The Howling Miller

by Arto Paasilinna

  The rucksack was so full that it was tricky actually getting it on his back. Huttunen tested the weight. He was almost doubled over for a minute and unable to stand up.

  Huttunen dragged the rucksack down from his room, through the trapdoor and out into the wood behind the river. He broke into a thick sweat hefting such a heavy load at the double. Hiding it among the firs, he went back to the mill, because it had occurred to him that a zinc bucket might be useful in his hideout. A bit cumbersome, but not too heavy.

  Bucket in hand, Huttunen tried to think of anything he might have forgotten. He seemed to have everything. He was just looking out the window at the vegetable garden, thinking that maybe he should take a few turnips – they were big enough to eat – when he saw a group of men at the edge of the plantation. A dozen villagers were standing in a circle around the police chief. The miller realised they had come looking for him. In a trice, he was running downstairs. The bucket banged against the doorframe; Huttunen was afraid they’d hear outside. He opened the trapdoor and slipped down into the turbine house. Just as he did so, the door of the mill crashed open and the men burst in. Huttunen recognised Constable Portimo’s voice saying, ‘There was no one here yesterday, at any rate. Perhaps he ran off into the woods.’

  The men walked over Huttunen’s head; the trapdoor creaked. Flour dust trickled down between the floorboards. The miller was painfully crouched over in the narrow pen, praying no one started up the mill. He would be done for otherwise: the turbine blades would grind him to a pulp in that tiny space. From the upstream wall water dripped down his neck; it must have run off from the millrace. The miller found himself thinking that he would have to seal it in the autumn.

  He made out the voices of Vittavaara, Siponen, the shopkeeper Tervola, the police constable and the police chief. There were two other men as well, possibly the schoolteacher and Launola, Siponen’s farmhand. ‘He’s been here,’ he heard Vittavaara say. ‘Look how neatly swept the floor is.’

  The men went up the stairs, calling Huttunen. The police chief yelled up from the bottom that resistance was pointless.

  ‘Come out peacefully. You don’t stand a chance against us!’

  The men soon established that the room at the top of the mill was empty. Annoyed, they came back down the stairs. ‘Whatever else you say,’ Vittavaara observed, ‘he did do a good job fixing up the mill before he went mad.’

  All of them went out except for the fat farmer, who had apparently engaged the driving belt. Huttunen heard the clacking of the millstones. Vittavaara shouted to the others outside, ‘How about we get the mill turning to have a look? Who knows, it might revert to the commune in the autumn. We could mill our own grain.’

  Huttunen was panic stricken. If they started up the mill, he’d be crushed to death. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do: they just had to close the gate over the shingle saw, the seething water would come flooding into the turbine house, and the turbine would inexorably start to turn. They’d hear the zinc bucket crumpling first, then the sound of bone being crushed.

  Huttunen gripped the blades of the waterwheel as hard as he could, wedged the bucket against his chest and flattened it into an oval. He resolved that if the turbine started turning, he would fight it for all his worth. He calculated how much horsepower it would generate given the water flow in the middle of summer. It was going to take an insane amount of strength to stay alive.

  He could hear the police chief outside shouting that now wasn’t the moment to get the madman’s mill turning. But someone had had time to reach the sluice gate over the shingle saw and, from the lapping sound, Huttunen guessed that they had closed it. The first cascade of water shot into the turbine house, soaking him from head to foot. He bent back the turbine blades with all his strength. Everything went black. Put up a hell of a fight, he told himself: life or death. The water came rushing full bore down the channel, almost drowning Huttunen, yet he shook himself and held firm. The huge volume of water pressed down on the wheel to turn it, but Huttunen wouldn’t let it move an inch. A taste of bile filled his mouth; the blood vessels in his head felt as if they were going to burst. Still he didn’t let go. Giving in to the water now would have meant relinquishing any claim on life.

  ‘It’s not turning,’ Vittavaara shouted from the mill. ‘The bloody thing’s stuck.’

