New Finnish Grammar (Dedalus Europe 2011) (14 page)

‘You see, in the Orthodox World you are never alone. You end up by believing that when you go into the next world, you will be received into that crowd of welcoming saints and angels who are gathered there especially to meet you. They will keep you company until the Last Judgement, which, for the Orthodox, is nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a rite of passage, a bit like the day when soldiers take the oath, nothing more. Then a new life will begin, exactly like this earthly one but without suffering, in a glittering many-splendoured earthly paradise. For the Orthodox, death does not exist and paradise is just like this world, with some slight alterations for the better.’

From the seashore we turned to look at the Uspenski Cathedral once more before turning down the Esplanadi. With some difficulty, one by one, I was taking in Koskela’s words. In the pauses between them, I heard them die away. I watched them floating down into the landscape of the city around us, so as to note where they fell, so that I could go and collect them later: a belltower would remind me of a verb, I wasted a whole ship on an adjective and entrusted the all-important subject to a tram. The pastor’s thought was scattered throughout Helsinki, and I could reread it every time I pleased.

‘For us, however, there is no redemption. We grow up with a need for expiation and continue to punish ourselves throughout our lives. We entertain no hopes, make no demands. We are gobbets of pure evil, and the best thing we can do is to melt away, wither away, without any fuss. Only in the world to come will some of us be vouchsafed a way out. Nor do our actions serve to earn us any reward, for our fate is predestined. Our damnation or salvation is already sealed, right from the day of our birth. But only after death will we know this. That is why our lives are just one stricken period of waiting.’

Lunastus
, redemption, is a lovely word. I liked to repeat it to myself, to feel its mysterious murmur on my breath, as though some spirit were unleashed by those lisping sounds and set soaring upwards towards higher worlds. We had now crossed the Mannerheimintie; after walking in front of the Hotel Torni, we turned into the Lönrotinkatu. We went into a park, full of well-grown, shady trees, in the middle of which we could just make out a white building with a greenish roof. Here the pastor suddenly came to a standstill.

‘That, on the other hand, is our soul. Look at these memorial tablets. They’re all over the park.’

I looked around and noticed marble slabs set into the thick grass. Some crooked, others half sunk into the earth, they were thinly and discreetly scattered throughout the great stretch of grassy land.

‘They’re tombs; this is a cemetery. But it’s also a park, where living people go to walk among the dead, This is our idea of the world to come: a place half a metre below ground, not a cheerful throng of saints. Nothing celestial or sublime about our world to come: it’s a gloomy, colourless limbo where absence of guilt does duty for beatitude. Guilt is the wellhead of all that gives us life. We do not know what it is we feel guilty about, we have forgotten, it’s not important any more. Perhaps it is just the guilt we feel at having come into the world at all. Eternal peace is liberation from guilt. Or, if you like, from life.’

A gust of wind swept through the trees, then ran along the grass. The weather was changing: a storm was brewing up. Above the sea the sky was still white and still, but black clouds were rolling in from the west, and the park suddenly became dark. Beneath the trees the light began to fade, and the first raindrops pattered onto leaves which had now taken on silvery tones, like those of olive-trees.

‘Come on, let’s go into the church, at least we’ll be in the dry,’ said the pastor, pointing towards the white building we’d seen earlier. We ran towards the doorway and went into what turned out to be a Lutheran Church. It was built entirely of wood, a single space without nave or aisles. Once inside, Koskela stopped under the organ loft and pointed out a notice hanging on the wall. It had a red and black border, and looked somehow ominous. I tried to read it, but there were many words I did not know. I understood only bits of any one sentence, but nonetheless I gleaned an idea of the general meaning. It talked of mothers, suffering and the homeland. Even the title bristled with dishearteningly long words, studded with umlauts. But, taken letter by letter, the screws that held them so tightly in place began to yield, allowing some drop of meaning to seep out.

