“I’ll try one,” she says.
I hang my coat up beside Mary’s. “And for you, John?”
“What are you having?” he asks me.
“A lager and a Koskenkorva, Finnish vodka affectionately known to most of us as kossu.”
“I’ll have the same,” he says.
Now Mary’s disapproving look is for me. “You order two portions of alcohol at the same time?”
“It’s a Finnish habit, particularly of middle-aged rednecks like me. Why?”
“I don’t agree with the use of alcohol in general.”
What I drink isn’t her business. I shrug and smile. “Mary, you may have come to the wrong country.”
Her half smile at my half joke is only a politeness.
I make two trips to the bar and bring our drinks. I ask how their trip went. We chat about Kate’s pregnancy. We make the small talk of strangers.
Mary sips Jaffa. “This is good. And Kate, you look ravishing. Motherhood agrees with you.”
“The baby is kicking now,” Kate says.
“Can I feel it?”
Kate nods. Mary lays a hand on her belly. Mary smiles, and tears come to her eyes. “I adore children,” she says. “You and Kari are truly blessed.”
I’m sipping my kossu, but John knocks his back in one gulp. He’s also chugging his beer. “This place is a tad on the drab side,” he says.
It’s not extravagant by any means, but simple and pleasant, furnished with dark wood. The beer taps and bar fixtures are polished brass. “Why do you say that?” I ask.
“There isn’t even any music.”
“The customers here prefer it that way,” I say. “We can hold conversations without shouting.”
He knocks off the rest of his pint of beer. “Whatever. The vodka is good. Let’s have another round.”
Kate and I exchange a fleeting look. “I’ll get it,” I say.
“I’ll go with you,” Kate says. “I haven’t said hi to Mike yet.”
I offer Kate my hand to help her up, and we go to the bar together. She’s graceful, having learned to move in a way that makes her limp almost invisible, but pregnancy has changed her balance, and she lurches a bit when she walks.
The bartender, Mike Davis, has a Finnish mother and a British father. He grew up in the U.K., but has lived here since his late teens. He’s a big, outgoing guy in his mid-twenties. He’s heavily tattooed, is taller than me and runs a little better than two hundred pounds. Despite his good nature, he doesn’t look like the kind of guy you want to fuck with. “Hi, guys,” he says. “How are things?”
“Pretty good,” I say. “Long day at the office.”
An older man has had too much to drink. Mike shuts him off. The man yells, “Mina olen asiakas, mina olen asiakas” -“I’m a customer, I’m a customer”-the standard bitch of drunks when refused service. Mike pretends he’s not there, the standard Finnishbartender method of dealing with such situations.
“Yeah,” Mike says, “I’m having a long day at the office, too. And you, Kate?” Mike asks. “You feeling well?”
“Things are great, couldn’t be better,” she says. “My brother and sister just arrived from the States. That’s them sitting at the table with us.”
“I’ll make sure to take good care of them,” he says.
Mike gets John’s beer and kossu. The drunk leans on the bar and sulks.
Kate and I sit back down. The bar is about half full, the murmur of conversation low. The drunk screams, “Vittu saatana perkele jumalauta!” The anthem of angry Finns announcing aggressive intentions. Kate’s eyes open wide. She’s been in Finland long enough to understand the gravity of the situation. Conversation ceases. Everyone stares. Mike puts his hands on the bar, raises up to his full height but keeps his face expressionless.
“What did he yell?” John asks.
“It’s untranslatable,” I say, “but something like ‘Cunt devil devil goddamn.’”
John laughs. Mary winces.
The drunk yells some more. Mike’s answer is calm. Around the bar, jaws drop. The drunk realizes he’s gone too far, turns and walks out the door without another word.
The exchange was beyond Kate’s Finnish language abilities, even though they’ve improved over time. “What was that about?” she asks.
I explain in such a way that Mary and John can understand as well. “Mike’s mother tongue is English, so like yours, his accent is soft when he speaks Finnish. When Russians speak Finnish they also have a soft accent. Most Finns have never heard a person with English as a mother tongue speak Finnish, so the drunk made a natural assumption and called Mike a goddamned fucking Russian. A bad mistake. Mike, not a Russian and displeased to be called one, got pissed off and said, ‘Yeah, I’m a goddamned fucking Russian, and I hope my grandfather killed your grandfather during the Winter War.’ That’s the point when the drunk knew he was in serious trouble and left while he could.”
“Isn’t Finland somehow related to Russia?” Mary asks.
Now I wince. “No, it’s not.”
John sighs, drinks his second kossu in one go. “Mary, Finland is neither part of Russia, nor is it part of Scandinavia proper. It’s classified as a Nordic country and is an entity of its own.”
“I take it Finns don’t care for Russians,” Mary says.
“No,” I say, “in general, we don’t.”
“Why?”
Kate has told me John is a Ph. D. candidate in history and a graduate teaching assistant. An educated man. He explains. “Finland was a long-standing Swedish possession, but twice during the eighteenth century, Russia invaded. Thousands of Finns were killed or forced into slavery. In 1809, Sweden ceded Finland to the Russian Empire. In 1899, the czar embarked on a policy called the Russification of Finland. Russian was made the official language, Finnish legislative bodies were rendered powerless, its army was incorporated into Russia’s. The czar tried to destroy their culture and Finland resisted.”
John’s knowledge surprises me. It speaks to me that, historian or not, he spent the time to acquire it.
I take up the story. “We declared independence in 1917, but had a civil war the following year-Bolshevik Reds backed by Socialist Russia versus anti-Socialist Whites, as they were called, backed by Imperialist Germany. Like your own American Civil War, it was sometimes brother against brother. The Whites won, but the result was tens of thousands dead, poverty and starvation.”
“You sound passionate about it,” John says.
“You would be surprised, even after nearly a century, what strong emotions the Civil War still dredges up in us.”
“What was the Winter War?” Mary asks.
“Kari,” John asks, “would you allow me to pontificate?”
“Be my guest.”
“During the Second World War, Finland fought three separate wars,” he says. “In the Winter War, Finland fought alone and it kicked Russian ass, but in fact lost, because it ceded territory in the peace agreement. The Soviets invaded Finland on November 30, 1939. The Soviets had thousands of tanks, Finland had thirty-two. The USSR attacked with upwards of a million men. Finns slaughtered them, killed five Russians for every Finn and beat them back. Finland signed a peace treaty with the USSR in March, but was at war with them again in 1941.”
“I’m impressed,” I say.
He continues. “Finland sided with Germany against the Soviet Union in what is known as the Continuation War. The Finnish hope was that the German invasion of Russia would allow Finland to regain lost areas and to annex some Soviet territory in the realignment after the Germans beat them. When it became clear that Germany would lose, Finland signed another armistice with Moscow. Finland ceded more territory and agreed to drive German troops out of their country. The consequence was the Lapland War.” He asks, “Kari, have I gotten it right?”
I finish my kossu and chase it with beer. “In every detail. The German scorched-earth policy as they withdrew resulted in the burning down of Kittila, my hometown, among many others. Again we starved, did without even the
