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Twenty-two: The Waters of Autumn
Twenty-two: The Waters of Autumn
...
Arvo
The border areas were aflame. In Suojärvi, north of the Ladoga, the Finnish soldiers stood and did their very best to hold the line against the menace from the east.
Lieutenant Arvo Vaara leaned forward in his saddle and brushed the side of Mary's neck to calm her down. His mount was skittish seeing the flames and smelling the everpresent smoke drifting above the forests. Thankfully the cavalry officer and his chestnut mare could keep some distance to the fire. Most of the actual firefighting was being done by infantrymen, while the mounted detachment sent from Lappeenranta had fallen mostly in a logistics role, helping in ferrying water to where it was needed, and transporting food and other necessaria.
Putting out the fires by hand, and cutting firebreaks into the woods was much more suited to infantry grunts than to mounted troopers, anyway, Arvo Vaara thought, and only half in jest. It was, in fact, nearly word for word what Captain Majewski had told him when he sent him to lead the detachment to the border area. The other thing the cavalry commander had told his young, now-decorated lieutenant was to remind him that the fires were, in part, only an excuse to boost military presence along the border. What with the war going on in Poland, and the worsening situation everywhere else in Europe, the Finnish military had started to increase its readiness in various ways. Military presence along the borders and the territorial waters was being stepped up, as was the number of refresher training for reservists and Civil Guardsmen. Even more members of the Lotta Svärd were brought to exercises to practice the skills needed in wartime.
Along with the grey-uniformed and soot-faced infantrymen, also young volunteers in civilian clothing worked shoulder to shoulder to put out the fires in the border parishes. Many of these young men, often university or polytechnic students, had also taken part in the construction of field fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus in the last months. There was a wave of patriotism sweeping the country, and had been all through late summer. The artillery accident in Hannila had put a dampener on it, but only for a time – or so it seemed to Arvo Vaara.
The summer had been dry, and even if there were some big thunder storms in August, it was still dry enough in Karelia that the fires continued even in early September. And the bloody Russians seemed to be doing fuck all to address it, it seemed. They have forests to spare in the great land of Russia, Arvo thought to himself, looking towards the border area, downslope from where his horse was standing. To the north from here, there was the curious whim of cartography, the so-called ”Hyrsylä bend”, an isolated tongue of land reaching out into the Soviet territory.[1] Its inhabitants had been all but cut off from overland access to the rest of the Republic for the last week or so. Why not use to fires to inconvenience the bourgeois Finns, then? It was the kind of cynical stunt Stalin could well pull out of sheer pique.
”We need to show the Ruskies that the Finnish cavalry is watching, and is ready to fight”, Majewski had told him when he was dispatching him to the border area. ”It will put the fear of God into the Bolshevik, what, to see our men out there just across the border, led by the heroic Lieutenant Vaarra!”
Like always, Arvo wasn't quite sure whether Majewski was taking the piss or not.
The cavalryman looked up to the sky as one of his officer cadets[2] rode to him, saluting his superior.
”Ah, Salminen”, he addressed the youth of nineteen, ”just the man I needed. It looks like it's going to rain.”
”Yes, lieutenant”, the awkward-looking Tavastian agreed. Salminen was a decent aspirant for an officer's career, Arvo Vaara thought, but he certainly needed some more confidence to grow into that role. And it wouldn't hurt if he improved his rather modest riding skills as well. To be honest, the lieutenant could easily see that Salminen wasn't a farm boy like he was – riding didn't come so effortlessly to him as it did to those who had hanged around horses and stables all their lives.
The dark clouds had been rising for a moment. And, now, after Vaara and Salminen had been there just for a minute, the first drops of water started coming down from the heavens.
”That's it, cadet”, Arvo Vaara said, ”I'm out of here. You have command over the detachment. I'll expect that the infantry major will call an end to today's efforts once the rain really picks up.”
”Lieutenant, I...”, Salminen started, and Arvo raised up a gloved finger.
”Nothing to it, man. See to it that the men and horses reach camp, and prepare the detachment for the night. Sergeant Mäkinen'll help you, tell him that I left you in charge.”
”Yes, lieutenant”, the cadet answered and seemingly steeled himself, ”will do, sir.”
”Good man”, Arvo Vaara said, nodding.
”There's a tall glass of beer with my name on it in the bar, and I need to hurry the fuck up before one of the local illiterates drinks it up. I got my job and you got yours, cadet. Get to it – you're dismissed.”
The young man saluted him again and steered his horse towards the border as the rain started picking up.
”All right, Mary – let's get ourselves something to drink then”, Arvo Vaara told his horse in a soft voice. Mary's ears perked up at the sound of her name.
”You must be even more thirsty than I am. Say, maybe we'll even find ourselves a game of cards.”
Was it subtle disapproval Arvo heard in Mary's neighing just then?
…
Sisko
The knock on the door woke Sisko Vaara up. It was Sunday, the only day when she didn't have studies or practical exercises, so it was a surprise that someone should come to rouse her up at this hour – eight thirty, said the Junghans clock on the wall.
Sisko stumbled up from her bed, put on her nightgown and walked to the other room, to stop in her tracks to see a man lying on the sofa. It took her a while to remember that she indeed had had company coming home from the party at the New Student House, and that after one whisky grog too much, she had allowed her acquintance to spend the night on her couch, after he had solemnly promised her not to get up to any mischief. It had been raining heavily in Helsinki during the night, and it had seemed a decent thing to do to spare him from getting wet, walking back home through the city.
Thought that wasn't the only thing. Sisko had secretly hoped that the handsome and witty young journalist would not actually keep to his word of not causing mischief. But, in the event, she had been disappointed: the man had just laid down on the sofa as soon as they got to her apartment, and in minutes she could hear him snoring softly. She would have been in mind for a drink more.
At least.
Now the man had sat up, in his crumbled suit, his tie askew. He looked at her with a sleepy, slightly baffled look on his face.
