The Winter War Read online

  “We were all hoping for the best,” Mother said.

  “Russia promised us our independence back in 1917 when they got rid of their czar!”

  “The history books might say that. But Russia never liked the idea of a free Finland. It was only a matter of time before they made up an excuse to start a war.”

  The ground shook as a string of bombs exploded nearby. “What about Tuuli?”Nina jumped off Mother's lap.

  Tuuli was their gentle workhorse, and Nina adored her. The family's second horse, Teppo, had been “drafted” into the army.

  “Tuuli's safe in the barn,” Marko said as the earth continued to shake.

  Jari explored the room. Grinning, he waved at his own shadow on the wall.

  “We need to put out the candle,” Marko said.

  “Don't make it dark!” Nina said.

  “You know the blackout rules.” He bent down and blew out the flame.

  Jari climbed onto Mother's lap and bounced on her knee. “Sit still,” Mother said. “Would you like a song?”

  “A funny one, Momma,” Jari said.

  Marko smiled. Mother sang beautifully in church, but at home she liked to make up silly words to old folk tunes.

  “How about'My Pretty Darling'?”

  “Yes!”Jari clapped his hands.

  “ 'My darling is so very pretty,'“ Mother began in a singsong rhythm. “'With her skinny bones and her knotted hair, with her squinty eyes and her yard-wide mouth, she makes the horses in the market laugh.'“

  Jari and Nina giggled and joined in for the second verse.

  While they sang, Marko stared into the darkness and tried not to close his eyes. If he did he would see the jagged crater and the gloves all over again.

  Suddenly a bomb hit so close to the cellar that Nina screamed. Dust sifted between the roof planks and down the back of Marko's shirt.

  “Poor Tuuli.” Nina's voice trembled.

  “Everything will be all right,” Marko whispered.

  But Marko wondered: Would anything ever be right again? How could he have fooled himself into believing a war wasn't coming? The Russian farmers who traded in Virtalinna were honest, hardworking people, but he should have known better than to trust the Russian government. Father often told Marko stories of what it had been like during his boyhood, when Russia controlled Finland. The czar angered everyone by making Russian the official language of Finland. Then he banned the Finnish parliament and began drafting Finnish men into his army. The bitterness toward Russia peaked during the Finnish civil war, when Russia contributed to the bloodshed by supporting Red forces within Finland.

  “More,” Jari said, urging Mother to sing another song.

  As Marko thought back over the last few months, he could see so many signs that war was approaching. Early in the fall the Finnish government had announced a rationing program for coffee and sugar. That same week Marko's class started making gas masks in school. A blackout policy required people to paint their lampshades black except for a little point of light. Workers dug a deep, zigzag trench in the park and covered it with logs and earth to make a bomb shelter. Schools were even closed for a time during the mobilization of troops.

  But the oddest thing of all had happened toward the end of summer when Marko and Johan were walking past the church. A well-dressed couple stopped them. “What sort of a factory might that be?” The man spoke with a strange accent as he pointed to the furniture company across the river. Then he asked about the ironworks and the sawmill. Marko and Johan answered politely, and the man gave them five marks each.

  The boys ran home, anxious to tell Johan's father about their good fortune, but Mr. Kronholm said, “Those people may have been Russian spies. You must be careful whom you speak with these days.”

  At the time Marko had thought Mr. Kronholm was worrying too much. Now Marko knew—he'd helped two spies that day.

  The explosions were further apart and fainter now. Nina was beginning to breathe easier.

  Marko hadn't been the only one who believed war could be avoided. Even Father remained positive on the night he shouldered his rifle and prepared to catch the troop train. “Building up our defenses is only a precaution,” he told Marko.”Field Marshal Mannerheim is too wise to be drawn into a fight. He's pulled our men well back from the front so there's no chance a stray bullet can start something. I'll be back at my forge by Christmas. But in the meantime”—he glanced at Mother and the smaller children—”can I count on you to look after things?”

  “Of course.”

