The following day, the Jukolas regained their home, stepping out one
behind the other. But woebegone was their appearance: their garments
hung in shreads and their faces were mottled with bruises and wounds.
Juhani, who led the way, had had his left eye almost closed up, Aapo’s
lips were badly swollen, a mighty bump protruded from Timo’s forehead,
and Simeoni, limping, brought up the rear. Their heads had been
thoroughly pummelled and were now wrapped round with empty food-bags or
with strips of rag torn from a coat. In such condition they returned
from their trip to school. The dogs, Killi and Kiiski, rushed forth to
meet them, leaping with joy; but the brothers had little strength left
to respond to the caresses of their faithful house-guards.
Who then had used them so cruelly? Who had succeeded so well in
crushing the doughty Jukola brothers? Who else but the men of Toukola,
whose revenge it was. Having heard that the brothers were at Tammisto,
they had banded themselves together, twenty men strong, and hidden in
the bushes by the wayside to await their enemies. There, with stout
staves in their hands, they had dozed and bided their time. Then, as
the school-goers drew nigh, the villagers fell swiftly upon them,
charging from both sides of the road, and a terrific cudgelling began
in which the brothers were badly beaten. But neither did the Toukola
men escape whole-skinned from the affray, for many of them turned faint
on acquaintance with the brothers’ fists. And two were borne swooning
to their homes: Kuninkala’s Eenokki and Kissala’s Aapeli. And on this
occasion Aapeli’s skull shone bare from neck to brow, shone like the
bottom of a pewter mug. The hand of Juhani had done its fell work.
At last, however, the brothers sat in the large living-room of their
home, terribly tired.
JUHANI. Whose turn is it to heat the bath-house?
TIMO. It’ll be mine now.
JUHANI. Then heat it till the oven cracks.
TIMO. I’ll try my best.
JUHANI. Do it like a man, for truly, our wounds need a
steaming. And do thou, Eero, hasten and bring a can of spirits from
Roution, for which they can have the stoutest log in our forest. A can
of spirits!
SIMEONI. Isn’t that too much, a can?
JUHANI. Why, it’s hardly enough as grease for seven men. God
knows, we have as many wounds between us as there are stars in the sky.
But though this eye of mine aches and kicks right fiercely, the bile
and heart in my innards ache fiercer still. But all’s well! all’s well!
Jussi Jukola is not dead yet.
Evening fell, a melancholy September evening; Eero brought the spirits
from Roution and Timo word that the bath was ready; and the men’s
sullen temper revived a little. They set out to their bath, and Timo
threw water on the heated oven until the blackened stones heaped over
it cracked with a noise like rifle-fire and a cloud of hot steam was
wafted round the bath-house. Each plied now with all his strength the
feathery bunches of leafy birch-twigs, so grateful to the skin; they
bathed and washed their wounds, and the furious beating of the twigs
was heard afar without the building.
JUHANI. Our wounds are getting a real Turkish polka. Hot steam
in the bath-house, that’s the best physic for soul and body. But my eye
stings like Satan. Well, itch away and sting, all the hotter will I
make it for thee. How is thy muzzle, Aapo?
AAPO. It’s beginning to melt.
JUHANI. Swipe away at it and beat it as a Russian hammers his
nag, and it’ll soon be softer. But more steam, Timo, seeing it is thy
job tonight to wait on us. That’s it, my boy! Let it come. Oh, but it’s
hot there, it’s hot there! That’s the way, my broth of a brother!
LAURI. It fair bites at my finger-nails.
JUHANI. Let our nails get a basting, too.
AAPO. Stop throwing water now, boy; or we’ll soon have to
climb down from here, every man of us.
EERO. Go on praising him and we shall soon be roasted to
cinders.
JUHANI. That’s enough, Timo. Don’t throw any more. For Hell’s
sake stop throwing water on that oven! Art thou coming down, Simeoni?
SIMEONI. I’m coming, wretch that I am. And ah, if ye only knew
why!
JUHANI. Tell us.
SIMEONI. Man, remember the furnace of the lost and pray night
and day.
JUHANI. Stuff! Let the body have it if it wants; for the
hotter the steam-bath the greater its healing-power. That thou knowest.
SIMEONI. Whose hot water is this in the bucket near the oven?
JUHANI. It’s mine, as the smith said of his house. Don’t touch
it.
SIMEONI. I’m going to take a drop of it, anyway....
JUHANI. Don’t do it, brother mine, or there’ll be trouble. Why
didst thou not warm some for thyself?
TUOMAS. Why be so snappy without cause? Take a little from my
tub, Simeoni.
TIMO. Or from mine, under the platform steps there.
JUHANI. Have some of mine then, too, but see thou leavest me
at least half.
