The Black Tongue

by Marko Hautala

  She’d gotten tipsy and shamelessly asked Kirsi whether she taught anyone from Patteriniemi Road. And she’d been a little more than tipsy when Kirsi had told her everything about Sagal and her older brother, who had been caught selling drugs at his trade school. This serious, intelligent, and extremely diligent girl had tried to protect her brother to the bitter end. Apparently their father had been beaten on multiple occasions in Somalia, maybe even tortured. Kirsi had seen scars under his sleeve when he’d raised his hand to ask a question at parent-teacher night. He had nothing but pale scars above his wrists.

  Now, I don’t know if it was scarring from a burn or whether his hand had been . . . skinned or something.

  A welfare state didn’t have to make a distinction between a burn and a skinning.

  A serious, intelligent, and diligent girl. Maisa felt like such a jerk. If she were caught pressuring a preteen and pretending to be a criminal investigator, the worst punishment wouldn’t be dealt through the justice system. Her pure, debilitating shame would take care of it. And for what? A good research subject? Maybe. Something applicable to the larger scheme of things. Something beyond a childhood issue for a girl with no nails.

  The strip of forest on Ranta Street and the sea behind the pine trees didn’t take sides on this. Maisa made her decision, grabbed her phone, and called Pasi. When she heard the phone ring, she pretended to be confident of her decision.

  “Hey, it’s Maisa,” she said when Pasi picked up the phone. “I have a story that’ll blow you away.”

  “Great. The Awakening movement or the Laestadians?”

  “Neither.”

  “But you’re in Ostrobothnia, home of these religious movements. Either the Awakening or the Laestadians, pretty please.”

  “Listen to me. I have a recording from that Fairy-Tale Cellar where the teens go.”

  Pasi was quiet for a moment. “I’d love to congratulate you,” he said, “but instead I am compelled to ask an academic question that lays the groundwork for your project: what the fuck?”

  “You’ll congratulate me soon enough. I have a session on tape where kids are initiated into adulthood by being told a story that they’re not allowed to tell anyone else. They then become adult members of their community. It’s super spontaneous, just like I told you. Incredible stuff. The genre is absolutely bizarre.”

  “But what about the Laestadians—”

  “Listen.” Maisa put Pasi on speaker and played the recording. He listened.

  “Those are just ghost stories,” he said when the recording ended. “I mean, ‘Granny Hatchet’? That even sounds like kid stuff. A little funny, a little exciting, and stupendously useless.”

  “It’s not,” Maisa said, “if it’s been going on since the 1980s. Maybe even before then. You know the prognosis for urban legends.”

  “Two generations max.”

  “But this thing . . .” She tapped the MP3 player with her finger although Pasi couldn’t see her gesture. “This thing hasn’t gone away. It hasn’t even waned. On the contrary . . .”

  “What, it’s getting stronger?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe it’s an Internet meme,” Pasi said.

  “It’s not. This is genuinely old, organic, and spontaneous.”

  “I’m still not buying it.”

  “Just think about it,” Maisa said. “They don’t need a reason for Granny Hatchet’s existence. She just is. She’s the embodiment of all that’s scary and threatening. Everything you need to appease.”

  “Did you hear that sound?” Pasi asked.

  “What sound?”

  “The sound of the definition of religion being stretched to its breaking point.”

  “Surely it’s allowed to stretch,” Maisa said. “Or are we sticking to organized religion until the end of the world? One more century of secularism and the entire field of religious studies will be wiped out.”

  “It’s in the lap of the gods, as they say.”

  “So should we not include the gods of Arabic nomads in the definition of religion? ‘In practice they’re nothing but wandering demonstrative pronouns.’ Ever heard of that one? It’s a quote you should be familiar with.”

  “Rudolf Otto,” Pasi said. “Stop being so pedantic. I’m sure there’s a suburb where the same store window has been broken during alcohol-fueled Midsummer Eve festivities since the 1970s. Is that religious behavior to you?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why not? They had a rite of passage in Nivala where you’d become a real man if you shot yourself with a BB gun in the foot on your eighteenth birthday. I was in the army with a guy who showed me his scar.”

  “But this is different,” Maisa said. “Just think about it. They manipulate all these teenagers to think that they have to take part in the rite—that they won’t be adult members of the community until they do. And this is happening in modern times, in an urban environment, and restricted to a very small area. My informant, Sagal, is a goddamned second-generation Somali from a religious family. Can you imagine the hurdles she’s had to overcome to participate?”

  Just a tiny jab of guilt hit Maisa then. The memory of a figure wearing a dark-blue veil, walking away from the parking lot with contempt on her heels. The memory of the thumb on her left hand where the nail had cracked, a white, unexplained line running into the cuticle.

  “What it means is that there’s a place where the same ghost story has been told for over thirty years, and for whatever reason it’s become somewhat organized. And Muslims are now invited, too. It’s certainly curious, but it’s just a ghost story,” Pasi said.

