The Howling Miller

by Arto Paasilinna

  Huttunen was amazed: why had he dragged this barrel all the way out here, to the middle of this desolate marsh? Why was he working himself into such a lather?

  The oddball disappeared into the woods on the other side of the marsh. Huttunen wanted to have a look at what he’d been carrying, but something stopped him. Who knew why that equipment had been dragged there so laboriously? Perhaps it was a giant bomb designed to arouse his curiosity, the hermit thought, a trap.

  Man’s cruelty and cunning knows no bounds: I’d better keep a safe distance from that paraphernalia as long as I can.

  After a while, the man emerged from the woods by the marsh with another load, possibly even heavier than the first one, on his back. So that’s why he went off – more supplies to ferry across this bog. Huttunen studied the man’s bizarre behaviour through his binoculars. This time he was carrying a gleaming container. It was smaller than the previous one, and so heavy that he hadn’t the strength to run, but he was walking fast, straight towards Puukko Hill and the black barrel awaiting him on the moss.

  When the man came closer, Huttunen saw that he was toting a five-gallon milk churn. It looked full, judging by how far his feet sunk into the marsh. He dropped it on the ground when he reached his first load, caught his breath, and then hoisted the black barrel onto his back. Huttunen swapped his binoculars for his rifle, released the safety catch and waited to see what would happen next. The man seemed to be making a beeline for Huttunen’s lookout point. The miller took cover in the spruces, ready to fire. How could he tell what the mysterious churn carrier’s intentions might be?

  It was only when the fellow climbed the hill that Huttunen recognised him. The tub hauler was none other than the village postman Piittisjärvi! Huttunen knew him well, as did everyone in the village. He was a good man, albeit a hopeless drunk – although how many men, good and bad alike, haven’t taken that path and been lost to drink? Huttunen relaxed: the newcomer with all his baggage had definitely not been sent by Police Chief Jaatila. Piittisjärvi was a skinny little guy in his fifties who had been widowed before the war; a jolly sort, not up to much, who lived on his meagre postman’s salary and was always short of money but rarely of strong drink. He often staggered when he delivered letters, and dropped off packages with a pitiful hangover. When he was sober, he was a quiet, rather obliging soul, but if he’d been drinking, many a local dignitary was the recipient of a few choice home truths from their postman, since alcohol spurred Piittisjärvi to put into words what he thought of those who life had treated more kindly than him.

  Panting heavily, Piittisjärvi climbed the hill. He set the sooty barrel and some pipes down on the moss. Steam rose off him like an exhausted horse; his hands trembled from the intensity of the exertion. His features were drawn; sweat rolled down his wrinkles. He wiped his face with his filthy sleeve and stood with his hand pressed to his chest for a moment. A thick cloud of mosquitoes had followed him from the marsh but he was too tired to shoo the bloodsuckers away. Then he span on his heel and set off back to the marsh to get the churn he’d left there.

  When Piittisjärvi had managed to drag every last bit of kit and caboodle onto the hill, he finally calmed down, sat on the lid of the churn and took out a cigarette. He was so shattered that he couldn’t light it until the third go, his trembling fingers snuffing out the first two matches.

  ‘Oh shit!’

  The man was exhausted and in a foul temper, which did not much surprise Huttunen. Dragging a load like that God knows how far over an unstable bog would cast a shadow over the most genial of spirits. The hermit stepped out from the trees holding his rifle.

  ‘Hey, Piittisjärvi.’

  The postman was so afraid that his cigarette tumbled onto the moss. But when he recognised Huttunen, his fears evaporated and an exhausted smile lit up the fellow’s lined face.

  ‘Kunnari, my God! So this is where you’ve got to.’

  Piittisjärvi retrieved his cigarette and offered Huttunen one. The hermit asked the postman what he was doing on Puukko Hill. And what the devil were those tubs he was dragging around way out here in the woods?

  ‘Haven’t you ever seen a still?’

