Making Enemies (32 page)

‘We used to spend our summers here when we were children,’ Tanya said. ‘Whole summers, swimming, sailing – can you imagine that? Then the war came and all that ended.’

‘Everything was still here, untouched, after the war?’

‘Oh yes.’ There was no surprise in her voice. ‘Nothing had changed. There was more dust, of course, but it was still our house. It had waited patiently for us.’

I wondered whom she had come back with and felt an icy shaft of anxiety. I tried to tell myself that her life before I met her was no concern of mine, but the idea persisted of someone else sitting where I was now, looking out over the same view, with Tanya next to him.

‘What was it like, coming back after all that time?’

‘Very sad. In the last summer before the war my father had been here with us. Now it was just my brother and myself.’ Relief flooded through me. ‘Though he has never liked it here.’ Doubt again. Perhaps she had not come back with Mika.

‘Why not?’

‘Mika is restless. He cannot keep still. Here there is nothing to do. He prefers to sail.’

‘He left you alone here, did he, sailed off once you’d opened up?’

There was silence between us. A bird rose up from a tree, flapping its wings lazily as it flew off over the lake.

‘I wasn’t here alone, Danny.’ The words I had dreaded. I heard her changing her position in her chair. I felt her hand reach for mine.

‘You cannot claim the past,’ she said. ‘Not the years before I knew you. If I could, I would wish them away. But they are there, a part of me as much as yours are a part of you. I am not sorry for those years. They taught me to know myself and to know what I want. Then I found you. That is all that matters.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Oh,’ she said in mock irritation, ‘the English sorry again. Are there two of you, Danny, one who says I love you and one who says I’m sorry?’

She laughed at my bewilderment.

‘You can ask me what you wish,’ she said. ‘You can know about me what you want to know. I will always tell you the truth. But why? Why hurt yourself with memories you cannot change? Why look backwards? The past is gone. It is forgotten. Its only value is, it led me here, to you.’

‘I know.’

‘Then leave it, Danny. Let it go. Let it all swim away into the night.’

For a time I managed to do what she said. I forgot everything and lived in an eternal present with her. We sailed and swam and made love, we talked about each other, what we believed in, what we wanted for our lives. It was a time of discovery for both of us. We never talked about the future and we never mentioned the past. But the world cannot be jettisoned for long. Unknown to us, it had slipped its moorings in the night and every day was drifting slowly but irrevocably towards us.

‘Professor Stevens? Good morning. Lander. From our embassy here. Welcome to this northern land.’

The voice on the telephone was conspiratorial, as if the relief of discovering our shared nationality in this distant outpost was a comforting secret. We were English, and that set us incontrovertibly apart from the locals. It made us superior, too, but it would be tactless to play on that in front of the poor old Finn.

‘We were wondering if you might be free for a drink tonight.’

Monty’s instructions had been far from explicit, though he had been clear in his view of the British embassy. ‘Avoid them at all costs. Useless lot. We don’t want them involved.’

‘Very informal,’ Lander was saying. ‘Just a few Brits and one or two distinguished locals. H. E. would be so pleased. No need to dress.’

‘H. E.?’

‘His Excellency. The ambassador.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said.

‘Shall we say about six then?’

‘Thank you.’

‘We look forward to it.’

‘There’s just one thing.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘My name’s Forster, not Stevens.’

William Forster, one of the small British delegation to the Helsinki conference, had fallen ill the week before but his name had been left on the list. Monty had agreed that I could impersonate him in an emergency. ‘God knows,’ he had said, ‘I don’t want you anywhere near the Brits. If you have to go into the conference, and I’d rather you didn’t, keep your head down and your mouth shut.’

I heard the rustle of paper in the background. Lander was searching for some mention of the name Forster. I was sure it wouldn’t feature on the ambassador’s list. Forster was Reading, not Oxbridge.

‘Here we are,’ Lander said, lying through his teeth. ‘Forster, William. I’m so sorry. We’ve got you down for Thursday night.’ There was a beguiling smoothness to his resumption of control that I had to admire. ‘I’ll be in touch again soon. I’ll know where to reach you, won’t I?’

That was the jolt that set me tumbling headlong into the real world. Monday and ambassadors and distinguished locals for Nobel-prize winning professors, Thursday for the rest – bottles of beer and a second secretary if we were lucky. I was back with the old brigade of hypocrisy, privilege, snobbery and the diamond-edged rules of a game that men like Lander played effortlessly every minute of their waking lives. I had come up against Lander and his kind in the army, and I had never overcome my dislike of them. Monty’s view didn’t go far enough. Lander wasn’t useless. He was pernicious.

The sun streamed into the apartment. I lay back on the sofa, hands behind my head, and closed my eyes. I sought some kind of consolation for my return to civilization by reliving the events of the past few days.

