The Howling Miller

by Arto Paasilinna

Shaking his head, Tervola retreated behind the counter. But when Huttunen took a step towards him, he began hurriedly piling up food on the counter. He yanked sugar and coffee off the shelves, grabbed salt fish, bacon and butter, scooped up flour and potatoes from their bins. He stacked this mass of food in front of Huttunen, slamming the bags and packets onto the counter’s glass top hard enough to make the windows tremble. On top of the pile, he chucked a few packets of tobacco and ten big boxes of matches.

  ‘Take it! Steal it!’

  Huttunen held out money but Tervola didn’t want it.

  ‘Steal it! Have it all! I won’t take your money but you can steal from me if you must. What chance has an old man like me against a maniac like you?’

  Huttunen had already started gathering up his supplies. He put the packets back on the counter, shouting, ‘I have never stolen a thing in my life and I’m not going to start now. My money’s as good as anybody’s.’

  But the shopkeeper didn’t want his money. He brushed aside the notes the miller repeatedly tried to put in his hand. Then he measured out two pounds of wheat semolina and a pound of dried raisins into bags, slung those on the counter and barked, ‘Steal those too!’

  Huttunen couldn’t stand this treatment any longer. He rushed out of the front door of the shop, which was locked. A shower of rivets tinkled on the hall floor in his wake.

  Tervola went out onto the porch to see where the miller had run off to. There was no one in sight, but a noise was coming from the woods. The shopkeeper assumed it was Huttunen. He went back into his shop and quickly put everything lying on the counter back where it belonged. Then he went into his flat to telephone the police.

  The shopkeeper Tervola told Constable Portimo that Huttunen had escaped from the bin. The fugitive had come into his shop and tried to buy food with force, but Tervola had refused to sell him anything.

  ‘Kunnari had money. But I was not for turning and wouldn’t take a penny. He has just run off into the woods, so you’d better find him and arrest him. Otherwise the howling’s going to start again.’

  When the conversation was over, Constable Portimo donned his official cap with a sigh and set off on his bicycle towards the Suukoski rapids.

  Huttunen sat in the mill house, his stomach empty, his head in his hands. It was already late in the evening. Soon the lonely, starving night would fall. The miller drank water from the ladle and wearily went back to the window. If only the horticulture adviser Sanelma Käyrämö would come down the hill on her bicycle, things might take a turn for the better.

  But it was an old man who appeared on the hill, a man who Huttunen recognised as Constable Portimo.

  CHAPTER 18

  The police constable left his bicycle against the wall of the mill and made a noisy entrance. He saw that the boards nailed across the door had been pulled off, which meant there was every likelihood the miller was at home, and called up the stairs in a conciliatory voice, ‘It’s only the police, Huttunen, don’t worry!’

  Huttunen offered Portimo a seat. The police constable gave the miller a cigarette. It was the first he’d smoked in a long time. Inhaling deeply, he said, ‘They even took my cigarettes at Oulu.’

  Portimo asked if Oulu had let Huttunen out. In a low voice, Huttunen admitted, ‘I ran away.’

  ‘That’s what Tervola suspected when he rang. How about if you come along with me now?’

  ‘I wouldn’t come even if you shot me on the spot.’

  The police constable calmed him down, assuring him there wasn’t any question of shooting. The shopkeeper had telephoned, that was all. Huttunen asked if the police chief had been told about his escape. Portimo said that Oulu hadn’t sent through a request, and the police chief didn’t know the miller was back in the canton yet.

  ‘So why have you come to arrest me if you haven’t been given any orders?’

  Portimo admitted that no, it was true, he didn’t have any orders. But as the shopkeeper had called …

  ‘The thing is, I have been running a tab with Tervola for three months. I sort of have to do what he says. You can’t afford to upset a grocer on a police constable’s salary. I’ve got my son at Jyväskylä studying education; he wants to become a teacher. It’s expensive, you know, bringing up a boy. Do you remember Antero? He spent whole summers at the mill listening to you. The lad with long legs.’

