The Year of Broken Promises - A Finnish Timeline
- Thread starter DrakonFin
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Twenty: Veli and Salomo
Twenty: Veli and Salomo
…
On a dotted line you'll find the name of a travelling man
That'll bend with the ground frost when it gets cold
...
Veli
Rope.
The thought of rope came into Veli's mind out of nowhere. A coil of good, sturdy rope.
What the heck, he thought and opened his eyes. Veli sat on the driver's seat in the wagon, holding the reins of Rusko the horse. He had been deep in his thoughts for a while, not really consciously trying to use the reins the direct the horse in any way. But Rusko knew where they were going, so it didn't matter.
Horses tend to know what they are doing.
It had been sort of a heavy week for Veli Vaara. There had been the last game of the pesäpallo season, played at the sports field by the Youth Association House. The weather had been somewhat rainy, but it didn't dampen the spirits of Veli and the other HiNsU players: they had won the game against the Kaislastenlahti team in a resounding fashion and secured the club's promotion to the Provincial League for the 1940 season.
What really did hurt the spirits of the young men and women of Hirvilahti, though, were the damages many farms had suffered due to the Sylvi Storm. On Wednesday, a village meeting had been called at the Youth Association House to discuss the issue. When it became clear that there would most likely not be government action to relieve the financial losses of farmers, at least not in the near future, it had been agreed that the villagers would try to help those who had lost the most in mutual effort.
It practically meant that there would be even more work bees organized across the village than during an ordinary harvest season, to fix the practical damages the storm had done and to try to save as much of the crops as was possible. The idea that those who had suffered only slight damage to their crops would share some grain with those with worst losses was also floated, and it gained grudging support. To Veli's chagrin, his father had stood up then, to make the point of mentioning that all such help should be noted in a common ledger and any grain thus provided then reimbursed from the next year's harvest. On top of that, Salomo Vaara even mentioned how some farmers in the village already were in debt to others and that it should be made certain that any outstanding debts are paid promptly when they are due.
Veli Vaara didn't really like the looks some of the villagers gave him after his father's little speech.
And so, in the days after the village meeting, Veli Vaara had gone out of his way to help others to fix storm damage as much as possible. Together with the work he needed to do back in Vaarala, itself increased due to the storm, it had made for a rough few days. So, it wasn't strange at all that Veli might be in a risk of nodding off into slumberland as he sat there on the driver's perch, the horse leading the wagon slowly towards home.
Behind Veli in the wagon there sat Jorma and one of the two Kerman boys, Kalle. Predictably called "Pikku-Kalle" [1] as his father was also Kaarlo by his given name, Kalle was one of Jorma's best friends in the village, and there was a friendly sort of rivalry going on between the boys in many things. The two boys had been talking animatedly about pesäpallo just some minutes ago, but now it was quiet in the back of the wagon as well.
Had the boys fallen asleep, too?
For Veli, though, there was still some ways to go before he could stumble into his bed. There was one last stop he needed to take before actually heading home. At the crossroads, the tired man turned the horse and the wagon right, towards the Hyvärinen farm. Heikki Hyvärinen had been one of the farmers suffering most damage due to the storm, and by now there had been no time to help him. So now Veli had thought to drop the man a visit to tell him to hang in there, to assure him that they would get around to helping him in a day or two.
It was already starting to get a little dark when Veli stopped the wagon in front of the modest Hyvärinen farmhouse and climbed the front step to enter the building. Knocking a couple of time on the door, he entered into the hall.
”Come on in”, he heard a woman's voice from the biggest room [2] in the house, or, well, a cottage, really.
As Veli entered the room, he found the woman behind the voice. It was Heikki's wife, Kaisa, a slight woman who kept her hair in a very long single braid. Some called her ”Kyy-Kaisa” behind her back [3], and it wasn't because of this single braid. It was because of her poisonous tongue.
Sitting there on the bench, Kaisa was nursing her youngest, a tiny but loud baby by the name of Sampo.
”Good evening, Kaisa”, Veli said, removing his cap, ”is the master of the house [4] home?”
Kaisa looked at the visitor and gave him a crooked smile.
”Hah. Some master of the house it is, indeed. Heikki's out fixing the granary, ain't he? For all the good it'll do us.”
It was all classic Kaisa. Sometimes, Veli wondered what it felt like to be that woman's child. By all accounts, what ever came out of her breasts must have been so bitter that it was hardly good for you.
Veli didn't want to even consider what being married to her felt like.
Veli nodded to the mistress of the Hyvärinen household.
”I'll look for him out there, then.”
Veli took off across the darkening yard, glancing at the wagon as he did so. Rusko gave him a thoughtful look, but otherwise it was all quiet.
The two boys were sleeping, Veli thought and smiled to himself.
The granary was not far. Approaching it in the growing gloom, Veli saw that the storm wind had done a number to the rather rickety building's roof. Half of it had come tumbling down. He went around the collapsed part, and there he could finally find Heikki. The farmer was sitting on a stump of a log, apparently staring into the fields. Veli walked into what he thought was Heikki's line of sight, but it elicited no response in the man. Seconds passed. Finally, Veli cleared his throat.
”Ahem, Heikki”, he said.
Slowly, the man snapped out of what ever it was.
”Veli Vaara”, he said, in a dark voice that sounded off somehow, ”well, fancy that.”.
Veli felt unwelcome, somehow.
”Am I interrupting something?”, he asked, shifting his weight to his right foot.
Heikki Hyvärinen stood up.
”Oh, you're interrupting nothing at all...”
The man took a few steps towards him.
”Except the lone thoughts of a ruined man”, Heikki said, with a nearly breaking voice.
Now, closer, Veli thought it looked like the man had been crying.
”Your father was here a few hours ago”, Heikki said.
What the hell, Veli thought, I thought he had agreed with me that I could handle matters with Heikki myself?
”...And he told me that if I won't make my September payment in full and in time, like we originally agreed...”
Heikki stressed those words, and Veli thought he could hear his father's voice behind them.
”...He will move to seek foreclosure on the farm.”
Veli immediately understood what that meant. It was all visible in the look Heikki gave to him then.
”Because of losing my crops, I can't afford my September payment, not even the reduced one I agreed with you last month. I cant' get any additional debt anywhere, not in these conditions... And so, thanks to the great Salomo Vaara”, Heikki said, and now there was an angry edge to the man's voice, something Veli did not expect from the usually quiet and timid man at all.
”...I'll either need to sell my farm to be able to pay at least some of my debt, or just wait that he takes it away from me through a compulsory auction. The end result of both is the same – me and Kaisa and the kids, thrown out on the street, without a roof over our heads.”
Veli looked at Heikki, his hands clenched in fists, obviously beside himself. Now a measure of the man's anger had started catching him, too.
”Listen, Heikki”, the son of Salomo Vaara said to the farmer, ”I won't accept that. My old man can't do that to you.”
He stepped closer to Heikki and put a hand on his shoulder, in a gesture he thought was reassuring.
”I'll talk to him as soon as I get home. Heikki, I'll do all that I can to make him change his mind.”
Veli tried to put a smile on his face.
”It'll be all right”, he said earnestly to the older man, the father of three small children, ”I promise.”
Veli Vaara walked to the wagon briskly, with his anger giving more strength to his feet. He grabbed the reins with some force, too.
The dark countryside was now only lit by a waning moon in a cloudless sky.
”Home, Rusko. We're going home now”, he said to the horse.
…
Salomo
The chairman of the board of the Kuopio rural municipality sat in silence in his study. Outside, the evening of the third day of September was falling. It had been a gorgeous sunset, all made in various shades of red, from pink to blood. Salomo Vaara, though, had seen none of it. He had other things on his mind.
It was a matter of faith to the man that one had to keep oneself appraised of what was going on in the world. Salomo Vaara read the papers religiously. Two newspapers arrived to the Vaara farm, as did the weekly magazine Suomen Kuvalehti [5]. The man did make it clear to his children as well that following the events of the world was one of the major ingredients of making one an informed, independent thinker and a capable citizen of an independent republic, besides.
Vaara didn't mind if his children did read books as well. But he was rather partial to non-fiction. ”Everyone can make up stories that are not true”, he would tell the other members of the Vaara household, ”and so it is more, nay, most important to read the products of those who write of real things, of the sciences, of technology, of business and the economy, rather than those who make up comforting fairy tales or pamphlets full of political agitation”.
Vaara believed that he was a man of reality, a man of truth.
This week, Salomo Vaara had been reading the papers with even more interest and urgency than was usual. It was due to what was happening in Europe. The unthinkable had happened, and war had broken out. On his desk, Vaara had yesterday's Helsingin Sanomat.
ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN A STATE OF WAR AGAINST GERMANY AS OF YESTERDAY.
The German government has refused to call its troops back from Poland.
No news yet of military action in the west.
Salomo Vaara had bought Adolf Hitler's book some years ago. He was impressed how the man and his party had managed to raise Germany out of the prostration the great nation had found itself in after the Great War. Building German industry, building great highways, rebuilding German national pride... Salomo Vaara had been a friend of Germany and German culture since he was a boy, when Finland still was under the heel of imperial Russia. After Finland had gained independence, and after Germany had helped the young nation drive away the threat of the Red Ruskies, Vaara had been sorry to see Germany lose the war and have to accept heavy and demeaning peace terms, dictated by the victorious powers. The British and the French, especially – they had been bloodthirsty like hyenas. It was no surprise to Salomo Vaara, then, that the German people had risen against the injustice and chosen for itself a leadership that could shake off the shackles the nation had been put in. The shackles of Versailles.
As for Hitler's book itself – Vaara had been unimpressed. The man might be a great orator, but as an author he left something to be desired. It was rambling, and it was not wholly logical. Vaara agreed with the gist of it, though, as he understood it – Germany would need to reclaim its place in the sun. But then Vaara did not agree with all of the beliefs of the so-called National Socialists, of course. He was at core a supporter of democracy. Then, at the same time, he understood the need to keep the Reds down, to control the revolutionary threat to a law-abiding society. Whether the Germans had gone too far under Hitler's leadership, well, time would tell, he had told himself only some time ago. Maybe it was just a phase in the development of Germany towards bigger and better things.
But this, this was taking things too far. A war against Poland, and apparently with both Britain and France in league with the Poles, to boot? Vaara was not at all sure there was any rhyme or reason to it.
The bald man had felt angry and off-centre for almost two weeks now – due to the ill health of the president, first, and then due to the bloody accident that had claimed so many of the nation's top leaders. Not least Juho Niukkanen, an accomplished stalwart of the Agrarian League and a politician Vaara could feel was a definite asset to his party.
And then there had been the German-Soviet Treaty. Madness. What Europe should be doing would be to agree for a joint front against Stalin and his Red armies. As far as Salomo Vaara was concerned, under Hitler Germany had taken a wrong turn – come to an actual agreement with the most dangerous dictator of the day, the bloody oppressor Josef Stalin. It was nothing short of a betrayal for Western values and the civilized spirit of Europe – especially if the agreement meant that Germany had abandoned smaller nations to the Soviets as was rumoured.
Practically, though, the main thing that made Salomo Vaara ill at ease was the storm that had, in his view, ended the summer in North Savonia. The storm had destroyed much, nay, most of Vaarala's crops. And only days before the harvest work was due to start. It was an unmitigated disaster for the farm. Vaara had attended a meeting of the Kuopio Agrarians, and he had argued hard for state support for the farms that had suffered from the Sylvi Storm. Beginning with the bigger farms, of course, as like he was wont to think, the rationally-run and well-organised major farms were the backbone of the Finnish countryside. Let those farms fail, and you risk the well-being of the entire farming profession in Finland. Some smaller farms would have to fail, perhaps, but the viable bulk of the best farms of the land would have to be protected from the ill effects of the sudden natural disaster.
To cushion the losses of Vaarala, Salomo Vaara had decided to expedite the repayment of some of the loans he had given to other farms in Hirvilahti and the neighbouring villages. Just this spring, he had bought some more forest land to increase his holdings, and now his cash reserves were unconfortably low. Lower still after the sizable loan he had given to his son the lieutenant, against his better judgement. As Vaara did not want to sell his land to make up for the farm's financial losses (after all, under the circumstances he would most likely lose money in comparison to the purchase prices), right now the most palatable option was to get back some of the money other people owed him.
It was, after all, his money. And a part of the inheritance of his children, besides. A part of what the Vaarala farm was. Salomo Vaara wanted to leave a legacy.
This afternoon, Vaara had already visited some of the villagers that owed him money, to tell them that they were expected to pay off their debts according to the deal they had originally made with him. As of late, Vaara had allowed his son Veli help him manage some of these financial matters, and it occurred to him now that Veli had been rather too lenient with some of them.
Time to get things back on track, then.
In the view of Salomo Vaara, one of the most important things was trust. People needed to trust you, and you needed to trust people. That is what made society work, at the very base of it. And how can you make people trust you? You keep your word. If you make promises, you keep them.
A man who can't keep his word is not a man at all.
The men Salomo Vaara had loaned money to had given their word that they would repay him. It was all in writing, all in black and white, signed, sealed and notarised. It was as clear-cut as it was.
