by Mikael Niemi
Breadloaf was forced to lean against the wall in order not to fall down. Kaunisvaara was seeing double in the one eye he was still using, and was also compelled to hold his eyelids up with his forefingers. Both had fallen silent. The pain barrier had been passed, and the poison offered nothing more than death and paralysis. Kaunisvaara’s arm collapsed, and his eyelid closed. Silence. But just when everybody had concluded it was all over, he announced that since his arm no longer did what he told it, somebody would have to help him. One of his mates raised the lad’s mug to his lips, and emptied it into the void. Breadloaf wasn’t answering questions as his powers of hearing had now failed him, but he still understood sign language. He could still raise his mug, but was unable to swallow and hence was forced to pour the stuff out slowly and let it find its own way down his throat. I proposed that the match should be declared a draw. The Kaunisvaara supporters were quick to declare vociferously that such cowardice was unthinkable, and besides, no Pajala upstart was going to rob them of the championship that was so obviously theirs.
I filled the mugs yet again. They were duly emptied as before. I was really worried now, and insisted that as they were both unconscious, the championship should be shared. The Kaunis supporters reacted by lifting the eyelids of their hero and demonstrating that his pupils were not fixed, but were in fact eager to continue with the contest. Somebody yelled into Breadloaf’s ear and asked if he wanted to keep going, in which case he should open his mouth. This he did, and another mug was poured in.
But now the last signs of life had faded away. Heavy-handed attempts were made from both sides to revive them. Breadloaf slumped at what looked like an uncomfortable angle, and the lad from Kaunisvaara started drooling with his tongue hanging out. As a result of my urging they were both laid down on their sides with their tongues hanging out, whereupon it was discovered that they had both wet themselves.
Erkki inshishted on having another mug. Like his brother, he found it hardest to speak when he was drunk—but even so, I gathered what he wanted and served him up another round. He emptied his mug, and then announced in Finnish, with more than a few intrusive consonants, that the champion boozer of Pajala and district was the representative of the Sattarjärvi Forest Sami.
Supporters of both Kaunisvaara and Pajala stared at me. I stared in turn at Niila. He nodded and said that it was right. Erkki had drunk one more mug than all the others. Erkki grinned and stammered in a hoarse voice something about this having been the most he’d ever drunk in his life. And whether or not he was a Social Democrat or a Communist, that was worth thinking about, but what he most needed now was a pee.
* * *
Niila and I helped Erkki out through the hatch in the roof. The Kaunisvaara supporters were thunderstruck and stayed put, started drinking to drown their sorrow and talked about the latest case of suicide that autumn. The Pajala boys realized that Breadloaf had thrown up and cleaned out his mouth to make sure he didn’t choke. A sweet and sour smell indicated that mash diarrhea had already arrived. The fallen Kaunisvaara hero looked worryingly pale, but it was assumed his strong skier’s heart would see him through. The others were snoring like pigs, their eyes either open or closed, blissfully unaware of the morrow.
Outside the sewage treatment works Erkki proceeded to paint the autumn night with steaming brush strokes. I congratulated him heartily, and then had a sudden idea. I explained solemnly that as he was now the youth champion, Erkki would receive the surprise award, namely a position as drummer in the most promising local rock band.
Niila opened his mouth but said nothing after I’d given him a nudge. Erkki said he’d barely even seen a photo of a drum. I assured him that if he could hold his willy and paint pictures in pee as he was doing now, he should be able to handle a drumstick. Erkki laughed so much the brush strokes broke in several places, and it was agreed.
* * *
And so the following Monday during lunch, the rock band was formed. It was a memorable day for several reasons. Although it was two days since the contest took place, Erkki was still hung over. But that was nothing compared to the state of his brother, Breadloaf, who signed the pledge over and over again in between fits of nausea, and actually stuck to it for a few weeks. The Kaunisvaara lad fought his attacks of sickness by means of a ruthlessly hard training program: running through the biggest swamps he could find, wearing his father’s Wellington boots with stones packed into the legs to make them heavier; chopping up several truckloads of firewood, alternately using his left and right arms; and bicycling to school in Pajala with no saddle so that he couldn’t cheat by resting, and breathing only every other time to strengthen his lungs.
At first Erkki wanted to back out when he discovered that playing the drums involved using two drumsticks. That was twice as many as he’d expected. In the end, however, he reluctantly sat down behind the school’s drum set, grasped hold of the sticks as if they were hatchets, and started to chop down the set. It fell over as if struck by a tornado—the stand, the cymbals, the lot. Erkki remained seated. Stared into space for a while. Then claimed his hangover was getting better already. Duly impressed, he picked everything up and set it all to rights, then tried again with similarly disastrous results. And now his headache had gone more or less completely. Very remarkable. If he played for a few more minutes, no doubt the shaking and sweating would stop as well.
I tried to get a beat going with the bass to Erkki’s non-existent rhythm, Niila and Holgeri filled in the holes with their guitars. We didn’t mention the word “key,” we hadn’t reached that level yet. Erkki seemed to be totally unaware of the rest of us, was going cross-eyed, sticking his tongue out, and twisting his mouth into strange shapes. Already he had mastered the imbecilic look that lots of drummers assume when they’re playing, even though they look normal in other circumstances.