  ‘Oh, that one … But look, talking of something else … I’m terribly hungry. I couldn’t get any food at the shop, and it wasn’t for lack of money. I can tell you. It’s almost three days since I had a proper meal and that was only that bloody slop. Believe me, I am absolutely bloody starving.’

  Portimo promised to discuss the question of food with his wife, but they couldn’t do something every day, and they wouldn’t bring things to the mill. Maybe there was somewhere they could meet in the forest, say.

  ‘A policeman has to be careful when he’s helping a wanted man. I wouldn’t give a criminal food, but it’s a bit different with you. And I know you as well, anyway.’

  Portimo gave him another cigarette.

  ‘Listen Kunnari, wouldn’t it be more sensible to sell up and go to America? From what I’ve heard, madness isn’t such a big thing over there; mad people are free to walk around as they please. As long as you did your work, you wouldn’t be harassed.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word of English and I don’t speak any either. I can’t even go to Sweden: I don’t know the language and it takes a long time to pick it up at my age.’

  ‘That’s true … but you can’t stay in the mill. We’d get a wanted person description tomorrow if you did, and then I’d be forced to arrest you and take you back to Oulu. The police have to obey the law as well, you know.’

  ‘Where can I go?’

  Portimo started thinking. What if Huttunen went into the woods? It was summer; the good weather had well and truly arrived. The miller could live in the forest to start with, try to sell the mill through someone, and then discreetly leave the country.

  ‘You just have to take a phrase book and study in the wild. Once you’ve learnt the language and the mill’s been sold, all you have to do is nip over to Sweden through the woods, across the Torniojoki, and the world’s at your feet.’

  Huttunen considered the plan. It was true that he couldn’t stay at the mill any longer. But escaping into the woods was a daunting prospect. How would he get by?

  ‘Think of the “armies of the forest”, those deserters who lived in the woods, some for years,’ Portimo exclaimed enthusiastically. ‘You can survive in the forest just as well as any traitor to this country. And if you get caught, there won’t be a military tribunal to have you shot. There’ll just be a little drive to Oulu.’

  As the men talked, evening gave way to night. Portimo sat at the window, keeping a lookout so that no one could take them by surprise. Everything was quiet.

  Huttunen asked who had cleaned out his store cupboard and taken his tools. Portimo said he had come with the police chief to confiscate the rifle and axe for reasons of public safety. The pastoress had taken the food and given it to the needy of the parish.

  ‘She didn’t have to take the sack of potatoes. The spuds wouldn’t have gone off in the cupboard.’

  ‘I don’t know about the potatoes. Perhaps they thought you’d be in Oulu for years.’

  ‘My God, to think that I had to lick flour off the floor! Life can be complete hell if you’re mad. And I’m not even properly mad. There were some really mad people at Oulu.’

  Portimo gave a start and pointed out of the window, ‘Look, Kunnari … Look who’s bending down in the vegetable garden!’

  Huttunen rushed to the window, tipping over his chair. Someone was bustling around in his vegetable patch, a woman. Huttunen instantly recognised the horticulture adviser Sanelma Käyrämö, crouching at the edge of a row of beetroot, pulling out weeds. Huttunen tore out of the mill, taking the steps five at a time.

  Portimo saw the miller leap over the bed of tu
rnips, grab the adviser in his arms and give her a smacking kiss. Once her initial fright had passed, the horticulturist recognised the apparition and threw herself into his arms, wrapping herself around him and hugging him as tight as she could.

  After a while, when the sound of animated conversation rose up from the vegetable patch, Portimo opened the window and shouted out to the couple, ‘Be quiet! Someone might hear you and take it upon themselves to call the police! Come in here!’

  The horticulture adviser and the miller climbed up to the mill house, radiant with happiness. They remained silent for a long time until, with a cough, the police constable observed, ‘Our Kunnari’s affairs are not looking too healthy. What do you think, as a counsellor?’

  The horticulture adviser simply nodded, intimidated by the policeman’s gaze. Portimo continued, ‘Kunnari and I were thinking that perhaps he should nip off into the woods. At least until autumn. We could see how it went.’

