Popular Music from Vittula

by Mikael Niemi

  Dad finally got around to accounting for the inherent weaknesses in our own family. There were drinkers among us. That’s why he wasn’t going to offer me anything just now: I ought to wait until I came of age before getting involved with the poison known as alcohol, since the art of intoxication was a complicated one and needed a degree of maturity. When that time came, if I started to acquire a taste for the stuff I’d better be very careful. The nature of alcohol was such that it spread warmth and good cheer throughout one’s body even though ordinary folk found its taste bitter and unpleasant. Nevertheless, Dad had heard many alcoholics actually claiming to like the taste of it, which is no doubt why it brought about their downfall.

  Moreover, some members of our family used to get violent when they were drunk. That was something impossible to predict until you’d actually tried it, but it was important to be aware of it, as an inability to hold your liquor would lead inevitably to fines and knife wounds that never healed properly, not to mention spells in the clink in Haparanda. And so, to be on the safe side, the first time I got drunk ought to be when I was all alone and locked up in the safety of my own room. If I felt an irresistible urge to start fighting, I should always shun strong drink while in the company of others. The only option was getting used, at an early age, to going to dances in a sober state, which was extremely difficult to achieve, but not impossible.

  Then he started going through a list of all the family idiots. I’d already met some of them: one was in the psychiatric hospital in Gällivare, and another in Piteå. In medical jargon it was called schizophrenia, and it seemed to run in the family. It would appear when you reached the age of eighteen or so, and was due to certain causes. Frustrated love was one, and Dad begged me to be very wary of getting involved with complicated women who were scared of sex. Dad urged me never to be too persistent with the fair sex if they declined to open their legs, but rather to follow his own example and find myself an unabashed peasant girl with a big ass.

  The other cause of lunacy was brooding. Dad strongly advised me never to start thinking too much, but to do as little as possible of it, since thinking was a menace that only got worse the more of it you did. He could recommend hard manual labor as an antidote: shoveling snow, chopping firewood, skiing cross-country, and that kind of thing, because thinking usually affected people when they were lolling about on the sofa or sitting back to rest in some other way. Getting up early was also recommended, especially on weekends and when you had a hangover, because all kinds of nasty thoughts could worm their way into your mind then.

  It was particularly important not to brood about religion. God and death and the meaning of life were all extremely dangerous topics for a young and vulnerable mind, a dense forest in which you could easily get lost and end up with acute attacks of madness. You could confidently leave that kind of stuff until your old age, because by then you would be hardened and tougher, and wouldn’t have much else to do. Confirmation classes should be regarded as a purely theoretical exercise: a few texts and rituals to memorize, but certainly not anything to start worrying about.

  The most dangerous thing of all, and something he wanted to warn me about above all else, the one thing that had consigned whole regiments of unfortunate young people to the twilight world of insanity, was reading books. This objectionable practice had increased among the younger generation, and Dad was more pleased than he could say to note that I had not yet displayed any such tendencies. Lunatic asylums were overflowing with folk who’d been reading too much. Once upon a time they’d been just like you and me, physically strong, straightforward, cheerful, and well balanced. Then they’d started reading. Most often by chance. A bout of flu perhaps, with a few days in bed. An attractive book cover that had aroused some curiosity. And suddenly the bad habit had taken hold. The first book had led to another. Then another, and another, all links in a chain that led straight down into the eternal night of mental illness. It was impossible to stop. It was worse than drugs.

  It might just be possible, if you were very careful, to look at the occasional book that could teach you something, such as encyclopedias or repair manuals. The most dangerous kind of book was fiction—that’s where all the brooding was sparked and encouraged. Damnit all! Addictive and risky products like that should only be available in stateregulated monopoly stores, rationed and sold only to those with a license, and mature in age.

  At that point Mum shouted down the stairs that it was time to eat. We wrapped ourselves in towels and made our way up. Dad was swaying a bit, and stubbed his big toe, but he didn’t seem to feel the pain.

  As for me, I was no longer a boy.

  CHAPTER 16

  In which a bad man becomes acquainted with crusted snow, after which his wife is treated to a cold drink

  Niila’s old man, Isak, tried to put a stop to his sons’ puberty by beating them. The bigger they grew, the more he beat them. Isak’s bouts of drunkenness became more frequent and lasted longer. When sober he was moody, touchy and melancholy. He spent his time setting up rules and regulations for how to behave in every corner of the house, then methodically dealing out punishment every time he caught a sinner.

  Isak regarded himself as extremely fair. He would often complain, as dictators always do, about how onerous his duties were, how ungrateful his family was, and what catastrophes would befall the house when he was gone, which would probably be quite soon. Like all alcoholics he used to think a lot about death. He longed for it, threatened to kill himself, but feared death above all else. Such thoughts grew stronger the seedier he became. He would often cover the kitchen table with sheets of newspaper and sit there cleaning his old moose rifle. He’d check the mechanism, dismantle and oil it, lift the barrel to his eye, and follow the spiraling rifled grooves into infinity. If relatives dropped by he liked to inform them about how he intended to distribute his estate, which was his favorite hymn, which Biblical quotation he thought would be most appropriate for his obituary notice. The children tried to get used to the thought, but it remained pretty awful. If he was out for longer than usual, they would find an excuse to go down into the cellar, out to the garage, or up into the loft. They wanted to know if he’d achieved his aim, but they never mentioned it to one another. Whenever he slapped them with the palm of his hand or lashed them with his belt, his eyes would disappear, they would turn black like holes in a skull. He was not of this world, he was already partially decomposed, already half with God, or Satan. His sense of duty and justice was so strong that he could carry out a beating and weep at the same time, belt his children with tears rolling down his cheeks, hit them with a confused passion that he called love.

