The Red Book of Farewells

By Pirkko Saisio

For fans of Claire-Louise Bennett and Eileen Myles, an enigmatic work of autofiction set in a time of leftist politics and criminalized sexuality.

Pirkko Saisio’s autofictional novel, in Mia Spangenberg’s tender translation, is a mesmerizing account of radical politics and sexual awakening in a series of farewells—to her mother, to the idealism of youth, to friends and lovers, and finally to her grown daughter. The novel embeds readers in a delirious Finland, where art and communist politics are hopelessly intertwined, and where queer love, still a crime, thrives in underground bars. But then one morning in 2002, on a remote island off the coast of Finland, the narrator Pirkko Saisio informs her publisher that she’s accidentally deleted her latest manuscript, The Red Book of Farewells. Playful and mysterious, The Red Book of Farewells is a work that stoically embraces the small revolutions of moving on.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Two Lines Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781949641479

Book preview

1

august 7, 2002

The heat bakes our skin and the sides of the aluminum boat. The air shimmers like water.

But the water itself is clearer, more transparent than the air, with only the faintest green tinge.

Bladder wrack sways in the depths. A small perch frightened by my shadow zips under a rock to hide.

Honksu jumps onto the burning rocks in her bare feet.

Watch out for snakes!

That’s what you’re supposed to say when coming ashore on an outer island.

Watch out for snakes.

Remember to watch out for snakes.

So…don’t forget the snakes.

You can’t ignore snakes in the archipelago, because if you do, even for a second, one will immediately appear.

Glistening in the crack of a rock, coiled on top of the remains of last year’s reeds and dried by the heat, it doesn’t move. Its black, scaly skin gleams—as do its eyes, like drops of varnish.

And merely by lying in that crack in the rock, it makes the entire island dangerous. Because it isn’t the only one.

There are hundreds of them under the rocks and gnarled tree roots; in the dry, crackling reed beds; near the decomposing swampy bogs that bubble black.

You can’t see them, but they’re there.

There, underfoot, somewhere.

This group of islands is known as Pentinletot, or Pentti’s Fens.

We’ve never been here before, though we have been to the island of Sammo just across the way. But not here. Never here.

I’ve never heard of anyone else from the island of Lyökki coming here.

I’m sure someone must have come here before, but I haven’t heard about it.

Some island.

No, it’s great. It’s a great island.

But it’s tough. Tough to get around, I’ve heard.

It’s easy to lift the bow of the boat up onto the sloped rock, as long as we dip our hands in the water first so the smoldering aluminum doesn’t burn them.

Even the smooth rock is hot. There’s no shade for the Styrofoam cooler, and we can’t take it with us because we have so much to carry.

Water bottles.

Water bottles for both of us.

Water bottles can be a lot to carry when you plan to circle an island under a ruthless, scorching sun.

The water doesn’t move. Neither does the air.

The sun is moving; it has no choice, since time is passing. Time has to pass, because that’s the arrangement.

But the sun doesn’t look like it’s moving.

From the great expanse of the sky, it trains its hot, immobile hatred on this island, which no one remembers ever having visited before.

The sun doesn’t allow anyone to gaze on its brilliant glory, just like a god. The sun blinds the insolent, just like a god.

But this hostile, motionless island isn’t silent.

In winter it’s silent, maybe snowy.

Or it could be that ice constantly crackles. A ship blasts its horn over the cleared path through the water. Or maybe it doesn’t blast its horn—why would it?—but its motor rumbles evenly.

There could be a hare carefully moving over the snow, its claws leaving a faint scratch on a buried branch. Or there could be a fox, or a bobcat.

There could be someone skiing by—a person, turning to whistle to their dog. Maybe the dog barks in response.

The sun is dim then, hidden behind a hazy mist, indifferent.

But not now. Not now.

Terns and gulls cry in the sun-bleached sky. It’s hard to see them; they’re high in the sky; the weather isn’t about to break. A plane, the same size as the birds, drones in their midst.

There are so many mosquitos, and the sound they make is tiny but persistent, demanding. The mosquitos form a veil over my head, airy, conforming to my fretful movements.

There’s only a little water left. Even the deepest pools among the rocks stink of mud and muck, and on top of the water, a greenish black carpet bubbles and moves nervously. Millions of organisms—I couldn’t name a single one, but they don’t care—all fight for space to live. And then there are the snakes. They’re out here somewhere, and there are a lot of them. They’re silent, those snakes.

