Not blond like Sweden or Norway, those cool albino hotbeds, but blond enough in patches to make any American take notice. The Finns have a Slavic darkness running right through them, but still there are plenty of fair heads bobbing in this tiny, lovely northern country. I couldn’t help but think this as Joe and I and the rest of our party moved through the airport in a whirl of Finns, some of them taking pictures, some asking questions, all of them wanting something from him, a touch, a word, a gently tired smile, as though his talent might rub off in these casual moments, imparting a little bit of a glow to them, which they would return by giving him a touch of their own brand of Scandinavian goldenness. They were blond and attractive, so many of these Finns, and the rest of them were simply noble- and heroic-looking, like heads carved on Viking ships, and he was a small, seventy-one-year-old, formerly handsome and dark-haired Jewish man from Brooklyn. But somehow, the lovefest between him and them was boundless, continuing all the way through the airport corridor, which struck me as being as long as a smorgasbord table.