Sisko was quicker to put two and two together.
”Quick”, she whispered to the man, ”I need you in the bedroom!”
The man's eyes went wide. Yes, one could misinterpret that...
”Just go to the bedroom, close the door and be quiet!”, Sisko hissed to the man, who stood up and then, sheepishly, did just that.
There was another knock on the door. Sisko checked that her gown was wrapped around her in the most modest fashion possible under the circumstances.
”Sisko Vaara!”, a woman's voice said. Sisko could recognize it, and she was not surprised.
After the door creaked open, it was the widow Roos that stood there, sizing up the young medical student with her dark eyes behind round spectacles.
”Sleeping at this hour, were you, young woman? Well, I am sorry to disturb you”, the wizened old woman told her, looking not sorry at all, and cocked her head to peer inside the rooms she was renting to Sisko Vaara.
”Yes, Mrs Roos, what is it?”, Sisko asked, in the friendliest voice she could muster from within her slightly hungover, a bit disoriented self.
”Oh, it is your father, the bank inspector...”, the widow said, trying her level best to sweep the room behind Sisko with her squinty gaze.
”Yes?”
”He's on the telephone, isn't he? You better go and not keep him waiting like this!”, the old woman said, looking triumphant.
The widow led Sisko to her apartment, a large and handsome home in a nice part of Helsinki, though rather old-fashioned and somewhat dusty and worn at this point. The widow Roos had been a widow for many years now. The telephone was in her living room. Sisko sat down in the empire-style chair, looked at the silly old wooden telephone bearing the legend ”AB L.M. Ericsson & Co.” on it and picked up the receiver from the small table.
”This is Sisko Vaara”, she said into the microphone, to hear a familiar harumph in the other end of the line. It was Salomo Vaara all right. What might have possessed him to call her at this hour on a Sunday?
In the next minutes Sisko found out what it was. When she in the end laid down the receiver and absentmindedly thanked the widow Roos (who had obviously been eavesdropping all the while) for being able to use her telephone, Sisko had a thoughtful look on her face.
Walking back to her rooms, closing the door carefully to avoid more of the widow Roos in the immediate future, the university student was again startled to find a man in her bedroom, so in her thoughts she was after the call from Vaarala.
”Get out of my bed!”, she told the young journalist who complied with a slightly hurt look on his face.
”I need you in my bedroom, she says. Get out of my bed, she says. It appears you have trouble making up your mind today, miss...”, he quipped, running his fingers through an unruly mop of dark hair.
”Oh shut up, Tapio”, Sisko said, at first looking angry but then relenting and allowing him a slight smile.
”I am sorry, but I have had a rather vexing morning until now. And your antics are not helping, you damned newspaper negro![3]”
”It is not just keeping you hidden from my landlady – who has strictly forbidden young men in my rooms – but then I get a phone call from my dear old father, who tells me that he has been hired as a bureaucrat in Helsinki through his party contacts and that he is coming here tomorrow, expecting to spend the first night in these very rooms with me until he...”
The young man raised his head.
”Really, what position is that? Your father's an Agrarian, isn't he?”
”It's a leading position at the new Ministry of Supply, if you really must know... Something to do with food reserves, grain and whatnot. Asked by the party chairman himself, he said...”
Sisko looked at the young journalist and recognized a familiar glint in his eyes.
”And no, you can not quote me on that!”
Tapio the newspaper man deflated a bit.
”Please, Sisko! Would I misuse your trust as to use this information for a news story? You don't really trust me very much, do you?”
”You'd do anything to advance your career at the Helsingin Sanomat, you would. I have no illusions about that”, Sisko said to the man who was affecting a hurt expression.
Then she smiled.
”That is what I like about you, Tapio, your drive and determination. But you could also try to improve your skills for discretion and subtlety. An ability to protect your sources. A good journalist needs those skills too, I have been led to believe.”
The man nodded towards the young woman with mock courtesy.
”Touché. Ever the bold commentator, Sisko Vaara. And that is what I like about you, the way you are able to confront matters head on. It is rare in someone so young.”
”So young and a woman, you mean to say.”
”And she does it again! My goodness.”
”Oh do shut up, Tapio. Now, straighten up that hideous tie of yours and get ready to go. I'll think of a way to distract the widow Roos so you can hightail it out of here with her none the wiser, to write your story about the new additions to the staff of the Ministry of Supply.”
…
Veli
A crisp, clean shirt. The better trousers, recently pressed. Some eau de cologne, even. These on top of a swim in the lake and a nice little scrub in the sauna.
By and by, Veli was getting prepared for the dance.
There was nothing like getting ready for a village event after weeks of heavy work. Work with the harvest, work with relief efforts after the Sylvi Storm. Now, finally, there was some time for relaxing before the typical work of autumn would start in earnest. In Hirvilahti, it was time for the dance at the Youth Association House, to end the harvest season. Because of the storm damages, this event that usually took place in late August or very early September had now been pushed back to the second week of September instead.
Now, the rains were already here. The dry summer was giving way to a wet autumn, and for the last two days, it had been raining almost incessantly.
Veli didn't mind, really. He was feeling better than for some time. This morning, he had taken the motor boat out and delivered his father, with a lot of trunks and baggages with him, to town to take the train south. Now, with his father left to attend to matters of state, in some small way he could do it in the Ministry of Supply, Veli Vaara had become the man of the house in Vaarala. It was a big duty, certainly. But Veli was confident he was up to the task. It helped to know that Salomo Vaara was not there to watch his every move and sit in judgement of his mistakes.
Now, for the while, he could do things his way.
His first act as the de facto lord of the ”Vaarala Manor” was to tell Heikki Hyvärinen that not only did he rescind his father's decision to demand him full payments in the fall, but that the struggling farmer would not need to hand in his loan payments at all during the next four months. There would be time enough to return to the matter in the spring, Veli had told Heikki earlier today. The man had thanked him warmly, though Veli could not but feel a deep-seated suspicion lurking below his now-happier demeanor.
