[Subsection]

The very next morning, when Myyriäinen awakened upon his bunk in Lampinen's sauna and sleepily squinted at the sun which shone in through the open door, he began to think about what sort of beautiful thing he was going to make for Sabine. He had a vague memory of having seen something very beautiful in his dreams, it seemed to be some object which he held in his hands and which Sabine was supposed to have, but he could not recall what it was, or even if he had really seen how it looked. "What can I make with my hands?" he thought sadly. "I can't make anything beautiful, I'm absolutely incapable of that, and I can't make anything amusing either."

Then he happened to remember that Sabine was going to paint the Little Mermaid for him, and he decided to go immediately to Matvej Olkkonen's store to see if the storekeeper could get him some paints, it would be nice to surprise Sabine with a paintbox while she was drinking her morning coffee. No doubt she had completely forgotten   [p. 114]   that paints were needed for a painting, too, and that even a mermaid could not be done with dream-paints, in case anyone else was meant to see her. He jumped briskly out of bed, full of eagerness and the desire to get something done. It was a completely new feeling for him to have such a helpless being to think of and to look after. And then there was Uncle Ungert, too. He had awakened from his quiet trance with a remarkable sense of strength and concentration, and padded about his cottage all day long, as snug and comfortable as he could be. But he did not go outdoors, and he put the papers to one side without wanting to pay them any further attention on that day. When evening began to fall, he lay down---without any preparations whatsoever---on an old sheepskin beside the stove, as if it were taken for granted that the girl would sleep in his bed. Myyriäinen thought with tenderness and warmth of the little house which lay hidden and forgotten out there on the knoll in the forest, beyond the peaceful and beautiful cemetery, whose unpretentious chapel could have been taken for some plain barn or other, if the Greek cross had not gleamed from its grayed bark roof. There, it seemed to him, he had a little family of his own.

But when he stepped outside, on his way down to the beach to wash himself, and beheld the peculiar stillness of the farmhouse, which had been decorated with spruce greens, and noticed that everything was lost in its own special serenity, as if there were no people here who would go to the well or the pigsty, no children to poke in the sand and run through the grass with their bare feet---then he remembered that it was Sunday and that little Sanni was to be buried on this day. For a moment the image of her face hovered before him, as he had seen it in its perfect beauty that moment when she died, and then he realized that it was this face, carved by him in some noble wood, which he held in his hand last night and which he would give to Sabine as   [p. 115]   the most beautiful thing he knew of. He felt a mighty joy stirring within him. He went excitedly back into the sauna and closed the door behind him, so that the twilight was broken only by a faint glimmer from the greenish murk of the windowpane, which was no bigger than a spread-out hand; then he crept into the darkest corner behind the stove in order to concentrate upon that idea which came welling up from within him, hammering at his chest and the delicate muscles of his heart, as if it wished, piercing through him, to find the way to his hands.

Meanwhile Sabine awoke in Uncle Ungert's little cottage, hale and hearty, and immediately looked around for her friend. He was not there. The old uncle stood over by the stove, busying himself with something or other. The cat sat beside him and stared straight out into space with its round yellow eyes.

"Uncle," said Sabine.

She did not receive an answer. The cat took a leisurely stretch and padded across the floor to the door. Sabine jumped nimbly up and opened the door for the cat; sticking her nose out, she decided that the weather was delightful. "He'll be here soon," she thought, "and then we'll go out." She went resolutely up to the stove, where she intended to look after her small bits of clothing, which were spread out here, there, and everywhere in the pleasant warmth.

"Back to bed!" Uncle Ungert said brusquely. "I have some warm water here. You'll get it. And an egg into the bargain."

"I want to go outside," said Sabine.

"As far as what you want is concerned, I have your will in my trousers pocket," said Uncle Ungert.

"May I see how it looks, then?" said Sabine, and very gently lifted up the tail of his old frock coat. She could not restrain a little effervescent laugh.

"People are not allowed to laugh today," said Uncle   [p. 116]   Ungert with great gentleness in his voice. "There's going to be a burial."

"Has it already started?" Sabine asked eagerly, as if they were discussing some special kind of spectacle.

"We'll be able to hear it from here when it begins," said Uncle Ungert. "We'll open the window and then we'll get to hear everything."

Sabine did not have to be told about it twice. She flew straight across the floor like the wind, the voluminous nightshirt fluttering around her legs. She opened the window as wide as she could and seated herself on the sill in order to enjoy the beautiful weather to the full. A big brown ant on the path below the window caught her attention. It looked so terribly comical. It crept with the uttermost care along a straw, and when it reached the end and could go no farther, it stopped, not knowing what to do, and one could see how unhappy it was. After thinking the matter over for a while---and unable to get hold of anything, no matter how much it waved its antennae in the air---it turned around and climbed back carefully along the way it had come. Sabine could not help laughing. Her eyes shone, and the corners of her mouth were full of unspoken wishes.

