Popular Music from Vittula (25 page)

The lads gaped askance. Stared at Niila’s rifle. At the coffee sizzling down into the embers. Then one of the boys threatened to beat the living daylights out of him, but hesitated as Niila had already reloaded and was busy pumping.

“I’ll bring you a new kettle tomorrow,” said Niila calmly.

The General spat into the fire. Then nodded. We had enlisted.

Then we lay concealed in the bushes on the river bank, the whole lot of us, silent and motionless with our eyes skinned. They came in two boats—long, thin craft specially designed to cope with the Tornedalen rapids. Six lads in one, seven in the other. They were all armed, scanning the edge of the forest, apart from the two in charge of the engines. They hadn’t noticed the ambush, but they were on the alert, just in case. Gliding closer and closer to us. Slowed down, watching out for rocks.

The only rule was not to shoot at faces. Bottoms and thighs were the preferred targets. That’s where it hurt most, and you could make lovely big bruises. We glanced at the General. He was still lying motionless. The enemy were now so close that we could read the logos on their caps. The outboard motors were switched off, the boats glided increasingly slowly toward the river bank. The boy in the bow stood up to take the impact with his foot.

That was when the General shot. Slap bang into the boy’s thigh muscle. The rest of us blasted away the first salvo. A swarm of lead-heavy wasps shot out from the bushes and landed painfully on their targets. The victims screamed out in fear and pain, by Hell but we gave them a good peppering! They shot back without having time to take aim, then eventually they managed to get the engines going again. Salvo after salvo. Stinging snake-bites all over their bodies. They lay prone at the bottom of the boats, trying to hide. Slowly, the boats moved out into the river, slid away. And we started laughing, roared so much we had to roll around in the moss.

They landed a few hundred feet further upstream. Several were limping. We guffawed even louder, then withdrew into the trees to prepare fresh attacks.

We had a sort of strategy—at first, at least. But soon it was just a matter of hit and run, and in between, crouch down as low as possible in the wild rosemary. I tried to stick close to Niila. Felt protected to some extent by the power of his rifle. But he aimed like a bleary-eyed old dodderer and hardly ever hit, which might have been just as well,
in fact. We lay there panting after withdrawing at the double, with our hands over our mouths to deaden the sounds. Wondered where our friends had got to. Peered into the dark depths of the forest, where we could hear somebody running and shooting. There were screams coming from the other direction, people moving around.

“Let’s go over there,” I whispered.

Just then Niila nudged me in the back. Only a couple of paces away were four of the enemy grinning, their rifles aimed straight at us as we scrambled to our feet. I dropped my rifle in the moss. Niila hung on to his.

“Drop your gun or we’ll shoot your cocks off!” barked the tallest of them.

Niila was white-eyed with terror. His lower jaw was chewing at nothing. I carefully loosened his desperate grip on the butt of his rifle. Then I heard him whisper:

“You shoot then …”

“Drop that gun!” yelled the tall boy in his puberty-stricken voice—he’d seen a lot of American police films on television.

I nodded obediently. Bent slowly down with Niila’s rifle in my hands. And then, before he could react, I shot the warbling berk in the thigh.

He roared like a bull. Slumped to the ground. Shots stuttered all around us as we zig-zagged away at high speed. I felt a sharp pain in my bottom. Niila, who’d managed to rescue my rifle, screamed and clutched at his shoulder. But we were free, we crowed in triumph and raced off between the trees with branches whipping our faces.

After this, the level of respect they had for us increased considerably. The boy with the breaking voice had to remove the pellet with the tip of a sheath knife. A bounty was placed on the heads of both me and Niila. A ten-pack of Finnish cigarettes to whoever succeeded in capturing us.

Taking prisoners was one of the greatest pleasures in our war games, but also probably the hardest. Niila and I once managed to creep up on one of the Strandvägen kids when he was squatting down and having a crap. The reputation of Niila’s pump-action rifle was widespread,
and Niila made it convincingly clear that the bloke would get one up the back passage if he didn’t give himself up. Pale and trembling, the poor lad pulled up his trousers without bothering to wipe himself. Then we escorted him back to HQ. The applause was deafening. We used his own shoelaces to tie him against a pine tree, then embarked on the obligatory torture. This consisted of the General waving a penknife under his nose and scaring him to death with all sorts of threats. It was a matter of dicks being abbreviated and anthills being provided with victuals and other niceties he’d read about in the comics. If we could reduce the prisoner to tears, that was a plus. Things rarely went any further than that. Let’s face it, you might find yourself in the same position one of these days.

