesn’t seem surprised. On the contrary, she talks as if she had been prepared for my arrival. As if she knew me, though we’ve never met before.

I draw my breath.

"Me? What do you mean?"

She laughs. Her laugh is strange, only slightly more of a laugh than a hiccup. She sounds like a little girl, though a rather big one. Too big to be skipping with a rope in a pleated skirt and with scabs on her knees. Too big to speak familiarly to strangers, especially those older than herself. Too big to lick each finger one by one after slipping something from the pocket of her pleated skirt.
.
"I've seen you before. Tell me who you are."

She isn’t laughing any more. Not only that: she is completely serious. Her hiccups have turned into inexpressiveness in the time it takes to blink an eye or take half a breath. To open a mouth to speak. To intend to. When I say my name, she repeats it as if she knew it in advance.

"Katariina" she says. "You're probably eighteen now."

"Yes."

"That's good. I’m Margareetta. Thirteen."

Then she offers a sweet. I take the sticky yellow oval. It puts up a little resistance before agreeing to free itself from the sweaty palm of her hand. The sweet is fluffy and rough, so sugary that it hurts one’s cheeks.

We have introduced ourselves, exchanged the codes that are sufficient to bring us together during the weeks to follow.

We are Margareetta and Katariina, in that order.



The rules are simple.

"We’ll only meet at your place,” she says. "You can’t come to our place, and don’t come looking for me. I’m the one who decides when we meet, I’ll come when I can and if I don’t it means that I couldn’t. Don’t ask any questions, you don’t need to know. I will take care of knowing and telling you what you need. Got it? "

The rhythm of her speech is like a poem. A slow monologue rehearsed in front of the mirror, or a cheat sheet from a civics test. A preliminary guidance lecture for youth camp participants.

Margareetta does not wait for my reply. Or what I would say if I did reply, for I don’t. I have known her for five minutes and I already know that it is useless to resist her.

"I’ve done my skipping now, haven’t I, Katariina."

I must have closed my eyes, as I didn’t see her face turning into a smile. Yet there she is, smiling, rolling up the skipping rope and throwing it over the railing. She smiles again. I see the rope fall and open up. The sun brushes the plastic surface. My heart stops. It’s a thirty foot drop.



And later, many hours or days or weeks later, we sit on the roof of the house, on either side of the chimney, with the cooling bricks under our bare legs. Behind Margareetta the sun dazzles me so that I can’t see her properly. We sit with every muscle tensed, every nerve-end receptive, in the pit of our stomachs a fist that presses and of which we are unable to say whether it feels good or horrible.

From the roof we can see far away. The cars. The trees. The dogs. The people.

Margareetta speaks first.

"How many of them are actually thinking," she asks, "those people down there?"

"Not very many," I suggest.

"None of them. They’re all just props. They’re there to make us feel lonely. In the right kind of way."

I look at the props far below, props that walk and run, props that stumble, cycle or stagger. Pee against a tree trunk, if they happen to be dogs. Shriek and fly up to the branch of a tree, if they’re birds. How real it all looks. The sound effects carry upwards faintly: a cry, a laugh, the shouting of children.

"The sounds are a bit too quiet," I say. Margaret nods gravely.

"If you fell from here," she says, "it would be a thirty foot drop."

"We’d land with a thump in the middle of the stage.”

Margaret laughs. She looks at the thirty foot drop and continues almost as if in a dream.

"If you lost your balance you’d end up sliding down the drain pipe."

"It would give way."

"Which way would you fall?"

"Legs first, then head. Or maybe head first. The head is heavier."

"It wouldn’t look good," she says. After that she doesn’t say anything for a long time. And then, at last: "I wonder what mother would say when she found you lying on the ground.”

"I don’t know. Cry, probably."

"Or maybe she wouldn’t."

Margareetta gets up and stands on the ladder. She stands with her legs apart and her hands outstretched as though she were trying to hold the sky in her arms. Her long shirt flutters. Her long hair streams.

"I wouldn’t just cry. If you were to fall, I would fly after you." She closes her eyes. "I’d fly so hard and so fast that I’d be able to catch you before you hit the ground."

I believe it. Margareetta always takes hold of me before I fall. If she wants to.

She’s a bird. Quite soon she will take flight. Quite soon she will fall. I don’t dare to look, but hug the chimney tighter and close my eyes. Then I remember the skipping rope. How it fell. How it opened like a cry. For a moment I think she is the skipping rope that fell. Or not her. I am.

Until she laughs again. Opens her eyes on the roof ridge.

"What about trying an experiment," she says, and I know that soon we will start to play again. "Let’s stage a fall. It would be great."



"It’s boring here, isn’t it,” Margareetta says, slipping another sweet into her mouth. To me she no longer offers one.

"Let's go to your place, Katariina."

We do that. We go to our place.

In the coming weeks we sometimes meet in other places too. In the city. At the harbour. Sometimes in a garden, in a park or under a bridge. Most often however, we meet at my place. At hers we don’t. I go there only once, and uninvited.

Our place. Soon, she starts to talk like that about my home.


Why did I obey? In this, and then in everything else as well? I simply obeyed. She was one of those people who are obeyed. The people who handle others like puppets and make them do things for them. Besides, if I really think about it, I wouldn’t have had anything better to do.


Katariina, by Marisha Rasi-Koskinen, Burning Bridge 2011

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Autumn's archive

In Hbl, Clas Zilliacus writes about Bo Carpelan's posthumously-published novel Blad ur höstens arkiv (Schildts, 2011, 204 pp.), which takes the form of a semi-autobiographical reflection contained  in 101 diary entries. Commenting on this form, with reference to the Danish poet Paul La Cour, Zilliacus makes some topical observations about the history of the European novel, a genre which included not only the romance, but also the picaresque and the epistolary diary, neither of which was characterized by plot:

Hela genreproblemet är omdebatterat. Att Urwind fick Finlandia­priset 1993 vann allmänt gillande. Men att samma författare fick priset för Berg 2005 var oerhört i sig. Dessutom – priset hade snävats in till ett romanpris – utlöste utkorelsen en principfråga: Var detta verkligen en roman? Skön var Berg, och poetisk, men intriglös; den saknade den spänningskurva man har rätt att kräva av sina lässtunder.