That man, Veli thought, he expects the worst. It came naturally to his melancholy character, the oldest resident son of Salomo Vaara thought. Heikki has always been dealt to worst hand possible, it seems. Who could blame him for expecting just more of the same in the future, too?
As Veli looked out the window now, the rain seemed to be subsiding. In half an hour, even the sun might come out to greet the village by the shore of Lake Kallavesi. Veli wouldn't be going to the dance alone – he would take his two younger siblings along with him. Hilja and Jorma were getting ready as well, and only little Erkki would be staying home with his mother. As Jorma stepped into the room, ready to go, Veli smiled at how similar to his mirror image the boy looked like – the same white shirt, the same sharp trousers, his hair combed the same way. The only difference, really, was the look on his face. Jorma had always been easier with a smile than his older brother.
As the trio walked out of the main gate of the house, the sun indeed came out, lighting up the recently grey countryside, still into an approximation of late summer even if the trees had started acquiring the colours of the fall and the leaves were already falling.
It struck Veli how Hilja, his quiet little sister, now had all the appearance of a women grown, too. Had this past summer changed her that much? Or was it the rare, nicer dress she wore now?
As Jorma and Hilja joked among themselves, Veli was mostly caught in his thoughts. Thoughts of time, and thoughts of the now. Someone had once told him that one can't change the past, and nothing ever happens tomorrow. Everything that happens, happens now. In this very moment. But then – how can you be prepared for doing things now, having no time to think it over? You make big decisions with very limited information, in situations you are suddenly thrust into, and then you have a full lifetime to regret them. And that is the very best case you can imagine.
It might not be a full lifetime at all, if things go otherwise.
Before he realized, they were already walking the front steps of the Youth Association House. The house had been decorated with bunting and flowers by the young women of the village, and people were slowly drifting to the yard and inside the house. The first strains of music drifted out, in turn, the band was practising while there was food served to the people of the village, paid by the Youth Association. It was a reasonably simple spread, but at least the food was plentiful. Drinks there were as well, but strictly of the non-alcoholic kind.
The tables and benches would be cleared away when it would be time.
Sitting down with his plate, munching thoughtfully on some rye bread and every now and then nodding cordially to people greeting him, some also thanking for his help during the rebuilding after the storm, Veli let his look wander among the people gathering in the big hall. Young men and women in their Sunday best, eating and chatting among themselves, laughing at jokes and witticisms.
Veli could not spot the person he wanted to see tonight.
Two men crashed down on the bench next to him. Markus and Janne, from the neighbouring village of Niemisjärvi. They made up half the band playing here tonight, Markus the singer and Janne on the accordion. By the looks of them, they had already partaken in a bit of beer of something stronger, even.
”Why, if it isn't Veli Vaara! The man of the hour, isn't it?”, Janne said, winking, and slapping him on the back.
”Good to see you”, Markus said as well, ”and thank you what you have been doing for our Heikki.”
Markus was Heikki Hyvärinen's second cousin.
Word gets around in the villages.
”Guys”, Veli nodded, ”you're making me blush. Cut it out”, he said, smiling a bit despite himself.
Janne, a tall man with a quick wit about him, smiled a wide smile and hunched towards Veli, conspiratorially.
”No, Mister Vaara”, he said, ”you're getting it all wrong. It is you who's making all the girls blush. The pesäpallo champion, the handsome athlete. The son of a big farm, the philantropist and the all-around good guy. A real catch.”
Come to think of it, Veli had seemed to get several meaningful looks from young women when he entered the hall. Especially the two Ollikainen sisters had looked at him in a way that made him almost uncomfortable.
”They're all head over heels for you, you know”, Janne continued, digging an elbow into his side.
Not all of them, Veli thought to himself. To Janne, he just shrugged and smiled innocently.
”I wouldn't know anything about that”, he said, ”things seem pretty normal, I'd say.”
Janne looked at Markus, affecting a look of surprise.
”Can you believe this guy? Jeezus![4] He's putting us all into shame, and it's literally nothing to him!”
As the two musicians then left to prepare for the evening, probably in the company of a bit more drink, Veli was left alone at the table. Wiser than before, maybe, he had decided to forgo seeking liquid courage this time around. He wouldn't be touching drink tonight.
The remaining food was gathered up, and Veli helped others to remove the tables and benches, to make room for dancing. Some potato flour was sprinkled on the floor to make it slightly more slippery, to better accommodate dancing moves.
After the band had been playing for some time and as the dance floor was filling up to full capacity, as the evening was slowly falling, Veli still couldn't see the one person he was looking for. He drifted in and out of the hall, having short conversations. At some point, he asked some girls to dance with him, basically at random, just to keep his hand in the game. As he then drifted across the floor with a slight blonde, to the tune of a popular waltz, his mind was nowhere near the Youth Association House, or indeed his dance partner.
”Veli”, the girl in his arms said to him in a hesitant voice, and only then Veli realized it was Esteri Ollikainen he was holding, the petite girl he had danced with in the last dance as well.
”It's nice to dance with you”, the girl said with a coy smile, her straw-coloured hair falling partly on her eyes. Light blue eyes in which there was... something. A certain look that Veli later thought was meaningful in some way.
Right then, in that moment, Veli just absentmindedly mumbled something to the effect of ”yes, it's nice to dance with you as well”, breaking eye contact and looking around the hall as he did so.
As he then bowed slightly to Esteri to thank her for the dance and left the hall to go outside to get some air, he thought that the look in the girl's eyes was disappointed, somehow, if not outright sad or angry.
Out in the yard, Veli looked out into the darkening fields and woods with unseeing eyes. The air smelled like autumn, and only muffled sounds emanated out from the Youth Association House. The evening was slowly starting to wind down, there was only time for a few songs, for just a few dances more. It was all winding down for the summer.
Veli had started to feel that sinking feeling inside him, like he was losing a chance to do something meaningful tonight.
