by Mikael Niemi
I managed to borrow an acoustic guitar from an uncle who’d bought it while on holiday in Bulgaria. There followed a hectic period, buying some simplified sheet music from a shop in Luleå; first attempts at the mysterious art of tuning, short and stiff boyish fingers; figures and dots that were supposed to produce notes but didn’t; more insight into the mysterious art of tuning; the culturally alien climate in Niila’s house that forced him to practice in our garage until the winter cold set in and we had to move down into our boiler room, poking cotton wool under the strings so that my parents wouldn’t hear and start telling tales; the first chord that was in fact E minor but sounded like somebody jumping up and down on a tin roof; the second that was A minor but sounded like two people jumping up and down on a tin roof, me singing to Niila’s accompaniment with such neverending pauses when he needed to change chords that I ran out of breath; his total lack of humor in circumstances like this, which more than once led to an exchange of blows; my total inability to guess, even after eight attempts, the identity of the first tune Niila taught himself, and then having to dive and rescue the guitar a split second before it smashed onto the concrete floor.
The annoying thing was that I taught myself how to play in a fraction of the time. My fingers are long and supple, it’s a family trait. My hand felt at home on the neck of the guitar, scampering up and down like a spider and spinning chords with an ease that astonished me. Before Niila had managed to produce his first clean chord, I had learned the whole of The House of the Rising Sun, and then succeeded by hook or by crook in getting my hands on a book about the acoustic jungle of barré-chords. Niila always left the guitar in the cellar, and as soon as he left for home I could let myself go.
Naturally, I couldn’t let Niila know how good I was. He’d have been devastated. Even at his age he was starting to show signs of his pitch-black, self-deprecating depressions. In between, he was the best there was, completely deaf to how awful he sounded, cocky and big-headed and certain of his impending fame. I pretended to have a go at the guitar occasionally, and played badly on purpose, and I’d see him sniggering so hard through his nose that snot would start dripping down. There were times when I very nearly gave the game away, it’s true—there was a limit even to my patience. But I managed to restrain myself, hard though it was.
* * *
It was now in the junior school that a handful of boys in our class started to take snuff. You could see on their jeans the round marks of the lids of the tins, and during breaks there was a strong and telltale smell of tea in the air. Being unused to it, the boys became intoxicated and their pupils dilated. They’d sit around in corners shouting and yelling, then march down the corridors calling the girls whores and floozies. After PE they’d stand in the showers pulling back their foreskins for the others’ delectation. Rumors started spreading about the ones who’d had it away. Those of us boys who were later developers or just shyer would look on in horror. The change had come suddenly. The old mates of yore were suddenly turned on by snuff and hormones. A bit like junkies, cantankerous, unpredictable. Instinctively, we kept in the background.
The more snuff they took, the more disgusting the girls thought it was. Snuff caught between their teeth and stained their fingers brown, and what looked like spit-covered used teabags stuck to the walls and in the washbasins. It was forbidden to take snuff in class, but they couldn’t care less. Just squashed the wad a bit flatter when the bell rang for lessons.
On one occasion one of the snuff-takers was unexpectedly summoned to the front of the class. He was supposed to give an oral report on something he’d forgotten about. We all sat in expectation—the moment he opened his mouth he’d be found out and told off by the teacher, which was always exciting and interesting to watch. The boy was scared stiff, that was obvious. He turned white in the face, and was trembling. Then he started mumbling. The whole class stared at him, agog. He barely opened his mouth, and was exhorted by the teacher to speak up. He did as he was told, but held a piece of paper up in front of his mouth.
“You haven’t been taking snuff, have you?” she asked.
A shake of the head.
“You know that’s forbidden!”
A quick nod.
“Let me have a look!”
He stood rooted to the spot while the teacher lifted up his lip. A few seconds passed. Then to everybody’s surprise, he was told to go and sit down. No shouting, no accusations, no threats of being reported and sent to the headmaster.
Everybody was disappointed and perplexed. When the next break came all the class gathered round the boy and asked what had happened. He was quite calm about it.
“I swallowed the snuff,” he said casually.
