Prose
Down to business
Issue 1/2006 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
An extract from the novel Ystävät kaukana (‘Friends far away’, Gummerus, 2oo5)
The half-day secretary Oksana Pelkonen was already bustling about the office as I squeezed my Mercedes onto the side of Viherniemenkatu Street. I had kept my office next to the Hakaniemi Market even though newer places had been pressed on me. There were new messages taped to the doors and windows, anyway. They explained, in what I thought was a quiet way, that the so VK Corporation’s office was here and that Kärppä Construction, VK East Trade, VK Consulting and Hakaniemi Eastern Aid also belonged to the Group. The slogan was at the bottom: ‘Two centuries’ experience trading with the East’. Would have been just as true to put ‘two millennia’, but the customer might have started to wonder.
‘Good morning, Vityuha, good morning!’ Oksana greeted me doubly. ‘I just put the tea onto steep for you. And look, on top of the pile of mail, three letters to Viktor Kärppä. That’s how I knew you were coming.’ More…
Midsummer madness
Issue 4/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
An extract from the novel Voimattomuus (‘Powerlessness’, WSOY, 2005). Introduction by Maila-Katriina Tuominen
Cast:
a man
a woman
a boy
Midsummer Eve. A cabin.Outside it’s raining a little, but the blanket of clouds is already breaking up.
It’s bright in the cabin, like daylight. The table is set.
A bunch of wild violets, torn from its means of support, droops in the middle of the table, surrounded by stemmed glasses and paper napkins folded into the shape of swans. The champagne, aquavit and white wine are still chilling.
A man and a woman walk into the cabin wearing bathrobes. She has a terrycloth towel wound around her head like a turban. They’re coming from the sauna. He looks at the table with surprise. The table is set for three.
She notices the man’s gaze and hurries into the bedroom to get dressed.
He takes a beer out of the refrigerator and sits down at the table in his bathrobe.
A long silence. More…
All aboard
30 December 2005 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Nooakan parkki (‘Noahannah’s barque’, Tammi, 2005)
A Royal Navy Three-funnel Brig
The crew:
Matilda, an overeating cat
Five geese
20 hens
A fat narcoleptic cock
A couple of ducks
A goat
Three dogs
48 bats
Six woodpeckers
104 titmice
There’s a north-westerly blowing.
Djibouti 253
Three feet long from the east and five from the west, plus two hat-heights above the earth’s surface; standing on the sauna bench I scan the horizon for any omens – a raven, a woodpecker or a flock of waxwings. A crow would do. More…
Big-city blues
30 September 2005 | Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Beige. Eroottinen kesä Helsingissä (‘Beige. An erotic summer in Helsinki’, Sammakko, 2005). Introduction by Tuva Korsström
Helsinki starts – where? Where a country girl will wear white corduroy pants if she’s eight and her pen pal tells her to. Where you’re allowed to jump in at the public swimming pool, and water splashes in your face no matter what you do, and it’s a long way to the bottom, you can’t touch. Unreal. That’s what Helsinki was like. Buildings that you recognized from pictures. A city where pictures were the starting point of your life, not experience. You step into the picture and begin your life. The step takes a long time. An entire youth. The first few days go well. You’re a tourist. The crowd of anonymous, noisy people is relaxed, you feel uninhibited. Nobody pays any attention to you. Then you start to want to feel. To talk. To say hi to somebody. The waiting begins, and there’s nothing you can do to speed it up. You have to live in the city. Ten years and you’re in, maybe, a little. Be there. Stay. You’ll circulate around the triangle formed by Sokos, Stockmann, and Forum department stores. They’re familiar from pictures, you’re wary of the others. The streetcar home. Home and downtown. The city. The lanes. Conduits. Lights. Trams. Taxis. Buses. The first negro. The first stop at a traffic light. The yellow stone building. The colorful cottages at the foot of the bridge. More…
What the snail thought
30 September 2005 | Fiction, Prose
Poems from Tapahtui Tiitiäisen maassa
(‘It happened in Tumpkin land’, WSOY, 2004)
Illustrations by Christel Rönns
Meritähti
Eli merenpohjassa Meritähti
tuhat tonnia vettä yllä.