Det var trångsynta invändningar. Romangenren hade en av sina första stora perioder under tidigt 1700-tal, då det kryllade av dagboksartade ting. Då kunde man ha trott att genren var bestämd att vara just fingerad dagbok. Visst blev det mer intrig efterhand, men vem säger att just intrigen var romanens bestämmelse? Är det dagens vurm för thrillerns whodunit som har skruvat in romanen i ett så litet hål?

The whole problem of genre is the subject of much debate. The award of the Finlandia Prize to Urwind in 1993 gained general approval. But that the same author won the prize for Berg in 2005 was unheard-of. Moreover - the prize had been narrowed down to a novel prize - the choice triggered a fundamental question: was this really a novel? Berg was beautiful and poetic, but had no plot: it lacked the tension one curve had the right to demand of one's reading hours.

Those were parochial objections. The novel genre had one of its first major periods in the early 18th century, when it swarmed with diary-like things. Back then one might have thought that the genre was precisely designed to be a fictional diary. While it is true that a greater element of plot gradually developed,  who will say that plot was the novel's designation? Is it today's craze for the thriller and the whodunit that has forced the novel into such a small pigeon-hole?

It's also significant that, as Zilliacus also aptly points out, in addition to his diary-like works of fiction, Carpelan also produced a traditional historical detective novel, showing perhaps that while he was perfectly capable of working in that form, he did not consider it the most suitable medium for the realization of his artistic  intentions.

from The Diary of William N. [3]

(continued)

25.12. 14 degrees Celsius. I ate some Alsatian sausage cold. A glass of madeira. The university swallows talents and digests them slowly and surely as the sundew which grabs the fly and use it for food, but I do not have to fight for a "position" at any university, for there has always been enough ground under my feet. The thanks one receives are mere crumbs for the sparrows, while the vultures lurk on the branch waiting for the moment you make a mistake: Thank you, thank you, friends and enemies! Now that it is dark it sounds to me as though Paris is humming. Plaisance used to be open countryside – there was even a large park and a castle, which the omnibus company demolished in order to build the depot, and now there are tenement buildings and narrow streets, and the residents are poor people. Before the tall building was built opposite to darken my dwelling, this street was better than the Rue Pernety, where I used to live.

26.12.1898 Between the first and second pages of this notebook I have inserted a note which reads: "À Madame Constance Cavé. Ce cahier doit être détruit après ma mort."

27.12.1898 No letters. Before Christmas Elise sent me the instrument I had asked for, but it was quite the wrong one, even though I carefully explained what it should look like, and drew a picture of it. It will have to be returned. Coughing badly, the codeine tablets do not help, my whole body hurts and I have no appetite. If I get the article finished, the black-gowned academics will attack it like flies on a carcase.

28.12.1898 Death is not discussed as much as love (which is also discussed on the street corner), even though it is the only certain thing in life. Write poetry about death! People love a woman/man, but, I ask, does anyone love death? Suicides I do not count, for they do their deed while their minds are unbalanced. As a physician I have seen death many times, but the face of a dead person is neither happy nor sad, but completely empty, as the death struggle is over. When I die my old enemies will be disappointed, because they will miss an important event in my life, one that with all their hearts they desired to witness.

29.12.1898 Human folly occasions an anger that warms like an eiderdown or a bottle of burgundy! Th. S. wrote to me about a dispute concerning a civil service appointment, which is interesting, even though it does not concern me at all: let Helsinki, Uppsala, Lund and all the universities of the world look after their affairs without me!

30.12.1898 7 degrees Celsius. I lie in bed under the coverlet (my coat is also being used) and am trying to write, but my fingers are numb. It is 4 pm. I did not eat, drank milk which I mixed with hot water and sugar.

31.12.1898 At midnight the year changes and I will be writing in 1899, but I will not stay up that late. In her letter Elise wished me a "Good New Year". How good will it be, I wonder?

Paris, 1. January, 1899 A person of romantic disposition would suppose that this day is a "clean sheet", as it is Sunday and the first day of the year. I have not the slightest tendency to romanticism, but I awoke pleased that I had slept better than I have for a long time, for the cough did not keep me awake. On opening the front door (I was taking the refuse out to the back yard), I received a surprise: propped against the wall was a paper-wrapped bouquet of anemones, lilac, poppies, expensive spring flowers that can only be bought at the finest flower shops in Paris, and I thought it was a mistake and the bouquet was intended for one of my neighbours, but no: in an envelope was a card with my name on it, Dr. William N. On the other hand, there was no sender's name, and I am most perplexed by this occurrence! After rummaging in the kitchen I found a large jam jar (it was not clean, but I washed it), and in it I put the bouquet of flowers, which I think is very beautiful, and it looks as though spring had come to my dark, cramped and dusty apartment. A truly remarkable event!

[Kristina Carlson, William N. päiväkirja, Otava 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

from The Diary of William N. [2]

19.12.1898   In Finland I am not respected!  How would it have gone with me if I had remained in Helsinki? Poorly – the mail does not go to the hinterland properly, unlike in Europe –  the circles there are narrow, malicious, and even I respect but a few men like Th. S. who is loyal to me and F. Elfving, who is also a decent man. The Fries family are Swedish, but how they have messed up my life! At the dinners in Uppsala there was punch and chatter, yes, yes, but later the mood of the music changed (furioso), F. pater did not listen to my opinions, he contradicted me and cultivated relations behind my back in many directions, and so did F. filius. Lord knows  what will become of science if the scientists comport themselves like dancing masters!  I tried to promote Zetterstedt’s appointment to the Upsala post, but it turned out otherwise, for the post went to  T. Fries filius. Professor Andersson of Stockholm had the nerve to claim that I had merely succeeded in harming Z.’s position, thank you very much!

