Popular Music from Vittula (19 page)

In a dream I sprayed gas over the dead bodies, gave them a good splashing, a good soak. It felt like a religious act, as if trying to atone for something, to put things right. I struck a match, and dropped it onto the pile. There was a deep, sad cough as it burst into flames. A barely visible flame shot up stiffly, cracking. The nearest bushes were scorched, the brushwood caught fire. I stamped out the flames. Then I realized I’d splashed my trouser legs with gas, and flames were creeping up toward my kneecaps. I screamed, flung myself to the ground and ripped off my trousers. They got stuck around my shoes, which were also burning. I frantically kicked my shoes off and put out the fires by flapping with my hands.

Back at the grave, the fire had caught hold in the parched undergrowth. The nearest bushes were already ablaze. I broke off a leafy branch and tried to beat out the flames, but everything was so dry that they continued to spread. Before long they’d reached the nearest tree. I tried desperately to prevent catastrophe. There was a sudden breath of air through the forest, a gentle breeze closing in on the hearth. The fire was sucking all the oxygen from the surrounding area, the fire’s own breathing, a wind getting stronger and stronger as the flames worked their way up through the branches. And at the heart of it all, at the center of destruction, the crematorium was bubbling away.

I was petrified. The flames spread through the forest with astonishing speed, throwing their torches from tree to tree. I started beating again with my leafy branch, flailing around in terror, but the catastrophe grew worse by the minute.

“The fire brigade!” I thought, and wanted to run for help. But I
couldn’t, something was holding me back, I carried on beating, my eyes stinging. The fire spread inexorably toward the edge of the forest, a raging battle front. The hay barn started smoldering and would soon be beyond rescue. And the wind was blowing toward the cottage. The sparks rained down thicker and thicker. Sharp nails of fire cascaded down. And soon they had taken hold of the roofing felt.

It was war. A wild animal had been aroused and could no longer be restrained. And I was the one responsible. It was my fault.

At that point Heinz materialized. Eyes staring. Panic.

“The manuscript!” he bellowed, wrenching open the front door. The roof was alight and belching thick smoke, but he crouched down under it. He had to get inside, and surged forward. Tears poured from his eyes as he was forced to retreat, empty-handed. Another swift attempt, and now there were flames, not just smoke—there was a yellow glow inside the cottage. And this time he came storming out clutching a bundle of papers. He held them close to his chest, as if they were a child, embraced them passionately, then collapsed into the grass, coughing.

I went up to him. Covered in soot, stinking, wearing nothing but my underpants. In my hand was the string tied round the decaying tails. They were bundled together in tens, to make counting easy. Easier to check.

“One hundred and eighty-four,” I stammered. “Ninety-two kronor.”

Heinz stared vacantly at me. Then he grabbed hold of the string with the stinking tails and hurled them into the raging fire.

“It was all your fault!”

No brown leather wallet. No money. No electric guitar.

Heartbroken, I reached for his bundle of papers and flung them into the fire. Then ran for it, for all I was worth.

Heinz leaped to his feet with a roar. He tried to force his way in, but this time he was driven back.

When the fire brigade finally arrived, he was sitting on the lid of the well, the old soldier, sobbing.

In which we acquire a music teacher with a thumb in the middle of his hand, and get to know an unexpected talent from Kihlanki

In class seven we got a new music teacher. His name was Greger and he came from Skåne, a tall, thick-lipped farmer’s boy who had lost all the fingers of his right hand in a piece of farm machinery. Only the thumb was left, as big as a fluted almond potato. After his accident he had retrained, and landed in Pajala immediately after graduating as a music master. It was difficult to understand what he said. Apart from that, he was a cheerful fellow with an odd sense of humor. I’ll never forget the very first lesson he gave, when he bounced in with his hand hidden in his pocket, and announced in his typical Skanian burr:

“Good morrrning! Now you’ve got a teacherrr with a thumb in the middle of his hand!”

With precise timing to maximize the shock effect, he whipped out his deformed hand. We gasped with horror. He turned his hand around, and we noticed that from a certain angle his thumb and hairy knuckles looked like a male sexual organ. Only bonier and more frightening, and supernaturally mobile.