How long had Tanya and I been away? I had no idea, no sense of day or night or the passage of time, only an overwhelming awareness of Tanya, her presence, her body, her laughter, her questions, her uncertainties, her passion and her love as we absorbed each other with an extraordinary desire. We lived in the absoluteness of our involvement with each other, our world bounded by the experience of our selves, what we could touch, what we could feel. All other concerns were ignored and forgotten for those few days because they could neither be touched nor felt by either of us. It was an overwhelming sensation. You cannot live for long in that intensity of feeling, but while you do it is intoxicating.

To others – if there had been any others to see us or care about us – we were one more love affair, one more passionate exchange in thousands of years of passionate exchanges, while the sun rose, blazed overhead, and sank back to hover over the horizon before it rose again in all its glory. There were no days and no nights: I lived by the light in Tanya’s eyes, I forgot myself and found myself in one wonderful unending moment. We were obsessed with each other because we had so little time, and in the exercise of that
obsession we had no sense of time passing. There is nothing new in the discovery of love except for those who do the discovering. For three whole days we loved each other as if the world was about to end.

Then it was over. The world didn’t end. It did what it always does, it reclaimed us.

Tanya had kissed me awake, and we had swum naked in the lake for the last time. We had eaten at the table under the birch tree, closed the shutters and taken down to the boat the boxes that it seemed we had brought ashore only a few hours before. As I watched the house slip from my view, I felt an uncontrollable sadness, tears welling suddenly in my eyes, as I relived all the partings of my life in a single moment.

*

‘The Soviet delegation won’t arrive until Monday afternoon,’ Monty had told me, ‘in time for the opening ceremony. We expect Marchenko to make contact on Tuesday morning when she’ll fix the meeting with your father for Wednesday or Thursday. That gives you forty-eight hours to get your father to pull out of this madcap scheme. If you can’t get him to see sense, and I hope to God you can, stick to him like glue. The last two days of the conference are when he’ll be at greatest risk.’

My dilemma had been whether or not to tell Tanya what had brought me back to Helsinki.

‘Follow your instinct,’ Monty had said. ‘If you don’t want to involve her, say nothing.’

He had been surprisingly unsympathetic to the argument about a relationship built on lies.

‘So what? She can’t help you if you don’t tell her and she can’t help you if you do. Let her get on with her doctoring. She doesn’t need to know what’s going on.’

I wanted to tell Tanya when we went to her island but I didn’t know how and I took the coward’s way out – I put off the moment, arguing to myself that it would have spoiled everything. She helped me in this, not asking to know why I’d come to Helsinki, simply accepting that I was there. I was a fool to leave it, in more ways than one. It was a betrayal of trust and I should have told her.

I slept after that, and when I awoke it was nearly five and the day had become very hot, the air still and lifeless. I walked down
to the harbour. I passed the
Havis
Amanada
‚ the young woman emerging from the sea, the monument to Finland’s youth, and looked around the open market where I was offered winter hats and coats in sable and silver fox. How difficult it was at that moment to imagine ever being cold again.

Then on past the harbour, the gulls dazed into silence by the heat, to the Uspensky Cathedral, the Russian Orthodox church. I watched the women, all with scarves on their heads, kneeling on the stone floor, and listened to the sounds of the deep bass voices intoning plainsong behind the coloured wooden panels that separate the congregation from the clergy. Occasionally the panels would open and we would glimpse the gold cloth of the priests’ vestments and see the candles glittering on the altar, a rich world of mysteries invitingly displayed. Then the panel would close and the act of worship became invisible once more. I wandered back as the market was packing up for the day, and laughing attempts were made in sign language to get me to buy a fur hat before it was replaced in its box.

I heard raised voices as I let myself into the apartment. The sounds of a quarrel are the same in any language. Mika was there, standing over Tanya. He came unsteadily towards me.

‘My English friend. Welcome to our country.’ He grinned foolishly at me and held out his hand. ‘The last outpost of the civilized world before you experience the barbarism of our neighbours.’

‘He’s drunk,’ Tanya said in anger and embarrassment.

We shook hands and he sat down heavily on the sofa.

‘I want to know everything,’ he said. ‘Are you looking after my sister? What are your intentions? Will you marry her?’

There was a furious exchange in Finnish. Mika grabbed Tanya by the arm and tried to drag her on to the sofa but she resisted.

‘She is my little sister,’ he said. ‘I swore to our father before he died that I would always look after her.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tanya said to me. ‘Please forgive him.’ She looked hurt. I felt powerless.

Tanya spoke to her brother in Finnish again.

‘No,’ Mika said. ‘You must speak in English before our English friend. Do you know what she is saying? She is asking me to leave.’ He spoke a few words in Finnish to Tanya. Then he turned to me. ‘I will tell you what I am saying. I am saying no, I will not leave. I have things to tell you. Information you will like. Useful information.’

‘Say what you have to say,’ Tanya said in English, ‘and then go.’

‘I need a piss first.’

