The village

My mother talked me into coming with her to the cemetary and, not having any other plans, I complied. For the villagers, the cemetary is a place for display of social status, for remembering those who have passed away, for mourning and reflection - but the cemetary is also a social meeting point fully comparable to the shop or the bank office. All in all, it occupies an important place in day-to-day chatter in a way that might strike the outsider as puzzling, but when once familiar with its importance, one does not think about it much (when somebody has been at some place, afterwards, she is usually inquired about the people she met there). Today we met nobody. There was a sudden gush of rain, and through the rain sunlight made the cemetary bath in an unreal dark light, the shadows rawly demarcated. While my mother attended to practical matters, I shuffled around, looking at the names of the graves, thinking about people that have been dead for many years.

When I was a kid, we had to raise money for school trips by selling lots. We were doing this at least once a year, harassing people into buying our lots. Our victims were fully aware of the very modest value of the prizes (coffee, garish towels, pens...). We were usually prowling the village for prey during day-time, when mostly elderly people were at home. I thought about that, today, when I saw the grave of "Nordens Birger" and "Nordens Ada".

Older villagers talk about their neighbors using the name of the place where the family resides, plus the forename. There was one exception, "Gösta Carlsson" was always called - "Gösta Carlsson". I wonder whether something positive was ever said about Gösta Carlsson.

When I knew them, the "Nordens" were both half-deaf, but they always treated us with candy. I remember sitting in their somehow deserted house, chewing on a mint candy, listening to the clock ticking, which was the only sound in the room. The room had the smell of old age, of the non-existence of time flowing. Ada's voice was shrill, and Birger always (or so I remember) had a curious smile on his face - as if slightly unsure of or amused by what was going on around him. I never knew whether Birger & Ada were siblings, or if they were married. That goes for some other people of the same generation. I don't know if that means anything.

Then there were scary places. Ingmar had a dog (I've forgotten the dog's name, but even the name itself conveyed danger) and as we were slowly approaching the house on a seemingly endless gravel road, we could hear the bark of the dog. Ingmar is a sturdy man, but one should not be deceived by appearances; he was kind to us kids and there are few villagers that have anything bad to say about him, which is a rare thing, indeed (my mother asked me whether I could recall his mother, but I couldn't).

Lennart was a blind man who was friends with everyone. He loved to talk. He could talk to anybody, about anything. I remember him talking about the bombing of Helsinki during the war, how everyone was leading a normal life despite the circumstances. During those years, he was a young man. He enjoyed the small adventure of riding buses without paying for the ticket. He used to have dinner at our house every week. It was obvious to everybody that he loved life. The villagers, however, are addicted to slander, so some of them considered him overly social, he "rushes on from house to house" ("springer från gård till gård"). And a few days ago, somebody said of him: "Well, you know, he was one of the N---s, for sure - he piled up a lot of junk in his house." (Some of the villagers are very skillful at turning every seemingly nice thing into a gruesome vice. The art of description.)

There are also people who lived in the village before my time that I now merely from stories and sayings. "Nu ska vi dela, sa Teddy" ("Let's divide this between us, as Teddy would say"). Teddy, and a bunch of other men, are remembered mostly for their drinking and for their witticisms. Based on pictures from the fifties and the sixties, they seem to have had a blast.

I don't know whether it is something that is characteristic of this village only, but people talk a lot about those who are no longer with us. In conversations, it is not uncommon that people recall things that happened fifty or eighty years ago. "You know these folks from X - they have always been foolhardy. You remember that time when...." "He has that from his mother, you know how she...." There's usually no conversation without an endless excursion into the annals of genealogy. Also horses, cats and dogs that lived over fifty ears ago have a vivid place in people's memories. My father sometimes talk about the cat they had when he was a young man - Pip.