by Mikael Niemi
“I think we have it,” he announced.
Ceremoniously he laid out sheet after sheet on the floor. Some depicted the pastor full length, on others only one or two details were visible. His nose, for example, had an entire charcoal sketch to itself; it was large and bent in a distinctive way, an essential element for an accurate likeness. The pastor, Brita Kajsa, and those of the children who were at home had to appraise each sketch as Nils Gustaf pointed to it with his walking stick.
“I fancy a half figure, seated. The face in half profile to allow for a proper rendition of the nose, the eyes looking straight at us. We see a person on the road, someone who has taken a momentary rest. Imagine the play of light to the right at the back, an arbor perhaps.”
“A what?” Brita Kajsa said doubtfully.
“A portion of the pastor’s wife’s delightful garden,” the artist hurriedly explained. “You see how the vegetation forms a window of light where the sky can be glimpsed. You understand the symbolism?”
Brita Kajsa was won over by the unexpected praise and displayed an air of benevolence seldom witnessed in her. The pastor pointed at the table.
“So I’m sitting outside? The desk is going to be in the garden?”
“It is symbolic. In one hand, a magnifying glass, in the other, one of God’s beautiful creations you have just been examining, a mountain plant. And by the herbarium, instead of a brandy glass we’ll place your wooden cup, filled with fresh spring water from a babbling mountain brook.”
“That is also symbolic,” said the pastor, nodding thoughtfully.
“Just like the broken bread on the table. No wafer, but a hearty and nutritious potato loaf! And two fishes on a plate. And we’ll prop the rifle against a birch tree in the background. You can see the branches, can’t you? The pattern they form with the metal of the gun?”
“A cross!” I whispered.
The cross of Christ in Brita Kajsa’s garden. It was a stroke of genius and filled us all with excitement. The artist moved the sheets of paper around, showing how the parts would coalesce into a hitherto unseen whole. It would be a full account, a unique picture, as deep and multifaceted as the pastor’s own life.
“This is going to take some time, isn’t it?” The pastor was thoughtful.
“Naturally it will require a number of sittings. We’ll have many opportunities to exchange our thoughts. I have some folk paintings I would like to complete first, some local scenes, nothing formal.”
“Dance scenes, perhaps?”
“Yes, I was in fact inspired by the dance setting a little while ago. Such heartwarming rusticity.”
“Which ended badly.”
“Yes, that was dreadful. To think that a violent criminal could lie in wait out there for a suitable victim.”
“And you didn’t notice anything yourself?”
“Such as . . . ? No, thank heavens.”
The artist solemnly took his leave and the pastor accompanied him a short distance along the road. The bearers were bent under their load and disappeared in the direction of the foundry at Kengis, where the artist’s cabin was.
“Did you see how he was sketching?” the pastor said in a low voice.
“Yes, it will be outstanding. The pastor’s painting.”
“I was thinking of something else. Did you see how he held the crayon, Jussi?”
“In his left hand.”
The pastor pulled off his tie as we watched the walkers merge into the summer greenery.
28.
During the haymaking season, I was hired as a day laborer in the parish. The weather was favorable, and with no rain expected the hay would dry from one day to the next. I was sent out to one of the waterlogged bogs that had been divided up between the villages generations ago. The master was a withdrawn, sullen fellow who communicated with his ill-tempered wife in sidelong glances and gestures. They argued constantly or, more accurately, she walked around snarling and swinging her rake in a lethal manner, while the muscles in her husband’s shoulders were knotted so tightly that he resembled a T. Their adult sons had left home, leaving only the daughter, as irascible as her mother. In the evenings they lay down in the hay barn while I rolled myself up in a blanket on the ground outside and listened to them continue their quarreling. They never called one another by name, but they had a large repertoire of epithets they spat at each other, words such as “swine,” “pismire,” “lard-bladder.” I soon acquired the nickname Räkä, or Snot, and I could well understand why the family had so much difficulty getting hold of hay makers that they were forced to hire a stranger.
When it was time for a meal break, we gathered by the hay barn. There was a wooden barrel inside that had been driven there on a sledge earlier in the year. The lid had swollen and stuck, and the master had to tap an ax around the edge until it loosened. Filled with expectation and displaying a rare grin, he lifted the lid. Inside was a hairy blanket of mold. With his tobacco-stained fingers he lifted it off to reveal a fatty sludge streaked with yellow. His wife and daughter waited with bated breath, in one of the few moments they showed any kind feelings to one another. I saw the wife pick up her wooden cup, dip it in until it was full, and then take a slurp.
They called it piimää, in other words sour milk. But this was something quite different from the sort served fresh in the parsonage. I had never tasted anything so vile. It was musty and rank. Over the months in the hay barn the substance had fermented and putrefied until it was dead, and then it rose again and started re-fermenting. In the end it was so acrid, the noxious elements seemed to cancel each other out, leaving an overwhelming taste of graveyard. That was the food on offer, and that was what I forced into me as I retched involuntarily. But the strange thing was, you got used to it. By the second day it was easier. And on the third day, when the barrel was thumped open again, I could feel my mouth filling with saliva as soon as the stench reached my nose; and then I realized that I was beaten. I shakily held out my cup and it was returned to me full to the brim with the slime, and when I let it fill my palate, a song began to grow inside me, a poem, a sensation that my entire brain was addled, and instantly I wanted more.
