[Subsection]

This morning was not like other mornings in Abel Myyriäinen's life. It was not because something out of the ordinary had happened or because some external influence had made him lose his balance. It was simply so---everything was different.

He had awakened with a feeling of intense melancholy. The sensation was so all-embracing and, in some way, unfathomable that it terrified him; but at the same time it gave him pleasure to be so completely absorbed by a feeling. The ground-bass was the same as in all melancholy, whether it appears in a child or in a grown man, in a criminal or a saint: I am alone, utterly alone, beloved of no one. His thoughts circled around this fact with horror-struck delight; he could not understand how, until now, he had managed to exist and had even been able to give his existence a semblance of dogged effort. It was as though an unknown presence had taken possession of him as he slept; in the very moment he awakened he could still feel how mighty tremors slowly fled, and he was left alone and utterly empty. He turned toward the wall and pressed his face into his pillow, hoping somehow, in the warm bedding which had held his unconscious bliss, that he could recover a breath of that intense spirit which had possessed him and without which he knew he could not live.

All he could recapture were some disconnected and evanescent images from the dream he had had before his awakening; a friend whom he once had loved and later despised slipped past in some painful context, and someone who was dead also seemed to have something to do with the matter, but he could no longer tell what it was all about, and besides, it was nothing unusual---for the most part, just the old, familiar story. These confused and painful images contained nothing which could give him a clue, which could enlighten him in any way about what it was he missed so bitterly, which could say why his life suddenly seemed so indifferent and meaningless to him.

He would have preferred to stay in bed. The mere thought of getting up and dressing and taking the work in hand which had lain waiting for him since he left it the day before filled him with a distaste that bordered on loathing. But he could hear his mother rummaging around in the kitchen. There was something curious about her steps and about the noise her hands caused when she was preparing a meal. These sounds were different from all the other sounds in the world. He had heard them through the years, ever since he was a little boy, and there was a melody in them which moved him in a way he could not explain. Perhaps one could have said that everything he had ever dreamed of "becoming" in the world lay hidden in the tune; it had something about it---challenging and cheering at the same time---which he could not resist, even in his darkest moments. He could not let her down, that was what it amounted to.

While he listlessly pulled on his clothes, he happened to think that, for once, it would be good to get away from her, to have a little breathing-space. He had always lived very close to her, in fact there had never been any space between them. Back home in the wheelwright's cottage on the   [p. 5]   hillside, where his childhood passed in the shelter of friendly meadows and handsome white wagon wheels which even now appeared as symbols of happiness in his mind, space was so tight that the three people who lived there grew accustomed to having even their innermost thoughts become common property. Now father was gone, and the only things remaining from his workshop were the old carpenter's bench and the memory of the enchanted symbol of happiness, but space had grown no greater for the two who were left behind. They had only become all the more dependent on one another, thrown upon one another during the hard years in a strange environment. This little shack on the edge of the big and bustling city had become their silent affinity's refuge; here the air itself was saturated with all the unspoken implications which bound them together. Sometimes it seemed almost oppressively close. Anyway, so much gathered inside a person which one had no right to disclose, hidden things that could not bear revelation. One had to submit to a self-imposed and heavy reticence, in order not to lose the strength which lay in what had been concealed.

His steps hesitating and stumbling, his face dejected, he went in to join his mother. She saw immediately that his eyes had that blank look which frightened her, and which had filled her with dread even when he was a child and had his fits of restlessness; lately it had happened that he was gone for days when the evil thing beset him. "He's got it from his father," she thought, and then all the burdensome memories descended upon her, and she felt that she loved her son more than one human being perhaps had the right to love another.

She rose up heavily from her place and went over to the stove. She stayed there longer than it was necessary for her to get the coffee-pot ready. Quite silently, some tears ran down her withered cheeks. "May God protect him," she   [p. 6]   mumbled in the dark chimney corner, but her obstinate heart told her that he needed her more than ever just now, when he was in this condition and could not take care of himself.