20.12.1898   Constance brought "Christmas fare", as she he is leaving tomorrow with her "old fellow" for the Auvergne. (I thought the man was a former officer, but he is really a common soldier.)  I received food that keeps such as sausages and brawn and English-style Christmas cake  in which there were plums, apricots, cherries and raisins, and the cake is soaked in brandy. I snorted at the word “Christmas”, for C. knows the manner in which I "celebrate" it, but she also insisted on cleaning, which led to an altercation between us, and C. shed some tears when she went home. But she is a good woman.

21.12.1898  Today I sat in the hospital (I had promised Elisa that I would see the doctor), on a bench with a mother who held a crying baby in her arms, an old, loud-voiced deaf woman, a labourer whose leg was wrapped in bloody rags, etc.  The dreary corridor echoed with footsteps when the nurses and doctors walked by, and I at last I made up my mind to get to my feet and shout that I was a doctor too, and should therefore be treated with respect, did I have to bow and scrape in order even to make a doctor halt in his tracks, I was not trying to jump the queue ahead of the concierge-woman or the tinsmith, but had been waiting for two hours, so perhaps at last it was my turn. A third hour began, and I could not endure to wait any longer, but went home. Let Dr. S. send me instructions for treatment by letter as before. I am too thin, I know it is true,  I am six feet tall and weigh only 136 pounds, but my frame has the strength of spirit and intellect.

24.12.1898   I ate two slices of Christmas cake and drank two small glasses of Madeira. (A.B brought the Madeira yesterday.)  I have found  the pharmacist R's  old letter in which he writes: "Vous serez toujours pour moi un homme d'une veritable science, mais d'un caractère quelquefois difficile. " Friends and enemies in the same basket! R.  helped me to manage my affairs in Paris during the time when I held the post at Helsinki, but later he got tangled in a troublesome affair which had its origins in the fact that I did not inform Descaine of my travel to Helsinki, although he got me the money with which to complete the Synopsis (Part Two), and therefore D. began to threaten to reclaim the money by legal means, which information was passed to me by R. That wretched sum of money, a mere handout, which originally seemed almost an insult, but the real insult was the fact that I was suspected of laziness or incompetence or even of dishonesty! I immediately sent half of the sum to Tulasne, and through him a letter to  D.  My relations with many people were at once broken off, but not even in the scientific sense can I associate with people who do not trust me and do not value my work. Since in the room it is only 15 degrees Celsius, I shall drink one more glass of Madeira, this is my Christmas Eve.

[Kristina Carlson, William N. päiväkirja, Otava 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

(to be continued)

from The Diary of William N. [1]

by Kristina Carlson

26.11.1898  Solitude is not dispiriting or sad, but it is sometimes boring, and I conclude that this is due to the company in which I am alone.

27.11.1898  Today a pharmacist, D. (there have been many pharmacists in the circle of my acquaintances!), invited me to dinner at his home on Sunday.  I went with some reluctance, as the D.’s  live in a street off the Avenue de Messina where I had to travel by omnibus, and what was more,  Dr. D. did not belong to the same botanically cultured group as, for example, the pharmacist Dr. R., who at one time did much to help me (my relations with him have broken) – Dr. D. is just an ordinary, successful, wealthy pill-pusher. I accepted the invitation none the less, because he assured me that there would be no other guests apart from myself, and that his family had an excellent cook. The dinner was indeed first-rate: Potage velouté aux champignons, Filets de poisson en soufflé, Bifteck sauté béarnaise, Pommes normande en belle vue, vegetables, cheeses, and so on, and good wines. When we rose from the dinner table I had to pay for my meal with  some culture! The children’s nanny and Madame D. led into the drawing-room two little girls with curly hair adorned with bow-ribbons, whom they planted in front of the grand piano to play duets, and after the first piece I applauded, but when they began to play a third I began to fret and wondered when it was going to be the little girls’ bedtime, which fortunately arrived at the end of the fourth. I do not know what error led the D.’s to imagine that I was a lover of music, but luckily I managed to catch the omnibus.

28.11.1898  People who live in the flatness of the everyday do not think about their own condition, they are well-to-do and satisfied, for they have delicious dishes and good wines on their tables, they have shiny carriages and sleek horses, servants who bow to them, and they live without care, for it never even occurs to them that everything could be different – instead, their happiness is ensured by at one-dimensional view of the world. Perhaps they browse through newspapers and novels, attend the theatre or concerts and look at works of art, but this dilettantism has a uniform surface, and their minds are not touched by art. They have a certainty about the essence of the world that is based on an assumption, one that they do not call into question by looking through a microscope or telescope. They are pitiful, but they are "happy", so what is there in them to pity? I thought  that even on a flat surface a crack or roughness would appear, but with these self-satisfied people that does not happen. While I do not begrudge them their wealth and their self-satisfaction,  I would never dream of exchanging my narrow room for the cardboard theatre of their world.  

30.11.1898   I too have received awards! The French Academy’s Prix ​​Desmazières, an honorary doctorate, honorary membership of the Fauna & Flora, what else, by giving those awards they salved their bad consciences, but did I receive assistance when it was most needed, for the writing and printing of the Synopsis, for example? Had I jumped off the bridge in 1857 my great work would have remained unpublished. My only support was  Dr. J. B. Mougenot, who lived in the Vosges, and though I have never wanted to be financially dependent on anyone, I agreed to accept money from him, as it was a loan and not a gift, and a loan that I paid back conscientiously. Mougenot, said that precisely because of all the difficulties the Synopsis would become dear to me, and in that he was right, though my joy in completing the work did not last long, for the second part was still waiting to be written and published, a process that took many more years. I did not take seriously Mougenot’s instructions about the life of society, for he exhorted me to be polite and conciliatory in my behaviour, and said  in his letter that "Truth and the conviction to defend the right opinion give one strength, but one must strike with caution." How does one "strike with caution"? With the butt of an axe? I was sorry when M. passed away a few weeks later, after I had taken up my post in Helsinki in the autumn of 1858.

