Popular Music from Vittula

by Mikael Niemi

  PRAISE FOR

  Popular Music from Vittula

  “A blissfully eccentric, fiction-enhanced memoir.… Niemi tells his stories with stoic wit and a dusting of magic realism, as if the extreme climate knocks the senses off kilter. (Or perhaps it’s the vodka.) His prose buzzes with wonder, fearlessness, and ecstatic ignorance: the sensations of youth. Each chapter is an epic in miniature.”

  —Hugo Lindgren, The New York Times Magazine

  “[An] entrancing first novel.… In Laurie Thompson’s deft translation, the novel is shot through with vivid and often funny depictions of daily life in an exotic corner of the world.… I can’t think of many recent novels that have better captured the intricacies of social life in a rural community.”

  —Richard McGill Murphy, The New York Times Book Review

  “[H]aunting and glorious … Niemi’s finest achievement is to have created a world poised between an adult’s fantastic memories of childhood and a child’s naïve dreams of his future. Graceless sentiments like disillusionment or regret are never allowed to trespass upon Pajala’s icy rivers and twilit woods. The future remains a frantic hallucination, while the past is absurd and wondrous.”

  —Nathaniel Rich, Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “[Popular Music from Vittula is] the natural successor to The Catcher in the Rye—assuming Holden Caulfield grew up just above the Artic Circle.… It’s a singular anthropological dispatch from a permanently frozen Lake Wobegon, and a tribute to the power of international pop culture as sensitive to local home culture as Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity.… We can only imagine the punch of the original Swedish text; Laurie Thompson’s zinging English translation is its own kind of rock & roll heaven. A”

  —Lisa Schwarzbaum, Editor’s Choice, Entertainment Weekly

  “Popular Music from Vittula is a tale of boyhood friendship elastic enough to include numerous digressions, some fantastical, some so precise in their sociological observation … that an anthropologist could make good use of them.… In British translator Laurie Thompson’s hands, Niemi’s language is a constant, fresh poetic surprise.… Even the alphabet—’a scary army of sticks and half-moons’—comes strangely alive in this marvelous book.”

  —Michael Upchurch, The Seattle Times

  “Mikael Niemi comes from Pajala, Sweden, the scene—perhaps even the main character—of his remarkable book.… The book is filled with eccentric, grotesque, even unsavory characters, but Niemi shows large tolerance, kindly spirit and even clear pleasure in these odd neighbors. They are human, too.”

  —Bill Holm, Star Tribune

  “A beautiful, poignant, often very funny novel about growing up in a remote area. Niemi writes with real poetry as he strings together the culturally rich vignettes of Matti’s experiences, snapshots of childhood that are at the same time intensely personal and universal … all rendered pure and convincingly as a young boy’s perceptions. Niemi also seasons the book well with the mysticism of childhood that suffuses the usually hidden psychological space where the transformation from child to youth occurs. An exquisitely beautiful novel, artfully translated.”

  —Paula Luedkte, Booklist

  Copyright © 2003 by Seven Stories Press

  First trade paperback edition October 2004.

  Populärmusik från Vittula was first published by Norstedts Förlag, Stockholm, in 2000.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Seven Stories Press

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  http://www.sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Niemi, Mikael, 1959-

  [Populärmusik från Vittula. English]

  Popular music from Vittula / Mikael Niemi ; translated from the Swedish by Laurie

  Thompson.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-60980-288-2

  I. Title.

  PT9876.24.I29P6713 2003

  839.73′8—dc21

  2003002496

  College professors may order examination copies of Seven Stories Press titles for a free six-month trial period. To order, visit www.sevenstories.com/textbook, or fax on school letter-head to (212) 226-1411.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  The narrator wakes up, starts his climb and finds himself in a fix in the Thorong La Pass, whereupon the story can commence

  It was a freezing cold night in the cramped wooden hut. When my travel alarm started peeping I sat up with a start, unlaced the top of my sleeping bag and reached out into the pitch-black cold. My fingers groped around on the rough wooden floor, through all the splinters and grains of sand and the naked draft from the gaps in the floorboards until they found the cold plastic of the clock and the off-button.

  I lay there motionless for a while, semi-conscious, clinging on to a log with one arm trailing in the sea. Silence. Cold. Short panting breaths in the thin air. Still lingering in my body was an ache, as if I’d spent the whole night with muscles tensed.

  It was then, at that very moment, that I realized I was dead.

  The experience was difficult to describe. It was as if my body had been emptied. I had been turned into stone, an incredibly big, bleak meteorite. Embedded deep down in a cavity was something strange, something long, thin and soft, organic. A corpse. It wasn’t mine. I was stone, I was merely embracing the body as it grew ever colder, encompassing it like a colossal, tightly closed granite sarcophagus.

  This feeling lasted two seconds, three at most.