All of a sudden, in the middle of Holgeri’s guitar solo, Erkki stopped and loosened his belt. We lost the thread and stopped playing as well. Erkki said this rock music lark was the most enjoyable thing he’d ever tried, including getting drunk and masturbating. He was unable to compare it with sexual intercourse because he hadn’t yet had that experience, but no doubt it would be irrelevant because he’d always suspected that sex is overrated anyway.
I asked him to try again, but this time attempt to hit the drum with regular intervals between each contact. Erkki was doubtful, but set off again. The result was even worse, a hellish row. Splinters of wood flew off the drumsticks, the skin was pockmarked, the screws in the stand worked loose and the whole thing collapsed again. I looked at Niila. He shook his head. We had never been anywhere near such an unrhythmical and infernal commotion as this. Holgeri had already unplugged his guitar and was packing up. Niila did the same. I wondered how we could get rid of Erkki without making him angry. Perhaps tell him the award had only been for one day. That would be best. He was mistaken if he’d thought anything else.
But Erkki beat us all to it. He stood up before I could get around to saying anything, and marched out of the door with a cheery “So long.”
The next second I heard jeering coming from outside. Quiet but triumphant. I looked out of the door and saw that Erkki was being held down by Uffe and his mate Jouko. Several of their underlings were standing by, watching. Suddenly a couple of them jumped on Holgeri and forced him down to his knees in a neck-lock.
“Now, you bloody pansies!” they snarled.
I was terrified. My stomach turned inside out, my blood vessels contracted in preparation for the attack. Uncertainty was always the worst. Never knowing how far they would go this time. How many bruises? How much pain? How long before Greger turned up?
There were screams from outside. Shrill and piercing. What the hell were they doing to Erkki? Surely they weren’t using knives?
I felt as if I were going to die. Then I noticed them crawling on the ground. Jouko was blinking over and over again with blood pouring from his skinned, split eyebrows. Uffe was drooling and collecting the remai
ns of his front teeth.
The underlings backed away, white with terror. Erkki limped back into the hall with blood trickling down his chin from his lower lip.
“They won’t bother us again,” he said calmly.
CHAPTER 15
In which tongues are loosened after the Saturday sauna, and what every young man ought to know
In our family we used to have a sauna every Saturday evening, a tradition that no doubt went back to prehistoric times. As time went by my sister wanted to be alone in the sauna—that was when she’d started to grow titties; when she’d finished, Mum and Dad and I would go in. We’d sweat all the dirt out of us, then wash ourselves with soap and scratch away old bits of skin and scrub one another’s backs until we were as red as skinned rabbits. The only thing you needed to think about when you were in the sauna was not to fart. That was also something that had been handed down from generation to generation, and it was best not to if you wanted to avoid being thrown out.
Last of all we’d create a final head of steam so that the remaining bits of soap dissolved, and when we finally rinsed everything away with cold water, we were cleaner than it was really possible to be.
On this particular night, though, everything was different. I realized afterward that Dad had planned it all; there was something in the air. Nervousness. We sat down in the changing room, where the washing machine was standing in one corner. Mum was in a hurry to get away: it was obvious she wanted to leave us on our own. There was a fire burning and crackling away in the stove, making it cozy. A fir log occasionally spit lumps of charcoal out onto the floor, and Dad put them out with his bare feet. We each grilled a sausage or two and really enjoyed them—we were hungry after all that sweating that had drained us of salt. Dad finished off his post-sauna beer, then went over to grog: Koskenkorva schnapps and lemonade. He hadn’t said a word from start to finish.
I would normally have gone and left Dad in peace. I knew he liked to be on his own, and enjoyed sitting for hours, looking at the flames and filling his Ugrian brain with melancholy thoughts. On this occasion, though, I had a feeling that something was up. There was that intuitive contact that often develops between father and son when you’re not chattering away all the time. You turn into a couple of bucks, smelling the scent of each other’s sweat, listening to each other breathing. You tense your muscles, then you relax and listen to the soft messages relayed through skin and blood by your digestive systems. You become organic. Strip yourselves naked. Iron out the wrinkled everyday phrases from your brows.
Dad cleared his throat, but then said nothing for several minutes. Cleared his throat once more, to soften up his tongue. Drank. I put another lump of wood on the fire. Watched the condensation trickling down the cold glass.
“Anyway, now that you’re not a little lad any more …” he eventually started, speaking in Finnish.
I didn’t reply. Thought how I hadn’t yet grown a beard, but on the other hand had started to get a bit cheeky and my feet were getting bigger every day, some of the first signs of puberty.
“I expect you’ve sometimes wondered … asked yourself all sorts of questions …”
I glanced at him in astonishment, and could see his jaw muscles throbbing.
“Asked yourself … about life … about people.… Now that you’ve grown a bit older you ought to know …”
He paused, took another swig, and avoided looking at me. He’s going to go on about the birds and the bees, I thought. Condoms.
“What I’m going to say is just between you and me. Confidential. Man to man.”
