Evening has come of the day on which the fight had raged so fiercely at
Tammisto. The brothers sit in their cabin; they have anointed and bound
up their wounds as well as they could. Night, black and everlasting,
reigns in their thoughts, and their angry glance is directed downward
at the floor. They think of what they have done and know the punishment
that threatens them; they ponder over their unhappy, hopeless
situation, and the silence in the room is awful. Finally Simeoni
started the following conversation.
SIMEONI. Brothers, brothers! say a word. What are we to do to
escape the clutches of the law?
AAPO. Ah! there is not a single road of escape left to us out
of this fix, not one.
JUHANI. We’re trapped now, trapped! All is lost, all hope and
happiness!
TUOMAS. The Devill’ll get us without any mercy; so let us take
what we have earned with eyes shut. We disturbed a Crown Servant in
the midst of his hurry, and that’s a serious thing; we made men into
cripples perhaps, and that’s a worse thing. Ha! maybe we even knocked
the dear life out of someone, and then all’s well; we’ll be shut up and
can eat the Crown’s carefree bread.
SIMEONI. Oh we poor boys!
TIMO. Poor sons of Jukola. And seven of them! What shall we do
now?
LAURI. I know what I’ll do.
JUHANI. I do too. Knife to throat, every man of us!
TIMO. For God’s sake!
JUHANI. My knife, my shining knife! I’ll let blood in waves!
AAPO. Juhani!
JUHANI. Let the blood of seven men flow into one single pool
and let us drown together in this Red Sea, like every man-jack in the
Old Testament once did. Where’s my birch-handled knife that shall atone
for all?
AAPO. Calm thyself!
JUHANI. Away out of my way, thou, and away out of this
accursed life! My knife!
SIMEONI. Hold him!
AAPO. To me, brothers!
JUHANI. Out of the way!
TUOMAS. Steady, my lad!
JUHANI. Let go, brother Tuomas!
TUOMAS. Sittest thou down quietly.
JUHANI. What good will quietness do us when all is lost? Art
thou minded to take forty brace of fresh birch-rods quietly?
TUOMAS. I’m not.
JUHANI. What wilt thou do?
TUOMAS. I’ll hang myself, but not before.
JUHANI. Let’s do now what we shall have to do in the end.
TUOMAS. Let’s think it over first.
JUHANI. Ha-ha! It’s all no use.
TUOMAS. We don’t know yet exactly.
JUHANI. The law’s waiting to lay its gloves on us.
SIMEONI. Let’s leave Finland and go as herds to Ingermanland!
TIMO. Or as doorkeepers to St. Petersburg town.
AAPO. These are childish ideas.
EERO. Away off to sea to cleave the waves like our grand old
uncle used to! Once we get away from the Finnish coast we are free from
the hand of the law, and can then try to reach the Englishman; a man’s
worth something in the masts of his ships.
AAPO. There’s advice worth thinking over.
TUOMAS. It might perhaps be that, but remember: before
we could reach the coast, we’d most likely have the Crown’s
engagement-rings on our wrists.
TIMO. Aah! Even if we get away from Finland with whole skins,
when should we be in England? It’s millions and thousands of millions
of miles there. Ah!
AAPO. Listen to a word: let’s join the wolves ourselves, and
it’s little we need fear their teeth. Let’s march to the army and
enlist for a few years. Ah! it’s a hard way out, but still perhaps the
best in this mess. Ay, let us set out for that famous and great big
battalion at Heinola, that marches and drills all summer on Parola
Plain. This is an idea worth weighing, seeing that the Crown looks
after its own.
JUHANI. I’m afraid, brother, thou hast found the only way.
The barracks have saved many a wild lad from prison before this. Think
of Karila’s farm-hand, that great rogue, who once got it into his head
to thrash his master a little; it would have gone ill with him, if the
rascal hadn’t suddenly had a grey coat on his back which saved him. Let
that be settled! And now off to barracks! Why, our father’s uncle died
in the wars, the Kyrö War, where they say a five-fathom log floated
in blood. Our own uncle too died in the wars, fell on the coast in
North Finland; and so it has gone with many another, both kinsfolk and
neighbours. We too know how to fall, to fall like devout heroes. Better
death, better to be in Heaven than here amongst such wild beasts of
men. I can’t help crying. Ay, much better there than here. Ay, ay, much
better.