1. 12.1898  Awards, awards, indeed! Perhaps they will even put up a gravestone for me,  though at Helsinki University they ridiculed my clothes (I did not dress according to their idiotic dress code , not even at meetings of the Senate), and my meagre sandwich lunches, because even my students ate better than their professor, and it was told as an amusing story how I hammered and chiselled the dry pieces of bread, when hunger overtook me  and the students on a specimen-gathering trip and nothing else edible could be found. at the peasant cottage. One of the students broke a tooth, but when the pieces of bread had been soaked in spring water for a little while, they were fit to eat.  In their heart of hearts the university people had no respect for me, of course I know that, that is precisely why I was not given von Nordman’s apartment, because among them there were still those with whom I had quarrelled as a younger man, when in Fauna & Flora I  opposed von Nordman’s plan to send a biological expedition to the White Sea, yet it was  my duty as the Society’s vice-chairman to oppose it, because the White Sea was not part of the region we studied, and the expedition was against the Society’s rules.  Nordman and his assistants would have  liked the Society’s  2000 roubles for himself! When Nordman resigned from the Society he was followed by Mannerheim, Nordenskiold, Ilmoni, Bonsdorff, Mäklin and Wright, but was that my fault, or was it the fault of the Society’s rules?

2.12.1898   In the mid-1860s Admiral Jones, who lived in Dublin, sent me 500 francs when he heard that I had resigned my professorship, but later I never heard anything more from him. The German F. Arnold sent me 100 francs, but I returned that money and wrote "timeo Danaos”, because Arnold is a Schwendenerist, and my opinion is not for sale. Monsieur M. sent me some lichen specimens wrapped in hundred franc notes! I suppose he was quietly trying to help, but I returned the money and later only accepted a fee, which I had earned by my study of the specimens.

3.12.1898   I took a long walk, though the weather was bad, it was cold and windy and the drizzle poured from the sky, but as I walked my brain also remained in motion  (the peripatetic school) – in my apartment I can only move an inch or two  at a time, as there are books and papers all over the floor.  I must outline the contents of an article, there is not enough light for microscope work, and my eyesight is not what it was. Constance has not visited.

4.12.1898   The next time the year changes, we shall be on the threshold of a new century, and a hundred years after that there will be a new millennium, too.  I shall sink into history, and no one will remember me. Elise maintains that the “good” people will be remembered, because their memory will be transferred from friends and relatives to subsequent generations, but I am not a “good” person! If friends (?) and enemies are to be believed, I am:  sharp-tongued, cantankerous, malicious, quick-tempered, unforgiving, rancorous, suspicious, jealous, bitter, pig-headed, egocentric, ill-bred, and stingy. Among other things.

5.12.1898  Plain talking is not valued in academic  "social circles", and rebuttals must be wrapped in cotton wool, so as not to "offend" anyone. But is the cause of science advanced in this way?  Honesty has always been my guiding principle. But it is not enough – for everything to go smoothly one must please, no matter how insignificant one’s work! Even  in ancient times one could  succeed by means of  eloquence, although one’s other achievements were not particularly impressive.

8.12.1898   Perhaps I am not a nice person, perhaps no one likes me – let alone loves me – so I can hardly expect even pity as my lot.

10.12. 1898   A.B. came to visit, even though in a letter I had forbidden him to, as except for  Constance I do not want to let anyone into my apartment,  and my friends know that, but A.B. was stubborn, and rang my doorbell despite my prohibition, which made me angry, because I was dressed in a morning coat and cardigan, with woollen socks on my feet, and was not prepared to receive a visit. A.B. did not, however, turn away from the door, but came inside, because I did not think I could stop him by force. He brought me meat pasties and egg pasties, two cakes coated in pink sugar, a bottle of burgundy and a newspaper, but my wrath did not abate until he handed me a surprise, which was a reproduction of  Georges Seurat’s painting "La Grand Jatte"!  After he left, I studied the picture closely, and I am just as thrilled as when I saw the original work, though the copy fails to do it full justice. I like Seurat’s "scientific" way of painting, for he is not content with an obvious or flat surface like the painters of the old school who try to carefully imitate the reality that is visible to the eye. Instead,  S. disperses and reassembles, and in this process I see a confluence with microscope work, when the gaze is directed on even the smallest elements, and the brain traces their  significance and completeness. A. B. also talked about the other "Impressionists", whose paintings he believes I ought to see, but perhaps this one alone will suffice. Once I had moved the other things away, I leaned the picture against the edge of the stove.

11.12.1898   Sunday. On Rue Didot there was a modest funeral. When I stopped to raise my hat,  Madame L. hurried up to me, whispering in a loud voice that "he ought not to be buried in consecrated ground, because he took his own life," and it was apparently the same coal merchant whom I saw in the summer. In my opinion he need not have troubled to take his own life, as he would soon have died from high blood pressure and heart failure in any case. I didn’t jump into the Seine, and I am already at an age where I know that  Nature takes care of death in due time, so there is no point in hurrying.

12.12.1898   At night it was cold, and I felt so chilled that I shivered. I got up in the dark to fetch a coat to put on top of my quilt. In the morning the outside thermometer read -3, and when I went out to buy milk and bread I saw that  the water flowing from the drainpipes had frozen in the street, which the little boys thought was fun, because they could “skate". The cold and darkness prevented me from working at the microscope. Of the things that  A. B. had brought me I still had 1 egg pasty, 1 cake, and ¼ bottle of wine. After I had eaten, at 4 pm I went to bed.

16.12.1898   I shiver and have no appetite, I suffer from shortness of breath and pains in my joints, my stomach is bad and I am unable to work, but I will endure, for I know that I have done the right thing, I have not curried favour with anyone, I have not sold myself, I live like a poor artist, even though I am a scientist, and posterity will not remember me though I have sacrificed my whole life to science. I suppose art is never "wrong" as science can be, but is that any consolation to  the artists whose work is not valued and not purchased? (G. Seurat  is said to have been a wealthy man, but he had a very short life.)


(to be continued)


[William N. päiväkirja, Otava, 2011]

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

The Diary of William N.

Following on from Mr. Darwin's Gardener, which won the Finnish State Prize for Literature in 2010, Kristina Carlson has written another novel on a theme drawn from the history of 19th century science. The Diary of Wlliam N. [William N. Päiväkirja, Otava 2011] is a fictional portrait of the Finnish botanist and entomologist William Nylander (1822-1899), who specialized in lichenology and lived in Paris from 1863 until his death.

