Lucifer's Tears

30

I make the journey through a snowstorm, along icy highways, back to Porvoo. The faint smell of cat piss and the strong gamey scent of roasting moose and turnips fill Arvid’s house. He invites me in, cordial but wary. I’m not sure if he regards me as friend or enemy. Maybe a bit of both. Ritva greets me with warmth, asks me if I’m feeling better. Arvid and I sit at the dinner table. Ritva serves us coffee and bustles in the kitchen.

I lay Pasi Tervomaa’s book, Einsatzkommando Finnland and Stalag 309, on the table between us. “Maybe you should read what’s been written about you,” I say.

He sits straight up in his chair with his hands flat on the armrests. His clothes are again starched and pressed. He’s the most military civilian I’ve ever met. He doesn’t even glance at the book. “I’ve read it,” he says. “I make it a point to read everything about historical events in which I’ve played a part.”

“I went to SUPO headquarters and found your file. Your version of events doesn’t hold water, because you and my grandpa, Toivo Kivipuro, had parallel careers. You entered Valpo service together. Bruno Aaltonen wrote letters of recommendation for both of you, and you and Ukki worked in the same duty stations at the same time. You even won the same medals. The odds of you and him being separated in 1941 and 1942 are almost nil. You said you didn’t know Ukki, but in fact, your families were associated before the war, and you were paired up for the duration of your careers.”

“Okay,” he says. “You got me. I was at 309 with Toivo. You say you want to make the Germans fuck off and leave me alone. How?”

“A statement from you admitting your presence at Stalag 309 but denying any participation in murder might do it. If it’s the truth.”

He smirks. “Nobody gives a damn about the truth. This is about payback. The story really started in 1999, when Martti Ahtisaari was president. He decided to honor Finland’s Nazi Waffen-SS volunteers during the Second World War by erecting a monument in the Ukraine, where the bodies of about a hundred and fifty Finnish SS volunteers are buried.”

Ahtisaari, president, diplomat and Nobel Prize winner, commemorates Finnish SS war dead and, by association, endorses our part in the Holocaust. Fucking amazing.

“Finland’s Jewish groups protested,” Arvid says. “The European Jewish Congress said that Ahtisaari undermined efforts to combat anti-Semitism. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that by suggesting equality between its perpetrators and victims, Ahtisaari denigrated the memory of the Holocaust dead.”

“What does all this have to do with you?” I ask.

“Ahtisaari fucked up. The commotion resurrected nearly forgotten history. Suddenly the world remembered that Finland had around fifteen hundred volunteers in the SS. The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals held that all Waffen-SS troops were guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. This would include Finns. Heinrich Himmler formed a Finnish Waffen-SS Volunteer Battalion called Nordost. It was attached to the Nordland Waffen-SS Regiment of the Fifth SS Viking Division, a most vicious and fanatical bunch. Then Jewish groups recalled that rather than punish our SS volunteers, in 1958, the government exonerated them and then gave them full veterans’ rights. All this gave the Wiesenthal Center a hard-on for Finland. They want a scapegoat. It took them ten years to find the right one. A Finnish icon. Me.”

Arvid Lahtinen. National hero. Political football. I tap Pasi’s book. “There’s only one eyewitness account accusing you of murder,” I say, “and the accuser is dead. Say he made a mistake. Deny everything.”

“It won’t work,” Arvid says. “If they dig a little, they’ll find other witnesses.”

The implication gives me a start. “The allegations against you are true?”

“Actually, the account in the book is mistaken. I didn’t shoot that particular Commie, it was your grandpa, Toivo.”

It jars me like a punch to the head. I didn’t realize that, if I found out Ukki was a murderer, it would affect me so. I’m crushed. “Ukki was an executioner?”

“Not exactly. He and I and some of the others shot people, though.”

“Why?”

“We drank a lot in those days. Sometimes we got carried away in the spirit of things. Whacking the occasional political commissar didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. Still doesn’t, really. He and I both killed hundreds of Bolsheviks. That was our job. Whether they were combatants or prisoners didn’t make any difference to us. We just wanted them dead. Toivo had a vicious streak, by the way, a lot worse than mine.”

I need to hear this. “Tell me about him.”

