The Howling Miller
Page 15
Explaining her reasons for enclosing this brochure setting out the Institute’s programme, Sanelma begged her beloved recipient ‘not to throw it away, but to look it over and begin one of their correspondence courses’ since Gunnar now had time on his hands and it was important never to remain idle and always try, even in difficult circumstances, to increase one’s store of knowledge. When all was said and done, this was the only way that every Finn could achieve the personal happiness and success that would contribute to the wellbeing of the country as a whole.
Huttunen ran all the way back to his camp, reaching it in an hour and a half, even though it was almost thirteen miles across the marshes. He dived into his hut and re-read Sanelma Käyrämö’s love letter. He read every word of it over and over until he knew it by heart. Only then did he turn to the papers.
There was a lot of coverage of the Korean War. A complicated conflict was unfolding in the distant forests of Asia, which seemed over the summer to have turned into a war of positions. Huttunen remembered how the Americans, Koreans and Chinese had each by turns held the upper hand the previous winter. Now the front had stabilised along the 38th Parallel and the Soviet Union was pushing for the start of negotiations prior to a ceasefire. One paper had a picture of an army jeep full of officers with artillery and high mountains in the background. The caption said UN troops were constantly patrolling supply routes to guard against ambushes. The flag fluttering on the jeep’s bumper oddly enough, however, was a United States one. Huttunen hoped that the different sides would reach an agreement. As soon as there was peace, the price of wood would tumble in Finland. Then at least the big-shot farmers, Siponen and Vittavaara in particular, wouldn’t be able to get rich on Korean blood anymore.
People were starting to talk about the Olympic Games. Apparently they were going to be held the following summer in Helsinki. In his day, Huttunen had cleared 12.8 feet in the pole vault using a pole made of poplar, and he had seriously thought of competing. But then the Winter War had broken out and the Helsinki Games had had to be cancelled. Huttunen didn’t have a chance of watching the Games now, even though the war was over. He’d be caught the minute he tried to leave the woods.
The paper reported that the Soviets were planning to take part in the Olympics for the first time. Why not, Huttunen thought. They’d probably have some good hammer throwers, judging by how far they could throw grenades on the Svir.
They’ll sweep the board in the marathon, but the Finnish soldier is quicker on a bicycle. If they have cycling events, that is.
After reading the newspapers, Huttunen studied the brochure for the Institute of Education through the Medium of the Post. The system’s merits were praised from every angle. The claim was advanced that ‘an enterprising, well organised businessman or businesswoman can find a good position quicker and more easily than most people working in other fields’.
Huttunen thought of his own trade of miller. It was quite true that business was an easier way to earn one’s crust than working the aged Suukoski mill, when, given that frosts could take everything, you couldn’t even be sure there’d be good grain to mill every year. Luckily he could make a living from the shingle saw, but he couldn’t expand. There was no money to start a sawmill. And people were talking about electric mills now where one could mill one’s grain without having to pay for water rights. In all these respects, there was a case to be made for a change of profession. But if the hermit thought clearly about his situation for a moment, how could he get a job in business when, as an outlaw, he daren’t even start up his own mill?
On the other hand, Huttunen saw that studying could be a useful pastime. The Institute explained that the tuition was carried out entirely by correspondence: ‘Anyone who has attended primary school can take our courses, whatever their place of residence, their age and the time available to them. It is enough for them to live in a place where the post is regularly delivered and to study when it suits them and they have the time.’
Such a form of teaching seemed to have been conceived specifically for the life Huttunen was now leading. What did it matter where he was studying, the forest or the mill? Piittisjärvi delivered his mail to the forest; there was no reason to tell that to the gentlemen of the Institute.
Huttunen ate half a black grouse with cranberries for his supper. Then he threw himself on his bed of fir needles, his rifle within reach. Before falling asleep, he read the horticulture adviser’s letter again. Perhaps my life will still work itself out, if Sanelma carries on sending me such passionate letters, Huttunen thought hopefully, before drifting off to sleep amid a smell of sap from the fir branches.