  Father's first letter from the front said he'd been assigned to a post in the north. He couldn't tell the family where, but he gave a hint in his final sentence: “We won't have to worry about an attack unless the Russians trade their tanks for reindeer.”

  But no matter how far north Father might be, Marko knew he couldn't escape the Russian bombers.

  They stayed in the shelter until the church bell rang after sunrise.”All clear.” Marko stood up.

  “Don't leave us, Marko,” Nina said.

  “I need to see if it's safe.” Marko walked to the door and listened. He heard the faint clanging of a fire bell.

  “No, Marko!”Nina cried.”The Russians will get us.”

  “The planes are gone.” Mother squeezed Nina's hand.

  Jari made the sound of a bomber and laughed as Marko climbed the steps and opened the second door. Their farmhouse and barn were all right. He called down: “Everything is fine. Tuuli's safe.”

  Marko looked to the east. The sky above the lake was milky gray. When he turned toward town, he saw smoke from dozens of fires merging into an angry black column. The fire bell clanged and shouts echoed from the city center.

  The smell reminded Marko of the midsummer bonfire that had blazed beside the river last June. The townspeople sang and danced all night. As the flames died down toward morning everyone was sleepy and ready to walk home, but Johan challenged the boys to a fire-jumping contest. “Marko, you judge who leaps the farthest,” he said, not wanting his friend to be left out.

  When Johan tried to jump the widest part of the fire on his first effort, his foot brushed the embers and his shoelace caught on fire. But he lined right up to try again. Soon everyone was laughing and cheering.

  Today, through the smoky haze Marko could see the flagpole above Kronholm Castle. The twin flags of Sweden and Finland hung limp against the white pole. Marko imagined Mrs. Kronholm wringing her hands and pacing back and forth in her drawing room, grieving for Johan.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE FUNERAL SLED

  On the morning of Johan's funeral, Marko walked to the barn before dawn to feed and water Tuuli. When he got back to the house, Mother was setting a pan of water on the cookstove.

  “I'll make rye porridge. We need a hot meal before church,” she said. Birch bark and kindling crackled in the firebox, and a thin puff of smoke rose from under the stove lid.

  “Do we have to put out the fires during the day again?” Nina asked.

  “That's the new blackout rule,” Mother said. “No cooking after sunrise.” Mother's blue eyes, which were normally bright, looked gray and tired today. She often teased Marko, saying, “You inherited my eyes but your father's head,” meaning that Marko was blue-eyed like her but stubborn like Father. Though Father never wavered from a task, Marko had never met anyone more stubborn than his mother.

  “But it gets so cold.” Nina hung on Mother's arm.

  “We can't let the Russian pilots see the smoke,” Marko said.”We'll just put on three coats if we have to.”

  Nina gave him a little smile.

  Jari was so sleepy that he laid his head on the kitchen table. Marko looked out the window into the starless black sky. Snow was gently falling. “The clouds should keep the bombers grounded.”

  “That will help us bury Johan in peace,” Mother said.”I never thought I would dread clear skies.”

  Marko sat down and rubbed his calf.

  “Sore?” Mothe
r asked.

  “A little.”

  As he rubbed his leg, Marko thought back to the August afternoon three years ago when he'd first felt the pain. He and Johan had been swimming. They'd been going to the lake all summer long, and they were both tanned and strong. But on the way home Marko got so tired that he could barely walk. Then his left leg began to ache. He tried not to limp, but Johan asked, “What's wrong?”

  “It must be a cramp.”

  “Lucky that didn't happen when we were swimming to the island,” Johan said.

  “I would have sunk like a rock.” Marko tried to smile.

  That evening Marko felt good enough to eat a big dinner. But he got dizzy later and threw up. Father said, “I told you your eyes were bigger than your stomach.”

  Marko was so tired that it took all of his strength to walk to his bedroom and crawl into bed.