There was nothing ambiguous about it.
Salomo Vaara was pouring himself a glass of brandy and looking at a piece of news in the paper, about the official opening of the Eduskunta's fall session, with a photo of President Kallio in his wheelchair and the Speaker, Hakkila, when something startled him.
It was the telephone. At this hour of the evening, too.
The Vaarala household was one of the first ones in the village to get its own telephone, only a few years ago. Salomo Vaara had been the main proponent of drawing the phone line to the village, and he had also footed most of the bill. The marvel of the new age had been a subject of many discussions and frequent visits to Vaarala during the first year.
Now, Salomo Vaara picked up the receiver to hear from the operator that there was a long-distance call for him.
”Salomo, it is Pekka Heikkinen here”, the voice in the other end of the line said, ”I am sorry to bother you at this hour, but I have an important message to you...”
Salomo Vaara cocked his head and listened what the chairman of the Agrarian League had to say.
It wasn't a very long call, but it did give Salomo Vaara something to think about. The bald man was not yet ready with his thinking when he heard a determined knock on the door. Before he had the time to say anything, his son Veli walked, no, barged into the room.
”Father, I need to talk to you”, the young man said with a determined voice. There was an unusual edge to him, Salomo thought.
”Good”, Salomo Vaara said, ”there is something I need to tell you as well.”
He looked at the bottle on the table.
”Care for a glass of brandy, son?”
…
The man sat alone in the gloom. The darkness had fallen now, and he was all alone. It was not just dark outside, it was also dark inside the man, a deep, everpresent black that felt like it was sucking all life out of him.
Standing up, the man reached out for the coil of rope next to him, and then climbed on the wooden ladder on his right to attach the end of the rope to the beam above.
He had already made the noose beforehand.
Heikki Hyvärinen thought of his wife and his three little children as he stood there on the swaying ladder, his right hand holding on to the beam.
They are better off without me.
Tears were running down his cheeks now.
Heikki felt the coarse surface of the manila rope with his left hand. It was a good, sturdy rope.
As the man started putting his head through the noose, he suddenly saw the face of a younger man floating in front of his eyes.
”It'll be all right”, the man said and smiled, ”I promise.”
Slowly, Heikki lifted the noose off his head and let it fall loose. Then, he climbed down from the ladder and lay down on the ground, still crying.
Only a waning moon, shining through a hole in the roof, shed its light on a man who would not die tonight.
…
And the road is black, but the traveller's mood would be blacker
If the moon didn't shine its silver
Under the darkening skies
….
"EVERYWHERE THEY'RE WAITING
these days for the Ilta-Sanomat to be published. The paper's fresh and trustworthy news from the war theatres of Europe have caused a massive growth in circulation. The effect of Ilta-Sanomat advertising has also increased to the same extent. Advertise in the Ilta-Sanomat and you are advertising effectively and affordably."
A front-page advert in the Helsingin Sanomat, 5th September 1939.
Notes:
[1] Little Kalle.
[2] The main room of an Eastern Finnish farmhouse was called a tupa. It fullfilled the functions of a living room, a dining room and a kitchen.
[3] Kaisa the Adder.
[4] Isäntä.
[5] Literally ”the Finnish Magazine” or ”the Finnish Paper of Pictures”, arguably the Finnish equivalent to Life magazine.
...
To Be Continued
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Perhaps a length of "manillaköysi"?
Somehow, I doubt the future will be very good, regardless of what happens next
And here we go. In the future, there is only war.
Well, it is, just not the way he thinks it is
If only companies would work like this... between individuals, it just might not be the best solution, though.
Oh, and it was. Nicely done.
I can't wait to see what happens next, although this does seem to head towards a depressingly dystopic future.
Twenty-one: Urho
Twenty-one: Urho
The man opened his eyes to see a young, pretty nurse bent over him on his left hand side.
”Oh”, the woman said. Her eyes were blue and her lips a deep red. The man couldn't help but notice that she was particularly well-endowed in the chest area.
”You're awake”, the young woman told him, ”don't be alarmed but you are still being operated on....”
Feeling a foreboding, the man looked to his right, and sure enough, he could see a man dressed as a surgeon hovering there next to his right foot. It was not easy to see the man, though, as bright lights were pointing at his face.
”Mister Kekkonen”, the nurse said, ”we needed to amputate both of your legs to save your life...”
Suddenly horrified, the man looked at his feet again, and only now saw that his both feet were indeed just stumps, entirely cut off below his knees. For some reason, he could not feel any pain, though.
The doctor's surgical outfit was heavily spattered with blood.
A cold feeling went through the man.
This isn't right at all.
”You are being very brave”, the nurse said and gave the man a smile that was a tad too wide for his liking under the circumstances. The woman actually winked at him, too.
The doctor turned his face towards him.
”The shrapnel damages are more extensive than we thought, minister. I need to remove your genitals as well”, he said, pulling on a surgical glove.
...What?
”Nurse. The cleaver.”
The young, buxom woman bent over him again and handed the doctor the shining steel cleaver.
And then Urho Kekkonen woke up. Icy waves went through him as he reached out to feel his legs.
Both were still there. And he was in his own bed, not in a hospital. On his right leg he could feel the dressing covering his wound, but that was it.
Just to make sure, the man checked his crotch, too.
Thank God it was just a dream. Urho Kekkonen's thought returned to it several times during the day, and the verdict of his waking mind was that the dream had been caused by his unconscious speculating on what could have well happened to him, based on what actually had transpired with Mannerheim, and then all the stress he was feeling at the moment, giving its own spin to the horror.
I need to remove your genitals.
In the morning, the first order of business for Urho Kekkonen, now the Second Minister of the Interior, was to attend a meeting of the Finnish cabinet. It was naturally chaired by the curmudgeonly new Prime Minister. After just a handful of these meetings by the new cabinet, Kekkonen could actually already feel some grudging respect for the late Aimo Cajander. Say what you will about the man who had died in Hannila, the previous Prime Minister had at least been a good chairman for his cabinet. He was able to listen to the ministers, and reconcile different points of view in a positive, contemplative atmosphere. Paasikivi was a man of a different school of thought. He came to the meetings with his mind already made up, and ”irascible” was his standard frame of mind. To Kekkonen, Paasikivi's general attitude to life brought to mind nothing as much as a mountain troll that had just woken up and emerged to the surface from his cave.
The man Paasikivi was now being irascible to was Arvi Oksala, the recently-appointed Minister of Defence from his own party.
”...And tell the dunderheads to watch where they are going, and control their ships, would you? They do have steering wheels, what, and maps and compasses and whatnot, paid from the damned state budget.”
The context of the outburst was a Soviet protest concerning a near-accident between the Finnish coastal ship Väinämöinen and a Soviet-flagged freighter, the Metallist, just off the Finnish coast. This had happened just yesterday as the Finnish Coastal Fleet had taken to the sea to move from the capital area to the Sea of Åland, to take up its pre-planned positions there to conduct neutrality patrols now that there were Baltic Sea nations at war against each other.[1] During this operation, the Väinämöinen had in the darkness of the night met with the Soviet freighter on a sealane just off the island of Kökar and, according to the Soviets, nearly caused a fatal accident.
Navy Command had not yet weighed in on the issue – probably they were just now poring over a report from the ship's captain, Urho thought.
After Oksala had sheepishly promised Paasikivi to get answers from the Navy, it was the Foreign Minister's turn. Voionmaa had just returned from Stockholm in the morning. He had taken a work visit to Stockholm, to pay his respects to Prime Minister Hansson for the death of Per Edvin Sköld, and to discuss the Finnish and Swedish position towards matters relating to the outbreak of war with both Hansson and the Swedish Foreign Minister, Rickard Sandler. Voionmaa had also briefly met with Sweden's new Minister of Defence, Gerhard Strindlund, unlike his predecessor a member of the Swedish Agrarians.
Both the Finnish and the Swedish governments had already proclaimed themselves neutral in the recent days, and now both nations agreed that there would also need to be a joint Nordic meeting to weigh in on the issue of neutrality. Voionmaa told the assembled cabinet that Hansson had suggested that the meeting would take place in Stockholm beginning on September 15th, and that he had provisionally agreed with the suggestion.
In the matter of a potential joint defence of the Åland Islands, something that had been discussed with Sweden at depth in the recent two years, Voionmaa informed the cabinet that according to Sandler, the Swedish government would not submit a new proposal about Swedish participation. According to Sandler, the cabinet did not believe that the Riksdag would accept to such a proposal ”at this time”. Also emergency measures to protect the safety of the islands in the absense of a fortification plan were ruled out by the Swedish. Sandler and Hansson had told Voionmaa that Sweden had not officially abandoned the plans for a joint defence in Åland,[2] but that they would need to wait for ”a change in the parliamentary situation” in Sweden. And besides, Voionmaa had been told, now the fortification of the Ålands was not as pressing a matter, either, as the Germans and the Soviets had come to an accommodation: there was less threat of a Soviet-German race to take over the islands than there had been before.
Voionmaa's own analysis about his Swedish trip was that there was clear scepticism towards Finland in Sweden. The death of Sköld, and the nature of the accident that had led to it, had led to doubts towards Finland as a partner in defence matters. Voionmaa had even overheard a disparaging comment about the state of the Finnish military at a reception, not meant for his ears perhaps, but indicative of Swedish views at the moment none the less, he thought.
Urho Kekkonen could not blame the Swedish for being sceptical about the readiness of the Finnish military. After all, so was Mannerheim. It was by now common knowledge that a few days ago the still bedridden Field Marshal has summoned to his presence a young staff officer from the Ministry of Defence, Captain Halsti, and given the man a personal commission under the Defence Council to look into the deficiencies and problems of the preparedness and defensive plans of the military. Now, Halsti, a smart man who was just writing a book about Finnish defence was probably as good a man as any for this job, Urho thought. But then in his opinion it was not good for the state of mind of the political and military leadership in Helsinki to consider the impications this little commission had about what Mannerheim was thinking at the moment.
Voionmaa also reported that Yrjö-Koskinen, the Finnish ambassador to Moscow, had sent a positive report about a discussion with Molotov, where the Soviet Foreign Minister had taken a very positive stand towards improving trade relations between Finland and the USSR. Even the German ambassador, von Blücher, had just yesterday approached Voionmaa about the matter of improving Finno-Soviet relations, which certainly was a sign of a sea change in international politics.
When Voionmaa had said his piece, the discussion drifted towards the need for setting up a new government ministry – the Ministry of Supply. This effort was now spearheaded by Heikkinen, the Agrarian Minister of Trade and Industry. To hear the man, the recent loss of crops in Eastern Finland due to the Sylvi Storm further underlined the need to secure the Finnish food supply in the conditions of international crisis in the Baltic Sea. Paasikivi had already agreed with the need for the new ministry, was ready to support its founding in parliament, and now asked for suggestions for the short list for the first Minister of Supply.
After the cabinet meeting was concluded, Urho Kekkonen was in dire need of a lunch. He had opted for a restaurant in the very vicinity of the Government Palace. The doctor had recommended that he should use a crutch while his leg was still healing. Urho had decided against it, for reasons of appearances as well as pride (though he would not have admitted as much) and so he found walking any longer distances somewhat difficult at the moment.
In a secluded corner of the restaurant, the Second Minister of the Interior met an old friend. The Director of the State Police was already there, sitting down and sipping from a glass of mineral water.
”Urho, you really need to take a load off those feet”, Paavo Säippä said when he saw the man approach the table.
Urho Kekkonen gave him a smile that was predominately made of a wince.
The previous Minister of the Interior had taken an immediate suspicion towards the new Minister of the Interior, Mauno Pekkala. What he had seen of the Social Democrat in the first common cabinet meetings had only served to confirm his less than positive view of the man. Simply put, Urho was not sure that Pekkala would have the ability and resources to be an effective government minister in the circumstances of a major international crisis. As it was, there had already been a large far-left demonstration on the Hakaniemi square against militarism (namely, Finnish militarism) two days ago, and Urho had his suspicions that the event had been put together by men who were just puppets to people pulling their strings from beyond the Republic's eastern border. Pekkala, though, had barely mentioned the demonstration in the meeting today.
And this is why Urho Kekkonen was meeting with Säippä today. He chose to approach the issue only after the two men had finished their main course of pot roast, mashed potatoes and pickles. What Urho Kekkonen suggested to Säippä was to put together a new, confidential task force to look into such foreign-directed activity that was a potential threat to the government and legal order of the Republic.
Säippä was quick to catch his meaning.
”You mean we would keep it a secret from the Minister of the Interior, too?”, he asked quietly after checking that there was nobody in earshot, holding aloft his dessert spoon.
Urho nodded.
”In practical terms, yes. We won't tell him unless he asks about it directly. It is well within your rights to operate the State Police the way you see fit, and you don't have to tell the Minister of every bloody detail of what you are doing to safeguard the Finnish state's security. Should he learn of the task force himself, well, then you can pin it all on me. As much I understand my new posting as a second minister, it is in my purview to make sure that practical matters do run smoothly when the first minister is looking after the major policies and broad strokes, as it were.”