TUOMAS. Brother, in this way thou canst set us all wiping our
eyes.
SIMEONI. O Lord, look down upon us and let the sun of Thy
mercy shine!
And their conversation ended in tears, in a general, choking fit of
weeping; not a single eye remained dry. But the evening drew on, night
came, and from weeping they all sank at last into a deep sleep. The
next day they took up the matter again and sought, sweating, some plan
that might save them, and meanwhile their eyes kept close watch on
their surroundings, in order that any approach of the forces of the
Crown might be observed in time. Thus they kept watch and pondered;
and the barracks, though dreadful enough, began to seem the likeliest
sanctuary. They decided therefore to set off together to Heinola and to
enlist for six years. And when the next day dawned, they embarked on
their long journey with downcast minds and troubled hearts. They strode
on forgetting that, for their purpose, passports and parish reports
were necessary; strode on, first towards Jukola, meaning to beg the
tanner to take charge of their animal friends and to keep an eye on the
cabin.
Reaching the Viertola road, they met the Sheriff, who, with his man
seated behind him, drove rumbling towards them. The brothers were taken
aback, believing his errand to concern them. They were on the point of
running away, but then stepped forward, sure in the belief that no two
men would ever be able to arrest them. They were mistaken, however,
regarding his errand; other matters had set the Sheriff driving round
the parish. Moreover, he was a fine fellow, brave, high-minded and
always merry. He had ever listened with joy to all that was told about
the Jukola brothers and their life in the forest; and he was their
well-wisher, a friend and not an enemy. And now, having come up with
the brothers, he began in a pleasant voice:
THE SHERIFF. Good-day, good-day! Whither away with such long
faces? Answer me, and don’t look at me like that, like backwoods
wolves. Whither away, with those knapsacks?
JUHANI. We have a long journey before us.
THE SHERIFF. Is it to Hell ye’re off then? Hey?
JUHANI. Do you want anything of us?
THE SHERIFF. What would you have to give me? A man can ask
without wanting to buy. Well, well, your eyes are glowering and glaring
at me; if I wasn’t used to looking the Devil himself in the face, my
heart might even start beating. Ha-ha-ha! What the blazes is the matter
with you?
JUHANI. One thing I ask you: will it be a Crown job?
THE SHERIFF. Will what?
JUHANI. Hm. That, that.
THE SHERIFF. What, thou tousled-headed loon? What?
JUHANI. That shindy at Tammisto Farm.
THE SHERIFF. Ahaa! That game the other day. Ay, there’s
something I want to say to you about that now.
JUHANI. Was anyone killed?
THE SHERIFF. Thank thy luck that there wasn’t. But, thunder
and lightning! you drove away a Crown Servant from his work and even
upset his desk, think what that means.
JUHANI. God ha’ mercy! It’s just what we have thought about a
lot, and have come to realize what it means for us. Ay, the Devil’ll
get us, and so we have chosen the Devil’s part. Know that it is to
Parola’s big battalion that our road now leads uphill and down so that
the sand rings. There’s the last pass to which we can flee in our
danger and distress, what with people, those raving devils, worrying
us on every side as though we were young wolves in a trap. We’re off
to Parola! and woe betide the man who tries to stop us; for the Crown
needs men, war is brewing, so we have heard. Soon we shall wear the
Crown’s armour, and touch us then, if you dare, you Satans. Hii, haa! I
could bite the world in two, bite it in two like an eel; a bit more and
I’d weep for very rage and sorrow; weep and shake my fist. We’re off to
Parola! There’s men like young ravens there at Parola.
THE SHERIFF. You owls and boobies! would you leave your own
cabin on your own soil and go off to the whizzing rods at the barracks?
JUHANI. Better there anyhow than quarrying rock in prison; and
as for that, the brown skin of a Häme man is an inch thick, as they
will see.
THE SHERIFF. Quarrying rock in prison! Why?