LAURI. Eero! Thou imp, take care I don’t throw thee off the
platform.
AAPO. What tricks are you two up to in the corner?
JUHANI. What’s the squabbling about? Eh?
LAURI. Blowing on another fellow’s back.
AAPO. Softly, Eero!
JUHANI. Hey, troublemonger.
SIMEONI. Eero, Eero, can’t even the stewing heat of the bath
remind thee of the fires of Hell? Remember Juho Hemmola, remember him!
JUHANI. He saw when he was stretched on a sick-bed the fiery
lake, from which he was saved that time, and all because, as it was
then said to him, he had always thought of Hell when he was on the
bath-house platform. But can that be daylight shining through yon
corner?
LAURI. Bright daylight.
JUHANI. Oh the beast! the bath-house sings its last note. So
let the first aim of my mastership be a new bathhouse.
AAPO. A new one’s needed, it’s true.
JUHANI. Ay, no gainsaying that. A farm without a bath-house
is no good either from the standpoint of baths or the babies a wife or
the farm-hands’ women might have. Ay, a smoking bath-house, a barking
hound, a crowing cock and a mewing pussy, these are the signs of a good
farm. Ay, there’s plenty to do for the one who takes over our home. A
little more steam, Timo!
TIMO. It shall be given thee.
SIMEONI. Don’t let us forget that it is Saturday night.
JUHANI. And let us take care our skins aren’t soon hanging
from the rafters, like the former serving-maid’s.
SIMEONI. That was the maid who never had time to take her bath
with the others, but dillied and dallied in the bath-house long after
all the others had gone to bed. Then one Saturday night she stayed
longer than usual. And what did they find when they went to look for
her? Only a skin hanging from the rafters. But it was a master-hand had
done the flaying, for the hair, eyes, ears and even the nails had been
left in the skin.
JUHANI. Let this be a warning.... Hi-hi, how skittishly
this back of mine takes its steam! As though thou hadst not tasted a
birch-twig since New Year’s Day.
LAURI. But who had skinned her?
TIMO. Who, thou askest. Who else but the ...
JUHANI. Old ’Un himself.
TIMO. Ay, he who goes around like a roaring lion. A horrible
story!
JUHANI. Timo-lad, stick that shirt of mine from the rafters
there into this fist.
TIMO. What, this one?
JUHANI. Ho! ’Tis Eero’s little rag he offers to a full-grown
man. Ah thee! That middle one there.
TIMO. What, this one?
JUHANI. That’s a man’s shirt. Ta, brother. A horrible story,
say I too to go back to what we were speaking of. Let it be a reminder
to us that ‘the eve is the height of a feast-day’. Now let’s wash
ourselves as clean as though we had just come from the midwife’s nimble
paws: and then shirt under arm to the house, so that our over-heated
bodies can get a skinful of cool air on the way. But I do believe this
beloved eye of mine is getting better.
SIMEONI. My leg isn’t better yet, but aches and burns as
though it were wrapped round with hot ashes. What’s to become of poor
me with it?
EERO. Go nicely to bed when we reach the house and pray for
leg-salve, and then thank thy Creator who has not suffered thee today
to ‘dash thy foot against a stone’, as it says in evening prayer.
SIMEONI. I do not hear thee, I do not hear.
EERO. Then pray for ear-salve as well. But start moving, or
thou’lt be left here a prey to Old Nick.
SIMEONI. My ears are closed to thee, closed in a spiritual
sense. Understand me, man!
EERO. Come on, or thy skin will soon be hanging from the
rafters, and that in a bodily sense.
Naked and hot, they went from the bath-house to the sitting-room, their
bodies glowing like the sunlit stem of a birch-tree. Arrived within,
they sat down to rest a while sweating plentifully. Then little by
little they dressed themselves. And now Juhani began concocting an
ointment for the whole wounded brotherhood. Into an old handleless
saucepan, which he placed on the fire, he poured the can of spirits,
stirring into it two spans of gunpowder, one of ground sulphur and a
like measure of salt. And when this had boiled for an hour, he set
the mixture to cool, and the ointment, which resembled a pitch-black
gruel was ready. With this salve they anointed their wounds, paying
particular attention to those in their heads, and then covered the
whole with fresh, golden tar. Whereafter their teeth met fiercely and
a dark flush overspread their faces; so burned the potent ointment in
their wounds. But Simeoni set forth supper; seven ring-shaped loaves,
the smoked haunch of a cow and a heaped-up platter of stewed turnips
soon lay on the table. Food, however, was little to their taste that
evening, and after a few moments they rose from table and, having
undressed, lay down on their beds.
The night was dark, peace and silence reigned everywhere. But suddenly
the air around Jukola was illumined: the bath-house had caught fire.
