by Mikael Niemi
I was petrified. Forgot to swallow, didn’t notice I was slavering. I felt dizzy, my head was spinning, I forgot to breathe.
This was the future. This was what it sounded like. Music like the bellowing of the road-building machines, a neverending clatter, a commotion that roared away toward the crimson sunrise on the far horizon.
I leaned forward and looked out the window. Smoke was rising from a tipper truck, they were starting the final surfacing. But what the truck was spewing forth was not black, shiny-leather asphalt. It was oil-bound gravel. Grey, lumpy, ugly, bloody oil-bound gravel.
That was the surface on which we inhabitants of Pajala would be bicycling into the future.
* * *
When all the machines had finally gone away I started going for cautious little walks around the neighborhood. The world grew with every step I took. The newly surfaced road led to other newly surfaced roads, the gardens stretched away like leafy parks with giant dogs standing guard, barking at me and rattling their running chains. The further I walked, the more there was to see. The world never seemed to end, it just went on and on, and I felt so dizzy I was almost sick when it dawned on me that you could go on walking for ever. In the end I picked up courage and went over to Dad, who was busy washing our new Volvo:
“How big is the world?”
“It’s enormous,” he said.
“But it must stop somewhere, surely?”
“In China.”
That was a straightforward answer that made me feel a bit better. If you walked far enough, you’d eventually come to an end. And that end was in the realm of the slitty-eyed ching-chong people on the other side of the globe.
It was summer and roasting hot. The front of my shirt was stained by drops from the ice-pop I was licking. I left our garden, left my safe little world. I occasionally looked back over my shoulder, worried about getting lost.
I walked as far as the playground, which was really an old hayfield that had survived in the middle of the village. The local authority had installed some swings, and I sat down on the narrow seat. Started heaving enthusiastically on the chains to build up speed.
The next moment I realized I was being watched. There was a boy sitting on the slide. Right at the top, as if he were about to come down. But he was waiting, as motionless as a hawk, watching me with wide-open eyes.
I was on my guard. There was something worrying about the boy. He can’t have been sitting up there when I arrived, it was as if he’d materialized out of thin air. I tried to ignore him, and forced the swing up so dizzyingly high that the chains started to feel slack in my hands. I made no sound and closed my eyes, and could feel my stomach churning as I hurtled down in a curve faster and faster toward the ground, then up toward the sky on the other side.
When I opened my eyes again he was sitting in the sandbox. As if he’d flown there on outstretched wings: I hadn’t heard a thing. He was still watching me intently, although he was half-turned away from me.
I allowed the swing to come slowly to a stop, then I jumped down onto the grass, did a forward roll, and lay on my back on the ground. Stared up at the sky. Clouds were rolling over the river in patches of white. They were like big, woolly sheep lying asleep in the wind. When I closed my eyes I could see little creatures scuttling about on the insides of my eyelids. Small black dots creeping over a red membrane. When I shut my eyes tighter I could see little violet-colored fellows in my stomach, clambering over one another and tracing patterns. So there were animals inside me as well, a whole new world to explore in there. I felt giddy as it dawned on me that the world was made up of masses of pockets, each of them enclosing the previous one. No matter how many layers you penetrated, there were more and more still to come.
I opened my eyes and gave a start. I was astonished to see the boy lying beside me. He was stretched out on his back right next to me, so close that I could feel the warmth of his body. His face was strangely small. His head was a normal size, but his features had been crammed into far too small a space. Like a doll’s face glued onto a large, brown, leather football. His hair had been snipped unevenly at home, and a scab was working its way loose on his forehead. His face was turned toward me. He was screwing up one eye, the upper one that was catching the sun. The other was lying in the grass and wide open, with an enormous pupil in which I could see my own reflection.
“What’s your name?” I wondered aloud.
He didn’t answer. Didn’t move.
“Mikäs sinun nimi on?” I repeated the question in Finnish.
Now he opened his mouth. It wasn’t a smile, but you could see his teeth. They were yellow, coated with bits of old food. He stuck his little finger into his nostril—the others were too big to fit in. I did the same. We each dug out a booger. He stuck his into his mouth and swallowed. I hesitated. Quick as a flash he scraped mine off my finger and swallowed that as well.