They drank their morning coffee in silence, and there was nothing unusual about that. But ordinarily the silence around them was full of mutual confidences, of small and mute exchanges. On this morning even the silence was different. They both noticed it, and it bothered them. They knew that they were silent because they did not wish to discuss what they were thinking of. The old woman paid special attention to his hair. He had not combed it today. It was in that tangled and oddly shaggy state which always came over it when he was depressed. The very sight of it pressed a knife into her heart. And there was something touching about it at the same time. He looked like a child when his hair was in that condition. Her own little boy. Why couldn't she press his head against her breast, as she used to do when he was little, and run her hand into his unruly cowlick, and make it terribly tangled, all to her heart's desire; he always used to laugh. . . . He had such a pretty laugh. A weak smile passed over the old woman's lips when she remembered it. It seemed to her he had got his laugh from his mother. But it was a long time since they had laughed together. All of a sudden, she had a sickening feeling that he was about to slip away from her, to a place where she could not follow him. His absent glance made him seem so far away. Would he ever come back?

When she was about ready to leave, she got the courage to say something, something she immediately realized she ought not to have said.

"You shouldn't work so much," she said, and perhaps a little of her old uncomprehending irritability lay in her   [p. 7]   tone, although she was conscious only of not wanting him to wear himself out the way he had been doing.

He answered nothing at all, but she saw that he seemed to collapse, withdrawing inside his shell. Sheer thoughtlessness had made her tear open old wounds.

She had never been able to reconcile herself to the woodcarving which he occupied himself with now. She held a grudge against it, as against something she could not understand and over which she had no influence. They had clashed about it many times, and if there was any bitterness at all between them, then it arose from this source. When he abandoned his work in the shop, saying that he intended to spend all his time with what had been a hobby of his free hours, she realized that it would end in catastrophe. From the very beginning, she knew that if anything could separate them, then it would be that strange task which seemed never to be finished, and which did not give him a moment of peace or satisfaction. He had never been really happy after that. He lived under constant pressure. Even if he had the chance to sell something, the sale made him no happier. No, she could not reconcile herself to it. There was something unholy about the work, it wasn't like a human being's work at all. People said it was old-fashioned to believe that art was sinful, but she knew better. She could see very well that an evil spirit had got control of her son, since he had started to call himself an artist. He did not serve God with his work, she was sure of that.

She pressed her lips tightly together. She knew that she was right, but she did not want to say anything more. She was sorry that she had said anything at all. Long ago she had decided not to mix into this matter, but to leave it in God's hands instead.

On this morning the old woman went off to her job with   [p. 8]   a heavy heart. She fumbled with the latch and noticed that her hand was trembling; then she wondered how it would feel if the house was empty and her boy gone when she came home in the evening.

Myyriäinen stood at the window for a long time, watching her as she went away. He thought of nothing in particular; he merely received within his gaze the image of the tired little old woman who was his mother.

After a while he went into his room. It was his time for work. Mechanically he took out his chisel and his knife, and stood before the carpenter's bench in order to examine the little figure he was working on. He drew back when he caught sight of it. It was like seeing a ghost. The carving, in full figure, was small, no bigger than a doll. It was supposed to represent Myyriäinen himself. He had suddenly got the idea of carving himself in the same humorous manner he used for his other "old men." To tell the truth, he was quite tired of them by this time. His ideas seemed worn out, used up. He had made infinite variations on certain favorite motifs, and he could not look at them any longer without feeling repugnance and shame. Then he got the idea of carving a figure called "Myself." His interest was aroused. For once he worked with genuine enthusiasm. Everything went along splendidly. The sculptural balance and the surfaces' harmony seemed admirable to him. And he had captured the resemblance perfectly. He was terribly amused to see the little fellow take shape, so much like him with his coarse, large-boned build, his stooped posture with its slightly groping air, and his expression, comic in its dejection. In reality it was a pathetic figure; that it had such a comic effect perhaps resulted mainly from its small size. To take one's self so terribly seriously when one is so small: this is funny in itself. He was very satisfied with his little   [p. 9]   figure. He had a feeling that it would be the best thing he had ever done.

He had even thought this way yesterday evening, when he finished his work for the day.

And now, in the morning, everything was so very different. He stared horrified at the little figure, unable to believe his own eyes. What had happened to it? What diabolical spirit had come and rendered it unrecognizable? It was the same figure, of course it was, the features and the posture and the expression were the same, but where was its harmony, its rhythm, its subtle expressiveness? Where was the artistic meaning of it all? He saw only a primitive imitation of his own contours, undertaken on a lifeless doll. He was filled with horror. It was as though a malicious spirit had conjured forth this dead fetish in order to mock him, showing him the pitiful contents of the being of which he had made a graven image.

