[Subsection]

They had discovered that, entering the thick green grove which lay right beside Uncle Ungert's cottage, they could be hidden there as if in a hall with green fairy-tale curtains which no one could reach and draw aside. It was a little piece of forgotten wilderness whose serenity had remained undisturbed since Uncle Ungert's matted old goat had gone to happier hunting grounds. The land was quite marshy here, and there were treacherous spots into which a small foot could easily sink. A mysterious bubbling and boiling could be heard in the earth round about, as if it were trying to say: I am the hidden river, the broad river which runs toward the sea. At these places the alder bushes, with their smooth bright stems and their impenetrable green arches of leaves, formed genuine little jungles through which they could walk, keeping a lookout in every direction among the ferns and the monstrous clinging plants, and feeling like the only people in the primeval forest.

But there was another place which the birds loved, and which Sabine called Noah's Ark because it was raised above the marshy ground and the invisible river; up there it was always dry and the sun shone and the bumblebees hummed like mad around some funny blue flowers which looked as if they had been made of rattling tissue paper and stuck stiffly   [p. 121]   onto long stalks. At the very top, on the shiny gray slab of stone which peeked out like an eye from deep within the earth, amidst stealthily advancing lichen and moss in brown and bright yellow and dark green shades, Sabine was accustomed to sit with her legs crossed underneath her, watching the exciting and changeful life around her, while Myran lay stretched out beneath the gnarled old ash tree which he loved, looking up into its many-branched crown and listening to the trills of the birds.

Nowhere in the world had Sabine felt as safe as here in Noah's Ark.

The epilobium, the wildwood's violet fire, stood like a row of sentries around her hiding place, the bumblebees' favorites nodded cunningly with their blue heads, and the yellow bedstraw spread its sweet odor through the still and sun-filled air.

Myran taught her to love the birds. One pedantic little willow warbler in particular became her friend. No doubt it had its nest somewhere nearby, and Myran wanted to show it to her, but no matter how hard they looked, they could not find it. Sabine could think of nothing except that nest. She crept around with all the caution she could muster, scarcely daring to put her foot on the ground for fear that she might happen to tramp on some downy little creatures in a nest. She could never have imagined that something of that sort could lie hidden between the bunches of grass. Now and then she heard an anxious and piercing wheet-wheet, and then she realized that danger was abroad---that she must have come close to the nest. She stood there on one leg, her heart pounding, and looked with all her might, but since her eyes were not used to the wilderness, she could not discover something as carefully hidden as a willow warbler's nest. She had to be satisfied with observing the little grayish-brown bird itself, which first sat in a tree, then hopped from   [p. 122]   branch to branch, holding an investigation in its own amusing and careful way as to whether there were any insects in the bark.

Of a sudden, a breathless Myran came up to her very quietly, taking her meaningfully by the hand. He led her cautiously through a raspberry patch and all the way up to the old gray fence, which was falling to pieces. At first Sabine could not see anything at all. She only felt the blood throbbing in Myran's warm hand. Going still a little closer, she bent forward, and not until she was so close that she could touch the fence was she able to distinguish the nest among the gray and stubbly rails. It was built out of sticks and straw on the most fragile of fragile things: a dried piece of bark already come halfway loose from the old fence post, and it seemed only to be waiting for a puff of wind to blow it down. Here the tranquil gray warbler had built a nest for its young in a strange trustfulness toward that strong hand which is the defender of the defenseless, the shelterer of those without shelter. Sabine sat down on the ground in mute reverence. The baby birds were quite naked, with only a few promising spots of down here and there, and they lay clustered together like a single, tender, breathing softness. She could see how the thin membrane rose and fell in the light rhythm of respiration, and perhaps it was this which moved her most of all, as if she had accidentally come upon something which was supposed to be hidden in the deepest recesses of God's heart.

"You have to be careful not to touch it," Myran said. "Birds are very sensitive. It can happen that they'll abandon their nest if a human being touches it."

Sabine merely nodded. She would never have dreamed of touching it. And she knew that, having seen it, she would be careful of everything that breathed---she would know that nothing was as sensitive and delicate as a living being.

  [p. 123]  

Finally the bird itself came to the realization that whoever it was that sat in the grass close beside the nest was not some strange being, but rather something which had planted itself in the nest's surroundings, something that belonged to the surroundings like the stone and the bushes---this was how still Sabine sat in her contemplation. The shy bird seated itself on the fence post and sounded its quiet and modest cry: tsit, tsit, tsit. It sat there, quite content, and looked around; a frizzle of down surrounded its small legs; now and then it lifted its wings, which drooped a little, ever so slightly.

Afterwards, when Sabine came to sit down beside the big ash tree with Myran, she was so thoughtful and her eyes were so large and dark that he had to draw her close to him, letting her lie the way she wanted to, with her head tucked underneath his arm, curled up like a baby bird in its nest.

Myyriäinen lay there thinking of the wondrous thing which had befallen him since he had started to carve little Sanni's head. It seemed to him that everything he saw had changed since he had begun his work. The whole village seemed to have been transformed. The people looked quite different. Lampinen's face had acquired a certain remarkable quality he had not seen there before. Palaga's eyes had become as deep as the Madonna's, and her hair had a sheen as though it were in an old painting. The children had grown so full of expression that he thought it would take him years to decipher what it was each one of them had concealed in his dirty little face. For example, Mikko, who was ill and could not move, had shadows beneath his eyes and a cast to his mouth and his temples which Myyriäinen had never seen anywhere before, and at which he believed everyone would be astounded, if only they had the chance to see it. Assendorff, too, had been changed in some way. His ill-tempered old face had got something splendid about it, causing him to   [p. 124]   resemble a red-bearded Moses on Mount Sinai. Not to mention Uncle Ungert, who obviously declined more and more each day that passed, growing smaller all the while; yet at the same time he grew as big and tall as an archangel. Myyriäinen could scarcely dare to begin to study him, the way he looked now; no one could know, of course, how much time he had left; and, as for himself, he had only his own brief span of life in which to ponder what he had seen---and how could that possibly be enough time?