“Our fathers were friends. We saw each other sometimes growing up and got to be friends, too. As you thought, our fathers had some political influence and got us into Valpo. Toivo and I were close during the war, but it affected him in different ways than it did me. He could be less than reasonable. He used to make saps out of sections of fire hose filled with shotgun pellets. They save your hands when you hit people. He beat men so often and so hard that he went through a sap almost every week. They would wear out and burst and lead would go flying all over the room.”

This hurts. “How many people did Valpo detectives kill in Stalag 309?”

“Some dozens, maybe a hundred. Toivo and I killed maybe half of them. The SS guards found it soothing to see us take part in their cause and show solidarity, but not too often, because if we did the shooting instead of them, it ruined their fun.”

I was wrong. I didn’t need to hear this. “I don’t want to know any more.”

He nods understanding. “Don’t judge Toivo. Or me. You don’t have the right. Those were different times. Strange times. I don’t feel guilty about them. On the contrary, I’m proud of what we did for our country. Our patriotic duty. Toivo was a good man and a good friend. I still miss him.”

My temples pulse migraine, but the evil creatures in my head lie dormant. “I miss Ukki, too,” I say. “You remind me so much of him, in a way it’s hard to be around you.”

Arvid smiles. “I always wanted to be a grandpa. Ritva and I had two boys. Cancer took one. The other died in a car wreck. Neither one made it out of his teens. You’re a good boy and a detective to boot. You can call me Ukki if you want. Maybe it will make you feel better.”

The idea seems silly. I question his motivation for suggesting it, and it makes me suspicious, so I play along. “Okay, Ukki. Why did my grandpa move to Kittila?”

Despite my mistrust, calling him Ukki feels good, makes me feel like I’m a kid again.

“He was braver than me. I was afraid of persecution by the new Red Valpo. I thought they would execute me or at least put me in prison. I fled the country and moved to Sweden for a while, then to Venezuela. I had a farm there and didn’t return until the late 1950s, after the amnesty. I met Ritva and settled down. Toivo was furious about the settlement with the USSR, called it a betrayal. The Kittila area had a lot of Red partisans. Toivo moved there and joined an underground network of White partisans. They stockpiled weapons and hoped the tide would turn. They wanted to overthrow the government and slaughter the Reds. It never happened, so he lived out his life as a blacksmith. We exchanged letters, I visited a couple times. His disappointment over the war was bitter, but in general he was happy enough.”

Sixty-five years later, Arvid’s fears of persecution are renewed. It disturbs me.

Ritva sets the table. Arvid carves the roast. “A friend of mine killed a big moose and gave me a lot of it. Take some home with you if you want.”

I find myself liking Arvid more and more, and I’m less and less certain I care about what he did in the Second World War. A lifetime ago. “Listen,” I say. “After what you told me, I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid you’re in real trouble.”

“I’m afraid, too,” Ritva says. She’s been quiet today, looks like she’s not feeling well.

Arvid ladles gravy on baked potatoes, carrots and turnips. “Here’s what we do. You go back to the interior minister, and tell him to fucking fix this or I start telling state secrets.”

He’s ninety years old, and his secrets must be from the war. I can’t imagine that they carry much weight anymore. “Can you give me some examples?”

“Things contrary to Finland’s perception of its own history. Unpleasant things. Most of it has been written about in one place or another by historians, but often disputed or discredited, called surmise or conjecture, because no one wants to know the truth. I’m a national hero. I’ll write a book and give this unpleasantness the official stamp of veracity.”

I’m still doubting. Arvid and I compliment Ritva on the moose roast.

“What do you think of Finland’s great Lord and Savior, picture of moral rectitude and man of supreme honor?” Arvid asks.

“You mean Mannerheim?”

“The one and only.”

Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. Descended of Swedish royalty. Imperial Russian army officer. Commander in chief of Finland’s defense forces in the Second World War, and later the nation’s sixth president.

“He was a great man,” I say, “a great leader. Finland might not exist today without him. The Russians or the Germans or both would have destroyed us.”

“That’s correct. Much recent historical research has taken up the question of the extent to which Finland protected Jews during the war. Mannerheim is lauded for his efforts.”

“You’re the one they’re going to accuse of being a Jew killer, not Mannerheim,” I say.

“I killed Communists. I didn’t give a flying fuck if they were Jews or not. Jewish prisoners of war were concentrated in the middle of Finland, near the Second Central POW camp in Naarajarvi. Can you think why that might be?”