  When he was drinking he came closer to real life. He had more color in his cheeks, the dried-out river beds filled with moisture and started to flow again. He could laugh, enjoy the first few glasses, and lust after women, food, and money. But jealousy grew at the same rate. It was directed primarily at his sons, and was stronger the more grown-up they became. He treated Johan worst, his eldest son, who was closest to adulthood. Isak was jealous of the fact that Johan would soon have women of his own, delicious young lovers, and that the hard stuff hadn’t damaged his young body, that Johan would soon be earning money and be able to live his own life and enjoy all the temptations the world had to offer, while he himself would be eaten up by unfeeling maggots. In Isak’s dreams Johan would walk up to him, force his mouth open, and press his decayed teeth one by one until they sunk right down into his rotten gums. The boy would keep on going until only the bare gums remained, flat and bloody like the hands of Christ disfigured by nails.

  Puberty was stronger than death. It was a plant that could grow through asphalt, a rib cage that could burst through shirts, a rush of blood that was more potent than vodka. Deep down, Isak wanted to kill his sons. But such a thought was so forbidden that he re-jigged it and turned it into beatings, into many beatings, into a long, drawn-out execution. But they kept on growing even so.

  One Saturday in
early spring when Johan was sixteen and Niila thirteen, they were instructed to accompany their father into the forest. They would have to shift some piles of timber to a forest road while the hard crust of snow lasted, before the midday sun—Isak had struck a good deal on some cheap wood he could use for his stoves back home. He had borrowed a snowmobile and raced off into the wilderness, weaving his way around tree stumps and tufts of grass, while his sons bumped around in the trailer, rubbing away at their cheeks to stave off the cold caused by the slipstream. You could see they were muttering away to each other and repeatedly looking at his back, but you couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying over the roar of the engine.

  It was a sunny day. Light seeped in through the tops of the fir trees, glittering and gleaming in the mirror-prisms of the snow. The spring winds had blown down lumps of beard lichen and flakes of bark that gradually melted into the crust of snow. The night frost had hardened the surface into a solid floor that could be pierced with your thumbs and lifted up in large sheets. Underneath, the snow was soft and powdery, so loose that you could sink into it right up to your thighs.

  Isak kicked at the piles of logs covered in snow, produced a spade, and ordered Johan to start shoveling. And he’d better get a move on as well: if they hadn’t finished before the midday thaw came because the two boys had been wasting time, it would be no joke, no laughing matter at all.

  Without a word Johan took the spade and leaned it carefully against the wood-pile. Then he took off his gloves and delivered a vicious punch that landed just over his father’s right eyebrow. Isak lost his balance and fell flat on his back. His bellowing echoed in the vast silence. Johan continued punching him, on the nose, his chin, his cheekbones. Niila flung himself over his father’s legs, as they’d planned, and pummelled away at his midriff. No weapons were used, just clenched fists with boney knuckles, strong, hard, boys’ fists that punched and punched. Isak wriggled like a crocodile, screaming all the while. His body was pressed through the hard crust and sunk down into the powdery snow. He was flailing his arms around, his mouth filled with snow. Blood was flowing freely, red and viscid, his eyes swelled and closed. But still the boys punched. Isak kicked at them, defended himself as best he could, fighting for his life now. He grabbed hold of Niila’s throat and squeezed hard. Johan bent his father’s little finger back until he screamed and was forced to let go. He disappeared down through the hard crust, floundering like a drowning man in the cold, white foam. More punches, harder and harder, a slab of iron under heavy hammers, a red-hot lump that glowed less red with every blow, became darker, greyer, stiffer.

  Eventually the old man was no longer moving. The boys got to their feet, panting, and scrambled up onto the hard crust. The old man lay down at the bottom of his snow hole, looking at his sons outlined against the sky above. They peered down as if into a grave, whispering to each other like two priests. Flakes of snow melted and chilled the old man’s death mask.

  “Do you give up?” shouted Johan in the piping squeal of a lad whose voice is breaking.

  “Go to hell!” wheezed Isak, spitting blood.

  They jumped back down into the hole. Started again. They punched their father until the sweat poured off them, pounded that old alcohol-sodden face out of shape, beating the life out of the wreck, finished him off once and for all.

  “Do you give up?”

