Deep River Page 4

  Aksel escorted Aino back to the group of unmarried girls, where a somewhat irritated Voitto was standing on the group’s edge with the two drinks in his hands. Aksel thanked Aino and nodded his head toward Voitto. His whole body felt like a song about to be sung.

  He had just returned to his place by the food when stillness quickly spread through the crowd. A group of five young Russian officers had appeared, two of them carrying bottles. They stood there talking among themselves, laughing a little too loudly to be carefree. They must have known they weren’t welcome. Still, Aksel didn’t begrudge them anything. They were just young men, probably unhappy about being posted so far from home. He, along with all the others, tried not to look at them, but he felt uneasy.

  The dance band’s leader acted, starting a lively schottische, and the older people, including Tapio and Maíjaliisa, deliberately took the floor to ease the awkward silence. Soon the general hubbub restarted, and the Russians’ presence was, if not forgotten, being politely tolerated.

  Then, two of the young Russians asked two Finnish girls to dance. The girls politely refused. A couple of the soldiers who hadn’t asked the girls to dance made fun of the ones who had, in Russian, probably disparaging their looks or their manhood, and those soldiers came right back with their own insults just like young men everywhere. The bottles were passed again. An empty bottle was thrown into the trees on the edge of the dancing area. That brought looks of disapproval from the adults, but the Russian who did it grabbed for another bottle and took a large defiant swig. Aksel’s uneasiness grew.

  Still, the Russians now kept to themselves and were politely ignored.

  Aksel was aware that Aino had been dancing with other boys than Voitto, and when he’d danced with her earlier, he noticed that her hand was rough and callused, both making her seem a little more within his reach. So Aksel once again looked up to Arcturus in the dawn-like silver of the summer sky for courage and walked over to ask her to dance. She accepted. It was another waltz. She moved like a sailboat responding to the slightest touch of the rudder.

  On the second turn around the area, Aksel saw one of the Russians watching Aino intently. The young officer tossed down a drink, handed the bottle he’d been holding to one of his friends, and worked his way slowly through the dancing couples. When he neared Aksel and Aino, he stood there for a moment, swaying just slightly. The waltz came to an end. Aksel bowed, as his mother had told him, and started to escort Aino off the floor. The soldier stopped them, also giving a bow. He was not only an officer but, by the cut and quality of his uniform, upper class. He politely asked Aino, in Russian, if he could have the next dance.

  Aino’s head went up slightly and her shoulders back and she answered with an abrupt, “Ei onnistu!” “No way” in Finnish. The Russian took it for the clear snub it was. His face clouded. Whatever he said back to Aino in Russian wasn’t good. The two stood there, glaring at each other.

  Aksel started to look around for Gunnar. He and Voitto were already coming across the tanssilava. The soldier’s friends started coming from the other way. Aksel saw a dark-haired boy with the same flashing black eyes, a little older than himself, join Voitto and Gunnar. He guessed this must be Aino’s brother.

  Voitto was the first to speak. “Maybe you think you own the country,” he said in Finnish. “But you don’t own our women. Nobody owns Finnish women.” The Russian didn’t understand him.

  Aino, with her fluent Russian, repeated Voitto’s words and then added an earthy insult that involved the Russian going home and having sexual congress with sheep.

  Two of the Russian officers burst out laughing but not the aristocrat. He slapped Aino across the face. Aino snarled and hit his face with her fist. The stunned soldier shook his head, trying to clear it. Before he could even think of retaliating, Aino’s brother was on him, screaming with rage, slugging the Russian, who staggered backward into his friends, trying to shield himself. The brother kicked the Russian in the knee and then, spinning, caught the side of his head with his elbow. Spit and blood flew from the man’s mouth. The other Russians waded in, and the fight was on.

  Aksel had never been in a fight before. He picked out the nearest Russian, who stunned him with a fist to the temple. He saw stars, not like Arcturus, and found himself sitting on the ground.

  Aino stood there with her mouth agape, stunned at the raw male aggression she’d unleashed.