The ones who die in the wilderness

die completely;

the sun is the earth

in which they are buried.

Don’t come over here.

Honksu is vomiting into the water. Her shirt is sweaty and stuck to her back, and her hand gripping the rock face is inflamed by the sun.

I walk over.

A seal is lying between two rocks.

Lying on its back with its tail in the water.

I’ve seen seals on TV, at the aquarium, and in the sea. Seals are wet and round. They also have wet, round eyes and bushy whiskers.

They don’t have any ears, with the earlobes and all. They have holes where the ears should be, and they know how to open and close their ear holes just as they know how to open and close their nostrils.

They have mouths, too, but I imagine no teeth, because they usually keep their mouths closed in what looks like a smile.

I’ve heard a seal cough before, in the sea.

But this seal is lying on its back between two rocks, and it has a hole in its stomach.

Its mouth is open, as if it’s screaming.

A mouth full of long, yellow teeth, like a wolf’s.

A crow is sitting on the spotted skin of its stomach. Its beak is covered in blood.

It smells of death. Not of freesias, calla lilies, or lilacs; not of pipe organ metal; not of the paper in hymnals; not of the perfume of funeral guests.

It smells like death. Like fresh bodies on a street in Bangladesh; or a dump or a package of ground beef left out for the cat on the table of a cabin and forgotten.

The ones who die in the wilderness

die completely;

the sun is the earth

in which they are buried.

But it will take time.

It will take time for the sun to burn the seal into a white, fragile skeleton to be scattered across the island by the wind. Someday someone may find a cervical vertebra, gouged by the wind and water, and take it back home with them to the city.

I have a vertebra like that under a glass tabletop. I thought it came from a human’s spine. I thought it had made its way, wrapped in muscle, to a ship called the Estonia, which tragically sank, and then it drifted to the island of Ärväskivi near Lyökki, where I found it buried in the sand.

But when I brought it to the University of Turku to be examined, they told me it belonged to a seal, a different seal than this one with its yellow teeth and the hole in its stomach.

It’s impossible to walk all the way around the island.

To the north, the rocks are smooth, and they’re manageable on the west side, too. But the south shore is covered in a yellow, viscous slime. The water is shallow there, and the rocks are slippery.

On the east side, the cliffs are steep, and the narrow strip of sand is covered in birch trees as tall as a person that crowd down to the water’s edge.

There’s a heath in the middle of the island, covered in angry juniper crawling along the ground and heather burned a brick brown.

And there’s a pile of boulders and rocks under the heath, there could be, and the snakes must be in those rocks.

We’re standing at the edge of the heath, sweat stinging our eyes, when the phone rings.

It’s Touko Siltala, my publisher.

I can hear the traffic through the line, cars and more cars, the screeching of a tram and even the murmur of voices. Touko must have his window open.

In Helsinki, on the street, it must be hot.

About that message you left me.

There’s a dead seal here, I say.

Touko (confused and trying to relate): Oh, I see.

I say: Someone’s shot it. It’s got a hole in its stomach.

Touko (trying to get to the point): Really. Well. About that message…

I say (I know I should talk about my manuscript, but I can’t help myself): This is such an incredible island though. We’ve never been here before.

Oh really.

Yes.

Touko (clearing his throat): So you’ve lost some of your manuscript, is that right?

It’s absurd to talk out here. It’s like the world is being born.

And Touko again: I see, I see.

I’ve lost my book titled The Red Book of Farewells. It’s completely disappeared.

I wrote a book by that name, and then (at five o’clock in the morning, when the sun was just a threatening red), I leaned my hand on some keys with words I don’t understand: Ctrl and Alt.

The text turned black and incomprehensible. I wanted to get rid of all that black, so I did. I pressed the Del key.

Later that morning, before leaving for the island—the only island we could come to on a day like this—many people came over to look at my computer.

It’s gone.

Yep.

How many pages?

All of it.

The whole book?

The whole book.

It’s all gone, the whole book.

After the phone call, the island turns ordinary.

I look at my watch for the first time all day. It’s twenty past three.

The light has changed; the sun has moved and now burns from an angle.

Should we go back?

I guess we should.

