The Howling Miller

by Arto Paasilinna

  ‘You’ve decided to have a go at painting, then,’ Vittavaara observed, as they carried the sacks into the mill. ‘I saw at the churchyard gate that your mill was working, so I’ve brought the rest of my barley … We’ve got to support our own mill. Can’t let all that good river water slip past lazily for free and go to waste somewhere else.’

  Huttunen started up the mill, opened the first sack and emptied it into the hopper. The air was soon thick with the smell of freshly ground barley. The men went outside. Huttunen offered Vittavaara a cigarette, thinking to himself that here at last was a decent neighbour he could actually get on with. A different sort of person altogether to that Siponen and his bone-idle wife.

  ‘You’ve got a beautiful gelding there,’ Huttunen enthused, to show the goodwill he bore its owner.

  ‘He’s a bit skittish, but otherwise he’s a good horse,’ Vittavaara replied, and then cleared his throat. Huttunen sensed that his neighbour had something else on his mind besides getting some old barley milled. Did he have a message from Siponen? Or the shopkeeper Tervola, or the teacher?

  ‘Listen, speaking man to man … as one good neighbour to another, I want to warn you, Kunnari. You’re a good fellow all round, that goes without saying, but you do have one failing. It’s come up at social services – I’m head of the board in fact.’

  Huttunen dropped his cigarette and trod it into the ground. What was Vittavaara driving at, he wondered warily.

  ‘How can I put it?’ Vittavaara hesitated. ‘There are so many people in the commune who have a grievance against you. You’ve absolutely got to stop your howling and all your other carrying on. There have been complaints about you all the way up to the board.’

  Huttunen looked his neighbour fiercely in the eye.

  ‘Tell me plainly what people have been saying about me.’

  ‘I’ve told you. The howling has to stop, once and for all. It’s not right that a grown man should be out barking with the dogs. Last winter you kept the whole village awake for nights on end, and now you’ve done it again. My wife couldn’t sleep all spring because of you, and my children have got problems at school. My daughter had to re-sit a special end-of-year exam – that’s what happens when you stay awake all night and spend all the summer in the mill listening to your foolishness.’

  ‘I howled less than usual this spring,’ Huttunen volunteered in his defence. ‘I only really let rip a few times.’

  ‘You insult people, you play the clown, you make fun of everyone. Even the teacher Tanhumäki has brought it up. You imitate all sorts of animals and then, on top of everything, you have to go and throw bombs in the river.’

  ‘It was a joke.’

  Vittavaara had got the bit between his teeth now. The veins on his forehead bulged as he railed against Huttunen.

  ‘And you have the nerve to protest, for Christ’s sake! As if I hadn’t spent thousands of nights on the edge of my bed listening to you moaning in your mill – like this. Listen, does this ring any bells?’

  Absolutely livid, Vittavaara started to howl, throwing up his arms and staring at the sky. A high-pitched wail burst from his throat, so piercing that his horse took fright.

  ‘That’s how you terrified the whole canton. You maniac! And all your buffoonery! When you pretend to be a bear or an elk or a bloody snake or crane, have a look, just for a joke, just have a look at what it looks like. Watch closely! Is this any way for a human being to behave?’

  Vittavaara rocked heavily from foot to foot like a bear, growling and slashing with his claws, before throwing himself down on all fours and roaring so irately that his gelding strained at the bit.

  ‘That was the bear, probably rings a few bells. Then how about this one? You’ve done this one a few times!’

  Vittavaara trotted around the drum of paint, snorting and grunting like a reindeer, halted with a shake of his head, pawed the grass and bent down as if he were grazing lichen. Then he switched from a reindeer to a lemming. He rubbed his mouth, sat up on his hind legs and squealed aggressively in Huttunen’s direction, before scampering off under the cart like a rodent in a towering fury.

  ‘Stop this minute,’ Huttunen cried, finally losing patience. ‘You don’t know if you’re coming or going. A man who doesn’t even know how to do a proper imitation! Bloody hell, I may have imitated a bear but I never did it so bloody clumsily.’