He was talked about for ages afterward.
* * *
As early as in class six Niila’s awkward relationship with girls started to become clear. It had nothing to do with his appearance, even if he was no beauty, with his typically Finnish potato of a nose, prominent cheekbones, and hair that was always greasy, no matter how often he washed it. He was lankier than I, and perhaps a bit jerky, fumbling in his movements. But he wasn’t repulsive. On the contrary, he radiated a sort of energy that prowled around like a caged animal, looking for a way of escape. It would be an exaggeration to call it an inner fire, perhaps; but it was something warm and vulnerable. It rankled within him and the girls could sense it. He had will power, a root forming in his backbone.
Girls are different, of course. Many look for stability, they want boys who get up early in the morning, boys who know how to handle tools and weapons, who will build a house of their own on their parents’ land in rural Anttis or Jarhois and prepare a potato bed with Uncle’s Rotavator. That sort of pure-wool girl would be uncomfortable when she came up against Niila. I saw it happen several times over the years. He frightened them off with his silence and his restless eyes, or even worse, he gave the impression of being superior. I tried to teach him the basics of courtship—not that I knew much about it myself, but I wasn’t quite as hopeless as he was. The fundamental rule was to pick girls who liked you. Incredible as it might seem there was always somebody with just a little bit of interest. That was the type to go for. Niila always did the opposite, and was always falling in love with girls who were bad for him. Girls who wouldn’t even look at him, who made fun of him to their loudly giggling cronies, girls who were far too pretty or too cruel and who played with him like a cat with a young bird. It was painful to watch. All the time there were other girls in the background, not my type, it’s true, but there nonetheless. Girls who were adventurous. Who were willing to take risks, cling to the edge of a precipice by their fingertips, who were willing to launch themselves into the night sky. Artistic girls, thoughtful girls who wrote poems for serious girls’ magazines, who wondered about God and sado-masochism, girls who read books for adults, who sat listening in the kitchen when the men were talking politics. That was the type he needed. A mature, strong Communist from somewhere like Aareavaara.
This was before sex had really entered the scene, after all. The initial stages of puberty when the old pecking order and groups of chums began to be replaced by a new order, based on attractiveness. Nervous, hunchbacked little girls could suddenly turn into slim beauties with high cheekbones. Little boys with dimples and curly locks could turn into big-nosed baboons with prominent teeth. A morose young lad from Erkheikki could suddenly start talking and develop an understated but irresistible charm while a talkative lass from Pajala could sink into fits of inexplicable depression and gradually become somebody you no longer wanted anything to do with.
I was one of those children who grew uglier as I got older, but my charisma grew stronger. Niila became uglier to look at and less pleasant to be with as well, and music was probably his only lifeline.
I tried to teach him the trick of thinking about death whenever you came up against a girl. It’s a trick I’ve used myself many times over the years, and it is surprisingly effective. Before so very many
years have passed, I’m going to die. My body will decay and disappear for ever. The same will happen to the girl, we’ll all be no more. In a thousand years our lives and all our sweetest dreams and worst fears will be nothing but dust and ashes. So what difference does it make if she turns you down or is snooty or laughs in your face? Thanks to that cynical attitude I’ve occasionally managed to achieve remarkable results when it comes to love—dared to be with lethally beautiful women, for instance, and sometimes even been allowed to play with them.
This was the only piece of advice Niila ever listened to. He started to think about death more than he did about girls. To be blunt, the kid became insufferable. He was going to need my help shortly, but neither of us knew anything about that as yet.
CHAPTER 10
On an unwelcome nocturnal visit, an old skeleton bearing gifts, and how to get out of tight corners
A switch was thrown somewhere in my body, and the journey started in earnest. Puberty. It was the spring term in class six, and nothing dramatic happened: I just became intensely aware that a change was taking place. It wasn’t anything in my body, no visible signs as yet, but it was in my mind. Something was happening there, somebody was taking up residence in there. Somebody reminiscent of me, but somebody else even so. A certain whimsicality entered my life and I couldn’t always handle it. An impatience that I didn’t understand. And an unexpected, a really astonishingly intense interest in sex.