CHAPTER 30
On Sunday the hermit of Sandbank Camp received a visit. Postman Piittisjärvi and the horticulture adviser Sanelma Käyrämö came to pay their respects. The little postman led the way, carrying a heavy bag on his back, surrounded by a swarm of mosquitoes, and the 4H adviser followed, pink-cheeked and blooming. They were both exhausted from their long trek – the adviser’s head was spinning – but when she saw Huttunen, all her tiredness evaporated. She threw her arms round the hermit’s neck, and he suddenly felt so wonderful that he couldn’t help howling with happiness.
Piittisjärvi waited impatiently for the embracing and howling to finish. Then he gave a semi-official cough and inquired, ‘Any luck with the brewing, Kunnari?’
Huttunen led the man to the icy water hole and drew the churn of homebrew up from its depths; he opened the lid and gave Piittisjärvi a sniff. The postman jammed his little head in as far as it could go. The vessel echoed with a joyous whooping. Beside himself with gratitude, Piittisjärvi exclaimed that he had some things for Huttunen that were almost as precious.
‘Come and tick them off the list!’
They went back to the camp where Sanelma Käyrämö was making coffee. Piittisjärvi emptied the contents of his bag onto the floor of the hut. There was everything Huttunen could need: big bags of salt and sugar, a packet of coffee, a sack of flour, semolina, two pounds of bacon, four pounds of butter … last to roll onto the spruce needles were a head of cabbage, several bunches of carrots, turnips, pea pods, beetroot, celery, Brussel sprouts and five or six pounds of new potatoes!
Huttunen looked tenderly at Sanelma Käyrämö who gave him a shy, happy smile.
‘Think about cooking those vegetables, Gunnar. They’re best grated. All of them come from your garden, except the cabbage and the celery.’
‘How can I thank you?’ Huttunen stammered. He looked fondly at Piittisjaärvi’s frail silhouette and the mound of provisions he had carried through the forest from the village. ‘You must have worked up quite a sweat carrying all that, Postman.’
Piittisjärvi played down his labours in a manly way.
‘What’s a sack, a few cabbages … Remember the day I ran from the eastern forests to Puukko Hill with my still? That was hard work. If it hadn’t been my mash, I would have left it in Reutu woods under the police chief’s nose, believe me.’
The bag’s pockets contained writing paper and envelopes, a pencil and rubber, a pencil sharpener, a ruler, notebooks, a pad and a variety of books, including Institute of Education through the Medium of the Post course books. Huttunen thanked his guests at length as he transferred their gifts to his rucksack. He had mail as well: the Northern News and a bill from Kemi Hardware for the driving belt he’d ordered in the spring. Quite expensive, Huttunen noted. He dropped the bill in the fire.
‘I think I’m going to leave you two lovebirds,’ Piittisjärvi announced, the soul of consideration since he was hoping to get away for a tête-à-tête with his churn. But the water was boiling and the postman had to wait to attend to his business. Sanelma Käyrämö opened the packet of coffee and poured a generous measure into the pot. Piittisjärvi downed his cup in one and did not have another. With steam filtering from his mouth, he left the hut and promised not to return for at least two hours.
‘You do what you like, I won’t be around to see.’
‘We can adopt a child, or two. We’ll choose healthy babies. You can get them straight from Kemi maternity and you don’t even have to pay the mothers. They’re so poor they can’t feed their children themselves.’
Huttunen tried to understand her fears. It would be truly horrible to be categorised as mad the minute you were born … The hermit made plans to sell the mill. He decided to write to Happola in Oulu. Perhaps he could arrange the sale after all. Summer was nearly over. He wondered if Happola had got out of hospital, now ten years had passed since the start of the War of Continuation when he had gone in.
Huttunen dictated a letter to Sanelma for Happola. They stuck a stamp on the envelope. He gave Happola carte blanche to deal with the affair.
