I hadn’t told Mother how I’d met Einar. I think I was afraid that talking about him would destroy my image of him —like a dream that dissolves in the telling. Besides, I was trying to avoid a storm. Mother’s feelings were clear. She disapproved. She knew nothing about his family. Didn’t want to know. He was foreign.
It was November, late afternoon. I can still see the whiteness of twilight in the air. There I was, absent-mindedly walking up the path of leafless poplars in Waverly Park when I stumbled, and my library books went flying. A tall, gangly, blonde fellow caught up with me, and without a word, helped me to my feet, gathered up my books and began walking alongside me.
There was nothing suave about him, but he wasn’t tongue-tied like I was. A little awkward, he began asking me questions about myself. I told him I loved reading, listening to music, especially my new Louis Armstrong’s ‘St. Louis Blues’that I’d just bought. He interrupted and asked me if I’d been reading about Spain. “Spain?” I wondered. “Why Spain?” But before I could ask, he told me he was planning to go there. I assumed he meant on a holiday.
We met a few times after that. Once a late supper at the Arthur Café, and while we ate our fish and chips, he told me about his family. His father coming from Helsinki in the late 1920s, and his mother, with Einar and his sister Hilka, a year later. How his mother’s spirits sank as the train rumbled its endless way through the wilderness of northern Ontario: nothing but trees, rock, water; trees, rock water. Her first encounter with the town: the clatter of breaking glass—her grandmother’s fragile china — as the baggageman hurled her trunk to the platform. The muddy streets, with here and there a board sidewalk. The rudimentary house that awaited her—with its thin walls and rough flooring, anything but welcoming. And, worst of all, no indoor toilet, no running water. Hoards of blackflies and mosquitoes. She’d held back her tears; tried not to think of Helsinki, with its parks, its coffee houses, its lively theatre. Her childhood friends. To find herself with so little English in a foreign place so far from home, where people sounded rough and discourteous. She felt lost. Abandoned.
I was relaxed with Einar. His straightforward manner, his warmth, even his casual acceptance of his difference made him seem grounded. I didn’t want to let him know, I couldn’t–I was too shy—but he was beginning to grow on me. Not that I would have admitted such a thing, except to myself.
But Spain still bothered me! I needed to know more, and I kept searching the Chronicle for news. At first there were graphic photographs of the horrific bombing of Spanish civilians in Guernica, but later reports became scornful: ‘unpatriotic rag-tag idlers defying the law’ and other disparaging remarks. Only one tiny item of protest, hidden in the back pages: a local lumber union protesting the government’s ban on travel to Spain. I had only a vague idea what that meant. Presumably a reference to the passport warning: Not Valid for Travel to Spain. But what was wrong with support for the Spanish government? It was all very confusing. I felt like a child, hearing fragments, unable to sort it all out.
Einar’s next letter came from Spain. Sometime in February. Reading it, I could hear his soft, lilting accent.
My dear Meg,
We are in Spain at last. I have so much to tell you.
At the end of our crossing, the ship tied up at Le Havre. Customs checked our passports and took our $30 fee to enter. They knew we are not tourists heading to the Paris Exposition like we were told to say, and they stopped asking where we were headed. Just to look at Sammy’s cardboard suitcase—only socks and underwear—but they let us pass.
Christmas Eve we headed south, and the next day was a village (how to spell the name) where church ladies made us dinner. Soup, roast duck, potatoes, apple pie. We all talked at once: Norvege, Dane, Finnis, Czeck, and thirteen Canadians. Impossible to understand, but we use our hands. After dinner a movie Rose Marie’– Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. All us Canadians we laugh at the freezing north looks so romantic.
It was late when we board the bus for Pyrenees mountains. Riding in darkness I felt alone. Homesick. I thought about Christmas when I was a boy. Me and my sister pulling the toboggan to the end of our street for a tree. Ones far away look just right, but up close, skinny and bare. We hurry home, my hands and feet are like ice.
At night, we light candles on the tree., like in Helsinki. Church at midnight, then home and open presents. Late in the night, I can not sleep. Out the window I’ watch huge snowflakes floating down.
Our steep climb up mountain pass begins after midnight in snowstorm. Up 9000 feet they tell us, single file, narrow path. No warm boots, only thin shoes and socks, flimsy jackets. We are not to talk, the enemy can be close. One huge man trying to keep up, sinking in deep snow. He begs us to leave him but we can not. We found rope, and pull him behind.
At last the top. Then the going down, steep, narrow, slippery, nothing to hold to. Worse almost to climbing.
At the bottom a shack. Two Spanish soldiers come out, give us cigarettes and coffee, strong, like Finns make. We want to stay but must keep on moving.
Love Einar
P.S. I send you a hug. A friendly bear hug. Please write. I think you can use this address.
Canadians in Spain
Seamen’s Union Hall
Spadina Ave. Toronto, Ont.
Whenever a letter came I was excited, but between times I felt flat. Einar didn’t write often. I did all the usual things: skating, skiing, reading, working at Lowry’s Stationery, but it wasn’t the same. Thinking about Einar, I’d compare him to the boys at school. They seemed young and boring now, no sense of adventure. I couldn’t imagine them going to Spain. Einar was an odd mix: earnest, adventurous, shy, and funny. Made me laugh when he gently poked fun at me, never made me feel stupid. He seemed to know what was going on in the world.
When his family moved to Lappe, a few miles from town, Einar came in to go to Tech, but stayed only a year or two. He was older than his classmates, restless to be working. He found a job in the bush camp.
Then he heard about Franco and Spain, and knew he had to help out. But why? I wasn’t sure. A longing for adventure? Knowing Einar, I think it was his innate sense of fairness, his vision of what things could be like. As a child, he had listened to his father’s dreams of a new, more just Finnish society, so for him, the Spanish Republicans’ plans to break up the huge estates and divide the land among the peasants did not seem such a radical idea. It was the right thing to do.
I felt bereft when he left. Would I hear from him? See him again? In the meantime I still had to learn about this war he talked about. Franco. Republicans. The ban on travel to Spain. What was it all about?
Late one afternoon when I’d come home from work early, Mother, all out of breath, burst through the front door, slamming it behind her. She’d been to visit our minister, to ask what he thought about Einar, that ‘foreign fellow’. She couldn’t get home fast enough to tell me Rev. McCann’s warnings. “He was most emphatic”, Mother announced. “ It is illegal for Canadians to take part in the Spanish conflict!” Inwardly I fumed, but I had no response.
***