  The following morning he woke with a high fever. Father brought the doctor home after church. The doctor said Marko had a case of the grippe, an illness like the flu, and he left some medicine. But Marko ached a hundred times worse than he ever had from the flu. And he couldn't stop sweating. Mother held a cool cloth against his forehead, but he burned with fever all night long. His left leg felt as if it was being jabbed with needles, and he couldn't help groaning. At times he arched his back, and his whole body went rigid from the pain.

  The next morning he felt better. But when he tried to get out of bed, his leg crumpled under him, and he fell. The minute Marko saw Mother's eyes he knew something was very wrong.

  “Momma?” Nina's voice pulled Marko back to the present.

  “Yes, dear?”

  Mother had pinned her own hair up, and now she was getting Nina ready for church. “How can they have a funeral for Johan if they can't find all the pieces of his body?”

  “Whoever told you such a thing?” Mother set her comb on the table and looked at Nina. Marko's stomach churned as the image of the smoking crater and the bicycle flashed back.

  Nina said, “I heard Mrs. Arvilla talking to her husband.”

  “You know she likes to gossip,” Mother said. “Johan was a good boy. He's safe in God's arms.”

  The Koskis walked to church under a leaden sky. For Marko the fresh snow normally would have meant getting out the sleds for the children, hitching up the sleigh for the first time, and waxing his skis. But today the snow held no joy other than the relief it offered from the Russian bombings.

  All of Johan's classmates and teachers came to the funeral. When Marko opened the church door for Mother, he heard a whispered “Rautakinttu.” Iron Leg. He turned but saw only grown-ups. Iron Leg was the hated name that some boys in school called him because of his brace.

  On Marko's first day back at school after his recovery, the teasing had hurt almost as much as his polio had. He'd worked so hard to push himself to walk again, but a group of boys pointed at his brace and laughed. No one else in his school had caught polio, and he wanted to tell his classmates the whole story. How he'd lain flat on his back in the hospital for two weeks. How he'd struggled for two months before he was strong enough to hold himself up between two chair backs. How he'd taken his first steps with crutches. And finally, how proud he'd been to walk for the first time in his new brace.

  Over time Marko had learned to use the teasing to make himself stronger. He blocked out the words in the same way he fought the pains that shot up his leg with a burning, electric jolt. He worked harder than everyone else. To make up for his weak leg he built up his arms and shoulders so no one could beat him at arm wrestling. And if anyone told him he couldn't do something because of his leg, he fought to prove them wrong.

  Johan had been one of the few boys who never teased him. Last spring when he and Marko were fishing below the mill house, Marko asked, “So why didn't you ever make fun of me?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You know.” Marko rapped the metal slats under his pant leg as he watched his cork bobber float in the foaming current.

  “I'd never tease a friend. And they pick on me, too.”

  “Your father owns half this town.”

  “It's hard when everyone thinks you've got it so easy.” Johan cast out his line. “They call me 'poor little rich boy,' you know. And how would you like it if your parents lectured you every single day? 'Do the Kronholm name proud.'“

  “I thought you liked being descended from royalty.”

  “I'd give anything to be just plain Esko or Eero or Eino.”

  “You're kidding.”

  “No.”Johan jigged his bobber.

  Marko was shocked. The Kronholms had three servants, while he and Father worked six days a week to make ends meet. Father was a farmer, blacksmith, and knife maker. Together he and Marko shoed horses, tended a crop of rye and potatoes, and repaired everything from plowshares to gate latches at their forge.

  “We should trade places someday just for the fun of it,”Johan said.

  “Just for the fun of it.”

  But they never did.

  Today, as Marko took a seat in the old timber church and bowed his head, he knew that not one person in Virtalinna would dream of trading places with the Kronholms.

  The local Civil Guard commander conducted Johan's funeral with full military honors. Six guardsmen pulled the pine coffin on a sled to the front of the church and carried it inside.

  Other than Mr. Kronholm and a handful of men who were too old for military service, the church was filled with women and children. As the organ played, Marko heard a note that sounded lower than normal. He looked at the organ loft and listened hard. Had the sky cleared for another attack? Everyone looked toward the door, waiting for the air raid siren.