So hot had Timo heated the grey stone oven that after smouldering a
while the wall burst into flames. And in deepest peace the building
burned to ashes, unseen of a single eye. And when morning dawned, there
was left of the Jukola bath-house only a few glowing cinders and the
white-hot ruins of the oven. At last, at midday, the brothers awoke,
feeling a good deal fresher than on the previous day, and dressing
themselves, sat down to breakfast; and food now tasted well to them.
For long they ate without uttering a word, until at last a conversation
arose regarding the scene of violence on the road between Tammisto and
Toukola.
JUHANI. True, it was a fair beating for us; but then they
fell on us like robbers with staves and cudgels. Ah! if we too had had
weapons in our hands and a hint of the danger beforehand, they’d be
sawing coffin-boards at Toukola village today, and there’d be work for
the grave-digger. However, I gave Kissala’s Aapeli his due.
TUOMAS. A white, hairless path ran down from his forehead to
his nape like the Milky way in an autumn sky.
JUHANI. Thou sawest?
TUOMAS. I saw it.
JUHANI. He got his due, but the others, the others, oh Lord!
EERO. We’ll be revenged on them down to their marrows.
JUHANI. Let us lay our heads together; and it may be the means
of us finding an idea for a matchless revenge.
AAPO. Why should we work everlasting ruin? Let’s seek the law
and justice, and not revenge by our own hands.
JUHANI. The first Toukola man I lay hands on, I’ll eat alive,
skin and hair; there’s the law and justice.
SIMEONI. Wretched brother! Dost thou ever intend to be heir to
Heaven?
JUHANI. What do I care for Heaven, if I can’t see Tuhkala
Matti’s blood and entrails!
SIMEONI. Oh what a monster thou art, what a monster! I must
weep.
JUHANI. Weep thou for the cat’s death, but not for my sake.
Grrh! I’ll make sausages of them.
TUOMAS. I’ll be revenged for this beating, I stake my word and
oath on it. Only a wolf would treat a man so.
JUHANI. A raving wolf. I swear the same oath.
AAPO. That revenge would only rebound on to our own backs; but
the law would punish them and reward us.
JUHANI. The law won’t make their backs smart with these wounds
of ours.
AAPO. All the worse will their purse and good name smart.
SIMEONI. Let us put bloody revenge out of our minds; let us
appeal to the law. I’m ready for that, even though the noise and bustle
of a court-room is greatly scaring to me.
JUHANI. If it comes to that, here’s a lad who wouldn’t flinch
even there. True, a fellow’s heart beats a bit faster the first time he
stands before the table of high justice, but a real man soon bucks up.
I still remember that time when I was witness for poor Kaisa Koivula,
who applied for maintenance for her child. I remember how the Serjeant
shouted: ‘Juhani, son of Juhani Jukola, of the village of Toukola!’
TIMO. ‘And his younger brother Timotheus!’ I was there too;
and Kaisa got a father for her baby like winking. I was witness too,
Juhani.
JUHANI. Thou wert, thou wert. But there was a crowd for you,
porch, steps and yard full. I was just sitting in the porch, chatting
with Kyösti Tamisto about what and how a lad has to speak before the
judge. I was talking real gravely with him, twiddling his coat buttons,
so, like that, when the Serjeant, or wolf-bailiff, shouted in such a
loud voice that I’ll lay it made many of the folk there open their
eyes and ears widely: ‘Juhani, son of Juhani Jukola, of the village of
Toukola!’
TIMO. ‘And his younger brother Timotheus!’ And, dog take it,
Kaisa got a father for her child.
JUHANI. That she did.
TIMO. Even though we weren’t allowed to take oath.
JUHANI. We weren’t, that’s true. But our frank and honest
witness helped a lot.
TIMO. And our names have gone up in deeds and dockets right to
the Emperor himself, hey!
JUHANI. That’s well known. Ay, so the Serjeant shouted, and
there was a kind of jump in the cockles of this lad’s heart, but he
was soon at home and pouring out of his mouth the unwavering language
of truth like he’d been an apostle, without heeding the laughter and
giggling of all those in court.
TIMO. That’s how we’re treated in court, and all goes well.
However, there’s more than one noose cast there and many a foot put
slyly out for a man to trip over.
JUHANI. That’s so, but truth and justice snatch the victory in
the end after all their tricks.
