Portraits

ONE
When he left for work he peeled off the layers of home that had accumulated around him. The first was his wife, who would kiss him goodbye the first thing in the morning, because she had to rush off to teach in junior college. Like an unwanted rind his house clothes were discarded in the laundry bin. Next, the children conveniently of schoolgoing age would leave, without question of how voluntary or involuntary the act of going to school was. It was not a question of  choice, or even of necessity. No question had ever arisen in these matters of life. 

Mr Tan was grateful that the family was not one of those families. No, as easily as he dropped his clothing, he dropped his children into a neat container for domestic affairs. Then it was off to work, and to the life of bossing his people a little, and treating his superiors with the most politic combination of deference and peermanship. Occasionally, when in a good mood, he would casually brag about the latest gift Mrs Tan had received, or the eldest aiming to enter Harvard. He was a most ordinary man. 

TWO

Her morning routine was precise, unmarred by the demands of others. She cleaned up. She pulled on each item of clothing in quiet reflection but with certitude, like a warrior on the edge of an impending battle. The blouse was followed by the skirt followed by eau de toilette, necklace and make up. She made sure her work clothes were crisp, always cutting a neat silhouette. Nothing would link her to the frump and weariness of middle age.

 As she clicked across bank corridors in no-nonsense black leather three-inch heels, she prepared her face for the twenty faces that would surround her, that would make demands and no concessions, that would declare the improbable and denounce the factual, that would not listen but react, that would agree but fail to act. A skilled strategist, she would assess the situation and decide whether to take the easiest win -- the influential but silent retiree in the corner -- or go for the kill by taking down the ringleader, or play one group off another. When things were bad, she would bide her time and influence from the shadows, through the coffee talk and casual lunches, even going so far as to attend the evening drinking sessions which bored her. 

There had been another retiree once -- one she was rather fond of for his avuncular habit of asking after her health. He never failed to do so, even after the few meetings when he had sharply disagreed with her methods. She knew he had three children and seven grandchildren. He had been fond of talking about them. She felt she knew a little of each person through their father: the eldest son who was an Oxford grad, in-house counsel for an investment bank; the younger son, a romantic, an excellent musician with no interest in luxury so his father had set him up with a guitar shop of his own; and the youngest, a daughter, petite and unassuming, but already a vice president in a pharmaceutical firm. 

She had dropped by at this retiree's funeral. She wanted to bring the flowers personally, but nobody had thought to inform the company that the family had requested for no wreaths. So she was forced to leave it in a corner, as discretely as she could. As she walked towards the coffin she felt each lily staring accusations at her. When she shook the hands of the two sons and the daughter and introduced herself, they gave her a blank look. "From the company," she said. Knowing nods, and then their gaze turned to the other guests queuing behind her. 

----

Dealing in Death

Blood bespeckles the carcasses laid in neat rows across the stainless steel surfaces. Beside them, behind rusty iron bars, future victims look on. The cages are barely a foot high--just enough to live in, but not enough room to raise one's head and plead for clemency, for a momentary reprieve. One cage happens to be level with the block, and a young fellow gazes with curiosity at the glint of knife as it swings up and then down onto a former cellmate. I wonder if he knows what he sees, or if that cold, calm gaze means that he has accepted his status in the food chain.

"Dua ayam kampung," my father requests. We are shopping for a dinner party for the extended family. I look back at the trolley basket, at the parcels of other cold, dead things. They are more slimy, but there isn't much blood to look at, and there isn't much that looks back. The lady opens the cage, the chickens rush squawking to the corners, like a game of musical chairs. One doesn't find a safe chair. It is stuck at the fringe of bodies pressing against the iron. She drags the slow one out by the neck, pinioning its wings behind it before she places it on the weighing scale. Satisfied, she hands it to her assistant. Its nervous clucking rises to hysterical screeches as he carries it away, out of sight.

The chicken seller tells us to return in fifteen minutes. My father and I oblige. We head to the butchers' section where the pork sellers' stalls are. The floor is wet with melted ice dripping off the fishmongers' tables as we pass by. Enthusiastic stall hands wave fish in our faces, opening their gills to show their redness. "Ini cantik, very nice fish, sir, twelve ringgit a kg." "Miss, miss any fish for you? Sotong?" But its eye was dull and jellied. A fresh fish looks back. Even when dead, there's a gleam in the eye that takes a while to disappear. Beneath the table, a blue crate of swirling black things. Several whiskers protrude from the mass and sway in the air. It's a glistening mass of catfish, the layer on top writhing their way below, drowning in the air above; the layer below struggling to the top, crushed beneath their fellows.

