It was the fall of 1659 when Savonlinna relived the exhilaration of having one of her greatest sons return to her. Savonlinna was a township some fifty-odd miles away from the capital of the province Mikkeli. Unlike what had been the norm several times before then, Marko Kaarlonen’s footsteps were accompanied by another person’s this time around. Savonlinna had never before felt this ‘new’ person’s on its surface.
Marko himself relived the moments he had spent there, in Savonlinna—as a playful child, a thoughtful teenager, and later, a poetic man. His turf, his land, was anything but spectacular. Maybe it was due to the fact that his desire to return to Savonlinna had been fulfilled that he did not let himself find his muse in the comely and entrancing landscape he’d yearned so long for.
He immediately shaped his thoughts and moulded them into words; he was born to do this. He was a poet. He’d penned: Olet minun majakka Pelastuksen, Olen teidän tähtien
He was Finnish, and that was Finnish soil he where he lay, carving his words to precision. He was groping for perfection. His words, in English, coincided with: You are my beacon of Salvation, I am your starlight.
Succumbing to Mother Nature and the weariness that had accompanied him throughout the journey, he closed his eyes. He started on an inward journey to utopia in search of the forbidden fruit he called satisfaction.
•••
She, Marko’s companion, was from Seinäjoki of Vaasa province. From what she’d said while introducing herself, her name was Eleanor. She was called Lady Eleanor in her land, she had said.
She had been searching for Marko who had left as soon as they’d arrived and unloaded their belongings. He’d told her he’d be at Lake Kohtalo.
Eleanor delighted in observing the faces of all those who knew Marko when she inquired if they had seen him. She delighted in the way wrinkles waned and smiles crossed the faces of those people.
•••
He woke up at the splash on his face. It was her. She had ended his slumber.
“Eleanor, is that you?” slurred the bleary-eyed Marko.
There was no answer. He rubbed his eyes and screwed up his face.
“Eleanor,” he said and standing on his legs, started towards her.
“You don’t know that it took me one whole hour to find you, do you?” she said, and turned her back to him, facing the lake.
He reached towards her, held her shoulders and rested his chin on his left hand, her left shoulder. He then said, “Are you angry?”
“Yes,” had come the retort.
“Hadn’t I told you where I would be?” he said.
“Is this the lake you talked about, in Jyväskylä; the one you said had treasures beneath its waves?” she asked.
“Yes, my mistress, it is,” he said, after she finished.
In Jyväskylä—the capital of Central Finland—some hundred-and-six miles away, they had talked about the lake they now sat beside. Many moons ago, he had told her of how, as children, he and his friends were told about the treasures beneath the lake. He had never believed what he had been told about the mystic power the treasures beneath possessed, but he had certainly let the cat out of the bag.
“Then, I guess I will have to try and find that treasure,” she said, with a giggle.
•••
Upon reaching the cottage they’d been accommodated in, she readied the meal, and he did whatever it took for a log fire to roar in the fireplace.
He recited lines from the poem he had written that evening to her:
How should or could I describe or deny,Those eyes;
Those, which bear what it takes to loosen my guard;
Those, which have what it takes to unfetter;
Unfetter... the skies?
•••
The rooster from the nearest house crowed. He usually pulled the sheets over his head and kept sleeping on such occassions, but this time, he woke up. In the dawn, it occurred to him she wasn’t anywhere inside the cottage. Even before the sun crept out of the panoramic crests, he was out searching for her. In an alleyway, a thought came to mind out of the blue.
•••
He was gasping for breath when he reached Lake Kohtalo. She couldn’t possibly have gone to any other place beside the lake. He remembers what she’d said that night in Jyväskylä and also, yesterday. She’d said she would locate the treasure; both the times, she had said so playfully, but now it seemed like she’d really meant it.
In the fog-ridden air, he made out the woolly pullover Eleanor had on the night before. He rushed to it, picked it up, and confirmed it was hers. He didn’t want that alleged “possibility” to become the reality; not only because he didn’t buy into the story of the lake and its treasures, but also because nobody among those who’d attempted to secure the lake’s coveted and cherished fortune had ever returned.
So, that was it. She had wanted to reshape their destinies; she did it, but not exactly in the way she’d wanted to.
•••
He wistfully mulls over why he had not told her of what had happened to all those who’d gone under the blackened waves; how could he not have guessed what she would attempt to do?
He regrets the night he had told her about the lake and its mystery. That moonless night—when, under a dim candle, he had confided to her what he shouldn’t have—will always haunt his living days.
Now, everything starts falling into place. That myth behind the lake was a real one, he thinks. There really is a treasure in there; for him that is his Eleanor, the treasure he has lost and he can blame no one for.
He kneels down. Tears roll down his cheeks towards his chin, and the wool of her pullover absorbs them. After crying his heart out, he stands firm once again. He scowls the lake with his teary eyes, and on the spur of the moment, goes for his treasure. SPLASH…
- Sharad Duwal
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