* * *
—
The work itself was heavy and sweaty. The insects were irksome, especially the horseflies, so I kept my shirt on even though it was soaked through. Naturally I had been given the worst scythe: it was difficult to get it really sharp and it seemed to skew as it struck, so there was none of that swishing sound you would make if you were blowing grass away with your lips. I cut swath after swath nonetheless, smeared resin over my blisters, and downed gallons of water. As I was the lightest among them—I weighed less even than the daughter—I was the one who had to strap on the marsh skis and cautiously tramp farthest out on the undulating flark. Despite my skis, the water reached above my ankles, the surface rolled like waves on a great lake, and if I fell, or if I put my foot right through it, I would never be able to stand up again. In the black depths beneath me I felt the icy fingers of the netherworld dwellers groping for me, creatures who wanted to drag my hot, perspiring body into the kingdom of the cold. I thought about Hilda Fredriksdotter, about how she lay in the bog facedown, about what horrors must have filled her eyes down there.
Before I fell asleep I would pick up my birch-bark knapsack, carefully fold back the leather binding, and open a book. It belonged to Selma, the pastor’s daughter, who had lent it to me, and I never touched it without washing my hands in the stream first. Apostle of the Wilderness was its title. It was about a young man like myself. Who went out into the great forests. Where he built himself a wooden house. And caught fish and snared wild animals. And then he met a woman who made him believe.
The more I read, the more the letters faded away. When I had turned back the cover, the doors had opened onto a world I could step inside. I entered, and became Aaron. I felt the suspense when the wolves advanced
, when the arrows were unleashed and the only thing holding the wild animals at bay was the flaming torch in his hand. And the word of God. Carried in safety through the perils by the torch and the word of God.
The first pages had been almost impenetrable. The letters were very small and it was in Swedish, to boot. Every sentence had to be endlessly chewed over. But then it became less difficult and by the second chapter I was hooked. I shaped my lips so that my mouth could feel the meaning of the words, that made it easier. But I made no outward sound; it all happened in my mind. A different world was lying in my knapsack during the day, waiting for me like a trusty friend. Someone I could converse with at night, listen to, take by the hand and follow. It was the best book I have ever read.
Without my noticing, the woman had come to stand beside me. She must have been on her way to pee before she retired. I had been so immersed in the book I hadn’t heard her footsteps. Now she was staring at me as I lay on my bed of spruce twigs with the nighttime mosquitoes buzzing round my head, staring at the cover, at the too-white paper I was awkwardly trying to conceal. This was something unexpected. Something she had never seen before. Her lips blubbered noiselessly for a moment, wet with spittle, while her brain worked overtime.
“You’ll go crazy,” she said eventually. “Satan’s little noaidi. Crazy. If you read, you’ll go crazy.”
At first I was going to hide the book away. But then something happened: I turned into Aaron. I swung the torch at the wild animal. I turned my eyes firmly to the page and stepped back in. This was my hour of rest; the working day was over. This had nothing to do with the old hag.
And Aaron awaited me, his muscles taut. He was face-to-face with a bear, holding his hunting spear in his hand. It was difficult to see how this would turn out.
29.
When I returned to the parsonage at nightfall a few days later, the pastor was in the sauna. He stuck out his steaming mop of hair and waved to me.
“The stones are still hot, Jussi!”
I was unsure; normally I would bathe last, after the family, the visitors, and the servants. But he seemed to be eager and in a good mood, so I put my knapsack away and went in. It was the first time I had seen the pastor naked. He was surprisingly hairy, not smooth-skinned as we Lapps and Tornedalians usually are. His genitals were strikingly large and hung slightly askew. He spread out a piece of sacking on the wooden bench so that the soot wouldn’t blacken me and poured a few ladles of water over the pile of stones.
“Really and truly,” he said, giving a pleasurable groan, “isn’t the sauna God’s greatest gift to mankind?”
I could only agree with his sentiment. My shoulders ached. My thighs ached. My arms, my blistered hands, even the little muscles in my toes hurt. But gradually I felt the pores in my skin open and small drops of perspiration squeeze out; and I was rendered permeable and wide open to the miraculous healing powers of the steam from the löyly. My ears started to ring and my temples to pound, as the blood vessels expanded to let the blood sweep through. This blood, which was so filled with salts and strength.
By this time the pastor had been sitting there for a good while and was radiating a rare gentleness. He handed me his vihta and asked me to beat his back with the bunch of fragrant silver birch, in particular the area a handbreadth below his shoulder blade, where his age prevented him from reaching. He moaned with pleasure, while I beat with all my might. The summer scent of birch filled the sauna, the leafy twigs skipping across his thighs and chest, and soon the pastor gave me the same treatment. He beat as hard as a catechist, just as I wanted him to, lash after lash so that the marsh mud came off and washed away through the slats in the bench.