- Minä jaksan kyllä,
sanoi Meritähti.
- On terävät sakarat,
ja litteät pakarat
ja paineenkestävät kakarat!
Northern exposure
Issue 3/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Valon reunalla (‘At the edge of light’, Teos, 2005). Introduction by Kristina Carlson
Kari
The village despised all those who left. They hated us too, though we were still only planning our final escape.
We used to escape the village. We would hide from its gaze in the forest or the cemetery where the gravestones were so close together that there was no room for the trees to grow. We knew why the freight train brought the village so many dead and so few living. It was the village’s fault. It had a wicked soul. The grown-ups didn’t know it. We knew it, but no one asked us. Death was within us; it was alive. Asking would have been too dangerous….
On the backs of the headstones we carved our own marks with the end of a knife. We blew out the candles laid at the graves of suicide victims. We worshipped them in the dark and no new candles were ever brought to their graves. The parents of those who died so young drove south. They were looking for stations with real waiting rooms and staff that made announcements. They sat on the hard benches waiting, waiting for the trains to come, at the right time; hoping the years wouldn’t wreak havoc after all, hoping they’d roll slowly back along the tracks, to brighten as they approached the village, giving life once again to their children. And everything could start over. More…
Saikansalo the racing cyclist
Issue 2/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from the collection Heta Rahko korkeassa iässä (‘Heta Rahko at a great age’, Otava, 1947). Introduction by Vesa Karonen
Saikansalo was a racing cyclist and the country’s best, unquestionably. His Achilles tendons were superlative.
So when he found no rival in his own country. the athletics bigwigs put their heads together and hinted at the idea of sending him abroad to win a further reputation somewhere in the south – France, Italy or the like. They warned him that he’d have to be in good trim because of the enervating heat in the southern climes.
‘Heat!’ Saikansalo said. ‘There’s an old saying “Heat never broke anyone’s bones”….’
‘But it melts you like lard,’ his chum kept claiming. ‘The sun climbs really high there – scorches right down on your topknot, and boils your brains….’ More…
The Schoolmaster’s bicycle trip
Issue 2/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from the collection Heta Rahko korkeassa iässä (‘Heta Rahko at a great age’, Otava, 1947). Introduction by Vesa Karonen
He was an old teacher, retired, mostly known as ‘the Schoolmaster’ in this small town. It was common knowledge that he’d always been a keen gymnast and sportsman, and after retirement he began pursuing his favourite pastimes in earnest. Evidently he revelled in moving about, like a baby on the crawl, or a feisty youth. He was a man with no personal ties, with no one to patronise or distract him.
‘You grow no wiser, even with age,’ the small-town folk kept sighing. In response to one of these groans, Porki the factory owner said what they thought was almost blasphemy:
‘When did old age ever produce any wisdom? It’s always demolished any little there was….’
And meanwhile, covertly envious, he watched the youthful-looking Schoolmaster striding along his path, lean, sinewy, stern-faced, his tuft of beard only reluctantly thinning and greying. Well, there was a person who’d realised life was motion – and believed it! But Porki and the other bigwigs in the town grew bloated and obese, huffed and puffed, and yawned. More…
A toast before dying
Issue 2/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Voin jo paljon paremmin. Tšehov Badenweilerissa (‘I already feel much better. Chekhov in Badenweiler’, Loki, 2004). Introduction by Hannu Marttila
I went to meet them Friday and I did not plan to take other patients that week. They had a small but comfortable room with striped wallpaper.
The Russian was a tall man, but stooped. It soon became apparent that his wife spoke fluent German because she was of German descent. That made it much easier to take care of things.
Of course I knew who the patient was. I have always enjoyed literature and other forms of art. I could play several pieces rather well on the piano. When I was younger I had even written a couple of stories set in the mountains, though I had never offered them for publication. As for Chekhov, I had read a couple of his stories that had just come out in German translation, and I had liked them quite a lot in a way, even though they of course reflected that characteristic Russian nature, with its vodka and untidiness.
