Ginger Vehaskari: Helene’s Story

HELENE’S STORY

by Ginger Vehaskari

In World War Two, the German military helped the Finns fight off the Russian army. The Russian soldiers had been told that they were going into Finland to rescue and free Russian citizens who lived there. Neither the German soldier-boys nor the Finnish young men they were helping wanted to be in the shallow snow trenches as Russian tanks plowed from the east toward them through the dense forest, snapping frozen trees like old, dried, dead wood. Each tree screeched as it ripped apart, making the air scream like Valkyries coming for the soldiers’ souls.

It was in Finland during the Winter War of 1944 when cold so bitter that not only love, but all thoughts of warmth or kindness slipped away into thin steep crevices of dark frozen thoughts. There was no longer hate or ideas of freedom, only the survival instinct ingrained in the men from their Viking ancestors. Fight. Shoot. Hide. Shake with fear. No protection. Persevere. Their piss froze down their legs, first warm, then it tore the frozen flesh yet again. The stabbing cold crept through the rubber boots, as well as the woolen socks rifled with holes, and with insidiously shy tendrils it fooled the men into thinking their feet were warm. Their toes first felt the frostbite, then gangrene quietly spread up their legs, while their fingers froze on the metal triggers, refusing to pull, refusing to slap-click the round bullet magazine into place. They watched determined but unbelieving as their swollen fingers fed the bullets into the magazine one at a time and each time cursed at the Finnish-made machine gun.

The Finns didn’t know what happened, but Russians soldiers came from the west and rushed toward the oncoming Russian tanks, believing they were protected. They yelled in Russian at the tanks that they were comrades, but the men inside couldn’t hear them. The Russian foot-soldiers ran without caution toward the tanks and thought they were safe. The men in the tanks thought the soldiers were the enemy and roared to life, blasting and obliterating everything and everybody in gun-site. Surprised and screaming, the Russians fell through the slick snow that was hiding the trenches which were manned with the Finnish and German soldiers. Suddenly there was shouting and shooting in every direction. A German comrade threw himself on top of Pauli to protect him, and then shot the nearest enemy. The small round hole between the Russian’s dark eyebrows slowly dripped bright red blood down his nose and around his mouth. He was young and stunned that death could be so quick. His expression wasn’t sad, just surprised.

But that was twenty-five years ago. Now, Helene sat motionless in the cold metal chair at the kitchen table and listened as her mother told the story while Helene’s painful thoughts wandered back to her father, Pauli, in his hospital deathbed. There is no smell as stringent as a death-bed hospital room. Her dad knew she was there even if he could no longer see. “Dad, what was it you wanted to tell me?” The crisp, white pillowcase crackled as he turned to imagine where she sat. His dry, rattled whisper threw chill bumps over her body. “Ask your mother.”

The service was over a week ago, the speeches were made, and her father was praised as one of the last, truly honest men in the parish. She watched as relatives and friends she’d never known, dressed in deep dark black, placed mountains of flowers on top of the mound of fresh, gritty, granite sand. To her he was just Dad, but many thought of him as a respectful and forgiving police chief. How much of his life had she missed?

Her mom, always stoic to the point of being unemotional, sat unconsciously winding a white handkerchief around her fingers, scuffing them raw. The throbbing pain stopped her tears. The brewing coffee dripped in tandem with the ticking clock and spread a sensuous aroma around the small white kitchen. She played with the empty coffee cups that clinked against the thin china saucers while she waited for her mother to continue the story. Helene wondered what it was she had to hear. Why was it her mother who had to tell her and not her father? Why hadn’t her father told her when he was in the hospital? Why and what?

No one in her family showed emotions. It had been bred into them to hold all feelings inside, because showing emotions was deemed a weakness. Be tough. Persevere. Endure. She knew all this as did her brothers and sisters. The war had taught them this. The war so long ago lived as memories, hated and feared, but still vibrant in her parents as ever, and as a war-baby, Helene lived it second-hand, over and over again through them.

Red rings around her mother’s eyes was the only emotion Helene had ever seen in her. The war took away her warmth, like it had for many other Finns. The chair squeaked as her mother’s nervous legs kicked and scraped it across the floor, while she told the story. She was still afraid. She pushed up from the table. “Coffee’s ready.”

The aroma from the musky and sensuous coffee splashed in the china cup and slipped over into the saucer. Mother never spilled coffee, not since war times when it was made from some tree roots and not real coffee beans. You never wasted anything because “It might come in handy someday,” she said. Her hand trembled as she slipped the hot sweet coffee-bread on the dessert plates. “Eat it while it’s hot.” She stirred two lumps of sugar in her coffee and tapped the cup rim twice, as she always did. Helene stiffened – she knew that when her mother tapped her cup twice, she was getting ready to say something stern and unpleasant. “We didn’t have sugar during the war.” She folded her hands in her lap and stared out the small kitchen window seeing herself during the wars, cutting birch bark to make children’s shoes and to reinforce her own boots. She saw the dirt in the creases of her hands clawing at the mud looking for any vegetables that might have been overlooked. She smelled the fresh earth, cold and wet, and felt her stomach knot with hunger, but there was no time for tears; the children were hungry too. They had to live.

Wars? Yes. Many wars. There was the Second World War, the War of Independence, and the Winter War where the Finnish people fought the Russians each time. “We lost a generation of men during those times. Those were terrible times.” She looked down at her raw fingers and saw only hunger, death, and bitter cold.

