The Rhythm of Memory Read online

  Sirka had few memories of her own mother, who had died from pneumonia when Sirka was only five. The only thing she had to remember her mother by was a small wooden crucifix that hung from a thin, black string. She had worn it around her neck ever since her father had given it to her, never taking it off, even when she went to bathe. Even when Toivo unwrapped her from her nightgown and held her naked in his arms. Aside from her gold wedding band, Sirka considered it her most valuable possession. A gift from someone who had left her before she was old enough to form a memory. A gift from someone she hoped loved her from beyond a snowy grave.

  She noticed that the wooden crucifix had become even smoother and more beautiful over the years. A soft rosewood, the color of mulled wine. When she was nervous or when she knelt down at night to pray, Sirka clutched it around her fingers, felt the neat angles of its simple, perfect shape, and sensed, for a brief fleeting moment, that she was being watched over, cared for, and was safe.

  Her whole life, she had feared being alone. The mere thought of being left alone in their small wooden house was enough to terrify her, so she received the news of her pregnancy with great relief and delight. The youngest boy would be going to school next fall, and she was thankful that she would have the baby to keep her company.

  She was not unaware that another child would be a strain on the family. But she had been shocked by the intensity of Toivo’s response when she’d informed him that she was pregnant. It was the first time she had seen him cry.

  He tried to assure her that he was crying tears of joy, but she knew better. She saw how his face had been transformed over the past months. He hadn’t been the same since he had been sent home from the Russian front. He had left home a year and a half earlier a tall, strong man with broad shoulders and arms that resembled the thick tree trunks he had chopped since he was a small boy. But he returned a thin, frail man with sunken cheeks and a shattered foot.

  The evening he first returned home, she stood in the doorway for what seemed like a long time, too shocked even to invite him in. He appeared ghostlike. The white clothes, the pallid skin. Even his eyes seemed lost in a sea of white. The frost had penetrated him to the bone.

  She unwrapped his bandages herself that first evening. His white uniform was soiled with dried patches of blood, the tracings of dry earth and dirty snow; his red-raw fingers grasped a single crutch that supported his slender form. She took his fur-lined hat from him and laid it by the fire and placed his crutch in the corner. Silently, her fingers replacing words, she motioned to him to sit on one of their small wooden chairs, placing his swollen foot in between her thighs. She could feel the heat emanating from the flesh buried deep beneath the layers of cloth as she peeled the bandages off slowly, placing the strips of fabric in a pot of boiling water that rested on a stool beside her knees.

  He winced as she got closer to the foot. His eyes darted between the face of the wife he had longed for months to gaze upon and his bloody, disfigured foot.

  “You shouldn’t look at it, Sirka,” he whispered, his voice faint from the difficult journey.

  “Hush, be still!” she chided in a voice that quavered despite an attempt to be strong.

  “I don’t want you to see this!” he said, wiggling his leg so that the foot slipped from her thighs.

  But she grabbed his ankle, her strength surprising even herself.

  “If you get an infection, you will die, Toivo! So stay still and let me clean the wound and then sterilize these bandages!”

  He became quiet again. He had little energy left to argue with her, and he did not want to awaken the three sleeping boys.

  “It’s not so bad,” she whispered to him, trying to force back the tears that were beginning to well in her eyes. The battered, oozing mass of his foot lay there, exposed in the orange glow of the fire, two toes curling against Sirka’s white apron, the other three gone forever, replaced by gouges and ribbons of blue and purple, striating the flesh like the lines of an ancient stone.

  “It will heal, Toivo,” she said, her voice trembling as she placed his foot in a pot of warm, soapy water.

  “Never. I’ll be a cripple for the rest of my life.”

  “You can walk, Toivo, don’t be ridiculous.” And she paused, regaining her composure. “Thank God you’re alive, Toivo. We must thank God for that!”

  She raised his foot from the soaking water and kissed it gently.

  “Shall I wake the boys? They will be so happy to see their father!” she said, her face blushing slightly. Although only five months had passed since he’d joined the army against the Russians, to Sirka it seemed like an eternity since she had last been with her husband. How nervous she seemed with him now! It was as if Toivo were someone from her past she had forced herself to forget, for the wait for his return had been nearly too much for her to bear.

  Yet, now, she not only had to reacquaint herself with his presence, but also to deal with the reality that he would never be able to farm or fish as he once had. Their lives would be difficult, but she truly believed that God would watch over them and that somehow, no matter how difficult it might seem, they would manage.

  Now, nearly a year after his return, she had become pregnant again. But this time, unlike with her other pregnancies, the news of the arriving baby seemed to paralyze Toivo. Nearly every day and every night she would see his face lined with worry. “How will we feed another mouth, Sirka?” he asked her one evening as they lay in their birchwood bed. “The five of us are already existing on scraps alone.”

  Sirka just stared at him. There was little she could say. She knew how little food they had. The tin canisters of flour and sugar had been empty for months. The boys had stopped fighting each morning over the pieces of flat bread she broke into tiny slivers, which had become so small that they had quietly realized it wasn’t worth the quarrel.

