The Core of the Sun (12 page)

JARE SPEAKS

December 2016

While I'm arranging to have Neulapää transferred into my name, business really picks up.

The fresh score I got from the Gaians is starting to run out as they gradually wind down their greenhouses to get ready for the move. It's hard to grow in the colder winter months anyway. But there's as much flake as anyone could possibly want. I get a new batch from them every couple of months. I don't have to pay them anything for it; it's their advance payment for rent at Neulapää.

We're making amazing amounts of money.

Instead of using the bulletin boards, V and I have a new way to find customers that is simple but effective. We use the personals. The ad is always purportedly taken out by an eloi, since we're naturally looking for mascos. The wording varies, but the key point is that the ad always uses the word “hot” or “burning” or “fiery,” as in “Beautiful eloi is ready for a fiery relationship with someone ready to take the plunge.” We change the name and the coin-operated postbox every time, and V always goes to collect the replies. The authorities aren't interested in the romantic exploits of an eloi. I don't worry much about the security cameras. V's always dripping with makeup and hair spray, in a corset with cleavage, looking like one of the fashion dolls that little elois play with. She wears clothes from FemiDress, the state store. She fits the description of a thousand other elois. Ten thousand.

Of course we get a lot of responses from mascos taking the ad at face value. But the respondents who know what's what play the game right. They write as if they want to get to know her, but they sprinkle their letters with lots of words having to do with heat: talk about being on fire, about a hidden flame, use the kind of code I learned from Mirko. “Do you have the hidden treasure I'm looking for? Will you whisper in my ear, ‘You're getting hotter'?” Those are the ones we write back to in a way that will still sound like romantic overtures if the letters fall into the wrong hands, but includes hidden information about bulletin board locations, identifying pictures, key words. When a potential customer shows up at the refreshments bar, a few exchanged words make it clear whether we're on the same page. Only then do we arrange where to meet for the first deal, which often leads to a regular customer relationship.

No one's interested in why an eloi who's engaged, or even married, would be placing ads in the personals. A free, unregulated mating market is to everyone's eusistocratic advantage. An eloi looking for companionship outside of marriage might have extremely loose morals, but if it provides another, unmarried masco some satisfaction, what's the harm in it? At worst it could cause a little scuffle between two men. It's ten times more common for a masco to be looking for next year's model.

Consistent quality is our selling point. It used to be, especially before V was in on the game, that I'd be sold half-fake stuff, adulterated with formic acid or some other substance that stings the mouth to fool inexperienced users into thinking it was capsaicin. When V's tolerance started to increase she realized the potential of the vaginal test. The level of capsaicin doesn't have any connection to the taste, and the real stuff can only work on the mucous membranes in one way. But the Gaian stuff is always good. You don't even have to test it.

My travel fund keeps growing and growing. That's mostly thanks to V. It's still nothing near as much as I need, but at least I can see that the goal is attainable. Over the past couple of years at least two guys I know in a roundabout way have been transferred abroad from the Food Bureau by greasing the right official wheels. One went to Tokyo to spy on the matsutake mushroom market and the other to a factory in Germany where they process Finnish blueberries into health lozenges.

Our newfound wealth doesn't show. Sometimes I buy a book for V; sometimes we go to the movies. Of course V isn't that interested in the short romances and melodramas geared toward the eloi audience, and the war movies full of acts of heroism and patriotism made for the mascos bore her pretty quickly, too. We mainly do it just so that we can be seen in public as a couple.

I've heard that in the hedonist countries drug dealers drive fancy cars and wear tons of jewelry and drink expensive alcoholic drinks and dress like kings.

I wouldn't trade places with them. Right now the most important thing is that V is all right.

Dear Manna,

Do you remember the weekend in October when I was helping to dig up the rutabagas and put them in the cellar?

When Harri came into the living room at Neulapää with a red toy train in his hand?

I still get the shakes when I think about it.

