Popular Music from Vittula

by Mikael Niemi

  We stopped when we came to the ditch. There was a culvert running underneath the road, made of large concrete tubes. If we bent down, we could see a white circle of light at the other end. Dirty grey melt-water was flowing through the culvert and splashing down at our feet, forming an oval-shaped pond. Next to it were the shrinking mountains of snow piled up by the snow plows, looking like heaps of filthy old bed linen. Niila pointed down into the murky depths.

  “Present,” he said in English, with a smile to the twins.

  They leaned forward. Just under the surface were some big, slimy lumps. From close up we could see there were little things moving inside. Tiny black embryos wriggling about. Some creatures had already forced their way out and were swimming around in the muddy water.

  “From cemetery,” said Niila.

  The twins eyed me skeptically as I endeavored to work out what Niila was trying to say.

  “When the snow melts the water runs through the coffins,” I elaborated in a low voice, “and the souls of the dead are washed along and end up here.”

  Niila found a rusty old coffee tin. The twins stared wide-eyed at the tadpoles in the pool.

  “Angels,” Niila explained.

  “If you rescue them they turn into angels and fly off to heaven,” I added.

  One of the twins took the coffee tin and started to unfasten his patent leather shoes. The other one hesitated, but soon followed suit. They quickly pulled off their socks and their immaculately creased trousers and stood barefoot at the edge of the pool in their baggy American boxer shorts. Then they waded into the mud with short, tentative steps. Within seconds they were going all out to rescue souls. The melted snow was up to their thighs. They were shivering with cold, but gripped by the excitement of the chase. Before long they were shouting with glee and holding up the coffee tin with a few tadpoles swimming around inside. Their lips had taken on a shade of blue.

  Suddenly a dark, slimy mass slithered out of the culvert and dropped into the pool with a splash.

  “Grandma!” exclaimed Niila.

  One of the twins plunged his hands down into the mud, searching around for Grandma. Then he slipped and fell. His head disappeared under the slimy surface. His brother grabbed hold of him but lost his balance and was dragged down as well, flapping frantically with both arms. Spluttering and snorting they crawled back onto dry land, so cold by now that they could barely struggle to their feet. But the coffee tin was still standing in the grass, complete with tadpoles.

  Niila and I were struck dumb by this display of bravery. The twins got dressed again, shivering so violently that we had to help them do up their shirt buttons. They pulled off their underpants and wrung them out, then removed the worst of the filth from their hair with their elegant tortoise-shell combs. Their eyes gleamed as they gazed into the coffee tin. A handful of little tadpoles were circling round and round, their tails wriggling from side to side. Eventually one of the brothers gave us a frozen-stiff but nevertheless hearty handshake.

  “Thank you! Tack! Keytoes!”

  Holding the coffee tin between them, they strode back toward the house, jabbering eagerly in American.

  * * *

  That same afternoon the arguments began over Grandma’s estate. The family waited until the interment rituals were over and the neighbors and preachers had gone home, then all the house doors were closed to outsiders. The family’s various branches, shoots and grafted-on stock assembled in the large kitchen. Documents were laid out on a table. Reading glasses were winkled out of handbags and perched on noses shiny with sweat. Throats were cleared. Lips were moistened with stiff, sharp tongues.

  Then all Hell was let loose.

  Grandma had actually written a will. It was in the notebook she’d left behind, and was comprehensive, to say the least. Detail after detail, page after page, in her shaky handwriting. This and that person should receive this and that under the following conditions. But as the old bird had been preparing her final exit for the last fifteen years or more, and was extremely capricious into the bargain, the pages teemed with alterations, crossings out, and additions in the margin, not to mention a loose sheet covered in cramped endnotes. Some relatives had been disinherited several times over, but then reinstated equally often. Others would only be allowed to inherit if certain conditions were fulfilled, such as declaring their allegiance to the Living Faith and renouncing the demon drink in the presence of the whole family, or begging all present plus Jesus Christ to forgive them a whole host of meticulously detailed sins they had committed over a number of years. The entire text had been signed and witnessed several times, but, alas, not the crucial loose page. Moreover, it was all written in Tornedalen Finnish.

