I HEARD LYYDIA’S LAUGHTER long before I saw her face. The morning I boarded the Arcturus, I was struck by the bubbling sound that rose fearlessly above the din of the crowd. I also have to say that it annoyed me to no end. After all the preparations, the tumult of emotions, and the strain of the journey already behind me, I had stumbled into the terminal, close to tears – relieved to have found the right place all by myself, and to have made it to the right ship in time.
I had set down my luggage, trying to straighten my hat. Both of these things were new and uncomfortable; the plywood suitcase was cumbersome and ugly, whereas the bell-shaped hat felt strangely light on my head, as if it would take flight any second. I had to keep touching it just in case. I checked my purse for my documents. I straightened my skirt and touched my hat.
It wasn’t like me to feel so jittery. I blamed my light-headedness and my strangely racing heart on my hunger and the many sleepless nights I’d endured. Everything around me seemed to move at an accelerated pace, whereas my own reactions were slow, as my voice was when I had to answer people’s questions. At first I could hardly understand them, and thought they were speaking Swedish. After they had repeated the question – in what was clearly Finnish – I stammered an answer, cheeks burning with shame. Leaving home, I’d felt too glossy for the house and the familiar people around me; here, I suddenly felt the shabbiness of my too-long skirt, my too-long hair, and my unwieldy suitcase.
The laughter sounded again, jarring against my tired senses. A shameful thought flashed through my head. How dare she? Some of us are leaving behind everything we love. Whereas the laughter seemed to say: ‘Look at me, being ever so carefree, on a jaunt with my fashionable little friends!’ I craned my head to get a glimpse of the emitter of this improper noise – but then the great bell sounded, and I couldn’t think about her for quite some time. I could have turned back then, but somehow the thought never even entered my head. I was frightened, but there was nowhere else to go but forward.
I met Lyydia properly the next morning. The ship was making its ponderous way west – not pitching and creaking as I’d thought, but just gliding along the grey water, skirting rocks and islands and shouldering smaller vessels aside with an indignant hoot. I was ravenously hungry, but couldn’t find my way to the breakfast room. Now and then a door opened, and I could hear the clinking of cutlery and the buzz of low morning voices, but somehow I kept missing the right deck and bumping into locked doors. I don’t know how long I would have wandered in this nightmarish state if it hadn’t been for the pretty, round-cheeked girl who bounded down the stairs and happily greeted me.
“Are you coming to breakfast, too?” she asked. And, before I could answer, “What jolly good luck! Come on!” and led me into the dining saloon that smelled divinely of coffee and freshly-baked white bread.
And that was Lyydia. Eighteen years old, bobbed hair and sparkling eyes. A ridiculous Ostrobothnia accent that compressed and elongated words with no apparent logic. So relieved was I to find a fearless guide to the unknown world of the ship’s breakfast etiquette that I pushed my earlier annoyance aside and followed her, copying her every move and managing to get my rumbling belly filled. We piled our plates high with bread and butter, and made sure to pour fatty milk into our coffee cups. When we had finished the food, Lyydia did something unthinkable – she stood up to get more. I followed on trembling legs. Yet, no one seemed to pay attention to us.
All the while Lyydia kept pouring out talk, flapping her hands, and every once in a while emitting that full-throated, unselfconscious laugh. With the delicious heat of the coffee circulating in my veins, I soon found it easy to join in. I understood then that the sound that I had taken for coquettish affectation was a manifestation of a truly happy character. Lyydia just couldn’t help laughing at herself and the world around her. She chatted with the waiters and joked with the young couple at the table next to ours; she winked at two young fellows passing by. The latter alarmed me – for a while I thought they’d take advantage of her easy-going nature and join us. Luckily, they found a large group of acquaintances at the other end of the saloon and didn’t look back at Lyydia.