  Every morning, she performed the same ritual, dividing the scraps from the day before into small rations. In actuality, the parts were not even. She gave the boys a fraction more than Toivo because they were growing, and took for herself only the crumbs. Had it not been for the baby, she would have eaten nothing at all.

  She tried to convince Toivo that they would all be all right. That God would watch over them. He did his best to smile and agree with her, but the lines in his face and the furrows on his tired forehead only betrayed his tension and despair.

  The boys were beginning to stir, and through the crocheted curtains, she saw the sun beginning to weave through the branches. The Karelian birches were silver with snow.

  It was a perfect day for skating. The sun would be out for a few hours, and Lake Saimaa was so beautiful when frozen. She enjoyed the summers, when Toivo would row her and the children into its center and they would sing old folk songs. But in her heart, Sirka preferred winter. Then, the lake stretched like a sheet of platinum, the tiny waves frozen underneath a thin glaze of ice.

  How she loved the forest! She loved the sounds of the snow crushing underneath her footsteps. She loved the howl of the wind as it navigated its way through the drifts and the plateaus of frozen earth. So, even though Toivo urged her to stay at home that day, Sirka insisted that she join him and the boys. She was too far along in her pregnancy to skate, but she sat majestically on the small bench of the kick sleigh with a woolen blanket wrapped over her lap as the boys pushed her through the forest.

  The boys laced their boots and thrust their small hands into their mittens. Toivo placed his one good foot in a skating boot, leaving the other to trail along in a shoe. “Hold my crutch,” he called out to his pregnant wife, as he tossed her the wooden support over the ice. Sirka sat there watching the four of them slipping and sliding over the shimmering ice, their laughter slicing through the cold.

  Yet, now, Sirka’s back was beginning to ache. A low, deep pain that she brushed off as a mere muscle spasm. But the pain began to increase, and in the blue light of winter, her cheeks lost their flush, her pallor now like the snow.

  S
he had planned not to say anything. When they returned home, she would boil herself a cup of water and sing to the baby inside her. Her breasts were heavy, and she was grateful that, once the child was born, she would be able to feed at least one of her children with her milk.

  When Toivo returned with the boys, he saw that Sirka was not herself. Her eyes shone with pain and her forehead was wet and white. In a panic, he told the boys to be quiet and fumbled for his crutch.

  “I will go look for help,” he told his frightened wife, who begged him not to leave.

  “The baby is coming,” she said, and in the blue light of winter she looked like a small, terrified deer.

  She felt too modest to inform him that her dress was now soaked underneath the blanket, and that she imagined icicles forming around her knees. She remembered that her other children were born only a few hours after her water had broken, and that this child seemed far more eager to be born.

  The boys began to grow rowdy. In his despair, Toivo told them sternly to leave the two of them and to play a few meters beyond.

  “I could go find a doctor,” he said as he reached to hold his wife’s hand. She smiled at him and told him that she’d rather give birth here in the cold than be left alone.

  So he took the woolen blanket and draped it on the snow. And extended his one free arm to guide her from the sleigh to the ground. A little over an hour later, her legs covered by her husband’s sheepskin coat, the drops of blood dotting the snow crimson, she gave birth to a beautiful, green-eyed daughter.

  A daughter that, two years later, she would be forced to give away.

  When Sirka held her daughter for the first time, she noticed that the child’s hair was white, while the three boys had been born with red. She wrapped the child in her sweater. She examined the girl over in her entirety. She studied the child’s limbs, the moon-shaped fingernails, and the half-closed eyelids, to make sure that she was properly formed, and sighed with a mixture of exhaustion and relief as she brought the child to her breast.

  Even with the shortage of food, the little girl had not been a problem for the first two years of her life. Sirka nursed her, and Toivo often watched her suckle the child, trying to mask his own hunger and desire. She knew he secretly wished that she could feed the entire family at her breast. And sometimes, at night, he would reach underneath her gown and drink from her, before falling away disgusted and ashamed.

  The little girl, however, was beginning to grow weary of her mother’s milk, and Sirka saw how the child had already begun to steal scraps from the table.

  But still, she was small for her age. Tiny, pale, and white. Her favorite thing was a small toy bear, whose ear she sucked on at night.

  Sirka insisted, as all mothers do, that she loved all of her children equally. But, in her heart, she knew that she loved her daughter just a little bit more. She loved the boys too, but the three of them had grown so fast and wrestled themselves further away from her with each passing year. She saw how they had their father’s hair, his unusually dark brown eyes, and his passion for the outdoors. But this little girl was hers completely.

  She had the same blond hair and green eyes. When Sirka cradled her in her arms, she saw her own features in miniature. The cupid bow of her mouth, the straight line of her nose, and the roundness of her brow. She relished the child’s sweetness, her curiosity, and the sheer joy she displayed from discovering the simple things around her.

  So, when Toivo came home one evening with the newspaper in hand and a bouquet of winter violets, nothing could have prepared her for what he was about to ask.

  He showed her the paper’s headlines: “Swedish Government to Accept Thousands More Finnish Children in a Gesture to Its Scandinavian Brother As War Continues.”