JUHANI. You yourself, sir, are minded to drag us there in
clanking chains. And why? Because of that unlucky tussle in Tammisto
yard, because we dusted the backs of those Toukola lads a little, a
dusting which, God help us, we were thoroughly egged on to give. And
now the idea is to make a Crown job of it, make a bull of a fly, as the
proverb says.
THE SHERIFF. Now thou liest! Go to Hades, man! I have other
and more serious work than that.
JUHANI. Even if you were to grant us the freedom to go to
Hades, which we do not believe, the Toukola men are still at our
throats with the law behind them. We unlucky lads struck the first
blow, and that makes our case bad; but they won’t either escape without
‘pay up, please’. There are wounds enough on our side too, on which
the scab has scarce had time to form, and they prove something, these
wounds do. Hrrh! But even if we hold our own against the Toukola men,
there’s still a day of judgment awaiting us every year: Bible-reading
Day. The Devil! I say like Paavo Jaakkola, that fine lad: ‘This life
would suit me if it had one day a year less, if it wasn’t for that
accursed Bible-reading Day.’ And he also said: ‘It isn’t the pain, but
the shame,’ as he did once after one of those hair-pulling feasts, in
which his own crop had been badly milled again. And what happened to
him the next year at the same feast? Ay, the parson made him sit under
the table like an owl in full view of his young and pretty sweetheart,
who stood in the porch; she fainted when she saw it, the poor body,
tumbled head over heels on the floor like a young duck. It was a sad
case; after that Paavo took to drink, was refused by his sweetheart and
drank all the harder, and ended his days as a miserable knacker. That
was bonny Paavo’s end, a man by no means thick-headed, indeed not, for
he was one of the wisest and deftest of men; only his stepmother had
surlily thrust the book upon him in the beginning, and so reading-day
became a day of terror for him. And is this either a right state of
things? Mikko Kukkoinen, a man big and stout as a chopping-block, broad
in the cheek like old mother Tuhkala’s cat, but not what you would call
a good reader, shied like a lamb when he heard in his tool-shed the
sound of the parson’s sleigh-bells on reading-day. So awful is this
day, this feast of sweating and hair-pulling. And once we too will be
taken there by force at the rector’s command, and from there to the
scaffold of shame, the stocks; but from all this the grey coat of the
Crown can save us, to all this we now say an eternal farewell.
THE SHERIFF. You brainless goats, what fool’s plans are you
hatching? Well, go, go, march on as far as the Crown’s sandy field
will take you. What in fury have I to do with it! Our reckoning is
discharged as regards Tammisto, that I say and will swear to, you
loons! Discharged! and even the mouths of the Toukola men are stopped.
Ho! I did that the same day the fight took place, as soon as I was
satisfied that no lives had been lost. The rogues threatened to have
the law of you, though they had boiled the soup themselves. But then
I put my own weight in the scales, and the Toukola men shut up like
moles; I have a good many hooks of my own fast in them with which I
could drag them into a tight fix. And now they are silent and hold good
with what they have got. And as for your matter with the rector, I only
ask you: has he troubled you lately in any way?
AAPO. That he has not done, to our great wonder.
THE SHERIFF. And never will any more; remember who says it.
For who brought this about? Who other than that old Sheriff of ours?
And you, you ungrateful imps, you now say that he has evil designs on
you. Somehow, I’ve been foolish enough to be tickled by the life you
young cubs lead. Ha-ha-ha! Well, well, always room for a joke, a clean
joke. But let this be clear: peace be with you on my part and on the
rector’s part as well; he has begun to understand that a coat can’t be
made out of birch-bark. Well then, there’s no danger at all, boys, none
at all, although you do deserve a good thrashing, you confounded mules.
But go home now! At once! say I. Ay, ay, left turn there, left turn
and quick march home, Impivaara Company! Home, you rascals, and God be
with you. Gee-up, White-mane!
So saying, he jerked at the reins, and the Sheriff’s white-maned
gelding, famous all over the parish, broke into a trot. Rattling they
sped away; the hat of the Sheriff’s Man on the back seat shook, and the
dust rose in clouds behind them. And like seven images of salt, the
brothers stood by the roadside, watching this departure. Silent and
wondering what to think of it all, they stood and stared after the cart
until it was lost to view in a turn of the road.
TIMO. How the Sheriff’s Man has aged since we last saw him in
Kuokkala woods with our mother and all the village folk!