”Uhhuh”, Säippä just said, putting a spoonful of strawberry cake into his mouth.
On his way back to the ministry, Urho checked the headlines of the afternoon papers that were about the continuing fortification effort in the Karelian isthmus, mostly by enthusiastic volunteers, and then about the German advance into Poland.
POLISH RESISTANCE IN THE CORRIDOR HAS ENDED.
KRAKOW AND LODZ IN DANGER.
There appeared to be some headlines about the plans for rationing, too. In this morning's Helsingin Sanomat, there had already been a cartoon about people making lines at shops to hoard coffee and sugar, among other things. Those goods would be the first ones to go under rationing.
When Urho finally reached his office at the ministry, now slightly smaller and more modest than before, he needed to take a pill to do something to the pain in his leg. He made a mental note to call his doctor and ask for stronger painkillers. It would not do that the pain would cloud his judgement, not in these circumstances and in a time like this.
Sitting heavily into his chair and then looking at the pile of papers in his inbox, Urho again thought of the dream that had awoken him that morning. As much as he could by now appreciate the dark humour of the thing, a chill still went through him to think about it.
I need to remove your genitals.
Jesus bloody Christ.
….
"Offensive action on the 'food front' was showing suspicious signs of escalation yesterday, as in the morning also in Helsinki there were queues in front of grocery stores all the way to the street.."
A Helsingin Sanomat editorial cartoon, September 4th 1939.
Notes:
[1] The first stage of the operation took place on September 3rd and included the armored coastal ships Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen, the gunboats Uusimaa, Karjala and Turunmaa, and five guard motor boats.
[2] These plans had been discussed especially during the summer and fall of 1938, and again in the summer of 1939. In early June 1939 the plans had been put into ice, in part due to Soviet official criticism towards them.
...
To Be Continued
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Go for it!
Sure, there will not be any trouble at all in the future, no sir.
Well, this could have a positive effect - if there was enough time. Which is very much in doubt. However, does his text/book on the subject (Suomen puolustaminen) not predate the POD, as if I understand correctly, it was already finished 1938, and only published later because it was delayed by the then minister of foreign affairs Erkko? Of course, his review on the actual preparedness is/will be a different matter.
Fast, good updates, thank you.
Go for it!
I hope I caught the logic and disturbing nature of some dreams well enough in the sequence there, for the readers to be sympathize with poor UKK...
Halsti's book indeed was already completed before 1939, but due to delays the final version was actually printed and published only in early November 1939. I'll justify my words in the update by Kekkonen not knowing the process behind the delay of the book. Let's say that he had only heard that Halsti was writing a book and that to his knowledge it had not been published yet by early September.
I have Halsti's book here on my table. I also have his memoirs in three parts - which I just need to read.
Fast, good updates, thank you.
You're quite welcome.
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Donald Reaver
Donor
Just caught up with this one, looks like I'm just in time for the winter war. Not sure what to think about some of the references from the future so far. Sounds like a worst world. Scars on her arm after leaving prison, implants of some kind?
Without going into any more details about Nora Farrah's life at this point, I can tell you that the scars on her arm have nothing to do with the government (any government) or a corporation, they are more a personal sort of thing.
As for the continuation of the story, due to work issues, etc, it'll take still about a week before I have time to complete the next update.
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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
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Twenty-three: Matters of Pressing Mutual Importance
Nurses, members of the Lotta Svärd, and other female volunteers are showcasing the latest in civil defence fashions at the Guard Manege in October 1939...
Source: Helsinki City Museum
Twenty-three: Matters of Pressing Mutual Importance
On September 13th, a rainy Wednesday in the Finnish capital, the people reading their morning papers learned that in embattled Poland the defenders kept falling back on all fronts. Warsaw was getting encircled, and Marshal Rydz-Śmigly had ordered the Polish armies to start withdrawing towards the so-called Romanian Bridgehead. The Helsingin Sanomat tried to balance its reporting between Polish and German sources not to give too much weight to the official position of either government. Some of the paper's intrepid reporters were even present in the flashpoints themselves. Väinö Länsiluoto reported his views from Danzig, just recently a Free City under a League of Nations mandate, to give the readers facts about the situation on the ground, and to tell Finns that some Finnish nationals had been right there in Danzig to see the hostilities begin as the Finnish steam freighter Kastelholm had been just coaling at the mouth of the Vistula when the first shells were fired against the Westerplatte on August 31st. On the Hel Peninsula to the north, Länsiluoto reminded his readership, Polish units still continued a defensive struggle against the German invaders. The Battle of Hel would continue until September 28th, when due to the hopelessness of the defenders' position and the dwindling of their supplies the commander of the Polish Navy, Rear Admiral Unrug, ordered the Hel garrison to surrender – thus officially ending organized resistance in Poland.
While Poland's doomed struggle still continued and as Red Army troops stood poised to cross the Polish eastern border to take what had been promised to Moscow in the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Finnish domestic news were dominated by effects of the war on the shores of the Baltic on the Finnish society and the economy. The threat of foreign trade being cut had been accentuated by the near-sinking of the Finnish steel barque Olivebank which hit a sea mine on the North Sea on the 10th and managed only with help from nearby Danish ships to stay afloat.[1] As the ship was towed to Esbjerg for repairs, the reported views of the Olivebank's captain, Carl Granith, were used in the Finnish papers to demand better protection for peaceful trade vessels of neutral nations during wartime. Traditionally, 80-90% of all Finnish trade was carried on merchant ships, so the matter was generally seen as crucial for the small nation that had declared itself neutral in the unfolding European war.
The Finnish government had little chance of helping Finnish ships far from the home shore, but what the Paasikivi cabinet did was to increase measures to control the import and export of crucial materials, and to boost the resources available for stockpiling and the planning thereof. The supply committee of the economic defence council had already in August been given the task to start preparing the necessary legal framework for organizing emergency supply matters, and to handle acute problems with shortages. This groundwork proved very important when the creation of the new Ministry of Supply begun. The Ministry, led at first on the cabinet level by Rainer von Fieandt, officially came into being on September 18th, when the building previously used by the forestry department of the Helsinki University was mostly taken over for its various offices. The creation of the Ministry was spearheaded by its general secretary Artturi Lehtinen, with significant help from Henrik Ramsay, the chairman of the economic defence council (which now also become a part of the Ministry). Both the capital and the provinces were scoured for talent for the Ministry for which manifold responsibilities were projected already in September.
At this time, several plans of diversifying the Finnish access to foreign trade were floated. There was talk of building a railway line to the Norwegian coast through the Finnish Western ”arm”. A railway line to Petsamo was also discussed in the Eduskunta. The Finnish Foreign Ministry even inquired for the possibility to buy the rails from the British. It proved impossible under the circumstances. What all these plans practically boiled down to, in the short term, was an effort to improve road connections towards both Petsamo and the ports of Narvik and Skibotn in Norway. In Petsamo there was an active effort to improve and enlarge the rather limited port facilities as well, connected naturally to the ongoing works at the Kolosjoki nickel mine. Here the Anglo-Canadian Inco-Mond Corporation was prepared to start nickel production by late 1940 or early 1941, should nothing untoward slow down the construction of the modern smelter and the power station built to provide electricity for the mining operation.
Things were moving also on the military sector, despite problems. The work of the National Defence Council had been practically stopped for over two weeks because of the death of Rudolf Walden and the continued medical problems of C.G.E. Mannerheim. On the third week of September, Lieutenant General Harald Öhquist was officially installed as the acting chairman of the Defence Council, as the wheelchair-bound President Kallio again refused practically bedridden Mannerheim's permanent resignation from his post on the 15th. In retrospect, it might be understandable that Kallio hoped for the old Field Marshal to again take his post at the Defence Council, as a unifying national figure, but when we now know the severity of Mannerheim's depression in September 1939, and the continuing pain he was under due to the complications arising from the emergency amputation he had gone through, it might have well been better for the nation that his resignation had been accepted at this point.
An important figure in the military leadership under the circumstances was Colonel A.F. Airo, Mannerheim's trusted staff officer who since 1938 had worked as the Head of Operations at the General Staff and as Mannerheim's secretary in the Defence Council. During the heightened tensions of the fall of 1939, Airo was consistently a voice of prudence and caution who opposed the very idea of accepting any demands the USSR might make to the Finnish government. Together with Lieutenant General Oesch (the Chief of the General Staff), Airo and Colonel Valo Nihtilä kept working and implementing plans for mobilizing the Finnish military for war, if need be, during the de facto hiatus in the official Defence Council's work. In hindsight, Airo's cool and exaggerated carefulness appears even slightly reckless: on September 14th, for example, the same day the Red Army finally begun its invasion of Eastern Poland in earnest, Airo decided that the men of the infantry battalion called up for ”extraordinary exercises” in Turku to remilitarize Åland if need be could be sent back to home as the unit was, for the time being, unnecessary. In the event, Airo's view was that Finland should avoid any and all provocations that Moscow could use in its political operations against the Finnish government's position.
Incidentally, the belated official inquiry into the near-collision of the armored coastal ship Väinämöinen and the Soviet freighter Metallist was completed two days later. The findings of the Navy's internal review, signed and accepted by Major General Valve himself, were that the captain of the ship had followed the requirements of ”good seamanship” and that only the ship's watch officer was to be reprimanded for ”temporarily failing to maintain efficient visual surveillance of the ship's vicinity”. Between the lines, the report indicated that the incident was in big part attributable to the erratic course followed by the Soviet freighter, a fact that the Soviet embassy did not fail to notice. It appeared the only follow-up, for the time being, was a mooted protest by the Soviet ambassador.
Deep inside Polish territory, the German and Soviet troops met at Brest-Litovsk on September 21st and on the 23rd organized a highly symbolic victory parade in the town which name carried interesting connotations for both erstwhile allies. This celebration aptly echoed British cartoonist David Low's famous Rendezvous, published in the Evening Standard three days previously, with Hitler and Stalin meeting cordially in a bombed-out city, trading bows and back-handed compliments with each other. As now the Polish issue was all but wrapped up, with mere contractual formalities with the Third Reich and a bloody mop-up operation remaining, Joseph Stalin turned his eyes towards the other, smaller nations on the Western border of the USSR.
On September 21st the Estonian government received an invitation from Moscow to send a representative to negotiate a new trade agreement with the USSR. On the 23rd, then, the Estonian Foreign Minister Karl Selter flew from Tallinn to Moscow, to immediately upon his arrival meet Molotov in the Kremlin. What Selter would face in Moscow was something else than trade issues. The first thing Molotov hit Selter with was a Soviet condemnation of Estonia for allowing the Polish submarine Orzel to leave Tallinn after it had fled from the Polish waters to avoid being sunk or captured by the Germans.[2] According to Molotov, by international agreements the Estonians should have interned the submarine for the remainder of the war, and to him this incident very much highlighted the pressing need for more and better mutual security arrangements in the Baltic Sea area.
In this vein, Molotov arrived to his point: a suggestion that Estonia and the USSR should enter into a treaty of mutual assistance, one that would include Estonia granting its eastern neighbour the right to have military bases in its area. To stop Selter from making any counterarguments, Molotov told the Estonian that it would be best if what he said wouldn't be considered a mere suggestion, but actually an ultimatum: should the Estonian government refuse to accept the Soviet demand, the USSR would be forced to realize the goals outlined in the draft treaty ”by other means”. Molotov also told Selter that Estonia should not expect help from the Germans – a point that was during the next day confirmed through the Estonian ambassador in Berlin.
By this point, the Red Army had eleven divisions in readiness along the Estonian land border, and the Soviet fleet had been instructed to prepare for kicking off a maritime blockade of Estonia at a short notice, to stop Estonian naval vessels from escaping to Finland or Sweden, should Moscow deem this necessary. The orders to the units were sent on September 24th, at the same time as Selter boarded his plane to return to Tallinn. Both the Red Army and the navy units were expected to be in readiness at 4 a.m. on September 26th.
The Estonian government met at Toompea Hill in the evening of the 24th. The meeting, chaired by President Päts, was a gloomy affair: there was general agreement among the president and the cabinet members that Molotov's ”other means” could only be understood as military action. Due to the massive discrepancy between Soviet and Estonian military strength, the outcome of a military conflict with the USSR would be a foregone conclusion – the troops available after mobilization (which would take time) would amount to only two divisions of infantry.[3]
Thus, Selter was given instructions to negotiate with Molotov about a treaty of mutual assistance, but to try to avoid all issues that would violate Estonian sovereignty and internal security. Selter returned to Moscow on the 25th, and already on the following day he would sign a treaty which would be followed by several similar agreements between the USSR and its neighbours. In the text, both high contracting parties committed to help each other in all possible ways should they come under attack by any foreign power in Europe. Estonia granted the USSR the right to build naval bases on both Dagö and Ösel, as well as in Paldiski. It also agreed to host Soviet airbases, the locations of which would be specified later. In an additional protocol, the maximum number of Soviet army and air force troops in Estonia was set at 30 000 men, while the naval strength was not limited in any way.