The book is really a study of what it means to be an outsider - by virtue of his "difficult" temperament and his unconventional approach to scientific and university matters (sometimes perverse in its wrong-headedness), Nylander lives as an institutionless exile from his native land, subsisting in poverty while still maintaining his often shaky links with the scientific community both in Finland and abroad. Presented in the form of diary entries, the novel takes the reader through the final years of Nylander's life in Paris, and the narrative is broken by reflections on art and science - the botanist is also fascinated by contemporary French painting and other developments in modern art, and this makes for an interesting meditation on the meaning and significance of the new century which Nylander does not quite live to see.

In some ways the book is reminiscent of other Finnish and Finland-Swedish essays in the genre, possibly the most notable being Bo Carpelan's Sibelius study, Axel. But Kristina Carlson has gone further in evoking the atmosphere and reality of a bygone era and milieu, with a vivid and intricate account of the details of Parisian social, scientific and academic life viewed through the psychological lens of a Nordic mind that is steeped in Gallic wit and black humour. The figure and presence of August Strindberg are never far away, and with his antagonism to the status quo and embittered view of bourgeois life and marriage, Nylander becomes a link to the future - alienated from the suffocating climate of the age, he joins company at least in spirit with the artists, writers, philosophers and poets who seek a way out of the 19th century's moral and aesthetic cul-de-sac.

Christer Kihlman reassessed

Hufvudstadsbladet’s Pia Ingström has been rereading the novels of Christer Kihlman (b. 1930), Finland’s doyen and former enfant terrible of “confessional literature” who was at his most productive in the 1960s and 70s, but whose literary activity subsequently became more sporadic.  Kihlman’s breakthrough novel Se upp, Salige! (1960) has  been reissued in a new edition by Söderströms, though readers of English will have to wait.  Four of his novels are, however, available in English versions, and one wonders whether the renewed interest in his work may also extend to the English-speaking world. Certainly, as Pia Ingström points out in her column, Kihlman’s work is not short on interesting, contemporary and universally human themes, whether it be marital conflict, family breakdown, homosexual prostitution, alcoholism or drug addiction – “Frågan är om inte Kihlman är bättre ju värre han är” (The question is whether Kihlman is not better the worse he is), she writes, and there may well be something in that, for he was probably at his best as a writer when exploring what Gunnar Ekelöf called the “bottom” (botten) of human nature and  experience. At all events, one looks forward to seeing the republication in Swedish of more of Kihlman’s controversial but surely not superannuated output, much of which has been out of print for a long time. After all, in the intervening years since the 1970s confessional literature has never entirely gone out of fashion in the global literary market, and may even be on the way back to prominence again.

Purge

I've just finished reading Lola Rogers' translation of Puhdistus (Purge), by Sofi Oksanen. It's a remarkable work - restless, vivid, articulate, emotional, violent, political - and I don't think there is anything quite like it in the rest of world literature. The only book remotely akin to it that I've come across before is a strange Estonian novel from 2004, which has a similar graphic reconstruction of Soviet reality. I think Sofi Oksanen's work does require a knowledge of Estonian and Soviet history if the reader is to understand the thinking, motivation and actions of the characters. One solitary niggling doubt I have is that while the book amounts to an extraordinary tribute to the Estonian people and their survival of decades of Soviet occupation, the characters themselves don't come across as very likeable human beings - but I believe that may be deliberate on the author's part. It's good to see Paul-Eerik Rummo's poetry quoted in the opening of each section.

The Human Lot

Owen Witesman's translation of Kari Hotakainen's novel Ihmisen osa / The Human Lot is to be published by Christopher MacLehose/Quercus this year. From the book's blurb:

A writer buys a life from Salme Malmikunnas, an 80-year-old former yarn seller. You can get a lot for 7000 euros. Salme opens up and tells him everything the way she wants to remember it – the silence of her husband, Paavo, the accident that befell her daughter Helena, Maija’s marriage, and Pekka’s success in business. But will the author tell the story like they’d agreed? Can he resist the urge to write about subjects that are off limits? And is Salme telling the truth?

Mr Darwin's Gardener

Otava's Hanna Kjellberg reports that Kristina Carlson's novel Herra Darwinin puutarhuri (Mr Darwin's Gardener) [2009], my translated excerpts from which were published in Books from Finland magazine earlier this year, has been shortlisted as one of the Finnish candidates for the 2011 Nordic Council Literature Award.

Vanishing Point

Joel Haahtela’s novel Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) – excerpts from which I posted in my own translation in some earlier posts to this blog – has been selected as a nomination for this year’s Finlandia Prize, FILI reports.

Journeys - 2

By Mirjam Tuominen

II

Here again the people seemed neither happy nor cheerful - if one judged by their outer appearance. They looked dreadfully tormented, pale and sickly, and indeed the children - viewed with the inexperienced gaze of a stranger - were pure cripples. Instead, it could be said that here the cause was radiant, and there really was no reason to doubt people when they claimed to be happy in the service of the common cause.

Here prejudice was exalted into a religion. It had been said that the old religion had lost its grip on people's minds precisely because it was not prejudiced, but on the other hand it was clear that in the long run people could not live without belief; the belief that there must be something that was exalted above temporal existence was actually just as necessary to them as their daily bread; to proceed from any other hypothesis was to undervalue man - or to overvalue him, whichever way one wishes, but in any case absolutely wrong. Now it was desired to unite the social or the useful with the religious and it had been discovered that it was to society's detriment that man had been created so: with a left eye and a right eye, one hand that spread to the left and another that spread to the right. His inner being tried to conform to the physical, but could only do so in a dilatory, useless and therefore harmful way: what succeeded for the body, so that for example the two eyes saw a single image instead of two, was impossible for the soul and the consequence was dualism, disunion, splitting. Now what was desired here, in contrast to what had always been the case everywhere else, was to proceed not from the outer but from the inner. The physical must be adjusted, and as the basic tenet of the common religion a single saying from the annals of the old, inapplicable religion was borrowed: 'If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.' More dogma than that was not really needed, for this one tenet gave rise to a countless number of variants and above all it fostered unity in a way that had hitherto been unknown.