One afternoon at the end of the spring term when I was still in class six, I was lying on my bed leafing through a copy of Cute Chicks. I’d bought it furtively while on a visit to Luleå where nobody knew me and so couldn’t start badgering me. There was nothing worse than getting knowing looks from middle-aged ladies with perms in the local Co-op, who knew my mum and dad and whose pretty daughters went to the same school as I did. Buying Cute Chicks was an admission that you were horny. That meant that you were exposed, you’d put yourself at a disadvantage, and you might start blushing and stammering.
Suddenly, there he was in my room. I gave a start, dropped the magazine and raised my knees to conceal the bulge in my trousers.
“Bloody hell! I thought it was Mum!”
Niila didn’t say a word. He had slipped into the room in his usual soundless way, and he was standing as motionless as a wall. I tried to cover up my embarrassment, and decided that attack was the best form of defense. Smirking loutishly I opened up the week’s centerfold. Black lace bra, come-hither look, and red high-heeled boots.
“Why don’t you stick her up on the wall at home?” I suggested crudely.
Niila recoiled at the impossible thought. But he couldn’t take his eyes off the girl. He made no attempt to take the magazine, so I went through it for him, showing him picture after picture.
“How about that, she’s tied him down! And look at that, rubber underwear! And I bet it was you who wrote this letter: I lost my virginity at the Confirmation camp.”
I could see Niila was trembling deep down. But at the same time he was stiff, negative, determined to maintain his dignity. His head was vibrating slightly, as if he were tensing his neck muscles as hard as he could. The more scared he became, the more my own shame died away, he could feel it instead of me. I pressed the rubbishy rag into his hands.
“Come on, choose a chick, Niila! One of these in the magazine, which one do you like?”
It was as if all the air went out of him. He flopped down onto a chair and sighed, leaned forward as if he felt ill—quite common behavior among shy residents of Tornedalen when they feel obliged to say something. He cleared his throat and swallowed in order to make room in his mouth for his voice.
“Grandma …,” he said. Silence.
“Well, what about her?” I asked, trying to help him.
“She … she’s dead …”
“Yes, I know. That was ages ago.”
“But she’s come back!”
And now that the blockage had cleared all the rest came rushing out, jerkily, one wheezy sentence after another. I listened to Niila baring his soul with a growing feeling of horror.
Grandma had started haunting them. Almost three years after her decease she’d returned to her old home. Although she’d been given a heroic burial in true Laestadian style she’d not found peace.
The first time he’d seen her she was just a blurred stain, a bit like the spots of light you can see in the outer edges of your eye. Then he started feeling a gentle breeze as well, as if somebody was breathing over him. As time passed she’d become more and more solid, filled out, and even started making noises. She gradually took back her old place in the family. She waddled stiff-hipped down the attic staircase, frail but substantial. Several nights she’d sat at the kitchen table, mixing mashed potatoes and carrots into what remained of the meat stew, then ladling the resulting gray goo into her mouth with loud sucking noises. She smelled something awful. Sweet old-woman’s sweat mixed with odors from a fusty, subterranean world.
The odd thing was that only Niila seemed to notice her. Once, she’d sat down on the floor in the middle of the kitchen, catching flies then stirring them into the bowl of hash on the table. Everybody apart from Niila had gone on eating with undiminished appetite.
Niila shared an upstairs bedroom with his elder brother Johan. His brother had growing pains and therefore needed lots and lots of sleep. He slept like men do, deep and to the accompaniment of snores. Niila, on the other hand, was a very light sleeper.
One night quite recently Niila had been in the middle of a vivid dream. An extremely vivid dream, he repeated with a slight blush that made it clear what he was talking about. But his pleasure had been interrupted by an alarm bell, and he’d opened his eyes with a start.
Grandma was leaning over him. She was furious, her cheeks deeply wrinkled, her toothless mouth wide open and struggling to produce inaudible words, and a bitter liquid was dripping down onto his face. Niila had screamed so loudly that Johan had stopped snoring and turned over. But the ghost had disappeared by then.