JUHANI. What dost thou, Aapo, think of this fine speech of the
Sheriff’s?
AAPO. I should think him an honest man and that he spoke from
an honest heart, but let us be on our guard, for there’s no trusting
gentle-folk.
JUHANI. We’ll keep ready to gallop off to the wolves’ home.
The Devil’s in him, he’s trying to entice us into a trap.
TUOMAS. He wants to fool us into going back home, ready for
him when he comes back from Viertola with a crowd of men, for everyone
knows it isn’t wise to pounce on Jukola’s troop without enough men.
He’ll come back and collar us nicely if we go home and wait for him.
JUHANI. Ha! that’s what I think too. He’s out hunting, out on
a mighty chase, and we are the game he is after. Very likely terrible
things have happened, things from which even the barracks couldn’t save
us. And now there’s nothing left for us but to become outlaws and make
off into the woods at once! Off the highway, lads!
AAPO. Ah! what are we to do?
JUHANI. Everything’s done already; here are seven bandits. But
let us try to be as kind, as merciful robbers as we can, and always ask
politely beforehand for something to still our hunger with; ay, and
then if kind words won’t help, we can try force, though even then we
can stop short of bloodshed and murder. Let’s go now.
SIMEONI. Juhani, Juhani, what art thou saying?
AAPO. Ah! where are we wretched brothers to find shelter?
JUHANI. Where bandits do! Let’s move on.
TUOMAS. Hold thy jaw, thou raving madman! I’d sooner march to
the eternal colds of Siberia than eat a robber’s bread. Thou maniac,
wert thou in earnest, or was it only a senseless joke? What am I to
think of thee?
JUHANI. Oh brother! this meeting has addled my brains, and I
hardly know what I say or do. The Sheriff was here and vanished again
in wind and cloud; but that seems long ago to me. It was long ago, long
ago! Yonder he vanished, where my thumb points, like Tinder-Matti’s
thumb. Vanished in smoke, and in the midst of the smoke the white mane
of a war-horse flickered. But that was long ago, long ago!
TUOMAS. There now!
AAPO. What now, what now?
TUOMAS. You see, brothers, that even Juhani isn’t always to be
shot from the branch on which he seems to be sitting.
LAURI. What art thou rolling thy eyes and twitching thy head
and breathing through thy nostrils for like that? Ay, I will say. Be
thankful that thy brains are sound.
TUOMAS. Ay, let him hide his foolishness as best he can. But
what the Hell are we to do? Say, Aapo.
AAPO. I don’t know.
EERO. Listen, brothers. We don’t know yet for certain whether
the Sheriff had a fox up his sleeve or not.
LAURI. I believe he had not; for I looked him carefully in the
eye and there was no treachery there. And think it over. Why should he
have come all this way without assistants, when there were villages
and farms enough on his path? Why should he go past Impivaara right
to Viertola Manor, where he has less help to expect than in the big
villages he has left behind him? Strange! Then from Viertola he would
come all this long way back with a crowd of men to our cabin. Nonsense!
This doesn’t fit together with the wise and cunning ideas our Sheriff
has always had.
AAPO. It doesn’t seem to, that I too can see, but still we
mustn’t trust him too much. Thou believest that thou hast thought out a
matter real cleverly, yet it often happens, it’s often the case, that
the truth is just the opposite to what the best and wisest brain had
made out. And we have cause to be afraid. Our crime is great in the
eyes of the law, very great; and remember how very, how exceedingly
friendly the Sheriff was towards us.
TUOMAS. It wasn’t the language of truth, but gall boiled under
its honey. But what are we to do now?
EERO. Let us do this: go home, but not stay a minute in the
cabin, only leave the door ajar, so that it would look as though the
family were quietly at home; meanwhile we can hide ourselves in the
caves and gullies of Impivaara; sprawl there for two or three days,
keeping a close watch on the cabin. And now if we see the Sheriff come
near the house during that time with his men, we’ll always be ready to
escape to the hills and forests. But if nothing happens in these three
days and nights, all danger will be far from us.
TUOMAS. That’s advice and good advice.
AAPO. We’ll follow it.