I turn the corner after my father. The white-tiled walls aren't so clean here. They have a mottled appearance, stained with brownish streaks and specks. Old blood, maybe. Huge hooks suspend various parts of meat, even whole carcasses, from long steel bars. The butcher takes hold of one chunk, slices a hunk off it and chops it up for a customer. The pinkish meat left on the hook sways gently in tandem with the knife. We order trotters. The leg is difficult to cut. The butcher's chopper gets lodged in the bone, so he raises the whole leg with the chopper, and smashes it down on the board until it cuts through. He does this several times, then gathers the pieces into a pink plastic bag.

A clear autumn day is to be highly valued, the supply of them being so low at the moment...

So, just to cheer myself up, I post an autumn morning shot off the ferry at Turku (åbo in Swedish). Turku is Finland's second largest city (I think)...anyway, it is the old capital of Finland, before the Tzar moved it to Helsinki (invariably pronounced Char by my Finnish friends). The highlight there would be the Turku Art Museum which currently houses the Kalevala artworks exhibition, ongoing till 10 January. It has all the major pieces of Kalevala artwork collected from the various museums in Finland. I had been puzzled not to find any artwork on the Kalevala at the Ateneum, Helsinki's main art museum, but now I know that it's been collected at Turku in conjunction with the 160th anniversary of the publication of the Kalevala. I strongly recommend a visit, if you're taking the Stockholm-Turku ferry to get to Finland. It's very cheap for students, about 3 euro compared to the horrible prices for museum admission in Helsinki.

Anyway, although I started out about Autumn, the picture has reminded me of my time in Turku and the Kalevala exhibition. The Kalevala deserves a few words, because a nationally adopted myth tells a lot about how a people call themselves a nation. It is interesting that the Kalevala is one of the latest oral epics to be transcribed. It was published only in the nineteenth century, and there are voice recordings of the singers of Kalevala stories. Compare this to the existence of only a handful of known manuscripts of The Oddysey and the Iliad, Greek epics dating back to 900 BC.
The Kalevala is a Finnish oral epic which originated from Karelia. As far as I can make out, that's some area between Finland and Russia--and mostly lost to Russia during the second world war. I was told this by my host in Turku, whose parents were apparently Karelian refugees. In an attempt to express Finnish-ness and find a national spirit, Finnish artists turned to the Kalevala. Many of them made research trips to the Karelian songlands to find out about traditional Karelian life and Karelian landscapes.
My favourite artist of the Kalevala is Akseli Gallen-Kallela. He depicted the myth with the most dynamism, and many critics felt that he had portrayed the spirit of the Kalevala.

Defending the Sampo, by Akseli Gallen Kallela.

The centre of a myth, if it is to be interpreted for nationalistic purposes, is about the indomitability of a people in the face of what threatens them. In this case, Väinäimöinen of Kaleva must defend the Sampo, a powerful object, from being taken by Luohi, the Mistress of the North.

What the artists leave out of their powerful depictions, though, is the not-so-consistent backstory. The Sampo had originally been given to the Mistress by none other than Väinäimöinen himself, in return for her daughter whom he wanted to marry. I think she eventually marries Ilmarinen, the guy who forges the Sampo. I'm typing from memory here, don't have the time to do research. So forgive any errors. But check out Forging the Sampo : this article has the painting by Gallen-Kallela and a more detailed---and accurate--discussion of the myth. Anyway, when Väinäimöinen hears of the prosperity that the Sampo has brought to the Mistress's land, he decides to go and get it back, with the help of some of the other characters. The Mistress is really just vengefully reclaiming her treasure. Was Väinäimöinen a thief as well as a hero? *

The question is perplexing, because a myth does not really have a straightforward interpretation. It always digresses, and gets reinvented by its storytellers, so when it is compiled (and even the compiler, Elias Lonrött, added his own stanzas to link the various cycles together), it is not necessarily consistent. To interpret for nationalistic purposes means re-inventing the myth yet again for purposes other than the original one.

* The story of Väinäimöinen ends when he leaves the country after a new child-king is crowned. The child-king is born of a woman who eats a berry, rather like the Virgin mother and Christ (the Kalevala was still developing late enough for the Christian influence to show). The woman and child who displace the old man and his values is a very interesting image, but the portrayal and the participation of women in the Kalevala is really a whole other essay... I will just say for now that it is interesting how the men all get into trouble from wooing and winning maidens, like Lemminkäinen, who drowns in an attempt to capture the Swan of Tuonela (realm of death?), one of the tasks set for him in order to win a daughter of Luohi. His mother heroically resurrects him by collecting the pieces of his body and sewing them together. Another figure of interest is Aino, who drowns herself (commits herself to the water spirits) rather than give in to Väinäimöinen's lust.

Hmm, what started as a post on a clear autumn day has turned into a discussion of the Kalevala.