  The Guard commander stood up.”No need to worry. It's one of our Fokkers.”

  A collective sigh went up as everyone eased back into the pews. If only the Finnish fighter planes had been on patrol the morning of the first attack!

  As the minister led the prayers and hymns, Marko followed in a daze. The worst part was the stiff praise of the eulogy: “Johan was a fine young man, a servant to God's will…” Marko didn't want words; he wanted his best friend back. Whom would he talk with at school now that Johan was gone? Whom would he hike and fish with?

  Later, when they lowered Johan's coffin into the grave, tears welled up in Marko's eyes. Mother squeezed his hand. During the minister's final words, snow began to fall again. Three more dirt piles covered with green canvas stood nearby; those people had also died in the bombing.

  Marko shuddered as the first clod of earth hit the coffin lid. Johan's mother sobbed; she was shaking so badly that Mr. Kronholm had to steady her.

  As Marko and his family walked through the cemetery gate, Marko heard two guardsmen talking.

  “You know how this war started! The Russkies fired artillery on their own troops and blamed it on Finland!”

  “Stalin's a black heart.” The other man was grim. “He wanted this war, even if it meant murdering some of his own.”

  Stalin was the Russian dictator. Marko knew he was evil—yes, he had a black heart. But how could any man shell his own soldiers?

  And how could Finland defeat such an enemy?

  CHAPTER 5

  THE ROAD TO SAVOLAHTI

  Marko slapped the newspaper down on the breakfast table.”Isn't Sweden going to help us? They're supposed to be our ally! Do they expect us to fight the whole Red Army on our own? I can't believe that England or America won't help us.”

  “No one has the courage to step forward,” Mother said. “Now that Stalin has taken Estonia and Latvia, every country is afraid they'll be next. And America is making so much money selling arms to Russia. Who knows if they'll help?”

  A knock came at the front door, and Mother jumped up to open it. She turned white when a boy handed her a telegram. Marko stood beside her: Don't let it be bad news about Father. Mother held her breath as she opened the envelope. “Papa's fine—it's not about him. But things are bad at Grandma's.”


  “Are the Russians close?”

  “They're evacuating the whole area.”

  Momma's mother lived in Savolahti, a small village forty kilometers east of Virtalinna. She'd been a widow since 1918, when Red forces killed her husband during the civil war. Her farmhouse was only ten kilometers from the Russian border.

  “Should I get the wagon ready?” Marko asked.

  “Yes, and I'll see if Mrs. Arvilla will watch the children.” She set off for the neighbors'.

  Nina followed Marko to the barn. “Can't I ride to Grandma's with you?”

  “The wagon would be too crowded,”Marko said, but he was thinking about the danger near the front.

  Marko opened the barn door and looked at the cold forge and the leather apron hanging on the wall. The empty blacksmith shop made him lonesome for Father. When Marko was little, Father let Marko put one hand on the handle of his hammer and pretend he was helping pound out a horseshoe or a knife blade. Marko loved watching the sparks fly and listening to the clink of the hammer on the anvil. Knife making was the most fun because whenever Father plunged a red-hot blade into the tempering tank, he'd wink and say, “Now we cool the steel in our bucket of dragon's blood—that makes the strongest blades!”

  But before Father let Marko near the forge he'd taught him the “blacksmith's boot dance,” showing him how to jump back quickly if a bit of white-hot steel landed on his clothes.”You don't want to look like this,” he said, holding out a forearm that was peppered with small scars from metal burns.

  Nina's voice brought Marko back to the present. “Good morning, Tuuli,” she said, reaching into the stall. The pretty chestnut mare whinnied and perked up her ears, and Nina stroked her neck. Though Tuuli was sixteen years old, she was a hard worker. Like all Finnish horses, she was broad in the neck and shoulders, and she could pull 110 percent of her weight.

  Beyond the stall Marko saw a pile of used bicycle parts. Father had promised to help him build a bike this winter, but none of that mattered now. He stared at a rusty fender and thought of Johan racing along on his bike.