Popular Music from Vittula (7 page)

The only ones who ever returned from the south were those who died. Car crash victims. Suicides. And eventually also those killed off by AIDS. Heavy coffins dug down into the frozen earth among the birch trees in Pajala cemetery. Home at last.
Kotimaassa
.

* * *

Niila’s house had a view over the river and was in one of the oldest parts of Pajala. It was a spacious, well-built house from the end of the previous
century, with large, small-paned windows along the long walls. If you examined the façade closely, you could see traces of where it had been extended. There were still two chimneys from two separate hearths: the house had been too big to be heated by just one fire. When Laestadianism was at its peak, the house had been a natural grey color; but at some point in the 1940s it had been painted the traditional Swedish red, with white window trim. The rough corners had been sawed and planed in accordance with the new fashion, to make sure the house couldn’t be mistaken for an overgrown barn—much to the distress of national archivists and other persons of good taste. On the river side were grassy meadows that had been fertilized for thousands of years with river silt every time the thaw came, and they produced abundant and rich hay, perfect for boosting milk production. At this very spot several hundred years ago, one of the earliest settlers had taken off his birch-bark backpack and created a smallholding for himself. But the grass in the meadows had not been harvested for years. Creeping bushes and undergrowth had thrust up their sauna twigs here, there, and everywhere. The place stank of gloom and decline. Visitors did not feel welcome there. There was a chill about the spot, like that of someone browbeaten so relentlessly as a child that all the bitterness had been directed inward.

The cowshed was still standing, and over the years it had been turned into a shed and a garage. School was out, and I’d gone home with Niila. We’d exchanged bikes for the day. He’d borrowed mine, which was rather flashy with a racing saddle and drop handlebars. I was riding his Hercules—“just the thing for knobbly knees,” as the nastier element in class three used to shout at him when he rode past. As soon as we got to his house, Niila dragged me with him to the cowshed.

We sneaked up into the loft, up the steep, axe-hewn stairs that had been polished by a century’s feet. It was semi-dark up there, with only one small, glazed window to admit the afternoon sun. There were piles of junk everywhere—damaged furniture, a rusty scythe, enamel buckets,
rolled-up carpets smelling of mold. We paused by one of the walls. It was dominated by a huge bookcase full of volumes with worn, brown leather spines. Religious tracts, collections of sermons, books on ecclesiastical history in both Swedish and Finnish, row after row of them. I’d never before seen so many books at the same time, apart from in the library on the top floor of the Old School. There was something unnatural about it, something decidedly unpleasant. Far too many books. Who could possibly ever manage to read them all? And why were they there, hidden away in a cowshed, as if there were something shameful about them?

Niila opened his satchel and took out his reader starring Li and Lo. We’d been given an extract to prepare for homework, and he found his way to the place, turning the pages over with his clumsy, boyish fingers. Concentrating hard, he started mouthing the letters one after another, spending an enormous effort connecting them up to form words. Then he grew tired of it and slammed the book shut with a bang. Before I’d caught on to what was happening, he hurled it down the stairs with tremendous force. It landed awkwardly and the spine broke against the rough floorboards.

I looked doubtfully at Niila. He was smiling, with red patches on each cheek, reminiscent of a fox with long canines. Then he plucked a tract from the enormous bookcase, quite a small volume with soft covers. Defiantly, he flung that downstairs as well. The thin, silky pages rustled like leaves before it crashed to the ground. Then followed in quick succession a few volumes of collected works, heavy brown tomes that disintegrated with a crack as they landed.

Niila looked encouragingly in my direction. I could feel my heart starting to pound with excitement as I reached for a book. Flung it down the stairs and watched several pages flutter out before it thumped down into a rusty wheelbarrow. It looked outrageously funny. Growing more and more ecstatic, we hurled down more and more books, egging each other on, spinning them up in the air, kicking
them like footballs, laughing until we choked as the shelves were emptied one after another.

All of a sudden Isak was standing there. Broad-shouldered like a wrestler, black and silent. Not a single word, just big, fleshy fingers trembling as he unfastened the buckle of his belt. He ordered me away with one brief gesture. I crept down the stairs like a rat then bolted for the door. But Niila stayed behind. As the cowshed door closed behind me, I could hear Isak starting to beat him.