TIMO. After all their tricks and wiles; ay, unless the very
devil is lawyer and makes out night to be day and day night and black
tar to be skim-milk. But one thing can be as good as two. Why didn’t
God place justice on a firmer, ay, a downright firm footing? Why
witnesses, long questionings and lawyers’ tricks? To my mind, the
quickest road to truth and justice, if a matter seems doubtful and
can’t be cleared up, would be this: all the court, with the judge
himself in the lead, would step out into the yard, where the Serjeant
or hunt-bailiff would blow a big birch-bark horn, that could be called
the court-horn; with this he’d blow a few toots, holding its mouth
towards God’s Heaven. And then Heaven would open and the angel of the
Lord appear to all the people, asking in a loud voice; ‘What does
the Serjeant want,’ and then the Serjeant would ask back in a high
crying voice: ‘Is the accused man guilty or innocent?’ Then the bright
angel would give an answer the truth of which no one could doubt, and
according to which the man would be let go, or get a thorough hiding.
In this way I believe everything would go well.
JUHANI. Why even that much shouting and fashing. See how I
have thought the matter out. As the Creator I’d have arranged it so:
the accused man would have to confirm his words by a vow, a sacred
oath, and if he swore truly, let him toddle off home a free man again,
but if he felt like loosing off a lie, let the solid earth open beneath
him and Hell swallow him. That’s the straightest road to truth.
AAPO. It might be done that way, but best perhaps as it was
once ordained by the Father of Wisdom himself.
JUHANI. Best! Here we sit, battered, scabby and one-eyed like
tom-cats in March. Is this right? Marry, this world is the daftest
thing under the sun!
SIMEONI. So He hath arranged it, for He wishes to try His
children’s firmness in belief.
JUHANI. Firmness in belief. He tries and weighs us, but,
through these trials of his, souls go down to that everlasting
bath-house like midges; thither, where I wouldn’t wish a snake,
although I’m only a sinful human being.
TUOMAS. A hard game, this life and this world. Little is the
hope for any of us of as small a chance as Joshua’s and Caleb’s amongst
six hundred thousand men.
JUHANI. You’re right! What is this life then? The porch of
Hell.
SIMEONI. Juhani, Juhani, keep watch over thy thoughts and
language!
JUHANI. Hell itself, say I, if I take on my worst temper.
I’m the suffering soul down here and the Toukola lads devils, with
pitchforks in their fists. All men are like evil spirits towards us.
AAPO. Now, now, let us enter into our own bosoms a little.
The wrath of mankind towards us has perhaps been lit and kept alive
in great part by our own works. Let us not forget how we have sported
in their turnip-fields and peastacks, how we have trampled their
water-meadows on our fishing-trips and often shot the bears they had
ringed, and done many other such tricks, heedless of the law’s warnings
or the voice of conscience.
SIMEONI. We have awakened the anger of Heaven and earth. Often
when I lay me down to sleep and think of the wicked deeds of our youth,
the fiery sword of conscience pricks real painfully at my wretched
bosom, and I seem to hear, like the sound of rain far away, a curious
murmuring, and another dismal voice seems to whisper in my ear: ‘The
sigh of God and Man for the seven sons of Jukola’. Ruin threatens us,
brothers, and the star of happiness will not shine for us until we are
on better terms with our fellowmen. Why shouldn’t we then go and beg
for forgiveness, promising to live differently hereafter?
EERO. I would weep if I could. Simeoni, Simeoni! ‘with but
little more persuasion thou wouldest fain’ ... yea, there wasn’t much
lacking. ‘But go thy way this time’.
SIMEONI. Ay, ay, we’ll see on the last day.
TIMO. Would I be brought round to ask for forgiveness? I won’t
believe it.
TUOMAS. Not while the raven is black.
EERO. We’ll see it done then when we come to Judgment. Then
the raven will be white as snow, as it says in the song of the merry
lad and the loving old mother. Gladly for me the last grains in the
hopper before we begin to pray.
JUHANI. Believe me, Simeoni, it’s no use always watching the
state of our souls, for ever thinking of the fiery pit, the devil
and all the little devils. Such ideas either addle a man’s brains
altogether or tie a halter round his neck. Those former mad pranks of
ours are to be looked upon rather as the foolishness of youth than as
sins in the strictest sense. And secondly, I have come to the belief
and conviction that we have sometimes to close our eyes down here, and
pretend not to see what we see, or to know what we know. A man’s got to
do that if he wants to escape whole-skinned from the mortar of life.
Don’t stare at me like owls, there’s no call for any staring. What I
mean are those smaller sins against God, not against my neighbour. My
neighbour and nearest has a skin to his nose and is as touchy as I
am, and wants his best as I do mine; but God is a man slow to anger
and plenteous in mercy, and always forgives us in the end, if we only
pray from an earnest heart. Ay, ay, I mean that it is no use in season
and out measuring to a hair our own works and, what shall I say,
little rascalities by God’s words and commandments, but best to stand
half-way. Big sins we must keep from by all means, say I, and pray for
eye-salve, but the smaller ones, namely, smaller ones against God, we
needn’t for ever be weighing on the hooks of conscience, but stand
half-way, half-way.
SIMEONI. Good God! That’s what Satan whispers in our ears.
