The Blood Spilt Read online

  “So, Pikku-piika,” says Grandmother as her hands squeeze the udders rhythmically. “Where have you been all day?”

  “In the forest,” answers little Rebecka.

  She pushes a few blueberries into her grandmother’s mouth. It’s only now she realizes how hungry she is.

  Torsten knocked on the car window.

  I want to stay here, thought Rebecka, and was surprised by how strongly she felt.

  The tussocks in the forest looked like cushions. Covered with shiny dark green lingon with its thick leaves, and the fresh green of the blueberry leaves just starting to turn red.

  Come and lie down, whispered the forest. Lay down your head and watch the wind swaying the tops of the trees to and fro.

  There was another knock on the car window. She nodded a greeting to the big lad. He stayed out on the steps when she went in.

  The two garages that made up the old workshop had been converted into an eating area and a bar. There were six pine tables, stained with a dark color and varnished, arranged along the walls, each with room for seven people if somebody sat at the corner. The plastic flooring of coral red imitation marble was matched by the pink fabric wall covering; a painted design ran right around the room and even continued straight across the swing doors leading into the kitchen. Someone had wound plastic greenery around the water pipes, also painted pink, in an attempt to cheer the place up. Behind the dark-stained bar on the left of the room stood a man in a blue apron, drying glasses and putting them on a shelf where they jostled for space with the drinks on offer. He said hello to Rebecka as she came in. He had a dark brown, neatly clipped beard and an earring in his right ear. The sleeves of his black T-shirt were pushed up his muscular arms. Three men were sitting at one of the tables with a basket of bread in front of them, waiting for their meal. The cutlery wrapped in wine-red paper serviettes. Their eyes firmly fixed on the football on TV. Fists in the bread basket. Work caps in a pile on one of the empty chairs. They were dressed in soft, faded flannel shirts worn over T-shirts with adverts printed on them, the necks well worn. One of them was wearing blue overalls with braces and some kind of company logo. The other two had unfastened their overalls so that the upper half trailed on the floor behind them.

  A middle-aged woman on her own was dunking her bread in a bowl of soup. She gave Rebecka a quick smile then stuffed the piece of bread into her mouth quickly, before it fell apart. A black Labrador with the white stripes of age on his muzzle was sleeping at her feet. Over the chair beside her was an indescribably scruffy Barbie-pink padded coat. Her hair was cut very short in a style which could most charitably be described as practical.

  “Anything I can help you with?” asked the earring behind the counter.

  Rebecka turned toward him and had just about managed to say yes when the swing door from the kitchen flew open and a woman in her twenties hurtled out with three plates. Her long hair was dyed in stripes—blond, an unnatural pink and black. She had an eyebrow piercing and two sparkling stones in her nose.

  What a pretty girl, thought Rebecka.

  “Yes?” said the girl to Rebecka, a challenge in her voice.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, but put the plates down in front of the three men. Rebecka had been about to ask if they served food, but she could see that they did.

  “It says ‘rooms’ on the sign,” she heard herself asking instead, “how much are they?”

  The earring looked at her in confusion.

  “Mimmi,” he said, “she’s asking about rooms.”

  The woman with the striped hair turned to Rebecka, wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a strand of sweat-soaked hair off her face.

  “We’ve got cottages,” she said. “Sort of chalets. Two hundred and seventy kronor a night.”

  What am I doing? thought Rebecka.

  And the next minute she thought:

  I want to stay here. Just me.

  “Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll be in shortly having a meal with a man. If he asks about rooms, tell him you’ve only got space for me.”

  Mimmi frowned.

  “Why should I do that?” she asked. “It’s bloody awful business for us.”

  “Not at all. If you say you’ve got room for him as well, I’ll change my mind and we’ll both go and stay at the Winter Palace in town. So one overnight guest or none.”

  “Having trouble fighting him off, are you?” grinned the earring.

  Rebecka shrugged. They could think what they liked. And what could she say?

  Mimmi shrugged back.