At first I didn't understand why you and Harri wanted to keep Neulapää. I thought Harri would sell it immediately. But then it occurred to me that Neulapää was Harri and Manna Nissilä's country house. A powerful status symbol. A villa, a dacha, almost an estate, at the edge of nature, where the two of you could promenade up and down the paths arm in arm and invite city guests in the summer to enjoy the cool greenery and birdsong, the scent of lilacs and the shade of the apple trees.

I'm sure that's what Neulapää seemed like to you. To be the mistress of Neulapää was like a story in
Femigirl
magazine, a place where the lady of the estate could sip chilled mint coolers in the gazebo with friends.
Femigirl
gave you the idea that getting married would change your life into a fairy tale; once a masco came along, control of an eloi's life was outsourced and the crazy, chaotic world became clear and orderly.

But that's not what happened.

You called me often after your wedding. Almost too often, though I was always happy to hear your voice. It usually had something to do with summer chores. You couldn't remember when it was that the vegetables Aulikki planted should be harvested, or you'd forgotten how to preserve them. Should this go in the cellar or the freezer? How do you make sauerkraut again?

Oh my delicate, wide-eyed, endearingly energetic kitten. Of course I would come on my weekend off to help you out. Brother-in-law Harri strutted around the place like any city masco, knowledgeable enough about pipes and wiring and the secrets of light switches but happy to leave the gardening to us elois.

We weeded and harvested, picked berries and made juice, shelled peas. I offered my advice, gave you little tips, but also took care that I didn't talk too theoretically or knowledgeably when Harri was around, remembering to lisp and end my sentences on a shrill pitch. I acted like a chimpanzee doing tricks she's been taught through frequent repetition. But all my effort went down the drain when Harri walked into the room with that toy train.

I exuded fear as bitter as cranberries.

Harri shook the toy train in front of us as if it were covered in blood, as if it were an amputated hand. He asked you sharply if Aulikki had babysat any masco children.

You shook your platinum curls, sure of yourself for once, at just the wrong time. “Nope! No way! There was no one here but us elois!” you said.

Harri's sandy-colored eyebrows scowled. He'd found other boys' toys in the attic as well. Letter blocks. Even some sort of toy gun.

I started to feel dizzy. What a stupid mistake we'd made, Aulikki and I.

Elois have difficulty lying. You immediately turned to me and said, “I'm sure Vanna knows why.”

I looked at Harri with my big blue eloi eyes. “They must be Grandma Aulikki's fiancé's things. She was going to get married once but the masco skipped out on her. When he left she still had all his old things. And she saved everything. She saved her old ballroom gowns, too.”

The dresses were a nice little jab. Harri didn't like talking about those dresses, not at all. I had a hunch that selling those dresses hadn't been your idea. Harri looked at me narrowly and the soil smell coming off him was so strong that I thought he might be ready to dispute what I'd said. But there was also a strong smell of lemons, which told me that for now he was simply suspicious.

“Grandma Aulikki was so silly,” I said, and giggled, though my heart was frozen through. “She had a fiancé—I mean, like, a real fiancé, not our grandfather—but that was decades ago. And she was going to have a baby with him, but the baby was never born, it was a miscarriage, so Grandma Aulikki never got married because the masco didn't want a wedding if there wasn't any baby,” I babbled excitedly, feigning an eloi's relish for ­gossip. “So she went a little nutty and saved his toys, thinking that he might come back someday and make another baby with her. Isn't that pathetic?”

I flashed a look at you, desperately hoping that you would follow the herd like a good eloi, and you did.

“Yeah. That's what happened. Just like she said. Exactly like that. Pathetic.”

Harri's tense shoulders relaxed and he exuded a scent of laundry dried in the sun. He believed us.

“Grandma Aulikki was such a silly head!”

I stretched my face into a grin. You did too, like a mirror image.

“She really was a silly-billy head!” you said.

