In the morning of the 23rd of June we got into the car and drove off to Parikkala. Well ahead of high mass we stepped into the big wooden church with its spacious dome. As we entered the church, the female organist began playing psalms on the organ in the otherwise empty church. In an atmosphere of sacredness and purity we proceeded between the empty rows of seats. Light fell in through the dome and the large windows, and the beautiful and mighty organ music filled every last corner of the simple and ascetic shrine.

As Swami, Riitta and Ruotsa went out into the daylight while waiting for high mass, I lingered inside the pealing of the organ, photographing the spacious interior of the church.
Church attendants started seeping in. For the most part, they were old bent women with kerchiefs and old snuff-smelling men. We were the youngest ones in church by far.

Riitta was confirmed in the Parikkala church when she was in her teens, and the priest presiding this day was the very one who joined Riitta and her former husband Hannu in wedlock at home in the Saukkonen family house sixteen years earlier. The marriage lasted six years, and wasn’t a very happy one.

The priest had been a Finnish Minister of War (!!!) and was viewed by the congregation as a bread priest, i.e. one without faith, just doing his job.

I tried, as good as I could, to sing along, reading the Finnish stanzas out of the book of psalms, and we all had to rise and sit according to the liturgy.
When time came to partake of the Communion we withdrew and got back into the car, headed for the Siikalahti bird sanctuary.
We had a hard time finding our way there. Instead we came upon a place right close to the Russian border. We saw the watchtowers of both sides. We swirled around and found our way to the lake. It’s a world-class bird sanctuary, and the WWF protects it.

We trod the footbridge out through the greenery. (I recalled another time and another bird tower that Riitta and I visited back in May in Nyköping, Sweden. It was the Sjösa bird tower, and I fucked Riitta from behind there, while she leaned forward, spaying out across the Bay of Sjösa through a window. Her trousers and briefs were pulled down around her ankles, while she kept her anorak and her rubber boots on. The air was chilly around my ass, but make no mistake; it was worthwhile!)

We stood looking out across the surface of the water, but aside from a descending curlew the only birds revealing themselves to us were the members of a large colony of black-headed gulls. This was no migration period for the birds, either, but spring and fall things surely look different at Siikalahti.

When we got back to the Porkala cottage, Riitta’s parents were there. Lämpi was inside the house, and Erkki was out on the lake somewhere, fishing. He’d already been out for a couple of hours, and Lämpi had begun to worry, like so many times before. Riitta had worried so much during her youth when her father was out Sunday-fishing for long hours that she’d developed a Sunday depression which kicks in on Sunday afternoons even nowadays.
Riitta was so tormented by her father at times when she was young that she sometimes in secrecy wished that he’d drown, and when he failed to return from the lake within a reasonable time she thought her wishes had killed him.

However, after four hours Papa Saukkonen returned to Porkala with a grunt and a sizeable perch catch.

One should keep in mind that Papa Saukkonen is ill in many ways. He is asthmatic and has a weak heart, and he pants and groans like the Big Bad Wolf. One day he might be admitted to hospital, only top head out onto Lake Saimaa the next day, for hours on end, even if there is a piercing Moomin weather.

Erkki cut twigs to thread the perch catch on. They would be grilled over an open fire. Riitta and her mother immediately commenced scaling the fish. It was evident that they were used to the chore. Riitta was scaling intensely, the scales flying far and wide! It was a revealing sight to watch the novelist Riitta Saukkonen with gleaming fish scales in her waist-length, blond hair. She is a rare mix of an educated culture celebrity and Karelian child of nature.

Erkki and Lämpi prepared the fire, which soon burned clear and strong. Papa Saukkonen passed one of the fully loaded perch twigs to Swami and kept the other one for himself. The grilling went on while Papa Saukkonen gave Swami pungent instructions in Karelian. The smoke brought smarting pain to our eyes.

Jouko came biking around the bay on his bicycle Jopo, accompanied by his dog Jekko. Jouko participated in the perch feast, but the hungry and whimpering Jekko had to stay off the fish. The fish bones might have gotten stuck in his throat.

Riitta and I withdrew for a while to sleep, while Ruotsa worked on her egg-tempora icons. Swami went exploring into the forest.

Later we brought water to the sauna in buckets, to enjoy the sweating and the washing. The three others took a swim in Saimaa midway through the sauna bath, while I stood on the porch wrapped in a terry cloth bathrobe.

After the sauna Riitta and I made love on the bed. Ruotsa was considerate and went out onto the porch as I entered Riitta, kicking the making of Saimaa love off once more. She glanced furtively through the window at us, though, as I towards the conclusion of the fucking episode took Riitta from behind in great pleasure. Riitta let her long, experienced novelist fingers play voluptuously around my testicles while I maneuvered my pole to alternately just visit lightly at her private parts, alternately pushing all the way to the bottom, until feeling her portio vaginalis; the very end of Pleasure Road!
Riitta’s fingers eagerly flew like swallows around my testicles, and I grabbed her thighs tight, until I could bear it no more, finding release in a vibrating orgasm while my thigh muscles contracted in spasms.

At night Riitta, Ruotsa and I rowed out onto Lake Saimaa. It was a still night with almost unendurably beautiful nuances on the lake. Way over in the narrow sound and in the bay beyond we saw beavers. We got within thirty feet of them before they signaled loudly by smacking their flat tails on the water and dove.

On our way back to the cottage we observed a thin curtain of smoke hovering over the shore in front of the trees by the wooden jetty. The water was like glass, gravity performing wonders in the absence of wind. The cuckoo calls resounded across the waters, from various positions inside dark forests.

Swami had lit some logs in the fireplace and sat in the flickering light listening to Shivkumar Sharma’s santoor. The peace was divine; the crackling of the fire and the semi-light night sky out there in delicate shadings across Saimaa!