In the afternoon they ate. Sanelma Käyrämö prepared vegetable soup. They made open sandwiches with bacon and lettuce and the adviser set out grated vegetables and stewed berries on little birch bark dishes.
‘Absolutely delicious,’ the two men said. Flushed with pleasure, Sanelma Käyrämö pushed her curls off her forehead every now and then. Huttunen couldn’t take his eyes off the young woman; he was so in love with her it hurt. He found it almost impossible to stay sitting down and, with love alone bringing him to his feet, would have liked to walk round and round the fire.
After the meal, the guests had to set off for the village, because it was a long way back and Piittisjärvi was spectacularly drunk. Huttunen went with them. Luckily they didn’t have much to carry, but Sanelma Käyrämö found it tiring all the same, since she wasn’t used to great hikes through the forest. Piittisjärvi was also tired, but for different reasons. Huttunen walked the last part of the way in the middle, supporting both his guests. Piittisjärvi chatted and laughed, while the adviser leant languorously into Huttunen. They reached the main road in this order, and Huttunen and Sanelma Käyrämö tenderly said their farewells. Both promised to write. Piittisjärvi swore he would deliver their letters free of charge.
‘Why put them in the post, stamp them for nothing? No need to lick any stamps, the sort of postman I am, I won’t make any fuss … I’ll turn a blind eye. The Telegraph isn’t going to fly off the handle just because Kunnari doesn’t stick a stamp on all his envelopes!’
When he was alone, Huttunen returned to the banks of the Kemijoki, took a boat and crossed the river. Making his way through the eastern forest, he reached Mount Reutu, where he settled down to wait for nightfall. On the stroke of midnight, Huttunen started howling. He called out in a high, powerful voice so everyone in the village would hear him. Then he stopped for a cigarette, and thought that they would come looking for him on Mount Reutu and along the Sivakka after this fresh bout of howling.
You’ve got to know how to howl to give yourself an escape route.
Finishing his cigarette, Huttunen began again: long, plaintive wails interspersed with a low, menacing snarling, like a hunted animal. He carried on until he was out of breath and sated. It was a delight, really, after all this time being unable to howl.
Having bayed his fill, Huttunen fell silent to listen to the results. The village dogs had heard his cry; a chorus of barking echoed from all parts. No one in the vicinity would get a wink of sleep that night.
His task accomplished, Huttunen left Mount Reutu. He did not reach his camp west of the Kemijoki until the early hours of the morning. Lying down to sleep in his hut, Huttunen thought it was a tough life when you had to trek dozens of miles, steal a boat twice, row across the Kemijoki twice – and all for what? Rushing around all night just to have a howl?
CHAPTER 31
The weather turned cool and rainy. Confined to the hut, his hermit’s existence began to weigh on Huttunen. The nights were cold and misty, the days deathly dull. The only good thing about the change in the weather was that the fish were biting. This was the best season for fishing, the end of summer. But Huttunen didn’t have any barrels to salt his catch, so he couldn’t even spend his time on the river.
As the rain set in, the hut’s roof began to spring leaks. To improve matters, Huttunen tore off long hoops of bark from stout birches and laid them on the shelter like shingles on the roof of a barn. No water got in after that and, since he had decided to keep a little fire going all day in the hut, Huttunen was much more cosy. But time dragged terribly. Thinking for hours on end wasn’t very entertaining, especially when most of one’s thoughts were crazy.
Huttunen immersed himself in the books the horticulture adviser had bought him, including the publications of the Institute of Education through the Medium of the Post. He started with a medical work by a certain H. Fabritius, Nervousness and Nervous Illnesses. It was hailed on the dust jacket as the most remarkable book ever written on the subject in Finland. Interested, Huttunen looked for an explanation of his own mental illness. Several descriptions initially seemed to correspond to his case. He recognised himself in the chapter ‘Hypersensitive and easily irritated people’, for instance. The one on sexual problems caused by nervous illnesses, on the other hand, didn’t spark any recognition. His sexual organs were in perfect working order! The only obstacle to his desires was the horticulture adviser Sanelma Käyrämö’s fear of having a mad baby.