TUOMAS. Let’s turn back then; come, Juhani, and put away that
sulky look.
They set out once more towards Impivaara and soon reached their own
yard. Acting on Eero’s advice, they opened the latch of their door
and then climbed the fell, where they hid themselves carefully in
comfortable crannies between the rocks or under the dense spruce that
covered the fell-side terraces. Lounging there, they kept a searching
eye on the cabin, the edges of the stump-covered clearing and the
sombre line of forest. During the three days and nights they rested
there, they kept watch in turns, eating from the birch-bark knapsacks
and slaking their thirst at a clear spring, which welled up on the
summit of the fell and flowed down in waves along a rocky road.
Joyously the little brook gurgled while the long day held, gurgled all
the moon-lit night, ever sounding in the watchful ears of the brothers.
But when the sun of the third day hastened to its setting, the brothers
strode down from the fell and with rejoicing hearts took possession
of their cabin, for now it seemed to them that their fears had been
groundless. Even yet, however, they were not quite satisfied, but kept
casting cautious glances out of the window. And the next day a spy
was sent out; Aapo went out to bring confirmation of their safety.
He lingered in the villages and farms a day and a night, and when he
returned the message of peace could be read on his brow. And now all
seated themselves round the big pine table, while Aapo, at its end,
began to relate all that he had heard.
AAPO. Brothers! He is a peerless fellow, that Sheriff of ours;
he has done as he said, and our case is as he said it was. The Toukola
men, in spite of their spavined legs, the big bumps on their foreheads
or the holes in their bodies, say nothing of going to law or of revenge
by their own hands; and all this the Sheriff has done with his terrible
threats. And what do you think is the rector’s idea of us? Ay, the old
man has made peace with us, eternal peace; for he is now firm in a
belief, which the Sheriff has argued into him, that hardness towards us
would only bring about our everlasting doom. And another thing: when
old Härkämäki, a rare old fellow after all, happened to mention us one
day to the rector, saying in a growl: ‘Who knows but that those lads
turn out real students one day?’ the rector replied that his joy in
the Lord would be exceeding great if one day the Jukola brothers were
to come before him, reading passably well by sight and knowing the ten
commandments and the confession of faith by heart. These were indeed
melting words. All this and much beside I heard from the mouths of many
men, the most trustworthy being Kyösti Tammisto, who never smiles and
never tells a lie.
JUHANI. Sheriff, thou bonny man, I would charge into blazing
fire for thy sake! May the black bellowing bull take me! I can hardly
believe it.
AAPO. Everything is as I said. We must now admit that
gentlemen are not altogether such rogues as people think. Think of
Viertola too, who came round so quickly and agreed to our offer on
every point. While our rector, if we regard him without spite, straight
from an honest heart and mind, rises in our eyes to noble heights,
that I know. He is a fiery but true worker in the Lord’s vineyard, and
has already done a mighty lot of good in the parish. He has closed
many a wicked tavern; forced many a man and his former mistress to wed
properly; and many neighbours who were always after each other’s blood
he has enticed into sweetest friendship. And what has been his aim in
all his work on our behalf? To make respectable Christians of us. Now
he has taken his hand from us, but utters at the same time so beautiful
a hope that the memory of it nips at my heart.
TUOMAS. And now to reading, an a-b-c book in hand, and the
alphabet in our heads even if it has to be hammered there with a mallet.
AAPO. Now thou hast said something which, if we carry it out,
will bring us new happiness. Ah! what if we were to start this great
work together, without resting until it is done!
JUHANI. I understand. We are to pounce tooth and nail on the
alphabet, without flagging until we are under the cock’s tail. Right!
Soon we shall perhaps decide something, and once we decide, we’ll carry
it out too, though we sweated blood. I have a hard head, hard enough,
but there’s one and another thing in it, some real nimble works too.
Shouldn’t I with daily practice be able to keep step with a five-year
old chit of a girl? Why not? Hard work helps even with the worst of
luck.
AAPO. Oh Juhani! my heart is uplifted by thy words, so full of
manhood and sense.
JUHANI. Hard work conquers even the worst of luck. Ay, if we
once start on the job, we’ll stick to it with clenched teeth. But the
matter needs thinking over, wisely and from the roots upward.