  And now their father burst out crying. He sobbed and sniveled deep down in his grave, no longer capable of moving. His sons climbed back up, made a fire, and melted some snow in the sooty saucepan. And when the coffee had boiled and the dregs sunk down to the bottom, and the smell spread, inducing Siberian jays to fly up and peer around the tree trunks, they lifted the old bloke up and lay him down on a reindeer skin. They pushed a lump of sugar between his battered lips and handed him a steaming mug. And as their father slurped pitifully at his coffee, Johan explained to him quietly that the next time he laid a hand on any member of the family, they would beat him to death.

  For the next few days they were expecting revenge at any minute. They locked their bedroom door at night in order to avoid being surprised in their sleep, they hid the bolt of the moose gun and they made sure no knives were left lying around. Their mother tended her husband when he was in bed, feeding him with sour milk and blueberry soup and changing his plasters. She questioned her sons with her eyes but not with her voice, and noticed how they avoided entering the room. Isak himself said nothing. He stared at the cracks in the white-painted ceiling, a confusion of thin, black lines meandering along, branching off, coming to a sudden stop. They formed roads through remote, unknown landscapes. In his torment he started walking down those roads. He passed by houses and farms, got to know the local population and the names of villages. He wandered alongside rivers and tried his luck at fishing, trekked through forests teeming with game and berries, climbed low mountains and admired the views. Eventually he came across a spot where he’d like to live, and made himself a house out of fir logs he chopped down himself. He moved in to lead a solitary life. There was plenty of meat and fish, lots of wood to make fires with. The winters were long but he was used to that, the summers shimmeringly light. Only two things were different from the old world. First, there were no mosquitoes here. Not even around the enormous swamps where cloudberries hung down like yellow fists, not a single mosquito, no gnats, no gadflies, no clegs, no horseflies: a strange forest world completely devoid of bites or stings.

  Second, there were no sins here.

  Isak was shaken deep down in his soul when he realized that. He had found Paradise at last. No matter how hard he searched, he could find no evil. Nature gave birth and nourished, ate and was eaten in a neverending round of hunger and death. But it was an innocent struggle, uncorrupted. Nature breathed all around him, inside him, through him. He could abandon despair. Stop his desperate fight to keep his head above water. Just open himself up like a cavity and let the good, verdant air blow through him.

  And in this unexpected way, for the second time in his life, Isak found God.

  * * *

  As time passed he recovered, and turned nasty again. Anything else would have been too much to expect. But he stopped talking about suicide. And he stopped beating everybody, as he took the threats from his sons seriously. Instead he now started to see some point in growing old. Years later, when the sons had flown the nest, he tried to revive the tradition of beating his wife, but discovered that she had changed so much, she hit him back.

  Instead, he devoted his time to harassing the garbage collectors, telling off the mechanics running the official car roadworthiness tests, and adjusting the borders of his plot, not to mention protests and various claims for damages to every authority in sight. But he was never much good as an agitator, and officials took no notice of his ranting.

  There was a continental shift that affected the whole family. The landscape crumpled and assumed new contours. Niila’s mother had devoted her whole life to diversionary maneuvers, but suddenly found herself with breathing space. Unused to this, she became depressed. She felt isolated and undervalued. Her children could manage for themselves, without needing her as a punching bag or go-between. Now that the war was over, how was she going to get by?

  With time to think about her own welfare, she was suddenly overwhelmed by aches and pains. Her voice was nowadays heard in the house, unpracticed and hesitant, monotonously squeaky like an old wheel. The moment she opened her mouth, the house was filled with big, tired lumps of fluff that piled up to waist height and made it difficult to move around. The younger children, the girls and baby brother, became unruly. At last they dared to start growing up, and distanced themselves more and more from the stifling atmosphere of home. Their mother breathed her grey membranes over her children, but they thrust them aside and stuck their tongues out at life. She changed tactics and told them they were making her ill, that it was their fault that she was suffering. She kept on saying it over and over again, day in and day out, until they coul
dn’t fight it any longer. The spider’s web wrapped itself round them strand by strand, until every move they made was strenuous and treacly. They struggled and bit with their milk teeth, but they couldn’t break loose.

  Johan was now something of a head of household, but he couldn’t understand what was happening. Isak refused to have anything to do with the hysterical little brats, claiming that people get like that if they are not properly punished for original sin. The whole house seemed to be decaying and falling to pieces. The lust for life trickled down between the floorboards and gradually rotted away. Things had gotten so bad, everybody wanted to be beaten again. First a beating, then God’s grace.

  In the end Johan marched up to his mother.

  “It’s time you got yourself a job,” he said.

  She turned white, and wondered why he wanted to send her to her death, given her agonized and exhausted state.

  “It’s time you got yourself a job!” he said again.

  She refused, she’d become a laughing stock, who would want to employ an old woman with no qualifications?

  “Meals on wheels,” he said. “School dinners, old folks’ homes.”

  She didn’t reply, just slumped down onto the kitchen sofa, panting and wheezing from an attack of asthma. The children stopped squabbling on the floor, Isak froze in the rocking chair. Mum squirmed and wriggled, unable to breathe. Niila ran to phone for an ambulance, but Johan stopped him. Without saying a word he fetched a bottle of milk from the fridge. Walked over to his mother and emptied it all over her. A white flood flowed down her face, over her bust, down her skirt and her wrinkled stockings. A copious milky mess. And cold.