Lucifer's Tears (11 page)

Four cats lounge at various points around the room. The house carries the faint scent of cat piss. Somehow, it makes the place even more homey. I once had a cat, named Katt. He felt compelled to mark his territory on occasion, and my house smelled the same.

“Forgive me for coming unannounced,” I say.

He folds his arms and looks up at me. “I’ll consider forgiving you once you explain why you did it.”

His presence is commanding. It’s clear that he considers himself a man not to be fucked with. I start to make up a lie, but the headache roars, and I can’t speak for a moment.

“Well?” Arvid says.

I pull it together and half lie. “I was asked to speak to you about something and had other business in Porvoo. If I’m imposing, we can talk another time.”

“Asked by whom?”

I walk over to the fireplace and warm my hands. “Indirectly, by the interior minister.”

On the mantel above the fireplace, among mementos, war medals and photos, sits one of Ukki’s guns. I blink, think the headache has induced some kind of weird deja vu. It’s a little Sauer Model 1913, 7.65mm automatic pocket pistol. A low-power peashooter sometimes called a suicide gun.

I pick it up, turn it over in my hand. “Where did you get this?” I ask.

“Why? You want to see my license? I haven’t got one.”

“No, it’s not that.”

He cuts me off. “Put it back where you got it, or I’m going to take it away and shoot you with it.”

Our conversation is off to a bad start. My fault for touching his things. The headaches make me lose my manners and common sense. I lay it back on the mantel. “My grandpa had one just like it.”

“Boy,” he says, “you don’t look well.”

“Just a headache,” I say.

He softens. “My father carried that pistol in the Civil War, and I carried it when I was a Valpo detective during the Second World War. It’s the only belonging of his that I have left.” He pauses, I think deciding how to deal with me. “Let’s sit down,” he says.

We take easy chairs on opposite sides of the coffee table. He raises his voice. “Ritva, we have a guest. Make coffee.”

A voice calls back from upstairs. “Make it yourself!”

He laughs. “I’ll make it in a minute,” he says to me. “You were saying about the interior minister.”

He sits with his back straight, at a sort of relaxed attention. Ukki did that, too. Must be a generational thing. “This is a simple formality,” I say.

Matter-of-fact, I explain the accusations leveled against him and give him the background: about Tervomaa’s book, Valpo collaboration with Einsatzkommando Finnland in Stalag 309, about the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s request for investigation, about Germany’s request for extradition. “They want to charge you with accessory to murder,” I say.

I see anger well up in him. “Boy, who the fuck do you think you are to come here and talk to me like this? Accessory to murder my fucking ass. How many girls have you kissed?”

Off the top of my head, I don’t know. “What difference does it make?”

“Because if you take that number and multiply it by a hundred, that’s about the number of goddamned Communist Bolshevik Russian fucking bastards I’ve killed. And I wish I killed a hundred times more than that. You fucking pissant, you go back to the interior minister, that fucking cocksucker, and tell him to take his charges and accusations and stick them up his fucking ass.”

I realize I won’t get the opportunity to ask him about Ukki. Arvid leans forward in his chair and stares at me. I take in his starched white dress shirt, his tailored pants. Ukki dressed well every day, too. At home, I wear sweatpants and T-shirts. Arvid is a man with a great deal of pride. He has earned and demands respect.

The migraine thunders. My vision blurs.

“You look like shit,” he says.

“My head is killing me,” I say.

I stand and the world sways under me. I feel myself falling and realize I’m blacking out.

I start to regain consciousness. I’m fuzzy and confused. I look up at Arvid. “Ukki?”

Arvid slaps my face to focus me. I shake my head to clear it. He slaps me again. He packs a wallop for an old man. “You can stop now,” I say and sit up. “What happened?”

He hands me a glass. “Apparently, your headache made you pass out. Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“An opiated painkiller dissolved in water.”

I drink it down. “Thank you.”

He helps me to my feet and back into the armchair. He goes to his bookcase bar, comes back with a half balloon of cognac and hands it to me. “You need this,” he says.

I shake my head. “The painkiller was dope. I shouldn’t mix it with alcohol.”