  The sound of a vodka bottle breaking stopped the fighting. The Russian with the broken bottle, clearly drunk, was sneering at Gunnar and waving it in his face. Gunnar’s hand went behind him, and he drew the long, curved puukko used by all fishermen for gutting and scaling. Matti moved next to Gunnar and pulled out his shorter and broader hunter’s puukko, more effective for skinning. Gunnar and Matti stood together facing the Russians, both slightly crouched, left arms up, right arms holding the puukkos away from their bodies. Now there was fear in the faces of both sides.

  That was when Tapio stepped in, his own puukko in hand. “I’ll use it on the first person who takes a step forward.” He looked directly at Matti. “Including you.” He repeated himself in Russian and, obviously surprised that the man spoke their language, the young officers backed off.

  After a few minutes of awkward silence, the accordion player started up a lively version of “Suomalainen Polkka,” and the rest of the band was soon with him. With the almost Russian-sounding minor key, the rapid two-four rhythm, and the repeating four-note figures, the tune was just right to clear the air. Eventually the mood created by the fight dissipated and disappeared altogether when the huge midsummer’s night bonfire roared high into the sky, sucking air so furiously that the women’s skirts ruffled at their ankles. Then, with a heavy crashing noise, collapsing timber sent up a column of burning cinders into the clear, pale sky. Around the circle, Finns and Russians both were cast in foreboding red.

  5

  Sergeant Kozlov was a sullen drunk. When he got this way, it felt like a storm cloud moving toward you, the air stirring at your feet and around your shoulders; all you could do was weather it, hoping lightning wouldn’t strike.

  Kozlov and Corporal Kusnetsov were slumped in the straight-backed wooden chairs at the kitchen table, a bottle of vodka and a plate with their cigarette ashes between them. Aino was knitting a winter sweater for Matti. Maíjaliisa was darning stockings. Both sat next to the woodstove. The fire that had heated supper and coffee was down to just embers, the door and windows were open to let the June air blow through the house. Matti was carving a dinner plate to replace one broken by Kozlov during a previous drunk and Tapio was resoling a winter boot. No Finnish farm family was foolish enough to waste the endless summer twilight. Those who didn’t prepare for winter never saw spring.

  The Koskis didn’t tiptoe when Kozlov was in one of his drunks, but they knew to keep quiet. Laulu, however, lying on the floor in front of Aino with her legs splayed out, suddenly jerked up, came to her feet, and in the way of dogs everywhere began to bark furiously, raising the alarm at something not detectable by humans, something passing over the roof or in the trees across the fields.

  Kozlov startled. Springing upright, eyes wild, knocking back his chair, he reached for his revolver, which was always with him like a touchstone of safety and violence. He shouted a string of obscenities at Laulu. Aino dropped her knitting and rushed to Laulu, kneeling next to her, to soothe and quiet her, whispering into her ear, “Shh, shh. It’s just Ilmatar flying over us,” the spirit of the air. Kozlov sat back down.

  She let Laulu go and Laulu padded to the open door, then to the window, checking the perimeter, then padded back to settle in front of Aino, who had again taken her chair next to Maíjaliisa.

  Corporal Kusnetsov, his head on the table, was apparently asleep. Kozlov raised his glass to Tapio and asked him in Russian if he wanted a drink. Tapio played dumb, wrinkling his eyebrows in puzzlement. Kozlov then held the glass out to Aino and Maíjaliisa, asking the same question. The combination of hatred for Rus
sians in general, detestation of Kozlov in particular, and the insult to her womanhood made by the proffered drink, as if she and Aino were prostitutes, was too much for Maíjaliisa. She scowled, her jaw set with anger.

  Kozlov rose from the table, smiling coldly. He held the glass out to Maíjaliisa, walking toward her, saying he’d by God make her drink and wipe that sanctimonious look off her face. Aino, knowing that her father understood every word, even if Maíjaliisa only intuited the intent, looked at Tapio as he rose to his feet. Matti rose with him, the plate dropping to the floor, his puukko in his hand. Tapio put his hand on Matti’s arm.

  Matti lowered the puukko.

  Laulu gave a low ominous growl.