In the following week, the USSR invited the governments of Latvia and Lithuania to attend a similar process. Latvia's Foreign Minister, Vilhelms Munters, was invited to Moscow on September 28th and he travelled on the 30th. The Latvian-Soviet treaty would be signed on the 2nd. The Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Jonas Černius, arrived to the Kremlin on October 1st and the treaty was signed on the 8th. All the Baltic representatives visiting Moscow were assured that the USSR was not intent on the Sovietization of their nations – after all, all the three treaties included provisions stating that the USSR's defensive arrangements would in no way violate the sovereignty or the political and economic systems of these nations. Desperately clinging on to this straw, several Baltic politicians would in the next months state that they in fact got a more lenient deal out of Stalin than they had initially hoped for. Even the belief that the USSR would be now so satisfied of its new arrangements with the Baltic nations (and the strategic benefits to be derived thereof) and would thus not seek to further attach them to the Soviet system, was expressed at high political quarters.
North of the Gulf of Finland, the line of Baltic dominoes that had been set into motion by the fall of Poland now finally reached Helsinki. On October 3rd, the day after the Soviet-Latvian treaty was signed, Molotov summoned the Finnish ambassador in Moscow, Yrjö-Koskinen, to his presence and presented to him an invitation for the Finnish Foreign Minister, Väinö Voionmaa, or some other person empowered by the Finnish government to represent it on the highest level, to arrive to Moscow to discuss ”matters of pressing mutual importance”. In doing so, Molotov asked for an answer within two days.
It was Finland's turn.
...
...Whereas elsewhere in the city, the preparations for the 1940 Helsinki Olympics continue apace as if Europe wasn't being mired deeper in a general war by the day.
Source: The Finnish National Board of Antiquities
Notes:
[1] The steel barque was owned by the Åland-based shipping concern of Gustaf Erikson, and it was enroute from Barry, Wales with just ballast in its hold to return to its home port in Mariehamn. In the event, the ship's damages were so bad that it's stay in Esbjerg stretched months longer than had been initially thought. As a result, the Olivebank' s fate during the war would prove very different than had been anticipated, too.
[2] The Orzel reached the southern tip of Gotland on September 19th. The submarine was short on provisions and did not have any navigational charts. The captain, Lieutenant Commander Kłoczkowski, was suffering from an acute illness. He thus decided to seek assistance from the Swedish. The Orzel sailed diretly into Karlskrona under a white flag, surprising the Swedish. The submarine and its crew were interned by the Swedish government.
[3] General Laidoner's forces were in many ways ill-prepared. It has been argued that especially in strategy and tactics the Estonian army was stuck in the early 20s. Later studies of the extant Estonian documents regarding military plans have posited that, mindbogglingly, the Estonian military had only training in offensive tactics, and there simply were no plans for a defensive campaign or a fighting withdrawal in the face of a superior enemy attack.
...
To Be Continued
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I'm not 100% sure of the Polish ranks, but isn't the usual english translation, at least in modern times, Rear Admiral?
And it will still be discussed hundreds of years later, I presume...
Now this does not sound promising, at all!
Great chapter, at least Airo is in charge and will no doubt do as good a job with the preparations as anyone could. Of course the title of the timeline seems to hint that some kind of deal is to be made, and broken, perhaps with the actual war only starting afterwards. Keep up the good work, and thank you.
You're right of course. It's a silly mistake to make, as I've just recently commented upon someone else committing the same snafu in real life...
Twenty-four: Something In the Air
"Helsinki by night".
Source: The Helsinki City Museum
....
Twenty-four: Something In the Air
…
Wolf
A mud-spattered Ford rolled to the yard of the sanatorium. It was a nice collection of buildings, with a whitewashed stone main building surrounded by smaller wooden ones. As soon as the car stopped, a serious man in a grey suit approached it briskly. Wolf opened the door and stepped out into the slight rain.
”Excuse me, sir”, the man said in a polite but precise tone, ”this is a restricted area.”
Wolf had seen the signs already on the driveway. Something about ”contagious diseases”, even – a nice touch. He nodded to the man, pulling out a piece of paper.
”I know. I am Captain Halsti, and this is my warrant.”
The man looked at the paper, and Wolf could see the look on his face change.
”Welcome, captain. My name's Heyno. How can I help you?”
”Is the major in?”
”You're in luck – he arrived just a couple of hours ago.”
”Luck has nothing to do with it, Mister Heyno. We have a prearranged meeting with him.”
The two walked in to the main building. Also from the inside it looked like a real hospital, though there were no nurses or doctors anywhere to be seen. There were just youngish, military-looking men in civilian suits, or even in laid-back trousers and sweaters. Heyno took Wolf up the stairs and along the corridor, and then knocked on a heavy wooden door. In a minute, a man with a frown on his face opened it.
There was a flash of recognition on the man's face, and he asked Wolf in, casually dismissing Heyno with a nod. The captain and the major shook hands. Then Major Hallamaa asked his visitor to sit down in what appeared to be his office here.
”I've been expecting you”, he said, putting some papers into order on his desk.
”Word gets around, and intelligence is my business”, Reino Hallamaa declared and fixed his gaze on Wolf Halsti.
”I just came from Helsinki after meeting with an Estonian officer. They gave us some rather interesting material, just like the Latvians have recently...”
He laid down the papers and massaged his temple with his right hand.
”But enough of me. You're the man with a mission from Mannerheim”, the major said with a hint of smile.
Wolf had seen many other officers and visited many military commands in the last few weeks. He was greeted with either enthusiasm or doubt that bordered on hostility. Generally, it was the old and set-in-their-ways people who doubted him, and the reformers who were very positive towards him. Major Hallamaa, Wolf suspected, was one of the latter folks.
”It sounds a bit.. grandiose, when you put it that way”, Wolf said. ”...but I've heard worse”, he continued, without drawing a breath.
”You're rattling people's cages, and some don't like that. Me, I tend to think that if we are to have cages, then there will also have to be some rattling to keep their occupants awake.”
By now, Wolf had made a lot of notes and written what amounted to draft memorandums containing observations and suggestions of reform. But it was still early days – his final goal, what he considered was in his remit, was a full report on the modernization of the Finnish military system, to be presented to Mannerheim and the National Defence Council by early 1940.
”How's the Field Marshal, anyway?”, Hallamaa asked, some concern in his eyes.
Wolf shook his head.
”Not well, not well at all”, he said, remembering his last visit at the old man's Helsinki home.
”He's lost all the good humor he used to have – I worked briefly as his aide-de-camp, you know, some time ago. In comparison to those days... There's no spark there. He's in a dark place right now, I'm afraid. The best doctors are attending to him, but they seem to be short of solutions. We can only hope that time will heal his wounds, at the moment.”
”I am sorry to hear that.”
A contemplative silence fell in the room, accentuated by the grey October weather outside.
Then Hallamaa stood up.
”You're a busy man, captain. Let's not dwell on things we can't help, but rather attend to matters that are in our own hands. I've prepared a tour of the facility for you.”
”Lead on, then, major”, the captain said, nodding.
Hallamaa took Halsti around the largish building, first to a room set up like a classroom where a lesson was underway, on the properties of radio waves and various kinds of issues with them, it seemed. Next, he was led into a smaller room where two men were sitting at a table with American-made National radio equipment, headphones on, scribbling notes on sheets of paper. Halsti picked up one of the sheets and read it.
”I can't make heads or tails of this, I'm afraid”, he whispered to Hallamaa.
”To be fair, it is in code. Let's see...”
The major looked at the paper himself, contemplatively.
”It's in level three tactical code from the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. Easy. Come”, he said, leaving the room.
They entered the next room where two men similarly sat at a table, sans radios but with more papers and books about them. They stood up in a hurry when the two men entered.
”As you were. What does this say, Möttönen?”, Hallamaa said to the younger man, thrusting the paper to him with an authoritative air. The man simply nodded, took the paper, a pencil and an empty sheet. Halsti and Hallamaa looked on as he pored over the paper, consulted a couple of books in Finnish and Russian, made markings on the paper. A few times he corrected his markings, and finally he held up the paper triumphantly to the major.
”Major. It is a messy hand, one I have not encountered before, but clear enough”, the man said in an obvious Savonian accent.
Halsti had checked the time. It had taken seven minutes.
”A fleet commissary office in Kronstadt reports a shortage in uniform tunics, blankets and bed linens to the fleet supply headquarters in Leningrad. The message feels a bit, ah, angry.”
Hallamaa nodded.
”Analysis?”
”What with the other messages we have been getting recently, I'd say this one can be used to argue that the Red Banner Baltic Fleet is stepping up its preparedness and that new recruits are arriving to the barracks as we speak, major.”
”Thank you, sergeant major. I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. Alright then, carry on.”
Next, the major took Halsti to a small electronics repair shop, where four men were hard at work with equipment the captain did not readily recognize but assumed had again something to do with radios. When finally the two men entered the building's small cafeteria and Hallamaa offered the captain some coffee and sandwiches, the captain could agree that it appeared like a well-run little operation.
He told as much to the major.
”That is precisely my complaint, captain”, Hallamaa answered.
”We have more stations like this one, as you well know, for listening on different parts of the Soviet military, but it is still very much all too little. I have been constantly trying to get more resources for the work, but none of it is forthcoming. The old guard...”
Halsti knew the problem. The older generals saw the radio intelligence's work as a quaint little diversion, just a bit of study that would not have practical use, not something that could have major effects in a war, up to the strategic level.
”For what it's worth”, the young captain told his host, ”I do agree with you. This kind of work might well be crucial in the war to come – if we have the resources for it. And then its results would have to be readily available to the highest military leadership, after necessary analysis, while also crucial operational secrecy will have to be maintained.”
Hallamaa nodded, not finding any fault with Halsti's thinking.
”Now”, the captain said, ”what do you need?”
Hallamaa gave him a crooked smile.
”Simply put? More money, more equipment and more men. Women, too.”
Halsti raised his gaze from his notes.
”Too lonesome here for you boys, major?”
”Hah, you joke but you do know what I mean. Experienced secretaries with skills in shorthand and typewriting. And keen language skills. Don't get me wrong, though – it does get boring being cooped up with just the same men, day after day. Not for me, mind. I get to travel – recently to Sweden, and to Britain, too. But to the rank and file, as it were.”
Halsti smiled and nodded.
”You get me a draft proposal on how you would expand wartime signals intelligence, in the first instance and in a term of, say, two years, and I promise to give it a good, honest look. For the benefit of our superiors and the Fatherland, of course.”
”Of course. I'll get you something by the end of the week”, Hallamaa said.
”Unless, of course, I'll be busier with other matters", he said and nodded to the newspapers on the table.
In the folded paper, just the main headline was visible.
EXTRAORDINARY MILITARY EXERCISES, it said, in all caps.
….
Veli
...On the Hakaniemi Square and in the immediate vicinity. According to official sources, there were no serious injuries for the people involved on either side of the demonstration. Several attendees of the far left group have been arrested by the Helsinki police. According to the State Police, some of these individuals will be questioned in connection with...
The Vaara family was gathered in the farmhouse's big hall to listen to the radio. It had for long been a daily ritual of Salomo Vaara to listen to the news, and he had made it compulsory for everyone else to attend the proceedings as well. Now the head of the Vaara household was not home, having taken up a position in the capital, but the remaining members of the family continued with the ritual of the evening news.
...Has been refused by the Finnish government. The ship will have to leave Finnish waters, and the German Jewish refugees aboard need to find another port for disembarkation. Reached for comment about the matter, Urho Kekkonen, the Second Minister of the Interior, reminded everyone for the responsibility of the Finnish government to look after the national interest and the well-being of the Finnish people first...
Veli Vaara listened to the news these days with growing apprehension. It seemed to the young farmer that, somehow, the flow of history had sped up. It was like if you were paddling along a placid lake in your canoe. Sure, you had to watch out for sudden rocks and skerries on your path under the still waters – it was a lake you didn't know entirely. But then when the waters were still you see below them somewhat, and predict what was coming up. But now, the flow of water had picked up, and because there was a heavier current, you could not see under the surface. Were there actual rapids up ahead? You couldn't see that, either, because a fog was rising...
...Will personally lead the Finnish government delegation which will leave for Moscow tomorrow to discuss matters of mutual interest with the Soviet leadership, based on an invitation from the Soviet government. Along with the Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Väinö Voionmaa and Section Head Johan Nykopp from the Foreign Ministry will also be joining the delegation. Additionally, Colonel Paasonen, recently the aide-de-camp to the President of the Republic, is in attendance as a military...
Someone reached to him and tugged his left sleeve.
”Veli”, little Erkki asked him, looking puzzled, ”what is an atterant?”
Veli looked at his brother and smiled to the boy.
”An aide-de-camp, Erkki, is a soldier who is assigned to a higher officer or political leader to work as his personal assistant”, he said, slowly and with exaggarated care.
The boy nodded earnestly, and continued to listen to the news.
...Voluntary evacuations of civilians have been started in Helsinki and Viipuri due to reasons of raising national preparedness in uncertain times. The state and government are assisting the population of these two cities of national importance, by making it possible to buy railway or bus tickets at reduced prices and making available extraordinary railway and bus services. Good, neighbourly cooperation among ordinary citizens will be of high importance ...
