Grief plays the mind with black keys
By mistake even if I touched a white one
With a coin I buy the world, a guitar from the jukebox
I hear the sound, I hear that sound
I no longer feel grief
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
One thousand gigs and I improved my mind
I tuned my strings backstage
Now the six of them give an even tighter sound
The strings of my guitar, again and again
I played and broke one, then two
And still I was allowed to go on, the people only laughed
I got power for my electric guitar
Just power, it's all I need
I'll play the song all the way through
Build the heavens above me, with stars and all
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
So don't cry, you little girl there in the corner of the bar
The sound of the guitar will bring you its solace
It fills the space between your ears, it's Juha Torvinen that plays
Plays by partly plucking
Through a jukebox, though
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
When the guitar plays, you can't cry!
I got power for my electric guitar
Just power, it's all I need
I'll play the song all the way through
Build the heavens above me, with stars and all
Eppu Normaali:
Kitara, taivas ja tähdet (1985)
E9. The Popular Demand
Cpt. Koivu, Mikkeli, 9.30 a.m. March 11th 2014.
A couple of YLE employees stepped aside as the groggy military police officer barreled along the corridor with an unsteady gait. He had woken up on a couch in a semi-dark room, and it had taken him a while to understand where he was and why. But when it dawned on him, he immediately sprang into action, fueled by a rage stemming from being played like a fool by Colonel Vartia. It was obvious the SIO man had drugged him with something, spiked his coffee with sleeping pills at least.
Koivu wasn't exactly sure how long he had been out, but it was slowly dawning on him it might be several hours. Maybe more. He had kicked the locked door open to get out of Vartia's office [1]
, and now he only needed to find the bloody Colonel to stop him from doing what ever he was up to – it was bound to be treasonous, of that the Captain was sure.
Unsure whether to turn left or right at the end of the long corridor, Koivu suddenly wondered why he was only coming across YLE or SIO personnel but not any of his own ESP soldiers. Surely the military police was still in control of the building, his absense notwithtstanding? The thought of something going wrong with his mission brought a cold sweat on his forehead. Varis would not suffer a failure, and a cock-up here would certainly make Koivu's further advancement in the ranks of the ESP a lot more difficult if not truly impossible. Another reason, then, to find Vartia and take him into custody forthwith, he though.
A couple of young technicians passed him, somehow jubilant but then apprehensive when they saw his uniform. Why the wide smiles, Koivu thought. Perhaps it was to do with the Olympics – he vaguely recalled the national team was due to meet Sweden in ice hockey today... Or was it yesterday? Maybe there had been a victory against the sons of Mother Svea, eh?
Koivu stepped in front of the two technicians, blocking their way, and looked at them with a demanding expression.
”
- Tell me where Colonel Vartia is, right now!”
The left one, a gawky fiftysomething man in a old slipover just shrugged, but the other man looked the Captain in the eye and nodded to the left.
”
- Just saw him near the main entrance... Captain. I trust you can find your way there?”
He wasn't being openly insolent but Koivu didn't quite like his tone. He was in too much of hurry to make anything of it, though, so he just glanced at the man with a measure of practiced disgust and made his way to the direction indicated.
Along the corridor and down the stairs he strode, his head getting clearer all the while. Saatanan perkele he had been suckered! There would be a reckoning and no mistake, he swore as he stepped the final steps to the foyer.
It seemed the technician had not lied – there Vartia was, in the flesh, seemingly just lounging with three other men in uniform. Koivu made a beeline towards the men.
”
- Colonel Vartia!”, he bellowed with his official voice as he was nearing the rogue officer.
”
- This building is under ESP jurisdiction and I am arresting you for an assault on a Military Police officer! Attempt to flee and I swear I'll shoot you...”
Only then it registered in his head that two of the men next to Vartia were civilian police officers - their uniforms looked very similar to Vartia's Air Force blues and so he had assumed they were flyboys too. The younger one of them, a sturdily built constable with boyish looks took a step towards him, blocking his route to the Colonel and made as to say something.
People spoke with many sorts of accents in Mikkeli these days, most of them more or less laced with Savonian because of the local conditions in the Temporary Administrative Capital, but what came out of his mouth was some of the most deeply accented Savonian the Captain had heard in a while.[2]
”
- Fuck you, you damn crow! D' you think for real we're givin' anyone to your bloody claws anymore, to be beaten up and murder'd? U'r fuckin' dreamin' if you are, you dirty dog...[3]
Immediately, Koivu's anger flared up again. Who does this little man think he is?