  Simply reading the document aloud in the stifling atmosphere of the kitchen took several hours. Every single word had to be translated into Swedish, standard Finnish, English, German, and Persian, since the daughter living in Växjö had married a Sunni Muslim immigrant. Not least the religious sections caused great difficulties. A fundamental requirement for inheriting was embracing the Living Faith, something most people from Tornedalen interpreted as meaning Laestadianism. After hearing the translation, there were protests from the Sunni Muslim, the son-in-law from New Zealand who was a Jew, and the daughter in Frankfurt who had become a Baptist: all of them argued in turn that their faith was just as much a Living Faith as that of anyone else there. Grandma’s younger brother from Ullatti maintained noisily that as a West Laestadian he was the most Christian of all those present, whereupon an East Laestadian cousin, another one from the Assembly of Truth, and several fundamentalists protested strongly. An old biddy from a Finnish sect immediately went into a liikutuksia and started moaning and jumping around in ecstasy, sweat pouring off her. Others decided to play it safe and began confessing a multitude of sins while flailing their arms about, sobbing, embracing their neighbors and tripping over the rag carpets.

  In the end Isak leapt to his feet and bellowed something about keeping traps shut, in both Swedish and Finnish. A drunken second cousin from Kainulasjärvi was caught red-handed adding a codicil of his own to the will, and was thrown out. A truce was declared and, after a series of protests and counteraccusations, a tense calm ensued. Several requested that the confessions they had just made, together with other proof of their allegiance to the Living Faith, should be recorded in the minutes, and this was accepted after a vote had been taken.

  When the reading of the will was complete, the atmosphere was one of total and utter confusion. A laid-back engineer from Uppsala in the field of newfangled computing techniques suggested that the whole of the will should be put into a punched card program, so that with the aid of logic a just distribution of benefits could be achieved by running the program a number of times. Others immediately maintained that ummikko, a southerner, and in any case only a member of the family by marriage, would be well advised to keep his big mouth shut when important family matters were being discussed. Brothers and sisters, cousins and third cousins then huddled together in a series of small clusters to discuss tactics. The air was thick with whispers and mumblings. Feelers were put out, proposals made and rejected, alliances formed and dismantled, more or less hidden threats dispatched by messengers from one huddle to another. A few of the men withdrew for a pee in the garden and came back in suspiciously elevated spirits. Looks were exchanged. Sleeves were rolled up. The minutes-taker, a balding civil service clerk, tapped his coffee cup with a pencil and called the meeting to order. People thronged toward the kitchen table, jabbering in excitement and piously urging everybody else to be quiet.

  “Hrm. Hrrruuuuummm …”

  As far as the clerk could see, from his position as a neutral observer, the estate—that is, the total value of the smallholding and cottage, outbuildings, land, household goods, cash, bank accounts, and a small area of forest—should be divided into one hundred forty-three equal parts, apart from the spinning wheel, which had been specifically bequeathed to the next-door neighbor’s wife
.

  A storm of agitated voices.

  The official observer, a retired customs officer, requested that a reservation should be recorded in the minutes. In his view, admittedly not a very significant one although it was an opinion free of any partisan prejudice, the previous speaker had omitted to take into account the codicil on the loose sheet, paragraph three, about the evil and sinful nature of southern Sweden, and hence the smallholding, cottage, outbuildings, and household goods should go to the deceased’s son Isak, while the remainder of the estate should be divided equally between those members of the family who were officially registered as domiciled within the constituency of Pajala.

  The noise grew louder still.

  The next-door neighbor’s wife asked where the spinning wheel was, but was told in no uncertain terms to shut up.

  A nephew who worked in the iron ore mines in Kiruna maintained that his home town could hardly be designated as southern Sweden, and, in any case, he had a summer cottage in nearby Sattajärvi and hence demanded to be categorized as a citizen of Pajala.

  Another nephew from Kieksiäisvaara pointed out that the previous speaker had overlooked the paragraph on page fourteen in which the LKAB mines in Kiruna had been dismissed as the Babylon of the North, its employees condemned to the eternal fires of Hell, and that an illegally built property in Sattajärvi did nothing to alter that.

