“In many situations, we’re our own strictest judges. I don’t want to force my beliefs on you, but as a priest I can offer you one comfort. There is one who offers mercy and forgiveness when we can’t offer them to ourselves. He understands your choices. He sees your anguish. He forgives you.”
She has not looked at him, but now she looks away even more, if that’s possible. “The important thing is not how I feel. The important thing is my son. No contact possible. Letters have been sent. Official. Private. Red Cross. Nothing. Not even my father. Russia is like another planet.”
“I know. I don’t know if it would help you if we went through what can be done. I’m certain that you and your father know all the possibilities and have tried every channel. But sometimes it can help to discuss matters with an outsider who is sworn to silence. Nothing we speak of will go further. Maybe by pure chance we’ll come up with something new. In my line of work there are also examples of miracles.”
He smiles, understands perfectly well that she sees things differently, but he nevertheless enjoys shocking her with his naiveté. She almost smiles back, digs in her purse and shakes a pill into the palm of her hand and swallows it without water, throws her head back so it will slide down. “Yes,” she says. “Thank you. And forgive me for detaining you. Now we must go to the parsonage. Christening coffee cannot begin before Papa and Pastor arrive.”
They go in. The doors are open between the dining room and the parlour, there is a great buzz, and all the chairs are in use. The idea is that Mona should sit with the baptized baby in her arms while others serve, but it’s hard for her to see how slowly it’s all going, and she hates having her mother-in-law in the kitchen. Soon enough, Lillus is put to bed and Mona takes over. With help from Cecilia, who is willing and biddable, everything goes smoothly. And when the guests who are not staying on – in every corner of the parsonage – get up to to, the pastor says to Doctor Gyllen, “I’m planning to come to the village tomorrow. We need to talk about the roof-beam celebration for the Health Care Centre. Would it be all right if I look in during the afternoon?”
“That will be fine,” says Doctor Gyllen. “But I don’t expect any miracles.”
And here he is, where everyone can see, his briefcase in hand, knocking on Doctor Gyllen’s door. A long meeting, there is clearly much to discuss concerning the Health Care Centre. Her parents are out rowing in the nice weather. The general’s wife has a parasol raised against the sun, the general has a handkerchief on his head with knots tied at the corners, his braces over his undershirt, his trouser legs rolled up, and his lily-white feet on the duckboards. They row to an island in the bay and have coffee on the granite slope.
The pastor greets her with a smile, the doctor thanks him for yesterday’s reception. “It was all very pleasant.” As for the roof-beam party, maybe better to return to it when Sörling is ready to suggest a date. In any case, they need to discuss the refreshments with Adele Bergman. So:
The pastor has to start, he’s used to that. “All of this must feel like small potatoes compared with your own struggle.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. I do not think what happens here is unimportant. This is the right way to live—normally. Precious for me.”
“Yes, I feel the same way, ever since the end of the war. It’s good that we understand each other on that point. Moreover, I realize that here in Finland there’s a great deal we don’t understand about Rus—, about the Soviet Union. This Iron Curtain they talk about makes it hard for information to get through. Propaganda on their side, propaganda on ours. What are things really like over there?”
“A little better, I hope, now that the war is over. Materially. Maybe not the same hunger. But otherwise my information is quite old. Years have gone. No channels which function. Total isolation. We know nothing. We do not hear even rumours.”
“Before the war there were lots of rumours. People disappearing. No one knew anything for sure.”
“People who have never lived there don’t understand. No one knows what it was like.”
“No. Did you know other Finns in Leningrad? My father was in contact with Finns he met in America who moved to the Soviet Union, but then there were no more letters.”
“Many are dead. Others in camps. Yes, I knew Finns. In happier times, in their youth, my father knew Edvard Gylling. He looked me up in Leningrad. You will think it comic, but we always spoke Swedish together. Except last few times. We didn’t dare. We spoke only Russian, only the most common phrases. ‘I am happy to see you, dear Edvard Gylling.’ ‘And I to see you, dear little Irina Gyllen.’ ‘How is your dear family?’ ‘Fine, thank you, in good health. Fanny especially sends greetings.’ That was his last visit to Leningrad. Then arrested. Fanny taken away. Grown children, no contact.”
“Terrible.”
“He was a good person. An idealist. A socialist. Ach, if he had only stepped back when the civil war in Finland could no longer be prevented.”
“Like our own great donor, who knew enough to flee to Sweden. He had relatives here who helped him move on.”
“Gylling could have done the same. But he could not betray his ideals. What he saw as the cause. He could not betray his comrades.”
“He made the wrong decision for the right reasons. While things are happening, we have no access to the final accounting.”
“If he could have persuaded Fanny to stay in Sweden with the children or go to Finland when it was still possible! We were such good friends. Our names so similar. We had nicknames for each other. We always spoke Swedish. About our youth. Although I had more Russian than he and had lived longer in Russia. I was admitted to medical school before the Revolution.”
“You lived through all of it.”
“Yes. I knew how poor, ignorant, dirty, helpless the people were. We were many who thought the Revolution must happen to change these evils. How could we? So stupid.”
“You believed in reforms, ideals. That’s not stupid.”
“Years went by before we understood, and then we didn’t want to believe. I could pursue my studies, I took examinations, specialized. Got married. My husband like me. Those years, when we could have emigrated to Finland. The Finnish immigrants also.”
“People act on the information and the hopes they have. No one can demand that you should have known then what you know now.”
“Yes, but later. People start to disappear. Arrests. Everyone afraid. People afraid to talk. Afraid to telephone. Suspect each other. It takes astonishingly long time, my dear Pyotr Leonardovich, before you realize you are not paranoid to suspect your friends of being informers. You do everything from fear—wrong things, immoral things, ugly things. You’ve never had to see what you can be driven to do.”
“No.”
“And the worst of all, you let time pass until you can no longer save yourself. Contacts with Finland broken. No more invitations to consulate. Russian police at the gate, always asking for invitation, name, papers. The best doctors gone, new doctors and commissars, surveillance. My husband and I told ourselves for long time the regime needs doctors. They can’t manage without us. We’re safe. If we just work, not talk, not attract attention. Then we had our son, born in ’thirty-two. For him we do everything.”
“Yes.”
“There is so much envy. Everyone has something that someone else wants. Your job at the hospital. Your apartment. Something so unimportant you can’t even imagine. We discuss all the time, my husband and I, what is best for the child. If one of us is arrested, the other gets divorce. Disclaim the other, we forgive each other in advance. Live quietly with child. Hope for better times.”