  “It’s not,” Maisa said, frustration rising in her voice. “A primitive system is involved. Taboos, initiation rites, sacrificial gifts, punishments. We could use this to research how a religious drive tries to—”

  “Careful with the word ‘drive,’” Pasi interrupted her. “‘Propensity,’ please.”

  “You know what I mean . . . How a religious propensity tries to push through in an urban environment when there’s even the slightest possibility of isolating individuals from the mainstream culture. This must be researched, and it must be done now. These things are like butterflies; soon they’ll be gone because there is no paradigm to keep them grounded. This girl I talked to wasn’t very convinced herself because teenagers see and hear things that are much worse all the time. I don’t know where it came from, but it could disappear any day now.”

  Pasi was quiet for longer this time. “They talked about sacrificial gifts. At the peninsula.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s there?”

  “It’s the boundary.”

  “The boundary?”

  “Patteriniemi Road is an area of social interest. On one side you have public housing provided by the city, and on the other side you have mansions, with some townhomes between them. Such an arrangement stems from the Nordic school of thought on equality, where a variety of social classes are placed in the same area. Of course invisible barriers form between the classes, but the most important boundary, and the one nobody should cross, is at the shore: the boundary between them and the cabin owners who’ve been there forever. You’d think that telling the teens not to go there would just egg them on, but no. Going there wasn’t just prohibited, it was . . . a taboo.”

  “Oh, dear me,” Pasi wailed. “I cower before your formidable academic terminology!”

  Maisa closed her eyes. Her father had talked about the cabin owners with a loathing rivaled only by his attitude toward neighbors who were renting from the city. White trash. Those who ruled Patteriniemi Road lived in the apartment buildings, or that’s how the teenagers saw it. They always told the best stories, had the best music, and they were stocked to the gills with cigarettes, beer, and fruit wine. They had the toughest and cutest boys. They were the ones to pass on
the local folklore. Kids who were all about mopeds, and the band Accept, and who they’d fucked and where they’d gone drinking. They talked about Granny Hatchet with such reverence that in retrospect it seemed ludicrous that Maisa and the rest of the kids had ever bought those stories.

  She looked down at her nails. Her hand wasn’t shaking. Good.

  “A taboo?” Pasi said. “Can’t you use a term that’s a little less loaded?”

  “I can collect enough materials to convince you,” she said.

  He sighed. “Is there no way you could check in on the Laestadians? It’s easy to dig up something there that would arouse interest across the board. Just find a lamb that’s about to leave its flock, and investigate—”

  “Just fucking trust me this one time. It’ll pay off for you.”

  She could hear only Pasi’s breathing for a while as he either digested the curse word or the insinuation that personal gain was the only thing that drove him.

  “OK,” he said. “But just remember that an inherited ghost story is not religion; it’s urban folklore. It’s been researched to death.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “It’s the same with Yakuza—despite their initiations and other rites, they are not a religious cult. Keep this distinction in mind. You’re surrounded by your childhood, and I get it; you’re experiencing some lost youth out there, so it makes sense to be excited about the possibility of an urban religion that’s about to kick off, but to be honest, I’m not convinced.”

  “I get that,” Maisa said.

  “And in the form you’ve presented this story to me—it won’t convince the research-grant committee, either.”

  “Soon it will.”

  “We’ll see about that. Later.”

  Maisa hung up and felt her confidence drain out of her, writhe in pain, then die in misery. Pasi knew how to clip her wings. Old grudges reared their heads. Pasi was a professor, waiting for a young researcher to land on a story only to then swoop in like he always did as soon as the media got involved and claim credit. There was evidence of him fucking at least two of his protégés. Or three, but Maisa was too disgusted to count herself among them. Pasi had an uncanny ability to convince people to be grateful to him, and it was hard to explain how he succeeded. He was supposedly a relaxed, self-deprecating, calculating little shit who fucked with his socks on and whose wife smiled so hard at the department holiday party that her cheeks forced tears out of her eyes.

  Maisa listened to the recording once more. She walked over to her desk with her headphones on and looked at the quote she had on the wall: “Should it happen that all traditions in the world were cut off with a single blow, the whole mythology and history of religion would start over again with the succeeding generation.” It was framed and hung at eye level when she sat down at the computer. These days it was unwise to use Jung as a reliable source, but to Maisa this quote meant everything. It was her personal creed.

  Pasi’s doubts had managed to poison her confidence. She listened with closed eyes, trying to transport herself to the bomb-shelter ritual, to the Fairy-Tale Cellar.

  It wasn’t easy. Panic was settling in.

  There were times when Maisa had been so excited about her research subject that she couldn’t sleep. She’d pace her apartment and chew on her cuticles until the morning newspaper dropped through the mail slot in her door in the early morning hours.

  And then there was always Pasi.

  Nothing but crap. Ghost stories. Wishful thinking. No future. You should’ve gone to business school like your father told you to. Why travel to India and go nuts about the Parsi fire temples and the piss-poor people who performed beautiful acts of worship in the eternal light of the morning, as if they’d just invented the sun?