Afterward we sat in silence. The prickling heat was over and the stone oven was emitting its protracted secondary warmth, like a large, curled-up animal.
“I have been in paradise,” the pastor said.
“Ah,” I said.
“In paradise. I didn’t know it had its place here in the north. It’s called Poronmaanjänkkä. Below Jupukka Mountain. I didn’t think such floral splendor was possible up here.”
He half closed his heavy eyelids in his usual manner when withdrawing into himself. It was as though the pictures flowed out of him and attached to the dark sauna walls, as if he were illuminated by an inner source of light.
“Orchids!” he exclaimed. “The entire bog! Rich violet, pale pink, deep red. As if the Creator had splashed paint from the whole palette with his brush. It was a sea, Jussi!”
“A sea?”
“I had only intended to stay for a short while, but I couldn’t leave. The food ran out, I was bitten to death by mosquitoes, but I could hardly drag myself away.”
“The pastor must be exhausted!”
“Not like you, my boy. Were you paid your wages? Did the old fellow keep his promise?”
“I got a few coins. And I read as well.”
“Read?”
“A book I borrowed from Selma. Apostle of the Wilderness.”
“Indeed. Indeed. And what do you think of it, Jussi?”
“It was . . . it was . . .”
“Yes?”
“Never before have I read anything as good.”
“Apart from God’s word?”
“Yes, of course. But this book . . . it was . . .”
The pastor nodded pensively at my stammering. He placed his fingertips together and propped his elbows on his knees.
“Such books as these are called novels. I am a little afraid of them.”
“But it was about faith.”
“Yes, I know. But all that power. The collective power of words when they are piled up like that. Do you think it’s altogether a good thing, Jussi?”
“Aaron fights the wild animals and becomes a believer. He starts to preach God’s word.”
“Exactly, Jussi. Just imagine those words in the service of the devil. A novel from evil’s perspective. A story about evil deeds, about death and corruption.”
“Books like that will never be written.”
“I fear that time will come. That such things will even become common.”
“Books about evil?”
“Yes. About murder and death. About the effects of wickedness.”
“But . . .”
My thoughts were in turmoil. Could books be dangerous? I tried to pull myself together.
“But if . . . if you describe evil, and then show how evil is outwitted? In the novel you can follow the devil being fought and in the end being wrestled to the ground.”
“By whom?”
“By the rest of us! By good people, righteous people. The pastor could write a book like that.”
“A novel?”
“In the service of goodness. It would reach out to people. It might be in the interest of salvation.”
The pastor looked at me sharply. For a moment I thought he was angry. But his voice was thoughtful.
“I have actually considered it already, Jussi. I have been thinking about it for quite a while. To write a book in which you can see evil being conquered.”
“As opposed to what happens in reality.”
“Perhaps that is precisely why people like to read them. Novels about crime. Maybe you should write one yourself?”
I grinned at him, expecting to meet his teasing smile. But I couldn’t find it. Instead he laid his arm lightly on my shoulder.
“And you have to learn to speak,” he went on.
“I can speak.”
“No, Jussi, you talk. Speaking is something quite different. To soften a grudging heart with words. To gnaw one’s way in, even when the listener is unwilling and resists.
“Does the pastor mean preaching?”
“We will be having guests this week. The brothers Juhani and Pekka Raattamaa and the preacher Per Nutti are coming. Be among them and listen.
I’m sure you can learn something.”
He ladled on more water so that we were enveloped in a long heat, the heat you never want to leave. And he added, as if it were a trifling detail of scarcely any import:
“You’ll be there for the questioning in the afternoon?”
“Is the pastor at a church inquiry?”
“No, not that sort of inquiry. I’m expecting someone, a young woman. Her name is Maria.”
30.
I sat on a three-legged stool, in clean clothes, sweating. Perhaps the sauna was still working its effects on me, for I had to constantly wipe my arm across my wet brow. We were sitting in the pastor’s study, waiting. He was wearing his spectacles, with their peculiar glass prisms attached to long stalks of shiny metal. They slid down his large nose as he studied our notes. Now and then he peered out of the window.
When the knock at the door came, I stopped breathing.
“The pastor has a visitor.”
And there she stood. My beloved. It seemed as though she had a circle of light around her head, a halo, and her feet scarcely touched the floor. I was forced to cough into my clenched hands and waited for her to blow away, dissolve like a picture in smoke. She looked at me and it hurt; her gaze seemed to come from inside a painting. My fear was such that I couldn’t smell her scent; perhaps there was none, perhaps she was in a different world. I wanted to put my hands around her waist again, to cling to her sweetness; I wanted to breathe her in and never breathe out again. I had to cough one more time to make a hole in the world where the air could get in. She remained standing in the doorway and curtsied, her eyes darting between the pastor and me.