  The drunken cousin started hammering on the door with a lump of firewood, demanding to be let in.

  The Jew grabbed the Sunni Muslim by the collar, but was thrust back into the rocking chair. They shouted and cursed at each other while their wives stood by, translating. More and more of those present wanted to speak, and the clerk’s pencil-tapping on his coffee cup was drowned in the uproar.

  Then a fist was raised. A Sunday-scrubbed laborer’s fist rising like a mushroom from the black-clothed fray. It swayed back and forth on its sturdy stalk, twisting around like the head of an owl. No doubt it was intended as a gesture, implying that enough was enough.

  Immediately another identical mushroom sprung up. And another. A whole crop. People shouted each other down. Curses rang out in every conceivable language and dialect, threats swished through the air like whiplashes, and the house started shaking like the walls of Babylon.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  I shall stop at this point out of consideration for all those present. I shall desist from describing the punches, the bleeding lips, the scratches, the nosebleeds, the false teeth sent spinning though the air, the smashed spectacles, or the sly kicks and throttle-holds. I shall refrain from listing such weapons as frying pans, kitchen chairs, Wellington boots, shovels, dog bowls, and the Finnish family Bible. I shall omit all the un-Christian expressions, all the swearwords, especially the endless stream of those in Tornedalen Finnish, all the devastating accusations of stupidity, ugliness, obesity, inbreeding, senility, mental illness, or perverted sexual practices that were exchanged in overexcited voice registers.

  I shall merely record that it was Gehenna.

  CHAPTER 7

  On rock music, its effect on the fair sex, and the dangers of entering a room without knocking

  It was getting dark when Niila came over to our house, his hand pressed against his shirt front. He was still wearing his best suit, but was a little shaken after the afternoon’s encounters with his many relations. After a series of threats to call in the police and a long succession of counterthreats, they had considered the associated legal costs and decided to keep the matter within the family. The engineer from Uppsala had been given an opportunity to describe in detail the mechanics of punched card programming. A strict ban on any further consumption of alcohol within the boundaries of the smallholding had been announced. The Pajala cottage hospital had been required to dress the wounds of a surprisingly large number of people who had fallen and injured themselves. Running repairs on spectacles and false teeth had been made with insulating tape and superglue.

  My sister was out, so we sneaked into her room. Niila unbuttoned his shirt and produced the lukewarm single. I solemnly placed it on the record player and lowered the pick-up arm. Turned up the volume. There was a faint scratching noise.

  Then CRASH! A thunderclap. A powder keg exploded and blew up the room. All oxygen was sucked out, we were hurled against the walls, squashed into the wallpaper, and the whole house spun around at breakneck speed. We were like stamps on an envelope, all our blood rushed into our hearts, formed a gut-red clump—then suddenly everything changed direction, torrents raged into fingers and toes, red spurts of blood to every extremity of our bodies till we gaped cod-eyed.

  An eternity later the spinning stopped. Air was sucked back in through the keyhole and we splatted down on the floor in tiny damp heaps.

  Rock ’n’ roll music.

  Beatles.

  It was too good to be true.

  We couldn’t speak for ages. We just lay there bleeding, drained, happy in the echoing silence. Then I stood up and played it one more time.

  Same thing again. Incredible. This couldn’t possibly be a human creation.

  One more time.

  In stormed Big Sister. She was furious, dug her talons into my arm and screeched so loud her chewing gum embedded itself in my eye. What the hell were we doing in her room? Fucking bastard kids, and she raised her ever-so-feminine arm to deliver a fatal karate blow.

  Then she froze. The music beat her to it. It forced itself into her, swelled up like a prick inside her, spurted red all round. Magic! Three petrified mammals and a blaring portable gramophone.

  When the record was finished, she was the one who started it again. That’s the kind of music it was. You couldn’t stop.

  * * *

  That night Niila and I biked to the River Torne. Out onto the bridge, high over the water, balanced on the narrow concrete thread stretched taut between the distant banks.

