by Mikael Niemi
Seldom have I heard such a beautiful timbre. The voices of the village men were quite different, for the most part harsh and unrefined. They were used chiefly in two contrasting situations: either deafeningly shrill—for commanding horses and reprimanding children—or wearily subdued—at evening mealtime after a hard day’s work. Their voices almost never adopted the modulation this man was using now. I had never heard the like. At first I thought he was singing; the sound was of a meandering melody. But then I noticed that he wasn’t rhyming. This was no hymn, nor was it a joik, the language being neither Finnish nor Lapp. This man was speaking the language of the king and the bishop, the language you could hear at the marketplace in Kengis or coming out of a horse-drawn carriage arriving from afar. It was that weaving, bobbing language called Swedish.
Most of the time the pastor sat quietly listening. Now and again he interjected with a short comment, posed a question, or raised an objection. A short pause would ensue, a sharp intake of breath, and then the voice resumed at a slightly quickened tempo, marginally faster, but still so elegantly melodic.
Women’s voices are beautiful when low and mellow, I find. Whereas girls who are vain have shrill voices; at a glance from a boy they squawk and squeak like sparrows. The opposite is true of men: the deepest voices are the dullest. A dense forest through which the sun can barely penetrate. But this man’s voice opened a glade; or rather, presented a magnificent view as if from a mountaintop, boldly launching itself like a bird of prey and sailing forth through the light. Buzzards and eagles came to mind, the surprisingly high-pitched calls of the bird world’s dukes and kings. While the humble villager sounded like the mountain finch, the noise he emits suggestive of spitting tobacco.
While the man was limbering up his vocal cords, a column of gray ash was accumulating at the end of his glowing stick of tobacco. Longer and longer it grew, until it suddenly collapsed in a shower of silver onto the cabin floor. As the man spoke, he directed his gaze to the ceiling as if it were from there his strength derived. The pastor’s daughter Selma sat entirely motionless before this apparition; she, like me, had never encountered anything like it before. Even the pastor’s wife, Brita Kajsa, seemed impressed, sitting by the fireplace, half turned away. Unlike me, the rest of the household could understand the man’s Swedish tongue, they could follow all the finer nuances he drew, pick up all the little drollities that made them laugh.
The armchair creaked and his ample bulk swayed as he changed position and balanced his remarkable smoking contraption on the edge of the best china plate, now cleared of food. He reached for his luggage, which was no humble knapsack or haversack, but a square brown trunk. He positioned it across his thighs and unfastened the lock, every judiciously elegant gesture raising our expectations. He lifted up the lid as though it were so very heavy and cautiously pushed it back until it was lying on the table. Whereupon he pulled out an elongated bundle tied with a bright red ribbon. His nimble fingers loosened the knot and he held up the scroll, slowly letting it unroll. As he did so, whatever it was transformed into something shiny: a lustrous surface of intense colors, a shimmering expanse against a darker background, and, finally, a pair of eyes looking into mine.
Startled, I realized that it was a face. No, it was more than a face: the hair was arranged in a large chignon fastened with a precious jewel, the skin of the neck so pale that it appeared almost white, a woman’s neck, slipping down inside a dress. And what a dress. The fabric was deep red, gathered around the woman’s body in the most exquisite folds and drapes and caressing the arms, which held a cumbersome stringed instrument. I didn’t know what it was called, but it consisted of a brown, lacquered body in the shape of a human torso, which she was stroking with a bow. And as for her eyes, they were veiled as in a dream but leveled straight at the beholder. She was entranced by the music. And through her eyes I could hear and experience what she was feeling in her other world.
The man explained that he had painted the woman down in Härnösand. That much I understood with my meager Swedish. The woman had been sitting and playing in front of him and looked just like this. She had been holding this instrument, called a shello. I committed the word to memory, to keep it forever; shello, shello, shello.
With an involuntary sigh I acknowledged that the man before us was a genius. His visit, this conversation, his work of art, they had affected us all mightily. The man was showing us a world I could hardly believe existed, but which his skill had manifested for all, including me. I could even hear the rustling of the dress.
Eventually the man’s purpose became clear. On the sturdy table, on the solid plank of Finnish pine, he placed a bottle of something transparent and yellow. When he pulled out the cork and let the children smell it, they laughed or backed away. The sharp, woody aroma reached even me. Next to it he put a bowl, together with some slender brushes and a thin wooden board that bore the traces of dried paint. After that he lined up pot after pot, each bearing a little label. Last of all he brought out another roll. But when he unfurled this one, it was white and bare. With a broad sweep he applied the dry brush to the surface. His fingers and the handle seemed organically joined and the brush became a sixth finger, growing directly from his flesh. And in my mind I saw the picture take shape. He was painting with air. He filled the space with a face, a gentleman in a formal, dignified pose, one hand on a . . . hunting rifle? No, something smaller, a hymnbook, perhaps, a postil? Yes, now that I could see it all in front of me, I knew that the painting would be quite perfect, that it would capture the pastor in all his glory. The pastor would obviously be portrayed at work on his herbarium, and in his other hand he would be holding not a weapon, not a pen . . . but something small, something ostensibly trivial, and yet more important than anything else. It was a newly discovered Carex, one of the most insignificant plants in this wild region, one that had been named after him, Carex laestadii.