Now he looked at me for the first time, bleary-eyed. I nodded. He stared back at the fire.
“My father, your grandad that is, was a real stallion when he was a young man. That’s why I have two half sisters,” he said abruptly. “They’re my age, and have children of their own. That means that around here, in the Pajala area, you have five first cousins you didn’t know about: three of them are girls, and you ought to know who they are so as to avoid in-breeding.”
He spelled out who they were. One of them was in my year at school, and was pretty.
“Anyway, another thing. There are two families in this district that have caused us a lot of harm, and you’re going to have to hate them for ever and a day. In one case it all goes back to a perjury suit in 1929, and in the other it’s got to do with some grazing rights that a neighbor cheated your grandad’s father out of in 1902, and both these injustices have to be avenged at all costs, whenever you get the chance; and you must keep going until them bastards have confessed and paid, and also gone down on their bare knees to beg for forgiveness.”
Dad summarized what had happened over the years. There were summonses and countersummonses, false witness, bribery and corruption, fisticuffs, threatening letters, damage to property, attempted blackmail, and on one occasion the kidnapping of a promising elkhound that had its ears branded with a knife, like a reindeer. There was no limit to the outrages these madmen had perpetrated on us, and although we’d exacted as much revenge as we could, we were still a long way in debit. The worst thing was that these families were spreading false propaganda about us, and were greatly exaggerating the modest little counterattacks we’d managed to pull off. The upshot was that I’d better be on my guard when I went to dance halls and other public gatherings where vengeance could suddenly leap out of the bushes or from dark corners, with the most terrible consequences.
He named the families, and spelled out all their offshoots and all those who’d married and sometimes changed their last names as a result, but whose blood was nevertheless the same poisonous sort as before. Once again I was given the name of a fellow pupil, a skinny little chap from one of the outlying small villages who didn’t seem to have paid me any attention at all so far. Dad said that was just a front: they appeared to be quite harmless and instilled a false sense of security, and then your back was exposed. More than one of our relatives had been made to regret bitterly his gullibility by being stabbed or having bones broken, Dad could assure me of that all right.
I committed all this to memory, then Dad tested me on it as it was important that nothing be forgotten or forgiven through sheer carelessness. He took another swig or two and did a bit of ranting, then got me to grunt and snort and help him to work out a few crafty plots. He suggested I might like to make a career for myself in local government, because that put you in a position where you could create merry hell and, even better, they couldn’t sack you; if you played your cards right you could exploit a bit of nepotism and get the rest of the clan into positions of authority until it was impossible for these perjurers and land thieves to stay around.
Dad polished off the lemonade and resorted to swigging schnapps straight from the bottle. Then he went over to passing on information of a more general kind. As I would soon be a fully grown working man, I ought to know who had been strike-breakers during the road-building strike of 1931 and the log-floating strike at Alanen Kihlankijoki in 1933; also all those who had supported the Nazis, mainly in Tärendö and Anttis, although there were some in Pajala as well; not to mention informers during the Second World War, among whom were several who still called themselves Social Democrats but who had sent Communist workmates to the concentration camp at Storsien to be shot the moment Hitler set foot in Sweden. I was also informed which of them had apologized afterward, and which of them had not, and instructed that relatives of the latter should be reminded of the fact whenever an opportunity arose.
There was another mass of families to keep an eye on, and once again some of my schoolmates were involved. Dad reckoned we ought to review all the names, which we duly did with great thoroughness. Then he continued with a more general history of the labor movement, including explanations of why socialists with long memories still avoid reading newspapers such as the Haparanda Daily News and the Norrbotten Courier, why one should shop at the Co-op and not at Spar, and why customs officers, foresters, primary school teachers, and religious revivalist
s of the Laestadian persuasion should be regarded with suspicion even today.
This led him to an account of weird goings-on, and he rehearsed the history of the Laestadian sect involving disciples of the Finnish preacher Korpela. Having recited the names of all the families concerned, he leaned forward and guffawed over the way in which they were awaiting the arrival of a crystal ark, how they painted each other’s pussies and assholes, how they would curse worse than a gang of lumberjacks, and said “eat” instead of “screw,” and played silly games wearing reindeer antlers, and rode each other like horses, and drank so much distiller’s mash they used to shit themselves when they were driven off in police cars, and basically had as much fun as it was possible to have given the limited opportunities of life in a remote backwater.
I just gaped in astonishment and suggested he must be putting me on—this was the first time I’d ever heard about such things. Dad said he was only giving me a cleaned-up version of what they got up to, and he’d tell me the rest when I’d reached a sexually more mature age.
The whole of Tornedalen seemed to be transformed before my very eyes. The place where I’d grown up was apparently criss-crossed by a mass of threads enmeshing all who lived there. A vast and powerful spider’s web of hatred, lust, fear, memories. A four-dimensional web whose sticky strands extended both backward and forward through time, down to the dead bodies buried under the earth and up to the as-yet-unborn in the heavens, and it was going to envelop me with its field of force whether I liked it or not. It was powerful, it was beautiful, and it scared me to no end. I had been a child, and Dad had now taught me how to see. Roots, culture, whatever you’d like to call it—it was mine.