Crestfallen, he put down his tools. He looked around the little room where, once upon a time, he had begun his task with such reverence. His glance strayed through the room, as though he sought support somewhere, as though he did not wish to believe that everything he had experienced here had been meaningless. One evening he had read passages from the immortal chronicle of the seven brothers,^[1*] and the thought that he himself might walk in the master's steps, contributing with his simple art to the knowledge of this people which did not resemble any other on the face of the earth, seized him with the force of a revelation. He possessed his own province within this people's infinitely various   [p. 10]   character, and he knew this province completely. Suddenly he thought that his vision grew perfectly clear; he saw how it should be, and how the images should be formed to express the innermost being of the people he called his own. Faces, gestures, and situations he had seen in passing came back to him with a new and deepened significance, and he thought that he had grasped the immortal nature of his people. He enclosed himself within his dream-world like a pious hermit, intoxicating himself on visions inspired by his melancholy sense of humor.

How did it happen that now he had grown so poor? Where had his visions gone?

Searching, his eyes glided from one to another of the little wooden carvings standing in mournful rows on the shelves and tables of his den. He grew more and more sick at heart. It seemed as if someone had smuggled his true works away, putting a collection of bungled copies in their place. How was it possible that he had not noticed it before? Of course: he had made forgeries, crude reproductions of the primal images he once had beheld. He felt ashamed and confused, as though he had caught himself cheating. He tried to persuade himself that he had failed because he lacked the skill of a trained craftsman. He had begun so late, he had never received any real schooling, for the most part he made his own way by trial and error. But in his heart of hearts he knew that this was not the whole truth. A voice inside him said: "You know that you have betrayed something holy. Why did you do it?"

In his submission he stood before the ranks of comical figures in order to discover once and for all what was wrong with them. They were old acquaintances, all of them: the philosophical village tailor who resembled a pensive crow, the conceited parish clerk with the adam's apple in his skinny ostrich-neck, Mari the milkmaid, her skirts impudently   [p. 11]   pinned up, showing her sturdy calves, the old man from the country who scratched his bottom while he gazed astonished at the marvels of the city, the sly old peasants, shrewdly bargaining over some poor nag, one of them praising its virtues in extravagant terms, the other looking suspiciously at its teeth. He was disgusted by the involuntary humor the little figures were made to express. "I wonder what it is people really laugh about," he thought to himself. "If they laugh at the expense of these little beings, then it's wrong. They ought to laugh at their own expense instead---that could be called humor." Of a sudden, he realized with utter clarity that he somehow had lost what was most important, what he had felt most deeply when he had begun. The quality that had enchanted him in these people was not present at all in his copies. He had falsified them, made them less important than they were, so unimportant that anyone who wanted to could laugh at them in a feeling of his own superiority.

"There's nothing immortal about them," he thought to himself. And then he understood that a bungler is not only a bad artist but a bad man.

He returned sorrowfully to the bench where the comical figure of "Myself" stood awaiting its completion. He took the little statue in his hand and looked at it with an expression of sympathy, as though he could not exonerate himself of all responsibility for it, even though he saw how much a failure it was. It was a fine piece of wood, no question about that. Curly-grained, first-class. He always got a sensation of pleasure from the material he worked with. His hand had caressed blocks of wood the way other hands caress living bodies. With his fingertips he perceived the subtlest nuances in the soul of whatever sort of wood it was. A special sense seemed to have been developed within his hand in order that there might be someone in this forest-covered land who   [p. 12]   understood the nature of the white and mysteriously undulated wood. At its touch he knew gladness even now. And as he stood there with the wooden sculpture in his hand, he imagined that he had stood just the same way, holding a piece of wood, once before, long ago and in another life, when he had been much wiser than he was now, and had known much more about the manner in which wood should be treated in order for it to surrender its secrets. It occurred to him that if he could hold within his hand a single one of those bits of bark at which the little shepherd-boy had whittled so tirelessly, or any of the strangely formed pieces of wood he had found in the forest and concealed in secret places whose location he alone knew, then he perhaps might catch a glimpse of the world of fantasy in which he once had lived. Some clumsy line the boy had cut with his knife, or some whimsical detail nature had created, might perhaps give him an intimation.