TIMO. Just as Olli’s old woman feeds Mäkelä’s wife with lies
when she’s thirsting for a drink.
AAPO. Juhani uttered a few words that I heard with wonder and
dismay. Brother, is that what God’s commandments teach us? Is that
what our mother taught us? Never! One is with the Lord as a thousand
and a thousand as one. How canst thou then babble of smaller sins, of
standing half-way, defending the serving of two masters? Say, Juhani,
what is sin?
JUHANI. What is truth? thou Jukola’s Solomon, thou wise old
man from Savo? ‘What is sin?’ Ha! ‘What is sin?’ Oh what wisdom, what
marvellous wisdom. ‘There’s a head for you on our little boy’, verily
there is. Ay, what’s the good of speaking. ‘What is sin?’ Ha-ha! What
is truth, ask I.
TUOMAS. Why wriggle out of it, lad? Know that the doctrine
thou proclaimest is the Devil’s doctrine.
JUHANI. Let me give you a living example that strongly bears
out my belief. Recall to your minds the former tanner in the village.
The man got strange ideas about his soul, sin and worldly mammon, and
began altering his former ways greatly. Thus he suddenly stopped taking
in and giving out hides on Sunday, without looking to how important
one road and two errands are to the farmer. His friends warned him in
vain when they saw his business shrink from day to day, while that of
the other tanner next door grew and grew. The madman always replied:
‘God will surely bless the work of my hands though there be less of
it, but as for him who now thinks he is snatching the bread out of my
mouth, he will reap curses in the end in the sweat of his brow for
not having honoured the Lord’s Sabbath.’ So he would spout, walking
about staring on Sundays with a hymnbook in his fist, the eyes in his
head round as marbles and his hair sticking up like Bomb-Peter’s wig.
And what happened to the man in the end? We know what. It wasn’t long
before he had the heaviest piece of wood in his hand, a beggar’s staff,
and his path became the endless highway. Now he wanders from village
to village, emptying a glass wherever he can. I met him once at the
road-side over there on Kanamäki Ridge; there he sat on the cross-bar
of his sledge, and royally drunk was the miserable man. ‘How fare you,
tanner?’ asks I. ‘I fare as I fare’ answers he, with one stiff look at
me. But I asked him again: ‘How are matters with you, master?’ ‘They
are as they are’ he answers again, and went his way, bleating some
foolish kind of song. That was his end. But the other tanner? He became
rich as anything, and rich and happy he died.
AAPO. Narrow-minded belief and spiritual pride ruined the
tanner, and so it will be with all of his sort. However that may be,
thy doctrine is false doctrine and belief.
SIMEONI. False prophets and the last days of the world.
TIMO. He wants to tempt us over to the Turk’s religion.
But thou canst not shake me; for I am sure and steadfast, sure and
steadfast as the eye of an axe.
JUHANI. Hand me, Tuomas, that half loaf from the end of the
table there. ‘False prophets’. I tempt no man to sin and evildoing,
and I myself wouldn’t steal a bradawl from a cobbler or the eye of a
needle from a tailor. But my heart strikes sparks when my meaning is
always twisted to its worst, made out black as pitch, when a dark brown
would be enough.
AAPO. Thou spokest so plainly, weighed the matter so
from point to point and chapter to chapter, that we couldn’t have
misunderstood it.
TIMO. My head on it, he wanted to tempt us over to the Turks’
religion.
SIMEONI. God have mercy on him!
JUHANI. Shut your mouths, and quickly. Pray to God for me,
scold me like meek-eyed persons, I tell you it won’t do. I have just
enough wisdom, even if I’m not pure unmixed wisdom like, for example,
our Aapo there.
AAPO. God forbid! I’m not even as wise as I should be.
JUHANI. Pure wisdom, pure wisdom! And keep thy breadtrap
shut, or thou’lt get this paw against thy muzzle and a bit harder than
yesterday. This I say and my paunch being full, leave off eating.
TIMO. I’ll lay that every man of us is as tight as a gad-fly.
EERO. But why do I see no bath-house?
JUHANI. What would a midget like thee be seeing? But--our
bath-house has gone to blazes!
EERO. No, but to Heaven in a fiery chariot.
JUHANI. Can it have burned down?
EERO. How should I know, and what have I to do with it? It’s
the master of Jukola’s bath-house, not mine.
JUHANI. Eero’s body too, if I remember rightly, sweated
there yesterday. Ay, ay, everything on the master’s back, that I well
believe. But let’s go and look. Where’s my cap? Let’s go and look,
brothers. I know that our bath-house is in ashes.
They went out to see what had befallen their bath-house. But all that
there was left to see was a blackened fireplace and a smoking chaos.
