Читать книгу Popular Music - Mikael Niemi - Страница 8

—on dramatic happenings in the Pearly-Girly School shed and an unexpected meeting when we find ourselves way ahead of events

Next to the children’s playground was a big, wooden building, almost a mansion, with lots of windows. It used to be the hostel that housed pupils at Pajala school who lived too far away to travel backwards and forwards every day. Then it became a college where teenage girls were trained in such things as cookery and knitting. Instead of being unemployed, the girls were able to become well-qualified housewives. We boys imagined the girls being taught how to ‘knit one, pearl one’, and called it the Pearly-Girly School. Next to it was an old, red-painted shed, full of scrap metal and discarded school stuff that we youngsters found exciting to rummage through. There were some loose boards at one of the gable ends that could be prised open far enough for us to crawl inside.

It was a scorching hot day in high summer. A canopy of heat weighed down on the village, and the smell of hay from the grassy parts of the playground was as strong as tea. All alone, I sneaked up to the wall of the shed, keeping a weather eye open for the school caretaker. We children were scared stiff of him. An athletic type in paint-stained overalls, he hated kids nosing around. He would materialise out of thin air with his radar eyes on alert. He used to wear wooden clogs that he kicked off before pouncing on his prey like a tiger. No kid ever managed to get away. He would clamp his hand round their necks like a pair of pliers round a nail, then wrench them up into the air and very nearly sever their heads from their bodies. I had seen with my own eyes one of the lads down our street, a teenage tough guy as hard as steel, cry like a baby after daring to ride his moped where he shouldn’t.

I took the risk even so. I’d never been in the shed before, but I’d heard about others who’d been bold enough to sneak in. With nerves at breaking point, I peered cautiously round. It seemed all clear. I dropped down on all fours, prised open the wooden boards, stuck my head through the dark opening and edged my way inside.

After the sunshine, everything was pitch black. The darkness and blindness made my eyes swell up. I stood there motionless for an age. Then, gradually, I was able to start making out shapes. Old bookcases, broken desks. A pile of wood, a stack of bricks. A cracked lavatory bowl with no lid. Boxes of old electrical odds and ends. I started wandering about, being careful not to bump into anything. There was a smell of dried-out rubbish, sawdust and mortar and warm asphalt from the sun-drenched roofing felt up above. I glided around, almost swimming through the dense darkness. It was olive-green, like the heart of a spruce forest. I was moving as if through a dormitory at dead of night. Breathing silently through my nose, feeling the dust tickle my nostrils. My canvas shoes made no noise on the concrete floor, the soft paws of a cat.

Stop! A giant loomed up before me. I shrank back, a shadowy shape in the darkness. My body stiffened.

But it wasn’t the caretaker. It was an old boiler. Tall and heavy, covered in metal plating. As fat as a housewife with big, cast-iron doors. I opened the biggest of them. Peered into a cold, pitch-black opening. Called softly. My voice reverberated inside. She was empty. An iron maiden, left with no more than the memory of an all-consuming inner fire.

I carefully stuck my head in through the door. Groped around with my hand and felt lumps of rust coming loose from the walls, or maybe it was soot. There was a smell of metal inside there, oxide and old fires. I hesitated for a moment, plucking up courage. Then I wormed my way in through the fire doors.

Now I was inside her. Crouching down in her rounded belly, curled up like a foetus. I tried to stand up but hit my head against the top. I closed the door quietly behind me, pulled it to until the last faint strip of light was extinguished.

I was shut in. She was pregnant with me, protecting me with the bullet-proof iron walls of her womb. I was inside her, I was her child. It felt stimulating but unnerving. A feeling of security mixed with a strange sensation of shame. I was doing something forbidden. I was betraying somebody, my mother perhaps. Eyes closed, I curled myself up more tightly, resting my chin on my knees. She was so cold, but I was warm and young, a small, glowing ember. And when I pricked up my ears I could hear her whispering. A faint sighing through a damper or the remains of a cut-off pipe – tender, comforting words of love.