You saw your reward in my face, took Harri by the arm, and lifted your shockingly beautiful, cherubic face toward his and laughed, happily and loudly. “We had just about the dumbest, silly-billy-headedest granny in the whole world!”

Then you disappeared.

I already had the Cellar inside me, but oh, how it dug itself deeper, how much darker and broader and hollowly echoing it grew.

Its darkness was the darkness between the stars, cold and indifferent. Sometimes there was a flash, a supernova of pure hate, exploding in scorching flames and then dying. But even the roaring brightness of my hatred couldn't light up the suffocating blackness of the Cellar.

And at the bottom of the Cellar flowed more and more swirling, night-colored water.

Your sister,

Vanna
(
Vera
)

Excerpt from
A Short History of the Domestication of Women

National Publishing (1997)

In the nineteenth century, a wave of unprecedented violence and chaos swept across Finland. This phenomenon began in Ostrobothnia in western Finland, and in retrospect the initiating factors are easy to trace.

The west coast of Finland had become quickly prosperous. Tar was a commodity in great demand and large quantities of timber were cut to produce it. This freed up large areas of arable land, which in turn led to a glut of grain. Grain that isn't sold must be stored, but grain doesn't keep long, so the only effective way to exploit it monetarily and preserve its value was to produce another commodity that was in great demand at the time: alcohol.

Prosperity also led to an increase in population. The number of children per family grew, and in some places the increase in offspring made it impossible for the youngest sons in many families to be allocated land or other means of livelihood as an inheritance. Having no home or occupation of his own made it difficult for a young man to find a wife. The situation was made more difficult by the fact that the inhabitants of Ostrobothnia had traditionally attached a strong social value to a house, a farm, and other acquired possessions.

The idleness of an unmarried state, the ubiquitous availability of alcohol, and young men's competitive nature combined like sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter to form a volatile mix that needed only a little spark to cause a tremendous explosion.

That spark was struck during the time of the troublemakers, or the knife-fighters, as they were called. It was a period of unprecedented fear and terror. At its worst point there were more than 20 homicides per 100,000 residents in a single year. The period between 1820 and 1880 is a shameful mark on the history of the Finnish people and its social system, and a strong warning to us. It showed us that ordinary, respectable young men can be completely corrupted when their basic rights are neglected. Marriage and the position of natural dominance and regular enjoyment of sexual intercourse—so important to a man's personal well-being—that marriage provides are fundamental rights that the state should have granted and protected for the good of society instead of allowing deviant behaviors to foment to the point of acts of murder.

Luckily the state, in the form of the Finnish Senate, did not fail to act. Thoughtful statesmen such as J. V. Snellman introduced stricter punishments for knife-fighters. But Senator Johan Mauritz Nordenstam, well known and deeply respected for his efforts to restrain the recklessness of many young people, proposed cutting the problem off at its root. Instead of trying to rein in young men's unrest through force, a clause was added to the parish laws fining young women for “unjustified jilting” (an infraction known today by the more contemporary term “willful mating misconduct,” though with the advancement of our present Finnish social order it is a clause rarely invoked). Since it was clear that the unrest was largely caused by young men whose proposals had been rejected, it was decided that the fine would be exacted from those young women who for reasons of misplaced pride or sheer obstinacy refused an offer of marriage. Henceforth, the only legally valid reason for a refusal of marriage would be a suitor's infliction of serious physical injury or proof of his criminal background.

This action on behalf of dispossessed young men offered an immediate and noticeable improvement in opportunities for obtaining a wife and family, and through them a meaning and direction in life.

Of course, wealthy households could easily pay the fines, which allowed well-to-do fathers to avoid surrendering their daughters to any suitor who came along. This was, in a way, understandable, since many marriages at that time entailed combining land and possessions. The marriage chances for dispossessed young men who were discriminated against on the mating market nevertheless unquestionably improved, as could be seen fairly quickly in a gradual return to social stability.