  Vittavaara took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

  ‘I was just trying to say that if you don’t change your ways, the board will put a muzzle on you and have you sent to Oulu mental hospital. We’ve already discussed it with Ervinen. The doctor told me you were mentally ill. Manic depression. You even hit Mrs Siponen one night and made her deaf. Remember? You stole the shopkeeper’s scales and threw them down the well. Tervola has had to make a rough guess measuring out his flour for the past few days, and it’s cost him money.’

  Huttunen flew into a fury. What gave this man the right to come to his mill and berate and threaten him? He nearly punched Vittavaara in his jowly face, but at the last minute he remembered Sanelma Käyrämö’s warning.

  ‘Get your barley out of here, every last grain of it!’ the miller shouted instead. ‘I won’t mill an ounce of flour for someone of your sort. And for Christ’s sake take that nag with you or I’ll shoo it into the river.’

  Vittavaara was icily calm.

  ‘You’ll mill what you’re told to mill. There are still laws in this world and I am going to teach you them. You may have howled down south, but that isn’t going to wash here. I hope you understand that, because I won’t be telling you twice.’

  Huttunen ran into the mill and turned off the engine. He emptied the bin of flour that had already been milled onto the ground, scuffing up clouds of it with his feet, and swung the hopper away from the runner stone. Then he slung one of the unopened sacks onto his back, ran out to the mill bridge, drew his knife from his belt and gutted it. He shook the barley out into the rapids and chucked the remains of the sack after it. The rest went straight into the river without further ado.

  Vittavaara unhitched his terrified gelding and led him out onto the road. From there, he shouted at the miller, ‘You’ve pulled your last stunt, Kunnari! You’ve ruined five sacks of top quality barley! You haven’t heard the last of this!’

  Huttunen spat at the waterlogged sacks of grain floating in the river. The mill stood silently in its place, the drum of red ochre steaming at its feet. Huttunen grabbed the ladle of fiery red paint and charged at Vittavaara. The farmer whipped up his horse with the tip of the reins, and, with a squeal of the cart’s rubber wheels, the gelding tore off at a gallop. The farmer’s threats merged with the pounding of hooves.

  ‘There are laws for lunatics too, damn you! Barking mad, that’s what you are, you crook!’

  The river carried off Vittavaara’s grain. Huttunen went back to the mill exhausted. With a grouse feather brush, he swept up the flour on the floor and threw it out of the window into the rapids.

  CHAPTER 8

  Constable Portimo, a venerable figure in both the village and the constabulary, pedalled out sedately to the Suukoski mill on his old bicycle with its specially fitted low-pressure tyres. Freewheeling down the last of the hills, he saw that Huttunen had started painting his property. One wall was already done. The miller was perched on a ladder on the other side, above the bridge, slapping red paint onto the grey logs.

  ‘This won’t be a wasted journey. Kunnari’s home,’ Constable Portimo thought idly and leant his bicycle against the mill’s still unpainted southern wall.

  ‘You’ve got started on some home improvements, then,’ he called out to Huttunen who came down the ladder with his pot of paint.

  The men took out their cigarettes. Huttunen gave Portimo a light, thinking that Vittavaara, damn him, must have gone and reported the grain he’d thrown in the river. After a few drags, he asked, ‘Are you out on official business?’

  ‘A police constable with no land hasn’t got
any grain to bring to the mill. It’s about the business with Vittavaara.’

  After finishing his cigarette and exhausting the subject of the mill’s new coat of paint, Constable Portimo moved on to his official mission. He took a bill out of his wallet and handed it to Huttunen, who read that he owed Vittavaara the equivalent of five sacks of grain. The miller went inside to get a pen and some money, paid the bill and signed it at the bottom. The price wasn’t very high but still he told Portimo, ‘Most of it was sprouted. It would have ended up in the river, anyway. Even pigs wouldn’t have eaten that.’

  The constable counted the money, tucked it and the receipt into his wallet, then spat thoughtfully into the millrace.

  ‘Don’t get on your high horse, Kunnari. When the chief came round about Vittavaara’s grain, he said you ought to be locked up. I managed to calm him down and reach a compromise. Come on, be honest, Kunnari, Vittavaara basically had some good reasons for coming to see you. He wanted to talk to you about your mad fits, didn’t he?’