”
- I don't bloody think you have any say in the matter, Constable. ESP has jurisdiction here and I am under direct orders from General Varis himself. Another word in that vein, I will be happy to arrest you too.”
Koivu was struggling to keep his tone calm. He noticed Vartia and the other policeman looking at him with blank expressions.
Something wasn't quite right here.
The young Constable took another step towards him, but his colleague put a hand on his shoulder and said something to him. He was an older man, with greying set of bushy mustaches and eyebrows making him look curiously owl-like. There was something vaguely familiar about him.
”
- Captain,” he started somehow laborously, like being short of air.
”
- We have just placed the Colonel here under arrest ourselves. We are taking him to... ah, protective custody, as we have reason to believe his life is under threat...”
Koivu didn't see what the problem was.
”
- Good work then, Constable, but I need to take this man into a ESP facility forthwith, as we suspect he is involved in treasonous activity...”
Amazingly, the man in blue cut him off midsentence, now speaking more forcefully, suddenly with something like a fire in his eyes.
”
- First, that's Police Sergeant [4]
to you, Captain. Second, you have no jurisdiction here - or anywhere else for that matter. I don't know under which rock you just crawled from, but during the last 24 hours the Special Military police has been stripped from all duties, rights and privileges as a police authority. You all are just soldiers now, and me and Constable Huttunen here are not beholden to your authority anymore.”
Koivu was dumbstruck.
”
- What the Hell are you trying to pull here, man? I swear when General Varis finds out about this, he will make bloody sure...”
Again the man interrupted him. It irked him no end, now, almost making him pull out his sidearm.
”
- God, you really don't know anything! Varis has been canned, sacked, booted out, what ever you like to call it. Your dear General is gone, Captain. And you lot – the Committee has ordered you all Crows to withdraw to your barracks. In fact I would be well within my rights to lock you up myself for disobeying orders, but as it seems you only heard about it now, I'll make an exception this time.”
He looked at the ESP Captain with a strangely merry smile on his face and touched the brim of his cap briefly.
”
- I'd get into your barracks real quick and lock the door with some care if I was you, under the circumstances.”
Despite the smile, his voice was cold as ice.
”
- Now, I've enjoyed our little chat, sir
, but I really have to take the Colonel here to the station – orders, you do understand?”
As Vartia shook the hand of his colleague - a SIO Major by the look of it - in lieu of a goodbye, and the trio started to the door, the young Constable turned towards Koivu and spat at him, hitting him squarely on his chest. A audible snicker went through the YLE and SIO personnel lounging around in the foyer to gawk at the little incident. Koivu started after the Constable but the closing door blocked his way. As the snickers turned to laughter, the seriously demoralized Koivu stepped out, too, to escape the embarrassment.
In the still semi-dark yard, Vartia and the policemen had already ducked into a waiting Saab police cruiser, which turned out of the yard with Koivu looking ineffectually at the receding tail lights. To his left the ESP officer could see the first of his colleagues all morning – four of his men in combat gear but sans weapons were loading up a Susi APC that was standing there with its motor running. Koivu started towards the APC, shouted and took several fast strides as he realized all the men had boarded the APC, the last ESP vehicle in sight, and were starting to push out of the main gates, leaving all their heavy gear and sandbagged positions behind them.
”
- Hey, you men, stop the vehicle NOW!”
Now he was running after them. For a while it looked like he would catch up to the Susi which was slowly winding its way out of the only partly open gates. But then he reached the gates himself and the APC was already speeding away, past a group of protesters. He was sure the driver should have seen him there just next to it.
Slowing his sprint into a walk, Koivu only now really saw all the protesters milling around in the front of the broadcast centre. Some of them started walking closer. Some of them were masked, holding Finnish baseball bats and other makeshift weapons. And some of them started shouting and jeering at him.
”
- Look what we have here”, a rough-looking man dressed like a skinhead shouted.
”
- A lone crow, isn't it? Where's all your black-and-grey-coated brethren now, murdering little crow? Eh?”
Koivu started walking backwards towards the gate, but several of the protesters moved quickly to block his escape route. With the force of habit, the ESP officer raised his right hand and started bellowing orders to the crowd.
”
- Military police! Move back! Disperse immediately or I'll have to...”
He fumbled for his sidearm, only to realize his holster was empty. Someone had taken his pistol while he was out cold - and it took this long for him to realize it.
Suddenly, he was sinking, his insides liquid ice.