‘This is a proclamation by Marshal Mannerheim, father of Finland, the man who led us out of Russia as Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. It says that he is awarding every Finnish mother the Cross of Freedom, as compensation for the pain of having lost their sons in war. What a baffling title –
Ylipäällikön päiväkäsky
. Order of the day from the Commander-in-chief. But for those who can read between the lines, it’s actually a war bulletin; and nowhere else in the world would you find a war bulletin posted up in a church. This proclamation was issued two years ago, on 10 May 1942, when the Finnish authorities had agreed to let the German troops go through their country on their way to launch a new attack on Leningrad. This was the beginning of our revenge; or of our ultimate defeat. At the end of hostilities with the Russians in 1940, we had had to accept extremely harsh conditions of surrender. Without having lost a single battle, with her army still intact, Finland was forced to hand over those very battlefields where her little fighting force had managed to stand up to the mighty military power of Soviet Russia. We had no choice. To have refused would have meant total annihilation. So Finnish provinces and cities had to be evacuated. There was a massive exodus from Karelia. Viipuri, Finland’s second city, was emptied of its inhabitants and handed over to Russia. We have taken it back; but how long will we be able to hold on to it? We have always played for high stakes with the Russians, always bet heavily with nothing to fall back on. And, so far, this has paid off. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Finland too was caught up in the civil war. Red and white Finns were massacred and exterminated so viciously that our country lay all but empty for decades. Even today we do not talk about those years, we do not mourn those who died, and many graves remain unmarked. Even today the military authorities are afraid that some of the soldiers who go off to defend our frontiers might be covert Reds, who would fraternize with the Soviets! We have taken a great gamble, we have risked our all! The victory of the Whites meant the survival of our nation, of our way of life, our God. If the Reds had won the civil war, if we had refused peace in 1940, today this place would be an army depot or a communist party headquarters. And the memorial tablets you saw out there would have ended up serving as paving for some city street. In reality, this ‘proclamation’ is an appeal, launched by Mannerheim to invite our people once again to risk their lives in the eternal struggle against the Russians. Accepting Hitler’s help meant incurring Russia’s fury and risking annihilation. Awarding the Cross of Freedom to Finland’s mothers meant asking them to make the supreme sacrifice, giving their country even those sons who had survived, who had come unscathed through the Winter War. Their country was calling upon them once again. Marshal Mannerheim is the Väinämöinen of our time. He made Finland a free country, he saved us twice over: from the Reds and from the Russians. For us, these words come second only to the Bible. Do you see the difference? The Orthodox bow down before gilded images, we bow down before a typewritten order of the day! Now do you understand why we are two separate races?’

I was surprised at having understood almost all that the pastor had said. The words, I mean. As far as the politics were concerned, I was in no position to pass judgement, and I knew that he was often swept away by the sheer fervour of his vision. As in an unfamiliar forest, my mind had to make its own way as it went along. Whenever I lost the pastor from sight as I followed him on his frenetic ramblings, I had always managed to regain my bearings, to catch up with him again without too much difficulty, taking other paths. By now, in the discussions that had become the staple of our time together, I had acquired a reasonable mastery of his vocabulary, using my common sense as best I could, leaning limping words up against able-bodied ones in order to move forward. As Koskela walked before me towards the centre of the church, I noted with satisfaction how stark and unadorned the proclamation was, as indeed was the place where it was hung: not a single picture, not a single ornament on the whitewashed walls: except, in the middle of the apse, one single framed canvas, a Last Judgement where God the Father, with a white beard, was descending from a sulphurous heaven to separate men into sheep and goats. To the right were the damned, already licked by the flames of Hell, and to the left the blessed, a formless multitude clad in white tunics. Now Koskela had reached the altar. He made an expansive gesture, then spoke.

‘Here no one is going to come forward to greet you; no saints, no cherubim. Here there are just black missals on the pews, and the numbers of the psalms hanging up on the walls. Our very church furnishings tell you what is important, that is, prayer. Because all in all it is the word of God which absolves or damns you. In Finnish, the word for Bible is
Raamattu
, that is, Grammar. Life is a set of rules. Beyond the rule lies sin, incomprehension, perdition.’

Outside, the storm was raging. The rain was beating down on the copper roof, drowning out the pastor’s words. A sinister darkness now filled the empty church.

