Until Thy Wrath Be Past (28 page)

He thinks he’s making wretchedly slow progress, but he wouldn’t have been able to progress at all without skis. And if skis like these were good enough for his father and his friends, why shouldn’t they be good enough for him? Don’t forget that in the old days the Lapps used to roam far and wide through the forests with much worse equipment and only one pole.

Occasionally he looks up. Sees drops of water trembling hesitantly on the branches.

Sweat runs down his forehead and makes his eyes smart.

At last he comes to the shelter he and Tore built twenty years ago just south of Ripukkavaara.

Hjalmar sits down in the shelter and takes the thermos of coffee and box of sandwiches from his rucksack. The sun warms his face.

Taking the sandwiches out of the plastic box, he is overcome by exhaustion. He puts them down beside him.

The wind sighs soothingly in the crowns of the trees. Like Anni’s wooden spoon in a pot. The branches sway from side to side, offering no resistance. Allow themselves to be rocked to sleep. Not long ago Hjalmar thought the birdsong was hurting his ears. It sounded like knives being sharpened by rubbing against each other. But now it sounds quite different. A chirping and chirruping. A woodpecker is hammering at a tree trunk in the distance.

Hjalmar lies down on his side. Water drips from the roof of the shelter.

A sentence comes into his mind: “Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.” Where does it come from? Is it something he’s read in the Bible in his cottage at Saarisuanto?

Why should one have to worry about things that happened in the past? When his father held his head under the icy water. That was fifty years ago. He never thinks about it; why would he start now?

His eyes close. The snow sighs in the forest, made weary by the coming of spring. The sun is roasting hot. Hjalmar dozes off in the warmth of the shelter.

He is woken up by a presence. Opens his eyes and at first sees only a shadow blocking out the sun. Shaggy and black.

Like a shot he is wide awake. A bear.

It stands up on its hind legs in front of him. Hjalmar can make out more than the mere outline. Its snout, its fur. Its paws and claws. For three long seconds it stands still, staring him in the eye.

It’s curtains, Hjalmar thinks.

Three more seconds. During those three seconds, everything in Hjalmar comes to a standstill.

Well, this is it, he thinks about his own death.

God is looking at Hjalmar through the eye of the bear.

Then the bear turns round, flops down on all fours and ambles away.

Hjalmar’s heart starts pounding. It is the beating heart of life. It is the fingertips of the shaman on the skin of a drum. It is the rain on the tin roof of his cottage at Saarisuanto, an autumn evening when he’s lying in bed and the fire is crackling in the hearth.

His blood flows through his veins. It is the spring water starting to flow beneath the ice, forming rivulets under the snow, finding its way up into the trees, cascading over cliffs.

His breath floats in and out of his lungs. It is the wind that lifts up the rollicking raven, that whips the snow into whirling, sharp-edged spirals on the mountainside, that caresses the lake tenderly in the evening, and then lies down to rest and enables everything to become still and mirror-like.

My God, says Hjalmar in the absence of anybody else, anything else to turn to while he wallows in the feeling of deliverance that has overwhelmed him. Stay, stay with me.

But he knows this is a sensation that will not last. He sits still until it dies away.

Now he notices that his sandwiches are no longer there. They were what lured the bear to the shelter.

He skis home, feeling exhilarated.

Anything at all can happen now, he thinks. I’m free. The bear could have killed me. It could have been curtains.

He will search through the Bible in his cottage and see if he can find that line. “My heart within me is desolate.”

Anni looks completely transparent now. She’s been asleep on the kitchen sofa. I’m sitting next to her, looking at her chest. The muscles inside are so tired, there’s no strength left in them. Her breathing is shallow and fast. The spring sunshine pours in through the window and warms her legs. Then suddenly she opens her eyes.

“Shall we put the coffee on?” she says.

I realize that she’s talking to me, even though she can’t see me. Although she is far from certain that I’m there.

She sits up slowly: her left hand finds support behind her back while she holds onto the white-painted wooden back of the sofa with her right one. Then she needs to use both hands to move her legs closer to the edge of the sofa until they overlap it and she can lower them to the floor. Feet into her slippers, hand on the table to get some leverage. A little gasp reflecting effort and pain, and a there-we-go slides over her lips as she stands up.

