When Brecht notices—


This name could well denote the famous German author and stager of plays. But I am principally using it to shorten his name. As this practice is documented (in for instance Fuegi or Haikara), I am bolder about the use of the name. I have obtained all the information here from various sources, but I am intentionally absolving myself of the responsibility of writing what could be termed a “documentary novel.” I exaggerate here and there, but this is done deliberately. We all know that famous people do not have the right to an authentic biography. Take Hamlet! Who cares now who he really was!


—when he notices that it is growing dark outside over the sea—he can see this through the misty porthole—he goes up on deck for some reason or other.

The trip has already lasted one whole day and night.

And on the ship there is nowhere else to go when you want to leave your cabin.

The dialectical relation between deck and cabin is something that Brecht is of course not thinking about right now.

On all sides is a slurry of ice, that is beginning to merge with the sky. Brecht looks at the horizon, if you can call it that, for what else is there to look at on deck? When his eyes have grown accustomed to the dusk and his night blindness receded somewhat, he can make out a couple of faint lights. They are not flashing, so they are not lighthouses. If there is not, maybe, something flashing within Brecht’s eyes. The lighthouses are, of course, two in number, but Brecht immediately brushes aside the menacing thought of dialectics. Here at sea today I am going to think as little as possible about dialectics, is what Brecht has already decided. Because when glancing at the sea, you often enough see the proximity of two waves. And when it comes down to it, they are not lighthouses anyway, whether there are two of them or even three.

Maybe they are German warships?

Brecht is now quite prepared to believe that he is being tailed.

By not just anybody. But by What’s-His-Name.

—As usual, Brecht is here using some supercilious or mocking name for the great dictator.


—What’s-His-Name’s practices are often unfathomable. Why shouldn’t he send a ship in pursuit? These are perhaps neutral waters and here you can do what you like. Sweden claims that she is neutral—so why shouldn’t this stretch of water also be so?

If I am arrested in the Gulf of Bothnia it would be a clear sign to the rest of the world that What’s-His-Name will no longer tolerate more redundant chatter, whoever’s mouth it emerges from.

Oh yes, Scandinavia is not to be considered safe from attack from any point of the compass.

The Nazis are busy infiltrating everywhere, Finland too, no doubt.

On the other hand, it would seem for some reason that some kind of veneer of civilization has been preserved in this part of the world. The reason being that everything happens at a slower pace here in the North. Are North and South opposites? But the Middle, how does it relate to both parts, the upper and the lower?

You see, here we have yet another dialectical thought, another dream of duality or bipolarity, and this cannot have gone unnoticed by Brecht.

He can feel himself smiling slyly.

Brecht watches the lights, until his eyes begin to water. Then even the lights vanish. Maybe they’re not from ships, or maybe they were switched off. This watching won’t help. If they come, they come—from beyond the breakers, brandishing machine guns.

Look, the deck’s wet, slippery, swilling with water, the foam is spraying over the railing. But lo, a miracle is at hand—there’s someone else here too! At Brecht’s side stand two Scandinavians: genuine ones, chthonic individuals. They remain silent and spit from time to time into the water. The tundra has shaped their mentality, blizzards have instilled in them scorn for conventions. They are introverted. They are not only spitting into the sea. Will they suddenly start spitting on everything? On What’s-His-Name too. This is an indifference that bodes ill, ignorance that the Aryan race is sowing the seeds of everywhere. Why Aryan? Brecht doesn’t understand why, but that is what What’s-His-Name’s cronies have already decided. Brecht also suspects that the Finns will be categorized as a Nordic race. They are, after all, called Finns, a Germanic term, by some. Finn and suomalainen—there we have another duality. But everything has two names, and you just have to get used to it.

The Finns spitting into the water give Brecht the irresistible urge to make a poem. And this line of poetry springs to mind:

Fleeing from my compatriots, I ended up in Finland.

But I’ve not yet arrived, have to seize the text by the tail and be prepared to spit over my shoulder for good luck. Because where is this Finland? Meanwhile, it has grown even darker and now it is quite impossible to make out anything resembling a horizon. Was so before, for that matter. But now it’s vanished completely. Nichts. Nothing. Everything has evened out into one great realm of darkness and spray. Maybe Germany is a part of Scandinavia. But now I am surely approaching the polar circle, and that really is too much. Without What’s-His-Name, this would never have happened. Journeying to the navel of the North Pole. To Finland? Only violence and a world war and, of course, the play of world trade, have brought Brecht “up here.”

Lo and behold!

A man staggers by.

It’s the boatswain, Brecht decides. No problem if it’s a sailor. Even in the far North sailors are human. You can talk to them.

“What’s the thermometer showing?” asks Brecht. He asks this in German, of course, in which language What’s-His-Name also asks things as once did Wotan and Goethe. Does the Finn understand? At any rate, he stops. The Viking, the Vandal, the Aryan—He is thinking about something, doesn’t reply, but his lips are moving, as if he is counting. Brecht waits. He is a refugee, a pariah, he should not get too bold. In relation to this Finnish fascist he is in a situation he cannot escape. He should suborn himself to him. The grim-looking person stops his inner monologue and replies:

“Zero degrees precisely.”