  ‘He’s the one who’s mad.’

  ‘He told the chief he’d been to the doctor. Ervinen’s promised to sign your committal papers. If he does that, then it’s just a question of catching you and packing you off to the nuthouse in Oulu. If I were you, I’d try to control myself a little. There’s the business with the Siponens. And then apparently at the shop you put the scales down the well. The schoolteacher’s wife came to tell me about that, and Tervola telephoned too, of course. He said he had to take the scales to bits and that they aren’t as accurate now as before. According to him, customers don’t completely trust him anymore. There’s arguments about the price of a pound every day at the shop.’

  ‘Have you got another bill for the scales? Hand it over. I’ll pay for the bloody scales too.’

  Constable Portimo walked across the bridge to the water-wheel and jumped down onto the bank near the shingle saw; a little water got into one of his boots. He walked along the edge of millrace to the dam, with Huttunen following. On the dam, the policeman shook the sturdy wooden piles to see if they’d budge, but they were firmly anchored in the riverbed.

  ‘You’ve really done this mill up a treat,’ Portimo said admiringly. ‘It’s never been in this good shape, apart from when it was new, of course. I can still remember it being built on these rapids. It was in ’02. I was six then. There’s been a lot of grain milled here. It only became really derelict in the war. It’s good you’ve repaired it and we don’t have to go to Kemi or Liedakkala for shingles or flour anymore.’

  Huttunen enthusiastically related that he was planning to replace the last section of the millrace. And that wasn’t all.

  ‘I thought I could hook up a band saw as well. The current is easily strong enough. It just needs a new wheel here, or you make the shingle saw’s wheel bigger and run a driving belt behind it. You’d have to raise up the saw so the head rig was close enough. If the belt’s too long and comes off, it can kill you. A lot of sawyers get cut to pieces that way.’

  The policeman considered the potential site of the saw with a doubtful air. Huttunen elaborated: ‘Sixty cartloads of stone and sand there and you’ve got the base for a saw. There, higher up, you can put a stacking system and there’s plenty of room to store the logs, no matter how much sawing you do.’

  ‘Yes, now I see. But you can’t cut logs and shingle at the same time.’

  ‘Of course not, if you use the same wheel. But I am on my own here.’

  ‘True enough.’

  Constable Portimo pictured the new saw. He looked Huttunen benevolently in the eye, and said gravely, ‘With all your plans, and now the mill’s in such good condition, you should try not to be so foolish. That’s the advice of a friend. If they make me take you to Oulu, the mill will fall to pieces again and who knows what sort of character we’ll get instead of you.’

  Huttunen earnestly nodded in agreement. The men walked back from the dam. Portimo took his bicycle from the mill wall and waved to Huttunen as he rode off. The miller thought that Portimo was definitely the most amiable soul in the village, even if he was a policeman.

  Portimo reminded him of Sanelma Käyrämö. They were equally kind and understanding. Huttunen would be seeing the adviser on Leppäsaari Island tomorrow, provided it didn’t rain. On the radio they had promised it would stay dry until the evening; luckily there was an anti-cyclone over Fennoscandia.

  Huttunen went back to painting the mill. If he worked all night, in the morning a red mill would bestride the Suukoski rapids. He’d heard some women from Helsinki were touring the country with a revue called that, The Red Mill. They’d come up to Kemi and Rovaniemi; apparently their skirts were so short you could see their knickers and suspenders.

  It was agreeable painting in the cool, clear summer night. Huttunen was tired but he didn’t feel sleepy. He had two fine subjects to occupy his mind: the mill’s beautiful new livery and tomorrow’s meeting with the horticulture adviser on the island in the middle of the stream. He worked flat out all night. When the Sunday morning sun lit up the northeastern wall of the mill, the job was done. The miller took the ladder and the few remaining pots of red paint to the shed. He bathed in the river and then walked round his building twice, admiring its beauty. What a dapper mill!

