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 dad was called Isak and came from a big Laestadian family. Even as a little boy he’d been dragged along to prayer meetings in the smoke-filled hut where dark-suited smallholders and their wives in knotted headscarves sat bum to bum on the wooden benches. It was so cramped that their foreheads hit against the backs of those in front whenever they were possessed by the Holy Spirit and started rocking back and forth as they intoned prayers. Isak had sat there, hemmed in on every side, a delicate little boy among all those men and women being transformed before his very eyes. They started breathing more deeply, the air grew damp and fetid, their faces turned crimson, their glasses misted over, their noses started dripping as the two preachers sang louder and louder. Their words, those living words weaving the Truth thread by thread, images of evil, of perfidy, of sins that attempted to hide underground but were torn up by their hideous roots and shaken like worm-eaten turnips before the congregation. On the row in front was a little girl with plaits, fair golden hair gleaming in the darkness, squashed in by grown-up bodies riddled with dread. She was motionless, holding a doll pressed to her heart as the storm raged over her head. It was horrific to see her mother and father weeping. Watching her grown-up relatives being transformed, crushed. Sitting there hunched up, feeling the fall-out dripping all over her and thinking: it’s all my fault. It’s my fault. If only I’d been a bit better behaved. Isak had clenched his boyish hands tightly together, and inside them it felt as if a swarm of insects was creeping around. And he thought: if I open them we’ll all die. If I let them escape we’re all finished.
And then one day, one Sunday after a few years had passed, he crawled out onto the thin nocturnal ice. Everything crumbled away, his defences fell down. He was thirteen and could feel Satan beginning to grow deep down inside him, and filled with fear that was greater than the fear of being beaten, greater than the urge for self-preservation, he’d stood up in the middle of the prayer meeting and, holding onto people’s backs, he’d swayed back and forth before collapsing nose-first into the lap of Christ. Callused hands had been placed on his brow and his chest, it was a second baptism, that’s the way it was done. He had unbuttoned his heart and been drenched by the flood of his sins.
There was not a single dry eye in the congregation. They had witnessed a great event. The Almighty had issued a summons. The Lord had taken the boy with His very own hand, and then given him back.
Afterwards, when he learned to walk for the second time, as he stood there on trembling legs, they had propped him up. His corpulent mother had hugged him in the name and blood of Jesus, and her tears flowed down over his own face.
Obviously, he was destined to become a preacher.
Like most Laestadians Isak became a diligent worker. Felled trees and piled the trunks up on the frozen river during the winter, accompanied the logs down to the sawmills in the estuary when the ice melted in the spring, clearing jams on the way, and looked after the cows and potato fields on his parents’ smallholding during the summer. Worked hard and made few demands, steered well clear of strong drink, gambling and Communism. That sometimes caused him a few problems with his lumberjack colleagues, but he took their mockery as a challenge to be overcome, and didn’t say a word during the working week, merely read books of sermons.
But on Sundays he would cleanse himself with saunas and prayers, and put on his white shirt and dark suit. During the prayer meetings he could cut loose at last, sail forth to attack filth and the Devil, brandish the Good Lord’s two-edged sword, aim His law and gospel truth at all the world’s sinners, the liars, lechers, hypocrites, the foul-mouthed, boozers, wife-beaters and Communists who flourished in the accursed valley of the River Torne like lice in a blanket.
His face was young, energetic and smooth-shaven. Eyes deep-set. With consummate skill he grabbed the attention of his congregation, and soon plighted his troth with a fellow-believer, a shy and well-polished Finnish girl from the Pello district, smelling of soap.
But when the children started to come, he was forsaken by God. One day there was nothing but silence. Nobody answered his pleas.
He was left with nothing but confusion, tottering on the edge of the abyss. Filled with sorrow. And festering malice. He started to sin, just to discover what it felt like. Minor little wicked acts, aimed at his nearest and dearest. When it dawned on him that he quite enjoyed it, he kept going. Worried members of his church tried to engage him in serious conversations, but he put the Devil’s curse on them. They turned their backs on him, and did not return.
But despite being abandoned, despite feeling hollow, he still regarded himself as a believer. He maintained the rituals, and brought up his children in accordance with the Scriptures. But he replaced the Good Lord by himself. And that was the worst form of Laestadianism, the nastiest, the most ruthless. Laestadianism without God.
This was the frosty landscape in which Niila grew up. Like many children in a hostile environment, he learnt how to survive by not being noticed. That was one of the things I observed the very first time we met in the playground: his ability to move without making a sound. The chameleon-like
