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regarded himself as a believer. He maintained the rituals, and brought up his children in accordance with the Scriptures. But he replaced the Good Lord with himself. And that was the worst form of Laestadianism, the nastiest, the most ruthless. Laestadianism without God.
    * * *
    This was the frosty landscape in which Niila grew up. Like many children in a hostile environment, he learned how to survive by not being noticed. That was one of the things I observed the very first time wemet in the playground: his ability to move without making a sound. The chameleon-like way in which he seemed to take on the background color, making him practically invisible. He was typical of the self-effacing inhabitants of Tornedalen. You hunch yourself up in order to keep warm. Your flesh hardens, you get stiff shoulder muscles that start to ache when you reach middle age. You take shorter steps when you walk, you breathe less deeply and your skin turns slightly gray through lack of oxygen. The meek of Tornedalen never run away when attacked, because there’s no point. They just huddle up and hope it will pass. In public assemblies they always sit at the back, something you can often observe at cultural events in Tornedalen: between the spotlights on stage and the audience in the stalls are ten or more rows of empty seats, while the back rows are crammed full.
    Niila had lots of little wounds on his forearms that never healed. I eventually realized that he used to scratch himself. It was unconscious, his filthy fingernails just made their own way there and dug themselves in. As soon as a scab formed, he would pick at it, prize it up, and break it loose, then flick it away with a snapping noise. Sometimes they would land on me, sometimes he just ate them with a faraway look on his face. I’m not sure which I found more disgusting. When we were at my place I tried to tell him off about it, but he just gaped at me with a look of uncomprehending surprise. And before long he was at it again.
    Nevertheless, the oddest thing of all about Niila was that he never spoke. He was five years old after all. Sometimes he opened his mouth and seemed to be about to come out with something, you could hear the lump of phlegm inside his throat starting to move. There would be a sort of throat-clearing, a gob that seemed to be breaking loose. But then he would change his mind and look scared. He could understand what I said, that was obvious: there was nothing wrong with his head. But something had got stuck.
    No doubt it was significant that his mother was from Finland. She had never been a talkative woman and came from a country that hadbeen torn to shreds by civil war, the Winter War, and the Continuation War, while her well-fed neighbor to the west had been busy selling iron ore to the Germans and growing rich. She felt inferior. She wanted to give her children what she had never had. They would be real Swedes, and hence she wanted to teach them Swedish rather than her native Finnish. But as she knew practically no Swedish, she kept quiet.
    When Niila came around to our place we often sat 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 potpourri of pop music,
Woman’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 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 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