* * *

Just for a moment I look up from the notepad I started filling in Nepal. The commuter train is approaching Sundbyberg. The morning rush hour, the smell of damp clothing. In my briefcase is a file with twenty-five corrected school essays. February slush, and over four months to go before the Pajala Fair. I sneak a look out of the train window. High over Huvudsta is a flock of jackdaws, circling excitedly round and round.

I switch my attention back to Tornedalen. Chapter five.

About two hesitant winter warriors, chain thrashings, and the art of stomping out a ski slope

Every day when lessons were over at the Purly-Girly School, hordes of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls would come swarming past our house. Pretty young things. This was the sixties after all, with lots of mascara, false eyelashes, miniskirts, and tight plastic boots. Me and Niila used to perch on the snowdrift outside our house and check them out. They would saunter past in bunches, chatting away, bare-headed no matter how cold it was, so as not to disturb their hairdos. They smoked like chimneys, and left behind a sickly-sweet smell of ashtrays and perfume that I associate to this day with desire. Occasionally they might say hello to us. We’d be incredibly embarrassed, and pretend we were building a snow fortress. Even though we were only seven, we were certainly interested in them, in a way. You couldn’t really say we were horny, it was more of a vague longing. I’d have loved to have kissed them, to get close to them. Snuggle up to them like a little kitten.

Anyway, we started throwing snowballs at them. Mainly so they’d regard us as manly, I think. And believe it or not, it worked. These lanky sixteen-year-old Valkyries would scamper off like reindeer,
screaming and shrieking, holding up their makeup bags as shields. They really made a meal of it. We were only throwing loosely packed little bundles of snow that rarely hit them, after all—fluffy lumps of snow that came floating down like woolly Lapp mittens. But it was enough to impress them. We were a force to be reckoned with.

It went on like this for a few days. We made a store of snowballs as soon as we got home from school. By now we felt like soldiers from Vittulajänkkä fighting in the Winter War, two battle-scarred veterans in action on a foreign continent. We bristled in expectation. Fighting brought us closer and closer to pleasures we could only dream of. Our cockscombs grew with every battle fought.

There came the flock of girls. Several bunches with irregular intervals between them. As they approached, we crouched down behind the ramparts of snow piled up at the side of the road by the snow plow. The plan was worked out in great detail. We used to let the first group pass by unscathed, then throw the snowballs at their backs while the other groups came to a halt in front of us. Create disarray and panic. And admiration, of course, of our manly deeds.

We crouched down in wait. Heard the girls’ voices approaching, the smokers’ coughs, the giggles. We stood up at exactly the right moment. Each of us with a snowball in our right hand. Like two fearsome Vikings we watched the girls scamper away, screaming. We were just about to heave our missiles into their midst when we realized that one of the girls was standing her ground. Only a couple of yards in front of us. Long, blond hair, neatly made-up eyes. She was staring straight at us.

“Just you dare throw one more snowball, and I’ll kill you,” she snarled. “I’ll hit you so hard, you’ll never walk again. I’ll make such a mess of your faces that your mothers will burst into tears the moment they clap eyes on you …”

Niila and I slowly lowered our snowballs. The girl gave us one last, terrifying look, then turned on her heel and strolled after her friends.

Niila and I didn’t move. We didn’t even look at each other. We just felt we’d been terribly misunderstood, in spades.

* * *

As a boy in Pajala, one’s life was dominated by chain thrashings. They were a means of adjusting the balance of power between the male citizens of the village. You were drawn into them as a young lad of five or six, and didn’t escape until you were fourteen or fifteen.

Chain thrashings took something like the following form: a few little lads would start arguing. Anders punched Nisse, who started crying. I won’t go into the cause of the argument, whether there was a history of animosity or some kind of family feud hovering in the background. A young lad simply hit another one, and then they went home.

That’s when the chain reaction starts.

