Emmi Itäranta - Memory of Water

I took a step towards her, then another, and she didn’t move away. I hadn’t seen her cry since she stumbled in the fell when she was ten and sprained her ankle. She gave one sob against my shoulder and then she was quiet. We stood there for a long time, in the scorching sun-sting of the late afternoon. Eventually Sanja withdrew from me and sniffed.

‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t be silly,’ I said and poked her arm. ‘I brought water.’

I was relieved that she could still try a smile.

‘I’ll do repair jobs until the end of the world, if you won’t accept another payment,’ she said. I opened my mouth to argue, but she interrupted, ‘It’s only fair. It’s not like you have a well in your garden.’

I didn’t look at her then; I wasn’t sure what she would see on my face.

‘I left the skins in the front yard,’ I said. ‘Let’s go, before someone snatches them.’

We collected the skins from the cart and carried them to the door. When Sanja opened it, a thick stench that made me think of dirty hair and sour milk pushed through the gap. There were empty mugs and greasy plates with food remains stuck to them on the living room table and under it. I noticed children’s clothes soaking in murky water at the bottom of a washing tub in the corner. Some of them had large dark stains. Piles of dust floated along the floor in the draft when we passed them.

Sanja looked at me and then she looked around, as if realising for the first time in days how the house looked.

‘It’s a dreadful mess,’ she said. ‘Minja can’t hold any food, and we haven’t even been able to wash all her diapers.’

I saw she was embarrassed, because she had asked me in to witness the traces of the illness.

‘You can do it now,’ I said and tried to smile.

We carried the waterskins into the kitchen. I helped Sanja pour a little clean water in a baby bottle. She rinsed the bottle, filled it again and took from a cupboard a fabric pouch, from which she dosed two spoonfuls of white powder in the water. She shook the bottle a little so the powder would dissolve. Its pale mist floated in the cloudy liquid.

We heard footsteps from the veranda. Sanja went to the door with the baby bottle. Kira stepped inside, holding Minja in her arms. I hadn’t seen Minja in a few weeks and my stomach turned. She was thin and fragile, and her usually bright eyes were just two shadows in her bone-sharp face. Kira was pale and her posture was sunken.

‘They can’t admit more patients,’ she said. ‘The nearest hospital that has space is in Kuusamo.’

‘What do they expect us to do?’ Sanja asked.

‘They said to give the medical solution to Minja and wait for the fever to go down.’

‘But that’s what we’ve been doing for the past two weeks! Did you tell them we haven’t got enough water?’

‘Sanja,’ Kira said. ‘The medical centre is full of patients who are even worse off than Minja.’ Her voice was weary and crushed. ‘They have two doctors and three nurses, and a few volunteers from the village. They owe three months’ worth of water debt to the black market. They don’t even know if they can continue to run the clinic next month.’

The air between us grew heavy. Sanja and I realised at the same time what Kira must have understood earlier: the doctors had no choice but to send Minja home to die.

Sanja handed the baby bottle with the medical solution to Kira.

‘Is it clean enough?’ Kira asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. Both Kira and Sanja looked at me sharply, and a realisation passed across Kira’s face.

‘You do know we can’t pay, don’t you?’ Kira asked. The words were addressed to Sanja as well as to me.

‘You don’t need to,’ I replied.

Kira sat down in a worn armchair, took the baby bottle and offered it to Minja. Minja barely had the strength to open her mouth, but after a long coaxing Kira got her to lick a few drops of liquid from the bottle. She carried Minja to the bedroom.

‘Sanja, would you come here a bit,’ she called.

‘I’ll wait here,’ I said to Sanja, who nodded. Kira lowered her voice behind the door, but I could hear her words nevertheless. I believe she wanted me to hear.

‘You shouldn’t have asked her for water,’ she said.

‘What else can we do?’ Sanja asked defiantly. ‘I can’t finish the water pipe. It’s nearly impossible to find the missing parts now, and the prices are sky-high.’

Kira sighed.

‘I know, Sanja. And finding water shouldn’t be your responsibility. If Minja was healthier, I might be able to make rounds doing sewing in the nearby villages with her, or try to find work at the army boots factory in Kuusamo. I just wouldn’t want to owe a debt of gratitude to anyone.’

I had heard enough. I walked out to the veranda and pushed the door closed carefully. I sat down on the step and looked around me: at the limp sunflower sprouts nodding in the sand, at the sunshade woven of seagrass sheltering a couple of dust-pale, straggly chairs, taut in their wooden frames. The surrounding yards and houses looked the same – drab, tired reflections of each other, exhausted under the weight of the afternoon.

I didn’t know how long it had been when Sanja got out of the house and closed the door quietly behind her.

‘They’re both asleep,’ she said. ‘It’s been a rare sight in this house lately.’

I kept my voice low, but the words left my mouth sharper than I had expected.

‘Are you out of your mind?’

Sanja’s head twitched towards me. My chest tightened when I saw the recent weeks on her face, but I continued.

‘Do you realise how dangerous it is for you to be building an illegal water pipe? If the water patrol finds it—’ I thought of the empty workshop, the clank, her sudden appearance. ‘It’s under your workshop, isn’t it? Your construction site.’

Sanja’s features were hazy with exhaustion, but annoyance, or perhaps despair, focused them for a moment.

‘The water rations are not enough for us, and we can’t afford to buy more,’ she said. ‘Dad has managed to make an arrangement and get part of his salary in water, but sometimes it looks and smells like dirty underwear has been soaked in it.’

I frowned.

‘Couldn’t you complain to someone?’ I asked.

Sanja snorted.

‘Who? The same officials that give it to us illegally?’

I saw what she meant.

‘Stop,’ I said. She stared at me in disbelief. ‘Don’t go anywhere near the water pipe again.’

‘You’ve clearly never had to choose,’ she said, ‘if you’d rather be thrown into jail for a water crime, or let your family die of thirst.’

I fell speechless for a moment, because she had rarely said anything this harsh to me. The hardness of her words seemed to have taken her by surprise, too. She took my hand and squeezed it.

‘I’m sorry, Noria,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean…’

‘How much do you need?’

‘Noria—’

‘How much?’

She looked directly at me. Her eyes were dark and bright.

‘Much more than you can afford. Two skinfuls a day,’ she said.

‘I’ll bring it to you.’

She shook her head.

‘You need your own water. You can’t.’

‘Yes, I can,’ I said.

It seemed to me that she was going to ask something. I was grateful when she didn’t. I didn’t need to lie.

Something had changed between Sanja and me, something for which I had no words back then and perhaps have none even now. She hadn’t spoken to me about the water pipe or Minja’s illness. I hadn’t spoken to her about the spring.

Secrets carve us like water carves stone. On the surface nothing will shift, but things we cannot tell anyone chafe and consume us, and slowly our life settles around them, moulds itself into their shape.