Like people who had acquired an absolute formula for mutual happiness, they gave themselves up to selfless labour for the education of the growing race. To this end they set to work in the way that adults in every country usually do when children and the disciplining of children are involved: the adults pretended to do what the children had to do in earnest.

I visited one of their schools and I shall never forget that visit, such a powerful impression did the whole experience make on me. The teacher was a young man, pale, earnest, with the same tormented expression that seemed to be a part of people's physiognomy here. He wore a thick white bandage round his head, his right hand was in a splint and was held still in a broad, black-gleaming silken sling. After him followed the his little disciples, similarly bound up, in exactly the same manner, the only difference being that their bandages concealed real wounds and bodily injuries. They had that same morning had their right arms broken and their right optic nerves sprayed with a poison that had made them blind forever in that eye. But none of them complained, none even moaned, they walked silently and earnestly all the way to their work, which consisted of carrying heavy loads of bricks, and on the left side of their backs one could see the hint of a hump-like protuberance which in time would inevitably grow much bigger.

The young teacher fixed his burning dark gaze on me. Quite certainly he saw through me, for agnostic and foreigner unfamiliar with their customs as I was, I could not help watching the small children with growing anxiety. - You see, said the teacher, how happy they are, no adult can serve more selflessly than a child and make sacrifice for the sake of a great goal. When this race has grown up it will be invincible.
Thus did the teacher speak, but as I looked into his eyes, which could in their fanatical misery be called beautiful, there came over me an oppression so immense that never since have I been able to breathe naturally as I could before. I saw that the teacher was right, that these children might perhaps just as well be called happy as unhappy, and I saw for the first time full confirmation of the fact that man is prepared to make any sacrifice at all, just as long as he is assured of the existence of a clearly-defined good and is trained in the years of his youth to serve that good.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Journeys

By Mirjam Tuominen

I


I came to a land where freedom had been realized or was at least believed to be very close to its full realization. For the people here the word freedom could consequently not be applicable to themselves but only to other peoples who had not yet discovered the happiness-making formula that means the realization of freedom. In this land, therefore, the people talked much and with a strong sympathy for all the people beyond the frontiers of their own land who were not free. It was said that one ought to exert oneself to the uttermost in order to liberate all the lands and peoples of the earth. On the other hand, it would hardly have been the right thing if it had occurred to some compatriot to longingly invoke, for example, the concept of freedom in an internal context, to himself or any of his fellow-countrymen. To be sure, it was not forbidden by law to use the word freedom in that last-mentioned way, but a universally sanctioned convention in reality liquidated the word freedom for any contexts other external ones.

Since everything in this land was so new, so thrillingly and inspiringly new, I became like a child, reborn, receptive and avid for knowledge, and also became involved in teaching in a school. By day and by hour I received proof which confirmed that freedom really was being realized in this land as in no other. On the way to work, in buses, trams and underground trains the workers sat studying books which promised them the chance of experiencing freedom completely realized even in their own lifetimes; a mother married to a simple sailor told me with eyes moist from emotion that there was every reason to expect that her son would attain the rank of admiral one day, and everywhere there was testimony to the fact that here women were acknowledged as beings equal to men with all their human rights acknowledged: among other things the fact that within the military profession they possessed the rank of captain, major and even colonel.

In the light of such experiences, the old world I had left behind receded ever further into my consciousness like some primeval night, half-real. Here I had been born anew, here everyone was happy - there was no talk of anything else - and everyone was firmly resolved to save the whole world, against the whole world's will, if necessary. Everyone lived for the mutual welfare of everyone else.

But of course, I could not forget the old world completely, and as is often the case when one tries to repress painful memories, the past returned in my dreams at night.

And I dreamed that I was trying to invoke the word freedom. That merely to suceed in uttering and adducing freedom on my own inner - melancholy, for example - personal behalf would offer me the most nameless solace and happiness. But I could not utter the word, so strong on the other hand, also in the dream, was my conventional awareness: countless inhibitions made the syllables stick in my throat, until, sobbing with anguish, I reached the point where the four letters: f, r, e, e -- crossed the threshold of my consciousness. I knew they were there, but I did not utter them, I did not even think them.

When I woke up I was soaked through as after the most terrible nightmare.

And I said to myself that this was not suffering but imagined or pretended suffering. But in this dark night my repressed primeval consciousness refuted this assertion and said that it is precisely when we tell ourselves that we are only pretending to suffer that we really do suffer, for why should we acknowledge a suffering about which we can do nothing? The soul is mortally sick - but the soul's suffering is always imagination.

translated from Finland-Swedish by David McDuff

Maaria - 6

from Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) by Joel Haahtela (Otava 2010)

Maaria handed me a letter she had found, it bore a date in January 1998. Raija wrote that she had prepared five large bundles of firewood and carried them indoors to dry; now she felt safe for the winter. The novel she was writing was still unfinished, it did not interest her at all. Instead she was thinking of starting a career as an inventor and making her fortune from it, that would be more fun, and easier. She wondered why the iron had no switch; another typical male invention, a strange oversight. In the last paragraph she outlined plans for another journey, to Spain by car, Marbella and the mountains, Portugal and finally Africa, would Maaria come with her? For a week, at least?

It was late afternoon and I put the letter on the table. Maaria said she felt a little guilty, that she ought to be able to remember more. Now she realized there were many things they had never talked about, and that saddened her. I got to my feet and asked if she would call me later if she remembered anything. Maaria nodded and wrote her husband’s name on a piece of paper. Perhaps he may know something, Maaria said, folding the slip of paper into my hand, pressing it into my fist.

Outside it was dark and I walked down the hill, across the bridge to the other side. Later I stopped in front of the church, saw the brilliant lighthouse beacon shining up in the tower. It was cold and I walked briskly to the shore, but had to wait for a ferry. As I shivered under the shelter the dark water gleamed in front of me, and further away was the ferry, its lights swaying on the waves in their gradual approach.