Then there was a clattering noise. The caretaker stormed into the shed. He was furious, threatening to beat the living daylights out of any bloody brats he found in here. I held my breath and listened to him charging around, searching, heaving aside furniture, shoving and kicking at piles of rubbish, as if hunting down rats. He charged round and round the shed, growling out threats: no doubt somebody in the Pearly-Girly School had seen me and blabbed to the caretaker. And now it was all buggers and bastards and death threats, in both Swedish and Finnish.

He stopped right next to the boiler, and seemed to be sniffing the air. As if he were onto a scent. I could hear a scraping noise against the metal plating, and realised he was leaning against her. The only thing separating us was three centimetres of iron skin.

The seconds ebbed away. Then another scrape, and the sound of footsteps fading into the distance. The shed door slammed shut with a bang. I stayed where I was. Didn’t move a muscle as the minutes ticked by. Suddenly there was the clomping of the wooden clogs again. He’d only pretended to go away in order to flush out his young prey with the cunning of a grown man. But now he gave up, this time he left for real, I could hear his footsteps fading away on the gravel outside.

At last I was able to move. My joints were aching, and I pushed at the door. It was stuck. I pushed harder. It wouldn’t budge. I broke out in a cold sweat. Fear grew into panic. The caretaker must have accidentally brushed against the handle. I was locked in.

Once the immediate paralysis began to wear off, I started screaming. The echo magnified my voice, I stuck my fingers in my ears and bellowed out over and over again.

But nobody came.

Hoarse and exhausted, I collapsed in a heap. Was I doomed to die? Die of thirst, shrivel up in my sarcophagus?

The first day was awful. My muscles ached, I had cramp in my legs. I had no option but to sit curled up, and my back grew stiff. Thirst was driving me mad. The heat given off by my body condensed on the sooty walls, I could feel it dripping and tried to lick it. It tasted metallic, and only made me feel even more thirsty.

The second day I was completely overcome by exhaustion. I dozed for hour after hour. The emptiness felt liberating. I lost all trace of time. I slid in and out of contented oblivion and realised I was dying.

The next time I came to my senses it was obvious that a considerable length of time had passed. The greenish light of day that seeped in through the ventilator was fainter now. Days were growing shorter. It was getting much colder at night, and soon there was frost as well. I kept warm by jerking my muscles one after another.

I don’t remember much of winter. I curled up in a ball and slept most of the time. I was in a trance as weeks passed by. When the spring warmth finally returned, I discovered I had grown. My clothes felt tight and uncomfortable. I wriggled and squiggled and managed to take them off, and resumed my waiting naked.

Gradually my body filled more and more of the cramped space. Several years must have passed. The damp given off by my body had started the iron rusting, and I had flakes of rust in my tousled hair. I could no longer move up and down, only sway from side to side like a duck. If the doors were to open now, the hole would be too small for me to climb out anyway.

Eventually it became almost unbearable. I couldn’t even move from side to side any more. My head was jammed in between my knees. There was no room for my shoulders to grow any broader.

For several weeks I was convinced it was all over.

In the end everything came to a full stop. I occupied the whole of the space. There was no room to breathe properly any more, all I could manage was a series of short gasps. But I kept growing even so.

Then it happened one night. A faint cracking noise. Like when a pocket mirror breaks. A brief pause, then a slow crunching noise from behind me. When I tensed my muscles and pressed backwards, the wall gave way. Bulged out then burst open in a cloud of splinters, and I shot out into the world.

Naked, newly born, I crawled around through the rubbish. Stood up on very shaky legs and supported myself against a bookcase. To my surprise, I noticed that the whole world had shrunk. No, it was me who’d doubled in size. I’d sprouted pubic hair. I’d grown up.

It was a bitterly cold winter night outside. Not a soul in sight. I ploughed my way through the snow and scampered barefoot through the village, still stark naked. At the crossroads between the chemist’s and the kiosk, four youths were lying in the middle of the road. They seemed to be asleep. I stopped and stared down at them in surprise. Bent down to examine them more closely in the light from the street lamp.

One of the youths was me.

Feeling very odd, I lay down next to myself on the icy road. It was cold against my skin, melted and turned damp.

I started to wait. They’d wake up soon enough.