At this time another discovery was made that would be very significant for the future. Most of those who obeyed the new law were meek-natured girls who recognized limitations on their own value and desires and were aware that a marriage proposal was an honor for a young woman and in accordance with nature's laws. It was noteworthy that over time this attitude was increasingly passed down to female offspring—partly owing to genetics, but also largely as a result of being raised by mothers who had internalized these moral values. Uncooperative or overly proud young women, particularly those of modest means, often had to compensate for unpaid fines through imprisonment or resort to unseemly means to pay them, which caused them to age prematurely and left them with decreased hopes for matrimony. Those who had the means to pay their fines and avoid imprisonment, on the other hand, might be quickly labeled as “penalty girls” and be assumed to be ill-­tempered, coldhearted, or of questionable moral character, and thus they, too, were often left husbandless and unable to pass on their socially damaging characteristics to their female offspring.

This discovery was extremely important to social ­welfare, and the government made an effort to reinforce this positive ­development—it began to select meek-tempered girls for matrimony.

A personality test was developed for the purpose, made up of a series of questions about opinions and attitudes and administered by parish pastors in conjunction with confirmation classes. If a girl's answers were appropriately submissive, she would be confirmed and given permission to marry. The personality test made up for the shortcomings of the traditional confirmation exam, which had concentrated on qualities of secondary importance to motherhood and marriage such as literacy and knowledge of the catechism. Because the use of the new test produced consistently positive results in the life satisfaction of marriageable men and promoted social order, it was eventually adopted throughout the country.

This step produced one of the pillars of Finland's eusistocratic system, and with the advent of Francis Galton's eugenic theories at the beginning of the twentieth century, Finland's eusistocratic project was further clarified. The theory of eugenics created completely new and brilliant insights into the future of the Finnish people and all humanity. Positive racial hygiene incorporating both training and genetic selection was understood to be an essential complement to negative racial hygiene, which used a variety of rules and limitations to prevent the birth of weak specimens. Later, a deeper understanding of the work of Gregor Mendel and Dimitri ­Belyayev and of the mechanisms of genetics served to carry the torch of eusistocracy still further.

Another important pillar of our society was, of course, prohibition, which went into effect in 1919 and was later expanded to include not only alcohol but also many other “recreational substances” dangerous to health and welfare, substances whose unfettered use we still sometimes learn about in school when we study the hedonistic societies.

One might think that prohibition is completely unrelated to the domestication of women, but these two cornerstones of our eusistocracy are inextricably connected. While it is true that public health is protected by restrictions on the availability of dangerous substances, it also must be recognized that human happiness and a balanced life are naturally connected to certain specific chemicals in the brain that promote a feeling of well-being. Physical exercise, regular sexual intercourse, and the satisfaction of serving as the head of a household—or, for the weaker sex, the joys of motherhood—are important sources of these brain chemicals.

The duty of a eusistocratic society is to support the pursuit of this good life and to strive in every way to lower the barriers to its achievement.

Establishing prohibition as a permanent part of Finnish society has not been without its problems, however. In the early days of prohibition alcohol was smuggled into Finland from elsewhere in Europe in large quantities. Systematic prevention and surveillance, and above all substantial toughening of punishments, succeeded in bringing contraband under ever greater control. An absolutely thorough system of border control, applied to both people and goods, essential in the enforcement of prohibition and created for that purpose, later proved a blessing in other ways as well. The Finnish eusistocracy has no need for decadent democracies' luxury goods, for dangerous substances demoralizing to the public health and destructive to human welfare, nor for the soulless human worms who attempt to exploit such substances for personal gain. Strict control of our borders also ensures that deceitful propaganda isn't allowed to undermine the development of our society or rot away the heart of our eusistocratic system.

Wartime, as difficult as it was for the heroic Finnish people, provided a more favorable growing medium for our eusistocratic endeavor than ever before. The unavoidable loss of men on the front brought about a situation in which marriageable women far outnumbered men. It was a time when docile-natured women could more effectively be steered into marriage and procreation, while overly independent women were enlisted into maintenance and auxiliary roles required for the war in organizations such as the Lotta Svärd auxiliaries.

