by Mikael Niemi
“Tekkös sieltä tuletta? Is it you, then?” he said in Finnish, pretending to be surprised. Mum handed him the flowers she’d had inside her coat to protect them from the cold, Dad shook his hands and wished him many happy returns, and I swept the attacking Finnish spitz down the steps. It fell over and started howling.
We sat down at the kitchen table and listened to the clock ticking. The whole place looked unnaturally tidy. Grandad sat in the rocking chair, his wrinkled neck rubbing against his stiff shirt collar, and he fiddled nervously with his tie. Everything was artificial and stiff, which is how it should be on ceremonial occasions.
At lunchtime my uncles and their wives started turning up, and big cream cakes were produced. Some of the ladies started making coffee and filling the thermos flasks, while Sis and I helped to butter the local rieska bread and make open-face sandwiches with juicy slices of oven-baked moose steak. Others filled trays with newly baked biscuits and buns, and the house was filled with a lovely smell of cinnamon, cocoa, and vanilla.
Outside, a pale February sun had fought its way up out of the snowdrifts and made the wintry day start glistening. A few reindeer were kicking at the crust of snow in the meadow, licking at the faded wisps of grass they uncovered. Some were lying on folded legs in hollows in the snow, preserving body heat, with only their dark antlers visible. The old dog hadn’t the strength to bother about them, and instead nosed around by the house, sniffing at the holes made in the snow where Grandad had gone out for a pee, and a bunch of great tits clung onto a piece of bacon rind nailed to the wall. The whole countryside was bathing in the white tundra-light under an ice-cold sun.
As the afternoon wore on, more and more visitors put in an appearance. The parking area in front of the house soon filled up, and cars packed the road outside. The closest neighbors came on kick sleds, and a couple of them made their way on skis. It was now time to start getting serious with regard to the formalities. Guests sat down at the long tables that had been prepared: thin men with runny eyes and frozen eyebrows starting to melt, and portly ladies with arms like loaves from the local baker’s, compressed into flowery Sunday-best dresses. Coffee was duly slurped from saucers, and salmon sandwiches and biscuits were passed around. The ancient wood-fired oven was lit for old times’ sake, and the old ladies started going on about the old days and how nice it would be to bake some genuine crispbread instead of the rubbish you found in the supermarkets nowadays.
After a second cup it seemed appropriate to bring out the brandy. A bottle bought at the monopoly store was uncorked and carried around by Dad. Schnapps glasses were filled to the accompaniment of silent nods, while those condemned to driving home placed their hands over their glasses. The atmosphere became noticeably livelier. Mum sliced up a couple of cakes and put them on plates. A few toasts were proposed, but Grandad remained anchored in his rocking chair, sweating. Dad filled up his glass with brandy, to make things look better in the photographs. Then followed a rendering of the traditional birthday song in broken Swedish, accompanied by admiring expressions. The old man was embarrassed by all the fuss and tried to hide behind all the bunches of flowers. Then he was instructed to open his presents. He’d left them untouched in case it occured to anybody that they were the only reason he’d agreed to the party in the first place—a sensible move given the usual Tornedalen assumptions. All thumbs, he struggled with the parcels until one of my uncles took pity on him and produced a puukko. A few assured slashes and the old boy made short work of the fancy wrapping paper, as easily as slitting open the belly of a pike. He produced a glass relief of a bull moose, a carved kitchen clock driven by batteries, a cake slice made of Tornedalen silver, a fancy pewter tankard, some lace tablecloths, a wall-hanging complete with hanging chain, a fancy pack of shaving luxuries, a guest book with a genuine reindeer-skin cover, a bed-hanging made of shells from somebody who’d been on holiday in Thailand, a poker-work doorplate with the motif “Welcome,” and various other useless gifts. Grandad commented in Swedish that this was pure overkill—another way of saying that all this expensive bric-a-brac was quite unnecessary. Nobody had dared to give him really useful things such as a chopper or a new exhaust system for his car, since that could have been interpreted as suggesting that he was incapable of seeing to mundane, everyday things.