The gulls and the swarms of bugs riding the breeze no longer belong to me, and I no longer belong to them.

They’ll stay here, and next summer there will be other bugs swarming in the air.

I’ll inevitably be different, too, and The Red Book of Farewells, the book I’ll write all over again, will be different from The Red Book of Farewells that disappeared at five o’clock in the morning on the seventh of August.

I’m not coming back to this island… I doubt it.

Havva doesn’t arrive until fifteen minutes before the end of the visiting period.

I’ve been standing outside in a hospital gown overgrown with bright yellow daisies the entire time, waiting for Havva.

It’s hot. Unbearably hot.

It’s July, and the year is 1981.

The leaves on the linden tree hang limp and lifeless as Havva gets off the bus, and even though sweat drips into my eyes, making Havva look like she is melting in a wave of heat, the same thing happens that always happens to me when I see Havva: my throat swells shut and my nose gets wet on the inside.

I wish I could protect Havva from the world. I wish I could stand between her and the world.

Havva walks quickly from the bus stop, her head down.

But, despite the garish color of my gown, I’m so obliterated by the heat that Havva doesn’t notice me.

Havva has the world’s shortest, quickest steps.

Havva stitches her uncertain steps through the world as precisely as a Singer sewing machine.

But when did she start walking with her head down?

I thought we might play a game. You like chess.

Havva has a chessboard she bought in Moscow under her arm.

But we don’t have time for anything because you’re so late.

Stop always blaming me.

An emerald-green snake is stitched on Havva’s T-shirt.

The blinds in the café block the heat.

The air is heavy with cinnamon, estrogen, and blood plasma. The women who’ve had vaginal deliveries carry small pillows from home.

I capture Havva’s rook with my knight.

Absentmindedly, Havva moves her bishop in front of my queen.

You’re not really playing.

Uh-oh, Havva says. Can I take that back?

Havva’s emerald snake glitters wickedly.

I’m afraid of Havva. Starting to be afraid.

You won, Havva says lightly.

The café is about to close. I panic.

They’re closing, Havva says, and I can’t help but hear the relief in her voice. I guess I have to go.

Please don’t go yet, I say, and I immediately realize I’ve made a mistake: my plea contains an accusation.

My humility is starting to bother Havva.

But

we stand outside together in the heat, in the hospital courtyard. Havva is willing to stand there with me.

Something kicks in my belly. My unknown comrade-in-arms is announcing their solidarity.

I put Havva’s hand on my belly.

Try it. Press here.

Havva presses down; my unknown comrade kicks Havva’s hand; I can’t make out her expression.

Tomorrow we’ll know who this baby is.

Tomorrow?

If I were brave enough to see it, Havva would look startled right then.

In November, I called Havva in Pori.

She had a year-long position as an actor there, and in September I’d figured out how to use the vacuum and washing machine.

My mouth was dry. I had decided that my voice wouldn’t break, but it did anyway.

So, it’s going to happen.

What?

We’re going to have a baby. In July.

The line hummed unpleasantly for a long time.

I should have been patient but wasn’t.

Are you there?

Where?

There?

Well yeah. Yeah, I’m here.

And time and fear touched again. The line crackled with static; the wait was long and pregnant.

Aren’t you going to congratulate me?

Of course.

I seized on that. I bobbed like a cork in a marina.

So?

So what?

You don’t seem happy.

I need to think.

They’re going to induce labor tomorrow, I say. The baby’s already nine days overdue.

The emerald snake glitters in the sun, as do Havva’s hair and eyes—eyes that don’t look at me or the daisies on my robe, or the place where we’re separated from the baby by only a few inches, from the baby who will come and set everything right.

a bouquet of dark blue crocuses, the first one of spring

This is what she’s like in the year 1970:

She’s grown to her full height of five feet six inches tall.

She weighs a little over 150 pounds, but she doesn’t share that information with anyone.

She is stocky, angular, and broad-shouldered.

She paints her (nonexistent) eyebrows with a dark brown eyebrow pencil.

She sings a lot when she’s alone, and she’s writing the beginnings of a novella on her Remington. She absentmindedly doodles faces on the pages of the nascent story, men’s faces, her own.

She reads novels and takes her exams at the university. She yawns and waits.

This is the time before Havva.

The time before her first love, the green room on Maneesikatu street, and Helsinki Student Theater.

Before