  There were answering shouts outside that Huttunen didn’t understand. Then the flow of water slowed and soon came to a complete halt. Someone had opened the sluice gate over the shingle saw. Dripping with water, Huttunen realised he had outmatched his mill for strength. His whole body trembled from the terrible effort. The bucket had been squashed like a pancake between his chest and the turbine. His ears were full of water and he wanted to be sick.

  The voice of the police chief could be heard in front of the mill saying, ‘Let’s go. Portimo will keep guard tonight.’

  ‘He locked his mill, the bastard,’ Siponen said, coming back from above the millrace and, with that, the villagers left.

  Huttunen stayed sitting in the turbine house until all the voices had died away. Then he slipped outside and disappeared into the forest, the flat oval of his bucket under an arm. He saddled up, hoisting the heavy rucksack onto his back, and set off into the forest, wet to the bone. He felt weak and exhausted, but he had to get away from the Suukoski rapids: the search party would already be combing the woods behind the mill.

  CHAPTER 20

  Huttunen toted his rucksack a couple of miles from the village. He climbed a little hill planted with pines, set up a temporary camp at the top, and made a fire of dead branches to dry his clothes. When he was dressed again, he straightened out the flattened bucket, hammering it into a semblance of shape with a stone the size of a fist, and regretted not having an axe.

  It doesn’t help not having an axe when you’re making a proper camp either. A knife’s not much good for chopping firewood or dressing poles to make a shelter. In the forest, being without an axe is like having only one arm.

  Huttunen put out the fire and hid his rucksack at the foot of a spruce. Constable Portimo had confiscated his axe: well, now he was going to get it back. Huttunen hotfooted it to the village.

  As he thought, it wasn’t hard slipping into the police constable’s woodshed while its owner was leading the hunt for the fugitive. When the lady of the house went out to do her shopping, leaving the house empty, Huttunen patted the dog and in he went. The impecunious rural police officer’s wood store was a pitiful sight. In one corner of the shed was a measly little pile of kindling for the stove that would barely last a day or two. Stacked against the back wall were three steres of damp windfall, which, if they weren’t chopped soon, wouldn’t have time to dry before winter. And near the door was a vague sprawl of branches, which the police constable had gathered in the woods of neighbouring farmers, not having any land of his own. A sad, flimsy haul.

  Portimo’s axe was leaning against the wall. It was chipped and rusted, an ugly, unwieldy tool. The crude handle wobbled in its socket, the wedge all dried out and cracked. Huttunen firmed up the wedge, recut the handle and improved the join. Portimo’s frame saw was not much better. Huttunen tried it on a log. The blade was blunt and pulled to the right. Oh, the policeman’s destitution was painful to behold: an entire woodshed without any dry wood or suitable tools.

  It did contain one good bit of equipment, however: an axe he knew very well, his, stuck in the block. The miller took it out, ran his finger along the cutting edge and saw that it was still good and sharp.

  Before leaving, Huttunen decided to chop some wood for the police constable as a form of compensation for taking his axe. He ought to help in some way really; after all, the constable was having to run around the woods all day looking for him. He split a big pile of logs, piled them neatly against the wall of the woodshed and, when he saw Portimo’s wife coming back from the shop, slipped off into the forest, the gleaming axe over one shoulder.

  Huttunen followed the telephone line. The
going was easy because there was an old path that used, it seemed, to serve the shop. Keeping to the woods, Huttunen passed Tervola’s establishment and carried on under the wires. This was the telephone line the shopkeeper used to set the police on my tail, he thought.

  Bloody telegraph poles.

  Huttunen gave the offending supports a filthy look. He seemed to hear the shopkeeper’s voice in the whirring of the line, his complacent tones putting in an order to his wholesaler in Kemi: meat, sausage, cheese, coffee, tobacco. A wave of blinding hunger overcame Huttunen. He stopped at a pole and resting the blade of his axe against its base, teed up his swing.

  ‘If I cut here, the phone will stop trilling in Tervola’s shop.’