Early in the evening the local folklore society turned up to pay their respects, twenty or so mild-mannered ladies and gents who shook hands politely like southern Swedes. Several had brought bunches of flowers with neatly written cards. After a sandwich and a piece of cake, they produced song sheets and sang with tremulous, slightly shrill voices. Swedish folk songs from Grandad’s school days, well-known sing-alongs, tributes to the landscapes and climes of their motherland. Dad served brandy, tactfully avoiding the Laestadians. To end, we all joined in the Tornedalen national anthem, slowly and reverently:
To Tornedalen’s vales and hills
We sing our grateful praise.
Our northern homeland, shorn of frills,
Is where we’ll end our days …
Some of the elderly were deeply moved and started wiping away tears. Grandad was surprisingly touched, his eyes grew red-rimmed and his hand shook so much that Mum had to take away his glass. The whole house was on the point of bursting into tears. Especially when the Finnish verses were sung last of all, everyone’s heart fluttered and felt hot and wet.
Everybody sat in melancholy silence for a while. Let themselves fill up with Finnish suffering, and pondered all the catastrophes that had befallen the family: all the merciless blows of destiny that had been suffered, all the backward children born, all the teenagers who’d become deranged, all the starvation, all the poverty, all the horses that had to be put down, all the TB and polio, all the failed harvests, all the failed attempts at smuggling, all the beatings suffered and all the scorn from the authorities, all the suicides, all the traitors and blacklegs, all the occasions they’d been cheated, all the cruel teachers and greedy company directors, all the times they’d been blacklisted, all the laborers who’d gone to Russia to help Stalin but been shot for their pains, all the damn “efficiency consultants” at work, all the sadists at the hostels they’d stayed in as school kids, all those who’d drunk themselves to death, all those who’d drowned while floating timber or been killed down in the mine, all the tears, all the wounds, all the pains and humiliations that had afflicted our long-suffering family on their arduous trek through this vale of tears.
Outside, the long, steel-blue winter dusk had turned into darkness. The pole star hung down like an icicle from the winter ceiling, encircled by thousands of glittering sparks while the temperature fell a few more degrees. The forest was stiff and frozen, not a single twig moved. The whole taiga was draped in grisly silence, the endless forest extending through sparsely populated Finland, on over the vast Russian land mass, through the even more vast Siberia, and on to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, a motionless tree-desert weighed down with snow and sub-zero temperatures. Deep down in the forks of enormous fir boughs crouched tomtits like tiny, fluffy orbs. And there, only there, deep down inside, was there a warm little flutter.
Suddenly a mumbling spread through the kitchen. The moose hunters! The moose hunters were approaching! The chairman of the folklore society rose to his feet and delivered a polite but brief thank-you speech, and Grandad promised to present an old and illegal fish spear to the local folklore museum, as he couldn’t see well enough in the dark now to use it himself. They turned their coffee cups upside down on their saucers, flung on their outer clothing and were gone in a blink. The only ones left now were a few neighbors and retirees, plus Dad’s brothers, who now dared to start swearing again and ask for more to drink.
Soon there was a stamping on the porch steps, then the front door was kicked open. In boomed about twenty silent men. The spokesman for the moose hunters said:
“Hello.”
The others sat down at the long table without a word, and stared straight ahead. The y
oungest was just over twenty, the eldest was already over eighty. Many of them were related to us.
Rieska bread, cake, and coffee, and then a toast with brandy from the last of the bottles, and everybody wondered why on earth the French insisted on coloring their spirits brown and making them taste like paint.