AAPO. We’re going to try, for it is a mighty matter. Note: If
we cannot read, even a lawful wife is forbidden fruit for us.
TIMO. What! Is that so too? Well rot me! Then it’s worth
trying if this trick is perhaps going to help me to get a good wife,
if I should ever be so mad as to want one. But who knows what’ll come
into a lad’s head. Only God knows that.
JUHANI. Let us think the matter over wisely; we have such hard
heads.
A few days were suffered to go by, and then one evening the matter was
taken up anew, and they now decided to begin studying the alphabet in
earnest.
JUHANI. In two years from now may the whole a-b-c be in my
head; that’s said. But I’m sorry for Timo; his head’s harder than mine,
twice as hard.
TIMO. Never mind, even if it is twice as hard. Thou’lt learn
in two years, and that’ll be four for me. Ay, only patience is needed
for that.
JUHANI. Hear him; that joke wiped a good many days off the
reckoning, a whole year. But, lad! we’re in the fiend’s sleigh. There’s
going to be more than one sigh squeezed out of us, and the a-b-c book
will be pulp before it’s in our heads from back to back. God help us!
TIMO. I’m going to learn my a-b-c.
JUHANI. I’m going to do it too, even if it felt and tasted
like chewing little pebbles and raw potatoes. I’m going to do it
because our rector is so kind and merciful towards us that I’m quite
sorry for him. But where can we get a good and gentle teacher?
AAPO. I’ve thought that out too. I look to thee, Eero. Ay, ay,
thou hast a sharp head, that can’t be denied. But thank God for this
gift and go out for a few weeks into the world, with food on thy back
and thy a-b-c book in thy bosom. Go to the Sheriff’s Man: that fine
wolf-catcher will teach thee. He is a clever fellow, and I know he will
not deny thee his teaching, especially if we promise him a fine patch
of forest for sowing and a jack capercaillie or two for a roast. Then
when thou hast learned the chief points of ordinary reading, thou canst
return and teach us.
JUHANI. What? Is Eero to teach us? Hm! Eero! Well, see that it
doesn’t make thee proud, Eero; that I say.
EERO. Never! A teacher must always set a good example to his
pupils, remembering the day of stern reckoning when he will have to
say: ‘Here, Lord, am I and those Thou gavest me.’
JUHANI. Hark, hark, did it prick thee? But this is what is
going to happen: thou wilt teach me when I want and keep silent as a
roach when I want, and I learn from thee only when I want. That’s that.
We’ll keep thee in order all right, that thou knowest. But maybe this
plan will do.
TUOMAS. The best plan Aapo has ever invented.
JUHANI. A thousand crowns for this plan!
AAPO. Eero, what is thy own idea of the matter?
EERO. I’m willing to think it over.
AAPO. It’ll work, work beyond any doubt. But now I am going
to row forth with a bigger idea, an idea that stands for itself. Brave
boys and brothers! Let’s help to make Impivaara a fine new pioneer
farm, make a farm in the forests with the strength of seven men. Ay,
your eyes grow round and you stare at me in wonder. I’m not surprised.
But just think it over: our living grows harder to get day by day; only
seldom now we hear the bear whistle and rarely does a capercaillie
start up crashing before us. Let us note another matter too, note that
‘it is not good for man to be alone’. That is what we shall think one
day; but the savage in the forests has to keep far from the bridal
bed, the man who can hardly fill his own rumbling stomach, let alone
those of a wife and children. But if we clear these vast backwoods into
meadows, hoe this sloping sunlit clearing into fields, and around this
house, round its echoing yard, gradually build stables, a cowhouse, a
barn, a store-room and other buildings as they are needed, that will be
a different matter. Then we shall have a big farm, Impivaara Farm, a
farm in better condition than our birth-place, Jukola. And before that
day comes when old Jukola will be ours again, the meadows here will be
green, the rich fields wave with corn and each evening a herd of lowing
cattle draw near us from the forest.
JUHANI. Thou speakest finely. But think, brother, we have one
farm already, though rented now to a stranger. In a few years time we
shall have it back.