Greger brought with him to Pajala an unusual novelty: a twelve-gear
racing bicycle. It was among the most outrageous and useless things we’d ever seen, with a rock-hard leather saddle and tires no broader than cigars; it didn’t even have mudguards or a luggage carrier. It looked almost improper, completely naked. He started whizzing like a rocket along our roads in a red tracksuit, frightening the living daylights out of old ladies and local kids, and gave rise to several reports of UFOs in the
Haparanda Daily News
. He also made dogs go mad. It must have had something to do with his scent, something Skanian in his intestinal flora. As soon as he came swishing past, they went berserk. They would break loose and race after him for mile after mile, barking for all they were worth in flocks that got bigger and bigger. One day he returned from a practice run to Korpilombolo followed by two Norrbotten spitzes, a Swedish foxhound, a Jämtland wolfhound, two Norwegian elkhounds, plus a few more of mixed race. They were all white-eyed and intent on murder. Greger pulled up outside the police station and was immediately attacked by the pitch-black labrador that had taken on a leadership role in the hysterical pack. Greger waited for the right moment, then calmly kicked it on the snout with his fancy cycling shoe, whereupon the cur staggered back to his friends yelping and whining. Then he strolled with dignity into the police station. The duty officer had to chain them all up, apart from the labrador—it needed veterinary attention. For the rest of the day silent peasants from the surrounding villages came driving up in their cars to collect their Fido. From then on Greger was much talked about locally.

Another topic of discussion was just how fast you can ride on a contraption like his. One evening Staffan, from class nine, claimed he’d just tested his newly-souped-up moped to see how fast it would go, on the road to Kengis. He’d bent forward low over the handlebars and maintained the moped had clocked forty-two miles per hour. Just then Greger had come swishing past. Pedalling away vigorously and effortlessly, he’d soon disappeared over the crown of the hill ahead.

One of the lads from Vittulajänkkä with a penchant for making money arranged an unusual wager. Greger would race against the school bus from Pajala to Kaunisvaara. The bus wasn’t exactly renowned for its scandalously high speeds, but even so. The lad fiddled the odds and took a shamelessly high percentage for himself, but nevertheless persuaded people to place bets and also got Greger to take up the challenge.

The race took place one Wednesday at the end of September. The bus stopped as usual at the back of Central School, and the pupils filed aboard. The driver, who knew nothing about the challenge, pulled away and noticed a creature dressed in red shoot past him on the outside.

The next time the man in red was seen was in Mukkakangas. He was standing at attention next to a Gällivare Police patrol car when the bus drove past. One of the officers was making notes in a book, and the other was beating off an aggressive Jämtland wolfhound with his baton.

By the time we came to Jupukka, Greger had caught us up again. The bus was going at a fair lick, but the man in red was in our slipstream and belting along. As the bus was going downhill shortly afterward, he surged past to the excited approval of the pupils. The driver blew his nose in astonishment and couldn’t believe his eyes.

Five miles further on the man in red was crouched at the side of the road changing a tire on his back wheel. He occasionally had to hit out at a snarling fox with his bicycle pump.

But there was no sign of him after that. The pupils crowded around the back window, staring out through the dirt. But the road was deserted. Bogs and woods flashed past, Kaunisvaara was getting closer and closer. In the end the signpost appeared some way ahead, and everybody began to realize it was too late now.

Then a little dot came into view. A figure in red. A vehicle catching up on us, but not quickly enough. Just then a tractor appeared in front of the bus, chugging along. It was being driven by an aged pensioner wearing a peaked cap. Slap bang in the middle of the road. The bus
slowed down and sounded its horn. The tractor pulled in very slightly. The bus started to overtake, with only a couple of inches to spare. The road was completely blocked by the two vehicles. The man in red was getting nearer and nearer.

The tractor chugged along.

“Greger will never make it!”

There was the sign: Kaunisvaara. And the road was blocked, it was impossible to overtake.

“There!” yelled Tommy from class seven.