  The sight of the axe at the base of the pole was so tempting that Huttunen couldn’t help striking the quivering wood a blow. All the birds perched on the wire within a radius of a mile flew up into the air. Huttunen swung his axe again, the wires whistled and the whole line reverberated. The heavy pole started to sway and, after a few more blows, cracked at the base and collapsed. The porcelain insulators smashed and, with a noise like a whip crack, the wires flew off into the trees. Huttunen mopped the sweat from his brow and surveyed his handiwork.

  The shopkeeper’s telephone is now temporarily out of order.

  Huttunen tended not to do things by halves. While he was at it, he chopped the pole into eight-foot logs, stacked them on top of each other, rolled up the telephone cable and put it on top of the pile. When the engineers came to repair the line in due course, their job would already be partly done: they’d just have to load the logs onto their cart and put up a new pole.

  Now that the shopkeeper’s telephone had been silenced, Huttunen decided to take this opportunity to pay him a visit. Tervola would be sure to sell him some supplies this time, especially because, by a happy chance, he had his axe with him.

  The shop was pretty full. Its quiet murmur of conversation was replaced by terrorised silence as Huttunen entered, axe in hand. Some customers pretended to be leaving, although most couldn’t have had time to buy anything.

  Tervola dived into the back of the shop. He could be heard feverishly turning the handle of his telephone and asking for the switchboard. But the connection was cut. No answer from the constable; the police chief couldn’t be reached. Tervola came timidly back into the shop.

  Huttunen put his axe on the counter and began reeling off the goods he’d come to buy.

  ‘Tobacco, two tins of meat, a pound of salt, sausage, bread.’

  The grocer meekly produced the items. As he was weighing the sausage, Huttunen put his axe on the pan of the scales next to the weights, as a joke, and said, ‘Look how light this axe is, shopkeeper.’

  The axe was such a feature of the miller’s shopping trip that the shopkeeper sharply rounded down his bill. As his customer was leaving, Tervola even asked if there was anything else he wanted.

  Huttunen turned on the doorstep, ‘That will be all, thank you.’

  Under cover of the forest, he saw the crowd spill out of the shop. They ran as fast as their legs could take them towards Portimo’s house. Huttunen wanted to tuck into the sausage, but it made more sense to get back to camp. Now wasn’t the best time for eating.

  CHAPTER 21

  All day long, dogs’ barking and men’s shouting echoed through the woods as far as the fugitive’s camp. The village had gone on a war footing because of the miller and his escape from the hospital. To get a better view of events, Huttunen climbed a hundred-year-old pine, a venerable colossus towering over the hill where he was hiding. He had to make the climb twice because the first time he forgot his binoculars and couldn’t make out what was happening in the village with the naked eye.

  Through the lone eyepiece of his binoculars, Huttunen observed intense activity on the village road. Dogs ran around off the lead, men rode in all directions on their bicycles. Farmers stood at crossroads, rifles on their shoulders. There must have been others scouring the forest, but Huttunen couldn’t see them from the top of his pine.

  The miller climbed down the old tree. As a precaution, he put out the fire and packed his rucksack. The horticulture adviser had promised she would meet him on Leppäsaari Island when it had got dark. But if all that commotion in the village carried on, he thought ruefully, she might not be able to make the rendezvous.

  The village did not quieten down until sunset. Then the dogs were tied up and the farmers went home for their suppers and Huttunen set off for Leppäsaari Island.

  Someone had been there in the day: the tent had gone. The guy ropes and pegs were scattered between the alders. Huttunen picked up the stakes and wound the rope into a coil.

  ‘People always leave everything lying around.’

  Huttunen was afraid Sanelma Käyrämö wouldn’t dare come out to the island but she arrived not long after him. The young woman timidly stepped onto the miller’s footbridge with a basket over her arm, out of which poked a bottle of milk. Huttunen kissed her and began eating. She filled him in on what had been happening during the day in the village.

  Huttunen was now officially a wanted man. He shouldn’t have caused a scene in the shop with his axe, she said reproachfully.

  ‘And then you went and weighed the sausage with your axe. Tervola is bound to take you to court for obstructing a commercial transaction. The police chief has had a letter from Oulu saying you’ve escaped and must be caught. He has told everyone that this is now all extremely official.’