‘At heart, we have always been Lutherans, even before we became Christians. The heroes of the
Kalevala
were already Lutherans in the same way that Achilles and Ulysses were already Orthodox. Ulysses practised his wiles on a sophisticated and sceptical society which was familiar with mental trickery. Väinämöinen’s mode of speech is craggy, immediate, uncomplicated, like the first blow of a chisel on rough stone. The Greek gods mingled with men, wrangled and negotiated with them. The god Ukko never comes down to earth; he judges our actions and then visits light or darkness upon us, punishment or reward. The fate of the Greeks is erratic, ironical; it makes great warriors of simple men. Its will seems to be inescapable, yet it can in fact be outmanoeuvred. The destiny that awaits the Finnish heroes is brutal, inflexible. It turns great warriors into simple shepherds who serve out their sentence until the very last.’

Koskela was becoming carried away by his own words. He had laid his clenched fists upon the altar and was now preparing to give one of his own special sermons. Lucid passion shone forth from his lean face; or was it madness? I could now longer follow what he was saying, but his expression kept me rooted to the spot, the tone of his voice commanded my attention.

‘Väinämöinen and his companions were surprised by just such a storm when they were fleeing from the land of Pohjola after having stolen the
Sampo
. The fury of the waves had driven them to the edges of the world. For days and days they had sailed over a sea with no horizon; now it loomed up before them from the dark mist bit by bit, at every stroke of the oar. Then they found the route home. The green line of the coast led them towards the land of Kaleva. But they did not know that the mistress of Pohjola was pursuing them on a ship rowed by a hundred oarsmen, defended by a thousand armed men. When the
runoilija
realized that the shadow in the midst of the sea was not just another island emerging briefly from the waves, but the ship of the mistress of Pohjola, bristling with swords and lances, he was truly afraid that his last hour had come. Equally alarmed, his companions looked in his direction, waiting for some word, for some decision. From the nearby shore, shrouded in mist, a thousand startled pheasants took to the air. All the fish in the sea took refuge in the deepest waters, where the rock is warm, and cloaked with the red seaweed which feeds the monsters who live below the earth’s crust.’

I had at last managed to begin to make some sense of the well-known tales of old Finnish mythology. Koskela became easier to understand when he opened his book of such stories. Describing the characters from the
Kalevala
, he would imitate their features, mime their voices. I had no time mentally to register words that I did not know, but Koskela’s face and gestures helped me to recognize the character he was talking about. I could visualize the page of the book where he was represented, and the things around him, too, took on similar colouring. As to the ships and weapons, Koskela imitated them so well that I didn’t even try to pinpoint the word which described them. I knew I would be able to track it down at a later stage, recognizing it from the pastor’s gestures.

‘His hands around the thole-pin, Väinämöinen watched the ship approach, saw the swords sparkling. Already he could hear the warriors’ cries. The old
runoilija
closed his eyes so that the words to be sung would come into his mind; then he rose to his feet, took a knife from his knapsack, hacked off a piece of flint and threw it into the sea, saying: “May a black rock spring up from this stone, a submerged rock which will destroy Pohjola’s ship, which will split its hull like a knife ripping through the white belly of a toad!’ Then the water seethed, the waves parted in a gigantic maelstrom, and a peak of rock surfaced like a sea monster, instantly to be hidden by the waves. Väinämöinen heaved a sigh of relief. Once again the sea, his erstwhile mother, had come to his aid. The three heroes stopped rowing and listened in silence. Creaking majestically, Pohjola’s ship sailed on, breasting the waves securely to the helmsman’s call, when suddenly a blow sent the masts crashing downwards into the sea. The timbers shattered upon the rock, the freezing water poured into her warm belly, and she sank from sight.’

The rumble of the thunder, and the blaze of lightning visible through the church’s high skylights served as a powerful backdrop to Koskela’s narrative. Important words were lost to me in the din, even as I sought to decipher them on the pastor’s lips. But then I gave myself over to watching him as he rowed through the mighty waves unleashed by Väinämöinen’s magic. I somehow sensed that in one of the many lives a shaman is vouchsafed, the pastor had been on board that ship. Perhaps it was not a legend he was telling, but a memory from his own youth.