  “Okay then, ” she said. “But you’re both eating, are you? Or shall we say there’s only enough food for you?”

  * * *

  Torsten was reading the menu. Rebecka was sitting opposite, looking at him. His rounded cheeks, pink with pleasure. His reading glasses balanced as far down his nose as possible without actually stopping him from breathing. Hair tousled, standing on end. Mimmi was leaning over his shoulder and pointing as she read it out. Like a teacher and pupil.

  He loves this, thought Rebecka.

  The men with their powerful arms, their sheath knives hanging from their belts. Who had mumbled a reply when Torsten swept in wearing his gray suit and greeted them cheerfully. Pretty Mimmi with her big boobs and her loud voice. About as far as you can get from the accommodating girls at the Sturecompagniet nightclub. Little anecdotes were already taking shape in his head.

  “You can either have the dish of the day,” said Mimmi, pointing to a blackboard on the wall where it said “Marinated elk steak with mushroom and vegetable risotto. Or you can have something out of the freezer. You can have anything that’s listed there with potatoes or rice or pasta, whichever you want.”

  She pointed to the menu where a number of dishes were listed under the heading “From the freezer”: lasagne, meatballs, blood pudding, Piteå potato cakes filled with mince, smoked reindeer fillet in a cream sauce and stew.

  “Maybe I should try the blood pudding,” he said excitedly to Rebecka.

  The door opened and the tall lad who’d arrived on the moped came in. He stopped just inside the door. His massive body was encased in a beautifully ironed striped cotton shirt buttoned right up to the neck. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at the other customers. He kept his head twisted to one side so that his big chin was pointing out through the long narrow window. As if it were sign-posting an escape route.

  “Nalle!” exclaimed Mimmi, abandoning Torsten to his deliberations. “Don’t you look smart!”

  The big lad gave her a shy smile and a quick glance.

  “Come over here and let me have a proper look at you!” called the woman with the dog, pushing her soup bowl to one side.

  Rebecka suddenly noticed how alike Mimmi and the woman with the dog were. They must be mother and daughter.

  The dog at the woman’s feet raised its head and gave two tired wags with its tail. Then it put its head down and went back to sleep.

  The boy went over to the woman with the dog. She clapped her hands.

  “Don’t you look wonderful!” she said. “Happy birthday! What a smart shirt!”

  Nalle smiled at her flattery and raised his chin toward the ceiling in an almost comical pose that made Rebecka think of Rudolph Valentino.

  “New,” he said.

  “Well yes, we can see it’s new,” said Mimmi.

  “Going dancing, Nalle?” called one of the men. “Mimmi, can you do us five takeaways from the freezer? Whatever you like.”

  Nalle pointed at his trousers.

  “Too,” he said.

  He lifted up his arms and held them straight out from his body so that everybody could see his trousers properly. They were a pair of gray chinos held up with a military belt.

  “Are they new as well? Very smart!” the two admiring women assured him.

  “Here,” said Mimmi, pulling out the chair opposite the woman with the dog. “Your dad hasn’t arrived yet, but you can sit here with Lisa and wait
.”

  “Cake,” said Nalle, and sat down.

  “Of course you can have some cake. Did you think I’d forgotten? But after your meal.”

  Mimmi’s hand shot out and gave his hair a quick caress. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Rebecka leaned across the table to Torsten.

  “I was thinking of staying the night here,” said Rebecka. “You know I grew up by this river, just a few miles upstream, and it’s made me feel a bit nostalgic. But I’ll drive you into town and pick you up in the morning.”

  “No problem,” said Torsten, the roses of adventure on his cheeks in full bloom. “I can stay here as well.”

  “The beds won’t exactly be the height of luxury, I shouldn’t think,” said Rebecka.

  Mimmi came out with five aluminum packages under her arm.

  “We were thinking of staying here tonight,” Torsten said to her. “Do you have any rooms free?”

  “Sorry,” replied Mimmi. “One cottage left. Ninety centimeter bed.”