The spokesman for the sharpshooters got to his feet and started to deliver his ceremonial speech before the old men forgot where they were. He insisted that Grandad had been an effective member of the team; he wasn’t quite gaga yet, but as soon as he was he should stay at home and concentrate on the washing up and count on his former colleagues to look after his meat supplies. They couldn’t see any signs of senility just yet, repeated the spokesman, and the old boy seemed to be thinking straight, but by God, once he started rambling and talking nonsense, then he had better stay at home! Let’s face it, even a doddering old devil needed to be able to distinguish between a moose and a motor car, for instance, before he could be let loose in the woods with a gun in his hand—that was the difference between this particular group of sharpshooters and certain others he could name in this area.
The hunters all nodded grimly, and the spokesman took a swig before continuing. And so, the old boy could still manage to carry a rifle and put up with the rain and the cold and do his duty, but for hell’s sake, if he were to become senile! He’d be better occupied wearing out the sofa with the force of his farts. Because even if nobody could see any signs just yet, it was only a matter of time before his brain became addled, and that would be it, the old bastard ought to be quite clear about that!
After this heartfelt ceremonial speech, they handed over a pewter goblet with all the names of the hunters, including the dogs, engraved on it. A few of them had been spelled wrongly, as they’d made the mistake of having the engraving done in Luleå, where they weren’t familiar with Finnish names, but for the discount received they’d been able to buy a bottle, complete with contents.
Grandad responded by claiming that the wrong spelling was no doubt due to the awful handwriting of the sharpshooters, that his physique was equal in all respects to that of an eighteen-year-old, that he could see like an eagle and hear a moose cow fart at a distance of several hundred feet, and that if they took into account the number of brain cells destroyed by all the boozing among the hunters, he was highly unlikely to be the first one to go doddery. He then thanked them for the bottle, and more especially for what was in it, as this was the last remaining drop of strong drink left in the house, and once it was finished they’d be offered coffee for the rest of the night.
The moose hunters shuddered in shock. Grandad served them all with a thimbleful, and emptied the bottle. Silently, almost in tears, the men raised their glasses and emptied them. This couldn’t be true! The mean old bastard! Not now, when they’d managed to sneak out of the house without their old ladies noticing.
Grandad looked around and gave a signal. Dad quietly opened the hatch into the cellar and clambered down into the darkness. He was back in a shot and slammed the bottles down on the table. Two from each hand. And Grandad roared with laughter.
“Here you are, my boys! Some sweeties for you!” He was laughing so much, his belly was hopping up and down.
The hunters were so relieved, they almost burst into tears. Nobody bothered about the fact that the corks had not been sealed by the state monopoly liquor store. At last Bacchus could come into his own.
This was bliss. The joy of drinking. Getting drunk. Getting legless in the company of good friends without having to put up with whining objections. To pour the stuff down till your prick went stiff and your tongue flapped about your mouth like a flag in the wind. Emptying a bottle and immediately having it replaced, no need to go easy and measure it all out with a ruler, no need to pay, no need to sit half-sober but broke in some fancy pub and wonder where all your pals had got to.
The wonders of excess. None of your smallholder’s skimping with bacon rind and moldy seeds, but the ecstatic whoop of the hunter faced with a couple of hundred pounds of steaming meat. To drink till you drop, fill yourself up to the brim, pour it down with gay abandon—and just for once have no thoughts about the morrow.
Mum and the rest of the women still around could see the signs of imminent doomsday, and sullenly withdrew to go home. The men promised with one voice not to drink too much, but their tongues were so far into their cheeks they almost emerged on the other side. My big sister also withdrew, so as not to become a sex object; so I took over her role and started washing the coffee cups. Some of the men wondered archly if I was knapsu, and went on about my small titties. I suggested they go away and sniff shit or lick little girls’ privates.
Soon we heard the noise of cars outside, and when I investigated I saw it was our band that had turned up. Niila, Erkki, and Holgeri had arrived in an old Volvo Duett, chauffeured by a cousin. I helped them unload the amplifiers, guitars, and the drums, fewer of them than usual for this occasion. We put them next to the wood-burning stove to thaw them out before use. Unfortunately Greger was unable to be present: he had some vital phone calls to make, but might put in an appearance later on.
