“He stopped teaching me when the czar began making it the language of government.”
Järvinen chuckled. He waggled the booklet in front of her. “I can help you with the Russian, but I’m really giving it to you because of your questions in class. Why do people let the czar be so rich and stay poor themselves? Why must families who can barely feed their children do work rent on horse stables and roads that go nowhere for some count who lives in Stockholm? Good questions. This might help answer them.” He slid it under her work. “Just between you and me.”
When Tapio and Maíjaliisa were safely asleep, Aino lit the kerosene lamp next to her bed and stayed up until just before Maíjaliisa rose for her morning chores. Then she slipped the pamphlet under her mattress. Aware of Matti watching her, she said, “Don’t you say a word, or I’ll tell Father who took that mink trap from Mr. Kulmala.”
“No one here objected to the extra mink pelts.”
“Even more reason you’ll catch it when they find out the extra pelts are coming from a stolen trap.”
Matti glared at the obvious blackmail. “All right. I won’t tell; you won’t tell.”
“Deal.”
All through the winter Aino plied Järvinen with questions during lunch breaks, after school, after supper—whenever she could. Is there really going to be a revolution? Why aren’t the working classes already throwing off their chains?”
When Aino finished working through The Communist Manifesto, Järvinen gave her a Swedish translation of a pamphlet by Rosa Luxemburg titled Reform or Revolution? Aino daydreamed about meeting Rosa Luxemburg and being at her side reforming all of Europe. She also daydreamed about Mr. Järvinen.
That March of 1902, during another one of Järvinen’s weeks with the Koskis, he asked if Tapio would like to accompany him to hear a lecture by Erno Harmajärvi in Kokkola—and if Aino could come along.
Maíjaliisa shot a quick glare at Tapio. “He’s a socialist,” she said.
Aino held her breath.
“He’s really a Finnish nationalist,” Järvinen said.
Järvinen had hit Tapio where his heart beat. He’d named all his children after heroes and heroines of The Kalevala, the national epic poem of Finland. The reason he’d worked on churches in Russia was that he’d lost his government job by preaching Finnish independence.
Tapio looked at Maíjaliisa. “He’s right. What harm would it be for Aino to hear from someone who is actually doing something to get rid of these Russians?”
Aino stood up and whirled around silently clapping her hands. Her mother was shaking her head, tight-lipped.
Maíjaliisa urged Tapio over to the corner of the kitchen.
“They’ll have someone there taking names,” she said in a fierce whisper. “You know the Okhrana probably has your name from your time in Russia and the police are already keeping an eye on you for that speech about Finnish independence at last Midsummer’s Eve dance.” She took hold of his loose blouse with both hands and pulled him closer to her face. “I ask you. Don’t do this.”
Putting his large hands over hers, he gently pulled them away from his blouse. “Living in fear is not living.”
“Neither is living without a husband.”
“When a woman is humiliated, it doesn’t make her less a woman. When a man is humiliated, there are only two choices for him, fight or live in shame. Would you have a husband who is not a man?”
They looked into each other’s eyes, neither of them blinking. Then Maíjaliisa sighed. They both knew her answer. She picked up her pipe and walked out the door.
* * *
At the lecture, two men stood just inside the door taking notes, their faces stern and unmoving. They would occasionally ask someone’s name, but it was clear that they didn’t need to ask either Tapio’s or Mr. Järvinen’s.
Aino, Tapio, and Mr. Järvinen filed into seats near the lectern. A few minutes later, a boy about Aino’s age sat down on a seat by the aisle. She quickly took off her glasses.
She hated them. One day Matti found out she couldn’t see a lark that he could. He told her father. Her father asked her that night at family reconciliation—when they all had to recite their sins before they could eat—if she had trouble seeing. She confessed she had been walking by the blackboard during lessons and memorizing it before taking her seat. Her parents drove her into Kokkola to a hardware store where they tried on wire-rimmed glasses until they found a pair that worked for her. It cost