  Then I switched on my flashlight. The alarm clock display showed zero and zero. For one awful moment I had the feeling that time had ceased to exist, that it could no longer be measured. Then it dawned on me that I must have set the clock to zero when I was fumbling for the off-button. My wristwatch said twenty past four in the morning. All around the breathing hole of my sleeping bag was a thin layer of frost. The temperature was below freezing, even though I was indoors. I braced myself against the cold, wriggled out of my sleeping bag, fully clothed, and forced my feet into my icy walking boots. Somewhat uneasily I packed my empty notebook into my rucksack. Nothing today either. No draft, not even a single note.

  Up with the metal catch on the door and out into the night. The starry sky stretched away into infinity. A crescent moon was bobbing on the horizon like a rowing boat, and the jagged outlines of the Himalayan giants loomed dimly on all sides like spiky shadows. The starlight was so strong that it drenched the ground—sharp, white spray from a colossal shower head. I maneuvered into my rucksack, and even that little effort left me panting for breath. The lack of oxygen sent tiny spots dancing before my eyes. A rasping cough scraped through my throat, grating bellows, 14,450 feet above sea level. I could just make out the path running steeply up the stony mounta
inside before disappearing into the darkness. Slowly, ever so slowly, I started climbing.

  * * *

  The Thorong La Pass, Mount Annapurna in Nepal. Seventeen thousand seven hundred sixty-five feet above sea level. I’ve conquered it. Up there at last! My relief is so great, I flop down on my back and lie gasping for breath. Lactic acid is making my leg muscles ache, my head is throbbing, I’m in the early stages of altitude sickness. Daylight is worryingly blotchy. A sudden gust of wind is a warning that nastier weather is on the way. The cold bites into my cheeks, and I can see a handful of hikers quickly shouldering their backpacks and starting their descent to Muktinath.

  I’m left all alone. Can’t bring myself to leave, not yet. I sit up, still gasping for breath. Lean back against the cairn with its fluttering Tibetan prayer flags. The pass is made up of stones, a sterile expanse of gravel with no vegetation. Mountain peaks loom up on all sides, rough black façades dotted with heavenly white glaciers.

  Gusts of wind fling the first snowflakes into my anorak. Not good. If the path gets buried in snow, it can be dangerous. I look back over my shoulder: no sign of any other hikers. I’d better get back down quickly.

  But not just yet. I’m standing at the highest point I’ve ever been in my life. Must bid it farewell first. Must thank somebody. A sudden urge takes possession of me, and I kneel down beside the cairn. Feel a bit silly, but another look around confirms that I’m on my own. I bend quickly forward, like a Muslim with my bottom in the air, lower my head, and mumble a prayer of gratitude. I notice an iron plate engraved with Tibetan writing, a text I am unable to understand but one that exudes solemnity, spirituality, and I bend further down to kiss the text.

  At that very moment a memory comes back to me. A vertiginous pit down into my childhood. A tube through time down which someone is shouting out a warning, but it’s too late.

  I’m stuck fast.

  My damp lips are frozen onto a Tibetan prayer plaque. And when I try to loosen my lips by wetting them with my tongue, that sticks fast as well.

  Every single child from the far north of Sweden has no doubt been in the same plight. A freezing cold winter’s day, a railing, a lamp post, a piece of iron coated in hoar frost. My own memory is suddenly crystal clear. I’m five years old, and my lips are frozen onto the keyhole of our front door in Pajala. My first reaction one of vast astonishment. A keyhole that can be touched without more ado by a mitten or even a bare finger. But now it’s a devilish trap. I try to yell, but that’s not easy when your tongue is stuck fast to the metal. I struggle with my arms, trying to tear myself loose by force, but the pain compels me to give up. The cold makes my tongue numb, my mouth is filled with the taste of blood. I kick against the door in desperation, and emit an agonized:

  “Aaahhh, aaahhh …”

  Then Mum appears. She’s carrying a bowl of warm water, she pours it over the keyhole, and my lips thaw out and I’m freed. Bits of skin are still sticking to the metal, and I resolve never to do that again.

  “Aaahhh, aaahhh,” I groan as the snow starts lashing into me. Nobody can hear me. If there are any hikers on their way up, they’ll no doubt turn back now. My bottom is sticking into the air, the wind is whipping up and making it colder by the minute. My mouth is starting to go numb. I pull off my gloves and try to warm myself loose with my hands, panting away with my hot breath. But it’s all in vain. The metal absorbs the heat but remains icy cold. I try to lift up the iron plaque, to wrench it loose, but it’s firmly anchored and doesn’t shift an inch. My back is covered in cold sweat. The wind worms its way inside my anorak collar and I start shivering. Low clouds are gathering and enveloping the pass in mist. Dangerous. Bloody dangerous. I’m getting more and more scared. I’m going to die here. I’ll never last the night frozen onto a Tibetan prayer plaque.

  There’s only one possibility left: I must wrench myself free.

  The very thought makes me feel sick, but I have no choice. Just a little tug first, as a test. I can feel the pain right back to the root of my tongue. One … two … now …

  Red. Blood. And pain so extreme I have to beat my head against the iron. It’s impossible. My mouth is stuck just as firmly as before. My whole face would fall apart if I tugged any harder.