”
- Or you do what, you fucking crow? Or you do what?”, said a protester, raising up a makeshift club.
It took far too many hits for the Captain not to feel anything anymore.
…
The Spokesman, Mikkeli, April 21st 2014.
The two sides again settled around the table to get on with the negotiations. The Spokesman for the Interim Council had already lost count how many meetings they had had thus far. But today he could say it was exactly one month from when the talks were (officially) started – and it would not be long now before they would end.
The opposition's side, the Interim Council [5]
had been growing stronger all through the discussions. At first it had been tense, the two sides meeting in the same conference room where Varis had shot Halonen – the Spokesman still remembered well how he could not keep his eyes off the hole in the table, indicating where the fateful bullet was still lodged in – and despite everything, the uniformed or business-suited members of the Committee had appeared like a formidable obstacle to the opposition's goals.
But as soon as the talks started in earnest and the meetings were moved from the Government Buildings to the old wooden vicarage known as Kenkävero instead, things had taken a definite turn.[6]
Stripped of some of the trappings of power, the old men of the Committee suddenly didn't look so strong anymore. And of course the Committee's numbers were dwindling. Not only had it lost two of its strongest leaders, Halonen and Varis, on March 11th, it had been bleeding support also in other ways .
While the National Coalition's leader, Kakkonen, had joined his fellow Committee members at the beginning, just after the negotiations started he bowed out citing ill health and when his party rejoined the negotiations, a young vice chairman had now taken over and promptly defected to the Interim Council. Even more importantly, the Centre had not joined the discussions at all at the beginning, which was an alarming development to the Committee as it was, and in early April the party sent its representative to privately make contact with the Council for terms of it joining the opposition. The Spokesman thought it had been a good call, and one in which you could see the influence of one of the party's longtime veteran leaders, Seppo Kääriäinen.[7]
While the people were overwhelmingly on the side of the Interim Council, especially due to the bloody, heavyhanded actions of the Military Police and General Varis in March, and now even most of the semi-official parties had joined the opposition, much of the professional military and the bureaucracy were still thought to stand with the Committee. This would have to change before a settlement could be reached. Calling in favours and trying to play all the angles, the Spokesman had opted for a campaign of attrition – slowly, ever so slowly his allies worked behind the scenes to sow the seeds of change among those who still stood by the Committee. The ways and means were manyfold, but the goal was unified, to hollow out the Committee's power base so that in the best case it would crumble down spectacularly under the weight of the grand edifice the old men still tried to base on those creaky foundations - or maybe the keener heads among them would make their comrades bow out gracefully before they would face sure defeat and true embarrassment.
The funeral of General Halonen was a significant milestone in it all. A lot more modest affair than it might have been, for many it underscored the end of an era and perhaps the beginning of another one. Only to see the members of the National Committee for the Continuity of Government standing there in the rain, under the forest of black umbrellas held by junior officers, delivering their last salute to a fallen general. One of them had suffered a stroke, collapsing to the muddy ground then and there, needing to be resuscitated by medics under a cover of umbrellas. Surrounded by sad, concerned onlookers with faces grey as the clouds in the sky. And in the next meeting, all of those who arrived to the negotiations appeared considerably deflated. Really getting face to face with your own mortality tends to do that, to old men especially, the Spokesman mused.
Today it was unaccustomedly warm for April, and so many of the old men in full dress uniform looked sweaty and tired this morning. All the better, the Spokesman thought. The one of them who was neither was Koskelo, despite being also of advanced age. The Spokesman had some newfound respect for the General – during these last months, he had shown himself to be pretty shrewd, generally staying on the ball and even managing some surprising moves. At times he even looked more like a politician than a soldier, and that was saying something. With so many of his colleagues and allies losing faith, though, the Spokesman thought Koskelo was essentially just playing for time. But one could do that for only so long, and the Spokesman knew the General knew this too.
The Swedish mediator, Dahlgren[8]
, looked at his watch and signalled for the beginning of today's talks, smiling genially. The idea of the Swedish government mediating the negotiations had been opposed by the Committee initially, but as several foreign governments, the Swiss and the British included demanded it, there had been no way around it. By now, the Spokesman had no doubt that Dahlgren's presense had been a net benefit to the Interim Council.
