Popular Music. Mikael Niemi

across somebody going in the other direction, that’s inevitable. Somebody skipping along merrily downhill on the way to Pajala. Some of them even have bikes. Sitting on the saddle without needing to pedal, free-wheeling all the way down. That does raise your doubts, you have to admit that. You have to fight a few inner battles.

      Your strides get shorter and shorter. And the years pass. And now you must be nearly there, very nearly there. And it snows again, that’s how it should be. You peer through the snow flurries, and you think you might be able to see something. You think it might be getting a bit lighter just over there. The forest thins out, opens up. You can make out houses among the trees. It’s the village! It’s Muodoslompolo! And in mid-stride, one last short and shaky stride…

      At the funeral the preacher bellows on about how you died in the living faith. No doubt about it. You died in the living faith, sie kuolit elävässä uskossa. You got to Muodoslompolo, we all witnessed it, and now at long last you are sitting on God the Father’s golden luggage carrier free-wheeling down the eternal slope accompanied by fanfares of angels.

      The lad turned out to have a name: his mother called him Niila. Both his parents were strict Christians. Although their house was teeming with kids, there was a dreary, church-like silence wherever you went. Niila had two elder brothers and two younger sisters, and there was another child kicking away in his mother’s stomach. And as every child was a gift from God, there would be even more as time went by.

      It was unreal for so many young children to be so quiet. They didn’t have many toys – most of what they did have were made of rough wood by their elder brothers, and unpainted. The kids just sat there playing with them, as silent as fish. It wasn’t only because they had been brought up in a religious way. It was something you found in other Tornedalen families: they’d simply stopped talking. Possibly because they were shy, possibly because they were angry. Possibly because they found talking unnecessary. The parents only opened their mouths when they were eating; at other times they would nod or point when they wanted something, and the children took after them.

      I also kept quiet whenever I went to visit Niila. Children have an instinctive feel for that sort of thing. I took my shoes off and left them on the mat in the hall and tip-toed into the kitchen with head bowed and shoulders slightly hunched. I was greeted by a mass of silent eyes, from a rocking chair, from under the table, from by the pot cupboard. Looks that stared, then turned away, sneaked off round the kitchen walls and over the wooden floor but kept coming back to me. I stared back as hard as I could. The face of the youngest girl puckered up with fear, you could see her milk teeth gleaming in her gaping mouth and tears started to flow. She was sobbing, but even her sobs were silent. Her cheek muscles trembled and she clung on to her mother’s beskirted leg with her chubby little hands. Mum was wearing a headscarf even though she was indoors, and had her arms plunged up to the elbows in a mixing bowl. She was kneading vigorously, flour swirled up and was turned into gold dust by a sunbeam. She pretended not to notice that I was there, and Niila took that as a sign of approval. He led me over to a settee where his two elder brothers were exchanging nuts and bolts. Or perhaps it was some sort of game, involving a complicated pattern of shifting nuts and bolts around various compartments in a box. The brothers were growing increasingly annoyed with each other, and without speaking tried to wrench bolts from the other’s hands. A nut fell onto the floor and Niila snapped it up. Quick as a flash the eldest brother grabbed him by the hand and squeezed until Niila was in so much pain he could hardly breathe, and was forced to drop the nut into the transparent plastic box. Whereupon the younger brother turned it upside down. A clatter of steel as the contents rolled all over the wooden floor.

      For one brief moment everything stood still. Every eye in the kitchen homed in on the brothers like rays of the sun through a magnifying glass. It was like when a film gets stuck in a projector, blackens over, goes crinkly and then turns white. I could feel the hatred even though I couldn’t understand it. The brothers lashed out and grabbed each other’s shirt front. Biceps bulging, they exerted the force of industrial magnets and the gap between them closed inexorably. All the time they stared at each other, coal-black pupils, two mirrors face to face with the distance between them expanding to infinity.

      Then their mum threw the dish cloth. It flew across the kitchen trailing a thin wisp of flour behind it, a comet with a tail that squelched into the elder son’s forehead and stuck there. She eyed them threateningly, slowly wiping the dough from her hands. She had no desire to spend the whole evening sewing on shirt buttons. Reluctantly, the brothers let go. Then they stood up and left through the kitchen door.

      Mum retrieved the dish cloth that had fallen to the floor, rinsed her hands, and went back to her kneading. Niila picked up all the nuts and bolts, put them in the plastic box and stuck the box in his pocket with a self-satisfied expression on his face. Then he glanced furtively out of the kitchen window.

      The two brothers were standing in the middle of the path. Trading punches in rapid succession. Heavy punches jerking their crew-cut skulls around like turnips in a hopper. But no shouting, no taunts. Biff after biff on those low foreheads, on those potato noses, bash after bash on those red cabbage ears. The elder brother had a longer reach, the younger one had to slot in his blows. Blood poured from both their noses. It dripped down, splashed about, their knuckles were red. But still they kept going. Biff. Bash. Biff. Bash.

      We were given juice and cinnamon buns straight out of the oven, so hot that we had to keep what we bit off between our teeth for a while before we could chew it. Then Niila started playing with the nuts and bolts. He emptied them out onto the settee, his fingers were trembling, and I realised he’d been longing to do this for ages. He sorted them out into the various compartments in the plastic box, then tipped them out, mixed them up and started all over again. I tried to help him but I could see he was annoyed, so after a while I left to go home. He didn’t even look up.

      The brothers were still at it outside. The gravel had been kicked around by their feet to form a circular rampart. Still the same frenzied punches, the same silent hatred, but their movements were slower now, weariness was creeping in. Their shirts were soaked in sweat. Their faces were grey behind all the blood, powdered lightly with dust.

      Then I noticed they had changed. They weren’t really boys any more. Their jaws had swollen up, their canines were sticking out from between their swollen lips. Their legs were shorter and more massive, like the thighs of a bear, and so big their trousers were splitting at the seams. Their fingernails had turned black and grown into claws. And then I realised it wasn’t dust on their faces, it was hair. They were growing a pelt, dark hair spreading over their fresh, boyish faces, down over their necks and inside their shirts.

      I wanted to shout a warning. Rashly took a step towards them.

      They stopped immediately. Turned to face me. Crouched slightly, sniffed at my scent. And then I saw their hunger. They were starving. They were desperate to eat, craved meat.

      I stepped back, an icy chill ran down my spine. They growled. Started advancing shoulder to shoulder, two vigilant beasts of prey. They speeded up. Stepped outside their gravel circle. Dug in their claws then pounced.

      A dark cloud loomed over me.

      My scream was stifled. Terror, whimpering, the squeaking of a stuck piglet.

      Ding. Ding dong.

      Church bells.

      The holy church bells. Ding dong. Ding dong. A white-clad being cycled into the courtyard, a shimmering figure ringing his bell in a cloud of floury light. He braked without a word. Grasped the beasts with his enormous fists, lifted them by the scruff of their necks and banged their turnip-heads together so hard that sparks flew.

      ‘Dad,’ they gasped, ‘Dad, Dad…’

      The bright light faded, the father flung his sons to the ground, grabbed them by their ankles, one son in each hand and dragged them backwards and forwards over the gravel, smoothing out the surface with their front teeth until everything was nice and tidy again. And by the time he had finished, both brothers were crying their eyes out, sobbing, and they’d turned back into boys again. I raced home, galloped as fast as I could. And in my pocket I had a bolt.

      

      Niila’s