After that, my journey took on an entirely different hue. I still shared a gloomy, cramped cabin with five other girls who hardly spoke to me. The corridors and common spaces were full of pinched-faced women and their shrieking children, and single men who kept staring at me a little bit too long. Yet, now I had a place to escape their unwanted attentions: I could climb up on the deck and follow the sound of Lyydia’s laughter. Inevitably I’d find her in a group of other young people, and quietly slip close to them. In a while I’d be noticed and introduced. Sometimes there would be singing and dancing; I learned many new tunes on that short trip alone, although I never dared to try the dance steps. Lyydia knew all the words to all the songs, and she always danced – not caring if her feet followed the music exactly.
Lyydia and I rarely had a chance to talk alone together, and when we did, it was Lyydia who did most of the talking. I learned about her large West Coast family, the brothers and uncles who’d already made the crossing, some of them several times over. To them, America seemed like an extension of their own world, and this made their decisions easily reversible. If they didn’t succeed in their ventures across the sea, they could just hop back to their Finnish farms and families. Lyydia had picked up some of their vocabulary, which she showed off from time to time. Otherwise, her English was just as poor as mine.
“Why are you going, then?” I asked her.
“I didn’t want to feel left out,” she replied with a chuckle. “And it’s much easier to find a job over there than it is back home. And I definitely don’t feel like settling down yet.”
She didn’t ask why I’d decided to emigrate. Which was just as well. In her company, all the heaviness of the decision fell away, and all the whispered conversations, the half-swallowed words exchanged with my family faded to the background. So far, I hadn’t been able to think too far into the future. Each step had been frightening enough: reading the advertisement, stepping on the train, stepping off the train and finding my way to the ship in a strange city. What would happen after that last step had only been a vague image in the corner of my eye – look at it too quickly or too closely, and it would disappear.
My brothers, embittered by the war and the prison camp, had told me to stay at home. Nothing good came from the outside: all we could do was keep our heads down and keep working. Reading wasn’t allowed – even thinking could be dangerous. Dreaming of a better life was out of the question. Yet, it wasn’t as easy for me to shake off the ideas they’d managed to drum into me before the war. It wasn’t easy for me to stop dreaming, once I’d got into the habit.
My father left the room every time someone mentioned foreign countries, or ships, or even the south of Finland. He’d tried to stop his sons from joining the Party. He would stop me from joining the ranks of emigrants. It was my mother, bowed down with years of hard work, who pressed money into my palm and told me to do what I thought best.
With Lyydia, I could start looking this new life in the face. I asked her questions, and she gave me as much information as she could. There were jobs for maids and housekeepers aplenty – good, safe, indoor jobs. At home, I hadn’t been able to mention such things. My brothers would have baulked at the idea of me becoming a maid in some bourgeois house, serving blood-suckers hand and foot. If I had to work somewhere, much better to choose a factory, or a logging camp – cooks were always wanted. But I already had enough experience of physical labour to know that it only wore you down, mentally as well as physically. I wanted something better for myself, class conflict be damned.
My new friend wasn’t interested in politics. Most Ostrobothnians were White by persuasion – this I knew – but she didn’t seem particularly blood-sucking to me. As far as I could tell, she came from a farming background similar to my own – although by the sound of it both the fields and the houses were far bigger than in Eastern Finland. The land was absolutely flat, like a pancake, she said. And laughed.
Eventually we arrived in Hull. There’s very little I remember about our transition from ship to train, but I do remember the incredibly green landscape around us. Few trees – instead, grassy hills and fields dotted with sheep and stone houses. I couldn’t take my eyes off the shifting scenery. At home, the ground would still be covered in snow for a month at least; here, flowers bloomed fearlessly. Lyydia had given me the window seat so that she could look at people passing our compartment. She stared at everyone, waiting to see if any of her new acquaintances would drop by. Many did. She managed to buy some tea and crumbly biscuits, and shared them with anyone who passed. In a couple of hours there was a non-stop tea party in our compartment. When the train stopped or slowed down, she would lean over to get a glimpse out of the window, commenting on the shop signs, automobiles and outrageous hats we saw.