Sitting at the central point of the long table, the Spokesman looked at the men and women on his left and right. Saaresto of the New Democrats, the poetic firebrand who might well be smarter than he appeared; Donner, the seemingly inexhaustible pre-War relic now in the SDP's left wing who had made personal rebellion a way of life; Härkönen, the Kokkola-based author of many anti-Committee tracts, one of the few women in these negotiations; Wahlroos, the opportunist businessman back from Sweden, a rising star in the New Coalition, looking like a shark smelling blood in the water. Like these four, also the others in the Interim Council looked more collected, more sure of their purpose than the men on the other side of the table. Maybe it was the collective realization of the time being on their side, maybe it was the understanding that they finally had a level playing field where they could challenge the powers that be on their own terms. Maybe it was just a common illusion, but what ever it was, it was working.
So on with the games, then, the Spokesman thought with an inwards smile.What do we have to lose, anyway?
...
Gothenburg, April 30th 2014.
The Editor walked out of her office, already putting on her overcoat when she saw her star reporter still sitting at his desk in the otherwise deserted offices of the Göteborgs-Tidningen in central Gothenburg. Even the nearby Kungsportsavenyen was emptying now as most people had already reached home, to prepare for May Day, but Sven Blomqvist still beavered away at his DIAB personal computer, stacks of papers strewn across his desk and a few shelves.
The Editor walked up to Blomqvist and gingerly placed her hand on the younger man's shoulder. The reporter almost jumped before he realized who had roused him out of his writing stupor.
”
- Why don't you go home now, Sven? You're the last one here, again.”
Blomqvist looked at the Editor in the pale light of the computer screen, and the Editor could recognize the glow in his eyes as something familiar.
”
- I've still a few things to write down, chief”, the man said, in his voice a combination of absentmindedness and irritation at being disturbed.
”
- I'm leaving again for Finland next week, and I must be prepared to ask the right questions when I get there.”
The Editor sighed. Blomqvist's singlemindedness with his Finnish story was getting to a point of obsession.
”
- Why don't you let me read some of what you have so far so I could give you some pointers as to where to take it? I know you think...”
Now more irritated, Blomqvist interrupted her with a handwave.
”
- Please, I know exactly what I am doing. And I will tell you when I am good and ready. Believe me, Eva, this is the biggest story this paper has covered in years, and you will thank me for not telling you anything in advance. This story... Our readers need to read it. It will blow you away.”
The Editor wanted to roll her eyes at this. But better not, the man might get even more riled up.
”
- All right, Sven, I hope you know what you are doing,” she said with a soothing tone.
”
- But be careful out there. Finland is still pretty chaotic, and you might get into trouble by being too aggressive with the old government, assuming that is who you are going after.”
Now it was Blomqvist's time to consider rolling his eyes.
”
- Don't worry about me, Mother”, he said with a devil-may-care look on his face.
”
- I am an old hand in all matters Finnish. I'll be back all safe and ready for fame and glory, you'll see.”
The Editor decided to give up.
”
- What ever you say. But I am leaving now, Karl-Johan is bound to have my dinner waiting and you now how he gets if I'm not there in time... Lock up when you go, then. Have a happy May Day, Sven, and good luck on your trip.”
Blomqvist had already turned his gaze back to the glowing screen and he raised his hand perfunctorily to his old workmate.
”
- Yeah, happy May Day to you too, and Karl-Johan also. See you in a few weeks.”
...
Some called what happened in the spring of 2014 a Revolution. Others, especially foreigners and those with a historical bent, a Finnish Spring.[9]
But in Finland, the events are generally only known as the Winter Games. This is on one hand a reference to the Olympics in St. Moritz where Finland won a lot more medals than anyone had hoped for, even if the ice hockey team's chances were in the end dashed by Sweden's Tre Kronor. But on the other it is also an reference to the people, the revolutionaries outplaying the Committee in its own game. The game for political power.
For 2014 also became known as an Election Year, the first one since 1983. The deal struck by the National Committee for the Continuation of Government, on one hand, and the Opposition Interim Council, on the other, was that presidential elections would be held in August to get the nation an elected leader, the first one after President Koivisto, via a direct popular vote. The Committee would relinquish its power to the winner of the elections, which an international body of election observers would monitor to ensure fairness.
In exchange for not standing in the way of a transition to democracy, however tenuous, the living members of the Committee and the highest leadership of the Defence Forces as well as some of the top bureaucrats would be granted an immunity from prosecution for all possible crimes committed during their time in power. These men (and a very few women) would be allowed to retire in peace and even to receive a state pension. And they would have the right to leave the country, if they so wished. Such, in this case, was the price of democracy.