The pastor was clearly impressed. I saw that he too had been captivated by the artist’s charm. The portrait in all its splendor was actually already painted. All it wanted was immortalizing as a work of art. For a certain fee, of course. An appropriate sum for this humble craftsman in the illustrious halls of painting. A sum that was not exactly small; a sum that was, in fact, when he finally named it, quite large. A great deal larger than many people in the parish could have afforded.
But even as he said it, I was thinking, What is the price of perpetuity? What is worth more to the pastor than existing for the rest of time?
With graceful movements he placed the painting equipment back in the chest. His hands were so unlike anything I had seen, the large fingers could mold and shape, finish at a precise point, follow the curve of a single hair, capture the flash in an eye the same second it occurred.
Amid much mutual paying of respects, the pastor prepared to take his leave of the artist, who asked to be called Nils Gustaf (they were already behaving like close friends). I gathered that the pastor had been given some time to think about it before completing the transaction. Nils Gustaf stressed that the opportunity would soon pass, and that after a visit to the Kengis foundry he would be leaving these parts, possibly never to return. As always in this life, it was a matter of seizing the day.
As Nils Gustaf walked past me, I stopped him. I showed him what I wanted to know, holding my hand as if there were something in it and slowly moving it toward my mouth.
“What . . . is . . . one of those called?”
At first he didn’t appear to understand. But then it dawned on him and he burst into a short laugh, with a sound as beautiful as his speaking voice. And he told me.
Now I had two words. The first was shello. What the woman was playing was called a shello. And the second, the thing he was holding between his lips and sucking on. The thing that was long and brown.
It was called a siggar.
9.
The pastor was ill at ease. I sat on the floor in the corner and watched
him read the letter that had arrived that morning. He rose to his feet, sucking on his large pipe, and frowned when he discovered it had gone out. He stood there poking and tapping it, his craving for nicotine intensifying like a fever all the while. Several times he held the paper up to the light at the window, to be able to see better. Lately he had been complaining that his eyesight seemed to be getting worse and worse. I hurried across to cut off some tobacco from the twist on the table and watched him greedily fill the bowl of his pipe with the flakes.
“So now Bishop Juell’s in on it too! Do you know of him, Jussi?”
“No.”
“Bishop on the Norwegian side. The revival is spreading over there as well, but not to everyone’s pleasing.”
“Really?”
“People are giving up drink, Jussi! And when the taverns can no longer rake in cash from liquor sales they’re going to lose substantial revenue. A number of priests side with the innkeepers, as does this Andreas Qvale they’re writing about.”
“I don’t know him.”
“An enemy of the revival. A priest who only does it for the money. Before the revival movement men like him could rule the roost, but not anymore. When he held a service in Skjervøy Church, newly awakened souls from Kautokeino came to protest. During the service there were calls for him to repent, for the priest himself to start living like a Christian. But instead of listening to their words, he had them thrown out for disturbing the peace. From what I hear it was Aslak Haetta, Ole Somby, Rasmus Spein, Ellen Skum, and one or two others. Do you know them?”
“Those are the family names of some of the reindeer herders up there.”
“Well, the following day Qvale was supposed to be giving Holy Communion. But the Sami had gathered at the church door and were exhorting everyone who came not to celebrate Communion there.”
“Because of the priest?”
“Of course. So Qvale had the Sami locked in one of the church cabins for the duration of the service. And afterward he reported them all to the bailiff.”
Puffing energetically on his pipe, the pastor sat down at the desk and began writing Sunday’s sermon. He muttered under his breath, moving his lips, rewriting, crossing out. I saw him fashioning the words, honing them; it was obvious that in his mind he was already standing in the pulpit. The smoke swirled as the words filled the sheet of paper, until he paused and read it out to me.
“Virtuous harlots, honorable thieves, sober drinkers, and upstanding innkeepers. Ye who are gathered before the cross after supping whore’s piss on the way to church, do you think that God doesn’t see? Do you feel the snakes writhing inside your guts, shiny and black with forked tongues . . . ?”
I could only nod in agreement. The pastor’s words were like iron skewers. For him they were not mere language: as well as tools and implements, bolts that could build steps up to heaven’s door, they were also knives that made sinners quake and sweat. With my own eyes I had seen the drunkard stagger out of the pew, full of remorse, to throw up in a snowdrift. Such was the power of the master’s oratory that his words could rend the hardest rock or reduce silent heathens to tears.
The page was soon full. He turned it over, but there was already something written on the other side. He hastily searched through his desk and found an invoice of some kind, turned it sideways, and proceeded to fill the empty spaces in the margins. The pastor often ran out of paper; deliveries out here were slow and unreliable and the cost was high. If I could have gifted our master anything, it would have been paper. I would have placed it next to his inkpot, a large pile of well-cut white sheets, ready to be filled with his thoughts. His writing ink was unsatisfactory as well; he often made it himself out of soot or rust that he scraped up, sometimes even from blueberries. Surely the king could send him a preparation from Stockholm? But the pastor, without complaining, took out his knife and pared the top of the quill to prevent the worst blobs.