  “The children who went there in the first wave were very happy,” he whispered to his wife. “It won’t be permanent, just until the war ends.”

  “No, Toivo. No—” she pleaded. “How could you even suggest such a thing?” In the lamplight, her face revealed her despair, her brow quivering as she spoke. “She is our only daughter…”

  “This is no life for our daughter. For anyone.” He slid into one of the chairs and propped his leg on a low wooden stool. “We have no food now. The Russians are pushing farther west. Our soldiers are basically fighting on skis in our backyard! What kind of life is this? And nobody knows when it’s going to end!”

  “It will end, Toivo. Eventually.” She began to cry.

  “The women who are volunteering for the war effort in town, the lottas, are taking names of children to be sent on the SS Arcturus in the next few weeks.” He paused. “I put Kaija’s name on the list, Sirka,” he said as he covered his brow with his hand.

  She knew even before he said her daughter’s name that she would be the one he would choose. For, not only was Kaija the only girl, she was also young enough to forget them. But, for Sirka, it would be far more difficult. No mother could erase the memory of any of her children. Particularly this little girl with the white hair who asked for nothing but the love of her mother, her milk, and the company of her small bear.

  Sirka wept nightly and the violets beside her bed soon wilted and died. Outside their modest home, the snowdrifts piled high and the sun shone for fewer hours each day.

  Three weeks later, Toivo arrived home with lowered lids and hunched shoulders. “One of the lottas will be coming to pick Kaija up for the transport,” he said as gently as he could.

  She heard him, his words veiled in a whisper. She turned from him so her back faced him and her eyes wandered to the window.

  “The Arcturus leaves Friday,” he said sadly. “We must leave her in God’s hands now, Sirka.” He embraced her. “God will watch over her while she’s in Sweden, and we will know that at least there she will be safe.”

  That Friday, she packed a little bag for her only daughter. She washed her only dress, a little blue-checkered smock with a small white collar, in a bucket of melted snow and dried it by the fire. She folded two sweaters and a pair of woolen tights and placed a small prayer book on top of the small red suitcase. Inside the prayer book, she placed a letter.

  Dear Kaija,

  Be a good girl and appreciate all that your new family does for you. Please never believe that your father and I have abandoned you. We love you and only want you to be safe. You have three brothers who will miss you too. Someday soon, when the war ends, you will be returned to us. We love you and you will always be in our thoughts and prayers.

  God will watch over you.

  Love,

  Your mother, Sirka

  She wrapped the book in a small blanket and tucked it into the valise, along with the only photograph she had of herself. Her wedding portrait. A black-and-white photo of her and Toivo, with her in her mother’s white dress and a crown of flowers in her hair.

  Lastly, she removed her mother’s wooden crucifix. She held it one last time in her palms, traced its straightness with her finger, and pressed the smooth center close to her lips. If only her daughter could retrieve her kiss, she thought to herself, as she placed it in the bag.

  Toivo stood in the threshold of the bedroom watching his young wife. He came over to her and rested his large palm on her shoulder as she knelt to shut her daughter’s little red bag. Through his palm, he could feel her shudder as his wife began to weep softly. And she begged her husband once more not to make her send Kaija away. He buried his face in her shoulder and pleaded for her not to ask him again. For all of this seemed far worse than death. Sending your child to a home, a country, you did not know. Where you knew they could never love her as you had loved her. For she was your own.

  Overhead, the sirens blared and the red lights stretched over the snow with scarlet beams, as Toivo went to fetch young Kaija, who slept quietly in the kitchen. The young lotta stood in the doorway, her navy coat and hat appearing incongruous with the rustic surroundings.

  Sirka buried her head in her pillow, unable to endure the pain of watc
hing this stranger take her daughter away. But from her bedroom, she heard her little girl calling, “Minun nalle karhun, minun nalle karhun,” “My bear, my bear.”

  As Sirka rushed to the doorway to hand Kaija her little stuffed animal, she met the eyes of her daughter one last time. The little girl, sensing her mother’s despair, began to wail.

  And through her flannel gown, Sirka’s milk began to run.

  Seven

  KARELIA, FINLAND

  JANUARY 1942

  They had rounded the children up. Confiscated their suitcases and burned the clothes their mothers had packed for them for fear of lice. Kaija’s dress and socks were thrown on the fire, but the photograph, letter, and crucifix were all repacked into the little red suitcase with far less care than Sirka had originally placed them.

  Kaija’s tiny body was stripped and examined by a medical doctor, who wrote notes on her physical condition and inserted them into her file. She was reclothed in a new outfit that was donated to the war-effort program and given a new woolen coat with a matching navy hat.

  As with the hundreds of children who would be joining her on the SS Arcturus from Abo to Stockholm, an identification tag was placed around her neck detailing her name, hometown, and date of birth. She stood there completely bewildered, her green eyes stricken with fear and confusion, her blond curls damp underneath her woolen cap.

  The children were encircled with a long white rope to ensure that they didn’t separate from the group. Their small hands were encased in mittens, their feet in shiny new boots.

  “Come now,” one of the lottas spoke softly to tiny Kaija as they boarded the boat. “You’ll be going to a wonderful new home.”