Popular Music from Vittula (23 page)

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 revivalists 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.

Dad finally got around to accounting for the inherent weaknesses in our own family. There were drinkers among us. That’s why he wasn’t going to offer me anything just now: I ought to wait until I came of age before getting involved with the poison known as alcohol, since the art of intoxication was a complicated one and needed a degree of maturity. When that time came, if I started to acquire a taste for the stuff I’d better be very careful. The nature of alcohol was such that it spread warmth and good cheer throughout one’s body even though ordinary folk found its taste bitter and unpleasant. Nevertheless, Dad had heard many alcoholics actually claiming to like the taste of it, which is no doubt why it brought about their downfall.

Moreover, some members of our family used to get violent when they were drunk. That was something impossible to predict until you’d actually tried it, but it was important to be aware of it, as an inability to hold your liquor would lead inevitably to fines and knife wounds that never healed properly, not to mention spells in the clink in Haparanda. And so, to be on the safe side, the first time I got drunk ought to be when I was all alone and locked up in the safety of my own room. If I felt an irresistible urge to start fighting, I should always shun strong drink while in the company of others. The only option was getting used, at an early age, to going to dances in a sober state, which was extremely difficult to achieve, but not impossible.

Then he started going through a list of all the family idiots. I’d already met some of them: one was in the psychiatric hospital in Gällivare, and another in Piteå. In medical jargon it was called schizophrenia, and it seemed to run in the family. It would appear when you reached the age of eighteen or so, and was due to certain causes. Frustrated love was one, and Dad begged me to be very wary of getting involved with complicated women who were scared of sex. Dad urged me never to be too persistent with the fair sex if they declined to open their legs, but rather to follow his own example and find myself an unabashed peasant girl with a big ass.

The other cause of lunacy was brooding. Dad strongly advised me never to start thinking too much, but to do as little as possible of it, since thinking was a menace that only got worse the more of it you did. He could recommend hard manual labor as an antidote: shoveling snow, chopping firewood, skiing cross-country, and that kind of thing, because thinking usually affected people when they were lolling about on the sofa or sitting back to rest in some other way. Getting up early was also recommended, especially on weekends and when you had a hangover, because all kinds of nasty thoughts could worm their way into your mind then.

It was particularly important not to brood about religion. God and death and the meaning of life were all extremely dangerous topics for a young and vulnerable mind, a dense forest in which you could easily get lost and end up with acute attacks of madness. You could confidently leave that kind of stuff until your old age, because by then you would be hardened and tougher, and wouldn’t have much else to do. Confirmation classes should be regarded as a purely theoretical exercise: a few texts and rituals to memorize, but certainly not anything to start worrying about.

The most dangerous thing of all, and something he wanted to warn me about above all else, the one thing that had consigned whole regiments of unfortunate young people to the twilight world of insanity,
was reading books. This objectionable practice had increased among the younger generation, and Dad was more pleased than he could say to note that I had not yet displayed any such tendencies. Lunatic asylums were overflowing with folk who’d been reading too much. Once upon a time they’d been just like you and me, physically strong, straightforward, cheerful, and well balanced. Then they’d started reading. Most often by chance. A bout of flu perhaps, with a few days in bed. An attractive book cover that had aroused some curiosity. And suddenly the bad habit had taken hold. The first book had led to another. Then another, and another, all links in a chain that led straight down into the eternal night of mental illness. It was impossible to stop. It was worse than drugs.

It might just be possible, if you were very careful, to look at the occasional book that could teach you something, such as encyclopedias or repair manuals. The most dangerous kind of book was fiction—that’s where all the brooding was sparked and encouraged. Damnit all! Addictive and risky products like that should only be available in stateregulated monopoly stores, rationed and sold only to those with a license, and mature in age.

At that point Mum shouted down the stairs that it was time to eat. We wrapped ourselves in towels and made our way up. Dad was swaying a bit, and stubbed his big toe, but he didn’t seem to feel the pain.

As for me, I was no longer a boy.

In which a bad man becomes acquainted with crusted snow
,
after which his wife is treated to a cold drink

Niila’s old man, Isak, tried to put a stop to his sons’ puberty by beating them. The bigger they grew, the more he beat them. Isak’s bouts of drunkenness became more frequent and lasted longer. When sober he was moody, touchy and melancholy. He spent his time setting up rules and regulations for how to behave in every corner of the house, then methodically dealing out punishment every time he caught a sinner.

Isak regarded himself as extremely fair. He would often complain, as dictators always do, about how onerous his duties were, how ungrateful his family was, and what catastrophes would befall the house when he was gone, which would probably be quite soon. Like all alcoholics he used to think a lot about death. He longed for it, threatened to kill himself, but feared death above all else. Such thoughts grew stronger the seedier he became. He would often cover the kitchen table with sheets of newspaper and sit there cleaning his old moose rifle. He’d check the mechanism, dismantle and oil it, lift the barrel to his eye, and follow the spiraling rifled grooves into infinity. If relatives dropped by he liked to inform them about how he intended to distribute his estate,
which was his favorite hymn, which Biblical quotation he thought would be most appropriate for his obituary notice. The children tried to get used to the thought, but it remained pretty awful. If he was out for longer than usual, they would find an excuse to go down into the cellar, out to the garage, or up into the loft. They wanted to know if he’d achieved his aim, but they never mentioned it to one another. Whenever he slapped them with the palm of his hand or lashed them with his belt, his eyes would disappear, they would turn black like holes in a skull. He was not of this world, he was already partially decomposed, already half with God, or Satan. His sense of duty and justice was so strong that he could carry out a beating and weep at the same time, belt his children with tears rolling down his cheeks, hit them with a confused passion that he called love.