  The whole river was still frozen, but the heat generated by the day had melted the snow of the endless forests, streams had started pumping through arteries under the icebound coffin lids enclosing the landscape, and the depths pulsated with new vigor. Muscles had swollen, and a thawed-out heart had started beating once more.

  And now, at this very moment, the river breathes in and its rib-cage expands, pressing up against its three-feet-thick case, filling lungs and blood vessels like an escape artist intent on breaking out, digging in its heels, swelling up, slowly forcing up thousands upon thousands of icy tons, inch by inch. We don’t see it, but it’s going on all the time, subterranean, as tense as a dream, a surface buckling, a young man imprisoned but growing and growing until he fills the whole boiler with meat and muscles.

  Another half inch.

  We don’t see it, we feel it. Maybe it’s the air, the air pressure, a shudder in the sea of light stretching away towards Jupukka, the outline of a crow that suddenly turns back, or maybe it’s something we feel in the pier of the bridge, through the concrete, a shimmering shriek of water.

  Breathing in. Melted snow. The crow turns one more time, inexplicable.

  Then it happens. Two terse crackling sounds. And then the snow-white surface splits asunder, cracking and splintering. A torrent of black water. A rumbling, new cracks, shattering axe-blows all over the mass of ice. Swelling blisters split open. Movement everywhere, everything starts moving. The whole of this incredible marble floor.

  A minute later, and the river’s risen more than two feet. Banks are flooded, black fingers of water probe their way forward. Enormous floes, a hundred tons, split wide open as everything round about forces its way in. They’re thrust up on end, like glittering whales leaping then plunging back down into the sparkling deep. They’re forced one over the other, like continents in the age of drift. They break up, low and bellow. Beat their foreheads on the bridge parapet, are crunched down to clinking icicles. Noises you never hear otherwise, crashing and banging, creaking, sizzling, rustling, clanging, squeaking, it’s non-stop music. And we’re in the midst of it.


  Then the locals arrive. Park at the end of the bridge and come running out to join us, lining up along the iron railings; old men and old women, young lads and young lasses and little girls and tiny tots held tightly onto. Cousins and neighbors and old pals and even solitaries, as if the river had gone around the village and bade them all to attend, as if they’d all gotten the urge at the same time.

  We just stand there. There’s not much to add. We simply watch and listen and feel the brittle concrete shuddering under our feet. Ice floes hurtling past, one after another, there’s no end to them, an endless crashing, broken and chipped. And then we feel the bridge getting dragged away from its foundations, it’s melting away, it starts to swing around upstream like a colossal icebreaker, we stand forward as it batters its way though the pack-ice, enormously powerful, at the start of a long and adventurous journey.

  “Rock ’n’ roll music!” I yell to Niila.

  He knows what I mean.

  * * *

  Once you’ve discovered the power the music has, there’s no going back. It’s like the first time you tried wanking. You can’t stop. You’ve opened the bottle and the foam comes spurting out with such force that it rips the door off its hinges and leaves a gaping hole behind. We all remember those films about submarines where the depth charges hit their target and men covered in oil rush up to the watertight steel doors in the bulkhead and try to close them, but they’re thrown about like bits of bark by the surging mass of water.

  The College of Music at Nacka, on the other hand, was like practicing swimming on dry ground.

  A bit like a spindly old schoolteacher teaching in primary school with wall charts and hands covered in chalk, trying to teach young lads how to masturbate. And to round it all off she sits at the harmonium and sings pedagogical wanking songs.

  Niila started coming over much more often than he used to, and he always brought the record with him. As a result Sis suddenly turned into a human being and let us play it on her gramophone, as long as she could listen as well. Somehow or other, music brought us closer together, and it dawned on her that I wouldn’t be a snotty-nosed kid for the rest of my life. Sometimes her friends were there as well. They sat on her bed, or on cushions on the floor: good-looking senior school girls who smelled nice of hair spray, chewing gum noisily. They wore tight jumpers, and had breasts. Mascara eyes. They got the measure of Niila and me—little brats—and tried to tease us and make us blush. Asked if we had girlfriends. If we’d ever kissed anybody. Described what to do with your tongue—it was pretty disgusting, enough to turn you on, although we were in our latency period and didn’t really understand the point of the other sex.