The moose hunters had reached the cordial stage. They started telling tales and boasting and recounting pornographic experiences in both Finnish and Swedish. One of the men started to sing Rosvo Roope with half-closed eyes, and followed that up with Villiruusu, even though several of his pals urged him to stop singing Korpela songs, as they only revived memories.
Dad was now getting tipsy as well. He staggered backward with a few empty bottles in his hands, and very nearly fell through the trapdoor into the cellar. The men all roared with laughter, but Dad cursed the idiot who’d left the hatch open, even though it was him. Then he passed the bottles on to me instead. I tottered down the unsteady ladder, feeling the coldness and dampness envelop me. There was a strong smell of sandy soil and potatoes. Wooden shelves with rows of glass jars full of cloudberry and lingon jam, the remains of the gravadlax, a few crates of pilsner, a tin of fermented Baltic herring, and a tub of pickled herring. Some planks had been placed on the earth floor, and on them were all the bottles of moonshine. I discreetly filled a lemonade bottle for the band, and put it to one side for later.
When the first of the sharpshooters went out for a pee, we gathered in front of the stove. I fitted a multi-plug into the mains and prayed the fuse would stand the strain. There was a worrying clicking noise in the cold loudspeakers when the current was switched on. Niila and Holgeri plugged in their guitars, and Erkki sat on a kitchen chair behind his drums and other fancy bits. I plugged the mike into the spare socket on the base amplifier, and coughed to get my vocal cords moving.
The hunters had watched our preparations with considerable misgivings, but when Niila started to strum in three-four time, they relaxed. Everybody recognized the old evergreen we’d taught ourselves in honor of the occasion:
“Oi muistatkos Emma sen kuutamoillan, kun yhdessä tansseista kuljettin …”
Everybody put their glasses down and remained seated. The party had already reached the melancholy stage, and the music was right on target. I sang facing Grandad, but he looked away modestly.
“Oi Emma Emma, oi Emma Emma, kun lupasit olla mun omani …”
We followed that with Matalan torpan balladi. The mood became so sorrowful that the windows steamed up. We finished up with the Erkheikki Love Lilt, a slow waltz in a minor key that could have wrung blood from a stone.
Afterward, all the men wanted to drink a toast to us. As was the norm in Tornedalen, nobody said a word about our performance: after all, unnecessary praise would only encourage us to undertake projects beyond our capabilities, and result in bankruptcy. But you could see from their eyes what they thought of it.
We sat ourselves down in a corner and started swigging from the lemonade bottle. The hunters, on the other hand, had the urge to wander around. They’d gone past the subdued stage, and now wanted to stretch their legs and discuss all sorts of things.
One of them stumbled over to us and wondered about our political persuasions. Another wondered whether what he’d read in the Evening News was right, that girls were hornier now than they used to be. We gave evasive answers to his first question, but maintained in response to his second that girls were no doubt the same as they’d always been, and that their enthusiasm for sex wasn’t obvious on the surface but you caught on when you were halfway inside ’em. He then started asking intimate questions about our girlfriends, how horny they were and how often we did it. And although we told him where to go, he persisted and wanted to know all the details.
I started to feel a bit woozy and staggered outside. A few of the men were standing in front of a snow drift, trying to remember if they’d just had a pee or were just about to. They decided for the latter, and pulled out their guns. They seemed to have made the right decision, as jets eventually appeared. One of them claimed the height record, and another challenged him. My young bladder was as bouncy as a highly pumped-up football, and I had no trouble at all in beating them both. Then I signed off with my initials underneath the record squirt. The old boys got annoyed and threatened to tar my scrotum. I drew a box around my initials then increased my record for good measure before they agreed they would fill my underpants with snow—but I was already on my way back in by then.