  The adviser agreed once more and looked at Huttunen, who seemed to be of the same mind. Portimo sought to adopt a more administrative tone: ‘How about if we, that is the counsellor and I, agree that we don’t officially know anything about this man? It’s a bit tricky for public servants to help a fellow in his situation … I mean, we should keep it secret that we’re helping him.’

  They agreed on this, and also that the horticulture adviser would bring Huttunen food from Portimo’s wife that night.

  The three of them left the mill together. Huttunen took a blanket and a raincoat and put on a pair of gumboots.

  On the road, Portimo solemnly held out his hand to Huttunen.

  ‘Try to make the best of it, Kunnari. Circumstances are to blame here, not people. Trust me, I have no intention of coming looking for you.’

  When Portimo had left, the miller and the horticulture adviser went to Leppäsaari Island, with Sanelma Käyrämö making a detour to pick up some potatoes and gravy in a lunch box from Portimo’s. The food got a little cold on the way, but it was just what the starving miller needed. He ate in silence, almost reverently. His large Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The horticulture adviser found this so touching that she put one hand on his shoulder and stroked his hair with the other. Had grey hairs appeared since the last time they’d seen each other? In the half-light of the tent, it was impossible to be sure.

  The horticulture adviser rinsed out the lunch box in the stream. Huttunen walked her back to the edge of the island, but didn’t follow her over to the other side. Tears filled his eyes as the woman disappeared into the trees.

  Huttunen went dejectedly back to his tent, lay down on the dried hay and thought that he was alone now. The night was completely silent, with not a trace of birdsong.

  PART TWO

  The hermit at bay

  CHAPTER 19

  Gunnar Huttunen’s life had reached an ominous pass: he was now no more than a miller without a mill, a man without a home. Having been cast out by humans, he had now in turn cast himself out from their society. Who knew how long he’d have to shun their haunts.

  Sitting on the edge of the stream, Huttunen listened to the song of the water racing down from its distant spring in the cool summer night. If he’d had a tumour in his chest, they would have left him in peace, he thought. He would have been pitied and supported and allowed to face his illness amidst his fellow men. But just because his mind worked differently to other people’s, he was beyond the pale, he had to be banished from the social order. Still, he preferred this seclusion to the bars on the hospital windows, with only poor melancholy wretches for company.

  A trout or grayling jumped in the shadowy river. Huttunen started; the ring floated past, breaking up and melting back into the stream. The thought occurred to him that he wouldn’t be eating any more bread or bacon as he had as a miller. It was strictly fish and game from now on.

  Huttunen put his hand in the cool water and imagined himself as a brook trout, one weighing a couple of pounds at least. He pictured himself swimming upstream, against the current, rippling and darting between the stones in the shallow water, resting for a moment in the lee of a moss-covered rock, working his fins, opening his gills, breaking the surface of the water with his mouth and then instantly diving back down and gliding away with a flick of his tail. The rushing water rang in his head as he swam further upstream into the night. But the desire for a cigarette soon brought him back to the present; forgetting about the fish for the moment, he resumed thinking about his life.

  One thing frightened him: mightn’t a hermit’s life make him go completely mad? If he looked in the same direction for too long it felt as if an iron band was gripping his forehead. He had to shake his head violently from side to side to relieve the pressure.

  Huttunen got to his feet, broke a few alder branches without knowing why, threw them in the stream and muttered, ‘If it’s like this, I could easily go out of my mind.’

  Sunk in thought, he returned to his tent. Notions, each more bizarre than the last, flashed through his mind, making it impossible for him to sleep. It was only when the first birds of the morning began singing that Huttunen drifted off for a few moments, assailed by such oppressive dreams that he woke up drenched in a cold sweat.

  Huttunen washed in the stream that, although the sun was already up, still had its dawn chill. He was hungry again, and yet, even after such a short sleep, he felt better, full of energy and verve. His brain was teeming with plans for his hermit’s life.

  The adviser would bring him food at first, but Huttunen realised that she wouldn’t be able to support a man of his size in the woods on her meagre salary for long. He made a list of objects that would help him survive on his own in the forest: an axe, a hunting knife, a rucksack, kitchen implements, clothes … There was no end to it. The hermit decided to go to the Suukoski rapids to kit himself out. It was still so early that no one would have come looking for him yet at the mill. He ran through the woods to the rapids, slipped under the mill into the turbine house and, from there, through the trapdoor into the building and up to his room.

