Volter Kilpi

In the Parlour
of Alastalo
A description
of an archipelago

Cemetery
Prologue
It is an estival Sunday, in the time of evening. A silent church lies in the middle of the cemetery.
The black shake roof of the church rises high and serious in its grove, as the western sunrays play
along the red wall and illuminates the white window frames. An indescribable peace fills the air
and everything nearby. The only noise in the vicinity is caused by the leaves of aspen, as they
flicker to the edge of the mossy stone fence.
I've opened the iron gate of the cemetery. The hinges screech as it wallops shut behind me and the
gravel creaks below my feet as I enter the pathway. Gray, tarnished wooden crosses stand on both
sides, here and there stands a black marble cross, etched with a brass plate, above them a metal
plate stringed to an iron stake. Rusty, mossy writing is etched to its curved surface. Is it more silent
in the forest of crosses, than by the entry of the iron gate that was newly left to rest in the holiday
evening?
I walk among the crosses, eye the faded writings, read a name there, read a name here. Is it you
resting here, and is it you lying safely in this soil? A name after name, as familiar as my own
childhood. I read, one by one, grave by grave, row by row I read: so him too, him aswell, young,
old, the folk of my youth, a sensitive child, a trembling elder, all next to each other in the protection
of the dirt, oh how the bell has tolled for each of them! To my mind zooms from the deep abyss of
my memory a little girl leaning to the open windowsill, blue veins throbbing on a gaunt temple,
lying on the scrawny cheeck a lost, poor strand of hair of ashy colour, slightly shimmering in those
gray eyes a lonely gleam of hope for life lost, abandoned and thrown away. The blur of a bending
elder, a trembling, knotty hand holding the handle of a worn walkstick, thin, frost white remnants
of hair surrounding a suffering, pale face, as if fading to its wrinkles, a face stripped by life so that
death may not have to put great effort in snuffing out its fire. From grave to grave, cross to cross
I wander, reading the mossy writings on the graves of the passed, those, whose life still lies before
me regardless, like it was still yesterday.
Children I see, elders I see, the young living in their blooming lives and men in their manhoods and
women in their womanhoods maturity, I see the entirety of those who lived by my side, now silent,
each of them has emitted the feel of life like I, hoped, waited like I have, been dissapointed,
suffering like I have, felt the joy of being and carried the burden of life like I have, been poor and
rich as the ill fortune of man is! You too, child, rest here: your half-open lips I've seen, on which the
light of life radiated, on your gentle skin of your cheeks the weak flowers of blood rippled, in your
eyes childlike curiosity, its great and inquiring expectations of life: your eyes have not been filled
by the dreams of marvelling anticipation, and the only thing life has yielded is cold myrtle covering
the pale skin of your forehead, the dust below this cross as the sole memory of you, along with the
cut of sadness that slashed your mother's heart as this soil filled your grave. Who among you do I
see, you and in the cold of your tomb: who was braver than you, as youth shined in our chest and
courage burned in your eyes and your motion was joyful and your steps fast, you, cohort in my
youth, whose gallant step couldn't carry you to the doorstep of manhood, and the grave was opened
before you; in whose eyes life glimmered stronger then, on whose cheeks sprouted the aurora of
healthiness most blissfully, on whose hair the light of the sun sparkled as yours, maiden of my
youth, whose bosom, once bloating while longing for youth, for decades has the sand of the
cemetery weighed down, and whose lips, once opening to life in their thirst are now shut by the
cramped dark of the soil! Who do I see, men in their dignity, gleaming with the blade of volition,
and decisive, unbreakable prestige: men filled with life, discipline and cunning in the curls of their
brown beards, their overflowing eyes wit and craftiness; I see mothers with the molten gaze of
motherhood, and fathers with the stout gaze of fatherhood; elders, on their face an exposed, humbly
prepared serenity, on their bent shoulders, on their staggering steps a trembling prayer seeking rest;
prayer for the delivery of waking to life, of hope, of feasting, of will, of accomplishing, of settling,