“History books say they were placed there for their own protection.”

“Wrong. They were placed there in case it was necessary to sell them off to the Gestapo.”

“Sorry,” I say, “but how could you possibly know that?”

“Bruno Aaltonen was friends with the head of the Gestapo, and they discussed it at length. My father was friends with Aaltonen. He told Dad about it. Dad told me. And besides, it was a common topic of discussion among Valpo detectives.”

“You’re telling me Mannerheim was an anti-Semite and prepared to take part in the Holocaust.”

“No, I’m telling you he was a pragmatist, faced with weighing the lives of a few hundred Jews against the liberty of Finland, a country he protected at all costs, and the lives of its citizens, which at that time numbered about four million. I’m telling you great men don’t become great without getting their hands dirty.”

“It’s hard to believe,” I say.

“You believe fabrications in history books. You’re brainwashed. Our relationship with Germany was rooted in ideology as well as shared military goals. The Continuation War was about expansionism. Through Valpo, we only handed over about a hundred and thirty people to the Gestapo through extradition. But the military turned over about three thousand, mostly Red Army. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because we wanted slave labor. Germany had an enormous number of prisoners of war. We were trading our Red Army prisoners for their Finnic and especially Finnish-speaking prisoners so we could settle them in Karelia, which we had captured from the Soviet Union and which we intended to ethnically cleanse of Russians. It would have eased the labor shortage on the home front. It was an ideological decision. Nationalists had dreamed about the opportunity to occupy Eastern Karelia since before I was born. Mannerheim signed off on this. He refused to send our troops to attack St. Petersburg with the Germans. Giving the Gestapo three thousand POWs was a way of smoothing that over.”

“What about Jews?” I ask.

“We gave the Gestapo latitude. If they requested extradition of a particular person, like as not, we wouldn’t inquire about the basis for the request. We knew goddamned good and well though, that an extradition was a death sentence.”

“This is powerful stuff. How could it have been kept secret for so long?”

“Near the end of the war, Valpo saw trouble coming. We destroyed as much documentation as we could.”

I’m in over my head. I’m a detective, have no business in the political realm. “You’re asking me to relay a threat to blackmail the Finnish government into protecting you.”

“It’s not a threat. I am blackmailing them. Tell the interior minister that I’ll also discuss our treatment of POWs.”

“The death rate in our POW camps was high,” I say, “but be fair. We didn’t have food to adequately feed ourselves, let alone them.”

“We held sixty-five thousand POWs. About thirty percent died. That rate was surpassed in Europe only by Nazi Germany, with its death camps, and by the USSR. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler. The death rate here wasn’t so high until we decided to use already sick and starving POWs for forced labor. Then they started dropping like flies. And we could have made sacrifices, fed them better if we wanted to. We just didn’t want to.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think anyone will believe all of this, even from you.”

“Boy, you’re naive beyond words. We shared the Nazi vision. Expansionism and room for the nation to grow. An agrarian paradise populated by ethnic Finns. That dream lives on. Don’t you watch TV?”

“A bit.”

“Think about, for example, the Elovena ads. They’re not selling porridge, they’re selling Aryan propaganda. If Leni Riefenstahl had made those commercials, Hitler would have come in his pants. A hardworking beautiful blond mother in the countryside, surrounded by her adoring, content, and even blonder oatmeal-glomming children. Fields of grain ripple in the breeze. Like it or not, boy, that idyllic Nazi vision is alive and well in this country today.”

His cultural view is extreme, but his point is well taken. I think about Christmas Eve, and the beginning of the twenty-four hours of official Christmas Peace. At noon, in front of the town hall in Turku, a band plays Porilaisten marssi – March of the People from Pori -and the Christmas Peace song reminisces about covering the land in the blood of our enemies.

“You still haven’t told me how my great-grandpa and your father knew each other,” I say.

He gets up and brings me a package of meat out of his freezer. “As I said, you’re a good boy. I’ve decided I enjoy your company, so I’ll save that story. Come back tomorrow, we’ll eat and I’ll tell it to you. You’ll like it, it’s a good one. Ritva is tired. You better go now.”

I have a murder to solve, don’t have time to lounge around and listen to war stories, but I realize, to my surprise, that I don’t care. Somehow I need it, and I’m already looking forward to it. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”