Helene didn’t want to interrupt her mom’s memories but was afraid of what her mother had to tell her. She couldn’t leave for university, for a life of dancing, where she knew she would have to leave her old self behind and forgotten. She would have to concentrate on different ballet roles without her past dragging-up into the present. She had to know. “Mom?”

“Pauli had nightmares about the Russian boy. He never stopped feeling guilty. He would scream about the blood in the boy’s eyes, and he thought the Russians were attacking and coming in through the ceiling.” She stirred her coffee without looking at Helene. “You haven’t touched your coffee. You have to eat to keep your strength up to dance all the time down there in Helsinki.”

Helene tore a small piece of coffee-bread and played with it in her thin, smooth fingers. She’d always been a lively little girl and today doctors would say she must have had ADHD several times over. Probably back then, they would have given her Ritalin or some other drug to keep her still. But she loved to run, especially on the countless large granite boulders covering the shores of the hundreds of lakes around the countryside. She skipped over the rocks, using only

the balls of her feet, like she was skimming. As she twirled and jumped, some said she looked like she was flying. She out-ran and out-danced all the other village children.

“Mom. I have to leave soon.” Helene took a bite, then tore the bread into pieces, then wiped them off the table into her hands. “What did Dad want me to know?” She brushed the crumbs into the saucer and waited, but what she really wanted to do was reach across the table and shake her mother until her teeth rattled. How many times had she felt the frustration of wanting a warm hug, a soft complimentary word, a smile of tenderness and encouragement, but only getting monosyllabic grunts? She often felt that her mother’s spirit died in the war; at least she was sure part of her mother died back then. “Dad told me if I ever needed anything, or if I was in trouble for any reason, I was to contact a Mr. Siemens who works at Stockman’s in Helsinki. Why, Mom?”

“Your dad never forgot a kindness or a friend. He and Mr. Siemens fought together for months and almost froze together. It was the coldest winter on record.” She slowly chewed the coffee-bread and ignored her coffee. “He didn’t want to go back.”

“He who? Go back to what? The war?” Helene choked and coughed up her bread and coffee into the new cloth napkin, bought for the funeral lunch. Her mom shuffled around the table and patted Helene on her back.

“To Germany.”

“Dad go to Germany?” Helene’s face was blue, then red, from the coffee bread stuck in her throat, and the coffee stung the inside of her nose.

“No. Silly. Dancing must have cooked your brains. The German didn’t want to go back to Germany.”

Helene’s eyes watered, her throat burned, and she asthma-wheezed the coffee bread out of her lungs. She wondered where her brain had stored the history lessons from school, and if her coughing had shredded all studies from her memory. Why couldn’t her mother say directly what happened? Why was she putting her through this mental torture? She sipped the coffee and watched as her mother stood at the sink, looking at the past, out of the window. Was this her way of being dramatic or was she ashamed? Helene watched the back of the paleyellow dress that covered her mother’s round body, take a deep breath and sigh.

“Your father was the most honest man in the parish. If anyone had found out what he’d done, he’d have either been shot as a traitor or put in prison.” The yellow dress straightened tall and she turned to face Helene. “Now that he’s gone, he can’t be punished, and I can tell you, but you must only use this in an emergency.” She wrapped her arms around her soft body and under her heavy breasts. “He was so well-known for his honesty and fairness that he was chosen to be the police chief until he retired.” She shuddered and hid her face in her hands.

Helene doubted if she could move. Her mother lowered her tear-filled hands.

girl.” “Gerhardt hated fighting. He hated Nazis and he was in love with a Finnish

“Gerhardt?”

“That was his name then.”

“You mean, Mr. Siemens’ name was Gerhardt?”

“Yes. Gerhardt Schmidt … something. I don’t remember.” Mom waved away the memory and continued.

“The war went badly for the Finns, as you read in school. We had to give one third of our land to the Russians, and we had to push out the Germans who’d fought with us to keep the Russians out. War is really shit.”

Helene’s stomach clenched in a knot and she tasted acid. She’d never heard her mom curse.

“We hid him, and Dad falsified the papers so Gerhardt became a different person, then he went away to Helsinki.” She looked down and scuffed her shoe on the slick clean tile floor. “I never saw him again, but I think Dad did once.”

“Oh Mom. You hid the German?”

“He saved your father’s life and, in turn, we gave him a new start. He’ll do anything for us.”

“He’s still alive?”

“Not only alive, but very wealthy. I don’t know his full name because Dad thought it would be better if I didn’t know any details. Dad wrote to him about you studying in Helsinki and Gerhardt answered, “All I have is for you and your family, at any time.” At least that’s what Dad said. He wrote this for you and sealed it so I wouldn’t know, but I guess it’s Gerhardt’s contact number and new name.” She pulled the wrinkled envelope from a pocket and pressed it in her daughter’s hand. “You’d better go now. You’ll miss your bus.” She turned back to the memories out the kitchen window. “Don’t forget your back-pack.”

Helene massaged her legs to revive them. She squirmed in the chair, then slowly stood and put the used coffee cup and saucer in the sink. “Thanks, Mom. It’s good you told me. I won’t forget … anything.”

Years of work, children, and running a business had plumped her into a comfortable matron. Then she saw him, lovingly herding his three grown children into their extended BMW, all beautiful, well dressed, confident. She watched at a distance as the happy chatter quieted when the car kicked up the pink and grey gravel surrounding their idyllic home. As the car drove out into the country road, she whispered, “Dad would have been pleased.”