  And then there was the newspaper clipping next to the quote from Jung: The police are requesting any information on Samuel Autio, who disappeared . . .

  Maisa had been surprised to see how much the adult Samuel looked like he did as a teen. Of course his face was wider and his eyes were colder, but that’s how men aged. They got wider and more cynical.

  He was last seen September 29, 2012, in Vaasa. He left Helsinki in his blue-gray . . .

  But what did anything matter? Just keep on trudging to retirement, if those days ever come.

  On the day he disappeared he wore . . .

  Maisa fixed herself a gin and tonic, then took it with her to the bathroom and started applying makeup.

  She decided she was beautiful when she finished lining her lips. Beautiful enough even for a miracle such as Samuel Autio, who had gone missing two years earlier walking toward her in a dark alley like the resurrected Christ. It was a stupid thought, but it awakened a hint of teenage excitement in Maisa. Anything could happen. Anything was possible.

  She pursed her flawlessly lined lips and thought of Pasi. She couldn’t help grimacing and sticking her tongue out at her reflection.

  As Samuel exited the freeway he sped past traffic cameras, going a hundred kilometers an hour. He realized this wasn’t a good idea on a rain-slicked road. He could’ve lost his license if he’d been caught.

  He slowed down to eighty and immediately saw headlights in his rearview mirror. They moved from one edge of the mirror to another, looking for a chance to pass. Samuel didn’t care. He drove a steady fifty for a couple of hours.

  At some point the lights in the rearview disappeared. They had probably disappeared awhile back, but Samuel just hadn’t noticed that he was the only one on the road. He and the videotape.

  Why had Julia filmed it?

  What a stupid question.

  Samuel squeezed the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white. Everything had been so much simpler when his dad was still alive. He hadn’t needed to stay in touch or return to Suvikylä to know what was going on there.

  Tears began to blur his vision, so he quickly turned off the road into a gas station. He filled the tank although he didn’t really need to. It just felt good to do normal things. He parked the car and went inside to buy a coffee. He punched in the first number of his debit-card PIN with his index finger and then stopped. He stared at his finger, defying it to move. No visible shaking.

  “Forgot your PIN?” the young woman behind the counter asked.

  “Almost.” Samuel laughed and entered the rest of the numbers. The woman told him she’d had to request a new card twice because she’d forgotten the PIN. He quipped, “Just you wait until you get older.” They both laughed.

  On his way to an empty table, Samuel observed completely ordinary people reading newspapers, staring intently at their phones, yawning. He first sat at a table the farthest away from everyone else, but the incessant noise and flashing lights from the slot machine next to it made him restless. He moved one table over. He’d already had half of his coffee.

  Samuel felt safe among people. He thought about the tape and his dad, but with a detachment that kept him calm. Gas stations like these were built on practicality. They were pit stops far away from home. Anyone could get out of their car, walk in, and be whoever they wanted to be.

  “Did you forget your PIN?”

  This question could’ve been aimed at anyone, but Samuel made the mistake of turning toward the voice.

  The woman at a nearby table became visibly excited about the eye contact they’d just made. She was an odd-looking character. Samuel didn’t reply, just kept on drinking the weak coffee. He took his smartphone out of his pocket and started reading his emails.

  “You tried to forget your PIN.”

  Samuel continued to stare at his phone, although he’d already seen everything on the screen. Somewhere to his left the woman let out a deep sigh. Maybe she was losing interest in her victim. He heard a down jacket rustle. Samuel put the phone back in his breast pocket.

  “People try to forget their PINs.”

&n
bsp; Samuel aimed his gaze firmly at the register. A disabled man was trying to place an order at the fast-food counter, and the cashier leaned over with a sympathetic look on her face. Samuel would’ve given positive customer feedback about the girl if there was an easy way to do it. There had to be.

  “Did ya hear me?”

  Samuel kept on watching the man order his food and thought about how the fast-food counter, the colorful posters, and the entire gas station were designed for people like him—ordinary folks who didn’t think too much.

  “Did ya hear?”

  Samuel tapped the table with his fingertips.

  “Did ya hear?”

  He could just finish his coffee and leave. Or leave the coffee and walk out. Nobody would even notice.

  “People try to forget their PINs.”

  The woman had switched tables. She was now sitting right next to Samuel.

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  He had to look at the woman.

  Black hair, at least forty years old. Some shades of gray here and there. Her light-green eyes could’ve still mesmerized men if she hadn’t been so cross-eyed. Her stare was penetrating, expressionless. She was obviously a drug fiend or mentally ill.

  “I just . . .” the woman started.

  Her gaze traveled straight through Samuel. Maybe she was blind. It was easy to mistake the mute and the blind for wise people, but they were just mute and blind.

  “You’ve lost someone.”

  Samuel stirred his coffee and stared at the blown-up, sickeningly colorful version of the fast-food menu.

  “Am I right?”

  A burger and fries for €8.10 and a drink of your choice.