The brothers gazed upon this scene of destruction for a while with
annoyance, and at last returned to the living-room. Last came Juhani,
in his fist two iron hinges which he cast angrily on the table.
JUHANI. Ay, the house of Jukola is now bathless.
EERO. ‘And a farm without a bath-house is no good’ said
Brother Juhani.
JUHANI. Timo made the dear old oven too hot, and dust and
ashes is all that’s left of the beloved sooty rafters and walls, in
whose shelter each of us entered into the light of the world. Timo
heated the oven mightily, say I.
TIMO. At thy bidding, at thy bidding; that thou knowest well.
JUHANI. I give the devil for ‘thy bidding’, but that we are
now bathless men, and that is an annoying thing. Building a new one
won’t add to our bread.
AAPO. An annoying matter; but still the bath-house was old and
its corners full of holes; and thou thyself didst decide yesterday to
build a new one right soon.
JUHANI. True it was old and its logs steamed through to their
marrows, but it would have done at a pinch for a year or two. The farm
has no strength yet to waste on building bath-houses; the fields, the
fields are what we must pounce on first.
TUOMAS. Thou’lt treat the fields as thou didst the big meadow
last year, whose fine hay we let wither without a single stroke of the
scythe. But it was thy wish. Whenever I reminded thee of the mowing,
thou wouldst answer: ‘we won’t go just yet, the hay is still growing so
fast that you can hear it.’
JUHANI. That is something past and thy jawing can’t help it.
The big meadow’ll grow all the better in the coming summer. But who’s
that man coming towards the house in the field yonder?
TUOMAS. Juryman Mäkelä. What can the man want?
JUHANI. Now the devil’s loose. He comes in the Crown’s name,
and it’s because of that accursed scrap with the Toukola lads.
AAPO. In the last fight the law is on our side, but in the
first one we must look to ourselves. Let me explain matters to him.
JUHANI. As the eldest brother, I too want the right to speak
when our common good is being talked over.
AAPO. Then see thou dost not talk all of us into a trap, if so
be we should have to wriggle a little.
JUHANI. I know how.
Entered Mäkelä, an excellent and well-meaning juryman. He came,
however, on a different errand from that which the brothers had guessed.
MÄKELÄ. Good-day!
THE BROTHERS. Good-day!
MÄKELÄ. What horrors do I see? Boys, how are matters here?
Torn, bruised, scabby, dressed in rags! Miserable men!
JUHANI. ‘Trust a dog to lick its wounds’, but let the wolves
look to themselves. Is this the reason thou now standest in our house?
MÄKELÄ. What did I know of this? But can brothers have harried
each other in this wise? Shame on you!
JUHANI. Thou art mistaken, Mäkelä, we brothers have treated
each other as angels. This is the work of neighbours.
MÄKELÄ. Who has done this?
JUHANI. Kind neighbours. But may I ask why thou hast come to
see us?
MÄKELÄ. For a grave reason. Boys, boys, the day of your ruin
is upon you.
JUHANI. What will that day be like?
MÄKELÄ. A day of shame.
JUHANI. When will it dawn?
MÄKELÄ. I have strict orders from the Rector to bring you to
church next Sunday.
JUHANI. What does he want of us at church?
MÄKELÄ. To put you in the stocks, to speak plainly.
JUHANI. Why?
MÄKELÄ. For many reasons. You wild and maddened men! You broke
the parish clerk’s window and then fled like wolves.
JUHANI. ’Twas the parish clerk who worried us like the wildest
wolf.
MÄKELÄ. But what has the Rector done to you?
JUHANI. Not the bite of a flea.
MÄKELÄ. And yet you have mocked and insulted him through
that foul-mouthed, brazen Cupper-Kaisa. You sent, by Rajamäki’s awful
regiment the most filthy, really scoundrelly greetings to a well-born
man, the shepherd of our parish; that was bare-faced insolence without
like.
JUHANI. ‘It’s true enough, but prove it,’ said Kakkinen’s
Jake, but so say not I.
MÄKELÄ. But now, know that the rector’s sternest revenge will
befall you. Now he is without pity for you.
AAPO. Sit down, Mäkelä, and let us talk over the matter a
little more broadly and deeply. What do you say to this point: can the
Rector screw us down in the stocks for Rajamäki Kaisa’s lies? Surely
not! Let what we have said and in what way hurt his honour be legally
proven.
JUHANI. ‘First a matter must be weighed, ere the rod on back
be laid’, that’s well known.
MÄKELÄ. But another thing, this matter of reading, gives him a
fair amount of power, anyhow, by the church laws, which he is now sure
to use against you in his anger.
JUHANI. In the matter of reading we have God’s own laws and
regulations on our side, which rise against any attempt. Look you,
already in our mother’s womb He gave us such hard heads that it is
impossible for us to learn to read. What are we to do, Mäkelä? The
gifts of learning fall very unevenly on our heads down here.