The Atlantic crossing, which had been frighteningly foreign to my imagination, passed in a similar swirl of regular meals, talk and laughter. One evening Lyydia took me by the hand, and led me through the maze of corridors to a cabin on the other side of the ship. Inside were young women – Lyydia introduced me, but not them. She sat me down on one of the low beds, and said, “Girls, this is Hilma. Terribly good fun, but look at this braid! Anna, you said you’d bobbed hair before? Have you got your scissors with you?”
I tried to protest, but the four of them proved far too persuasive. I knelt down on the floor with a towel around my shoulders; there were no chairs in the cabin. The sea was calm, and so I could keep more or less still while Anna worked quickly around me. I felt the steady throb of the ship’s engine against my legs. When I think back on that night, it’s not so much the snipping of the sharp blades that I remember, or the loss of my hair, but the reassuring heartbeat of the machinery below. I was being carried towards my new life. There was nothing I could do about it but to sit there and wait.
Afterwards, we went out on deck, and I threw the long, silky braid into the Atlantic. The girls cheered behind me – Lyydia loudest of all. I felt the evening air caress the back of my neck. I was a new person already.
When we arrived in Quebec, I got through the ordeal of customs by thinking that I’d meet Lyydia on the other side. I followed the throng and presented myself and my documents mechanically. When I couldn’t find her at first, I panicked, watching the swirl of foreign faces around me, hearing nothing but foreign gibberish spoken. Finally one of our mutual acquaintances spotted me, and took me along. All new arrivals were quarantined in a dorm, she explained, and I’d be certain to meet Lyydia there. And, would you believe, the first person I laid eyes on was her, standing in the corridor, showing her flattened hat to a young man, laughing. When she saw me she made a wide, theatrical gesture.
“Look! We’ve arrived! Isn’t it wonderful!”
“It is,” I said.
In my heart of hearts I knew that our time together was coming to an end. Lyydia had already hinted at a long train journey to Thunder Bay, whereas I would try my luck in Ottawa. I looked at the foreign name printed on my ticket, wondering how much it would cost to go that extra leg, to be able to step off the train together with her and start a new life knowing that whatever happened, I’d have a friend in that place.
Yet, something held me back. Leaving home, I’d felt frightened and confused, ashamed of my poverty and my lack of education. Despite that, I’d made it this far. I had made friends on the way, and I would do so again. I would find a family that would treat me well. I would learn the language, and make my own money to survive in this new world. I had already learned to hold my head high like Lyydia. I couldn’t go back to crouching.
Boarding a train in Quebec, Lyydia and I settled down to travel together once more. We swapped sandwiches and hoarded sugar, repeating English phrases we saw and heard around us like a pair of parrots, much to the amusement of the conductors. At some point a couple of young men passed on their way to second class, and Lyydia waylaid them with her chatter. An hour later they had a water-throwing contest going, and went on to drench the entire carriage and everyone in it. We changed trains, following our red-hatted Finnish agent through the station. In the end, I nearly missed my stop, having fallen asleep against Lyydia’s shoulder. It was one of the friendly conductors who came and pointed at the name of the station that was slowly coming to view.
I had to clamber off the train with my silly suitcase in tow, with barely enough time to see Lyydia waving through the window, mouthing ‘Write to me!’ and then turning and disappearing for good. I could imagine her collapsing back on her seat, glancing at the conductor with the beginnings of a laugh already gathering inside her.
As I landed on the platform, I heard someone saying, “She’s surely from Finland. Ask her.” She’d recognised my nationality, I learned later, from my plywood suitcase. I turned to the waiting group of women with a smile, ready to start my new life.
Anne Karppinen is a university teacher, musician and writer based in Finland. Her short stories have recently appeared in Tales from the Moonlit Path and Not One of Us; “The Lamplighter’s Daughter” was chosen for the Best of Wyldblood anthology in December 2022. Her book, The Songs of Joni Mitchell, was published by Routledge in 2016.