We once captured the enemy leader. We tied his hands over his head and flung the rope over a stout branch. Then we pulled it taut until he was standing on his toes with a sweaty sock stuffed in his mouth. I suppose we thought he’d work himself loose eventually. But he didn’t. When night fell his mum began to wonder where he was. After a few telephone calls his friends put two and two together. It was already starting to be very dark. Contact was made with our gang, directions were provided, and eventually a group of his friends set out with torches.

The difficulty was in finding the place. It was hard to work out where you were in the gathering autumnal gloom, and, anyway, the bloke couldn’t shout out directions because of the smelly sock in his mouth. All the trees looked the same, paths were rubbed out, and the contours melted away. A wind got up, and the soughing and sighing drowned out all other noises. Then, to top it all off, it started raining.

It was several hours before they found him. His trousers were soaked in pee. When they untied the rope, he collapsed in a heap. The first thing he did when the gag was removed was to pass a death sentence on a number of named teenagers.

A temporary truce was declared for the next few days, to let feelings cool down a bit. Then I got caught in a crafty ambush. I was split off
from the flock like an antelope, and was peppered with shots in my bottom until I flung aside my rifle and gave myself up. My God, but it hurt! Nasty purple bruises all over my thigh. But I refused to cry even so, while the lads who’d caught me argued about who was going to get the ten-pack of cigarettes. Their leader forced me onto the ground and announced that I was now going to get the same treatment he’d had. Grinning broadly, he slung a rope up over a sturdy pine branch. The he pulled off one of my socks and peed all over it until it was soaked through. My throat felt dry, I was dizzy with fear. Tried to prepare myself for the torture to come. Whatever they did to me, I mustn’t start crying. I had to resist, no matter how much pain I felt. Be tough. But for Hell’s sake, what would happen if I couldn’t manage it?

Just then we all heard a shouting and screaming not far away. One of the look-outs yelled that we were being attacked. The leader hesitated, then listened to the sound of the battle approaching.

“Run for it!” he barked, and raised his rifle to take aim at me. All the others did the same. I held my breath in anticipation of the pain, then ran for it. I raced for all I was worth, zig-zagging from side to side. Pellets thudded into my body, hurting like third-degree burns.

“You missed, you missed!” I scoffed, with tears welling up as I glanced back in terror.

At that point their leader shot: I fell. Collapsed completely. Landed on my back in the moss. When I tried to open my eyes, I realized I was blind.

“Stop shooting!” somebody yelled.

The attack crumbled. Footsteps approached. My head was pounding like a drum. Pain, darkness. I felt my face. Warm and wet.

“Fucking hell!” somebody yelled. “Some water, quick!”

They all gathered round me, I could hear them panting after all their efforts.

“I’m blind,” I said, and felt like throwing up.

“You hit him in the eye! Jesus Christ, there’s blood everywhere!”

Somebody handed me a soaking wet bit of cloth, and I tried to wipe away the blood. Sat up, and could feel it dripping. Gave it another wipe. Ran my fingers over my eyes.

Panic-stricken, I blinked wildly: but everything was in a fog. I rubbed harder. Found I could see a bit clearer. I wrung out the cloth over my face, and the water streamed down, washing and cleansing. I blinked. Put my hand over one eye. Then the other. What a relief, I could see! Mind you, I could feel a sort of bulge under the skin.

The pellet had hit me right between the eyes. What had blinded me was the blood.

War was called off for the rest of the day. Niila managed to prize out the pellet with a red-hot needle, and when I got home I told them I’d been hit by a stone flung up by a passing truck. The wound healed eventually, but I still have the scar.

That marked the end of my participation in the air rifle war.