I realized he wanted to be my friend.
We sat up in the grass, and I had an urge to impress the boy in return.
“You can go wherever you like, you know!”
He was listening attentively, but I wasn’t sure if he’d understood.
“Even as far as China,” I added.
To show that I was serious I started walking toward the road. Confidently, with an affected, pompous air of self-assurance that concealed my nervousness. He followed me. We walked as far as the yellow-painted vicarage. There was a bus parked on the road outside, no doubt it had brought some tourists to see the Laestadius House. We bowed our heads in acknowledgment of the Bible-thumping evangelist who once lived there. The bus doors had been left open because of the heat, but there was no sign of the driver. I grabbed the boy and pulled him over to the steps, and we climbed aboard. There were suitcases and jackets lying on the seats, which smelled a bit damp. We sat right at the back and crouched down behind the seats. Before long some old ladies got in and sat down, panting and sweating. They were speaking a language with a lot of waterfall sounds, and gulping down big swigs of lemonade straight from the bottle. Several more retirees eventually came to join them, and then the driver turned up, pausing outside to insert a wad of snuff into his mouth. Then we set off.
Wide-eyed and silent, we watched the countryside flash past. We soon left Pajala behind and breezed off into the wilds. Nothing but trees, trees without end. Old-fashioned telephone poles with porcelain insulators and wires sagging in the heat.
We’d gone several miles before anybody noticed us. I happened to bump against the seat in front, and a lady with pincushion cheeks turned around. I smiled expectantly. She smiled back, rummaged around in her handbag, and then offered us a sweet from an unusual cloth-like bag. She said something I didn’t understand. Then she pointed at the driver and asked:
“Papa?”
I nodded, my smile frozen.
“Habt ihr Hunger?” she asked.
Before we knew where we were she’d thrust a cheese roll into each of our hands.
After a long and shaky bus ride we pulled up in a large parking lot. Everybody got off, including me and my friend. In front of us was a big concrete building with a flat roof and high, spiky, metal aerials. Beyond it, behind a wire fence, were some propeller-driven airplanes. The bus driver opened a hatch and started pulling out bags and suitcases. The nice lady had far too much luggage and seemed to be under a lot of strain. Beads of sweat were forming under the brim of her hat, and she started making nasty smacking noises, sucking at her teeth. My friend and I gave her a hand as a way of saying thank-you for the sandwiches, and we lugged her heavy cases into the building. The flock of retirees crowded round a desk, jabbering away loudly, and started to produce no end of papers and documents. A woman in uniform tried patiently to keep them in order. Then we passed through the gate as a group and made our way toward the aircraft.
It was going to be my first ever flight. We both felt a bit like fish out of water, but a nice brown-eyed lady with gold heart-shaped earrings helped us fasten our seat-belts. My
friend landed a window seat, and we grew increasingly excited as we watched the shiny propellers start spinning, faster and faster, until they disappeared altogether in a round, invisible whirl.
Then we started moving. I was forced back into my seat, could feel the wheels bumping, and then the slight jerk as we left the ground. My friend was pointing out of the window, fascinated. We were flying! There was the world down below us. People, buildings, and cars shrunk to the size of toys, so small we could have popped them into our pockets. And then we were swallowed up by clouds, white on the outside but grey inside, like porridge. We emerged from the clouds and kept on climbing until the aircraft reached the sky’s roof and started soaring forward so slowly we hardly knew we were moving.
The nice stewardess brought us some juice, which was just as well, as we were very thirsty. And when we needed a pee she ushered us into a tiny little room and we took turns to get our willies out. We peed into a hole, and I imagined it falling down to the ground in a yellow drizzle.
Then we each got a book and some crayons. I drew two airplanes crashing into each other. My friend leaned his jaggedly cropped head further and further back and soon dozed off with his mouth wide open. The plane window misted over as he breathed.
We eventually landed. All the passengers pushed and shoved their way out, and in the mélée we lost the old lady. I asked a man in a peaked cap if this was China. He shook his head and pointed us in the direction of an endless corridor, where people were hurrying to and fro with their bags. We walked down it, and I had to ask politely several times before we came across some people with slitty eyes. I reckoned they must be going to China, and so we sat next to them and waited patiently.
