Last spring my neighbour moved to parish sheltered housing. Well, I hadn't seen much of him recently anyway. We'd sometimes bumped into each other at our shared letterbox, but more and more rarely. And now and then I'd heard his car driving along the minor road below the hill.
     For twenty-three years I've been living in this former village-school in mid-forest on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, seventy-five kilometres east of Helsinki. A better home it's difficult to imagine: my wife, a ceramic artist, has been able to build a large wood-burning oven in the garden, the children went to a small country school, and, for me, it'd been a return to an environment that suited me: I'd spent my childhood and youth in a similar village and a similar little school.
     Outside the kitchen window, northwards, is the world of people: there's a hill, and below the hill a minor road that leads to the major road. Beyond the minor road there are fields and neighbours as well, whom I don't see. Outside my study window, looking southwards, there's another world: first forest and then sea.
     From the kitchen window I see how the world goes by; from the window in front of my desk another world comes inside. As I translate Japanese literature, I look out of the window, and the landscape changes to meet my needs. When I write poems I see my image reflected in the window and I begin debating with myself.
     The trees, mosses, ferns, birds, clouds, moon and stars visible from my window are vocal the whole time, and they're not discoursing about nature or peace or beauty, they're not symbols, they're living beings and they have so much to tell me that now and then I escape into the kitchen and the human world to read a paper and calm down. Sometimes I escape by walking through the forest and down to the shore. There they won't find me.
     When we moved here there were still three neighbourhood inhabitants: a farmer, his wife, and their semi-invalid grown-up son. The farmer soon died, the son stayed on with his mother, looking after the smallholding. It's now years since the mother died too. The son soldiered on as a cattle farmer. The holding and its produce had to fit in with the EU regulations; when the cows' milk was too fatty, the dairy imposed a fine by lowering the payment. One evening it dawned on me that the dairy van hadn't shown up for a whole week. I heard from the taxi driver that he'd sold his cows.
      In the early years my neighbour often popped in. We immigrants from the city were interesting; he had to come and advise us about splitting logs and shifting snow. He was particularly intrigued that I worked at night and slept till after mid-day. I didn't explain that in the daylight too much distracting life was going on outside the window. Finally he always got round to his favourite theme: Well, it's jolly peaceful here in the country, isn't it? About three times a week we came to an agreement that it is.
      With the passage of the years our children moved to the big world; one after another, the old farmers and their wives left the neighbouring houses for the other world. The sawmill is gone, the village shop-cum-post office no longer exists. But the ice cream van comes trilling around, and the traffic has decidedly perked up, since a hundred-cottage holiday village has been established not very far away, and a twenty-seven-hole golf course.
      No point in coming and telling a country boy like me that peace consists in silence or motionlessness: when, in spring and autumn, hundreds of geese fly cackling over my head, when the mechanical saw's singing away in the forest, when the combine harvesters and tractors are buzzing night and day in the fields, when a northern storm is clattering on the corrugated iron roof and waves are pounding the seashore, peace is complete.
      Here in the country so much is going on all the time, you don't have the leisure to notice everything without some peace: but though the world outside the window does acquire some peace at night, the books on my shelves go on shouting at me, demanding to converse with me. Sometimes I have to go all the way to town to find peace.
      This spring my wife heard something said at the garage: my neighbour has sold his house and estate to a country-house owner, who has united the fields and forests to his own lands. The cottage has been done up and is now rented to city-dwellers as part-time accommodation. About the new neighbours all I know is that they've two cars, a red one and a grey. The taxi-driver would know their name, if I asked. Hereabouts, the taxi-drivers and garage mechanics know everything.

the wine's waiting in the bottle
the books are waiting on the shelves
can't get away from here to anywhere, here is where I've     stayed
here it's good
good to know you're being waited for
patiently

From Lopullinen totuus. Kaikesta
('The ultimate truth. About everything', Tammi, 2002)

Translated by Herbert Lomas
 
 
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