He replies in German, which is something that worries Brecht, but a reply in Finnish would have been worse still. What more can he ask? Because once you have formulated one question, the next is pregnant for a reply. Ask the time? Ask how late it is, not for time itself. The sea all around is dark, and Brecht just isn’t that banal. Night is approaching and this helps a refugee.

“How’s it going otherwise?” he asks him instead. Brecht knows that the common people like this question.

“OK,” replies the Nordic barbarian, off the cuff, and because of the swell, he walks away swaying slightly.

Brecht is still thinking about this zero temperature. Zero isn’t a high number, and the weather really is very cold and raw. Brecht has waited the whole winter to arrive at this zero. Zero is exactly on the border between cold and heat. At least this has become the convention in Celsius’s world.


Anders Celsius (1701–1744) invented the temperature scale that is widely in use throughout Europe. The 80-degree Réaumur scale is largely forgotten. In the USA the Fahrenheit scale is still used. Its calibration is quite different to that of the Celsius system. Europeans find it difficult to get used to the fact that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Why can’t it freeze at zero, as our beloved Celsius suggested? But we can’t dictate to the Americans which scale they should use. Moreover, Fahrenheit himself wasn’t an American. He was a German, like Brecht himself.


This zero wasn’t just some off-the-cuff number. Brecht had a friend, Professor K., a Marxist, who claimed that zero marks the point at which water freezes and ice becomes fluid. One thing goes over into another. A qualitative change occurs. It is true that this leap only occurs abruptly on the scale of a thermometer. Brecht had noticed that a bucket of water doesn’t suddenly become ice at zero degrees. It only does so when the air temperature has fallen below minus three. And at first only the surface freezes over. Then, goodness knows how many hours later, tomorrow or the day after, the whole bucket will be frozen. Sometimes the bucket doesn’t freeze right down to the bottom, the weather gets warmer, the temperature rises to, say, one degree above zero. Then too, things don’t change instantly. Whatever the state of freezing, the water doesn’t just thaw instantly, although the borderline, the chance of a dialectical leap occurring, has been reached. Time is still needed, and the layer on top maybe thaws the next day.

A qualitative leap has its own specific delay factor, as Brecht finds out, but he is not satisfied with this formulation as this has a whiff of Teutonic values about it, something which Brecht here among the mists, near to the North Pole, feels rather out of place. I have come here, I am trying to escape the dialectic in the shape of “delay,” is what Brecht is thinking and walks determinedly over to the other side of the ship: you have two sides of the ship to choose between, and when you’ve seen one, you go over to the other. There are two further options, philosophically speaking—to go to the bows or the stern. This is on a left-right axis. So Brecht goes to the other side, beyond the superstructure, walking along the slippery deck, and what does he see after this profound little journey?

He sees that there are lights burning quite near, and they are very close to land. This land or island was on the other side, and before Brecht was staring out into the void, into nothing, which forced him to start thinking. Now, however, the shore is here! “Looking out over the surface of the water you forget the islands,” Brecht conjures up, in the style of Mo Di.

The port city is called Åbo, but it is also known by another name. Brecht was told that Finland is a bilingual country. Perhaps it is in its own way, and the other name of the city is indeed Turku, but we shouldn’t expect that name to stick in Brecht’s mind as well.

Brecht can’t get the cigar to light because of the wind. And the darkness. Nevertheless, he would like to arrive in Åbo with a cigar between his teeth. An aromatic cigar is his firm’s trade mark. When he was young, he would shake the ash onto the ground . . . and now he’s old . . .

Brecht’s self-centered thoughts cease, because the Finns have begun to talk to each other.

It is dreadful to hear this alien language—on the deck of a ship, in the darkness, among the slurry of ice, at zero degrees, off Åbo, as a refugee.

One of the Finns utters the word ilmasto (weather) again and again. The other replies: ilmasota (air warfare)! The first one looks up at the sky and says with approval ilmalaiva (airship)! The other doesn’t believe him, the sky is clear—at least that’s what it looks like—can’t really see any detail. They talk on a little, and now Brecht has grown seriously interested. I’m coming to your country, I’d like to understand you, whether you’re on What’s-His-Name’s side or not. You are. After all, human beings, is what Brecht is thinking and homes in on them. One Finn or resident of Åbo is saying: “Ilmalainen, kylmäläinen.”

Brecht repeats this to himself: ilmalainen. What’s that? Ilmalainen? Wasn’t it Mr Ilmalainen who, years ago, staged, somewhere in the North, his Threepenny Opera? Or was that Kylmäläinen? Or Silmäläinen? Jumalainen? Nainen?

Whoever it was, Brecht can’t imagine that the two Finns, on this filthy night, are talking about a play. They’re no doubt talking about something else. Maybe slash-and-burn cultivation or going on strike, now that they’re nearly home.

Brecht notes very clearly that he is not the center of the world.

Besides, he’s entering the country incognito.

Look, here in the North they drink a lot! That was to be expected. One of the Finns raises a bottle to his lips. Offers it to the other man. He too takes a good swig, then notices Brecht, the emigrant. Hands over the bottle.

Brecht doesn’t have any. The eternal refugee must be as sober as he possibly can. Brecht, who isn’t to know that that very week a ban on alcohol will be introduced in Finland, following the Winter War.