She pours water into the pan, opens the coffee tin and transfers some spoonfuls into the pan.

“I thought we could fill up the thermos and drink our coffee on the steps outside. Now that the sun’s so warm.”

Then it takes half a year for her to get out the thermos flask, fill it with coffee, put on her jacket and shuffle out of the front door. Not to mention the difficulty she has in sitting down on the steps. Anni laughs.

“I have my mobile in my pocket. So I can ring for help if I can’t stand up again. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to help me.”

She pours out the coffee. It’s hot. She drinks slowly, enjoying the warmth of the sun on her nose and cheeks. For the first time since I died she is happy to think that she might live long enough to experience another summer. Tells herself she must take care not to fall, so that she doesn’t end up in hospital.

Three ravens land in the parking area in front of the house. At first they saunter around as if they owned the place. The sun makes their black feathers sparkle and gleam. They point their curved beaks in all directions, but don’t have much to say for themselves. I have the impression they are putting on an act. Pretending to be serious fellows. Dragging their wedge-shaped tails behind them like peacocks. If I were really sitting here with Anni, I would joke about it. We would try to work out where these important gentlemen came from. Anni would say straight away that they were three Laestadian preachers who’d come to convert us. I’d guess that they were the boss of Social Services, a headmaster and a district judge. “I’m done for now,” I’d say.

Anni pours herself a refill. She wraps her hands around the mug.

I would also like to wrap my hands around a mug of steaming-hot coffee. I want to be sitting here on the steps with Anni for real. I want Simon to drive up to the door. Oh, his smile when he sees me! As if someone had given him a marvellous present. I’m so full of desire that it’s painful. My hands are unable to touch anything.

When a car does in fact drive up, I almost believe it is him. But it’s Hjalmar. The ravens fly up into the trees.

Hjalmar switches off the engine and clambers awkwardly out of the car.

Now he’s standing in front of Anni, but can’t work out for the life of him how he’s going to come out with what he wants to say. At first it doesn’t matter. Anni does the talking.

“I’m sitting here speaking to the dead,” she says. “I must be going daft. But what else can I do? Soon there won’t be any living people left whom I know.”

She falls silent. Recalls an old aunt who always used to sit around complaining about how lonely she was. Remembers thinking what a pain it was to have to visit her. Now I sound exactly the same, she thinks. It’s enough to drive me up the wall.

“Are you going to the cottage?” she says, mainly to change the subject.

He nods.

“Anni,” he manages to say.

Only then does she become aware of the strange expression on his face.

“What’s the matter?” she says. “Is it Isak?”

Hjalmar shakes his head.

“But what’s the matter with my little boy?
Poika, mikä sinulla on
?”

He can’t help smiling at the way she still calls him her little boy.

She grasps the iron rail with her bird-like claws and manages to stand up.

Then he says it.

“Forgive me.”

That wasn’t much of a voice. You can tell how unaccustomed he is to using it. And how unaccustomed he is to that phrase. His voice is hoarse as it stumbles out of his mouth. As if it were written on a piece of paper that he’s had in his mouth for so long that it’s become all scrunched up.

The last time he said it must have been very long ago, when he’d been thrashed by Isak. And in those days it meant “Have mercy”.

“For what?” Anni says.

But she knows what for.

She looks at him and she knows.

He realizes that she knows.

“No!” she shouts so loudly that the ravens in the tree beat their wings together.

But they don’t fly away.

She clenches her bird’s claws and shakes them at Hjalmar. No, she will not forgive him.

“Why?” she shouts.

Her body might be skinny, but the air around her on the front steps is vibrant with powerful forces. She is a priestess with damnation in her clenched fist.

Hjalmar reaches out with one hand and leans awkwardly against his car. He holds the other hand against his heart.

“They were going to go diving, looking for an old aeroplane,” he says. “But Father heard about it. That was when he had his heart attack. You shouldn’t poke around in the past.”

