Popular Music. Mikael Niemi

hat, and she started making nasty smacking noises, sucking at her teeth. My friend and I gave her a hand as a way of saying thank you for the sandwiches, and we lugged her heavy case into the building. The flock of pensioners crowded round a desk, jabbering away loudly, and started to produce no end of papers and documents. A woman in uniform tried patiently to keep them in order. Then we passed through the gate as a group and made our way towards the aircraft.

      It was going to be my first ever flight. We both felt a bit like fish out of water, but a nice, brown-eyed lady with gold heart-shaped earrings helped us to fasten our seatbelts. My friend landed up in a window seat, and we grew increasingly excited as we watched the shiny propellers start spinning round, faster and faster, until they disappeared altogether in a round, invisible whirl.

      Then we started moving. I was forced back into my seat, could feel the wheels bumping, and then the slight jerk as we left the ground. My friend was pointing out of the window, fascinated. We were flying! There was the world down below us. People, buildings, and cars shrunk to the size of toys, so small we could have popped them into our pockets. And then we were swallowed up by clouds, white on the outside but grey inside, like porridge. We emerged from the clouds and kept on climbing until the aircraft reached the sky’s roof and started soaring forwards so slowly we hardly knew we were moving.

      The nice air hostess brought us some juice, which was just as well as we were very thirsty. And when we needed a pee she ushered us into a tiny little room and we took it in turns to get our willies out. We peed into a hole, and I imagined it falling right down to the ground like a yellow drizzle.

      Then we each got a book and some crayons. I drew two aeroplanes crashing into each other. My friend leaned his head further and further back and soon dozed off with his mouth wide open. The plane window misted over as he breathed.

      We eventually landed. All the passengers pushed and shoved their way out, and in the mêlée we lost touch with the old lady. I asked a bloke in a peaked cap if this was China. He shook his head and pointed us in the direction of an endless corridor where people were hurrying to and fro with their cases. We walked down it, and I had to ask politely several times before we came across some people with slitty eyes. I reckoned they must be going to China, and so we sat next to them and started waiting patiently.

      After a while a man in a dark blue uniform came over to us and started asking questions. We were going to be in trouble, you could see it in his eyes. So I smiled shyly and pretended not to understand what he was saying.

      ‘Dad,’ I mumbled, pointing vaguely into the distance.

      ‘Wait here,’ he said, and strode off purposefully.

      The moment he’d gone we moved to another bench. We soon discovered a black-haired Chinese girl in knee-length socks who was playing with a sort of plastic puzzle. It seemed to be fun. She laid the pieces out on the floor and showed us how you could make a tree, or a helicopter, or whatever you liked. She talked a lot and waved her thin arms around, and I think she said her name was Li. She sometimes pointed to a bench where an elderly bloke with stern eyes was reading a newspaper, next to an oldish girl with raven hair. I gathered she was the girl’s sister. She was eating a red, messy fruit, and kept wiping her mouth with a lace-edged napkin. When I went over to her she gave me a guarded look then offered me some pieces that had been neatly cut with a fruit knife. It tasted so sweet that I started to get butterflies in my stomach: I’d never tasted anything as good as that in my life, and I prodded my friend into trying some as well. He was ecstatic, his eyes half-closed. As a sort of thank you, he suddenly produced a matchbox, opened it and let the Chinese girl have a look inside.

      Inside was a large, shimmering green beetle. Big sister tried to feed it a little piece of fruit, but then it flew off. Buzzing softly it flew over all the slitty-eyed people in their seats, circled round two ladies with long pins in their hair who gazed up in astonishment, investigated a mountain of suitcases with some carelessly wrapped reindeer antlers on top and headed off down the corridor just under the fluorescent lights, the same way we had come in. My friend looked sad, but I tried to console him with the thought that it was no doubt going back home to Pajala.

      At that very moment there was an announcement over the loudspeakers, and everybody started moving. We packed the puzzle into the girl’s toy bag and passed through the gates in the midst of the jostling crowd. This aircraft was much bigger than the previous one. Instead of propellers this one had big drums on the wings that made a whistling sound when they started up. The noise grew and grew until it was a deafening roar, and after we’d taken off it reduced to a booming rumble.

      We got to Frankfurt. And if my silent travelling companion hadn’t been taken short and started doing his number twos under a table, we would certainly, we would quite definitely, without a shadow of a doubt we would have got to China.

       Chapter 2

      —about living and dead faith, how nuts and bolts give rise to violence and a remarkable incident in Pajala church

      I started seeing quite a lot of my taciturn friend, and before long I went home with him for the first time. His parents turned out to be Laestadians, members of the revivalist movement started by Lars Levi Laestadius a long time ago in Karesuando. He was only a little man, but his sermons were red-hot and peppered with almost as many curses as the sinners used when he attacked strong drink and debauchery with such force that the reverberations are still rumbling on even today.

      Faith is not enough for a Laestadian. It’s not just a question of being baptised or confessing your sins or putting money in the collection plate. Your faith has to be a living faith. An old Laestadian preacher was once asked how he would describe this living faith. He considered for quite a while, then answered thoughtfully that it was like spending the whole of your life walking uphill.

      The whole of your life walking uphill. It’s not easy to imagine that. You’re ambling casually along a narrow, winding country road in Tornedalen, like the one from Pajala to Muodoslompolo. It’s early summer and everything is fresh and green. The road passes through a forest of weather-beaten pines, and there’s a smell of mud and sun from the bog pools. Capercaillies are eating gravel in the ditches, then take off with wings flapping loudly and disappear into the undergrowth.

      Soon you come to the first hill. You notice that you’re starting to climb and you can feel your calf muscles getting tense. But you don’t give it a second thought, it’s only a gentle slope after all. When you reach the top, quite soon, the road will level out again and the forest will be flat and dry on each side, with fluffy white reindeer moss in among the soaring tree trunks.

      But you keep on climbing. The hill is longer than you thought. Your legs grow tired, you slow down and you look more and more impatiently for the crest which has to come at any moment now, surely.

      But it never does come. The road just keeps on going up and up. The forest is the same as before, with stretches of bog and brushwood and here and there an ugly clear-felled patch. But it’s still uphill. It’s as if somebody has broken off the whole landscape and propped it up on one edge. Lifted up the far end and stuck something underneath it, just to annoy you. And you start to suspect that it will keep on going uphill for all the rest of the day. And the next day as well.

      You keep on climbing stubbornly. The days gradually turn into weeks. Your legs start to feel like lead, and you keep wondering who it was that thought he’d be smart and chock up the landscape. It’s been pretty skilfully done, you have to admit that, grudgingly. But surely it will level out once you get past Parkajoki, there are limits after all. And you come to Parkajoki, but the road is still going uphill and so you think it will be Kitkiöjoki.

      And the weeks turn into months. You work your way through them one stride at a time. And the snow starts falling. And it melts, and falls again. And between Kitkiöjoki and Kitkiöjärvi you’re pretty close to giving up. Your legs are like jelly, your hip joints ache, and your last reserves of energy are practically used up.

      But you stop for a while to get your breath back, then keep battling on.