The book detailed case histories of patients suffering from ‘obsession, otherwise known as psychasthenic neurosis’. Huttunen had to admit that he displayed some of the symptoms mentioned but he still didn’t feel he was really psychasthenic. As a whole, the book failed to live up to its reader’s expectations, who finished it still uncertain as to exactly what illness he suffered from. That apart, however, Huttunen found the book interesting, even amusing. He particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the psychopaths. Case 14 struck him as one of the funniest.
A middle-aged man who had never left Germany used to travel the country giving lectures. He claimed to have been born in South Africa, in Pretoria, the capital of the Transvaal. He had performed legendary feats during the Boer War, notably fighting in forty-two battles, and President Krüger had awarded him a baronetcy in recognition of his services. At the lectures, he would sell postcards of himself in military uniform (ill. 3).
In the photograph, the man was wearing a splendid officer’s uniform. A likeable-looking fellow who Huttunen warmed to immediately. The hermit was overwhelmed with rage when he read how the Germans had treated this kindred spirit. Apparently ‘the police took an interest in the man’s activities and sent him to be examined in a psychiatric hospital where he was certified as a psychopath of the mythomanic, adventurer type’.
Fabritius analysed the case from a Finnish point of view. He noted that the man ‘could not be considered a criminal, but society was not able to allow one of its members to earn his living giving lectures which were just hot air, even if they were fascinating and apparently entertained his audiences’.
Incandescent, Huttunen flung the book into the corner. He could imagine the ordeal the poor man had suffered in a German asylum in such a primitive era. German hospitals would have been far grimmer than the madhouse at Oulu, which was a living hell as it was.
Huttunen threw himself into studying. The correspondence course began with written expression; he did the exercises, read the e
xamples of principal and subordinate propositions and gazed in amazement at certain instances of juxtaposition and conjunction:
Work triumphs over circumstance; work precludes sleep.
We will go for a long hike and spend all day in the forest.
We will only go if it’s hot.
The sentences’ content interested him more than their grammatical construction. He thought of his long hikes and reflected with irritation that he would have to stay all summer in the forest, no matter how cold it got. Police Chief Jaatila had seen to that.
Huttunen familiarised himself with the ‘eng’, or ‘äng’, sound. It tickled him that grown men actually bothered making rules about something so obvious. The chapter on the glottal occlusive, or aspiration, was less enigmatic. He amused himself talking without a glottal stop for a moment. Everything he said sent him into hysterics. It was lucky no one could hear.
Law and business practices appealed to him much more than written expression. He started with the manual Sanelma Käyrämö had got him, which was written by I.V.Kaitila and Esa Kaitila. Any relation? Married perhaps?
The style was dry but things were explained concisely and in an easily comprehensible way. According to the correspondence course, one need only read the first twenty pages to start with but, as there was barely any let-up in the rain, Huttunen devoured the whole book from cover to cover. Then he moved on to the exercises.
One question compared wholesale and retail practices. Huttunen thought of the shopkeeper Tervola. At the end of his answer, he added, ‘In our village the retailer Tervola refuses to sell food to the mentally ill unless he is threatened with an axe. It would be easier getting served in a wholesaler than it is in his shop.’
Why doesn’t the Bank of Finland pay interest on deposits?
Another interesting question. Huttunen spoke of the role of the central bank, as the Kaitilas had explained it, and almost went on to mention the bank manager Huhtamoinen, who did not pay all savers their interest, or even their principal, and thus behaved even more despotically than the Bank of Finland, but eventually he decided against it. What interest were Huttunen’s money problems to the Institute of Education through the Medium of the Post? The main thing at the moment was studying, not Huhtamoinen’s banking practices.