  Huttunen finished his meal. But the horticulture adviser had not said all she had to say.

  ‘You chopped down a telegraph pole as well. Engineers have had to be called out from Kemi and the line is still not working. The girl on the switchboard told me that there was a chance you could go to prison for cutting a phone line, if the Post & Telegraph Office was in a bad mood.’

  Huttunen remained silent for a long time, staring at the mist on the stream. Then he fetched his wallet from his pocket, took out his savings book and handed it to the adviser.

  ‘I haven’t got a bean. Could you go to the bank and take out all the money I’ve got in my account? It would be too expensive for you to support me in the forest on your wages.’

  Huttunen drew up a mandate on a page torn from the blue squared notebook. Sanelma Käyrämö signed under her name and Huttunen added the signature of two witnesses, John Crane and Henry Wolf, both of whom had highly distinctive writing. Huttunen explained that there wasn’t a great deal of money in his account, but, if he lived cheaply, he’d have enough to get by until autumn, perhaps even the start of winter.

  ‘I’ve been thinking of doing more fishing to save money on food.’

  She told him not to come back to Leppäsaari Island because their hideaway had been discovered. During the day, Vittavaara had taken Huttunen’s tent to the village and given it neatly folded to the police chief. In the evening, the wives of the police chief and the schoolteacher had done some washing in the river. Part of their load was Huttunen’s mosquito net; the adviser had seen it hanging on the line.

  The couple agreed to meet at the Reutu Marsh crossroads three miles from the church, on the east bank of the Kemijoki. The horticulture adviser promised to cycle there in a week’s time. It was a good idea not to see each other for a bit, at least not while the search was in full swing. Especially because the villagers were already keeping an eye on Sanelma Käyrämö.

  ‘Life’s not fair …’ she said. ‘The one consolation for me is that your vegetable garden is doing wonderfully. You could pick the carrots today, and the turnips will soon be the size of a person’s head. Don’t worry, I’ll carry on hoeing and manuring your patch. If the village calms down, sweetheart, go and pick some fresh vegetables. They’ll provide you with vitamins, my poor Gunnar. You can’t imagine how important vitamins are. Especially out here in the forest, they’re crucial.’

  The horticulture adviser hurried back to the village; Huttunen left Leppäsaari Island and melted into the nig
ht.

  The following morning, the adviser went to see Huhtamoinen, the manager of the Cooperative Bank. The bank manager asked her to sit down, and almost offered her a cigar, before he thought better of it, quickly shut the box and abstained himself. Sanelma Käyrämö handed him Huttunen’s savings book and the mandate.

  ‘The miller Gunnar Huttunen has telephoned me from Oulu and asked me to withdraw all the money from his account. He says he needs it for the hospital canteen.’

  Huhtamoinen examined the savings book, smiled with a satisfied air and read the mandate.

  ‘Did Mr Huttunen get these documents to you by telephone as well?’

  The adviser replied sharply that the papers had come by that morning’s post; the postman Piittisjärvi had brought them.

  The bank manager assumed a paternal, almost didactic air.

  ‘As you know, Miss, our work at this bank is governed by the code of confidentiality. I have always made it a point to explain to my staff – that is, to the cashier Sailo and to Miss Kymäläinen – that the banker’s code of confidentiality is inviolable. It is a principle more binding than Hippocrates’ oath. Generally speaking, to my mind there are three fundamental rules a bank has to abide by. First, a), that is, accounts must be correct down to the last penny. There can be no room for error. Second, b), the bank must have liquid assets. A bank must be financially solid. A lax lending policy does no credit to any establishment, however large it may be. Even where industry is concerned, a bank’s support can never be justified if it endangers, however marginally, the financial equilibrium of the bank itself. And third, or c) – this is the main rule – the institution must scrupulously respect bank confidentiality. No information on customers’ affairs should leave the bank. Neither without the customer’s agreement nor with it. I would say that, in terms of gravity, banker’s confidentiality is on a par with military secrecy, especially during peacetime.’