The sun was setting with a red glow in the horizon.
Slowly, the idea of getting a drink had floated to the surface of Veli's mind like some stealthy lake-monster. If there was nothing to be salvaged from this evening, why not give a little finger to the Devil?
It was not if his father was there to scold him this time.
Standing up from the bench on the veranda of the Youth Association House, facing the pesäpallo field, the scene of many of his summertime triumphs, Veli thought that he should go and see if Janne or Markus still had a bit of drink they could offer him to partake in.
With a creeping bitter taste in his mouth, Veli stomped through the foyer, and, passing the doorway to the hall, he glanced at the dancing couples.
A bolt of electricity went through him when he saw what he had been looking for all evening.
It was Emma Kerman, dancing a tango with Väinö Korhonen, Veli's team-mate from HiNsU. The two were smiling to each other.
Veli stopped in his tracks and turned right into the hall instead.
As the tango ended and Väinö bowed to Emma, Veli took a few tentative steps into that direction. It was hot in the now partly-darkened hall as Janne the accordionist announced that it would be the last waltz of the evening, ladies and gentlemen of Hirvilahti village and the adjoining habitations.
Noticing a younger man from Niemisjärvi starting to approach Emma, Veli steeled himself, and in what appeared to him like slow motion walked towards the young raven-haired woman in a blue dress hugging her slim upper body. Just in a nick of time, Veli cut in front of the other man to stand in front of Emma who only now turned her brown eyes towards him.
”May... may I have this dance?”[5], Veli Vaara asked Emma Kerman in a hoarse voice.
The tall girl raised her eyebrows and smiled a perfect smile.
”This last dance? Yes, of course you may, Veli.”
Veli felt awkward as he took a hold of Emma's hand and waist. The sporty young woman felt surprisingly insubstantial to his touch.
Like she isn't truly real.
At first, with his heart pounding in his chest like trying to run away, Veli had to concentrate with all his might not to step on Emma's toes. He felt like a particularly clumsy ox trying to pass himself for a man of civilization.
As he finally looked into Emma's eyes, she was smiling to him.
”You're so serious”, the beautiful young woman said, a playful glimmer in her eyes.
”Dancing... is a serious business”, Veli blurted out, trying hard to smile in a natural way himself.
Something in Emma's demeanor calmed him down, his panic died down a bit and he was slowly starting to feel better. In fact, soon he felt great.
He pulled the girl closer. Emma didn't seem to object to it at all.
They exhanged some words during the rest of the waltz as well. Veli didn't quite care what they spoke of, all he could think of was that he wanted the dance to never end.
When it eventually, necessarily, did so anyway, Veli let go of Emma with a great reluctance and bowed to her stiffly.
”Thank you, Veli. I really liked that”, Emma said and smiled again. Then she turned around and walked away as the hall started emptying up.
Was that it?
Right then, Jorma appeared from nowhere and literally crashed into Veli.
”Brother, I am so... sorry”, the young man stammered and appeared quite unstable. He smelled like booze.
”Jesus, Jorma, have you been drinking? That... ends... now! You'll go home to Vaarala right now”, the older brother told Jorma and, as the youngster sheepishly promised to do just that, felt the voice of Salomo Vaara speaking through himself.
His mind recoiling at the thought, Veli exited the hall as well. As he walked the steps down to the yard, his eyes caught a glimpse of a blue dress in the semidarkness. It was Emma, just standing there, her back towards him.
Veli walked up to her.
”Emma”, he said, making her turn around.
”May I walk you home?”, he asked, his mind suddenly gripped by an uncommon attack of determination.
Emma just shrugged and smiled.
”Why not? It's mostly the same road, anyway.”
As the two walked across the village in silence, they eventually reached the lakeside. Emma stopped there and peered out into the dark Lake Kallavesi, looking gingerly at the white wisps of mist floating above the dark waters, like insubstantial ghosts, precursors of the fall and winter to come.
”It's beautiful”, she said, looking at Veli and pushing a lock of hair off her forehead.
So are you, Veli thought, looking at the tall, dark-haired girl in her blue dress, with the mist behind her like some princess right out of a fairytale.
The enchantment was broken by a sudden shower of water, appearing out of nowhere and starting to very efficiently drench both Veli and Emma in seconds. It appeared that a rain storm had caught them unawares.
”Bugger”, Emma said and started searching around herself for some cover from the rain. It took a while, but then she noticed the Ollikainen hay barn some ways away and took off towards it at a sprint.
But first she grabbed Veli's hand and led him in the same direction.
As the rain turned into a torrent, Emma and Veli crashed into the barn through the open doorway, stumbling in the darkness and landing together on a pile of hay.
Veli looked at the laughing young woman next to him, those features he thought he could see in the dark. He could feel the shape of her body next to him, buffeted by the hay below them.
To hell with it, he thought and kissed Emma Kerman on the lips, wet from the sudden rain.
Emma kissed her back.
”Oh, Veli”, she said, and then kissed him again, ravenously this time.
Outside, the rain made a deafening sound on the roof of the barn, and with a huge rumble high above, thunder attacked the village of Hirvilahti with a vengeance.
….
Again, it dances like you do
The proud mist
Shrouding the lake in white
Into the last waltz of the waning summer
A stranger boldly asks you
There's a moment
When in a shared dream
I stare at floating, deadly snow
Take this night into your arms
I'll let you carry it
To the edge of the waters of autumn
Where we once walked together
And so, everything gets better
And we won't become
Steps in the stairs of autumn waters
...
Notes:
[1] The strange nook in the border was originally formed in the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617. In 1939 the ”bend” included the three villages of Hyrsylä, Ignoila and Hautavaara, with less than 2000 inhabitants in total.
[2] Upseerikokelas.
[3] A literal translation of ”lehtineekeri”, a 1930s slang term for a journalist.
[4] Kiesus.
[5] Saanko... saanko luvan?
…
To Be Continued
Twenty-two: The Waters of Autumn
...