After a while a man in a dark blue uniform came over to us and started asking questions. We were going to be in trouble, you could see it in his eyes. So I smiled shyly and pretended not to understand what he was saying.
“Dad,” I mumbled, pointing vaguely into the distance.
“Wait here,” he said, and strode off purposefully.
The moment he’d gone we moved to another bench. We soon discovered a black-haired Chinese girl in knee-length socks who was playing with a sort of plastic puzzle. It seemed to be fun. She laid the pieces out on the floor and showed us how you could make a tree, or a helicopter, or whatever you liked. She talked a lot and waved her thin arms around, and I think she said her name was Li. She sometimes pointed to a bench where an elderly fellow with stern eyes was reading a newspaper, next to an older girl with raven hair. I gathered she was the girl’s sister. She was eating a messy red fruit, and kept wiping her mouth with a lace-edged napkin. When I went over to her she gave me a guarded look, then offered me some pieces that had been neatly cut with a fruit knife. It tasted so sweet that I started to get butterflies in my stomach: I’d never tasted anything so good in my life, and I prodded my friend into trying some as well. He was ecstatic, his eyes half-closed. As a sort of thank-you, he suddenly produced a matchbox, opened it, and let the Chinese girl have a look.
Inside was a large, shimmering green beetle. Big sister tried to feed it a little piece of fruit, but then it flew off. Buzzing softly, it flew over all the slitty-eyed people in their seats, circled two ladies with long pins in their hair who gazed up in astonishment, swerved around a mountain of suitcases with some carelessly wrapped reindeer antlers on top, and headed down the corridor just under the florescent lights, the same way we had come in. My friend looked sad, but I tried to console him with the thought that it was no doubt going back home to Pajala.
At that very moment there was an announcement over the loudspeakers, and everybody started moving. We packed the puzzle into the girl’s bag of toys and passed through the gates in the midst of the jostling crowd. This aircraft was much bigger than the previous one. Instead of propellers this one had big drums on the wings that made a whistling sound when they started up. The noise grew and grew until it was a deafening roar, and after we’d taken off it reduced to a booming rumble.
We got to Frankfurt. And if my silent traveling companion hadn’t all of a sudden needed to relieve himself and started doing his number twos under a table, we would certainly, we would quite definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, we would have gotten to China.
CHAPTER 2
About living and dead faith, how nuts and bolts give rise to violence, and a remarkable incident in Pajala church
I started seeing quite a lot of my taciturn friend, and before long I went home with him for the first time. His parents turned out to be Laestadians, members of the revivalist movement started by Lars Levi Laestadius a long time ago in Karesuando. He was only a little man, but his sermons were red-hot and peppered, when he attacked strong drink and debauchery, with almost as many curses as the sinners used. He spoke with such force that the reverberations are still rumbling on even today.
Faith is not enough for a Laestadian. It’s not just a question of being baptized or confessing your sins or putting money in the collection plate. Your faith has to be a living faith. An old Laestadian preacher was once asked how he would describe this living faith. He considered for quite a while, then answered thoughtfully that it was like spending the whole of your life walking uphill.
The whole of your life walking uphill. It’s not easy to imagine that. You’re ambling casually along a narrow, winding country road in Tornedalen, like the one from Pajala to Muodoslompolo. It’s early summer and everything is fresh and green. The road passes through a forest of weather-beaten pines, and there’s a smell of mud and sun from the bog pools. Capercaillies are eating gravel in the ditches, then take off with wings flapping loudly and disappear into the undergrowth.
Soon you come to the first hill. You notice that you’re starting to climb and you can feel your calf muscles getting tense. But you don’t give it a second thought, it’s only a gentle slope after all. When you reach the top, quite soon, the road will level out again and the forest will be flat and dry on each side, with fluffy white reindeer moss in among the soaring tree trunks.
But you keep on climbing. The hill goes on longer than you thought it would. Your legs grow tired, you slow down and you look more and more impatiently for the crest, which has to come at any moment now, surely.
But it never does come. The road just keeps on going up and up. The forest is the same as before, with stretches of bog and brushwood and here and there an ugly clear-felled patch. But it’s still uphill. It’s as if somebody has broken off the whole landscape and propped it up on one edge. Lifted up the far end and stuck something underneath it, just to annoy you. And you start to suspect that it will keep on going uphill for the rest of the day. And the next day as well.