  Kozlov lurched forward, holding out the vodka glass, and stepped on Laulu’s outstretched paw. Laulu attacked, latching onto Kozlov’s leg just above the ankle. Kozlov threw the glass at her and began kicking her against the stove, screaming with rage and pain. Tapio and Matti both ran to pull Laulu off but didn’t reach her before Kozlov had pulled his revolver. The pistol shot froze everyone in place. Laulu sighed, her eyes looking up, and went stiff, blood running from where the rifle-size .30-caliber bullet had exited behind her heart. Kozlov kicked the inert dog away from him. Aino went to the floor, covering Laulu’s body.

  Tapio was on Kozlov like a wolverine. His rush knocked the drunken Russian sideways and they both went down to the floor, Tapio pounding Kozlov’s face with his right fist while trying to push the Russian’s gun arm downward toward the man’s feet. The pistol went off again. Matti was kicking Kozlov, while Kozlov was trying to bring the pistol up to bear on Tapio, who was trying to keep it turned down and away from him. One of Matti’s kicks hit Kozlov’s gun arm, and a third shot sent a bullet through Kozlov’s cavalry boot into his calf. Tapio wrenched the pistol from Kozlov’s hand and threw it between Aino and Maíjaliisa. Matti kicked Kozlov again and Aino started to make a grab for the pistol, but before she reached it, another pistol shot sent a bullet into the planks next to it. Aino jumped back. Everyone froze. Corporal Kusnetsov stood by the kitchen table, smoke curling from his revolver.

  Kozlov scrambled over, retrieved his pistol, and tried to stand. He immediately collapsed. He crawled away from the Koskis, his pistol moving to cover them, Tapio rising to his feet to join Matti, Maíjaliisa still by the stove, Aino on the floor hugging Laulu with tears in her eyes—and raw hate.

  It was an instant when motion seemed unrelated to time, Kozlov dragging his wounded leg, the Koskis standing by the stove, Aino at their feet on the floor hugging and rocking Laulu’s body, Kusnetsov standing behind the kitchen table, smoke from the various pistol shots moving lazily in the twilight air, and stunned silence. There are moments in life when everything is changed and there is no changing back.

  Aino heard Corporal Kusnetsov ask Sergeant Kozlov if he could remain conscious and Kozlov answer him that he could and would remain so until this shit-head Finnish revolutionary was in prison for the rest of his life.

  With Kozlov keeping his pistol on the family, Kusnetsov took Matti’s and Tapio’s puukkos. He tied their hands behind them with Aino’s and Maíjaliisa’s head scarves and forced them to their knees. He turned to Aino and said, “Ysti.” Aino glared at him. He fired his pistol into the floor in front of her and she scrambled to get the horse.

  Aino held on to Ysti’s harness as he stood patiently in front of the wagon. Matti and Tapio were now bound hand and foot on the wagon’s floor and Sergeant Kozlov, pale but obviously tough and in total control, was on the driver’s seat facing backward toward them, his pistol out.

  Kusnetsov climbed up to the driver’s seat and took up the reins. He looked with sadness at Aino and Maíjaliisa and nodded his head back toward Tapio and Matti. “Hyvästi,” he said quietly, indicating that it was time to say goodbye.

  Maíjaliisa hurried to the wagon’s side and touched her hand to Tapio’s face. “I’ll wait as long as it takes. I am your wife for eternity.” She then reached for Matti’s head, trying to pull it up closer to her over the wagon’s sideboard, but Kozlov rapped Matti with his pistol barrel and Maíjaliisa let him go. “Now is when you must remember your sisu,” she whispered.

  Aino stood next to her mother, fighting tears. Tapio said to Maíjaliisa: “Put your hand on our daughter’s head.” Maíjaliisa hesitated, knowing what this meant, then she placed her hand on Aino’s dark, warm hair. Tapio said, “I cannot give my blessing in the old way, but now my little girl will go into the world a grown woman. I cannot give you silver or gold but take my blessing and keep it. Remember the ways and the prayers of the old people and remember those who love you and all will be well.” He nodded to Maíjaliisa, who removed her hand.

  Aino and Maíjaliisa watched the wagon until it disappeared behind the birches at the road’s turning, keeping everything in: the utter helplessness, the emptiness, the two of them alone in the silence.

