Diego Marani - New Finnish Grammar

Back in town, I learned that the Russians had attacked the Finnish positions on the Karelian Isthmus: the dreaded counter-attack had begun. The Kämp was in a state of ferment. A number of journalists and reporters were ready for the front; gathered together in the press-room with their luggage, they were impatiently waiting their turn for a taxi. In the bar, the newsreader was listing the places already under attack and the enemy formations and Finnish regiments involved, all in a suitably martial tone. A small crowd had come in to listen. At each name, faces darkened, some people were weeping, others were staring blankly and silently into the middle distance. Hotel porters, bar attendants, telephonists, all had deserted their posts to cluster round the loudspeaker; even the waiters had stopped moving among the tables. I too got caught up in the excitement, joining the knots of people commenting upon the latest news. A reporter with a camera round his neck came in, shouting. A rumour promptly circulated to the effect that a German ship with anti-tank shells had come into the port, and others were expected. A few nights earlier, I myself had noticed that a vessel bearing the flag of the German navy was moored alongside the quay in the harbour at Pohjoissatama, indeed I had stopped to inspect it more closely; it reminded me of the Tübingen. The photographer who’d just come in said he was convinced that German troops were about to land in Finland to launch a counter-offensive on Leningrad, but several officers who were standing outside the main huddle intervened to put paid to that rumour, explaining that here we were talking about military aid: Germany was arming Finland against a Russian attack, as had already happened in the first years of the war. An elderly man standing beside me made certain observations concerning this piece of news, shaking his head the while, then wandered off; someone made a disobliging comment. I too wanted to have my say, and found myself suddenly strangely talkative. I said that German aid was manna from Heaven — I was very proud of that expression, which I had learned from Koskela. A young man behind me came forward to declare himself in agreement, and this served to embolden me further: quickened by my excitement, the sentences built themselves up mechanically in my mind, the right words presented themselves effortlessly and I was amazed to hear myself pronouncing them; my Finnish was no longer a blend of sounds now spiky, now indistinct. Even if I still had trouble with my cases, the phrases which now came out of my mouth were clear-cut, well-turned. People were listening to me, some were nodding; for a moment I felt capable of chairing a meeting, but then I was distracted by other voices and abandoned my new-found role of orator to return to my more normal line of duty, helping some foreign journalists to explain to a taxi-driver where they wanted to go, telling some new arrival where the Russian attack had taken place, explaining to another what they were talking about at the bar. Then, propelled by another surge of excitement, I found myself wandering about the streets. A long column of troop-bearing trucks had formed on the Esplanadi, near the market square; youthful faces were peering out from under the tarpaulins. Bemused and baffled at having been thrust by history into the midst of such momentous times, they greeted the passers-by with a mixture of gravity and delight. The rhythmical sound of the engines, the metallic din they made in that square, normally so peaceful, was reminiscent of the hammering of cannon on a battlefield. Despite the bright sunlight, the city seemed to be in mourning; people were wandering aimlessly about the streets, drawn to any commotion, any crowd, scanning the light-filled streets, retailing accounts of unlikely events which they themselves did not believe. I wandered around for quite some time, as aimless as the rest, idly drawn to any group I came across. Some hours later I went back towards the market square, where the traders were packing up their stalls, tarpaulins swollen by the mild sea breeze. I sat down on the quay, away from the crowds, near the point where the ferry left for the islands; I was breathless with exhaustion, and the sun hurt my eyes. I would have liked to go home and sleep, but the very thought of the visitors’ quarters made me feel uneasy: I wouldn’t have been able to bear the smell of the disinfectant, the silence, broken by slight noises, the distant clatter and above all the daylight and attendant shadows on the walls. Looking again towards the square, I saw Ilma’s flower seller leaning against a bollard, surrounded by her improvised containers. That was a pleasant surprise: I bought a bunch of wild flowers, watching her carefully as I handed her the coins, but I did not receive the expected smile. She thanked me humbly and lowered her eyes to stare at the cobbles, embarrassed by my insistent gaze. Truly exhausted now, I decided to go back to the hospital anyway. To avoid going straight into the visitors’ quarters, I decided to put the flowers on the altar in the chapel; it wasn’t yet mid-day, and the place was empty. There too the sunlight created a mood of misplaced optimism: usually sunk in smoke-filled gloom, the veining of the wood was suddenly revealed, like that on a delicate skin unaccustomed to light. I went into the sacristy and took out some sheets of writing paper I’d found in the Kämp. ‘Dear Ilma’, I began to write; but there I stopped; weariness drew my head down to the table, and I slept.

I did indeed find several sheets of writing paper in the middle of the notebook with the Kämp’s letterhead, bearing different dates and just the words ‘Dear Ilma’, gone over several times to the point of tearing holes in the paper, always a sign that the writer does not know what to say next. Only one bore any other words: ‘I know you’re right, but I …’ written in a hesitant hand, then nothing. Only a heart of stone could have been left untouched by words like those in Miss Koivisto’s letters. I wonder whether the author of these pages had fully understood their meaning. But the careful copyings out, the lists of verbs and nouns, the constant repetition, in other parts of the notebook, of expressions taken from her letters, give me cause to believe that in fact he did. Indeed, I am convinced that at a certain moment that man was actually preparing himself to write some reply. Perhaps he was discouraged by the difficulty of expressing his feelings in a language he had by no means fully mastered. But some things can be said quite simply, and sometimes a postcard with a simple greeting means more than a love letter. What is more likely, as Miss Koivisto herself maintains, is that that man was so obsessed by his search for his own identity that he was really at his wits’ end. After Koskela’s departure, left entirely on his own, the author of this document gradually lost all contact with reality. What is more the pastor, who must have been aware that his pupil was entertaining vague thoughts in connection with some woman, seems to have done nothing to encourage him to pursue them further, nor to support him in his efforts to forge for himself the sort of everyday life which turns the makeshift into something more permanent. Koskela was already caught up in the delirium which was ultimately to lead him to his end. The way he talked, his vision of the world, his merciless cynicism were already pulling him in the direction of his final choice, setting him on a path which was bound to lead to self-destruction. So Miss Koivisto’s poignant words fell upon stony ground, that of a mind unravelling; his attempts to answer her may have been his last moments of lucidity.

Long, long ago, I too believed in promises that are written down on notepaper. Deluding myself that I would keep them, I covered fragile sheets of paper with feelings that were bigger than myself, that I thought I could master simply because I was able to write them down. In fact, here too I was behaving like a scientist: I described my state of mind just as I would have the symptoms and course of a disease. I had not yet realized that nothing that concerns man ever happens the same way twice, that nothing is made to last and that the feelings by which I was being carried away would be vastly outlived by the organs which were producing them. I declared myself in love with the same lightness of heart with which certain of my patients declared that they had tuberculosis, as though TB were not some serious pulmonary pathology but a sort of state of mind. Like them, I was not aware of the seriousness of my illness. Indeed, it seemed to me that, written down, the awesome phenomenon by which I was beset would be more easily tamed, become more rational. I thought, wrongly, that my feelings, if written down on paper, would take on more solid form, and that such solidity would communicate itself to the person who read my letters. But one day, quite unexpectedly, words — set on their course long before I could read them — reached me, and killed me. Of all the types of cruelty that the person who loves us may inflict upon us, even without meaning to, this is the worst.