I thought about Ingeborg Bachmann, and the book that had rested on Raija’s table. She read a sentence now and then, wrote another few words, watched through the window an icicle beginning to slide along the telephone wire. What was that doom which had swept over everything? I felt the same sorrow in myself, was that why I was here? I saw Yves Navarre sinking slowly into sleep, heard the rattling in the stair passage as Raija tried to open the door. The lock was stuck, until suddenly it gave way and opened. October 17, 1973, and later: February 7, 2004. Between the two fires lay thirty-one years. I was certain that Paul Roux had come back to try to find the woman he once met. I was certain that he was still there, behind the slowly undulating water, behind the lights.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

Maaria - 1
Maaria - 2
Maaria - 3
Maaria - 4
Maaria - 5

Maaria - 5

from Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) by Joel Haahtela (Otava 2010)

(continued)

When Maaria returned to the room and asked what I had found, I was startled and felt that I had been caught doing something I was not supposed to. I apologized for trespassing on her books, but my eye had been struck by the name of Ingeborg Bachmann. I explained that Raija had written that name on the sheet of paper I had found in the Finnish Literature Society's archives.

Maaria smiled and said that Ingeborg Bachmann had been important to Raija, and especially this particular book, Word for Word. When Raija was writing she did not usually read books by other people, Maaria explained, but Bachmann was an exception. Ingeborg Bachmann’s work stirred her to action. Raija had even called her cat “Max” after Max Frisch, Bachmann’s husband. That had always made Maaria laugh.

But it certainly was strange, Maaria said, that Raija had died in a fire like Ingeborg. In fact, she remembered that Raija had always kept her stove lit, even in summer. Maaria told me that Raija also smoked in bed, even though she was afraid of fire. In one of her books Raija had written about bush fires that raged for days and weeks, driven by the wind; she wrote about a woman who stared at the television pictures of the sea of flames, then went back into her house, where something had happened from which she could not get away. The woman soaked a cloth in linseed oil, put it on the window ledge in the sun, waited, and when eventually the fire broke out she opened a bottle of wine, her best, sat by the window and watched the flames slowly begin to rise.

Yes, I said, it was a strange coincidence, but what was Maaria’s opinion of the fire? Had there been something deliberate about it, did she know what had happened? Maaria shook her head and said she had never thought the fire was deliberate, it had been a pure accident. Though it was true that Raija was in a bad state that autumn, thin, not eating anything. And perhaps it was true what Raija had once said, that a person’s attitude to food summed up their relation to life.

Maaria told me, still with a slightly absent air, about Raija’s last years and about the island, which Raija no longer visited. She had also begun to get rid of her books, and that had seemed strange to Maaria; as though all Raija’s ties with the world were being broken, one after the other, and suddenly she was free of all the things she once had loved.

When I was sure that Maaria had no more to add to this, I asked if she had heard the name Paul Roux. Had Raija ever talked about him? And what about Mariankatu 24, did Raija have any connection with that address? Maaria thought for a moment and then said she had never heard that name, but knew Mariankatu well enough, Raija had lived there. After giving up the beloved Ahlqvist House, Raija had moved to an apartment block on Mariankatu, but was not very happy there, and before her death she had moved again, to the Custom House on Korkeavuorenkatu. Maaria remembered that to Raija this had seemed a kind of new beginning.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

(to be continued)

Maaria - 1
Maaria - 2
Maaria - 3
Maaria - 4

Maaria - 4

from Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) by Joel Haahtela (Otava 2010)

(continued)

I listened to Maaria and through the window saw a twinkling, slowly moving light. Perhaps it was a ship, further out at sea. That journey must have been a real escape for her, Maaria thought, pouring a drop of mate into the bottom of a glass. Because if she had understood correctly, Raija's second marriage was in trouble, and she had embarked on the journey to get away from it, she herself hardly knew for how long. Maaria remembered that Raija’s husband, Tarmo, had two sons by his previous marriage who were likely to come and stay with them for a while, and perhaps that had scared Raija, though she had not talked about it.

Maaria related that she had gone back to Helsinki, but Raija stayed on, and when she later returned to Finland, Tarmo was taken ill, and died soon after. It had all happened so quickly, Maaria said, within the space of a few months, and at around the same time Raija's father also died, and now she felt that the two consecutive losses must have been too much for Raija; as though some cold and foreign object had been inserted under her skin.

Yes, Raija travelled again even after that, Maaria said, and even though those journeys were often disappointing and she came back earlier than planned, for one reason or another. In recent years they had not been in contact very often because Raija drank and did not always answer the phone, and there were fewer and fewer letters from her, too.

Then Maaria was silent for a long time, and I did not say anything either, feeling that the words had suddenly exhausted her, and that there were many things she did not really want to remember, and soon she began to talk about something completely different: how an apple tree grew in the yard, in a place where it should not be possible, yet it kept on growing and every spring it bore new white blossoms.

Maaria got up and said that she might still be able to find some of Raija’s letters, though she had not the faintest idea where they might be, because she was not very tidy, even less so this late in life. One day she had even lost her spectacles, and searching for one’s glasses without glasses was rather hard.

Maaria flitted away into the other room and in her absence I studied the bookcase, trying to make out the titles of the books. At the end of one shelf I found a volume by Ingeborg Bachmann, a collection of short stories called Word for Word (Simultan). I took the book in my hands and read the note on the back cover: "Ingeborg Bachmann was born in Klagenfurt in 1926 and died in Rome on 17 October 1973, as a result of serious burns sustained in a fire. She studied the philosophy of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, and after receiving a doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1950 she worked in radio and also in a mental hospital, and lectured at the University of Frankfurt. From poetry which received wide recognition she soon moved to imaginative prose. Malina, Bachmann’s only surviving novel (1971) was translated into Finnish and received the Finnish State Prize in 1984.” The translation was published by Weilin + Göös in 1988, and the front cover showed a painting of a woman's face. One of the woman’s eyes was black; the other seemed to be empty, a gaping hole.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

(to be continued)

Maaria - 1
Maaria - 2
Maaria - 3

Maaria - 3

from Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) by Joel Haahtela (Otava 2010)

(continued)

Maaria’s apartment was located in the second storey of a large stone house. She led me up a spiral staircase to a small two-roomed flat, where she asked me to take off my coat in the hallway. One of the windows looked out on the sea, but it was a grey afternoon and I couldn’t make out the landscape very well. Next to a bookcase was the guest bed with a colourful Turkish bedspread. Maaria asked me to sit down and asked if I would like something to drink, she had some yerba mate drink in the refrigerator. There had been a wonderful Chilean film last week on TV in which everyone drank mate from morning till night, and it had given her a truly obsessive craving to try it. Though the film had probably been financed by some mate-manufacturing multinational company, for that was the way of the world nowadays.