Arvo
The border areas were aflame. In Suojärvi, north of the Ladoga, the Finnish soldiers stood and did their very best to hold the line against the menace from the east.
Lieutenant Arvo Vaara leaned forward in his saddle and brushed the side of Mary's neck to calm her down. His mount was skittish seeing the flames and smelling the everpresent smoke drifting above the forests. Thankfully the cavalry officer and his chestnut mare could keep some distance to the fire. Most of the actual firefighting was being done by infantrymen, while the mounted detachment sent from Lappeenranta had fallen mostly in a logistics role, helping in ferrying water to where it was needed, and transporting food and other necessaria.
Putting out the fires by hand, and cutting firebreaks into the woods was much more suited to infantry grunts than to mounted troopers, anyway, Arvo Vaara thought, and only half in jest. It was, in fact, nearly word for word what Captain Majewski had told him when he sent him to lead the detachment to the border area. The other thing the cavalry commander had told his young, now-decorated lieutenant was to remind him that the fires were, in part, only an excuse to boost military presence along the border. What with the war going on in Poland, and the worsening situation everywhere else in Europe, the Finnish military had started to increase its readiness in various ways. Military presence along the borders and the territorial waters was being stepped up, as was the number of refresher training for reservists and Civil Guardsmen. Even more members of the Lotta Svärd were brought to exercises to practice the skills needed in wartime.
Along with the grey-uniformed and soot-faced infantrymen, also young volunteers in civilian clothing worked shoulder to shoulder to put out the fires in the border parishes. Many of these young men, often university or polytechnic students, had also taken part in the construction of field fortifications on the Karelian Isthmus in the last months. There was a wave of patriotism sweeping the country, and had been all through late summer. The artillery accident in Hannila had put a dampener on it, but only for a time – or so it seemed to Arvo Vaara.
The summer had been dry, and even if there were some big thunder storms in August, it was still dry enough in Karelia that the fires continued even in early September. And the bloody Russians seemed to be doing fuck all to address it, it seemed. They have forests to spare in the great land of Russia, Arvo thought to himself, looking towards the border area, downslope from where his horse was standing. To the north from here, there was the curious whim of cartography, the so-called ”Hyrsylä bend”, an isolated tongue of land reaching out into the Soviet territory.[1] Its inhabitants had been all but cut off from overland access to the rest of the Republic for the last week or so. Why not use to fires to inconvenience the bourgeois Finns, then? It was the kind of cynical stunt Stalin could well pull out of sheer pique.
”We need to show the Ruskies that the Finnish cavalry is watching, and is ready to fight”, Majewski had told him when he was dispatching him to the border area. ”It will put the fear of God into the Bolshevik, what, to see our men out there just across the border, led by the heroic Lieutenant Vaarra!”
Like always, Arvo wasn't quite sure whether Majewski was taking the piss or not.
The cavalryman looked up to the sky as one of his officer cadets[2] rode to him, saluting his superior.
”Ah, Salminen”, he addressed the youth of nineteen, ”just the man I needed. It looks like it's going to rain.”
”Yes, lieutenant”, the awkward-looking Tavastian agreed. Salminen was a decent aspirant for an officer's career, Arvo Vaara thought, but he certainly needed some more confidence to grow into that role. And it wouldn't hurt if he improved his rather modest riding skills as well. To be honest, the lieutenant could easily see that Salminen wasn't a farm boy like he was – riding didn't come so effortlessly to him as it did to those who had hanged around horses and stables all their lives.
The dark clouds had been rising for a moment. And, now, after Vaara and Salminen had been there just for a minute, the first drops of water started coming down from the heavens.
”That's it, cadet”, Arvo Vaara said, ”I'm out of here. You have command over the detachment. I'll expect that the infantry major will call an end to today's efforts once the rain really picks up.”
”Lieutenant, I...”, Salminen started, and Arvo raised up a gloved finger.
”Nothing to it, man. See to it that the men and horses reach camp, and prepare the detachment for the night. Sergeant Mäkinen'll help you, tell him that I left you in charge.”
”Yes, lieutenant”, the cadet answered and seemingly steeled himself, ”will do, sir.”
”Good man”, Arvo Vaara said, nodding.
”There's a tall glass of beer with my name on it in the bar, and I need to hurry the fuck up before one of the local illiterates drinks it up. I got my job and you got yours, cadet. Get to it – you're dismissed.”
The young man saluted him again and steered his horse towards the border as the rain started picking up.
”All right, Mary – let's get ourselves something to drink then”, Arvo Vaara told his horse in a soft voice. Mary's ears perked up at the sound of her name.
”You must be even more thirsty than I am. Say, maybe we'll even find ourselves a game of cards.”
Was it subtle disapproval Arvo heard in Mary's neighing just then?
…
Sisko
The knock on the door woke Sisko Vaara up. It was Sunday, the only day when she didn't have studies or practical exercises, so it was a surprise that someone should come to rouse her up at this hour – eight thirty, said the Junghans clock on the wall.
Sisko stumbled up from her bed, put on her nightgown and walked to the other room, to stop in her tracks to see a man lying on the sofa. It took her a while to remember that she indeed had had company coming home from the party at the New Student House, and that after one whisky grog too much, she had allowed her acquintance to spend the night on her couch, after he had solemnly promised her not to get up to any mischief. It had been raining heavily in Helsinki during the night, and it had seemed a decent thing to do to spare him from getting wet, walking back home through the city.
Thought that wasn't the only thing. Sisko had secretly hoped that the handsome and witty young journalist would not actually keep to his word of not causing mischief. But, in the event, she had been disappointed: the man had just laid down on the sofa as soon as they got to her apartment, and in minutes she could hear him snoring softly. She would have been in mind for a drink more.
At least.
Now the man had sat up, in his crumbled suit, his tie askew. He looked at her with a sleepy, slightly baffled look on his face.
Sisko was quicker to put two and two together.