  Piittisjärvi explained that he’d set up his secret distillery in its usual place on Mount Reutu. The mash had already fermented, and he had decided he was going to boil it that very morning. Until, that is, the peace of the forest was shattered at crack of dawn: men were scouring the hillside with rifles on their shoulders; dogs were barking; shouts of Huttunen’s name and rallying shots ringing out in all directions. The whole place had been in uproar.

  ‘You can imagine, I got out of there double quick. I had to evacuate the whole works. I’ve been dragging it through the woods ever since, east of the Kemijoki first, then I took it over the river in a boat, but that nearly sunk in the chaos, then all the way here, going like the clappers all day! I tell you, you won’t get a minute’s peace in the woods east of the river now. I’ve never been in such hot water in all my life.’

  Piittisjärvi took a long drag on his cigarette. He looked at his churn of fermented mash, his vat and his tubes and smiled blissfully.

  ‘But I snatched my still from their clutches, those curs. During the war, I found myself in a bit of a similar predicament during the retreat. Me and another guy had stayed behind on the isthmus with a machine gun. When we finally scarpered, it was a hell of a job dragging that thing. But lugging my set-up this time was harder. That’s twice now I’ve had to run all day to escape from fellows with guns.’

  Huttunen was moved by Piittisjärvi’s plight. He’d never meant to put the postman to so much trouble, he said, but the amiable fellow cut him short with a benevolent wave.

  ‘Don’t worry, Kunnari. I’m not blaming you, the rural police chief is the real cause of all this carry-on. Here you go, have another cigarette!’

  CHAPTER 28

  That night, Piittisjärvi and Huttunen set up the postman’s still in the bushes on the banks of the Puukko. Piittisjärvi was all for putting the mash on to boil straightaway; it had fermented and his mouth was terribly dry. But the night was clear and windless; any smoke rising up from the banks of the stream could give away the site of the distillery. It was not until morning, after a wind had picked up, therefore, that they lit a little wood fire under the vat and poured in the strong-smelling brew. Huttunen used the empty churn to fetch water from the stream and fill the cooling tub. As soon as the alcohol vapour reached the tubes, it condensed and began to flow, drop by drop, into the waiting container.

  Piittisjärvi tasted the first distillate, grimaced with delight and handed the mug to Huttunen. But the hermit declined, explaining that at that moment sobriety struck him as a good thing.

  ‘You’re mad not to want any of this nectar,’ the drunkard exclaimed in amazement. But after briefly mulling over the pros and cons of his partner’s abstinence, he made no further attempts to change his mind.

  ‘More for me this way.’

  Huttunen decided to cast a few flies in the stream. Before going, he took another churn of cold water to the still.

  On his return with two salmon trout, Huttunen found Piittisjärvi entering an already advanced state of intoxication. The postman suggested that, as the more lucid of the two of them, the hermit should take charge of the cooking while he devoted his time to getting conscientiously hammered.

  Before the postman could fulfil his part of the bargain, however, Huttunen grilled the fish on the fire under the still. Piittisjärvi had some salt and bread, as well as a piece of salted bacon. They ate the trout’s pink flesh in their fingers, sprinkling salt on its sizzling skin, and accompanying it with mouthfuls of bread. Huttunen realised that he hadn’t had a decent meal in a long time; not since his camp in Reutu Marsh had been destroyed. As for Piittisjärvi, he had last eaten two days previously, when he had gone to the post office to pick up the letters and newspapers. But he didn’t tend to eat much in summer in general, anyway, what with all the mail he had to de
liver and alcohol he had to distil.

  ‘I eat better in winter, when I’m not so busy. I cook almost every day when it’s cold, even though it’s just me.’

  Piittisjärvi proposed a collaboration of mutual benefit, whereby Huttunen would supervise the still while he did his job as a postman. Piittisjärvi had to deliver the mail to the station and two neighbouring villages three days a week, which left him barely enough days to brew his moonshine, given that he also needed time to drink it. In return for Huttunen working the still, therefore, he would see to every aspect of the hermit’s mail. Huttunen asked what sort of mail he could expect in this forlorn place.