Veli Vaara looked at his family around him, his mother Alma thoughtfully knitting a woolen sock while she listened to the staticky radio signal sent to the ether over the Republic from the modern long wave transmitter in Lahti. His sister Hilja stroking the fur of the yellow tomcat Pekka, his brother Jorma sitting next to her on the wooden bench by the big table, in the light of the oil lamp in the darkening October evening. On the wall, the old grandfather clock was counting time in its ponderous manner.
Suddenly, the yellow cat jumped down from Hilja's arms and, with its fluffy tail raised high, took a few suspicious steps towards the door.
About a minute later, there was a knock on the door.
It was a young, serious man in a Civil Guards uniform, slightly out of breath.
”Evening, Mikko”, Veli said to the Keinänen boy, ”what brings you around tonight?”
”Veli ”, young Mikko Keinänen said in a serious, official voice, one that made a shiver run through the spine of the acting master of the Vaara household, ”I have a letter for you from the military district.”
Veli had already guessed as much.
….
The Helsinki Main Railway Station, October 6th, 1939, 6 p.m.
In the October evening, rainless but surprisingly chilly, the main railway terminus of Finland was filling with people. Unlike most people who usually made their way across the main hall of the iconic station designed by Eliel Saarinen and built during the First World War, these people not going anywhere or coming from anywhere, either. Most, tonight, were here as spectators to a special event.
Men in police and military uniforms kept a close eye on the station and its surroundings. Even a few plain-clothed State Police agents were present, trying to blend into the crowd. The whole capital was in a state of heightened readiness this day.
A small group of men in suits and heavy overcoats pushed through the crowd, with uniformed men clearing a way for them. The group was led in a dyspeptic-looking older man with round spectacles, huffing and puffing in annoyance as he went. He was followed by a taller and slightly younger, somehow academic-looking man who tried to smile carefully to the people all around. Three other, still younger men brought up the rear of the group.
When the group arrived to the platform, they were met by a multitude of people. And the people sung to them. Patriotic songs rang out into the night on the open platform, as did religious hymns like Luther's powerful A Mighty Fortress is Our Lord. Naturally, they sang the national anthem, too.
Everyone who was there would remember this night for a long time.
The press and the radio were there, too. Journalists and their photographers covering the scene, a Yleisradio team making a broadcast for which they wanted comments from the main characters of this special event. Both Prime Minister Paasikivi and Foreign Minister Voionmaa indulged the radio reporteers, the Prime Minister briefly and Voionmaa in some more detail. The general tenor of their messages to the Finnish people was one of hope and national unity.
Finally, the crowd sang again, the song that was known only as the Pledge:
Hear a sacred pledge, you precious land of Finland:
Violence can not touch you at all!
We will protect you, guard you with blood,
Be without worry, your son is awake!
After the sound of singing died down, Minister Voionmaa doffed his hat to the people and started climbing to the carriage. Juho Kusti Paasikivi started to follow him up the steps, but Lieutenant Colonel Aladar Paasonen, the military member of the delegation leaving for Moscow, put his hand on the older man's shoulder.
”Prime Minister”, he said, nodding towards the station proper.
From there, across the throng, two military officers were determinedly pushing their way towards the delegation. Paasonen had already recognized one of them as a man he knew.
Paasikivi waited.
”Mr Prime Minister”, the older of the two men, with a staff major's rank badges on his collar, said.
”Yes, what is it?”, Paasikivi asked, irritably, ”as you can see, I am a bit busy”.
”It is the president, he... He had another stroke. Twenty minutes ago. They are taking him to the Surgical Hospital as we speak.”
”Perkele”, the Prime Minister cursed under his breath, ”right now, of all times?”
”I am sorry”, the major said, and certainly looked that way, too.
The Foreign Minister looked out of the open doorway. He had not heard the major's message yet.
”Mr Prime Minister, the train is leaving.”
Juho Kusti Paasikivi looked at his Foreign Minister and made up his mind.
”You go on, Väinö”, he said, his heart sinking, ”I have to stay here. President Kallio is poorly again.”
”But Prime Minister”, Voionmaa said as Lieutenant Colonel Paasonen already climbed the stairs to the train as well.
Paasikivi only raised his hand to Voionmaa.
”Go! You have all my trust riding with you.”
With those words, the train took off towards the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
….
Wind rises at a yard I can't reach anymore
A letter knocked on the door and told me the distance
Just like shaking its head a tree swayed its branches
Even if it well knows it will have to carry me
The crescent of a silver moon
Curves over my head
Until it falls
And finally that bright crescent
Of a silver moon
Will wrap itself around my neck
….
A letter knocked on the door and told me the distance
Just like shaking its head a tree swayed its branches
Even if it well knows it will have to carry me
The crescent of a silver moon
Curves over my head
Until it falls
And finally that bright crescent
Of a silver moon
Will wrap itself around my neck
….
"Finnish Prime Minister J.K. Paasikivi is about to leave for Moscow. October 6th, 1939."
Source: The Finnish Military Museum
To Be Continued
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SOURCES FROM THE FNAS Vol II. The Death of Kallio
SOURCES FROM THE FINNISH NATIONAL ARCHIVAL SYSTEMVol II.
The Death of Kallio
...
"President Kallio is dead.
The beloved father of the nation met with a stroke.
Flags flown at half staff across the nation."
Helsingin Sanomat, October 10th, 1939.
....
Twenty-five: Snow and Silent Shadows
....
Quietly, flakes of snow will fall,
Fall into a snow-white ground,
Covering the yellow leaves of autumn,
Throwing them away
I sit alone in silence,
I was left here with my memories,
I can never forget
That most beautiful summer
Like into a fairytale of magic castles,
I used to believe in happiness,
I was briefly in the spell of love,
Now I won't believe it anymore
Georg Malmstén & Dallapé: Lumihiutaleita (1936)
Twenty-five: Snow and Silent Shadows
On Monday, October 9th 1939, the civil defence organization in Helsinki staged the first general exercise for a black-out and an air raid alarm in the Finnish capital. On that very same day, President Kyösti Kallio drew his last breath in the Surgical Hospital, with his wife Kaisa sitting next to him, holding his hand. The final stroke that led to his death was entirely expected. In fact all through late September and early October there had been talk among the president and the members of the cabinet about Kallio resigning from the office of president due to his several medical issues.
For the Finnish government, Kallio's death could not have taken place at a more inopportune time. Prime Minister Paasikivi's coalition cabinet had only been in office since late August, and had started its work in conditions of national tragedy as it was. Now, less than two months later, the new cabinet was facing the death of the well-liked and respected President of the Republic, in the conditions of a general war having taken hold of Europe.
Prime Minister Paasikivi now became the acting president of Finland. This was not an official position, according to the constitution he still was merely acting as the president's deputy for the time being. It was now instrumental to elect a new president for Finland as soon as possible.
Also on the 9th, the official discussions between the Finnish and Soviet governments were started in Moscow. In the Kremlin, the Finnish delegation was met by Foreign Minister Molotov, who after offering his condolences for the death of President Kallio and apologizing for the absence of General Secretary Stalin himself, invited the Finnish delegation to the table. On the right side, sat the Finns: Foreign Minister Voionmaa as the head of the delegation, then the Finnish ambassador to the USSR, Yrjö-Koskinen; next to him Nykopp, an experienced Foreign Ministry official, and finally Colonel Paasonen, the Finnish military expert. On the left side was Molotov, his deputy Potyomkin, and Derevyansky, the Soviet ambassador to Finland.
After proposing to the Finns a mutual assistance pact, like on a whim and quickly shelving it, after hearing the negative answer of his opposing numbers, Molotov then outlined the general conditions of the Soviet government to the Finns. These included a Soviet base on the Finnish coast, preferably on the Hanko Peninsula, several islands on the Gulf of Finland to be given to the USSR, and ”border corrections” made both up north in Petsamo and in the south on the Karelian isthmus. In return, Finland would be given additional areas in Eastern Karelia, namely the parishes of Repola and Porajärvi. Some additions to the Finno-Soviet non-aggression pact would be made, and border fortifications would have to be destroyed on both sides on the Karelian isthmus. After Voionmaa communicated the Finnish position that the territorial integrity of the Republic of Finland was inviolable, the meeting adjourned for the day.
Voionmaa contacted Helsinki by telegraph to relay the Soviet position and to ask for further instructions. Inside the hour, he received an answer: discussions could not be continued based on the Soviet demands. The delegation had no chance but to return home as soon as possible.
On Tuesday, October 10th 1939, the statue of Aleksis Kivi was unveiled in Helsinki. The statue created by the sculptor Wäinö Aaltonen honored the writer of Seitsemän veljestä (”The Seven Brothers”), generally recognized as the most important Finnish novel. The event was attended by thousands. Heavy snowfall on the Railway Square covered the people, the statue of the thoughtful author with his downturned gaze, and the Finnish Navy Band, whose rendition of the national anthem sounded somehow muted this time. When the band stopped playing, it was as if all sound had gone out and all colours had been washed away. That day entire Finnish capital was hidden by a blanket of snow, early for the season. According to Doctor Risto Jurva, the ice expert at the Helsinki University Department of Meteorology, all the signs pointed towards a cold winter and heavy ice cover on the Baltic Sea to be expected in the months to come.
That week, several additional age cohorts for reservists were called to ”extraordinary exercises”. In other words, this meant a limited mobilization of the Finnish military, a process that had in fact begun already before the president's death. The mobilization was begun based on a suggestion by General Öhquist, the chairman of the National Defence Council, who many say was in this mainly channeling old Field Marshal Mannerheim.
In the Eduskuntatalo, the Finnish parliament passed amendments in the Criminal Code in the interest of increasing the severity of sentences for espionage. The new Civil Defence Act was given its second reading. That week, the state authorities already acted in the interest of national security, and the State Police, directed by Urho Kekkonen, the Second Minister of the Interior, started bringing ”dangerous elements” in for ”protective custody”. This measure was directed mainly against the far left, and that week already over three hundred individuals were arrested, mainly in Helsinki and the other major cities.
Kekkonen was also otherwise busy, as organizing and overseeing the volunteer evacuations of civilians in the border parishes on the Karelian isthmus were made the responsibility of the minister. To this effect, Kekkonen was to travel to Karelia himself. In the event, the death of President Kallio and the ensuing uncertainty about the governance of the nation kept Kekkonen in Helsinki where, instead, he would during the week receive parish delegations from the Karelian areas, all there to demand the government to stand firm against any Soviet demands.
In these meetings, Kekkonen consistently promised the Karelians that ”not one inch of Finnish land will be handed over to the Bolshevik government”. The answer seemed to elevate the visiting Karelians, who would leave the minister's offices with newfound optimism about their future.
Meanwhile, the Eduskunta and the parties were preoccupied with the most pressing domestic issue of the day: the lack of a President of Republic. The nation was in a state of mourning, perhaps still even in a state of shock after Kallio's death, and because the process of electing a new president had not been started while the old man was still alive, it was imperative that it would be started now.
On the evening of the 10th, while the Finnish delegation was returning to Finland by train, it was argued in the Eduskunta that the next president would have to be elected not in a nationwide election but through a simplified procedure by the parliament itself. This decision, based on the initiative of the Agrarian League, was generally agreed upon as prudent under the circumstances, due to the ongoing de facto military mobilization and the voluntary evacuations of civilians from several parts of the country. It was already seen in terms of showing national unity in the face of the USSR. In practice, this would mean voting on an expedited special act of parliament through which the electors of the 1937 presidential elections would be allowed to vote on the new president as well, for the remainder of Kallio's term of office.[1]
The first discussion about the Soviet demands were had in Helsinki between the members of the Finnish delegation and the Finnish cabinet on the evening of October 11th. In addition to the members of the delegation, in attendance were Paasikivi, the Minister of Defence Oksala, the Commander of the Army and the Chairman of the National Defence Council, Lieutenant General Öhquist, and the Chief of General Staff, Lieutenant General Oesch. Field Marshal Mannerheim was asked to attend, but he was unavailable due to unspecified health issues.
To start out, Paasikivi first noted that Finland had three options; either agree to the Soviet demands, or reject them in toto, or draft an alternative proposal for the Soviets. In the discussions that followed, only Oksala at first openly opposed concessions to the Soviets. He would have only discussed about the islands on the Gulf of Finland. Yrjö-Koskinen and Voionmaa, though, agreed that an effort would have to be made to ”satisfy the legitimate defensive needs of the Soviet Union”. The question was put to the soldiers present about how this could be achieved.
In the event, Öhquist in essence communicated Mannerheim's view that the fortress of Ino on the coast of the Gulf of Finland could be offered to the Soviets instead of Hanko. Oesch, in turn, commented upon the border changes, to point out that the changes as proposed would make the border many times more suitable for an Eastern attacker, and would make the position of the Finnish defenders difficult on both sides of the Ladoga, especially on the Isthmus where a new defensive line would have to be built further west of the current main defensive line – as a big part of it would have to be given over to the Red Army.
