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‘Papa?’

I nodded, my smile frozen.

‘Habt ihr Hunger?’ she asked.

Before we knew where we were she’d thrust a cheese roll into each of our hands.

After a long and shaky bus ride we pulled up in a large car park. Everybody got off, including me and my friend. In front of us was a big concrete building with a flat roof and high, spiky, metal aerials. Beyond it, behind a wire fence, were some propeller-driven aeroplanes. The bus driver opened a hatch and started pulling out bags and suitcases. The nice lady had far too much luggage and seemed to be under a lot of strain. Beads of sweat were forming under the brim of her 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 (#ulink_d8a9f1d4-f6d8-54ea-8a93-e48e9c75ccc6)

—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. Muodoslompolo can’t be far away now. Occasionally you come 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.