And it was not just the people who had changed. The trees had also grown full with expression. Even the ground had acquired another appearance. The special way the little paths had of creeping along beside the groves and disappearing into the meadows had somehow become mysterious. It was plain that the village roads and the black edge of the forest and the banks of the river all possessed an intimate relationship to one another, their emanations converging around an invisible center which was the soul of our village. If its writing could only be read, then the reader would behold a mighty face emerging from concealment. Even the little nest which had recently aroused Myyriäinen's amazement, hanging onto its fragile piece of bark, had its given place in that face, although one could not really tell, as it lay there, what its connection was to everything else.

He thought that, if he were going to succeed in rendering Sanni's face the way it was in the moment of death, he would have to include everything the village's mighty face contained, not just the faces of Lampinen and Mikko but the trees, too, and the small paths and even the little nest which lay breathing in the chink of the fence. It might seem that the task was one a human being could not complete during his brief time on earth---a task, perhaps, which he simply did not have sufficient power to complete. Yet he felt no anxiety; instead he knew nothing but happiness.

  [p. 125]  

"It's really a strange sort of thing you're going to get from me," he said to Sabine, who lay with her head hidden beneath his arm. "It's not just beautiful, there's a kind of magic in it too. When you have it, you can never be sad. And the best part of all is that you'll never be alone."

He did not get an answer, and he wondered if Sabine had gone to sleep. He lifted his head to see what had happened, but then he felt his arm being pinched, and the pinch was more or less meant to say: "Don't look at me, you stupid Myran!"

"It's a dead girl's face. And it is so beautiful that, when you've seen it, you'll notice that none of the faces you see around you is as strange or ugly as you sometimes think. You'll be able to tell that, deep within them, they resemble the dead girl's face, and that there's something in them which is just as beautiful as the dead girl's face, although it doesn't always show so clearly. And the best part of all is that you can see that your own face is just as beautiful, too. For it also resembles the dead girl's face. The remarkable thing is that people don't realize that they resemble one another and that what they possess in common is the most beautiful thing about them, their true beauty. That's why it is so good to have the dead girl's face with you, for then you're aware of it and cannot feel alone.

Now Sabine crept out of her hiding place. She had to get a good look at Myran's face in order to see if things were the way he said. She thought that his face was very beautiful. But she indignantly rejected the notion that his face was in any way supposed to resemble Assendorff's or Uncle Ungert's. There was not another face like Myran's in the whole world, and that was the reason it was so beautiful.

"You don't look a bit like anybody else, and I don't either," Sabine said with great decisiveness.

Myran laughed at her, but she did not get annoyed,   [p. 126]   because she loved to hear him laugh. Sitting up, he took her on his lap.

"Let me tell you something, my little mermaid. You can't figure that secret out before you've seen everything there is to see in the dead girl's face. It doesn't resemble anyone in the whole wide world, and yet it resembles us all, so that if we reach the depths of any face whatsoever, we're simply returning to it---to the dead girl's face. That's the way we human beings are."

"I don't resemble everybody and I don't resemble just anybody," Sabine insisted. "I don't resemble anybody but myself. And neither do you."

"If you knew how ugly a person is when he only resembles himself, then you wouldn't talk that way. I know, because I made that sort of image of myself. And it was a distressing sight. It was the dead girl who taught me that a human being doesn't look that way."

"How does a human being look, then?" Sabine asked suspiciously.

"What can I say? A human being looks like someone who knows that he is lonely, but who by virtue of this very loneliness is able to experience his community with men and nature. Can you understand all this? Whenever you are most clearly aware of being Sabine and no one else, then you are most fully a human being, and whenever you feel that you are a human being, then, in turn, you are very much more than just the lonely Sabine. You have a soul which can enter into contact with other souls, not only the souls of men but of animals, too, and even of the well-spring and the tree and the flowers. In this way, loneliness cancels itself out, and you become a friend of every living thing."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Sabine said, astonished and a little perplexed.

  [p. 127]  

"It is a fairy tale. But I can't tell it correctly. Only death can do that."

"Then it's beautiful death, not cruel death, that tells the story."

"It's only that we human beings sometimes think death is cruel. But that's not true. We'd be terribly unhappy and lonely if we didn't have death to tell us the fairy tale of our life."

It was time to go. Uncle Ungert was probably seated at the table already, waiting for them.

Myran got up and took Sabine's hand in his. She tripped along pensively at his side as they descended the slope of Noah's Ark; from time to time she looked up at his face.

"No one can tell the kind of stories you do," she said, and she thought to herself that it would no doubt be a great deal easier to live if a friend like Myran was always at one's side.

"And the end of the fairy tale goes this way," said Myran. "If there hadn't been a little mermaid whom Myran held so dear that he wanted to make something beautiful for her, then he would not have thought himself able to do something with his poor hands, and the enchanted face would never have come into existence."

"Say that once again," Sabine begged. She thought it sounded so wonderful that it almost could not be true.

Myran said it once again, just the way he had said it the first time.

And then Sabine thought that, no matter what the world held in store for her, she would never be able to feel truly lonely and unhappy.