The one on the receiving end, Nisse, immediately tells his two-years-older brother about it. Big brother goes out into the village and keeps his eyes peeled: the next time he comes across Anders he gives him a good hiding and extracts revenge. Anders goes home crying his eyes out and tells his own four-years-older brother, who goes out into the village and keeps his eyes peeled. The next time he comes across Nisse or Nisse’s elder brother, he gives them a good hiding and issues a series of threats into the bargain. (Are you still with me?) Nisse’s five-years-older, burly first cousin hears an abridged version of what has happened and beats up Anders’s brother, Anders himself, and a few friends who tagged along as bodyguards. Both Anders’s two friends’ six-years-older brothers go out into the village and keep their eyes peeled. The rest of Nisse’s brothers, cousins, and other relatives hear an abridged version of what has happened, who has beaten up whom, and in what order; the same thing happens on Anders’s side. Exaggerations in the interests of propaganda are common. Eighteen-year-old second cousins twice removed and even fathers receive urgent requests for assistance, but claim they couldn’t care less about the petty squabbles of little kids.

That gives some idea of how things developed. The most elaborate of chain thrashings would involve classmates, neighbors, and an entire range of friends, especially if the two original combatants came from different parts of the village. In that case it was Vittulajänkkä versus Paskajänkkä, or Strandvägen versus Texas, and war was declared.

The duration of a chain thrashing could be anything from a few days to several months. The norm was a few weeks, following the pattern described above. The first stage was scuffling and an exchange of blows with little kids crying. Then came the threat stage, with the strongest ones involved roaming the village with their eyes peeled while the little kids stayed in hiding at home. If any of the little brats got caught, it was no laughing matter, believe you me. I used to think that was the worst stage, that non-stop terror between school and the relative safety of home. Last of all came the disarmament stage, when nobody could remember or be bothered to remember all those complicated patterns of punishment with all the subtle variations, and the whole thing ran out of steam.

But before that happened, life was dominated by the balance of terror. It’s winter and you’re on your own on your kick-sled, gliding over the tightly packed snow to the corner shop where you’re going to buy a bag of mixed candy. It’s mid-afternoon, but it’s already quite dark, and scattered snowflakes are drifting down from the endless lead-grey sky, sparkling under the street lamps like stars. You’re standing with one foot on the runner of your sled, clinging on to the handlebar and kicking with your other foot, skimming your way between the mountains of snow piled up on each side of the road by the plows. Your runners are being held back a bit by the newly fallen snow, and from the nearby main road to Kiruna you can hear the booming of a snow plow bludgeoning its way through the winter. And then, just ahead at the crossroads, one of the big boys materializes. The black silhouette of a pupil from the senior school. He comes toward you, you slow down and try to make out who it is. You consider turning back, but you see
there’s another big lad closing in from behind. Hard to make out who it is in the gloom, but he’s certainly big. You’re surrounded, a little boy on a kick-sled. All you can do is hope. Square your shoulders and advance toward the first of the big boys, who eyes you up and down. The street lamps are snowing, his face is in the shadows, and now he steps forward and your heart stands still. You try to prepare yourself for what’s coming, snow down the back of your neck and all down your back and into your trousers, your ears boxed so hard you can feel your skull coming loose, your woolly hat thrown up into a birch tree, sobs and snot and humiliation. You stiffen up like a calf as the slaughterer approaches. And now he’s right in front of you and you have to stop. He’s as big as an adult, but you don’t recognize him. He asks you whose boy you are, and you recall that there are at least three chain thrashings going on at the moment, your mind is working overtime, then you tell him who you claim to be, and hope you’ve hit upon the right answer. And the bloke puckers up his eyebrows and knocks your hat off into the snow. Then he says:

“Lucky for you!”

And you brush the snow off your hat, set off again, and wish to God you were a grown-up.

* * *

The end of winter was in sight, the worst of the cold was over. The days were still short, but in the lunch break you could occasionally catch a glimpse of the sun over the frosty rooftops, looking like a blood orange. We drank in the light in greedy gulps, and the fiery deep orange juice filled us with renewed lust for life. It was like crawling out of a burrow, waking up from hibernation.