When he was drinking he came closer to real life. He had more color in his cheeks, the dried-out river beds filled with moisture and started to flow again. He could laugh, enjoy the first few glasses, and lust after women, food, and money. But jealousy grew at the same rate. It was directed primarily at his sons, and was stronger the more grown-up they became. He treated Johan worst, his eldest son, who was closest to adulthood. Isak was jealous of the fact that Johan would soon have women of his own, delicious young lovers, and that the hard stuff hadn’t damaged his young body, that Johan would soon be earning money and be able to live his own life and enjoy all the temptations the world had to offer, while he himself would be eaten up by unfeeling maggots. In Isak’s dreams Johan would walk up to him, force his mouth open, and press his decayed teeth one by one until they sunk right down into his rotten gums. The boy would keep on going until only the bare gums remained, flat and bloody like the hands of Christ disfigured by nails.

Puberty was stronger than death. It was a plant that could grow through asphalt, a rib cage that could burst through shirts, a rush of blood that was more potent than vodka. Deep down, Isak wanted to kill his sons. But such a thought was so forbidden that he re-jigged it
and turned it into beatings, into many beatings, into a long, drawn-out execution. But they kept on growing even so.

One Saturday in early spring when Johan was sixteen and Niila thirteen, they were instructed to accompany their father into the forest. They would have to shift some piles of timber to a forest road while the hard crust of snow lasted, before the midday sun—Isak had struck a good deal on some cheap wood he could use for his stoves back home. He had borrowed a snowmobile and raced off into the wilderness, weaving his way around tree stumps and tufts of grass, while his sons bumped around in the trailer, rubbing away at their cheeks to stave off the cold caused by the slipstream. You could see they were muttering away to each other and repeatedly looking at his back, but you couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying over the roar of the engine.

It was a sunny day. Light seeped in through the tops of the fir trees, glittering and gleaming in the mirror-prisms of the snow. The spring winds had blown down lumps of beard lichen and flakes of bark that gradually melted into the crust of snow. The night frost had hardened the surface into a solid floor that could be pierced with your thumbs and lifted up in large sheets. Underneath, the snow was soft and powdery, so loose that you could sink into it right up to your thighs.

Isak kicked at the piles of logs covered in snow, produced a spade, and ordered Johan to start shoveling. And he’d better get a move on as well: if they hadn’t finished before the midday thaw came because the two boys had been wasting time, it would be no joke, no laughing matter at all.

Without a word Johan took the spade and leaned it carefully against the wood-pile. Then he took off his gloves and delivered a vicious punch that landed just over his father’s right eyebrow. Isak lost his balance and fell flat on his back. His bellowing echoed in the vast silence. Johan continued punching him, on the nose, his chin, his cheekbones. Niila flung himself over his father’s legs, as they’d planned, and pummelled
away at his midriff. No weapons were used, just clenched fists with boney knuckles, strong, hard, boys’ fists that punched and punched. Isak wriggled like a crocodile, screaming all the while. His body was pressed through the hard crust and sunk down into the powdery snow. He was flailing his arms around, his mouth filled with snow. Blood was flowing freely, red and viscid, his eyes swelled and closed. But still the boys punched. Isak kicked at them, defended himself as best he could, fighting for his life now. He grabbed hold of Niila’s throat and squeezed hard. Johan bent his father’s little finger back until he screamed and was forced to let go. He disappeared down through the hard crust, floundering like a drowning man in the cold, white foam. More punches, harder and harder, a slab of iron under heavy hammers, a red-hot lump that glowed less red with every blow, became darker, greyer, stiffer.

Eventually the old man was no longer moving. The boys got to their feet, panting, and scrambled up onto the hard crust. The old man lay down at the bottom of his snow hole, looking at his sons outlined against the sky above. They peered down as if into a grave, whispering to each other like two priests. Flakes of snow melted and chilled the old man’s death mask.

“Do you give up?” shouted Johan in the piping squeal of a lad whose voice is breaking.

“Go to hell!” wheezed Isak, spitting blood.

They jumped back down into the hole. Started again. They punched their father until the sweat poured off them, pounded that old alcohol-sodden face out of shape, beating the life out of the wreck, finished him off once and for all.

“Do you give up?”

And now their father burst out crying. He sobbed and sniveled deep down in his grave, no longer capable of moving. His sons climbed back up, made a fire, and melted some snow in the sooty saucepan. And when the coffee had boiled and the dregs sunk down to the bottom,
and the smell spread, inducing Siberian jays to fly up and peer around the tree trunks, they lifted the old bloke up and lay him down on a reindeer skin. They pushed a lump of sugar between his battered lips and handed him a steaming mug. And as their father slurped pitifully at his coffee, Johan explained to him quietly that the next time he laid a hand on any member of the family, they would beat him to death.