Popular Music. Mikael Niemi

Чтение книги онлайн.

       Chapter 5

      —about two hesitant winter warriors, chain thrashings, and the art of stamping out a ski slope

      Every day when lessons were over at the Pearly-Girly School, hordes of sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls would come swarming past our house. Pretty young things. This was the sixties after all, with lots of mascara, false eyelashes, mini-skirts and tight plastic boots. Me and Niila used to perch on the snowdrift outside our house and check them out. They would saunter past in bunches, chatting away, bare-headed no matter how cold it was, so as not to disturb their hairdos. They smoked like chimneys, and left behind a sickly-sweet smell of ashtrays and perfume that I associate to this day with desire. Occasionally they might say hello to us. We’d be incredibly embarrassed, and pretend we were building a snow fortress. Even though we were only seven, we were certainly interested in them, in a way. You couldn’t really say we were randy, it was more of a vague longing. I’d have loved to have kissed them, to get close to them. Snuggle up to them like a little kitten.

      Anyway, we started throwing snowballs at them. Mainly so they’d regard us as being manly, I think. And believe it or not, it worked. These lanky sixteen-year-old Valkyries would scamper off like reindeer, screaming and shrieking, holding up their make-up bags as shields. They really made a meal of it. We were only throwing loosely packed little bundles of snow that rarely hit them, after all – fluffy lumps of snow that came floating down like woolly Lapp mittens. But it was enough to impress them. We were a force to be reckoned with.

      It went on like this for a few days. We made a store of snowballs as soon as we got home from school. By now we felt like soldiers from Vittulajänkkä fighting in the Winter War, two battle-scarred veterans in action on a foreign continent. We bristled in expectation. Fighting brought us closer and closer to pleasures we could only dream of. Our coxcombs grew with every battle fought.

      There came the flock of girls. Several bunches with irregular intervals between them. As they approached, we crouched down behind the ramparts of snow piled up at the side of the road by the snow plough. The plan was worked out in great detail. We used to let the first group pass by unscathed, then throw the snowballs at their backs while the other groups came to a halt in front of us. Create disarray and panic. And admiration, of course, of our manly deeds.

      We crouched down in wait. Heard the girls’ voices approaching, the smokers’ coughs, the giggles. We stood up at exactly the right moment. Each of us with a snowball in our right hands. Like two fearsome Vikings we watched the girls scamper away, screaming. We were just going to heave our missiles into their midst when we suddenly realised that one of the girls was standing her ground. Only a couple of yards in front of us. Long, blond hair, neatly made-up eyes. She was staring straight at us.

      ‘Just you dare throw one more snowball, and I’ll kill you,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll hit you so hard, you’ll never be able to walk again. I’ll make such a mess of your faces that your mothers will burst into tears the moment they clap eyes on you…’

      Niila and I slowly lowered our snowballs. The girl gave us one last, terrifying look, then turned on heel and strolled after her friends.

      Niila and I didn’t move. We didn’t even look at each other. We just felt we’d been terribly misunderstood, in spades.

      As a boy in Pajala, one’s life was dominated by chain thrashings. They were a means of adjusting the balance of power between the male citizens of the village. You were drawn into them as a young lad of five or six, and didn’t escape until you were fourteen or fifteen.

      Chain thrashings took something like the following form: a few little lads would start arguing. Anders thumped Nisse, who started crying. I won’t go into the cause of the argument, whether there was a history of animosity or some kind of family feud hovering in the background. A young lad simply thumped another one, and then they went home.

      That’s when the chain reaction starts.

      The one on the receiving end, Nisse, immediately tells his two-years-older brother about it. Big brother goes out into the village and keeps his eyes skinned: the next time he comes across Anders he gives him a good hiding and extracts revenge. Anders goes home crying his eyes out and tells his own four-years-older brother, who goes out into the village and keeps his eyes skinned. The next time he comes across Nisse or Nisse’s elder brother, he gives them a good hiding and issues a series of threats into the bargain. (Are you still with me?) Nisse’s five-years-older, burly first cousin hears an abridged version of what has happened and beats up Anders’s brother, Anders himself and a few friends who tagged along as bodyguards. Both Anders’s two friends’ six-years-older brothers go out into the village and keep their eyes skinned. The rest of Nisse’s brothers, cousins and other relatives hear an abridged version of what has happened, who has beaten up whom, and in what order; the same thing happens on Anders’s side. Exaggerations in the interests of propaganda are common. Eighteen-year-old second cousins twice removed and even fathers receive urgent requests for assistance, but claim they couldn’t give a shit about the petty squabbles of little kids.

      That gives some idea of how things developed. The most elaborate of chain thrashings would involve classmates, neighbours and an entire range of friends, especially if the two original combatants came from different parts of the village. In that case it was Vittulajänkkä versus Paskajänkkä, or Strandvägen versus Texas, and war was declared.

      The duration of a chain thrashing could be anything from a few days to several months. The norm was a few weeks, following the pattern described above. The first stage was scuffling and an exchange of blows with little kids crying. Then came the threat stage, with the strongest ones involved roaming the village with their eyes skinned while the little СКАЧАТЬ