AAPO. But before those years have gone we shall be idlers
without our like, hardly bothering to lift our feet from the ground,
while our farm will be about as wasted as it used to be. I have heard
that the tanner is a shiftless fellow, a poor booby, and that no change
has taken place yet in Jukola, either in the fields or the meadows. And
even if that were not the case, it is always better to have two farms
than one: Jukola and Impivaara. Our reputation would also rise greatly
in the sight of men, and for wife there’d be many a bonny daughter of
Häme to chose from. To work, brothers! To work with all our strength;
for such a life would be worth the labour, and we have seen that
mankind is not such a rogue as we have thought; nay, I would say that
the world is towards us as we are towards the world, and that the one
who ‘always suffers wrongs’ had better look into his own breast. We
have often been scurvily treated; granted! but in reality only by those
Toukola rascals, and I think that even they have had some cause for
it. However that may be, peace and harmony are best; and we can always
have peace if we only want it. Listen, we shall work here for a time
like all honest people do, and when at last we go back to Toukola, our
former enemies will look upon us with a bit more respect than before,
and if we then give them friendly looks on our part, a bright day of
general forgiveness will soon dawn. I admit that it will have cost us
much, much work and teeth-clenching hardship, but without them there’s
no harvest to be had down here. And one thing more: set plainly before
the eyes of your souls what will be our final victory: we shall be men,
friends with everybody, owning two farms, our future a ‘Cape of Good
Hope’; and our graves on the misty coming shore of life will not seem a
home of terror to us, but a place of delightful rest, a shadowy porch
to the halls of the blest.
TUOMAS. Thou speakest prettily and rightly, and I’m with thee
for one. Brothers, let us listen to him, for this is a mighty matter;
it gives us a new birth, raises a new dawn over the edge of the forest.
I’m with thee!
TIMO. And I too.
SIMEONI. God has heard us and our lives grow lighter. I’m
agreed to Aapo’s blissful plan.
EERO. I agree too, for it is a manly step we shall be taking.
JUHANI. Should I not do the same, I, your wretched eldest
brother? I agree, and shall always call this day a day of joy. Weren’t
fetters or the Crown’s grey coat and the roll of drums almost upon
us? Whereas now we are far from things like that, here amidst our own
forests. So at midnight our sky was suddenly lighted, and this light,
let us hope, will at once drive away all clouds and ‘God’s candles
shine’, as the shepherds sweetly sing. Ah! God and the Sheriff have
done their best by us; we will now try to do our best by them.
The next day they sent brother Eero off to his studies, well equipped.
With a birch-bark knapsack on his back, a bag over his shoulder and
an a-b-c book in his pocket, he set off on foot to the Sheriff’s Man’s
home. The others equipped themselves with hoes and spades and began to
hoe a field of the clearing around their cabin. Day by day, the area
of ground broken up into clods increased; and an eternal grave was
dug for the whortleberry bushes and cudweeds. But when they had hoed
an enormous patch of the clearing, enough tillage to keep seven men
alive, they left the clearing for the forest below, and began clearing
a meadow amid the century-old spruce which dozed there, wrapped in
cloaks of moss. Then the axes echoed again and with a crash the
spruce fell on the moist ground. They peeled the trunks, gathered the
branches in heaps, ready to be hauled to the yard in the winter, and
carried the logs up to the old clearing to be used for their coming
barn and cowhouse. While carrying them the men stepped stolidly one
after the other, each log resting on six stout shoulders. And when
they reached a certain mound, at a word of command from Juhani they
would simultaneously cast down their load, and the log would fall
thunderously to the ground, and the earth would boom and the forest
answer. So from day to day their meadow grew in extent, stretching ever
farther southward from the forest’s rim, while the materials for their
new buildings grew in proportion.
Eero too worked hard to learn the art of reading and his skill
increased with great rapidity. Every Saturday evening he would return
home with empty bag; and on the following Monday he would set forth
again, a bulging knapsack on his back and a bursting bag over his
shoulder, set off for school with his a-b-c book in his bosom. Thus the
autumn went by, winter approached, and the brothers left both fields
and meadows to rest until the following spring and hastened to gather
food for their cattle and for themselves. In the dark autumn woods they
trudged in all directions with their dogs, reaping a bloody harvest;
and down on the edge of the bog a high hay-rick grew again for Valko’s
use.