  ‘Just take out a subscription to the Northern News! We’ll put your letterbox in the woods by the station. I’ll deliver you your newspapers and letters just like anyone else. And you can send letters too; I’ll see they get there. Why don’t you write to the new horticulture adviser? Apparently she’s taken a real shine to you.’

  Huttunen thought it over. He should write to Sanelma; it wasn’t a bad idea. As for newspapers, he hadn’t seen one since he was sent to Oulu.

  The men agreed to help one another. They debated how long he should subscribe to the Northern News for, and concluded that one year would probably be a waste of money, since the hermit’s life was unsettled at present.

  Huttunen gave the postman the money for a quarterly subscription and Piittisjärvi promised to send off the form as soon as he got to the village.

  Huttunen wrote a short letter to Sanelma Käyrämö. He found the bank’s letter in his wallet to use for paper, but he didn’t have a pen. He made do with a stick dipped in soot.

  Huttunen spread out Ervinen’s maps in front of his associate. They discussed where the hermit should build his new camp and set up the moonshine apparatus, and decided on a little ridge overlooking the Puukko, bordering the marsh, about a mile and a half from the source of the stream. Huttunen had found it that morning when he had gone fishing. He thought it was safer than the hill where they were now brewing up their nectar. The men also chose where Piittisjärvi would put Huttunen’s letterbox. He could come and collect his mail three times a week. On the Lord’s Day, and sometimes even during the week as well, Piittisjärvi would come and drink in the camp.

  ‘I’ll deliver straight to your door on Sundays, so don’t bother going all the way to the letterbox for the Saturday papers.’

  Huttunen asked Piittisjärvi to get him some salt, sugar, coffee and smoked bacon, and of course tobacco, and gave him money for it all.

  After eating, the postman had to set off for the village because it was a delivery day. Washing his soot-streaked face in the stream and gargling to get rid of the worst fumes, he told Huttunen what to do if the mash overheated or if, for one reason or another, the distillate stopped flowing.

  ‘The worst thing is to let the mash boil away completely. It happened to me in the summer of 1939. My wife had died the autumn before and I was thinking how I was going to pass the time. The mash stuck to the bottom. I was cleaning that tub for days. Everyone who drank that burnt batch was ill, one guy nearly died. And then when the Winter War broke out that autumn, he went and died in the first week anyway.’

  Leaving Huttunen in charge, Piittisjärvi set off, tripping lightly across the marsh. He sauntered through the forest whistling, went straight to the post office, and before he did anything else, took out a three-month newspaper subscription for Huttunen. To be on the safe side, he put it in his name.

  When he had finished his rounds that evening, Piittisjärvi went home to pick up a saw, a hammer, some nails, a few bits of board and a piece of laminated cardboard. He stowed them in his saddlebags and cycled to the deserted stretch of forest past the station where he had agreed with Huttunen to put up the letterbox. He chose a sturdy pine and set to work.

  Progress was swift in the hands of a master. Piittisjärvi started with the frame, nailed on the boards, fixed the box to the tree and, with a knife, cut out a rectangle of laminated card the size of the lid to make it watertight. ‘It’s not such a great loss if the Northern News gets wet, but, when it comes to valuable mail, any negligence is unforgivable.’

  To secure the lid, Piittisjärvi cut two strips of leather from the surplus length of his belt. There was room to cut plenty more. The postman thought sadly that he’d bought the belt in Kemi for his engagement. He was a brawny fellow in those days. But ever since his wife had died, he’d been gradually putting in new holes.

  ‘Hilda always took good care of me when she was alive,’ Piittisjärvi remembered, a lump forming in his scrawny throat.

  The letterbox was ready; now it just needed to be painted. The postman wondered if it was sensible painting it the Post & Telegraph Office’s regulation yellow. It may have been hidden from the road for the moment, but in the winter the official colour might give it away. Piittisjärvi decided to leave the wood bare, even though he had always hated delivering mail to shabby, neglected letterboxes. Once, drunk, he had taken Siponen to task after dropping off a bundle of letters in his miserable little pigeonhole, ‘You could at least paint your letterbox, a big-shot farmer like you. It’s like chucking the paper into a rabbit hutch. Not that it would matter where anyone bloody tossed your shrew’s copies of New Romance.’