Maaria returned from the kitchen and said that after I called her she had considered matters and reached the conclusion that perhaps she had not known Raija as well as she had imagined. She had also tried to remember when she had first met Raija, but was not sure. It was probably back in the 1980s, although at that time they were not yet close friends, only later on. After that she had paid occasional visits to Kotka, where Raija lived in the beautiful hundred-year-old Ahlqvist House, opposite the cathedral. Maaria recalled that Raija had been involved in setting up a cooperative which had acquired that dilapidated house and gradually begun to renovate it. The house had been important, and Raija had often written about it, so it was particularly sad that later on money worries had forced her to abandon the house and move to another location.

Maaria said that although the house had been Raija’s base she had often wanted to go away, made long trips abroad. Maaria said she had accompanied Raija on one of those trips some time in the early 1990s, 1993 it would have been. Raija set off on the journey alone, but one day when she had been gone for several weeks, the phone rang and Raija asked Maaria to come to her immediately. Something was amiss, Raija was frantic, and because Maaria had nothing particularly important to do at the time and happened to have some money, she had flown to Nice and met her friend in Antibes.

It was autumn, and a couple of months earlier Raija had arrived in the nearby town of Grasse, where she rented a house. But this time everything seemed have to have gone wrong. The house was small and gloomy. It rained incessantly. Mildew and greenish flowers grew on the walls, the pots and pans were rusty, she had not really eaten anything. The shower did not work properly or did not work at all, each new day brought more small setbacks. When they met, Raija was lonely, almost in a state of panic, and had for a long time been suffering from writer’s block.

Maaria said that that not even then had Raija explained in much detail what the real trouble was, except of course for the wretched living conditions and the dispiriting rain. Instead, they had talked about everything else, and if it was not raining they had sat on the beach and drunk wine. One day they had taken the train across to the Italian side of the border, to Ventimiglia. They had bought shoes, Raija loved shoes, they put her in a good mood. And though Maaria herself was often timid on the journey, Raija coped with the practical things for her, too, whatever the situation; and that was really how she wanted to remember her friend: she had the sudden, surprising bravery that others lacked. As if Raija were sometimes a little above the world, as if the world’s rules did not apply to her in the same way.

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

(to be continued)

Maaria - 1
Maaria - 2

Maaria - 2

from Katoamispiste (Vanishing Point) by Joel Haahtela (Otava 2010)

(continued)

At around noon I went to see my colleague in the next room and said I would be out for the rest of the day. I had arranged the meeting for two o’clock on Suomenlinna Island, where the woman lived. Her name was Maaria, and when I called her to arrange the meeting, her silence was so prolonged that I thought she had put the phone down. At last I heard her voice, and she had said that mornings were no good, nor were evenings, because that was when she usually did her writing. But at two in the afternoon nothing much happened.

I did not know much about Maaria at all. She was in her sixties and had been acquainted with Raija  for about ten years. They had met for the first time in connection with some journey, and had then exchanged correspondence. Maaria wrote several novels, but I had not read a single one of them, though the titles of the books seemed vaguely familiar. I hoped that she would know something about Paul Roux; perhaps Raija had sometimes happened to mention the man’s name.

I walked to Kauppatori marketplace, which at that time of year was empty. By the seafront stood the ticket booth, and further away gleamed the red-roofed tower of Klippan Island. The sky was overcast and the wind blew off the sea. Perhaps the first falls of snow would be coming soon. The Suomenlinna ferry waited at its berth, rocking gently, and I entered the chilly cabin, choosing a seat near a window. There were only a few passengers, a solitary woman and a couple of parka-clad Asian tourists, heaven knew why they had strayed to Helsinki in October. Soon the sound of the engines grew louder and we moved away from the quay. I gazed out at the open sea beyond, which was like a large waiting room, a dim, undulating hall. I saw the quays gliding past, the other boats in the harbour, and I thought about the fear, the fear of all waiting rooms, the doctor’s office just before the results of the tests were announced; the paper tape that slowly ticked from the printer, the numbers on the screen which from now on would determine the direction of a life. I thought about what lay ahead and could not be imagined before it happened.

The trip took around fifteen minutes and Maaria was waiting for me on the quay, we had arranged it that way. Even from afar I knew it was her. The boat bumped softly against the quay and I walked to her side. We greeted each other and Maaria said it was unlikely I would have been able to find her apartment on my own, because most people who came got lost on the way and had to be searched for in the labyrinths of the walls or along the shores. We set off up the hill and past the church. I explained that, as I had mentioned on the phone, I was looking for information about Raija, I planned to write something about her, though it was all still very vague. I had heard that she, Maaria, had known Raija and might perhaps be able to throw light on certain points in her life.

We walked across a bridge to another island, past a dry dock and up a hill. Maaria said she had moved here at the turn of the millennium and now felt as though she had always lived here; at any rate she no longer wanted to leave. Many people had wondered how Maaria could live in such a windy place, but it did not bother her, quite the opposite, the windier it was the better. Except that her neighbours had nearly lost their roof last winter. She said she also liked the capricious nature of the wind here – quite different from the cold, harsh mistral of the Rhône, which was said to drive people mad. At least she had not heard of anyone being driven mad by this wind; by other causes, yes.

(to be continued)

translated from Finnish by David McDuff

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