Mika lurched towards the bathroom. There were tears of anger and humiliation in Tanya’s eyes. ‘I am sorry, I am so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘He has been drinking all day.’

Mika came back into the room. He put his arm round my shoulder and leaned his weight against me. I could smell brandy on his breath.

‘Do you remember your friend Hammerson?’ he asked. ‘Well, he is recovered. His wound is mended. The Soviets have emptied him of all his secrets and now he is useless to them. So they are sending him back to the West. Probably at this moment he is not far from us, maybe he is locked in a cabin on one of those warships in the harbour. Very soon he will be free. There. That is my information. What do you think of that, my English friend?’

‘How do you know all this?’

He laughed loudly at that. ‘Do you think I will tell you?’

‘How do I know what you’re telling me is true?’ I said. I should never have said it.

Mika gripped my jacket by the lapels and almost lifted me bodily off my feet. He brought his head very close to mine.

‘People I trust tell me soon he will be free. And do you know what will happen then?’ He let me go at that, standing back and looking first at Tanya and then at me. ‘When I see him, I will kill him.’

He produced a revolver from his jacket pocket and pointed it towards me. Tanya screamed and put her hands to her face. Then she spoke harshly to Mika in Finnish and for the first time she had some effect. He lowered the gun and answered her. Then he turned to me.

‘She is trying to tell me that Hammerson has not betrayed my people, but I know that he has.’

‘Hammerson is your friend. He would never betray you.’

‘The Russians asked questions. Hammerson told them answers. My friends are dead. He is the one who has killed them.’

‘Hammerson killed no one,’ Tanya said.

‘He did not put bullets in their heads. But he betrayed us. He is responsible for their deaths. He deserves to die.’ Mika sat down on the sofa, his eyes streaming with tears. He put his head in his hands. ‘They were good friends. Now they are gone. They must be avenged.’

‘That is not your task,’ Tanya said. ‘Nothing you can do will bring them back to life again.’

Again they shouted at each other in Finnish. This was a conflict between brother and sister, its roots in the history of their lives together. I was forgotten because I had no part in it.

Tanya went into the bathroom and fetched a flannel. Mika wiped his face with it slowly and deliberately as if his skin was painful to the touch.

‘Get her to tell you about Matti Sigrin,’ Mika said to me. ‘Then you will see whether she is the angel you think she is.’

‘Go,’ Tanya shouted. She flew at him, her fists flying. ‘Leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Go away from here. Get out.’

He stood up. ‘I will look for Hammerson,’ he said. ‘When I find him, I will kill him. Do you hear that? I will put bullets into his heart and head.’

I watched him stumble out of the door of the apartment. He left it ajar and Tanya banged it shut. When she turned to me she was crying. I held her in my arms.

‘When he is like that, he is not my brother,’ she said. ‘I wish you could see him as he is. He is a good man, not a murderer. He cannot understand that the war is over. For him, there must always be a battle, always an enemy. Whatever I say, he will not give up. One by one his friends are dying. Soon it will be his turn to be killed. That is what I am afraid of.’

She cried again, and there was little I could do except let her cry it out of her system. I knew then that somehow I had to tell her what was going on, or as much as I knew, which was less than I needed to know. But this time my excuse for doing nothing was that she was too upset to listen.

*

The damage that Mika wanted to inflict was done. He had fuelled my anxiety. I had a name now, Matti Sigrin, and with a name came an identity, an imagined one that I created in my mind, but effective none the less. He was the creature of my uncertainty: could Tanya really love me? Would she leave Finland if I asked her to? Did I dare ask her? If she said no it would be the end of my dreams. Slowly, Matti Sigrin worked his sinister way into my consciousness until I was completely in his power.

Why did I care about her past? It was over and unalterable, a time
on which I could have no possible claim. Sigrin and his presence in Tanya’s life, unspoken, unspecified but all the more insidious because it could not be pinned down, haunted me. Had she been his lover? Surely, yes. Did she think of him still, did he appear in her dreams? Was she free of him now? If I could not trust myself, how could I trust her protestations that she was?

I wanted to squeeze Sigrin out of her life by possessing all of it, present, future and past. I wanted to make Tanya wholly and completely mine, to exclude any experience that might threaten us. It was an impossible dream but one I could not relinquish because I needed an escape route in case her love couldn’t match the demands I made on it. I had created a monster out of my own lack of confidence which I could blame if our relationship were to fail. I was inflicting on her the weakness I perceived in myself. I was griped by a madness, powerless to deny it.

We’d had dinner in a restaurant near the Opera House and were walking back through a square with a wooden church in it and, to one side, a statue of Zacharias Topelius, one of the founders of modern Finnish literature. I listened as Tanya explained the
Kalevala,
the epic poem of the ancient myths of Finland collected by Topelius and published in 1822, which had created a platform for the nascent Finnish nationalism that had resulted, in 1911, in the departure of the Russians and the establishment of the first Finnish state.