This meant that by the 1950s the female population of Finland was already selected to such an extent that, as awareness of Belyayev's experiments increased over the ensuing decades, it was but a small step to adoption of a systematic and scientific program of domestication.

Manna,

I swear I tried to get in touch with you. I swear by everything most precious to me.

You very rarely called me over the winter. You were living in town so you didn't need any gardening advice, but you called sometimes to ask about recipes or stain removal. I'd stayed in eloi school much longer than you had, after all, and taken courses that you hadn't because of your early graduation.

I almost never saw you in town. I sometimes saw your husband in passing. Once he was even obliged to acknowledge me when I was walking by as he got out of his car.

I expected that at any time I would get that certain news.

Baby news.

But it never came. I knew that if it had happened you would have told me immediately. I've sometimes wondered if everything would have been different if you'd gotten pregnant.

Spring came, then summer. You and Harri were staying at Neulapää while Harri was on vacation, so my phone started to ring again. You called almost every day. The berry bushes had developed a bad case of aphids; the tomatoes were blossoming but not fruiting. What's the best way to stake peas? There was a catch in your voice when you talked about the failed radish crop, the tops healthy looking but the roots long, thin, and inedible—“And Harri likes radishes
so much
!”

I asked if you had thinned them and remembered to water them, if you had pruned the tomatoes, if you had tried adding ladybugs to the berry bushes.

You didn't ask me to come and help you, though. Just the telephone calls. “Harri says I gotta learn to take care of myself.”

In July the calls stopped like they'd hit a wall.

At first I thought that you'd finally started to get the hang of gardening.

Then I started to feel nervous about your silence. I decided to call, using your birthday at the beginning of August as an excuse. Like all elois, you set great store by your birthday—the one time in the year when an eloi, consumed with housework and giving birth, can be a princess again, can be the center of attention, dress up and get presents, if only for a day. I'd been planning to ask you if you wanted to have your birthday party in your apartment in Tampere or in my little bachelorette's studio, or whether we should plan a party at Neulapää. After all, it would be your first anniversary, too—doubly important.

Harri answered the phone and said that you were out.

Out?

Where could you possibly go? Elois don't drive and public transportation to and from Neulapää was limited.

I asked if he would call you to the phone.

“I'm sure she can't hear me,” he said.

I know now that he was telling the truth for once.

Elois don't pry and they certainly don't question. I thought you might have gone out on the bicycle, maybe to pick up some milk from the kiosk. I asked Harri to tell you I'd called and to call me back as soon as you had a chance.

Two days passed and you didn't call. Of course there was a possibility that you had tried to call when I was at school or at the store or out making a deal. I knew how you liked to throw extravagant, well-planned parties, so I was perplexed. The birthday girl can't arrange the whole thing herself; it has to be a surprise, even if she actually dictates exactly what she wants to her friends and family. It was really strange that you hadn't already come to me with a wish list. When you were younger you used to start planning next year's birthday the moment this year's was over.

I was afraid you were still holding a grudge against me, although I'd thought that things had finally warmed between us. Were you planning to exclude me from the party? Maybe a gaggle of your old classmates was already planning the table setting and baking cookies and wrapping trinkets for you. Or perhaps Harri was planning some big, romantic first anniversary celebration for just the two of you?

I seriously doubted it.

I called Neulapää again. Harri answered, once again irritable and in a great hurry. You were out again. I went straight to the point.

“Has Manna told you she doesn't want to talk to me?”

“Unfortunately that is the case.”

And he hung up on me.

I was flooded with worry. I knew that elois sometimes make a show of avoiding a person—it was typical competitive behavior to be “mad” at some of your friends and form alliances with others for one reason or another, whether it was from jealousy or envy or merely a desire to stir the pot. But you had invited me to your wedding, as your maid of honor no less, and I'd been over to Neulapää to help you several times.