Down in the ditch at the side of the road. Something red was lurching its way forward. Through all the gravel and undergrowth. Along the side of the bus. Then past, just as we came to the road sign.

Just for a moment everybody sat there as if paralyzed. Trying to take in what they’d just witnessed.

“The guy from Skåne did it!”

A fat Lapland hound knocked over an old biddie picking berries and raced after the man in red, barking like mad.

* * *

Greger had another remarkable talent. He could speak Tornedalen Finnish. As he was from Skåne, everybody had taken it for granted that he was an
ummikko
, in other words, ignorant of the mother tongue of glory and heroism; but confirmation of the fact came from several neutral observers. Old men and women swore blind they had conducted long and informative conversations in
meän kieli
with this outsider with the burr.

Greger was a cheerful soul, and, like southerners do, he had an abnormally developed need to make contact with people. After scorching along on his racing bike for a few dozen silent miles, he used to get off and chat with the locals. Startled men and women in Anttis, Kardis, Pissiniemi, Saittarova, Kivijärvi, or Kolari might suddenly be hailed for no reason at all. They’d look up and find in front of them a sweaty man
from Mars, babbling away with spit spraying around like rain. They didn’t recognize the words, but to be on the safe side they would reply in Finnish that they didn’t want to buy anything.

Then it dawned on them that, strangely enough, they could understand what he was saying. It was unreal. This double Dutch full of sounds that only a drunk could possibly produce! And when they replied with
joo varmasti
, or said
niinkö
, this stranger understood exactly what they meant.

The mystery was solved by a retired customs officer who’d been stationed for some years in Helsingborg when he was a young man. As a result he was one of the few people in Tornedalen who understood both Tornedalen Finnish and the dialect of Skåne. He happened to be passing Conrad Mäki’s country store in Juhonpieti one day when Greger was standing outside jabbering away with some pensioners. The customs officer stopped a couple of yards away and listened discreetly but carefully. Afterward he reported his conclusions in an objective and detailed way for anybody who was interested. By force of habit he also recorded his testimony; I’ve seen and read it: It was duly signed by himself in accordance with the regulations, and witnessed by two independent observers.

What was clear was that converser G (Greger, that is) spoke a Skanian dialect strikingly muddy in character throughout the conversation, with the exception of a small number of Tornedalen emphatic expressions (see appendix one), usually incorrectly pronounced. Conversers A, B, and C (two old men and an old lady) had equally obviously spoken Tornedalen Finnish the entire time. The strange thing was that the conversation had followed a totally logical course with both parties apparently understanding everything the other said. The topics of conversation were, in chronological order:

1. The latest spells of rain and cold weather.
   
2. The progress made by potatoes in late summer, the taste advantages enjoyed by almond potatoes in comparison with
   round ones, and to what extent all the rain would cause potato rot.
   
3. The summer’s hay harvest, the number and quality of the drying racks for hay, and to what extent the late spring has affected the nourishment content of the hay.
   
4. The number of animals on farms owned by local villagers, the foddering of milch cows nowadays and some years ago, the mechanization of farming and whether tractors were cheaper on the Swedish or Finnish side of the border.
   
5. A number of recently pulled-up deformed carrots that looked like penises, and to what extent that was a whim of nature or a warning sent by the Creator regarding dances arranged by young people.
   
6. Hopes regarding improvements in the weather, and goodbye phrases.
   

In the interests of science the customs officer had hailed Greger just before he pedaled off, and in a neutral tone asked him for the time in Finnish:

“Mitäs kello on?”

“And the same to you,” Greger had replied in a friendly tone.

The customs officer drew the following conclusions:

Greger knew no Finnish (apart from the incorrectly pronounced swearwords, appendix one as mentioned above). Similarly, the pensioners couldn’t understand a word of the Skåne dialect. The mysterious understanding between the parties could be ascribed to two causes: Greger’s body-language, which was strikingly exaggerated and clear, and also his extraordinarily comprehensive knowledge of agriculture.

The customs officer’s son was studying linguistics at the University of Umeå, and started a thesis entitled
Bilingual Understanding in a Northern Scandinavian Multicultural Environment
. But he turned to drink and never finished it.