REFUGEE'S HOME-COMING

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21194, 17 August 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

REFUGEE'S HOME-COMING

Picture From Finland :: Aged Women’s Return

(Elizabeth Kyle in English paper)

r A PORTION OF THE RAILWAY-LINE still remained and had been hurriedly repaired to facilitate the return of those who had lived in the neighbourhood to what was left of their homes. But the windows of the train were shattered, and over the sharp fragments of glass still clinging tojhe sill there whistled a biting wind from off the snow-covered Finnish landscape. She sat with a corner of her fur cloak held across her face, and her eyes fixed on the luggage rack opposite so that they should not see and be shocked by the carnage strewing the line. The rack was piled from end to end with provisions bought in Helsinki that morning by her daughter-in-law, for the district she was returning to had been swept clear of foodstuffs weeks ago. In vain she protested against the amount of stores being sent north with her. “I am an old woman,” she said. “I shall not eat so much before I die.” And, ‘‘How do you think I am going to lift so many packages out again?” But they had paid no attention, knowing well that everyone in the train would be willing to help her, relieved that the farmer Tensfeldt was still in the district and had wired that he would meet her with his sleigh. She leaned back in her corner, thankful that She Was Going Home at last. It had been a fight to leave Helsinki and her family, but she had had her own way, as she always did. None of her children and grandchildren was free to accompany her, but none of them could prevent her from returning to end her life where she had begun it with her husband forty years ago. In spite of the bitter wind she could see in her mind’s eye the deep, pearly stillness of the summer morning in which they had first taken possession of their bit of land. The land jutted out into one end of the lake and then ran back, through the clearing her husband had made to build his sawmill in, to the forest. Every scrap of their capital had been put into the first f sawmill, and he had built himself only the small, two-roomed wooden hut on the edge of the tongue of land in which all their children were bom. But from 1918 onwards they had prospered. He had built two other larger sawmills and a fine house for himself and his wife. The house had even hot and cold running water, so that the servants did not need to use the well she herself had so often fetched water from in the old days. But they had let the old hut stand, out of sentiment. It made a good souma. or bath-house, with its inner room for steam and its outer one for cooling down and dressing in. . . . What was left of the line now came to an abrupt end. Down from the third-class carriages climbed a few Dazed-looking Peasants with bundles on their shoulders, who stood storing about them as though seeking for obliterated landmarks before beginning to trudge off through the forest in search of the remnants of their villages. She saw Tensfeldt looking for- her farther up the train, but sat quietly in her corner till he reached the carriage where she was. “Well, Rouva.” he said, beginning to haul the packages down, *‘so you have flome home. But whether you have a

home to go to, that is another question. I have not been out that way yet.” “It may, of course, be destroyed,” she answered politely, not believing it. How could anything be destroyed that was built up so clearly in her mind’s eye ? She got into the sleigh, and they began to skirt the great lake stretching frozen and greenish towards the horizon. Here and there a pile of rusting metal, an overturned tank, or shattered ’plane lay sprawled grotesquely on the shore, as though cast up by some fantastic tide. Presently they had worked their way right round the lake, towards the tongue of land with its little landing-stage. Above it on a platform of rock stood the Shattered Remnants of what had once been a handsome summer villa. Tensfeldt pulled up the sleigh and pointed with his whip. “I am sorry, Rouva, but it seems that now you have no home, after all. Better come home and let my wife and me put you up till you can get another train to Helsinki.” But she was out of the sleigh and walking through the snow towards the old bathhouse on the edge of the lake. “What do you mean?” she said over her shoulder. “Here is my home. It will do well enough now I am alone. After all, I lived in it for twenty years.” She began to climb through the shattered rock garden which adorned the plateau towards the ruined house. The whole of the kitchen wall had been shot away, but there, above the fragments of her fine new porcelain sink, still hung an iron ring of keys. She took them off their nail, then, instead of going back to the bath-house immediately, picked her way through the broken-boarded rooms with their debris, pointing here and there to the few scraps of furniture that had escaped destruction. He carried them obediently down to the bath-house for her, disposing the fine gilt coffee-table under the window of the outer room near to the little iron stove. He piled all the provisions on the table, which was the only place for them. He hit a nail or two into the wall for her to hang her clothes on, and placed some salvaged dishes on the dusty shelf. She had brought a mattress with her, and this he laid on the long wooden bench on which the bathers had lain while the bathwoman drubbed them with birch twigs. Some firewood was piled up in a comer of the hut. He lit the stove with this, then left her reluctantly, promising himself to drive round that way tomorrow. When he had gone she sighed contentedly. She was home. The nightmare flight, the privations of the last few weeks Vanished From Her Mind. The stove began to glow and warm the atmosphere. She took a pan down from the shelf to fill it with water and make some coffee. There was no running water in the hut. She would have to draw some from the well, as she had done often enough long ago, and well she knew the cold of that journey out and back through the snow. She slipped on again the great sable cloak that had been one of her husband’s last presents, and, leaving the hut, began to go towards the well, a wiry, thin, old figure, with head bent against the wind.