”Quick”, she whispered to the man, ”I need you in the bedroom!”
The man's eyes went wide. Yes, one could misinterpret that...
”Just go to the bedroom, close the door and be quiet!”, Sisko hissed to the man, who stood up and then, sheepishly, did just that.
There was another knock on the door. Sisko checked that her gown was wrapped around her in the most modest fashion possible under the circumstances.
”Sisko Vaara!”, a woman's voice said. Sisko could recognize it, and she was not surprised.
After the door creaked open, it was the widow Roos that stood there, sizing up the young medical student with her dark eyes behind round spectacles.
”Sleeping at this hour, were you, young woman? Well, I am sorry to disturb you”, the wizened old woman told her, looking not sorry at all, and cocked her head to peer inside the rooms she was renting to Sisko Vaara.
”Yes, Mrs Roos, what is it?”, Sisko asked, in the friendliest voice she could muster from within her slightly hungover, a bit disoriented self.
”Oh, it is your father, the bank inspector...”, the widow said, trying her level best to sweep the room behind Sisko with her squinty gaze.
”Yes?”
”He's on the telephone, isn't he? You better go and not keep him waiting like this!”, the old woman said, looking triumphant.
The widow led Sisko to her apartment, a large and handsome home in a nice part of Helsinki, though rather old-fashioned and somewhat dusty and worn at this point. The widow Roos had been a widow for many years now. The telephone was in her living room. Sisko sat down in the empire-style chair, looked at the silly old wooden telephone bearing the legend ”AB L.M. Ericsson & Co.” on it and picked up the receiver from the small table.
”This is Sisko Vaara”, she said into the microphone, to hear a familiar harumph in the other end of the line. It was Salomo Vaara all right. What might have possessed him to call her at this hour on a Sunday?
In the next minutes Sisko found out what it was. When she in the end laid down the receiver and absentmindedly thanked the widow Roos (who had obviously been eavesdropping all the while) for being able to use her telephone, Sisko had a thoughtful look on her face.
Walking back to her rooms, closing the door carefully to avoid more of the widow Roos in the immediate future, the university student was again startled to find a man in her bedroom, so in her thoughts she was after the call from Vaarala.
”Get out of my bed!”, she told the young journalist who complied with a slightly hurt look on his face.
”I need you in my bedroom, she says. Get out of my bed, she says. It appears you have trouble making up your mind today, miss...”, he quipped, running his fingers through an unruly mop of dark hair.
”Oh shut up, Tapio”, Sisko said, at first looking angry but then relenting and allowing him a slight smile.
”I am sorry, but I have had a rather vexing morning until now. And your antics are not helping, you damned newspaper negro![3]”
”It is not just keeping you hidden from my landlady – who has strictly forbidden young men in my rooms – but then I get a phone call from my dear old father, who tells me that he has been hired as a bureaucrat in Helsinki through his party contacts and that he is coming here tomorrow, expecting to spend the first night in these very rooms with me until he...”
The young man raised his head.
”Really, what position is that? Your father's an Agrarian, isn't he?”
”It's a leading position at the new Ministry of Supply, if you really must know... Something to do with food reserves, grain and whatnot. Asked by the party chairman himself, he said...”
Sisko looked at the young journalist and recognized a familiar glint in his eyes.
”And no, you can not quote me on that!”
Tapio the newspaper man deflated a bit.
”Please, Sisko! Would I misuse your trust as to use this information for a news story? You don't really trust me very much, do you?”
”You'd do anything to advance your career at the Helsingin Sanomat, you would. I have no illusions about that”, Sisko said to the man who was affecting a hurt expression.
Then she smiled.
”That is what I like about you, Tapio, your drive and determination. But you could also try to improve your skills for discretion and subtlety. An ability to protect your sources. A good journalist needs those skills too, I have been led to believe.”
The man nodded towards the young woman with mock courtesy.
”Touché. Ever the bold commentator, Sisko Vaara. And that is what I like about you, the way you are able to confront matters head on. It is rare in someone so young.”
”So young and a woman, you mean to say.”
”And she does it again! My goodness.”
”Oh do shut up, Tapio. Now, straighten up that hideous tie of yours and get ready to go. I'll think of a way to distract the widow Roos so you can hightail it out of here with her none the wiser, to write your story about the new additions to the staff of the Ministry of Supply.”
…
Veli
A crisp, clean shirt. The better trousers, recently pressed. Some eau de cologne, even. These on top of a swim in the lake and a nice little scrub in the sauna.
By and by, Veli was getting prepared for the dance.
There was nothing like getting ready for a village event after weeks of heavy work. Work with the harvest, work with relief efforts after the Sylvi Storm. Now, finally, there was some time for relaxing before the typical work of autumn would start in earnest. In Hirvilahti, it was time for the dance at the Youth Association House, to end the harvest season. Because of the storm damages, this event that usually took place in late August or very early September had now been pushed back to the second week of September instead.
Now, the rains were already here. The dry summer was giving way to a wet autumn, and for the last two days, it had been raining almost incessantly.
Veli didn't mind, really. He was feeling better than for some time. This morning, he had taken the motor boat out and delivered his father, with a lot of trunks and baggages with him, to town to take the train south. Now, with his father left to attend to matters of state, in some small way he could do it in the Ministry of Supply, Veli Vaara had become the man of the house in Vaarala. It was a big duty, certainly. But Veli was confident he was up to the task. It helped to know that Salomo Vaara was not there to watch his every move and sit in judgement of his mistakes.
Now, for the while, he could do things his way.
His first act as the de facto lord of the ”Vaarala Manor” was to tell Heikki Hyvärinen that not only did he rescind his father's decision to demand him full payments in the fall, but that the struggling farmer would not need to hand in his loan payments at all during the next four months. There would be time enough to return to the matter in the spring, Veli had told Heikki earlier today. The man had thanked him warmly, though Veli could not but feel a deep-seated suspicion lurking below his now-happier demeanor.