On messing about making music and other more or less manly activities

Our first public performance took place during morning assembly in the Pajala school hall one bleak, chilly day in February. The aims of morning assembly were high-flown, namely that for twenty minutes every Friday morning the senior school would be crammed together in order to inculcate morality, raise the spiritual tone, and reinforce the feelings of camaraderie among pupils. It was no doubt an idea from southern Sweden that had spread up to the far north as a result of some school principals’ conference, but which over time had turned into something more like a
seura
, a prayer meeting. The role of preacher was played by the well-combed and anxious-looking careers counselor Henrik Pekkari or the velvet-eyed principal Sven-Erik Klippmark, who tried to convert all the sinners who had scrawled graffiti, spat out snuff, kicked in cupboards, smashed bottles, carved on desk lids, or raised the bill for local taxpayers in some other way. They would no doubt have had more effect if they’d used their Tornedalen Finnish and threatened the young devils with a good hiding and injuries that would be with them for the rest of their lives, which was the way most of them had been brought up.

There would occasionally be a musical interlude. The church organist and choirmaster, Göran Thornberg, had pluckily played a Bach prelude on the piano, apparently oblivious to the fact that his audience’s concentration had left much to be desired. The school’s girls’ choir had sung a canon with their silver-haired conductor Birgitta Söderberg trying to ignore the sexy wolf whistles from class nine’s special needs group. A lad from Peräjävaara had played the trumpet with the elan of a man bent on suicide, and he’d made so many mistakes that even the teachers joined in the laughter. But he survived, and eventually became a music teacher.

Friday came around, the village boys from class nine yawned, sat down in the back row, burped loudly, and started flicking erasers around. The rest of the pupils filled up the space in front. The stage was hidden by a curtain. Greger had received permission from the Head to arrange the morning assembly however he liked, having submitted a proposed theme based on responsibility and creativity in young people. It was only when you stood close to the curtain that you heard a strange, low, electrical hum.

The pupils prepared to sit it through or heckle, according to their temperament and reserves of courage. The teachers squeezed themselves into strategic seats. The brave, close-cropped history teacher Gunnar Lindfors took up his position on the back row and switched on his radar eyes, ready to lift up by the scruff of their neck anybody who transgressed.

Greger climbed up onto the stage with a solemn expression on his face and stood in front of the curtain. Nobody took any notice. The teachers called for silence. The chattering and giggling continued as if it had been rehearsed. Teachers glared threateningly at the most active pockets of resistance. New defiant laughter, fits of coughing, an empty bottle rolling down the aisle, a sheet of paper being torn over and over again, very loudly.

Greger raised his deformed hand. Waved with his thumb without saying a word, then disappeared into the wings.

That was our cue to start.

“Djuss letmi eersumutha rokunroal muzzeek!”

The ones in the front row were flung back in their seats. The rest stared uncomprehendingly at the closed curtain. It was swaying and bulging like the lid of a tin of fermented Baltic herring.

“Rokunroal muzzeek! If yoo wonner lav vitmi!
”

We bashed away like madmen in the half-darkness behind it. Erkki got stage fright and started hitting out at everything that moved until the speed of the song was doubled. Niila was playing his chords in the wrong key, and Holgeri’s acoustic feedback sounded like the last trumpet. And in front of it all. At the floor microphone. Was me.

I wasn’t singing, I was bellowing. The call of a moose in heat. The death shriek of a lemming. I was doing my own damn thing. Without realizing it, we had invented punk several years too soon. The tune decomposed, more or less; “ended” would be the wrong word, as Erkki was still pummeling away and flashing the whites of his eyes. So I stooped over the mike once again:

“Djuss letmi eersumutha rokunroal muzzeek!”

For the second time. The curtain was still drawn. I tried to follow the bass drum, but Erkki’s playing had now turned into something more like an epileptic fit. Niila eventually found the right key, but came in two bars too late. Holgeri played the solo for the second tune, not having realized that we were repeating the first one.

“Djuss letmi eersumutha …”

The same song for the third time. Greger was fiddling feverishly in the dark, tugging at ropes and bits of cloth. Erkki was bashing the drums so deafeningly loudly that I could no longer hear my own voice. Then suddenly the curtain shot up and the spotlights dazzled us. There they sat, the whole bloody school, and I leaned forward and bellowed out
Djuss letmi eersumutha
for the fourth time.