The patient’s wife seized both my hands when I entered. It was a bit confusing, but not necessarily unpleasant.
‘Our name is Chekhov. We have come from Russia,’ the woman said in a strong, carrying voice. ‘I trust you’ve been told?’ More…
The honey of the bee
Issue 2/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from the collection Mitä sähkö on (‘What electricity is’ WSOY, 2004). Introduction by Jarmo Papinniemi
Five days before I was born my grandfather reached sixty-six. He’d always been old. The first image I have of him gleams like a knife on sunny spring-time snow: he was pulling me on my sledge over hard frost under a bright glaring-blue sky. In the Winter War a squadron of bombers had flown through the same blue sky on their way to Vaasa; the boys leapt into the ditches for cover, as if the enemy planes could be bothered to waste their bombs on a couple of kids. Be bothered? Wrong: kids were always the most important targets.
Now it’s summer, August, and I’m sitting on the grassy, mossy face of the earth, which is slowly warming in a sun that’s accumulated a leaden shadiness. I’m sitting on my grandfather’s land. It’s the time when the drying machines buzz. Even with eyes shut, you can sense the corn dust glittering in the sun. Even with eyes shut, you can take in the smell of the barn’s old wood, the sticky fragrance of the blackcurrants barrelled on its floor, the tins of coffee and the china dishes on the shelves, and the empty grain bins; there’s the cupboard Kalle made, with its board sides and veneered door, and the dust-covered trunk that was going to accompany my grandfather to another continent. The ticket was already hooked, but Grandfather’s world remained here for good. When Easter comes we’ll gather the useless junk out into the yard and burn it; Grandfather’s travel chest will rise skywards. Grandfather stands in the barn entrance, leaning on the doorpost. He’s dead. Over all lies a heavy overbearing sun. Beyond the field the river’s flowing silently in its deep channel. At night time its dark and warm. More…
In the wars
Issue 1/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
A short story from Jussi ja Lassi (‘Jussi and Lassi’, WSOY, 1921). Introduction by Pekka Tarkka
One winter evening, Lassi, who was six, asked: ‘Can’t we go out, mother?’
‘It’s late already,’ she said.
‘We’ve been inside the whole day practically,’ said Jussi, who was seven. ‘It gets on my nerves.’
‘Gets on your nerves, does it? Well, boys, you’ll soon be off in bed,’ she said, ‘so you won’t need to get nervy.’
‘Not off to bed – not yet, it’s not yet, not…’ Lassi broke off, trying to work it out.
‘It’s not six yet,’ Jussi said.
‘No, it isn’t,’ their mother said; ‘but you’ll have to stay in your room and not go charging about here, because visitors are coming.’ More…
Troubled waters
Issue 1/2005 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Den amerikanska flickan (‘The American girl’, Söderströms, 2004). Introduction by Pia Ingström
Doris Night&Sandra Day, Sandra Night&Doris Day: those were their alter ego identities for the game, which also involved the smiles they’d practised in front of the mirror at the bottom of the empty swimming pool, in the house in the muddier part of the woods.
‘We’re two clairvoyant sisters,’ said Doris Flinkenberg. ‘We got that way because of tragic circumstances. The poltergeist phenomenon. Do you know what that is?’
Sandra Wärn shook her head, but looked expectantly at Doris, the perennial crossword – solver, with dictionary to hand, who continued. ‘It’s when the innocent child has been badly abused and has developed supernatural powers in order to survive. Powers to see behind what’s there,’ Doris Flinkenberg explained. ‘To see what no one else can see.’