  Matti came back to them two days later with Ysti and the wagon, his face bruised and eyes blackened, his back raw and still weeping blood and fluid from the whipping. They would never see Tapio again.

  6

  The burden of planting and harvesting would fall on Maíjaliisa, a forty-six-year-old woman; Aino, a sixteen-year-old girl; and Matti, a boy not yet fifteen. The little cash Maíjaliisa could earn from her midwifery practice wouldn’t begin to take care of the monthly rent. And as strong and willing as he was, Matti simply couldn’t match a grown man’s obligation for the work rent.

  Maíjaliisa, of course, tried to hide her fear from her children, as was expected of her, and Aino tried to hide her fear from Matti, as was expected of her. They needn’t have worried. Matti was too filled with rage to be worried about the future.

  They worked frantically, taking advantage of the long days, sometimes even working through the twilight of the summer night, missing out entirely on sleep. Still, they missed July’s rent. In mid-July, just two weeks after the rent was due, a letter arrived from the count’s manager, Mr. Melker Gustafsson, in Turku. After reading it, Maíjaliisa took it in to the bedroom and shut the door. Emerging about ten minutes later without it, her face grim and determined, she said nothing. She didn’t have to say anything. Aino and Matti just gave each other a look.

  Gustafsson arrived at the house on the eighth of August after the Koskis underpaid their August rent. He knocked on the door but entered the house as if he owned it, which his boss did. He presented Maíjaliisa with the letter she’d written several weeks earlier, saying she’d make up the shortfall in July’s rent. Maíjaliisa had to admit she didn’t have the money. Gustafsson said he wanted it in two weeks and left. Until then, Aino had never seen her mother cry.

  Voitto came to help whenever he could, but between school and his work with the socialists, he couldn’t come as much as Aino wished. He was also slow and inefficient at farmwork. Neighbors tried to help, but harvest came to every farm at the same time, so in the crucial last days the Koskis couldn’t get the hay cut and stacked before rain fell for several days, leaving it sodden and almost sure to rot. The cows might weather the bad hay because they had two stomachs, but their milk would be severely reduced. If Ysti was fed bad hay, it could kill him. They tried selling the cherries from the older trees as well as the potatoes from the garden but really couldn’t get much for them. The apples were looking good, but they wouldn’t be ripe for another month and, since virtually every other farm had a good apple crop, the market would be bad. So Maíjaliisa and Aino spent days picking deep-red lingonberries that grew in the forest and pale-orange cloudberries that liked to live on little hillocks in the wet pastureland or swampy ground near lakes and rivers, which meant fighting mosquitoes, sometimes so thick that Aino had to put her scarf over her nose and mouth so she wouldn’t breathe them in. No one in the district cultivated cloudberries—it was too difficult—so they were able to sell those for cash in Kokkola where the people liked to eat them, either fresh or as jam, with heated leipäjuusto, a local cheese made from cow colostrum.


  Maíjaliisa began taking Aino with her on every midwife visit, not just the occasional easy one. With two midwives in the family, there would be two times the income—if only the families who needed midwives could pay in cash.

  None of them said it, but winter was coming, and they might not even have a house.

  In mid-September Mrs. Puumala went into labor. There was a chance of some actual cash payment as the Puumalas owned their own farm and were good at working it.

  “Four centimeters,” Aino said. She looked up from between Mrs. Puumala’s legs at her mother. Maíjaliisa motioned her aside, peered closely at Mrs. Puumala’s cervix, and grunted approval. Aino did not have a ruler. She was using her mother’s finger scale.

  “Is there any depth?”

  “Just a little.”

  “So, what do you do now?”

  Aino hesitated a moment. “Nothing?”

  Maíjaliisa stood up and laughed. “You get coffee.”

  Aino was learning fast—but it wasn’t all about midwifery. While waiting for Mrs. Puumala she picked up Marx’s The Civil War in France and a German-Swedish dictionary to help her through it, both lent by Voitto. She was deep into it when she heard a horse outside and Mr. Puumala say to his wife, “It’s your sister’s nephew—the socialist.”