  Piittisjärvi did however carve the post’s symbol, the bugle, on the front of the letterbox and below it the owner’s name: GUNNAR HUTTUNEN. Finally he dropped a copy of the Northern News, which he had brought with him, into the box, as if to inaugurate his creation.

  ‘Now Kunnari can come and get his mail,’ he thought to himself with satisfaction.

  CHAPTER 29

  The hermit once again had to set about building a new camp. He moved his things and Piittisjärvi’s equipment to the foot of the little sandy ridge by Puukko Brook, which he christened ‘Sandbank Camp’. He immediately rigged up a shelter, followed by the postman’s still. He dug an oven in the lichen-covered slope and a bigger space a little further off where he put his tools, rucksack, fishing gear and rifle. Then he got down to distilling the firewater.

  After the first distillation, Huttunen had collected twenty or so pints of foul-smelling liquor in the milk churn. He calculated that if he distilled it a second time, he would still have twelve. The hermit knew that if Piittisjärvi had done the boiling himself, he would have drunk the moonshine without bothering to clarify it further. But a sober, capable man was in charge now, and Huttunen boiled the brew a second time. He ended up with a good ten pints of alcohol as clear as the ice on an autumn lake and as strong as Ervinen’s rectified spirit. He took a sip. It scalded the roof of his mouth; he spat out the stuff in disgust.

  I’d better not drink, otherwise I’ll go out of my mind again.

  Huttunen hid the churn of firewater in a waterhole, dismantled the still and buried it in a thicket of firs on the banks of the stream. Then he threw his rifle over his shoulder, gathered up his fishing gear and set off to stock up on food. He headed northwest by compass, towards the woods where he had gone capercaillie shooting with Constable Portimo the previous winter. The familiar landscape brought back happy memories: they had bagged plenty of birds that trip without even having a dog. Portimo’s spitz had been left at home, because, having been trained to hunt bear, it wouldn’t have crossed its mind to bark at capercaillie. If this had been a normal summer, Huttunen reflected, he’d be hunting with Portimo now, not trekking through the forest alone. The police constable wasn’t doing what he’d expected either.

  Portimo’s wasted the best part of the summer chasing me. He must feel terrible having to hound a friend.

  Huttunen had no difficulty finding a good place for game. He shot a couple of birds and on the way back caught several pounds of fish at the source of the stream. Before he reached his camp, he picked another basket of blueberries.

  Life was good, but lonely. He didn’t need to scour the forest; the birds were gutted and hanging from the trees, the fish were salting in birch bark creels deep in the
cool moss. To pass the time, Huttunen decided to go and see if he had any mail. Would Piittisjärvi have had time to deliver his paper?

  The hermit easily found the letterbox at the agreed spot, in the forest near the station. He circled around it first to check that it wasn’t a trap, that there was no chance of an ambush. But as the wood seemed silent and deserted, he ventured closer. His name was carved on the front.

  A rush of joy warmed the lonely man’s heart: now he had a point of contact with the world, this crude grey box on the side of a pine. Piittisjärvi had done a good job.

  But was there any mail inside? The hermit was afraid to open it. The disappointment if it were empty would be bitter in this forlorn place.

  When Huttunen lifted the lid, he had the happy surprise of finding two newspapers and a thick envelope bearing his name in a female hand. He recognised the handwriting: the horticulture adviser Sanelma Käyrämö had sent him a letter.

  The hermit retreated a few hundred yards from the letterbox into a dense fir thicket where he opened the envelope. It was a beautiful love letter. Huttunen read it, his face shining with happiness; his head hummed, the lines blurred as tears came into his eyes; his hands trembled and his heart pounded. He felt like howling for pure joy.

  Included with the letter was a little leaflet, which bore the title NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE POST: BUSINESS STUDIES.