Read Online The Story of My Face by Kathy Page - Free Book Online Page B

daylight as possible. I struggle on along the main road, past the community centre and the supermarket, then turn right, avoiding newly iced puddles and looking up briefly to monitor my progress towards some squat, concrete blocks of flats.
    Inside it must be thirty degrees: I have to strip off my cardigan and jumper, unbutton the neck of my blouse. Mrs Lohi, who recently moved from one of the outlying traditionally built houses to a new ground-floor apartment, is, however, well wrapped. She sits in a bright-blue armchair with her back to the triple-glazed sliding doors that lead on to the communal gardens behind – some small birch trees, leafless, of course, a climbing-frame and sand-pit, currently covered by thick ice and a crust of pitted, ageing snow.
    Mrs Lohi is over ninety and every part of her face, cheeks, chin, the sides of her nose, is wrinkled, though as recently as last summer, Katrin says, she was still using a bicycle to go to her allotment on the other side of the river.
    â€˜My eyes are not good,’ she tells me. ‘I can’t see detail any more, just the shape of you against the wall. I am doing this by touch, someone pins it on for me –’ She holds up the piece of cloth in her lap, appliqusé work and embroidery, an abstract design in wheat, rust and muddy green.
    â€˜I’m having the cataract operation in June. I’m looking forward to it!’
    Coffee cups and bicuits have been set out on a tray in the kitchenette; she sends me to fetch them.
    â€˜Katrin in the supermarket said that you might talk to me,’ I remind her some time later. ‘She said she would mention to you that I –’
    â€˜My memory is good,’ she says. ‘I know who you are, Natalie,’ she adds, quickly. ‘Kirsti Saarinen told me you were here the day you arrived.’
    â€˜What can you tell me?’ I ask.
    â€˜I remember what my mother told me ,’ she says, looking, it seems, at the white-painted wall several metres behind where I sit. ‘My mother’s older brother, Eino, the carpenter, he was one of the first to leave Elojoki. You know that one of the pastor’s jobs was to record those coming to the parish and leaving it, as well as births and deaths? And marriages, of course. It was the pastor who issued a letter confirming your identity, a kind of passport. So you’ll find Eino’s departure in the register, and all the rest that went, young men, mainly, or couples – a little while after the famine years, 1872 perhaps. You can see all the deaths too. And in the other register, the names of all the strangers who turned up from other places, even worse off than we were. Times were very hard. It was when things began to improve that some people felt they had the strength to go and seek out somewhere new where, they hoped, such things would not happen. No one wanted anyone to go, but at the same time, it couldn’t be condemned.
    â€˜So Eino went to see Tuomas Envall for his permit to travel. He came out of there, my mother said, with tears running down his face. There was a service and a parade to see him off. He took work on an English ship. He was aiming for Canada, but the ship stopped at Ipswich and he met a woman, married and settled there. They had four boys and a girl. All five of them kept the faith, and had their own families. Others followed.
    â€˜The Summer Congregations began in 1880. I can even remember Eino myself, because he used to come back when he could, and then, of course, his children and grandchildren visited too. Somewhere I have a spoon that he carved for me. I watched him do it. I can find it for another time, if you are interested. It means nothing to my grandchildren. I’m thinking that I’ll give it to the museum they are going to set up here. . . .
    â€˜My mother always said that when Tuomas Envall looked into your eyes and you met his gaze, the feeling was of a kind of warmth beginning in