“I’m ninety fucking years old. Don’t lecture me about health practices. Just drink it.”

I set it on the coffee table.

He sighs. To him, I’m a hopeless child. “You’re not going anywhere for a while. You’re going to stay here and eat lunch with us. When you feel better, you can leave.”

He’s ordering, not asking. I take a drink. The rush of opiates and booze is immediate. It helps.

A woman walks in from the kitchen. “I’m Ritva,” she says. “I suffer the misfortune of being Arvid’s wife. While you were passed out, I told him to stop being mean to you.”

She’s tiny and frail, maybe fifteen years younger than Arvid. Her face is kind, her long gray hair pulled back and rolled into a bun. Arvid’s smile exudes love for her.

“What happened to you?” Ritva asked.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I had a bad headache and passed out. It’s never happened before.”

“Finish your drink and come to the table. Some food will do you good.”

Ritva starts setting the table. Arvid and I sit in silence. He studies me. I drink the cognac. Dope and booze kill the headache, and its absence leaves me ravenous. Ritva calls us to eat. We take our places.

“It’s simple fare,” Ritva says.

“I’m grateful,” I say. “Thank you for having me.”

It’s some of my favorite food from childhood. Moose meatballs and brown gravy over boiled potatoes. Lingonberry jam to accompany the moose. Homemade perunapiirakka -little pies with potato filling-smoked whitefish, dark rye bread and piima -buttermilk-to drink.

We pass dishes around and start filling our plates. I look at Arvid. “I didn’t mean to offend you earlier.”

“I blamed the messenger,” he says. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I still have so much shrapnel in me that I set off airport metal detectors. No one has the right to question me about anything that happened during the war.”

We dig in. Everything tastes just the same way that my grandma made it. I tell Ritva this. She looks gratified. I need to know about Ukki, and I work up my courage. “The truth is,” I say, “I couldn’t care less about what the interior minister wants or doesn’t want. I was told you served in Stalag 309 with my grandpa, and I came here to find out if it’s true.”

I neglect to mention that said work in Stalag 309 implies Holocaust participation, and I want to know if Ukki was a war criminal.

Arvid is a hearty eater. He swallows and chases moose with buttermilk. He points at the whitefish. “You like the eyes?” he asks me.

“Yeah.”

“They’re the best part,” he says and scoops them out, one for him and one for me. We chomp them. They have an initial pop and crunch, then a little juice. I think he’s stalling, preparing his answer.

“Son,” he says, “I never served in Stalag 309. During the time that camp was open, I was stationed in Rovaniemi, not Salla. What was your grandpa’s name?”

“Toivo Kivipuro.”

“Sounds familiar, but I can’t picture him. It was almost seventy years ago, after all.”

“How do you think they made the mix-up?” I ask.

“Maybe a paperwork error. Valpo was a big organization, and a few men from the Rovaniemi station went to 309. Maybe there was another Valpo detective by the same name.”

I can’t put my finger on why, but I’m not quite believing him. “I’m sure they’ll figure out their mistake and this will come to nothing,” I say.

I’m lying. I think he’s banking on his hero status to pull through this, but it won’t go away. The German government won’t let it.

We finish our meals. “Want some ice cream?” Arvid asks. Aside from his ferocious temper, he reminds me so much of Ukki that it’s uncanny. Maybe Ukki had a temper, too, but I never saw it.

We have dessert and coffee, chat about nothing. I thank them and get up to go.

“Are you feeling well enough to drive?” Ritva asks.

I’m pain-free and well-fed. Relaxed. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. “I’ll be fine,” I say.

Arvid walks me to the door. He’s one of the few people I’ve met over the past year who have neither stared at nor inquired about the scar on my face. He’s sharp, seen a lot of scars like it and didn’t need to ask. He knows I got shot in the face. He offers his hand. We shake. I thank him for his hospitality. He says it was good to meet me. I have the feeling we’ll meet again.

I drive back to Helsinki. My next stop is the library. I take out Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309, the book that Jyri told me implicates Arvid Lahtinen as a collaborator in Nazi war crimes. I don’t have much time before meeting Milo, but I want to check on Kate. Besides, I need to look at the book and want a few minutes of peace and quiet.