  Huttunen took his relatively new rucksack out of the cupboard. It was a stroke of luck he’d bought it. During the war, particularly the retreat, Huttunen had cursed his miserable army rucksack that had carried almost nothing but had been incredibly heavy and always full, whacking him in the small of the back, and chafing and cutting into his shoulders, especially when he had to run. This one was big and sturdy, its broad straps were padded with thick felt and it had a belt and all sorts of straps and webbing to hang things from. It looked like the harness and saddle combined of a small horse. Huttunen set about filling it.

  A saucepan, a kettle, a frying pan, a cup, a spoon, a fork. What else? Huttunen stuffed two little jars of salt and sugar into the rucksack’s pockets, along with some camphor and iodine drops and paregoric powder, which, as it happened, was all the medicine there was in the mill.

  The hermit tightly rolled up his fur cap and tucked it inside a blanket. He cut on old flannel shirt into strips to bind his feet, two at the front and two at the back. With the woollen socks he was wearing that should be enough. His gumboots were luckily in good nick, but he’d better take some puncture repair patches anyway. He examined the boots’ leather soles admiringly: he never scuffed his feet when he was walking, he wasn’t in the slightest bowlegged, and that saved boots a lot of wear. Some people who don’t run anywhere get through two pairs of boots a year just because of the rubbing.

  A whetstone and a file …

  Huttunen thrust them to the bottom of a pocket. He fetched a saw from the woodshed, removed its frame, rolled up the blade, wrapped it in paper and tied it to the rucksack. Then he went out to get the clothesline. There wouldn’t be much washing hung out on the hill by Suukoski mill in the near future.

  A handful of three-inch nails. A comb, a mirror, a razor, a shaving brush and some soap. A pencil and a notebook with blue squared paper. What didn’t he need? Should he pack some books? Huttunen realised he had re
ad his entire collection several times over; there was no point lugging them around the depths of the forest. The radio? Too heavy. He might be able to carry the set on its own through the brushwood, but you couldn’t carry it with the battery.

  He flicked it on. It was the morning news; they were talking about the Korean War. They just had to bring it up every day, didn’t they, Huttunen thought to himself. Of course these yokels loved the Korean War: plenty had got rich selling timber since it had sent prices soaring. A farmer didn’t need a massive log pile or stack of timber nowadays to be able to treat himself to a tractor. In the spring, Vittavaara and Siponen had sold such a mountain of lumber that they’d be comfortable for years. Irritated, Huttunen switched off the radio.

  And that damn Mrs Siponen dares stay in bed claiming she’s paralysed. I won’t give Siponen a penny for his wife.

  He needed a needle and thread and some buttons as well. He tore the North Finland page out of his old school atlas. Pity he didn’t have a compass. Two pairs of underwear and some long johns. Mittens and felt slippers. The fur cap was in already. Huttunen rolled up his sheepskin-lined leather jacket and tied it on top of the rucksack.

  Who knows if I won’t have to hide out in the woods all winter … this was an expensive jacket when I bought it in Kokkola after the war.

  A plane, a chisel, a pick, and a one-inch diameter drill bit. Any kind of wood would do for a handle. But he wondered whether a plane would be useful in the forest. Better to leave it? He thought that if he had to stay in the wild until winter, he would need skis. He wasn’t going to take his own now. He imagined himself wandering along with a pair of skis over his shoulder in the middle of summer.

  If anyone saw me, they’d think I was mad.

  Huttunen stuffed the plane into his rucksack. A candle. Matches. Binoculars: one of the lenses had been blurred since they had fallen into the Svir during the war, but you could see very well with the other; he’d finally have time to take them apart and clean them. Scissors. Fishing tackle: nets, a dozen spinners and daps, line, hooks, swivels, a piece of lead. He was going to have to get his food with this from now on; at least he had what he needed. He had plenty of flies as well, having tied swarms of them all last winter.