Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

When I Forgot is Elina Hirvonen's first novel. Hirvonen is a celebrity in Finland, where she has previously been a TV presenter and chat show host. She has just finished her first documentary, which focuses on African migration to Europe. She is a passionate traveler and has journeyed independently through thirty different countries.

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When I Forgot

Tin House Books

Chapter One

I'm happy because I have a steam engine (that works).

I'm happy because I have Daddy Mommy Sister Grandma and got a Stiiga sled for Christmas.

I'm happy because I'm in the science club and when I grow up I'm going to be an inventor and win the Nobel Prize.

I'm happy because I get to live my whole life in free and independent Finland and because my Heavenly Father loves me and takes care of me.

Joona Louhiniitty 3A

Chapter Two

There's the smell of sun-warmed dog shit and damp earth. A bent woman in winter boots from the eighties and a child in muddied waterproofs whose tongue darts out around his ice-cream moustache. There's the long morning when you don't have to look at your watch.

There's the caf where you get old-fashioned coffee and thickly iced mocha squares and where you feel like someone's just told you a secret. There are the clacking trams and the foot-dragging kids on their way to school and the gray-headed women who prop each other up as they cross the street. There's the book I got from Ian. There's Ian, who loves me.

There's the book.

There's the world I am allowed to enter. Three women on a single day in different time periods. The writer Virginia Woolf, who filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the water.

You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work.

I've read Virginia's suicide note many times, but keep coming back to it. What did the rocks look like? What was she thinking as she sank under the water? Did she have time, before losing consciousness, to regret what she had done?

Chapter Three

The girls in long skirts and the boys who pulled their wispy hair back into ponytails talked loudly about literature ("Orlando like totally expanded my sexuality, man") and last night's party ("So I wake up on some fucking tech student's floor and I'm like, uh, sorry") and Ian kept saying, "Excuse me, excuse me please" to get everybody to quiet down. Finally he set down the glass and the pile of paper, stamped his sandal and shouted, "Shut the fuck up!"

When Ian started to talk, we were all quiet. He sat on the table, pushed the papers aside, and took a sip of water. His gaze was intense and his voice deep and dark, as if someone were humming quietly just behind his words.

First Ian told us why he became a literary scholar. "I'm convinced that it's important to remember. Only by remembering can we understand something about ourselves. But I happen to have a terrible memory. I wanted to fill in the gaps by stealing from others." Ian looked away, took a drink from his glass, and began talking about this dazzlingly intelligent woman who lived a hundred years ago and who wanted to capture even the tiniest movements of the mind, to dive into a person's inner world in a way no one had ever done in the history of world literature.

His voice tightened something in my throat. I wanted to raise my hand and tell him that remembering isn't really all that great. Memory is one of life's burdens that we can do nothing about. I wanted to stand up, make the note taking and enthusiastic nods stop and shout that all I want is an escape from memory.

Ian's face flushed and his hands drew swoops in the air. His hands were thin and his wrists were hairy and I wanted to put my hand there too.

Chapter Four

"Where are you?" My mother's voice as doubting as ever.

"Transcribing an interview," I lie. "What?"

"Don't get angry. Could you please go see Joona?"

"I told you already. I want to make up my own mind when to go."

"Yes, you told me. But it would mean a lot to Joona if you'd go now. He needs you. To get better."

Oh, fuck off. That's what I want to say. Fuck off and let me live my own life for once. But you don't talk like that to your mother. Not anymore, now that you're grown up and living in your own place. Not to the mother who has to care for Joona like some gigantic child. Not to the mother who in her whole life never had a door she could lock against other people's intrusions.

"Joona is not going to get better."

"He could be less unhappy. He says you don't care about him any more."

"Jesus Christ."

"Joona asks about you all the time. What should I tell him?" "You don't need to say anything. I'll go out there when I get this done."

He says you don't care about him anymore.

Where does he get off saying that? Where does he get off using a smarmy, crappy, hypocritical word like care? Caring's been poisoned by children's songs and politicians. If only we could all just care about each other we'd all be happy happy happy.

But he's right. I don't care about Joona. What I feel for him is something else. Nothing warm or fuzzy or happy-happy. I feel more toward him than anyone else in the world. I wish he would just vanish and I'd never have to remember anything about him.

When I was born, the world was already full of Joona. He had golden hair, a bright voice, and a racing car covered with stickers, which he crashed over and over into the yellow painted wall of our room. One day the paint cracked into flaky figures and father locked the car in the attic.

Joona played sad songs on his brown plastic recorder and sat for hours with a picture book in front of him without turning the pages or saying a word. He dreamed of dropping me along with carrots, turnip cubes, and celery stalks into Grandma's old iron pot and stirring my pink baby flesh into a savory stew. On bad days he crept over to my white crib and pulled my downy hair out of my head with both hands. On good days he pulled a blanket over the table in our room and we crawled under it to play. We had a torch and mashed banana and played Jonah in the belly of the whale. Joona pulled me into his lap and rocked me back and forth. I imagined behind the blanket a stormy sea, on whose waves our whale would rock up and down forever.

Joona's golden hair and ringing voice are my first memories of the world. For a long time I was sure that Joona was the whole world.

On my plate there is a half-eaten mocha square and a ring of coffee left by my cup. The man at the table next to me stares into space and a tram clanks by outside the window. I close the book and run my fingers over its rough cover. I feel like apologizing to the people in the book.

Chapter Five

We were swinging with my mother. Joona sat alone on one swing and she held me in her lap on the other. When we heard the...