All three, Voionmaa, Oksala and Yrjö-Koskinen agreed that perhaps some minor changes on the Karelian Isthmus could be proposed, but Hanko was out of the question. The meeting was ended on the note that before proceeding to answer the USSR, Finland would need to find out whether Sweden would help Finland in the event of an escalation. As everyone present knew that Voionmaa was due to visit Stockholm in just a few days, the decision was made to postpone the next meeting until the matter could be discussed with members of the Swedish cabinet.
Naturally, the matter of the presidential elections in the parliament also had a bearing on the issue. In practice, the Finnish top leadership agreed that the new president would need to be elected before a binding deal with the Soviets could be agreed upon, anyway, never mind what the terms of that deal would be.
Voionmaa's trip to Sweden took place from October 14th to 16th. The Finnish Foreign minister met Foreign Minister Sandler (together with Erkko, the Finnish ambassador to Stockholm), Defence Minister Strindlund and, finally, Prime Minister Hansson. The results of the visit would have been lean even if, in the event, the situation did not turn from poor to worse due to external events. Sandler was still predictably supporting strong Swedish support to Finland, and publicly he argued for Swedish participation in the defence of Åland. In this, he was in agreement with the attitudes of the Swedish military leadership. All the other key members of the Swedish cabinet were hesitant, not to say negative towards aiding Finland. Voionmaa could see that Strindlund had an almost hostile attitude to the Finnish wishes, and that generally the death of Sköld in the Hannila incident was still weighing down the Swedish attitude towards the Finnish military on the negative side.
In the evening of the 15th, there was yet another maritime incident in the Baltic Sea. Just a few sea miles outside the lighthouse island of Märket, west of Åland, the Finnish minelayer Louhi and a Swedish freighter, S/S Ulla, collided almost head-on in heavy snow storm. The Swedish ship was damaged, but the crew of the Louhi acted fast and towed the ship to Eckerö on Åland. No lives were lost in the incident, which the captain of the Louhi claimed was due to the minelayer needing to avoid an unidentified largish ship moving towards from south to north across the area with no lights at all.[2] In the Swedish press, the incident was immediately compared to the Hannila accident, and in the left-wing press especially to the Finnish Navy's late summer incident with the Soviet freighter Metallist.
The argument most prevalent in the Swedish press was then that the Finnish military was hopelessly incompetent and the Finns generally could not be trusted in military matters. Another issue was the fact that in the Mariehamn-based newspaper Ålandstidningen, the local provincial leadership protested the Louhi's ”unnecessary breach” of Åland's demilitarization in no uncertain terms. This commentary was also echoed in Swedish leftist papers.
While Prime Minister Hansson was moved to comment the incident in tones that emphasized the importance of Swedish cooperation with its Nordic neighbours, the general results of the incident were negative towards the likelibility of Finno-Swedish defence cooperation in the near future, and Voionmaa reported as much to the Finnish cabinet on the 17th after he returned home.
No Swedish support for Finland was forthcoming in this juncture, then, and in fact voices were growing in the Swedish capital for a cabinet reshuffle to remove Rickard Sandler to replace him with someone else more committed to the traditional Swedish stance on neutrality.
The state funeral of President Kyösti Kallio would be held in the Helsinki Cathedral on Sunday, October 21st. The emergency act on electing a new president having passed the parliament with two thirds majority on the 22nd, the Finnish parliament moved on with electing a new president on Monday, the 30th.
On the 22nd, the Finnish delegation returned to Moscow to resume its talks with the Soviet leadership. Voionmaa would again lead the delegation, it being deemed prudent for Paasikivi to stay at home due to the uncertain constitutional situation. This time the Finnish Foreign Minister would face Stalin himself. Prior to the meeting, the Finns had entertained the notion that Stalin was acting like a carpet merchant in an Oriental bazaar, putting up a ludicrously high first offer to have room to haggle. Now, though, the Soviet dictator dispelled this notion by saying that what the USSR was was asking were ”the minimum terms”. No more, no less.
Stalin spoke at lenght about the defence needs of Leningrad, and the need to have the ability to close the Gulf of Finland from the enemy in the event of an attack against the USSR. While Stalin referred in his arguments to the Allied intervention in Russia during the Civil War, Voionmaa would later comment that in his view, what Stalin was actually talking about was the future threat of Germany, not that of the British or the French. To hear him argue his case, Finland would be under no threat due to the Soviet demands, and would be amply compensated by land for the comparatively small pieces of territory they would be handing over to the USSR. By the same token, said Stalin, the USSR would be ready to accept Finland remilitarizing the Åland islands even in peace time, through a bilateral treaty, in the interest of the defence of both nations in the northern Baltic Sea area.
During these negotiations, the Finns offered the Soviets the concessions that had been agreed upon among Paasikivi and the Finnish cabinet: Finland would hand over the islands of Peninsaari, Seiskari, Lavansaari, and Greater and Lesser Tytärsaari, and agree to the division of Suursaari. Additionally, Finland would hand over a small parcel of land on the Karelian Isthmus, known as the Kuokkala bend, to move the border closest to Leningrad 16 kilometers west from its 1920 line. The new border would run across the town of Terijoki.
As for Hanko, Finland could not agree to any concessions about the peninsula.
All this would of course be dependent on the Eduskunta agreeing to these concessions, Voionmaa added, and the new president confirming the deal with his signature after he has been sworn in.
As the two sides again could not reach an agreement, the negotiations were again stopped. As the Finnish delegation stood up to leave, Stalin's parting remark to them was to exhort the Finns to get their decision for a new president ”done and over with”, and also otherwise start being ”prudent and reasonable”. As Aladar Paasonen later commented, Stalin's words contained a measure of threat and in his view put all the Finns present ”ill at ease” about the country's position in the negotiations.
In one way at least, the Finns would be heeding Stalin's words in the next few days. Back in Helsinki, the presidential electors gathered at the Eduskunta on October 26th to vote in the first round of the extraordinary presidential elections. The candidates had been chosen and the battle lines had been drawn.
Starting with the biggest party in parliament, the SDP had nominated Väinö Tanner, as everyone had predicted. The party chairman had a week previously been made the Minister of Supply in a minor government reshuffle, to correct what the Social Democrats saw as a flaw in the cabinet and to give Tanner a seat at the adults' table. The unaffiliated professional Rainer von Fieandt had bowed out give Tanner the room Siltasaari [3] felt he needed.
The Agrarians, for their part, nominated Viljami Kalliokoski, the Minister of Agriculture and a loyal long-time soldier of the party. He was, however, a placeholder candidate: behind the scenes the party leadership, spearheaded by the party chairman Pekka Heikkinen, and supported, among others, by Urho Kekkonen, tried to organize for a compromise among the bourgeois parties ”in the interest of national unity”. Kalliokoski's position was then hamstrung from the beginning due to lack of real support.
The candidate of the National Coalition Party was, unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Paasikivi. The party's argument was ”don't change horses at midstream” and of course Paasikivi was practically working as the president as it was.
For the Progress Party, the obvious choice was Risto Ryti, the Minister of Finance. Ryti had been considered as an outside candidate already in 1937, and his generally competent handling of Finland's state finances in the last months, even in the conditions of an international crisis in Europe, had earned him even more support as a pragmatic, statesmanlike figure.
The Patriotic People's Movement had no candidate of their own, having finally come to terms with the fact that Mannerheim would not accept the party's nomination. The party did not declare their support for any other party before the first vote, either.
The Swedish People's Party did declare their support, and it was for Paasikivi. The party's argument was for continuity, and the SPP also seemed to believe that the experienced former ambassador to Stockholm would stand the best chance of convincing Sweden into supporting Finland as strongly as possible.
The first vote took place in the evening of the 26th. The results were as follows:
Tanner 93
Paasikivi 92
Ryti 71
Kalliokoski 40
Empty votes 4
In the event, then, the Agrarian vote was quite expectedly split between Paasikivi and Ryti. It was obvious, though, that on balance Paasikivi had an edge among the bourgeois parties candidates.
As the electors mulled the results of the first vote, in Moscow the Pravda reported a speech given by Vyacheslav Molotov in a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The speech was, in general, a look at the recent geopolitical changes in Eastern Europe following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. What is noteworthy, though, that after commenting on the wider ideological struggle taking place in the world between Socialism and imperialism, Molotov moved on to spell out in detail the USSR's demands on Finland in the recent negotiations. Like Stalin, he expounded on the importance of defending Leningrad, and the importance of the Finnish government ”to come to its senses” in trying to uphold cordial relations with the USSR and ”decline the siren calls of anti-Soviet forces and foreign warmongers”. The USSR's demands were quite modest, being the minimum conditions to secure the defence of the Soviet Union, Molotov reminded his listeners, and as such they were eminently reasonable and did not include any real threats against Finnish sovereignty and independence.
The text of the speech quickly reached Finnish and Nordic papers. Among the Finnish political class, the results were electrifying. Many of the people in the cabinet and the parliament who had still entertained ideas about the situation not being serious for Finland suddenly sat up and took notice. If the Soviet leadership was ready to air its demands in public, and so forcefully through the words of the Foreign Minister itself, then Stalin was being very serious. Molotov was acting as his messenger.
In a meeting between the leaders of the major parties in parliament on the 29th, a tacit understanding of the precariousness of the Finnish position was reached. Finland was being forced into a corner, the parliamentary leaders agreed, and now more than ever Finland needed to speak with one voice. Some rather tense private conversations were had, and as the evening wore on until midnight, a clear choice emerged. At the stroke of midnight, almost to the minute, the different parties called their electors to hear the decisions of the their respective party leaders.
On the 30th, after a generally sleepless night, the electors again convened at the Eduskunta. The second vote for the president of Finland would take place at noon. When the votes were counted, the results were clear. While there was a small smattering of electors who didn't apparently want to heed the general consensus, overwhelmingly what had been decided the night before held.
By 268 electoral votes out of 300, Juho Kusti Paasikivi was elected President of Finland.
Paasikivi was sworn in on Wednesday, November 1st, at the Eduskunta. The event was quite modest and matter of fact. But then nobody really expected any festivities or big gestures, not under the circumstances. In the evening, Paasikivi gave his first public radio speech as president. In it he recounted the seriousness of Finland's position, and exhorted the Finnish people to trust each other and be ready to support their family, friends and fellow citizens steadfastly and in every way possible during what ever events the next weeks and months would bring.
Three days later, Paasikivi called together the cabinet's foreign affairs committee to hammer out Finland's final offer to the USSR. There was a general agreement now that Finland could not offer much more than it already had in the previous session in Moscow. Väinö Tanner, now first time a part of these discussions, outright said that there should be no more concessions offered. He was in the minority, however. Most of the others present were ready to further small changes to what would be put on the table. A small slice of the Karelian Isthmus more was added to the list, and an agreement was reached on handing over the Ino fortress should worst come to worst. Any areas under discussion still ran short of reaching the main fortified defence line on the Isthmus.
As the discussion moved towards the question of Hanko, the people present were surprised to hear a knock on the door. The door opened, and a flustered young secretary made way for an old man leaning on a cane. It was Field Marshal Mannerheim himself, in civilian clothes. To those in the room that had not seen the old soldier since the Hannila incident, his appearance was probably shocking. In a 1987 article about Tanner it is said that Mannerheim looked five if not ten years older than just months previously.[4] He had lost weight and his hair suddenly appeared to have a lot more grey in it than before. Despite all this, though, the Field Marshal was as meticulously well-groomed and neat about his person as always.
Mannerheim said that he had just one message for the men present. And that message was: Finland could not afford a war. In the recent weeks, Mannerheim had become quite disillusioned with the state of the Finnish military. While the draft information Captain Halsti was delivering to the old officer about this and that aspect of the military were not entirely negative, in his depressed mind Mannerheim was reading a lot into the deficiencies reported and even alluded to. The positives he overlooked or did not acknowledge. As a matter of fact, Mannerheim's extant diaries from the days preceding this meeting show that, in the event of a Soviet attack on Finland, the Field Marshal did not believe that the Finnish military could stand firm for longer than a week or ten days at the very best. The conclusion was clear: Finland could not afford a war with Stalin's USSR.
And this is what he told the political leaders of Finland at this crucial moment.
”Mr President”, Mannerheim said in his slightly accented but precise Finnish, looking intently at Paasikivi, ”we can't have war”.
In his diaries, Paasikivi confesses that he was somewhat shaken by Mannerheim's sudden appearance at the Presidential Palace. What we now know about Mannerheim's role in securing Paasikivi's presidency[5], it is no wonder that he wanted to come personally to meet the members of the Finnish delegation due to leave for Moscow in a few days to give them his view about the situation.
In the rest of the Nordic area, the papers abounded with speculation about Finland's fate when the Finnish delegation arrived to Moscow on the 4th. The Soviet press was no better: what waited for the Finns in the morning's Pravda was a direct attack on Finland and its recalcitrance towards the USSR's ”justified minimum demands”. The hyperbolic story made Paasikivi feel quite conflicted, especially with its ending.
Regardless of any opposition, the Soviet Union will ensure its security by crushing all obstacles in its path!
