True by Riikka Pulkkinen Read Free Book Online

mentioning a person long forgotten, someone she’d once spent happy days with, sworn lifelong friendship to, until, for some reason, because of a random whim or unfortunate misunderstanding, their connection was broken.
    â€œWhose?”
    â€œEeva’s,” she says again.

6
    T HE DAY WAS warm. The moment he stepped outside the building the world flooded over him. There were some young boys at the tram stop, swaggering fifteen-year-olds. A girl stood a ways off in triumphantly careless contraposto, glancing in the direction of the coming tram: she was obviously one of the boys’ classmates.
    Yet another drama where attention must be rationed out to obtain a greater reward.
    Which of the boys did she want? Maybe the bland one, the one who looked like a good boy, who carried himself with what he thought was serious-mindedness. That’s what Martti had been like as a boy. Secretly sensitive, an easy butt of practical jokes, touchy, occasionally sinking into romantic gloom.
    He once drew a picture of Helvi, who sat in the front row, and gave it to her shyly at recess. Loudmouth Helvi, whom he had fallen in love with on some sort of whim—maybe because someone like Helvi wouldn’t even look at someone like him, which ensured that he could love her in peace.
    That’s what this boy was like. Was the girl Helvi? No. This girl was sweeter.
    The tram to Meilahti wouldn’t come for five more minutes. He would change trams at Kisahalli, go to his doctor’s appointment, where they’d put an old man’s mask on him with their tests and measurements.
    Seventy and over. It had happened without him noticing.
    A person just wakes up all of a sudden and realizes he’s old. He gets on the tram and notices someone offering him their seat. I’m not crippled, he thinks. And then he realizes—no, but I am old.
    The group of young people was getting restless. The rowdiest of the boys started to jump onto the rails, trying to get the girl’s attention.
    The boy made a strange dance move that reminded Martti of something he’d seen on TV—a slow-motion video of a bird’s leaping mating dance. They were like the leaps of a dancer with years of training. Just as polished, just as exhilarated and self-assured.
    The girl gave the boy the finger. The gesture was disarming in its obscenity. Why waste time on such a thing when she could go over and kiss him?
    The tram came; the teenagers jostled in through the rear door.
    There was a meek-looking family in the middle of the tram: a father, a mother, and two little boys. The father held one boy by the hand. The boys were touchingly faithful miniature versions of their father—a shock of blond hair, an all-encompassing gaze. Knock-knees. Chubby hands.
    Martti thought, no matter what happens to us we carry where we came from with us.
    Martti himself had his father’s nose. His father had died in the Continuation War, in December of 1943 . The doorbell had rung, and he had asked if it was Santa Claus. The familiar pastor and two soldiers were at the door. His mother collapsed in the entryway, the servant girl pushed him and his sister away so they wouldn’t see the scene. He remembered the hesitant words of the young soldier and his mother’s strange anger: Out. Get out of here.
    He was never supposed to talk about that. Not about his father, or the pastor at the door, or his mother’s collapse. No one ever forbade him to talk about it, but he always knew that the whole scene, the whole memory of the pain, should be kept silent. They started leaving blank spots in the conversation where they would have mentioned his father. Reality had gradually closed over the wound, silence had bound his father’s memory like a bandage, encased it. Silence—it’s a strange grave.
    But even then, when his father was dead, Martti still had his nose. Even back then it seemed strange, almost incomprehensible.
    Those were the