Of course some exceptions to the rule would have to be made, in the interest of justice and to placate the people's ire. General Varis and several Military Police officers under his command would face charges of treason and several counts of murder and attempted murder for their unauthorized, violent actions during the weeks leading to March 11th and on the day itself. Not many even among the military and the strongest supporters of the Committee could find a lot of sympathy in them for these men and so making examples of them was generally accepted. Only among a minority of the military and the nationalist elites were these men considered scapegoats and, to some, martyrs to the cause of a proud, morally upright, truly independent Finland.
As the summers after the War were wont to be in Finland, also the summer of 2014 would be treacherous. Warm, nearly hot and very dry weather until the Midsummer Festival delighted some (though farmers were not among them) and made for several large forest fires in different parts of the country. Hundreds of young conscripts and TeeVees at a time were sent to put them out, naturally along with the former members of the Special Military Police, often proud, smart men who now found themselves so out of favor as to get all the most demeaning and heavy jobs any higher officer who had ever harboured a grudge towards Varis could think of. Since the beginning of July, though, heavy rains arrived and made a home in Central-Eastern part of the country well into August. For once, then, the people in the land would eventually welcome the arrival of the winter as the frost would at least drive away the onslaught of the constant rains.
Politically and socially, the summer was as unstable. Peaceful demonstrations turned to general festivities that were to mark the summer in the memory of the people. For many this was a summer of freedom and a summer of music, of multiple rock concerts no police authority would come to break up, even if they did not have official permits or even if members of the government would have been mocked. A summer of heavy drinking and lazy days. And, of course, for the young and the young at heart it was a summer of love. Free, plentiful love.
For almost all it was also a summer of unity, as even before the presidential elections could be held, Eastern and Western parts of the country would have to be rejoined together as one nation. The Temporary Administrative Border, the bitter line running since the early 1990s through Central Finland, across forests and lakes and in one case an unlucky farmstead, was finally wiped off the maps, the border posts dismantled and the soldiers who had guarded it sent to their barracks.
Or, increasingly, home, as dismantling the military police apparatus had even before any other official changes to the Finnish military organization also contributed to a creeping demobilization started by the outgoing Committee to show its good faith during the final stretch of the political negotiations between the old government and those who wished to supplant it with something new.
In short, the summer was marked with changes, big and small. Most of the people, especially the younger generations, saw this as a welcome, much sought after state of affairs. But to many, some or all of these changes were cause for concern, apprehension and even fear. Some people and some organizations benefit even from paralysis, and when that paralysis is suddenly lifted they might face an existential threat. The levity felt by most citizens of a new Finland this summer was far from universal, and while those who abhorred the change were in minority, they would still make for a new kind of opposition and leave a legacy for the future, for good or for ill.
For nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. If you even once make a mistake of thinking that maybe, just maybe this time is an exception to the rule – well, then you have forgotten something, haven't you?
Notes:
[1] As most doors in Finland open outwards, it is generally easier to kick a door
out rather than
in.
[2] The Captain himself was an pre-War evacuee from Turku in the historical province of Varsinais-Suomi (
Finland Proper), and even after spending most of his adult life in the Savonian area he wasn't quite getting used to the local lingo.
[3]
Haesta sinä varis vittu! Luuletko tosissas että myö ennää kettään annetaan teijän kynsiin hakattavaks ja lahattavaks? Elä sinä perkeleen koera unta nää...
[4] Fin.
Ylikonstaapeli, Swe.
Överkonstapel.
[5] Some also dubbed it ”the New Forum”.
[6] A move demanded by the mediator sent by the Swedish government, Dahlgren, to somewhat level the playing field between the sides.
[7] Being virtually the only survivor of wartime Centre Party's leadership, by dint of not being a member of parliament and getting privately evacuated to North Savonia just prior to the Exchange, the party secretary Kääriäinen became post-War one of the party's leading figures. A part of the Mikkeli administration since 1986 but never a government minister or a member of the Committee for the Continuation of the Government, Kääriäinen became known as a provincial leader who never ascended to the top posts of the FNA, in big part due to his cautiously critical view of the Committee's rule.
[8] A veteran diplomat in Swedish government service, since late 1990s Hans Dahlgren has become known as a successful international negotiator the Swedes send out to smooth issues with foreign nations, especially ones to do with freedom of information and political repression.
[9] Apart from the power change really taking place in springtime, this was a reference to the so-called Prague Spring of 1968, an ultimately unsuccessful era of homegrown political liberalization in Czechoslovakia during the country's domination by the Soviet Union.
)