Once again he stood up and gazed at the meadowlands outside the window. Then he turned abruptly, cheek muscles taut, and left the writing chamber without a word. There was always something preying on his mind. Often it was concern about his parishioners’ circumstances. The perennial problem of prostitution in the Pajala region. The desperation of the poor. Sunday after Sunday he took his place in the pulpit and sowed his seed on rocky ground. Perhaps he was bored with preaching to the same congregation, with the same grousing old crones reaching a state of ecstasy, their liikutuksia, begging for forgiveness in a shower of tears, even though they must be among the whitest sheep in the congregation. The revival seemed to have begun to wane, the flames he kindled in Karesuando to be dying down, the devotion to be cooling.
Without speaking he put on his curled-toe shoes. I didn’t know whether he wanted me to go with him, but I was always ready. I saw him grab the knapsack and the vasculum in which he always stored the plants he collected for the herbarium. Brita Kajsa asked how long he would be away, but he just gave a dismissive wave of the hand. This irritated her; it was the height of summer and there were many things around the place that needed doing, but he left her rebuke unanswered. His gaze was fixed on the far distance, he was no longer here, and when he snatched the rambling stick, I knew it was going to be a long day.
As we hurried through the village, people going about their business paused and gave a hasty bow when the pastor passed. He uttered a forced greeting in return, his entire demeanor indicating to me that he had no desire for conversation. The moment we were out on the cart track and the buildings were behind us, he relaxed. He stopped a couple of times to examine some examples of Salix, ran his fingers over the edges of the willow’s leaves and studied the hairs on them through his magnifying glass. But he had something else in his sights. Our rests were only long enough to allow us to drink something and apply another coat of tar against the interminable mosquitoes. I knew better than to offer, but during one break I managed to take his knapsack and shoulder its not-inconsiderable weight. Thereafter his pace increased as we abandoned the cart tracks and made our way into the woodland.
With mounting unease, I realized where he was heading. We were on the same path Hilda Fredriksdotter had followed before the bear took her. When we reached the firepit where we had found her headscarf, the pastor halted. He wiped his brow and his eyes, as though in an effort to clear his vision. The tracks were difficult to distinguish now, the grass was standing up again, and the girl’s possessions had long since been removed. The only interruption to the greenery was the sooty circle where the fire had been.
The pastor bent down and pressed his palm on the earth as if he could still feel the warmth of her body. The furrow in his brow deepened and his eyes scanned the forest, sweeping round in a full circle. I thought he was uncertain about where the hunting party had been searching, but after a while he lifted his gaze from the ground.
“Maa vettää . . . the earth draws,” he muttered. “I think everyone who’s walked in these forests has experienced this remarkable phenomenon. You believe you’re wandering around quite aimlessly. Your feet can take whatever direction they wish, do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“You amble along without purpose, thinking of nothing in particular. But suddenly, when you look down, you see you’ve ended up on a reindeer’s trail. How can that be?”
“Maa vettää,” I said.
“Exactly. The earth draws. It’s like magnetism. You’re drawn to where the terrain wants you to be. Reindeer and cows and elk and people and every other moving thing, we’re all steered along the same paths without realizing.”
Like the needle on a compass he slowly made a quarter turn. He raised his arm and pointed in an entirely different direction from that taken by the hunt.
“What’s over there? That way?”
“Marsh,” I said. “Undergrowth and bog.”
He took a few hesitant steps. Cattle had been here, their hooves had sunk
into the berry twigs, and the bushes’ leaves showed evidence of livestock having grazed on them. Bent over, he traced the hoof marks, his eye peeled the whole time. He instructed me to accompany him ten paces to his left in such a way as to cover a larger area. But I had no more idea now what we were searching for than I had before.
The ground grew more and more waterlogged and soon the spruce forest thinned out and turned into sedge swamp. There were clear signs that the grass had recently been scythed; the stalks were chopped off where the blade had struck. Out on a little island in the swamp stood a decaying hay barn. The pastor splashed out into the wet and I followed. Without marsh skis, we sank up to our knees and felt the undulating flarks roll uncomfortably beneath our feet, as if at any moment they would part and swallow us. The pastor followed a ridge, known as a string, where it was marginally less wet, until we made it to the barn and could catch our breath. We saw evidence of where the hay makers had stopped for a meal break and lit a fire. Twigs of spruce remained where they had sat, and the needles had started to drop. The hayrack posts were propped against the gable end of the barn in readiness for next summer. The barn was barricaded; instead of a door there were broad planks slotted into a rabbet. Together we lifted them out to get through the opening and then stood inside, hunched under the low roof, our feet on the hand-cut logs forming the floor. The barn was timbered but had large gaps to allow for ventilation, and the dry sedge hay was piled high. It had a warm, sweet aroma, a delightful summeriness that would be transported back by sleigh in late winter, the bounty that could be a cow’s salvation.