At the Kremlin, the Finns met a surprisingly affable Stalin. The Soviet dictator appeared even jocular as the Finnish and Soviet delegations again faced each other. Stalin congratulated Paasikivi for his electoral victory, making him an unexpected gift of a box of cigars that astonished the old diplomat. Stalin told Paasikivi that it was his first time of negotiating personally with a Finnish president and that he felt honored for it.
If Stalin's goal was to confuse the Finns, he appeared to have succeeded in it.
The Soviets laid out their terms and the Finns offered their amended counter-proposal. Again, no headway could be made – the difference was just too big. In Paasikivi's eyes, Stalin looked outright disappointed with the Finns. He stood up and threw up his hands.
”You Finns are impossible”, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said, ”and here I was thinking that I could finally reason with you. But as it now appears that we civilians are unable to come to an agreement, maybe it is time to give the soldiers their turn to solve this Gordian knot?”
It sounded truly ominous. As the Finns were escorted out of the Kremlin and driven to their lodgings, the majority feeling among the delegation was that the talks had again reached an impasse. The next day was Sunday, however, and on Tuesday the 7th the USSR celebrated the memory of the Russian Revolution. The Finnish delegation had no chance but to wait, though Stalin had arranged so that they would not need to be idle: they had been invited to the Red Square to watch an impressive military parade, standing among a number of other foreign dignitaries. The sight of so many troops and massed armored vehicles had an impression on Paasikivi, at least. In his diaries he writes that the next night he was besieged by nightmares about battles. A particularly harrowing scene, Finnish infantry hopelessly charging a number of machine gun nests and dying in their hundreds in a hail of bullets, kept repeating until he woke up tangled in his sheets, his heart pounding.
In the morning of the 8th, a new invitation to come to the Kremlin arrived. Hesitantly, Paasikivi, Voionmaa, Tanner and Paasonen returned to the presence of the Soviet dictator.
Stalin still appeared cautiously optimistic, which again surprised a tired Paasikivi. And now he was ready to make concessions. He explained to the Finns that the Soviet demands on the Karelian Isthmus could well be reduced, as long as there was agreement on the Hanko question. As Voionmaa explained him that the Finns would not give Hanko, Stalin kept insisting on it. When the Finns again refused, Stalin suddenly changed his tack. He pulled up a map with a number of islands near Hanko highlighted[6].
”How about these islands?”
It appeared Stallin was ready to give up Hanko for lesser gains in the western Gulf of Finland. The haggling continued about Ino and the island of Suursaari, and after a couple of hours, it seemed that a gridlock would again be reached. Paasikivi, remembering his dreams from a night before, asked Stalin for a brief recess for the negotions, to be continued the first thing the next morning. Grudgingly, Stalin agreed.
Back in the Finnish embassy, the president reminded his fellow negotiators about Stalin's words regarding the military on the first day of these negotiations, and drew their attention to the display they had seen on the Red Square the day before. And then he finally exhorted them to remember what Mannerheim had said to them back in Helsinki.
We can't have war.
The discussion continued well into the night, and finally the negotiators retired to their beds feeling already exhausted for the morning.
Now was the last opportunity to make a deal, Paasikivi had convinced himself. He believed that he had convinced Voionmaa and Tanner about it as well. In his mind's eye, he saw a steady procession of men dying in a hail of bullets, and others blown to pieces by artillery granades. Like Prime Minister Cajander.
And then the same dance with Stalin and Molotov was resumed. Five hours in, his frustration and fear growing, Paasikivi finally went for it.
”If we agree on giving you these three islands”, he said, making a rough circle with his finger east of the Hanko Peninsula, ”will you agree on our terms about the Isthmus?”
This was the final offer about the Isthmus agreed back in Helsinki that would leave the whole of Terijoki and roughly third of both Kivennapa and Uusikirkko on the Soviet side, including the Ino fortress. But it would keep the main Finnish defensive line on the Isthmus intact, which was the main point. And it would avoid having to give over Hanko itself, Suursaari, or any part of Petsamo.
Stalin's eyes flashed. He took his pipe thoughtfully in his hand.
”It is still a bit lean...”, he mused.
”It is our final offer. The Finnish people will not stand to give up any more”, Paasikivi told the Soviet leader, feeling like a gambler with a poor hand, throwing his last crumbled small notes on the table.
Slowly, a smile spread on Stalin's face.
”Well, then we must take it, don't we?”
The most feared man in the USSR turned to face Molotov.
”I told you we could reason with these people, Vyacheslav Mihailovich.”
After the meeting ended, says Paasikivi in his diary, his right hand would not stop shaking until he had taken two glasses of brandy to steady his wracked nerves.
When the Finnish delegation returned to Helsinki on November 12th, again a crowd of people waited for the train on the Main Railway Station.
When President Paasikivi climbed off the train, the silence around him was deafening.
…
....
Tell me from where those dark shadows
Always seem to find their way
To me, to seek me in their hands
Tell me why that journey
Just a shadow's length to light
Keeps on going, even if I know
That it would require just one step
….
Tell me from where those dark shadows
Always seem to find their way
To me, to seek me in their hands
Tell me why that journey
Just a shadow's length to light
Keeps on going, even if I know
That it would require just one step
….
Notes:
[1] The Finnish president's term of office was six years during the First Republic. Accordingly, the new president would then hold the office until March 1943 before the next scheduled elections.
[2] It has been suggested in some studies (most recently by Michael Gustavsson in his Vad är frekvensen? from 2012) that the mystery ship the Louhi tried to avoid could be one of the German merchant raiders that were known to operate in the Åland waters in the fall of 1939, most likely the armed auxiliary Tannenberg. Ironically, then, the presence of the Louhi may have saved the Ulla from being stopped and boarded by the Germans.
[3] The Siltasaari area of the Hakaniemi district used to be known as the centre of Social Democratic power in Finland. This is where the imposing Helsinki Workers' House (Paasitorni) is located, and this is the area where the headquarters of the Finnish Social Democratic Party stood until 1941.
[4] See Per Nyström's article ”Väinö Tanner: The Last Man Standing” in the Foreign History Quarterly, 2/1987.
[5] What had turned out to be the decider of the electoral vote was the fact that Field Marshal Mannerheim himself had sent the word late in the evening that he supported Paasikivi, just like President Kallio had before him. Mannerheim might have been a ghost of himself after the Hannila incident, but his word still carried a lot of weight even among the political parties' leaderships – for better or for worse.
[6] Specifically, Hermansö, Koö and Hästö-Busö.
…
To Be Continued
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Goddammit. Fixed.
(Might as well say that there was some truth in that mistake, given what will come later, though.)
Twenty-six: Heritage
Twenty-six: Heritage
…
Sisko
The older man removed his glasses and leaned on the lectern. Then he raised his greying head to face his audience.
”Today, gentlemen...”
”And ladies!”, Sisko Vaara quipped, ”if you don't mind, professor.”
It made the grumpy old man to look at her direction, and some heads to turn towards her as well in the audience. Some had smiles on them, others a look of reproach.
”...And ladies. Thank you, Miss Vaara”, the man said, looking annoyed. But then, just briefly, a smile seemed to grace his lips.
My God, Sisko thought, am I finally getting through to him?
She looked at one of the few other women in the lecture hall, Leena, to see her slightly flushed but giving her a brief smile nonetheless.
”...I trust you have all perused the reading material, von Wendt's book on racial hygiene and the recent volume by Fisher. And Dahlberg's articles, of course. There's no point for us being here if you have not done your homework...”[1]
The professor glanced at Sisko, looking stern, as if to make a point about due diligence. It always seemed to her that he held her to a higher standard than most of the male students. She hoped it was not only because of her gender.
”From those materials alone, one can see that a lot has been happening in the study of heredity in the last three decades, and we have certainly come a long way from Mendel's days. Today, I can say with certainty, eugenics stands on the verge of true success as a field of scientific study – and a practical endeavour.”
The professor took his glasses in his hand and pointed them towards the audience.
”You know have babies are made, ladies and gentlemen, and I am certain that at least some of you already have some empirical experience on the specifics of such proceedings...”
That caused some snicker among the audience. Sisko glanced at Leena, whose face had gone altogether red now.
”But we need to look beyond the vulgar hydraulics of the matter, and consider the deeper, more fundamental issues: what makes us the human beings we are? What makes race? How does a Finn or a Swede get his light skin tone, and how a negro his dark complexion? What makes the Finn such a good athlete that he time and time again prevails on the field of Olympic endeavour? And why is the Russian, his numbers much greater by comparison, not as adept in the realm of sports?”
The man paused for effect.
”And of course we can take the effort even further than that. The question of eugenics, indeed, is not just why things are like they are, it is also what could be done about changing them.”
When Sisko that evening sat at a table at the Oopperakellari[2] together with Tapio he was still thinking about the matters of heredity and eugenics.
”Where are you today, Sisko? Because surely you're not here with me!”
Roused from her thoughts, the medical student smiled at her beau.
”Oh, sorry, Tapio. I was thinking about my lectures today.”
The newspaper man smiled and winked at her.
”You'll make a great doctor one day, Miss Vaara, attending your studies so conscientously”, he said, with mock seriousness in his voice.
”What you should really improve upon is your bedside manner, though.”
Sisko raised her fist for effect.
”It's just an observation, don't hit me! It's not very ladylike to beat up journalists in one of the finest dancing establishments in the Republic's capital, you know.”
”Shut up, Tapio, and get me a drink”, Sisko told the man, now with an glowing smile on her face.
”Will do!”
On the dais in front of the restaurant hall, the band was setting up its instruments. The Dallapé was somewhat diminished due to some of its regular members being called up for military duty, but according to those in the know, the band had managed to secure passable replacements for its losses.
A female waiter set the drinks on the table and made a curtsey. Sisko and Tapio thanked her with a nod.
”Hilirimpsis, like you Savonians say”, the young man said and raised his glass, ”for a better future!”
”I'll drink to that”, Sisko acquiesced.
The singer came up on stage.
”Oh, it's not Malmstén”, Sisko observed, deflated, as the band struck up a foxtrot.
”You didn't know? Jori got called up, he's with the Navy Band now. But this guy they got covering for him, Virta – he's not half bad. I've heard him singing a few times by now.”
Sisko looked at the young singer, who smiled to the audience in his tuxedo. He wasn't hard on the eye, at least. And when had sung a few songs, Sisko had to agree with Tapio: the man had a voice on him.
”Tapio, good to see you! Mind if we join you at the table?”
The brusque question was presented in the English language. Tapio looked up.
”Jim! Please, do join us. Sisko, this is Jim, ah, James, he's an American news correspondent. Jim, Sisko is a friend of mine from the University.”
The American smiled.
”Just a friend, not a fiancé?”, he said, raising an eyebrow, ”nice to meet you, Sisko. Tapio, Sisko, do meet my friend as well. Martha is a colleague of mine from the States, she's here as the correspondent for Collier's.”
The two women shook hands.
”Sisko Vaara.”
”Martha Gellhorn, happy to make your acquintance. You're a university student, then, Sisko? What will you be when you grow-up?”
”A doctor, if possible”, Sisko answered, feeling awkward with her clunky English.
”It's the modern times, dear”, the American journalist said and smiled a slightly crooked smile, ”if I can be a foreign correspondent for a major US paper, then you can certainly be a doctor.”
She glanced out towards the bar.
”Jim, be a good boy and get us a drink, will you? My throat's parched.”
Gellhorn told Tapio and Sisko that she had come to Finland expecting a war to break out. She had to admit that the deal made between Finland and the USSR was a bit of a let-down for her, even if the Finns might not feel the same way.
”Tomorrow, though, I get to travel to Karelia to cover the evacuations. Should find something to write about there, at least.”
....
…
Sisko
The older man removed his glasses and leaned on the lectern. Then he raised his greying head to face his audience.
”Today, gentlemen...”
”And ladies!”, Sisko Vaara quipped, ”if you don't mind, professor.”
It made the grumpy old man to look at her direction, and some heads to turn towards her as well in the audience. Some had smiles on them, others a look of reproach.
”...And ladies. Thank you, Miss Vaara”, the man said, looking annoyed. But then, just briefly, a smile seemed to grace his lips.
My God, Sisko thought, am I finally getting through to him?
She looked at one of the few other women in the lecture hall, Leena, to see her slightly flushed but giving her a brief smile nonetheless.
”...I trust you have all perused the reading material, von Wendt's book on racial hygiene and the recent volume by Fisher. And Dahlberg's articles, of course. There's no point for us being here if you have not done your homework...”[1]
The professor glanced at Sisko, looking stern, as if to make a point about due diligence. It always seemed to her that he held her to a higher standard than most of the male students. She hoped it was not only because of her gender.
”From those materials alone, one can see that a lot has been happening in the study of heredity in the last three decades, and we have certainly come a long way from Mendel's days. Today, I can say with certainty, eugenics stands on the verge of true success as a field of scientific study – and a practical endeavour.”
The professor took his glasses in his hand and pointed them towards the audience.
”You know have babies are made, ladies and gentlemen, and I am certain that at least some of you already have some empirical experience on the specifics of such proceedings...”