MÄKELÄ. The hardness of your heads is only an empty fancy.
Diligence and daily practice will overcome anything in the end. Your
father was one of the best readers.
AAPO. But our mother never knew a single letter, and yet she
was a true Christian.
JUHANI. And brought up and chastised her sons in the fear of
God. God bless the old woman.
MÄKELÄ. Did she try what the skill of others could do for you?
JUHANI. Indeed she did her best; she tried what Old Mother
Pinewood could do. But that hot-tempered beldame began at once
hammering our backs, and her cabin became worse in our eyes than a cave
of demons; and at last we never entered it, though they whipped us like
a dying fire.
MÄKELÄ. In those days you were a thoughtless lot, but now you
stand for yourselves as men; and a commonsense, healthy man can do what
he wills; show the Rector and the world, therefore, what manhood can
do. As for thee, Aapo, who hast such a sensible mind and lackest not
a mite or two of knowledge, and whose sharp memory preserves all thou
hearest or seest, at thee I must wonder that thou hast not already
altered thy ways.
AAPO. ’Tis but little I know; oh well, I know a thing or two.
Our blind uncle that was told us many things, things from the Bible,
of his travels at sea and the build of the world, and then we always
listened to him with pious hearts.
JUHANI. We listened with ears erect as a hare’s when the old
man talked to us of Moses, the children of Israel, happenings from the
Book of Kings and the miracles of Revelations. ‘And the sound of their
wings was as the sound of chariots as they rush to war’. Lord save us!
we know many miracles and things, and aren’t quite such black heathens
as people think.
MÄKELÄ. But to become true members of the Christian Church you
must begin from the a-b-c book.
AAPO. Mäkelä, on that board you see seven a-b-c’s, purchased
at Hämeenlinna, and may this sight prove to you our willingness to
learn. Let the Rector show a little more patience, and I think that
something can take root, grow and prosper out of this matter.
JUHANI. Let him be longsuffering towards us and I am willing
to pay him his tithes twice over, and the flesh of young game shall not
be lacking in his bowl, at lawful times.
MÄKELÄ. Prayers and fine promises won’t help here I’m afraid,
when I think of his great and righteous anger.
JUHANI. What does he want of us then, and what do you want?
Good! Come with seventy men, and blood shall squirt around us even then.
MÄKELÄ. Tell me, what steps do you mean to take to learn your
alphabet and the lesser catechism, which is the chief concern of our
Rector.
JUHANI. Try what the teaching of Mother Pinewood or her
daughter can do for us here at home. Good reading women, both of them.
MÄKELÄ. I will tell the Rector of your intention. But for the
sake of your own peace go and beg his forgiveness for your insolent
deed.
JUHANI. We will think over that point.
MÄKELÄ. Do as I say; and note that unless he observes in you
an honest and strenuous endeavour, you’ll be in the stocks, nicely in
the stocks one Sunday, under the church windows. This I say; and now
fare ye well!
JUHANI. Farewell, farewell!
TUOMAS. Didst thou really mean what thou said’st about Old
Mother Pinewood and her daughter? Was it in earnest thou half promised
to go and crawl before the Rector?
JUHANI. There wasn’t a mite of earnest in it, and of truth not
a whit. To win time was what this lad’s prattle was meant for. Mother
Pinewood or Venla to guide our reading-sticks! Why, even the Toukola
pigs would laugh! You heard, we were threatened with the certain
stocks, with the pillory of shame. A thousand flaming goblins! hasn’t
a man the right to live his own life and as he likes in peace, when he
stands in no one’s way, tramples on no one’s rights? Who’ll forbid it?
But I say once again: parsons and officials with their books and papers
are the evil spirits of mankind. O thou black sow! O cursed day on
earth! we’re so knocked head over heels by the blows of hard fate and
the cruelty of men, that I could dash my head against a wall. O thou
black bull! Venla refused us; they’ve made a nasty, stinging song about
us; the parish clerk tortured us like the Evil One himself; the Toukola
lads hammered us like senseless earth, we were trounced like Christmas
pigs and now strut here like real Christmas brownies, like one-eyed
gnomes with rags round our heads. What more? Isn’t our home now without
the poor man’s only treat, the roaring steam of the bath-house? There
the ruins of our bath-house smoke and smoulder. And there’s still the
worst of devils left. Hrrh! With all its ten holes the stocks grin at
us from the church porch. Bright lightning! If such a bunch of worries
doesn’t lift a razor to a man’s throat, what will? O thou horned bull!
EERO. Now thy memory is a little weak; there aren’t ten holes
in the stocks.
JUHANI. How many then?
