girls.
Oh donât be shy, letâs cause a scene,
like lovers do on silver screens,
letâs make it, yeah, weâll cause a scene.
After that they went everywhere together and shared the feelings a fresh friendship creates, the dazzled gratitude, a certainty that reality was exactly what they wanted it to be.
The next year they marched with defiant certainty in a protest against the Iraq war and believed they were changing the world.
What more do you need to change it but friendship, shameless faith, and trust?
Anna feels simultaneously like it happened only yesterday, and like it all happened years and years ago.
Before she moved to Pengerkatu, Anna lived with Saara for a year on Liisankatu. They had evenings that never ended, music, discussions over the kitchen table, an open door for guests. Their breakfasts stretched out, turned into debates. They played records and didnât care if the neighbors stared at them in the hallway.
Another friend of Saaraâs lives on Liisankatu now.
Saara smiles, still not opening her eyes. From above she looks a bit like one of Picassoâs women, disassembled, fragmented, searching for a shape.
Sometimes Anna feels out of date around Saara, awkward, old-fashioned, always a step behind. Saara has the same fantasies she has, but not the same fears about getting there. Saara lives life in a way that Anna canât because sheâs too afraid.
ANNAâS THOUGHTS RETURN to Eeva. What does she know about her?
She only has a few facts. Eeva was from Kuhmo, and moved to the city to study French language and literature.
Anna conjures up a picture in her mind.
Eeva furrowed her brow when she was reading, which made her look a little worried. She had small hands, caught colds in the winter. Some kind of vague seriousness lodged in her eyebrows. When she buttered her bread or washed the dishes or brushed her hair, she would lose herself for a moment in the motions, look dreamy, relaxed and happy, like women in turn-of-the-century paintings. Like Schjerfbeckâs women.
When she was about to laugh she first looked startled for a moment. A hundredth of a second later you could see horror in her face. Then the laughter would come bursting out.
Anna has this picture in her mind, and the beginning of a story on her lips: a man, a child, the childâs astonishingly white neck, her trust.
The man had been one of the most admired of his day. Not at the forefront of change, not a provocateur, but certainly the most promising and indisputably the most handsome. A charmer, one of those men you sit down with in a restaurant and you donât get up for the rest of the evening, the kind of man you want to ask for directions to reality, to have him look across the table and tell you what itâs really all about. Everyone wanted a piece of him. His attention was accepted like a gift. When he looked at you, it felt like you had never really had a shape until that moment.
Artists are like thatâthey have the power to see, they carry all the weightiest, best-shaped ideas, they make things real that would otherwise remain lurking at the threshold, at the bus stop, around the corner, in parentheses.
Anna still needs Eevaâs voice.
The tree holds its blossoms above them as if it invented itself only yesterday. This has happened before, the exact same thing, but it has never been so fresh and so complete as now.
Eeva had days like these. Even this restlessness, this impatience to be somewhere else, someplace where life offered itself fully.
And there was more: Eeva had love, just like Anna. To give her all and get the whole world, thatâs what she believed in. Thatâs what she was doing with the little girl, just as much as with the man.
Anna didnât intend to tell Saara about Eeva, but Eevaâs here now, demanding that the story be told.
Annaâs voice is a little differentâsofter, fullerâas she begins.
1964
T HIS IS HOW it all
Oh donât be shy, letâs cause a scene,
like lovers do on silver screens,
letâs make it, yeah, weâll cause a scene.
After that they went everywhere together and shared the feelings a fresh friendship creates, the dazzled gratitude, a certainty that reality was exactly what they wanted it to be.
The next year they marched with defiant certainty in a protest against the Iraq war and believed they were changing the world.
What more do you need to change it but friendship, shameless faith, and trust?
Anna feels simultaneously like it happened only yesterday, and like it all happened years and years ago.
Before she moved to Pengerkatu, Anna lived with Saara for a year on Liisankatu. They had evenings that never ended, music, discussions over the kitchen table, an open door for guests. Their breakfasts stretched out, turned into debates. They played records and didnât care if the neighbors stared at them in the hallway.
Another friend of Saaraâs lives on Liisankatu now.
Saara smiles, still not opening her eyes. From above she looks a bit like one of Picassoâs women, disassembled, fragmented, searching for a shape.
Sometimes Anna feels out of date around Saara, awkward, old-fashioned, always a step behind. Saara has the same fantasies she has, but not the same fears about getting there. Saara lives life in a way that Anna canât because sheâs too afraid.
ANNAâS THOUGHTS RETURN to Eeva. What does she know about her?
She only has a few facts. Eeva was from Kuhmo, and moved to the city to study French language and literature.
Anna conjures up a picture in her mind.
Eeva furrowed her brow when she was reading, which made her look a little worried. She had small hands, caught colds in the winter. Some kind of vague seriousness lodged in her eyebrows. When she buttered her bread or washed the dishes or brushed her hair, she would lose herself for a moment in the motions, look dreamy, relaxed and happy, like women in turn-of-the-century paintings. Like Schjerfbeckâs women.
When she was about to laugh she first looked startled for a moment. A hundredth of a second later you could see horror in her face. Then the laughter would come bursting out.
Anna has this picture in her mind, and the beginning of a story on her lips: a man, a child, the childâs astonishingly white neck, her trust.
The man had been one of the most admired of his day. Not at the forefront of change, not a provocateur, but certainly the most promising and indisputably the most handsome. A charmer, one of those men you sit down with in a restaurant and you donât get up for the rest of the evening, the kind of man you want to ask for directions to reality, to have him look across the table and tell you what itâs really all about. Everyone wanted a piece of him. His attention was accepted like a gift. When he looked at you, it felt like you had never really had a shape until that moment.
Artists are like thatâthey have the power to see, they carry all the weightiest, best-shaped ideas, they make things real that would otherwise remain lurking at the threshold, at the bus stop, around the corner, in parentheses.
Anna still needs Eevaâs voice.
The tree holds its blossoms above them as if it invented itself only yesterday. This has happened before, the exact same thing, but it has never been so fresh and so complete as now.
Eeva had days like these. Even this restlessness, this impatience to be somewhere else, someplace where life offered itself fully.
And there was more: Eeva had love, just like Anna. To give her all and get the whole world, thatâs what she believed in. Thatâs what she was doing with the little girl, just as much as with the man.
Anna didnât intend to tell Saara about Eeva, but Eevaâs here now, demanding that the story be told.
Annaâs voice is a little differentâsofter, fullerâas she begins.
1964
T HIS IS HOW it all
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