  Delighted, Huttunen went into the mill house to have some Finnish sausage and a glass of buttermilk. Then he set off for Leppäsaari Island. It was still early in the morning and the tired miller fell asleep on the hay in the cool of the tent, a happy, trusting smile on his face.

  CHAPTER 9

  Huttunen was woken by a rustling of the mosquito net. He heard a timid woman’s voice outside.

  ‘Gunnar … I’m here.’

  The miller stuck out a sleepy head, and pulled the hesitant adviser into the white, sweet-smelling tent. She was in a fever of nerves, hurriedly telling him all sorts of things: she shouldn’t really have come; they oughtn’t to see each other like this; Siponen’s wife was still in bed and firmly resolved never to get up again; what time was it anyway; and oh … my goodness, wasn’t it a beautiful day, though?

  Huttunen and the adviser sat on the hay, looked into one another’s eyes and held hands. Huttunen would have liked to take her in his arms but she pulled back when he tried.

  ‘I haven’t come here for that,’ she said.

  Huttunen made do with stroking her knee. Sanelma Käyrämö reflected that she was now alone on a deserted island in the depths of the forest with a mentally ill person. How had she dared take such a risk? Gunnar Huttunen could do whatever he wanted with her without anyone being able to stop him. He could strangle her, rape her. Where would he hide the body? He’d tie stones to her feet and throw her into the stream, obviously. Only her hair would float free in the swirling current – luckily she didn’t have a perm. But what if Gunnar chopped her up in pieces and buried her? Sanelma Käyrämo imagined the knife marks on her neck and her wrists and her thighs … She shivered, but not enough to take her hand out of the miller’s.

  Huttunen meanwhile looked adoringly into her eyes.

  ‘I painted the mill this week. Red. Constable Portimo came to have a look yesterday.’

  The horticulture adviser gave a start. What did the police officer want? Huttunen told her about Vittavaara’s grain, adding that he’d paid for it.

  ‘The police chief made me pay bread flour prices for sprouted grain. Luckily there were only five sacks.’

  The horticulture adviser began fervently trying to convince Huttunen that he absolutely had to go and see Dr Ervinen. Didn’t Gunnar understand that he was ill?

  ‘Dear Gunnar, your mental equilibrium is at stake. I beg you, please go and talk to Ervinen.’

  ‘Ervinen’s just a village doctor. What does he know about mental illness, he’s mad himself,’ Huttunen protested half-heartedly.

  ‘But what if you went there to ask him for some medicine say, because you can’t control yourself. They’ve got tranquillisers now; Ervinen can prescribe you some.
If you haven’t got the money, I can lend it to you.’

  ‘I’m embarrassed to tell the doctor about my problems,’ Huttunen said wearily, taking his hand out of the adviser’s. She looked at him tenderly, stroking his hair and letting her fingers linger on his high, hot forehead. She thought that if she slept with the miller now, she’d definitely have a child. She’d fall pregnant instantly. It wasn’t a safe time of the month. But was there ever a safe time for a woman, a really safe one? A man that tall just had to touch you and you’d have a child. A boy. She didn’t really dare think of it. First her stomach would start swelling, and then by autumn it would be hard to ride her bicycle. The 4H Association wouldn’t give her any leave under the circumstances. Thank goodness her father had died in the Winter War; he wouldn’t have been able to stand it.

  The horticulture adviser thought of the sort of child she’d have with the miller: a fat baby with thick hair and a long nose. He’d be at least three foot at birth. No one would dare breastfeed him, this deranged cherub fathered by a lunatic. He wouldn’t burble away like an ordinary newborn, but would howl like his father. Or whine at least. Normal children’s clothes wouldn’t fit him; she’d have to sew him sailor trousers to wear in his cot. He’d grow a beard by the time he was five and howl during morning prayers at school. In biology lessons he’d imitate all sorts of animals and the teacher Tanhumäki would have to send him out in the middle of the lesson. She wouldn’t dare go and have coffee with the schoolteacher’s wife anymore. The rest of the day Huttunen’s son would hang around the village, tearing election posters off the telegraph poles. And then what would he get up to with his father in the evenings? What a nightmare!