EERO. How many stars in Charley’s Wain, how many sons at
Jukola?
JUHANI. We are seven. Seven holes therefore and seven sons.
Well, all the worse. Seven holes! Always worser and worser. See how
men and hard fate are joined together against us. Seven holes like
millstone-eyes! What mockery of hard fate! Well, let them shoot all the
arrows of their rage at us, we’ll clench our overgoaded hearts hard
as sparkling steel. Let them blow poison at us from every side like
snakes, and the heavens rain pure gall on us, we’ll still, with eyes
shut, grinding our teeth and roaring like mad bulls, charge at them.
And if we are dragged at last by all the Crown’s might to the stocks,
why, it’s with blissful joy I’ll sit in them, I.
AAPO. Why with joy?
JUHANI. Thou dost not understand, brother, the awful power of
anger. The thought of revenge would make this lad forget all shame;
and it’s shame is their purpose. A dream, that of bleeding our mister
Rector, it’s that would taste like honey-dew to my angry mind. And it
wouldn’t be a knife, or a gun I’d use, like the former man from Karja,
no, but with teeth and claws I’d fly at his throat like a she-wolf. I’d
tear the man to bits, to a thousand bits and taste my revenge to the
last drop. I’d do this even if I had ten lives and each life were to
be tortured ten years in a spiked barrel. It’d be nothing against the
lust of my revenge.
AAPO. Thou stirrest up all thy being. Lave, miserable brother,
the seething cauldron of thy heart with cool water from the rippling
brook of patience, which flows onward through the meadows, gently
meandering.
SIMEONI. Thy face is pitch-black, and thy eyes roll bloodshot,
sharp as gimlets. Have mercy on thyself.
TUOMAS. Truly, if we were made to sit in the stocks, we’d have
revenge, but may our hearts beat in peace until that happens. All hope
is not past yet.
JUHANI. On one croner of the earth a day of peace still gleams
for us. Ilvesjärvi Lake yonder, on the side of Impivaara, is the
harbour to which we can sail away from the storm. Now my mind is made
up.
LAURI. Mine was already made up last year.
EERO. I’ll follow you even into the deepest cave on Impivaara,
where it is said the Old Man of the Mountain boils pitch, with a helmet
made of a hundred sheep-skins on his head.
TUOMAS. We’ll all move there from here.
JUHANI. Thither we’ll move and build a new world.
AAPO. Cannot the hand of the law reach us there too?
JUHANI. The forest shields its pups. There we are indeed on
our own ground; deep as bleary-eyed moles we’ll dig ourselves in, right
to the bowels of the earth. And if they felt like meddling with us lads
there, they’d be made to see what it feels like to disturb seven bears
in their lair. Now to the tanner’s to draw up a lease in writing. For
ten years the farm can pass into other hands.
SIMEONI. I too long for an abode of peace. Brothers, let us
create ourselves a new home and a new heart in the depths of the forest.
JUHANI. All with a single mind!
AAPO. What dost thou decide, Timo?
TIMO. ‘Where all others, there I too’, says the proverb.
AAPO. You would move, and I be left here, a lone pine in
Jukola’s yard? Ah, for that every root and fibre of my being is too
firmly fast in your company. I’m agreed, then, and let’s hope for the
best from this trip. I’ll come with you.
JUHANI. Splendid! Now to the tanner’s the lot of us, to draw
up a proper lease. All with a single mind!
They set out in a body to draw up the lease, rented their farm to the
tanner for ten years; and the following paragraphs were set down in
writing. The tanner was to rule over and run the farm for ten years,
the first three years without any rent, whereafter he was to pay the
brothers seven barrels of rye each year and build a new bath-house
before the lease expired. Anywhere in the Jukola forests the brothers
were at liberty to hunt, and any kind of game the law allowed. In the
northern section of the farm’s holding, around Impivaara, the brothers
were free to do and live as they pleased, this applying both to the
clearings and the forests. The tanner was to take over the farm on
All Saints’ Day, but if they so wished, the brothers were to be given
shelter in the home of their birth over the coming winter. These were
the main conditions of the lease.
Came November, and the tanner stood with his loads in the Jukola yard
and took over the management of the farm for the term of the lease. But
to avoid the Rector and his men, the brothers spent the winter mostly
in the forest, ski-ing around and hunting; the charcoal-burner’s hut
on Impivaara did for camp. They did not, however, move altogether with
horse and other belongings from the farm. This they had settled was to
take place when spring had come. Nevertheless, they worked already at
their coming abode, felled trees to dry during the spring and rolled
stones for the foundations on to a stump-besprinkled clearing under the
steep fell-side.
Thus passed the winter, and during the whole of its course no command
or reminder reached the brothers from the Rector. Was he merely biding
his time, or had he left them to their fate?