Mikael Niemi - Popular Music

When Niila came round to our place we often used to sit in the kitchen because he liked the radio. My mum used to have the radio mumbling away in the background all day, something unknown in his house. It didn’t much matter what was on, so we had a pot-pourri of pop music, Women’s Hour, Down Your Way, bell-ringing from Stockholm, language courses and church services. I never used to listen, it all went in one ear and out of the other. But Niila seemed to be thrilled to bits just by the sound, the fact that it was never really quiet.

One afternoon I made a decision. I would teach Niila to talk. I caught his eye, pointed to myself and said:

‘Matti.’

Then I pointed at him and waited. He also waited. I reached out and stuck my finger in between his lips. He opened his mouth, but still didn’t say anything. I started stroking his throat. It tickled, and he pushed my hand away.

‘Niila!’ I said, and tried to make him say it after me. ‘Niila, say Niila!’

He stared at me as if I were an idiot. I pointed at my crotch and said:

‘Willy!’

He grinned, thought I was being rude. I pointed at my backside.

‘Bum! Willy and bum!’

He nodded, then turned his attention back to the radio again. I pointed at his own backside and made a gesture to show something coming out of it. Then I looked at him questioningly. He cleared his throat. I went tense, waiting impatiently. But nothing happened. I was annoyed and wrestled him down to the floor.

‘It’s called babba! Say babba!’

He slowly extricated himself from my grip. Coughed and sort of bent his tongue around inside his mouth to loosen it up.

Then he said: ‘Soifa.’

I held my breath. That was the first time I’d ever heard his voice. It was deep for a boy, hoarse. Not very attractive.

‘What did you say?’

‘Donu al mi akvon.’

There it was again. I was flabbergasted. Niila spoke! He’d started talking, but I couldn’t understand what he said.

He rose to his feet with great dignity, walked over to the sink and drank a glass of water. Then he went home.

Something very remarkable had taken place. In his state of dumbness, in his isolated fear, Niila had started to create a language of his own. Without conversing, he had invented words, begun to string them together and form sentences. Or wasn’t it just him alone, perhaps? Could there be something deeper to it, embedded underneath the deepest peat layer at the back of his mind? An ancient language? An ancient memory, deep frozen but slowly starting to melt?

And before I knew where I was, our roles had been reversed. Instead of me teaching him how to talk, it was him teaching me. We would sit in the kitchen, Mum pottering around in the garden, the radio buzzing in the background.

‘Ĉi tio estas seĝo,’ he said, pointing at a chair.

‘Ĉi tio estas seĝo,’ I repeated after him.

‘Vi nomiĝas Matti,’ he said, pointing at me.

‘ Vi nomiĝas Matti,’ I repeated, good as gold.

He shook his head.

‘Mi nomiĝas!’

I corrected myself.

‘Mi nomiĝas Matti. Vi nomiĝas Niila.’

He clicked his tongue enthusiastically. There were rules in this language of his, it was ordered. You couldn’t just babble on in any way you liked.

We began using it as our secret language, it grew into a space of our own where we could be all to ourselves. The kids from round about grew jealous and suspicious, but that only increased our pleasure. Mum and Dad got a bit worried and thought I was losing my powers of speech, but when they phoned the doctor he said that children often invented fantasy languages, and it would soon pass.

But as far as Niila was concerned, the blockage in his throat had been cleared once and for all. Our make-believe language overcame his fear of talking, and it wasn’t long before he started speaking Swedish and Finnish as well. He understood quite a lot already, of course, and had a big passive vocabulary. It just needed translating into sounds, and his mouth movements had to be practised. But it proved to be more difficult than one might have thought. He sounded odd for ages, his palate had trouble with all the Swedish vowels and the Finnish diphthongs, and he was constantly dribbling. Eventually it became possible to understand more or less what he was saying, although he still preferred to stick to our secret language. That was where he felt most at home. When we spoke it he would relax, and his body movements were less awkward, more natural.

One Sunday something unusual happened in Pajala. The church was full. It was a routine service, the clergyman taking it was Wilhelm Tawe as usual, and in normal circumstances there would have been plenty of room. But on this particular day it was full to overflowing.

The reason was that the inhabitants of Pajala were going to see their first real, live black man.

There was so much interest that even Mum and Dad were induced to turn up, despite the fact that they very rarely went to church at all apart from on Christmas Eve. In the pew in front of us were Niila and his parents and all his brothers and sisters. Just once he turned round and peered at me over the back of the pew, but was immediately prodded quite hard by Isak. The congregation included office workers and lumberjacks, and even a few Communists, all whispering amongst themselves. It was obvious what they were talking about. They were wondering if he’d turn out to be really black, pitch black, like the jazz musicians on record sleeves. Or would he just be a sort of coffee-brown?

There was a ringing of bells and the vestry door opened. Wilhelm Tawe emerged, looking a little bit on edge behind his black-framed spectacles. And there behind him. Also in vestments. A glittering African mantel, oh yes…

Pitch black! Whispers spread swiftly among the Sunday School mistresses. No trace of brown, more a sort of bluish black. Trotting alongside the African was an old deaconess who had been a missionary for many years, thin as a rake and with skin like tanned leather. The men bowed in the direction of the altar and the woman curtsied. Then Tawe got the service under way by bidding all present welcome, especially the guest who had travelled all the way from the war-stricken Congo. Christian parishes there were in crying need of material assistance, and today’s entire collection would be sent straight to the aid of our brothers and sisters in Africa.

Then the rituals commenced. But everybody just stared. They couldn’t take their eyes off him. When the hymn-singing started they heard his voice for the first time. He knew all the tunes, they seemed to have the same hymns in Africa. He sang in some native language or other, with a deep and somehow passionate voice, and the congregation sang softer and softer in order to listen to him. And when it was eventually time for the sermon, Tawe gave a sign. The unheard of happened. The black man and the deaconess both climbed the stairs into the pulpit.

There was widespread alarm – we were still in the sixties, and women were supposed to take a back seat and keep silent in the churches. Tawe explained that the lady’s role was to translate what our guest said. It was a little on the cramped side in the pulpit as she tried to establish herself alongside the imposing form of the newcomer. She was sweating profusely under her deaconess’s hat, took hold of the microphone and looked nervously round the congregation. The black man was calm and collected as he contemplated the worshippers before him, and he seemed even taller than he was, thanks to his high pointed hat, in blue and yellow. His face was so dark that all anybody could see was the glint in his eyes.

Then he started preaching. In Bantu. He ignored the microphone. He sort of shouted, loud and alluring, as if he were trying to contact somebody in the jungle.