of tiring.
I've sunk to sit on the mossy rocks, I've covered my eyes with my hands. Those silent, pale rows
below my feet, serenely resting next to one another, eyelids eternally shut, lips covered by the
shadow of endless hush and an unbreakable seal, crossed arms set to halt in eternal quiescence over
the chest. All beside one another, row beyond row, the young and those weighed down by the years,
children and elders, the poor and the rich, the greatest of the parish, and the smallest of the smallest,
all beside one another, however the date of death has been set, all as silent, all playing the same
part: the unmeasurable amount and strict authority of rest in death; the same lack of a part for all,
the eternal renouncement from the rippling air of life and it's colourful plains.
The familiar and the unknown, those, whom my own eyes have seen, and those, of whom I've
merely been told by memory of words, my own gentle mother, my own stout father, the honoured
dust of my ancestors turned to soil! Suddenly I find myself sitting on the moss-covered, sunken
gravestone of my own brother, who once was hidden deep in this earth. At the very moment my
chest is slashed by the first painful question of a five-year-old child beyond decades: fallen on my
mouth, sobbing face pushed to the hard floor, still echoing in ears an unexplained message, I
splutter in the insurmountable pain of living and unconscious selfishness a child's helpless
lamentation and guilt of life: Vin, bad Vin, why did you die, we left so many games unplayed!
All of you, all of you pale people resting have lived once, your ceased hearts have once beaten, the
joy of blood has tolled in your veins, the corners of your withered temples have bloomed, in your
stunted chests the mighty waves of life have dashed. On your young foreheads the rapture of
dreams has fluttered, your young lips have drunk the bliss in the air, your young feet have flought to
the dashing dance of life!
Destiny of man: it is written on the rolling waves of the sea! Life of man: akin to the blooming of
late spring grass, the withered wort of which todays wind hurls, until tomorrow when it becomes
dust! Longing weighs the chest, heavy as the immeasurable breast of earth. Mourning those who
lived, mourning those who live, mourning those who have yet to come, mourning my own fading
life. What is left of a life that's fallen to the depths of the grave? Life, filled with fortune, filled with
pain like the chest that rumbles the waves of a shoreless sea, whenever its endless waves reach out
to the arching skies and the mirage of the resting infinity, whenever it fights as the dark frolic of the
wrenching powers, as the lunging jaw of swallowing death? Life from which the frail fascination of
a childs glare came, life that suffered the weight of unnecessary riches on a young chest, life from
which the struggling strength of a man came, life that has expired to the silencing days of old age.
Man, you who have wandered through the interphase between the time of your birth and time of
your death, you who have lived from the dawn of your childhood to the morning of your youth,
from the daytime of your manhood to the cooling evening of your senium, played your tomorrows
innocent games, dreamed through the golden mirages of your hopes, carried the weight of your
oppressive day at work, reached the calming evening of your withering life, what is the pay of your
life? You, man, who experiences the fortune of agony and triumph in lifes misery, you whose life
has burned away the blushing bloom of your blood, eroded the rousing strength of your shoulders,
the rising wit of your young head and the wide reaches of your young wings. You who have digged
the clay off the earth to bolster your boundaries, who have toughened your hands on the handle of
your plow, the unbreakable might of action standing strong in your body, the daring bravery of deed
sitting on your forehead, the solid steel of will in the clearness of your eyes, you who have
shuddered in the cooling years of your old age, the waves of life calming down in your chest, the
holes of complete life on the wrinkled, pained, drowsy corners of your mouth, the sighing
loneliness and solitary desolation, the translucent coolness of memories on your faded forehead,
like the last rays of light dancing on the tops of trees in the evening. What will you take with you to
the cold grave of the colourful quilt of life? The miraclous books of hopes golden thread, the blood
red glow of love staining the canvas, the gray strings of daily work over decades, the trance of the
glory of battle, the ecstacy of proud achievements or the painful humiliation of dissapointment, the
deep cuts of suffering and dreams of exhaustion as the rest of the tired and the medicine of the
treated? What will you take with you of the fullness of your life, you, whose memory is fleeting like

the flying shadow of a cloud on the fields, transient as a wave in the seas falling silent, forgettable
as life that died to its birth?
Longing sucks on my mind, sudden, fiery and burning, bittersweet and infinite like a sea with no
strand. Silent, pale people who rest, faded in the shadow of the dirt for eternity: with thise living
eyes I've looked at your living faces, your sensing hands my sensing hands have touched, the sound
of yours lips have my ears witnessed: it is a miracle that I live, when all of you have been snuffed
out and lie silent under the grass.
Suddenly I am in the church of my childhood, around me the people of the parish standing and
singing. The chanting is like the humming of sea, a splash here and there, as a wave rises and then
descends back to the depths. One can tell apart the high-pitched, cut voice of an old wife, lone as a
bird in water separated from its flock. Further back an old man mutters words to the air, a voice
heavy and deep, as if pulled from the depths of the earth, further the ripe voice of a young woman
jingles high, full like the leaves of a birch rustling in summer, running as light as the flight of a lark,
and brightly rising as the rattle of a flute. Above all wallops the steady chanting of the old cantor,
whenever pulling low as the vibration of settling waters, whenever bloating in might like the
rumbling roar of the same seas. The chanting is sluggish and unsteadily slow, occasionally
weakening so that one can only hear the voice of the cantor, standing on the balcony, glaring at the
members of the parish from behind his thick eyeglasses, and the voice, almost gruff, rumbles from
beyond his half-open lips, as he prepares to let out from the wide bars of his chest another wave of
noise, so strong it shakes the very wooden planks, to the drowsy church. The rough, unsteady
sound, humming from lips that have chanted for eons, sternly chants in the small, poor archipelago
church and back in my ears from beyond decades, as the endless wallop of organs, bloating, filling
the borders of the sky, like the unexhausted sighing of the sea on blaring strands.
The chanting has hushed, the members of the parish have sat down. Stern silence has settled down
in the white church the shape of a cross with an arching ceiling. The old pastor has risen to the
ambo. Sluggishly his monotomous, devoted voice echoes over the silent members of the parish. On
the womens side silken scarves stiffly rustle, men sit on their benches with napes straight, their
faces stoic. The estival sun runs through its circle on the southern sky, along the floor a ray of light
bent by the windowpane wanders, it already reaches the side of the sextons seat and begins to climb
up the the oaken painted balk, imbuing it in golden shimmer. A bird flies on the bent branch of a
birch, swaying in front of the window, and leaves it wiggling, alone and empty. An unspeakable,
drowsy tranquility lies in the church and the air, the calm characters of the altar painting, in their
loose, blue and red cloaks dive into the eye with a solemn rest, and with their arms mercifully
spread, they cast the floods and divine air of a great temple in the small church.
There is languid serenity in the church. In the air echoes the sluggish voice of the vicar, whenever
bloating in an incantating, strict might, whenever soothing down to graceful and comforting.
Chandeliers of iron and brass hang heavily, the glittering sunlight has reached the bowl of glass and
dances within the crystal,