That man, Veli thought, he expects the worst. It came naturally to his melancholy character, the oldest resident son of Salomo Vaara thought. Heikki has always been dealt to worst hand possible, it seems. Who could blame him for expecting just more of the same in the future, too?
As Veli looked out the window now, the rain seemed to be subsiding. In half an hour, even the sun might come out to greet the village by the shore of Lake Kallavesi. Veli wouldn't be going to the dance alone – he would take his two younger siblings along with him. Hilja and Jorma were getting ready as well, and only little Erkki would be staying home with his mother. As Jorma stepped into the room, ready to go, Veli smiled at how similar to his mirror image the boy looked like – the same white shirt, the same sharp trousers, his hair combed the same way. The only difference, really, was the look on his face. Jorma had always been easier with a smile than his older brother.
As the trio walked out of the main gate of the house, the sun indeed came out, lighting up the recently grey countryside, still into an approximation of late summer even if the trees had started acquiring the colours of the fall and the leaves were already falling.
It struck Veli how Hilja, his quiet little sister, now had all the appearance of a women grown, too. Had this past summer changed her that much? Or was it the rare, nicer dress she wore now?
As Jorma and Hilja joked among themselves, Veli was mostly caught in his thoughts. Thoughts of time, and thoughts of the now. Someone had once told him that one can't change the past, and nothing ever happens tomorrow. Everything that happens, happens now. In this very moment. But then – how can you be prepared for doing things now, having no time to think it over? You make big decisions with very limited information, in situations you are suddenly thrust into, and then you have a full lifetime to regret them. And that is the very best case you can imagine.
It might not be a full lifetime at all, if things go otherwise.
Before he realized, they were already walking the front steps of the Youth Association House. The house had been decorated with bunting and flowers by the young women of the village, and people were slowly drifting to the yard and inside the house. The first strains of music drifted out, in turn, the band was practising while there was food served to the people of the village, paid by the Youth Association. It was a reasonably simple spread, but at least the food was plentiful. Drinks there were as well, but strictly of the non-alcoholic kind.
The tables and benches would be cleared away when it would be time.
Sitting down with his plate, munching thoughtfully on some rye bread and every now and then nodding cordially to people greeting him, some also thanking for his help during the rebuilding after the storm, Veli let his look wander among the people gathering in the big hall. Young men and women in their Sunday best, eating and chatting among themselves, laughing at jokes and witticisms.
Veli could not spot the person he wanted to see tonight.
Two men crashed down on the bench next to him. Markus and Janne, from the neighbouring village of Niemisjärvi. They made up half the band playing here tonight, Markus the singer and Janne on the accordion. By the looks of them, they had already partaken in a bit of beer of something stronger, even.
”Why, if it isn't Veli Vaara! The man of the hour, isn't it?”, Janne said, winking, and slapping him on the back.
”Good to see you”, Markus said as well, ”and thank you what you have been doing for our Heikki.”
Markus was Heikki Hyvärinen's second cousin.
Word gets around in the villages.
”Guys”, Veli nodded, ”you're making me blush. Cut it out”, he said, smiling a bit despite himself.
Janne, a tall man with a quick wit about him, smiled a wide smile and hunched towards Veli, conspiratorially.
”No, Mister Vaara”, he said, ”you're getting it all wrong. It is you who's making all the girls blush. The pesäpallo champion, the handsome athlete. The son of a big farm, the philantropist and the all-around good guy. A real catch.”
Come to think of it, Veli had seemed to get several meaningful looks from young women when he entered the hall. Especially the two Ollikainen sisters had looked at him in a way that made him almost uncomfortable.
”They're all head over heels for you, you know”, Janne continued, digging an elbow into his side.
Not all of them, Veli thought to himself. To Janne, he just shrugged and smiled innocently.
”I wouldn't know anything about that”, he said, ”things seem pretty normal, I'd say.”
Janne looked at Markus, affecting a look of surprise.
”Can you believe this guy? Jeezus![4] He's putting us all into shame, and it's literally nothing to him!”
As the two musicians then left to prepare for the evening, probably in the company of a bit more drink, Veli was left alone at the table. Wiser than before, maybe, he had decided to forgo seeking liquid courage this time around. He wouldn't be touching drink tonight.
The remaining food was gathered up, and Veli helped others to remove the tables and benches, to make room for dancing. Some potato flour was sprinkled on the floor to make it slightly more slippery, to better accommodate dancing moves.
After the band had been playing for some time and as the dance floor was filling up to full capacity, as the evening was slowly falling, Veli still couldn't see the one person he was looking for. He drifted in and out of the hall, having short conversations. At some point, he asked some girls to dance with him, basically at random, just to keep his hand in the game. As he then drifted across the floor with a slight blonde, to the tune of a popular waltz, his mind was nowhere near the Youth Association House, or indeed his dance partner.
”Veli”, the girl in his arms said to him in a hesitant voice, and only then Veli realized it was Esteri Ollikainen he was holding, the petite girl he had danced with in the last dance as well.
”It's nice to dance with you”, the girl said with a coy smile, her straw-coloured hair falling partly on her eyes. Light blue eyes in which there was... something. A certain look that Veli later thought was meaningful in some way.
Right then, in that moment, Veli just absentmindedly mumbled something to the effect of ”yes, it's nice to dance with you as well”, breaking eye contact and looking around the hall as he did so.
As he then bowed slightly to Esteri to thank her for the dance and left the hall to go outside to get some air, he thought that the look in the girl's eyes was disappointed, somehow, if not outright sad or angry.
Out in the yard, Veli looked out into the darkening fields and woods with unseeing eyes. The air smelled like autumn, and only muffled sounds emanated out from the Youth Association House. The evening was slowly starting to wind down, there was only time for a few songs, for just a few dances more. It was all winding down for the summer.
Veli had started to feel that sinking feeling inside him, like he was losing a chance to do something meaningful tonight.
The sun was setting with a red glow in the horizon.
