James Thompson - Lucifer's tears

When I was a young guy and first moved to Helsinki, I bartended in rakalat like this on occasion to make ends meet. The beer glasses are cheap and thick-hard to break-but the surface tension of the glass is so great that when they shatter, they explode.

I laugh along with them, good-natured. With my left hand, I hold up my pint in front of Fuckwad’s face and squeeze. He looks at me, smirking and quizzical. I squeeze harder, the glass goes off like a bomb, shatters into a thousand pieces. Beer and glass fly away from me toward Fuckwad, into his face and across the room. He recoils in his chair and gawks disbelief, face beer-soaked and covered with tiny bleeding cuts.

His friends shoot upright to their feet and back away. John and I remain seated. I glance around. Arska still lounges on the bouncer’s stool. He winks at me, amused. The bartender gapes, says nothing.

Fuckwad’s eyes brim with tears. “You fucking asshole,” he says, “you could have blinded me.”

I pick little glass shards out of my left hand and flick them at him with my right. “That was the idea,” I say. “Didn’t work.” I pick up another pint. “I could try again.”

He trembles and raises his hands to his face. “Please no.”

“I asked you nicely. Give me the boots.”

He tries to jerk them off as fast as he can. He turns his chair over and pitches to the floor. He keeps tugging at the boots.

I get up, stand over him and wait. I let blood drip from my hand onto his head. He offers me the boots.

I take them. “Get out,” I say.

His eyes dart, looking to his friends for backup, but they’re chuckling again, this time at his humiliation. He rights his chair and pulls himself back into it. He gives me a pitiful look of appeal.

“I said out.”

He whimpers. “It’s minus fucking twenty-five degrees.”

I nod toward John. “If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for you. I’m going to stand outside and watch. You’re going to walk until I can’t see you anymore.”

He gathers his courage and little remaining dignity, and starts to take his coat from the back of his chair.

I shake my head. “No coat.”

He lurches toward the door. I give John his boots and follow, and John tags along behind me. I thank Arska, step outside, ball up some snow in my cut hand and watch Fuckwad hurry along the ice.

John stands beside me. “I didn’t know it was possible to crush a beer glass in your hand,” he says.

“Me neither,” I say.

He puts an arm around my shoulders. “I’ll never forget this.”

“Me neither.”

“I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“Be a brother your sister can be proud of. Be her friend.”

“I’ll do my best,” he says.

“Tell her you missed your Sedona Wests and bought them back from UFF,” I say.

“I haven’t been around much. Nobody noticed they were gone.”

I check my watch. We’re near the house. Jari and his family are coming over for dinner tonight. I have just enough time to groceryshop, go home and check on Kate, and still make it to Filippov Construction and tail Linda when she gets off work.

It starts snowing hard again. John tags along while I groceryshop. We go to Alko. I buy a couple bottles of wine and two bottles of Koskenkorva. I tell John to hide one in his suitcase and sneak drinks to stay level, warn him not to let Kate catch him boozing alcoholic-style, especially in the daytime.

We go home. Kate and Mary are watching Dr. Phil. A bad sign. Kate hates Dr. Phil. It tells me Kate prefers listening to the good doctor to conversation with her sister.

I say hi to Mary, kiss Kate hello and touch her belly. “Learning anything from Phil?” I ask.

She mimics him. “Haaaney, what yoo got yourself is a drankin’ problem. Watcha need to dooo to cure yoor problem, haaney, is quit yer goddamned drankin’.”

She does a good imitation. It makes me laugh. John sits down to watch TV with them.

“What’s for dinner?” Kate asks.

“Karjalanpaisti.”

She smiles. “Dee-yummy.”

“I better get it started. Kate, I have to go out to work again. If I prep it now, can you pop it in the oven at five, so it will be done when Jari and his family get here?”

“Sure,” she says. “What happened to your hand?”

“I slipped on the ice, and rock salt in the snow cut it. No big deal.”

“What is karjalanpaisti?” Mary asks me.

“Something good. You’ll see.”

“How’s your headache?” Kate asks.

“Not bad.”

My head is splitting. I go to the bedroom and get a painkiller, so I can make it through the evening without my migraine singing songs that tell me to do bad things, and put dinner together. When I’m done, I go to the living room, sit down next to Kate and read the newspaper. I come across an article about the harsh treatment of Jews in Finland, and Helsinki in particular, during the nineteenth century. I think of the word Pasi Tervomaa used. Confluence. The persecution of Jews is suddenly everywhere I look.

The article says Jews were confined to living in designated areas. Jews were denied passports. Jews were forbidden to conduct many types of business, including, of course, moneylending. The list of citizens’ rights denied Jews is long. Because of these oppressive laws, a quarter of Finnish Jews either left Finland on their own or were deported.

This runs contrary to my perception of the Finnish treatment of Jews. Our country takes pride in its wartime record in that regard. Common wisdom holds that we protected Jews. During the war, they fought alongside other Finnish troops. Strangely enough, this means that Jews also fought alongside Germans. Finnish soldiers even operated a field synagogue.

Heinrich Himmler pushed for the deportation of our Jews to concentration camps. Our legendary general Gustaf Mannerheim replied, “While Jews serve in my army, I will not allow their deportation.”

Mannerheim’s hero status is such that he’s viewed as Finland’s Messiah. His military prowess and adroit political abilities allowed him to play the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany off one another, and ensured that neither overran us. On Independence Day in 1944, Mannerheim visited the Jewish synagogue in Helsinki and took part in a commemorative service for the Jewish soldiers who had died in the Winter and Continuation Wars, and presented the Jewish community with a medal. These things are common knowledge.

An SS stalag, manned in part by Finns, where Jews were sent by the Finnish government with full knowledge that they would be murdered, is antithetical to history as written. We love Jews. We hate Jews. Which is it? I call Pasi Tervomaa and explain my confusion and misgivings. “Did Mannerheim know about the slaughter in 309?” I ask.

“Let me put it this way. Mannerheim had the means to know if he chose to, and as such, he bore responsibility. If the Stalag 309 case had been brought before a tribunal at the end of the war, under the Nuremberg principles, Mannerheim would have been prosecuted as accessory to murder. That said, a lot of papers hit his desk, and he was an old man. He could have overlooked something. And the responsibility wasn’t his alone. The president and the interior minister at the time, Risto Ryti and Toivo Horelli, probably also gave their indirect blessings to Finnish collusion in 309 and the events that occurred there.”

“I remember that President Ryti and some ministers were convicted in war responsibility trials. Is there any connection?”

“No. Ryti and the others were sentenced in a show trial as a sop to the Soviets. They were charged with influencing Finland to wage war against the Soviet Union and United Kingdom in 1941, and for preventing peace during the Continuation War. By the way, it’s rumored that Mannerheim wasn’t charged because Stalin intervened. He liked Mannerheim. Or maybe Stalin didn’t actually like anyone, but found Mannerheim useful.”