Then she heard the bell ringing, and grew quite serious and still. Ding, dong, sang the bell with heavy strokes. It sounded very beautiful and solemn in this morning hour. And suddenly the little bells joined in with an endless and jubilant ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, which never stopped but simply kept on climbing and climbing in an infinite rhythm like one of the fugues of Father Bach. Sabine listened enchanted. "Now the soul is passing up to heaven," she thought, and it gladdened her that she had had the chance to hear it, for now she knew that the soul no longer mourned or lamented.

Amidst the sound of the bells, the little coffin was borne out of the chapel which stood on the birch-covered point; and, their heads bowed, the people walked beneath the bright trees. They walked among the forgotten graves with their grayed and crooked crosses which stuck up out of the earth like strange, odorless flowers from the fields of some other existence. Standing to one side, Myyriäinen, his blue eyes faintly veiled, gazed upon the gentle summer landscape: the wooded holms, the inlets covered with water lilies, the blooming meadows at the edge of the forest. In mysterious and joyful rhythms the words of the Byzantine ritual, heavy as death, rose up toward the sky, like an echo of the age-old lament of the human soul, wandering blighted in the wilderness:

What a mournful parting, oh brothers! What a lament! What weeping in this hour! Come, let us take farewell of her who but recently was among us, now she shall be lowered into the grave, the stone shall be rolled over her, she shall have her place in the darkness, she shall be buried among the dead, all her relatives and friends shall be parted from her now.

Wonder of wonders! What mystery is this which now has befallen us? How does it happen that we have been surrendered unto destruction? How have we been placed under a common yoke with death?

Woe, how the soul struggles, when it is parted from the flesh! Woe, how it weeps, and there is no one to take pity upon it. It sends its glance unto the angels, but it beseeches them in vain, it stretches out its hands toward humankind, but finds no one to help it.

For this reason, dear brothers, let us consider the shortness of our life and let us implore Christ to give peace to her who has departed, and to give great mercy to our souls.

The people stood in tight clusters, their faces pale, as if   [p. 118]   they expected that the words' wild lament and the blessed joy of the irresistibly ascending melodies would bear them upward to the throne of the mystery, letting them behold the Resurrection:

Accompany, oh Savior, your handmaiden's soul to rest among the spirits of the pious departed and hide her in blessed life with You, Who love the children of men!

Little Sanni's face spread out like a fair and spacious countryside before Myyriäinen's gaze. He saw that trees grew upon its hills and the inlets with the water lilies were reflected in its peace and the fields and the blooming meadowlands had found their fitting place within its mighty contours. All that he loved in his heart's country was found within this face. It was little Sanni's face and yet it was not, but rather his face too and Lampinen's and that of the smallest child, and it was the face of the whole people. It was the face of man in the land of his heart. It would never die.

On this day Sabine waited in vain for her friend.

She had to console herself with Assendorff, who swore by all that was holy that he would bring Myran^[1*] back with him in the evening. Myran was the pet name she had thought up for Myyriäinen, and she had a great deal of fun imagining what he would say about it. Only many, many years later, when they both were old folks and sat nodding at one another, would she tell him how she had happened to call him that---he looked just like that big clumsy ant which crept out so carefully along the straw, and which could only return the way it had come. Besides, as the afternoon went on, Uncle Ungert began to tell stories, and then Sabine was lost to the world. Never in her life had she heard their like. She even forgot to miss her friend. If she had known that   [p. 119]   she was the last person to get to hear these tales, which had become a historical tradition in our village, from Uncle Ungert's own lips, then she would have been still prouder than she already was at the confidence which was shown her.

When Assendorff came to fetch Myyriäinen in the evening, the woodcarver stood outside of the sauna lost in contemplation of something which Assendorff---with the best will in the world---could only regard as a roughhewn block of wood, a block supposed to represent heaven knows what, perhaps the devil himself or his grandmother. Assendorff could not have been more astonished at the peculiar man's behavior: he walked around the block of wood in the oddest way, looking at it with a dreadfully strange gaze, first from one side and then from the other, and it was nothing much to look at in the first place. "This man is crazy," Assendorff thought. Myyriäinen did not answer when he was spoken to, either, but just stood there staring at the block with his hair on end. It was really uncanny. He looked so upset and his gaze was so queer that Assendorff contemplated the axe which lay on the ground nearby with a certain shyness. After all, he could not know that the man he had before him was in such a state of humbleness and pious astonishment that he could not have hurt a fly; liberated from that demon of loneliness which is the source of evil and of suffering, he was in harmony with the cosmos and felt a common bond with all things which have received a spark from the Creator's hand.

"Look here," said Myyriäinen when he caught sight of Assendorff. "I'm going to make something beautiful for Sabine."