Slowly, the idea of getting a drink had floated to the surface of Veli's mind like some stealthy lake-monster. If there was nothing to be salvaged from this evening, why not give a little finger to the Devil?
It was not if his father was there to scold him this time.
Standing up from the bench on the veranda of the Youth Association House, facing the pesäpallo field, the scene of many of his summertime triumphs, Veli thought that he should go and see if Janne or Markus still had a bit of drink they could offer him to partake in.
With a creeping bitter taste in his mouth, Veli stomped through the foyer, and, passing the doorway to the hall, he glanced at the dancing couples.
A bolt of electricity went through him when he saw what he had been looking for all evening.
It was Emma Kerman, dancing a tango with Väinö Korhonen, Veli's team-mate from HiNsU. The two were smiling to each other.
Veli stopped in his tracks and turned right into the hall instead.
As the tango ended and Väinö bowed to Emma, Veli took a few tentative steps into that direction. It was hot in the now partly-darkened hall as Janne the accordionist announced that it would be the last waltz of the evening, ladies and gentlemen of Hirvilahti village and the adjoining habitations.
Noticing a younger man from Niemisjärvi starting to approach Emma, Veli steeled himself, and in what appeared to him like slow motion walked towards the young raven-haired woman in a blue dress hugging her slim upper body. Just in a nick of time, Veli cut in front of the other man to stand in front of Emma who only now turned her brown eyes towards him.
”May... may I have this dance?”[5], Veli Vaara asked Emma Kerman in a hoarse voice.
The tall girl raised her eyebrows and smiled a perfect smile.
”This last dance? Yes, of course you may, Veli.”
Veli felt awkward as he took a hold of Emma's hand and waist. The sporty young woman felt surprisingly insubstantial to his touch.
Like she isn't truly real.
At first, with his heart pounding in his chest like trying to run away, Veli had to concentrate with all his might not to step on Emma's toes. He felt like a particularly clumsy ox trying to pass himself for a man of civilization.
As he finally looked into Emma's eyes, she was smiling to him.
”You're so serious”, the beautiful young woman said, a playful glimmer in her eyes.
”Dancing... is a serious business”, Veli blurted out, trying hard to smile in a natural way himself.
Something in Emma's demeanor calmed him down, his panic died down a bit and he was slowly starting to feel better. In fact, soon he felt great.
He pulled the girl closer. Emma didn't seem to object to it at all.
They exhanged some words during the rest of the waltz as well. Veli didn't quite care what they spoke of, all he could think of was that he wanted the dance to never end.
When it eventually, necessarily, did so anyway, Veli let go of Emma with a great reluctance and bowed to her stiffly.
”Thank you, Veli. I really liked that”, Emma said and smiled again. Then she turned around and walked away as the hall started emptying up.
Was that it?
Right then, Jorma appeared from nowhere and literally crashed into Veli.
”Brother, I am so... sorry”, the young man stammered and appeared quite unstable. He smelled like booze.
”Jesus, Jorma, have you been drinking? That... ends... now! You'll go home to Vaarala right now”, the older brother told Jorma and, as the youngster sheepishly promised to do just that, felt the voice of Salomo Vaara speaking through himself.
His mind recoiling at the thought, Veli exited the hall as well. As he walked the steps down to the yard, his eyes caught a glimpse of a blue dress in the semidarkness. It was Emma, just standing there, her back towards him.
Veli walked up to her.
”Emma”, he said, making her turn around.
”May I walk you home?”, he asked, his mind suddenly gripped by an uncommon attack of determination.
Emma just shrugged and smiled.
”Why not? It's mostly the same road, anyway.”
As the two walked across the village in silence, they eventually reached the lakeside. Emma stopped there and peered out into the dark Lake Kallavesi, looking gingerly at the white wisps of mist floating above the dark waters, like insubstantial ghosts, precursors of the fall and winter to come.
”It's beautiful”, she said, looking at Veli and pushing a lock of hair off her forehead.
So are you, Veli thought, looking at the tall, dark-haired girl in her blue dress, with the mist behind her like some princess right out of a fairytale.
The enchantment was broken by a sudden shower of water, appearing out of nowhere and starting to very efficiently drench both Veli and Emma in seconds. It appeared that a rain storm had caught them unawares.
”Bugger”, Emma said and started searching around herself for some cover from the rain. It took a while, but then she noticed the Ollikainen hay barn some ways away and took off towards it at a sprint.
But first she grabbed Veli's hand and led him in the same direction.
As the rain turned into a torrent, Emma and Veli crashed into the barn through the open doorway, stumbling in the darkness and landing together on a pile of hay.
Veli looked at the laughing young woman next to him, those features he thought he could see in the dark. He could feel the shape of her body next to him, buffeted by the hay below them.
To hell with it, he thought and kissed Emma Kerman on the lips, wet from the sudden rain.
Emma kissed her back.
”Oh, Veli”, she said, and then kissed him again, ravenously this time.
Outside, the rain made a deafening sound on the roof of the barn, and with a huge rumble high above, thunder attacked the village of Hirvilahti with a vengeance.
….
Again, it dances like you do
The proud mist
Shrouding the lake in white
Into the last waltz of the waning summer
A stranger boldly asks you
There's a moment
When in a shared dream
I stare at floating, deadly snow
Take this night into your arms
I'll let you carry it
To the edge of the waters of autumn
Where we once walked together
And so, everything gets better
And we won't become
Steps in the stairs of autumn waters
...
Notes:
[1] The strange nook in the border was originally formed in the Treaty of Stolbovo in 1617. In 1939 the ”bend” included the three villages of Hyrsylä, Ignoila and Hautavaara, with less than 2000 inhabitants in total.
[2] Upseerikokelas.
[3] A literal translation of ”lehtineekeri”, a 1930s slang term for a journalist.
[4] Kiesus.
[5] Saanko... saanko luvan?
…
To Be Continued
- DrakonFin
- Word Count: 5k