He hears what that sounds like. As if he were defending himself. That would be wrong. But he doesn’t know what else to say.

“You?” Anni shouts. “On your own?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s not true,” Anni says.

Her voice has lost all of its strength. It’s as if she has an animal in her throat. And once the animal has bellowed out its lamentation, it turns on Hjalmar. Her eyes are blazing. The words tumble out in a rush of gurgling fury.

“Get away from here! You swine! Don’t ever, ever come here again. Did you hear me?”

Hjalmar gets into the car. He holds both hands in front of him like a bowl, and places his face in the bowl. He will go. But first he must pull himself together.

Then he drives away from Anni’s house, heading north. As soon as the lump in his throat has subsided, he will ring the police station. And ask to speak to that prosecutor, Rebecka Martinsson.

Isak Krekula is lying on his back in the little room off the kitchen. His feet are ice cold. He is freezing. The wall clock is ticking ponderously in the kitchen. Like a death machine. It first hung on the wall in his parents’ house. When they died it ended up with him and Kerttu. When he passes on, Laura will take it to her and Tore’s house: they will listen to it ticking and wait for their turn.

He shouts for Kerttu. Where the devil is the woman?

“Hey there! Get yourself in here, woman!
Tule tänne
!”

She turns up eventually. He moans and groans as she pulls the covers over his feet.

He has been shouting for her for ages. How come she has not heard him? Stupid cloth-eared bitch!

“I’ll put the coffee on,” Kerttu says, and goes back to the kitchen.

He continues fanning the flames of his anger. That woman has to come the moment he shouts for her. Can she not understand that? He is lying here helpless.

“Can you hear me?” he shouts. “Are you listening? Bloody whore.”

He adds the last comment in a somewhat quieter voice. He has always made such remarks without a second thought. He is the one who has paid for the food served up at mealtimes, and he has always been the boss in his own house. But what can you do when you are confined to bed like this? Dependent on others?

He closes his eyes, but he cannot sleep. He is freezing. He shouts to his wife, telling her to bring him another blanket. But nobody comes.

Inside his head it is August 1943. A hot day in late summer. He and Kerttu are in Luleå. They are standing outside the German military depot next to the cathedral in the town centre, talking to William Schörner, the S.S. man in charge of security. A fleet of lorries is being loaded with sacks, all marked with an eagle, as well as some exceptionally heavy wooden crates that need to be handled with care.

Schörner is always smartly dressed, clean-shaven, dignified. He does not even seem to sweat in the hot sun. The depot commander,
Oberleutnant
Walther Zindel, who is stationed in Luleå, sticks two fingers inside his collar and gives every appearance of being on the warm side. The only times Isak Krekula has seen Zindel raise an arm in a Hitler salute have been when Schörner has been in the vicinity.

It is plain that
Sicherheitschef
Schörner and depot manager Zindel are under pressure.

The tide has turned against the Germans. Everything is changed now. Sweden is accepting more and more Jewish refugees. Public opposition to the German trains passing through Sweden has increased during the spring and summer. The writer Vilhelm Moberg has published articles about these trains, claiming that they contain not only unarmed soldiers going on and coming back from leave but also soldiers armed with bayonets and pistols. At the end of July the Swedish government cancelled the transit agreement with Germany, and Swedish Railways will soon stop transporting German soldiers. People have started to hate Hitler. Four Swedes have been sentenced to death in Berlin for espionage. The Swedish submarine
Ulven
was sunk in April, and news is emerging of another Swedish submarine,
Draken
, coming under fire from the German transport vessel
Altkirch
. In July the Germans sank two Swedish fishing boats off the north-west coast of Jutland, and twelve Swedish fishermen died. People are furious when Berlin responds to the Swedish protests by claiming that the fishermen had been sabotaging German light buoys.

Both depot manager Zindel and
Sicherheitschef
Schörner have noticed that their reception in Luleå has become cooler. The atmosphere in the post office, in restaurants and everywhere else is different now. People avoid looking them in the eye. They receive fewer dinner invitations from local middle-class families. Zindel’s Swedish wife spends most of her time at home, alone.