‘You and I, Sandra,’ Doris confirmed. ‘We were badly abused. I with my scars and you with your tragic family background, your mother and her lover, all of that. You and I, Sandra, we know what it is to suffer.’ More…
1968
30 March 2005 | Fiction, Prose
A short story from Lugna favoriter (‘Quiet favourites’, Söderströms, 2004)
We were in the space age, the age that came and went, the age of space and great dreams, when space was what we talked about and space was what the papers wrote about, and about Vietnam and protests and revolution, in articles precocious and prematurely old children spelled their way through, children living in the mixed forests of the North which had recently been transformed into gleaming suburbs where ink-caps, puffballs and parasol mushrooms still grow in the backyards of high-rise tower blocks. It says in the paper that we humans will soon have to move away, leave the Earth because our planet has become overcrowded and almost uninhabitable, and space and the eternity of space are waiting for us and we have engineers of the highest class who will soon solve such small problems as still remain. It’s not a question of forests of mixed trees or ink-caps or parasol mushrooms or other earthly things, it’s a question of it being too late now, that we must go further, first to the moon and then to Mars and Andromeda and further still, and here are some of the key words and phrases: space programme, space race, Apollo, Vostok, Tereshkova and Glenn. For humanity has dreams, dark mixed visions and a nagging and not easily extinguished sense of life’s inscrutability and greatness, but down here all goes on as before, we kill each other, we kill our fellow men in jungles and marshes, we kill them amid rugged mountains and in snow-clad forests, we poison them and blow them to pieces, we kill them in dark backstreets and in ramshackle wooden hovels and in mighty marble palaces where the bath-taps glitter with gold. Only a chosen few are able to escape, and to do this they have to set off upwards into a coolness, and seek out a darkness and solitude where there will be no anxiety or feelings of guilt. But before they can get there they must face opposition of a magnitude that can only be overcome by a fierce rush of power, and before the rocket can start it sits and breathes out smoke and gases and fire for a good thirty seconds before lifting off slowly and reluctantly as if unwilling to leave its home planet, as if it hasn’t the slightest desire to go, but when it gets under way it travels at incomprehensible speeds over unimaginable distances, it’s only 108 years since Lenoir invented the internal combustion engine and we are already up in space where it’s silent and cool and peaceful, just a little anxiety in case some instrument fails, in case some double safeguard shows itself insufficient, otherwise nothing, just weightlessness and silence, just the oceans and deserts and mountain-chains on the surface of our blue globe. Though let’s be fair: the Chinese, who haven’t been up in space, claim that the Great Wall of China must be visible from up there, but on the other hand they have nothing to say about the visibility of new-built suburbs in the miserable little capitals of small underpopulated countries with frosty climates. More…
For the love of a city
Issue 4/2004 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel I väntan på en jordbävning (‘Waiting for an earthquake’, Söderströms, 2004). Introduction by Petter Lindberg
Nonna Rozenberg lived quite near the special school where I was a boarder, in a block nine stories high with a bas-relief to the right of the door. This bas-relief featured a fairy-tale figure – the Firebird or the Bird Sirin.
I often saw Nonna stepping out of a tram carrying a large brown case. She moved carefully, as if afraid of falling.
She played the cello, and resembled that bulky, melodious instrument herself. Women’s figures are often compared to guitars. But Nonna’s appearance never hinted at parties at home with parents away or singsongs around the camp-fire.
She was no beauty. Her slow, precociously mature body was neither graceful nor girlishly delicate. If I’d met her later, when I was working at a gym, I’d have said she was overweight and lacking in self-discipline. More…
Conversations with a horse
Issue 4/2004 | Archives online, Fiction, Prose
Extracts from the novel Kiinalainen puutarha (‘The Chinese garden’, Otava, 2004). Introduction by Anna-Leena Nissilä
Colonel Mannerheim.
Near Kök Rabat, on the caravan route between Kashgar and Yarkand.
October 1906
It is growing dark. Let the others go on ahead. Let us wait here awhile. Perhaps the pain will go over. We’ll get through.
Steady, Philip.
You always obey. And listen. Your ears proudly, handsomely pricked.
Steady, I said, there in the garden. No reaction. Everyone was moving. Pure comedy. And something else.
An illusion, two girls. Then gone.
How to explain.
Before that. I had a conversation with Macartney, the British chargé d’affaires…
Pain…. It burns, now it burns again. Let us wait now, Philip. Steady, steady now. More…