Fortunately things are a little different this time. We even have our own hotel rooms, and not just in any old hotel, but in the Hesperia (now a Crowne Plaza hotel). We have got ourselves on the guest list for a celebratory reception put on by a Soviet-Finnish joint venture, recently set up with the aim of using Finnish equipment to produce paper for the Soviet Union. Because the Soviet Union has no paper. That is, there is enough for the newspapers, but books sometimes have to wait years to be printed. Although not for much longer, if one is to believe the documents which both parties signed ceremoniously today.
We don’t see that happening because the signing event is only meant for the delegates, but we will still get into the party in the evening. Don’t worry, we have an official invitation, arranged for us by the same Friedebert Tuglas Society. Because if there is paper, then books can be published, and that is something which writers will want to celebrate, to say nothing of their readers.
So as the agreement between Director of Karelia Trade Yrjö Paananen and Soviet Minister for Forestry and Timber Mikhail Ivanovich Bussygin, which makes the factory possible, is signed in the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki, and the first chink of champagne glasses rings out, we are still waiting in the customs queue in Tallinn harbour, which is particularly slow today. But it always seems that way. You try to look calm, and you pull it off pretty well, or at least I suspect nothing, but of course you can’t fool the customs official. I only have my possessions yanked out of my bags, but you have your pockets searched as well. Thankfully the one-hundred-mark note you got from your cousin is hidden in your sock, and the customs official eventually resigns himself to finding nothing, deciding that the edginess he read on your face was just because of the irksome experience you were being put through, which was of course quite possible. Tomorrow you will take that one-hundred-mark note to the electronics shop on Iso Roobertinkatu Street and use it to buy a “Tallinn kit”, which costs forty-two marks and contains a couple of tiny components that your cousin can use to make his new TV set show Finnish television with colour and sound. The same thing would cost several times more on the black market in Tallinn, so your cousin is happy to let you keep the change, but you promise that you will treat him to a glass of the whisky which an acquaintance is going to give you to take home. Anyway, we’re now safely up the ramp and on board the ship, which is named after the Estonian singer Georg Ots. We walk about, looking enviously at the Finns and those few Estonians who have bought themselves a beer at the bar. We have alcohol with us as well, but we are taking it to our acquaintances in Finland. Some of the Finns anyway look like they no longer have much need for the bar: they’re barely able to stand upright as it is. One of them is making no attempt to hide his interest in the girls in fancy white blouses and denim skirts as they walk past.
Eventually we find one of the ship’s dimly lit cafés – too dark to read, but at least the Estonian waitress can pretend that she can’t see that we have ordered nothing, and leave us to our own devices, making no claims on our scant supply of hard currency. And so our journey goes, a bit hungrily, thirstily and joylessly, but at least in the right direction. You have brought two apples with you, and you treat me to one of them. Thank you for that. An hour before arrival we take up position by the exit so as to avoid waiting in the queue for too long. The Finns don’t have to worry about that, there is a separate queue for them; they must do little more than walk past the border guard with their passports held open. Just in case, you pull the one-hundred-mark note out of your sock before we leave the café; even though our invitation says we will be looked after and our bills paid, the border guard may ask us to show some money. Just to make sure that we remember our place.
As if it were possible to forget.
Reality
Actually, the first time I went to Finland I didn’t use this boat: I took the bus through Leningrad and Vyborg and then travelled onwards along the coast. We had to get to a gathering of Finnish and Estonian poets, and the whole thing was nearly called off because Gorbachev had requisitioned the Georg Ots ferry to travel to Reykjavík and meet Ronald Reagan. But we still decided to go.
At one event there, an elderly woman asked me what I found most remarkable about Finland. She said she liked to collect peoples’ first impressions, as they gave her a fresh perspective on her homeland. I replied that it was the petrol stations. I explained that when I was a child I had Matchbox cars brought back for me from Finland, and my classmate Peeter Laurits got given loads of Lego bricks. And so we played with them, building miniature models of a reality which was absent from our own lives. Now, years later, it was strange to see the petrol stations there by the roadside, as if a wall between me and my childhood toys had crumbled, as if I had stepped across a dividing line which had been separating me from that reality.
We are met at the harbour; a thin girl asks us to put our cases in the back of a minibus and she takes us to the Hesperia. We hear Estonian spoken from both sides of the foyer, but those girls aren’t connected with our delegation: they are wearing expensive clothes and smell of top-quality perfume. When they see us they fall silent, because we bring back memories. We hurriedly take our suitcases to our rooms and put our best clothes on – the reception has already begun. We enter the hall and are separated for a while – just in case, I let you know that the buffet nearest the door is meant for the Soviet delegation and consists mainly of vodka with or without juice, whereas at the other end of the hall you will find a pretty decent selection of wines, and the nibbles are just that little bit better too.
Alex was quite happy with vodka and juice. He felt a little uncomfortable, which was probably why he’d already downed a few drinks and was a bit flushed, but that also may have been due to the crush of people. He didn’t know anyone here apart from the Lenbumprom (Leningrad Paper Industry) people, but he couldn’t be bothered to talk about work stuff – he could talk about that to his heart’s content back home in Leningrad. He’d managed to exchange pleasantries with a couple of young Finns, but the conversations hadn’t lasted long as chit-chat wasn’t his strong point.
I’ll have a plateful of food, a drink or two, and then I’ll go to my room, he thought – tomorrow is another day, after all.
Standing in front of him in the queue was a jovial-looking older gentleman wearing spectacles who seemed to know exactly which of the snacks to take and which to leave alone, while for Alex they all remained something of a mystery. Since the man was clearly an expert, Alex decided to let himself be guided by his choices, and so he helped himself to what had probably once been some kind of sea creature, and some lumps of cheese served with pieces of an unidentifiable fruit.
The elderly gentleman took note.
“I take it this is your first time here,” he half-asked, half-stated and nodded approvingly in the direction of Alex’s plate. His English was a bit stiff, as is often the case with Finns, but that made it easier to understand. “Very good. Now all you need to do is choose the right wine. Come with me.”
Alex followed him and listened as he discussed something with the barmaid in Finnish and asked her to fill a couple of large glasses barely quarter-full of lightly sparkling white wine.
“It’s from Portugal,” the old man explained. “They know their stuff there.”
He put his glass and plate down for a moment and took a business card out of his pocket. “Tapani Yläkoski,” he read his name out. His place of work, the research department of the Bank of Finland, was also written on the card.