Kate sits at the dining-room table with Mary. Kate is wearing a T-shirt that reads PROPERTY OF JESUS.

When we decided to move to Helsinki, we also decided to get all new furnishings. The things in our house in Kittila were acquired by me and predated our relationship, had the traditional Nordic blond-wood look, which Kate doesn’t care for, and so we made a clean start in that way as well. Our new apartment has a big living room, decorated with dark leather couches and chairs, a walnut coffee table and a big entertainment center with a flatscreen TV. The interior wall is lined with built-in shelves that hold hundreds of books and CDs.

It’s a corner flat, and two sides of the room are lined with windows looking out onto Harjukatu and Vaasankatu. At the corner, where those two sides meet, a door opens onto a small balcony. I don’t smoke inside our home, so I insisted that we find a place with one, so I can have a cigarette without leaving the apartment.

At the rear of the living room, a low dais next to the kitchen serves as a dining area. We bought a big table for it that can seat ten, so we can have dinner parties. The kitchen has brushed-stainlesssteel fixtures. The refrigerator and induction oven are the ultimate in functionality and look like something designed in a space program. The bathroom is on the small side, but like maybe half the apartments in Helsinki, has a sauna in it, which I also insisted on. It’s electric instead of wood-burning, and because of it, the heat it throws off is too dry for my taste, but it serves its purpose. We have two bedrooms, one for us and one for the child on the way.

I kiss Kate hello, exchange pleasantries with Mary. They seem to be having a serious conversation, so I leave them in peace. John has gone out to explore the city. I’m tired and want to rest and read for a while. I take Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309 and lie down on the sofa.

I open the book and go to the index, look up Ukki, and, to my disappointment, find his name. There’s only one listing. I turn to the appropriate page. Toivo Kivipuro is mentioned as one of seven Valpo detectives working in Stalag 309, along with five Finnish interpreters fluent in Russian and German. I find no account of Ukki’s actions there. Details concerning Arvid are more extensive. A prisoner in the camp recounts that Arvid and other detectives took part in executions. Only one particular instance is cited in explicit detail, but the implication is that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

I skim through the book and learn a few things. The Finnish security police, Valpo, was founded in 1919 to protect the new Finnish Republic from Communists in both Finland and Soviet Russia. Professional links to German secret police were established during the 1920s and maintained after the Nazi rise to power. Finland and Germany cooperated in the fight against both domestic and international Communism, an acute concern in Finland because of her shared border with the Soviet Union. Their common enemy unified Valpo and the Gestapo.

Valpo and Gestapo leaders developed personal friendships and cemented the relationship. Racial hatred seeped out of Germany into the Valpo consciousness, and into the Finnish mind-set at large. Racial slurs for Jews began to appear in Valpo documents. Valpo sniffed out ideological enemies on Finnish soil. They surveilled and detained them. They traded information with the SS leadership. The SS had a say in the fate of detainees.

I skip around the book and hit the high points.

Stalag 309 opened in July 1941. It was a normal German prisonerof-war camp. In other words, an abattoir. Twelve Finns and between fifteen and thirty members of Einsatzkommando Finnland worked together there. It was huge, held several thousand inmates, had special sections for “dangerous prisoners.” Bolsheviks, both military and civilian. Jews. Commissars. Russian officers and maybe also noncoms. Details remain fuzzy. The German army destroyed most of its records when it dismantled the camp in 1944.

Germans looked for informers in the camp and used them to collect data. Valpo assisted in setting up these networks. On page 218, I find a set of eleven criteria used to determine eligibility for execution. The rules were written in such a way that the Gestapo could execute anyone they chose at their discretion: political organizers, administrators, Red Army officers, intelligentsia. And, of course, all Jews.

Each day, individuals were selected, their names called out. They were driven outside the camp. Their clothes were taken away. They were dressed in sacks and forced to climb down into bomb craters. A bomb crater could hold a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred people. They were machine-gunned to death. When the craters were full, the victims were covered over with dirt.