You keep on climbing stubbornly. The days gradually turn into weeks. Your legs start to feel like lead, and you keep wondering who it was who thought he’d be smart and prop up the landscape on one end. It’s been pretty skillfully done, you have to admit that, grudgingly. But surely it will level out once you get past Parkajoki, there are limits after all. And you come to Parkajoki, but the road is still going uphill and so you think it will be Kitkiöjoki.
And the weeks turn into months. You work your way through them one stride at a time. And the snow starts falling. And it melts, and falls again. And between Kitkiöjoki and Kitkiöjärvi you’re pretty close to giving up. Your legs are like jelly, your hip joints ache, and your last reserves of energy are practically used up.
But you stop for a while to get your breath back, then keep battling on. Muodoslompolo can’t be far away now. Occasionally you come across somebody going in the other direction, that’s inevitable. Somebody skipping along merrily on the way to Pajala. Some of them even have bikes. Sitting on their seats without needing to pedal, freewheeling all the way down. That does raise your doubts, you have to admit that. You have to fight a few inner battles.
Your strides get shorter and shorter. And the years pass. And now you must be nearly there, very nearly there. And it snows again, that’s how it should be.
You peer through the snow flurries, and you think you might be able to see something. You think it might be getting a bit lighter just over there. The forest thins out, opens up. You can make out houses among the trees. It’s the village! It’s Muodoslompolo! And in mid-stride, one last short and shaky stride …
At the funeral the preacher bellows on about how you died in the living faith. No doubt about it. You died in the living faith, sie kuolit elävässä uskossa. You got to Muodoslompolo, we all witnessed it, and now at long last you are sitting on God the Father’s golden luggage carrier, freewheeling down the eternal slope accompanied by fanfares of angels.
* * *
The kid turned out to have a name: his mother called him Niila. Both his parents were strict Christians. Although their house was teeming with kids, there was a dreary, church-like silence wherever you went. Niila had two elder brothers and two younger sisters, and there was another child kicking away in his mother’s stomach. And as every child was a gift from God, there would be even more as time went by.
It was unreal for so many young children to be so quiet. They didn’t have many toys—most of what they did have were made of rough wood by their elder brothers, and unpainted. The kids just sat there playing with them, as silent as fish. It wasn’t only because they had been brought up in a religious way. It was something you found in other Tornedalen families: they’d simply stopped talking. Possibly because they were shy, possibly because they were angry. Possibly because they found talking unnecessary. The parents only opened their mouths when they were eating; at other times they would nod or point when they wanted something, and the children took after them.
I also kept quiet whenever I went to visit Niila. Children have an instinctive feel for that sort of thing. I took my shoes off and left them on the mat in the hall and tip-toed into the kitchen with head bowed and shoulders slightly hunched. I was greeted by a mass of silent eyes, from the rocking chair, from under the table, from by the pot cupboard. Looks that stared, then turned away, sneaked off around the kitchen walls and over the wooden floor but kept coming back to me. I stared back as hard as I could. The face of the youngest girl puckered up with fear, you could see her milk teeth gleaming in her gaping mouth, and tears started to flow. She was sobbing, but even her sobs were silent. Her cheek muscles trembled and she clung to her mother’s beskirted leg with her chubby little hands. Mum was wearing a headscarf even though she was indoors, and had her arms plunged up to the elbows in a mixing bowl. She was kneading vigorously, flour swirled up and was turned into gold dust by a sunbeam. She pretended not to notice that I was there, and Niila took that as a sign of approval. He led me over to a settee where his two elder brothers were exchanging nuts and bolts. Or perhaps it was some sort of game, involving a complicated pattern of shifting nuts and bolts around various compartments in a box. The brothers were growing increasingly annoyed with each other, and without speaking tried to wrench bolts from the other’s hands. A nut fell onto the floor and Niila snapped it up. Quick as a flash the eldest brother grabbed him by the hand and squeezed until Niila was in so much pain he could hardly breathe, and was forced to drop the nut into the transparent plastic box. Whereupon the other brother turned it upside down. A clatter of steel as the contents rolled all over the wooden floor.