"The fir tree told me everything," he thought to himself, and all at once his childhood came so near to him that he could almost seize it. A freshet of memories rushed over him, as though they had only been waiting for the right word, the magic word, to free themselves from the unconscious. Before him he saw the old fir tree under which the boy had collected his treasures, and it seemed to him that he had left it only yesterday. He heard its deep and sheltering sough, and in the same second his heart was filled with the enigmatic music of the woods. Once he had taken part in the forests' primal life; fairy-tale beasts, trolls, and phantoms had been his company; and moss-covered stones and gray boulders, ages old, had given him murmuring instruction. His life had been filled by a familiarity and community with the things of nature, and in his eyes there had been no loneliness.

Where were his friends and protectors now? What crime   [p. 13]   had he committed to make those who had been his intimates abandon him? How had he come to this place, to this musty room where all was strange and hateful to him?

Once again he had a painfully intense sensation of the loneliness which had held him in its grip since the morning. Strange old biblical sayings entered his thoughts, words which had stamped themselves into his memory during silent evenings when he lay in his little bed and father had not come home and mother sat in her rocking chair and read aloud from the New Testament; and he thought that everything they said was one and the same:

"Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit."

"He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it."

"I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly."

The little sculpture slipped from his hand, but he did not notice it. He took a few stumbling steps and, without knowing why he did it, left the room.

A comical little figure lay on the floor among the shavings.

When Myyriäinen went out onto the stoop, he noticed that it was springtime. After the long and bitter months the spring was suddenly there. Or was it only that he had not noticed it before? A shimmer lay over the poor roofs of the suburb, and there was a gentle dampness in the air, mixed with odd and muted rays of light, which aroused a yearning for a new life. The old poplar beside the military barracks sent out an odor at once pungent and benumbing. An old woman shambled along the street, muttering mysteriously to herself. Somewhere children were playing, and their shrill voices reached him like the cries of birds. Everything   [p. 14]   was so full of expression, everything came so very close to him that it seemed an invisible dividing wall between him and the world had fallen away. He felt like someone who leaves a prison and, shaken to the depths of his being, receives his first impressions of a living life. Suddenly all else appeared quite meaningless to him: his work, his mission, all save this one thing---to find some contact, to establish some communication. He hungered for a link with men and things the way a starved person hungers for food. Suddenly he perceived that he had gone around and around in the same circle all these years, had seen the same objects and made the same observations, without ever being able to break out of the ring, without ever seeing things in some new relationship.

He stood unmoving, like a statue, with his heavy body bent forward and his arms hanging down loosely at his sides; only the nervous sensitivity of his face and a secret fragility in his earth-bound form bore witness to the hidden activity of the spirit's forces.

He thought of his life and of how restricted and poverty-stricken it was, and of how much richer a form it could have taken. The world was full of beauty and there was always something new to see, if only the proper contact had been found. "Perhaps a person ought to venture out into the world," he thought. And he remembered all he had heard about the great cities in foreign lands where the holy treasures of art were preserved. In this springtime, too, the artists would make a pilgrimage to these places as to their true homeland. What lured them with such an irresistible force, what caused everyone who once had been there to long to return? Was it the new impressions which meant so much to them? But how were new impressions formed, after all? Weren't the connections which were revealed to one the important thing? Or the links which were joined   [p. 15]   and the communications which were established on paths that transcended the senses? For a moment he abandoned himself to the notion of making such a pilgrimage himself, in order to partake of these overflowing riches. But at the same time he knew that this way was not his own, and that he would never wander as a pilgrim to the holy cities of art. Here he thought less of his poverty and his ignorance and the other difficulties which could bar his path; instead he knew in his heart that he lacked that elasticity of intellect which makes a person set out into the world. His nature was rooted like the tree's; if the springs which nourished his soul ran dry, the only possibility that remained for him was to sink his roots still deeper into the earth from which he grew. "But I wonder if it's not tempting, just the same," he thought. "I'd rather make a pilgrimage to the fir tree of my childhood and to the wise old stones in my forest---if I could only find the way to them."