  A knife. If only I had a knife. I feel for my backpack with my foot, but it’s several feet away. Fear is churning my stomach, my bladder feels about to burst. I unzip my fly and get ready to pee on all fours, like a cow.

  Then I pause. Feel for the mug that’s hanging from my belt. Fill it full of pee, then pour the contents over my mouth. The urine trickles over my lips, starts the thawing process, and a few seconds later I’m free.

  I’ve pissed myself free.

  I stand up. My prayers are over. My tongue and lips are stiff and tender, but I can move them again. At last I can start my story.

  CHAPTER 1

  In which Pajala enters the modern age, music comes into being, and two little boys set out, traveling light

  It was the beginning of the sixties when paved roads came to our part of Pajala. I was five at the time and could hear the noise as they approached. A column of what looked like tanks came crawling past our house, digging and scratching at the pot-holed dirt road. It was early summer. Men in overalls marched around bow-legged, spitting out wads of snuff, wielding crowbars, and muttering away in Finnish while housewives peered out from behind the curtains. It was incredibly exciting for a little kid. I clung to the fence, peeping out between the rails, and breathed in the diesel fumes oozing out of those armored monsters. They prodded and poked into the winding village road as if it were an old carcass. A mud road with lots and lots of holes that used to fill with rain, a pock-marked surface that turned butter-soft every spring when the thaw came, and in summer was salted like a minced meat loaf to prevent dust flying around. The dirt road was old-fashioned. It belonged to a bygone age, the one our parents had been born into but were now determined to put behind them, once and for all.

  Our district was known locally in Finnish as Vittulajänkkä, which means something like Cuntsmire. It’s not clear how the name originated, but it probably has to do with the great number of babies being born here. There were five children in some of the houses, sometimes even more, and the name became a sort of crude tribute to female fertility. Vittulajänkkä—or Vittula, as it’s sometimes shortened—was populated by villagers who grew up during the hardship years of the thirties. Thanks to hard work and a booming economy, they worked their way up the ladder and managed to borrow money to buy a house of their own. Sweden was flourishing, the economy was expanding, and even Tornedalen in the far north was being swept along with the tide. Progress had been so astonishingly fast that people still felt poverty-stricken even though they were now rich. They occasionally worried that it might all be taken away from them again. Housewives trembled behind their home-made curtains whenever they thought about how well-off they were. A whole house for themselves and their offspring! They’d been able to afford new clothes, and the children didn’t need to wear hand-me-downs and patches. They’d even acquired a car. And now the dirt road was about to disappear under a layer of oily-black asphalt. Poverty would be clothed in a black leather jacket. What was being laid was the future, as smooth as a shaven cheek. Children would ride along it on their new bikes, heading for welfare and a degree in engineering.

  The bulldozers bellowed and roared. Gravel poured out of the heavy trucks. Enormous steamrollers compressed the hard core with such incomprehensible force that I wanted to stick my five-year-old foot underneath to test them. I threw big stones in front of a steamroller, then ran out to look for them when it had rumbled past, but there was no sign of the stones. They’d disappeared, pure magic. It was uncanny and fascinating. I lay my hand on the flattened-out surface. It felt strangely cold. How could coarse gravel become as smooth as a newly pressed sheet? I threw out a fork taken from the kitchen drawer, and then my plastic spade, and both of them disappeared without a trace. Even today I’m not
sure whether they are still concealed there in the hard core, or if they did in fact dissolve in some magical way.

  * * *

  It was around this time that my elder sister bought her first record player. I sneaked into her room when she was away at school. It was on her desk, a piece of technical wizardry made of black plastic, a shiny little box with a transparent lid concealing remarkable knobs and buttons. Scattered all around it were curlers, tubes of lipstick, and aerosol cans. Everything was modern, unnecessary luxuries, a sign of our new riches heralding a future of waste and welfare. A lacquered box contained photographs of film stars and cinema tickets. Sis collected them, and had fat bundles from Wilhelmsson’s cinema, each one with the name of the film, a list of its leading actors, and grades out of ten written on the back.

  She’d placed the only single she owned on a plastic contraption that looked like a plate rack. I’d been made to cross my heart and promise never even to breathe on it. Now, my fingers tingling, I picked it up and stroked the shiny cover depicting a handsome young man playing a guitar. He had a dark lock of hair dangling down over his forehead, and was smiling straight at me. Ever so painstakingly I slid out the black vinyl. I carefully lifted the lid of the record player. Tried to remember how Sis had done it, and lowered the record onto the turntable. Fitted the hole of the EP over the central pin. And, so full of expectation that I’d broken into a sweat, I switched it on.

  The turntable gave a little jerk, then started spinning. The tension was unbearable. I repressed the urge to run away. With my awkward, stumpy, boy’s fingers I took hold of the snake, the rigid black pick-up arm with its poisonous fang, as big as a toothpick. Then I lowered it onto the spinning plastic.

  There was a crackling, like pork frying. I just knew something had broken. I’d ruined the record, it would be impossible to play it ever again.

  BAM-BAM … BAM-BAM …

  No, here it came! Brash chords! And then Elvis’s frantic voice.