That caused some snicker among the audience. Sisko glanced at Leena, whose face had gone altogether red now.
”But we need to look beyond the vulgar hydraulics of the matter, and consider the deeper, more fundamental issues: what makes us the human beings we are? What makes race? How does a Finn or a Swede get his light skin tone, and how a negro his dark complexion? What makes the Finn such a good athlete that he time and time again prevails on the field of Olympic endeavour? And why is the Russian, his numbers much greater by comparison, not as adept in the realm of sports?”
The man paused for effect.
”And of course we can take the effort even further than that. The question of eugenics, indeed, is not just why things are like they are, it is also what could be done about changing them.”
When Sisko that evening sat at a table at the Oopperakellari[2] together with Tapio he was still thinking about the matters of heredity and eugenics.
”Where are you today, Sisko? Because surely you're not here with me!”
Roused from her thoughts, the medical student smiled at her beau.
”Oh, sorry, Tapio. I was thinking about my lectures today.”
The newspaper man smiled and winked at her.
”You'll make a great doctor one day, Miss Vaara, attending your studies so conscientously”, he said, with mock seriousness in his voice.
”What you should really improve upon is your bedside manner, though.”
Sisko raised her fist for effect.
”It's just an observation, don't hit me! It's not very ladylike to beat up journalists in one of the finest dancing establishments in the Republic's capital, you know.”
”Shut up, Tapio, and get me a drink”, Sisko told the man, now with an glowing smile on her face.
”Will do!”
On the dais in front of the restaurant hall, the band was setting up its instruments. The Dallapé was somewhat diminished due to some of its regular members being called up for military duty, but according to those in the know, the band had managed to secure passable replacements for its losses.
A female waiter set the drinks on the table and made a curtsey. Sisko and Tapio thanked her with a nod.
”Hilirimpsis, like you Savonians say”, the young man said and raised his glass, ”for a better future!”
”I'll drink to that”, Sisko acquiesced.
The singer came up on stage.
”Oh, it's not Malmstén”, Sisko observed, deflated, as the band struck up a foxtrot.
”You didn't know? Jori got called up, he's with the Navy Band now. But this guy they got covering for him, Virta – he's not half bad. I've heard him singing a few times by now.”
Sisko looked at the young singer, who smiled to the audience in his tuxedo. He wasn't hard on the eye, at least. And when had sung a few songs, Sisko had to agree with Tapio: the man had a voice on him.
”Tapio, good to see you! Mind if we join you at the table?”
The brusque question was presented in the English language. Tapio looked up.
”Jim! Please, do join us. Sisko, this is Jim, ah, James, he's an American news correspondent. Jim, Sisko is a friend of mine from the University.”
The American smiled.
”Just a friend, not a fiancé?”, he said, raising an eyebrow, ”nice to meet you, Sisko. Tapio, Sisko, do meet my friend as well. Martha is a colleague of mine from the States, she's here as the correspondent for Collier's.”
The two women shook hands.
”Sisko Vaara.”
”Martha Gellhorn, happy to make your acquintance. You're a university student, then, Sisko? What will you be when you grow-up?”
”A doctor, if possible”, Sisko answered, feeling awkward with her clunky English.
”It's the modern times, dear”, the American journalist said and smiled a slightly crooked smile, ”if I can be a foreign correspondent for a major US paper, then you can certainly be a doctor.”
She glanced out towards the bar.
”Jim, be a good boy and get us a drink, will you? My throat's parched.”
Gellhorn told Tapio and Sisko that she had come to Finland expecting a war to break out. She had to admit that the deal made between Finland and the USSR was a bit of a let-down for her, even if the Finns might not feel the same way.
”Tomorrow, though, I get to travel to Karelia to cover the evacuations. Should find something to write about there, at least.”
....
Notices about air raid exercises and advertisements for musical events, dancing and movies.
Helsingin Sanomat, October 21st, 1939.
....
Urho
There were responsibilities, and they were not always easy. But if one had asked Urho Kekkonen, he might have said that at this time responsibilities were not divided evenly among the Finnish cabinet. At the moment, the First Minister of the Interior, Mauno Pekkala, was about to travel to North Karelia to attend the ceremony where Porajärvi and the sourthern part of Repola [3] would officially annexed to the Republic of Finland, and receive a parade of infantry and cavalry with the Kuopio provincial governor, Ignatius, and General Laatikainen to represent the military.
And here was Urho Kaleva Kekkonen, overseeing the evacuation of Terijoki and the other areas on the Isthmus to be given over to the USSR in a bit over week's time. The original stipulation had been two weeks from the signing of the Moscow Agreement, and the attitude of the angry, hostile and all-around recalcitrant Karelians was not helping with organizing the handover at all.
Urho could not blame them. He'd be furious if he had to give up his home to the Bolsheviks as well. But why did he have to be the man to receive the wrath of the evacuees and the local politicians when he, personally, had opposed giving up to the Soviet demands all the way? Why wasn't the president here to face up to what, ultimately, was his decision? The deal with the Soviets was creating rifts among Finns, and it was not enough that the opposition to the Agreement could be seen here in Karelia – even in Helsinki, people had taken to flying the flag at half mast due to the ”capitulation”. The Patriotic People's Movement was capitalizing on the issue in the Eduskunta, and it had required a huge amount of desperate horse-trading by the cabinet to push the Agreement through the Finnish parliament.
Urho stood by the side of the road, just a mile from the parish border between Terijoki and Uusikirkko on the coast. A seemingly uninterrupted line of evacuees passed him towards the west. The evacuation of the areas to be given over was of course voluntary: people were free to stay and become citizens of the USSR if they so chose. Practically, only very few people, and those few convinced Communists, were staying put. The vast majority of the locals were pulling up roots.
The irony for many was that they had just in the previous weeks been part of the voluntary evacuations west, and had already returned back home during the last part of the negotiations, believing that the worst was over and that Finland could keep its borders intact. For these people, leaving their homes again after a few days was all the more bitter.
Urho looked at a man in his fifties, leading on a horse pulling a heavy wagon overflowing with bags and furniture. His wife and children were following him on foot. The minister tried to offer an encouraging nod at the man. He had none of it, turning his head away in protest and spitting on the muddy road.
From the west, a unit of infantry made its way on foot, with difficulty passing the line of evacuees going west. Roughly where Kekkonen and his State Police escort were standing, the NCO leading the group decided to give the men a bit of rest, calling a break for cigarettes and water.
”Keep hydrated, youse numbskulls”, the senior sergeant said with a snarling command voice”, I won't have you passing out on me on such a short march”.
Kekkonen smiled at the words, despite his otherwise gloomy thoughts. He could recognize a North Savonian accent anywhere. Interested, he approached the men, spotting a vaguely familiar-looking corporal among the men.
”Corporal”, he said, nodding to the man in lieu of a greeting, ”it's good to hear a familiar pattern of speech, where are you boys from?”
The corporal looked at him wearily.
”We're from Kuopio and surroundings, minister Kekkonen”, he said, ”reservists all. Sent here to help with the evacuation.”
Urho nodded. The man seemed sharp, knowing him by looks alone, but there was a gloomy note to his voice as well.
”Call me Urho”, he said, offering his hand, ”we're probably practically related, anyway...”
The man took his hand and shook it, the look on his face melting into a slight smile.
”Veli Vaara. As a matter of fact, my second cousin married a Kekkonen last year. The girl is from Lapinlahti.”
Kekkonen nodded.
”Just goes to show. We Savo boys need to stick together.”
A State Police agent approached Kekkonen, tapping his watch.
”Minister, we need to be going to make the parish centre in time. I think we can take the smaller roads to avoid the congestion.”
”Alright, Myyrä, get the car ready. I'll be there in a moment.”
He turned back to the reservist, wondering how his face was so familiar. Maybe they were relatives after all?
”Good luck then, Vaara, with your work. And take my regards to your family when you get home. Your second cousin and his young wife, first of all.”
The two shook hands and Urho started walking through the mud towards the state car and his agents.
The senior sergeant looked at the corporal and shook his head.
”The company you keep, Vaara...”
….
Veli
Veli Vaara was feeling a slight chill. Maybe he was coming down with the flu? His nose was runny, and the night before his throat had been sort of sore.
Meeting with the Second Minister of the Interior had given him something to think about. It wasn't easy to be a minister at the moment. The government's decision to cave in to the Soviet demands was hugely unpopular among a large swathe of the Finnish people. Even if Paasikivi and the other negotiators had managed to whittle down Stalin's original shopping list a great deal. Paasikivi definitely was not starting his presidency under lucky stars, to hear what people were talking about him.
Having heard from the senior sergeant that there was some minutes to spare before the unit would move on, Veli started walking along a side road leaving away from the main highway running east. He wanted some privacy for his thoughts, and a private place to relieve himself. After two hundred meters or so, though, he arrived to a small farmhouse. It struck him how much it was similar to Heikki Hyvärinen's farm back home in Hirvilahti.
On the yard stood a wagon, and a man and a woman were loading up their belongings in it. A girl of maybe seven or eight was helping them. Not a word was spoken, though Veli could hear the woman sobbing slightly. Not knowing what to do, Veli just stood there, watching.
In a minute, the man noticed him, and then beckoned him to come over.
”Good day, corporal”, he said, his face a little red from the exertion of putting heavy parcels up on the wagon, ”would you mind helping us a little?”
Well – we're here to assist with the evacuation, anyway, he thought and nodded.
”Sure. My unit's just down the road, I can go fetch a couple guys more if you need us to...”
The man shook his head.
”One man's quite enough for this job. Hold on...”
He went to the barn to the left and arrived with a canister of kerosene in his hand, and a stick of matches.
”Take these and put the house on fire.”
Veli recoiled at the thought. He remembered what the officer briefing them had told the reserve unit in Lappeenranta.
”We're strictly prohibited from sabotaging the buildings and infrastructure in the evacuated area”, he said to the man, ”as per the Moscow Agreement...”
The man raised his hand and interrupted him.
”I don't care a whit what the so-called Agreement says. I am not leaving my house to Stalin and his Bolshevik scum. I want it made sure that they can't use it for their purposes. Please, help me. I want the house gone.”
He looked at the little farmhouse. Veli could see a tear rising into his eye.
”But I can't do it myself, I can't bear it. I built it with my own hands, two decades ago now. My daughter was born here. Please.”
Veli nodded, grimly, and took the kerosene and the matches from the man.
When he walked into the house's foyer, he felt like he could still smell the scent of a freshly baked barley bread in the air.
Slowly, methodically, Veli Vaara doused the walls of the biggest room with the flammable liquid.
Then he withdrew to the door. After a little pause, like a moment's hesitation, he struck a match.
...
September 2009
The white-bearded man in his early sixties entered his apartment and closed the door with a thump.
He was kind of rattled after experiencing the terrorist bombing in Töölönlahti very close by. He had been questioned by the first Civil Guard patrol that arrived to the scene, and then by the Fennia Security goons in dark blue. They had taken down his information, and made it known that he might be called for follow-up questioning later.
Jyri Rantanen walked directly to his liquer cabinet and poured himself a big glass of Suomen Tähti.[4] Getting a bottle of soda water from the fridge to wash it down with was an afterthought.
He sat down in his chair in the middle of overflowing bookcases and piles of books and documents on the floor and downed his glass of ”national cognac”.
In a minute or three, he started feeling a bit better.
After someone had written him threats in the windscreen of his classic VAU convertible, he had pretty much made up his mind about what he would do with the American girl.
In maybe fifteen minutes he stood up and walked to the foyer. There he found some papers that had been dropped in through the letter slit. The first one was a glossy advertisement with a bespectacled woman in a white lab coat, mature but attractive, on the cover, flanked by that familiar jagged logo.
INTERESTED ABOUT YOUR HERITAGE?
Here at Systek Genetics, we know the genetic profile of the Finnish people. And we are ready to let you know as well! Sign up to our Genetic Heritage Program for free, and you will know what your genes can tell you about your ancestors and about YOU.
Would you like to know more? Call our toll-free numbers, or log on to your FinnAccount and go to #systekgeneheritage# right now!
Rantanen crumbled the ad and threw it on the floor.
The other thing in his hand was a plain white paper with simple block letters on it.
FORGET THE GIRL AND WALK AWAY.
IF YOU HELP HER, YOU BOTH WILL SUFFER.
DON'T BE STUPID.
That does it, Jyri Rantanen thought.
If there was any doubt before about what he would do with the girl, this removed all ambiguity.
Now the bearded man was sure he would help Nora Farrah in any way it was possible.
...
Notes:
[1] Georg von Wendt was a German-educated Finnish physician and the long time professor of veterinary sciences at Helsinki University, while the Swedish geneticist Gunnar Dahlberg was the director of the Statens institut för rasbiologi, the Swedish state's foremost research centre in the field of eugenics and human genetics.
[2] Literally ”The Opera Cellar”.
[3] Stalin had in the last minute cancelled the handover of the northern part of the parish, apparently as a response for smaller than expected Soviet gains on the Isthmus.
[4] ”The Star of Finland”.
…
To Be Continued
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