Winter came; on Christmas Eve Eero returned home, sufficiently learned
in the opinion of the Sheriff’s Man to be capable of teaching his
brothers. Remarkably easily he had learned. He read fluently by sight
and knew the a-b-c book by heart from back to back, and the Lesser
Catechism as well. And then when Christmas was over, lessons began.
Eero sat as teacher and his brothers as pupils, all shouting as with
one mouth the names of the letters as the youngest brother called them
out. They would all shout together, and the spacious cabin would echo.
Hard and agonizing was this work to them, full of agony especially
in the beginning; sorely they all sighed and sweated. Hardest of all
worked Juhani; for very zeal his jaw would shake, and dozing Timo who
sat beside him received many an angry poke of his fist whenever his
poor head drooped. An added trial was that Eero did not always take his
high calling with due gravity, but frequently allowed stinging little
remarks to pass his lips. For this he had received many warnings from
the brothers, but the game was dear to him.
Once on a winter day, when a biting frost prevailed outside and an
almost rayless sun shone over the southern rim of the world, the
brothers sat hard at work in their cabin, a-b-c books in their hands.
The devoted, but monotonous sound of their reading might have been
heard afar; it was the second time they were going through the alphabet.
EERO. A.
THE OTHERS. A.
EERO. B.
THE OTHERS. B.
EERO. Ay, A is the first letter of the alphabet and Z the
last. ‘A and Z, the beginning and the end, the first and the last’, as
it says somewhere in the Bible. But have you ever happened to see the
last as the first, Z as A? It certainly looks a bit funny to see that
little thing, the one that always used to be at the tail end, suddenly
cock of the dunghill and all the others looking up to him with honour
and respect, as at something fatherly, even though they do it with
somewhat bulging eyes. But why do I turn to matters with which we have
nothing to do just now. Ay, go on reading.
JUHANI. Do I catch thy meaning? I’m afraid I do. But teach us
nicely now, or the Devil’ll get you.
EERO. Go on nicely with your lesson now. C.
THE OTHERS. C.
EERO. D.
THE OTHERS. D, E, F, G.
JUHANI. Wait a bit; I, poor boy, have lost my place. Let’s
start again at the beginning.
EERO. A.
THE OTHERS. A.
EERO. A, B, C, ‘the cow ran up the tree’. What does this
sentence tell us, Juhani? Canst thou explain it?
JUHANI. I will try to discover its meaning. Come out with me a
little, you others; there is something important we must talk over.
So saying, he went out into the yard, and the others followed him;
and with beating heart Eero began guessing what this withdrawal might
portend. But in the yard the brothers discussed the best way of keeping
down Eero’s cruel bent for joking, which caused him to jest with the
a-b-c book in his hand and thus mock not only them, but also God and
His word. And they concluded that he had earned a good whipping. They
entered the cabin again, and the fresh birch-rod in Juhani’s hand
struck the soul of Eero with dread. Tuomas and Simeoni seized the lad
firmly; and then Juhani’s rod did its best. Eero yelled, kicked and
raved, and when at last he was free, looked around him with terrible,
murderous glance.
JUHANI. Now then, take the book in thy hand again and teach us
properly, thou rascal, and remember this hiding whenever thy blackguard
tongue feels like talking mockingly. Ah indeed! Did it hurt? Ay, ay,
thou hast got what I prophesied thee years ago. For ‘evil is the
mocker’s reward in the end’, that thou now knowest. Take the book, say
I, and teach us in a sensible and proper way, thou rascal.
TUOMAS. Don’t grind thy teeth, but sit nicely down at the end
of the table there and do as we bid thee. And do it without grumbling,
or the stick’ll dance in my hand, and that’d mean a storm many times
hotter than a minute ago.
They began reading again; but it was in a very surly and biting tone,
accompanied by baleful glances, that Eero read out the letters to
his brothers. And thus a stormy atmosphere reigned for long over the
school-table at Impivaara, until time, after a few days had passed,
again softened down Eero’s wrathful mind and countenance. Thus the
brothers laboured to attain skill in reading, and their work prospered,
although extremely slowly in the beginning, especially for Timo and
Juhani.