And now, last night, he’d been woken up again. This time the old woman had wrapped her talons around his neck. They had felt as cold as iron. She’d started squeezing, but didn’t have enough strength, and he’d managed, though panic-stricken, to kick himself free. He’d spent the rest of the night locked in the bathroom with the light on and armed with a sheath knife. He’d heard clicking noises coming from the bolt and seen luminous gas drifting in under the door, but it had disappeared when he’d splashed hot water on it.
Niila pulled back his shirt collar and I could see a purplish line across his neck, as if somebody had pulled a rope over it. It was reminiscent of frostbite, a fading furrow in his skin.
I’d grown increasingly horrified as Niila told his story. When he’d finished, I wanted to say something, try to console him a little, maybe cheer him up. But I couldn’t. His expression was vacant, drained; he looked like an old man.
“This is too big,” I mumbled.
Niila’s head quivered even more. Then he produced the old Beatles EP and handed it to me. He wanted me to have it after he’d gone, he said curtly: he didn’t own anything else of value.
I told him to shut up, but I could feel the repugnance rising inside me. Fear was running up my legs, and I stood up.
“You can sleep here with me.”
“Sleep?” he whispered, as if the word had no meaning.
I told him it was the only chance he had. As soon as everybody had gone to bed, Niila should sneak out of the window, climb down the fire escape and spend the night in my room. He could go back at dawn, when the danger had passed. No need to tell any of our parents, as long as we were careful.
Then a couple of spades would be acquired, a grave in Pajala cemetery opened up, and a sharpened fir branch would be thrust with great force through a twisted old biddy’s heart.
Niila didn’t have TV at home and therefore didn’t have access to the most basic of educational enlightenment, and couldn’t agree. I could
see the problem, especially as spring nights were far too light.
That meant there was only one possible alternative. Both Niila and I recognized that it had to be faced up to. One of us would be forced to propose it sooner or later. I drew the short straw.
“We’ll have to go to Russi-Jussi.”
Niila turned pale. Closed his eyes. Grabbed hold of his neck as if he’d placed it in a noose.
Russi-Jussi was one of Tornedalen’s last itinerant peddlers of the old school, and one of the most scary people for miles around. Crow-like, hunched, as wrinkled as a seed potato, his old-man’s cheeks were covered in moles. His nose was beak-like, his eyebrows joined, and his lips were bloated and girlish, red and damp. He was aloof and sardonic, malevolent and vindictive. Somebody to avoid if at all possible.
This scarecrow of a man would pedal his way round the forest villages on a lady’s bicycle with a suitcase made of stiffened cardboard on the luggage carrier. He would march into people’s kitchens with the audacity of a council official and pile on their tables shoelaces, zips, hair lotion, linen handkerchiefs, razor blades, cotton reels, and mouse traps. But concealed in the back of his case, in a special pocket, were the items that made him welcome—one might even say sought after. Little jars containing a gooey brown concoction called nopat in Tornedalen Finnish. The substance was renowned for being able to arouse the sexual urge of the most decrepit old biddy and the most impotent of drooping drips. They say the vital ingredients came from a mushroom that Russi-Jussi harvested in the north of Finland, and, according to witnesses, it must have contained the most remarkable of hallucinogenic substances.
Jussi was born an illegitimate child at the end of the last century, in what was then the Russian province of Finland. His mother was a maid and had inculcated in him a hatred of the landed gentry and the rest of the upper classes, who had the privilege of taking advantage of their serving women with no threat of consequences, and in 1918 he had entered the Finnish civil war as a soldier for the reds. When they were defeated, like so many of his comrades he had moved to the workers’ paradise in the newly created Soviet Union. But before long Stalin came to power, and since he was a foreigner and hence a spy, Jussi had been arrested and sent to a labor camp in Siberia. It became a center for Finnish and Tornedalen comrades who tried hard to convince themselves that they had been victims of a terrible mistake, and that in his infinite wisdom Uncle Joe would shortly realize this, and at any moment now release them, amid celebrations and rejoicings and an acknowledgement of mistakes made plus gratitude for heroic contributions to the new world order.