  “That’s okay,” Rebecka said to Torsten. “I’ll give you a lift.”

  He smiled at her. Beneath the smile and the well-paid successful partner was a fat little boy she didn’t want to play with, trying to look as if he didn’t mind. It gave her a pang.

  * * *

  When Rebecka got back from town it was almost completely dark. The forest was silhouetted against the blue black sky. She parked the car in front of the bar and locked it. There were several other cars parked there. The voices of burly men could be heard from inside, the sound of forks being pushed forcefully through meat and clattering on the plate underneath, the television providing a constant background noise, familiar advertising jingles. Nalle’s moped was still standing there. She hoped he’d had a good birthday.

  The cottage she was sleeping in was on the opposite side of the road on the edge of the forest. A small lamp above the door lit up the number five.

  I’m at peace, she thought.

  She went up to the cottage door, but suddenly turned and walked a few meters into the forest. The fir trees stood in silence, gazing up toward the stars which were just beginning to appear. Their long blue green velvet coats moved tentatively over the moss.

  Rebecka lay down on the ground. The pine trees put their heads together and whispered reassuringly. The last mosquitoes and black-flies of the summer sang a deafening chorus, seeking out whatever parts of her they could reach. She could cope with that.

  She didn’t notice Mimmi, bringing out some rubbish.

  Mimmi went into the kitchen.

  “Okay,” she said, “it’s definitely wacko-warning time.”

  She told him that their overnight guest had gone to bed, not in her bed in the cottage, but on the ground outside.

  “It does make you wonder,” said Micke.

  Mimmi rolled her eyes.

  “Any minute now she’ll decide she’s a shaman or a witch, move out into the forest, start brewing up herbs over an open fire and dancing around an ancient Sami monolith.”

  YELLOW LEGS

  It is Easter time. The she-wolf is three years old when a human being sees her for the first time. It’s in northern Karelia by the river Vodla. She herself has seen people many times. She recognizes their suffocating smell. And she understands what these men are doing. They’re fishing. When she was a gangly one-year-old she often crept down to the river at dusk and devoured whatever the two-legged creatures had left behind, fish guts, dace and ide.

  Volodja is laying ice nets with his brother. His brother has made four holes in the ice and they are going to lay three nets. Volodja is kneeling by the second hole ready to catch the cane his brother sends beneath the ice. His hands are wet, aching with the cold. And he doesn’t trust the ice. All the time he makes sure his skis are close by. If the ice gives way he can lie on his stomach on the skis and pull himself ashore. Alexander wants to lay nets here because it’s such a good spot. This is where the fish are. The water is fast flowing and Alexander has struck with his ice pick exactly where the bottom plunges down into the deep river channel.

  But it’s a dangerous place. If the water rises, the river eats up the ice from below. Volodja knows. The ice can be the thickness of three hand breadths one day and two fingers the next.

  He has no choice. He’s visiting his brother’s family over Easter. Alexander, his wife and two daughters are crammed together on the ground floor. Alexander and Volodja’s mother lives on the upper floor. Alexander is stuck with the responsibility for the women. Volodja himself travels all the time working for Transneft, the oil company. Last winter he was in Siberia. In the autumn in the gulf of Viborg. In recent months he’s been stuck out in the forest on the Karelian isthmus. When his brother suggested they should go out and lay nets, he couldn’t say no. If he’d refused Alexander would have gone out alone. And tomorrow evening Volodja would have been sitting at the dinner table eating fish he hadn’t bothered to help catch.

  Such is Alexander’s rage, it makes him force himself and his younger brother out onto the perilous ice. Now they’re here, the weight pressing down on Alexander’s heart seems to have eased slightly. He is almost smiling as he kneels there with his hands in the water, blue with cold. Maybe that buttoned-up fury would lessen if he had a son, thinks Volodja.

  And at that very moment, with a fleeting prayer to the Virgin that the child in the belly of his brother’s wife shall be a son, he catches sight of the wolf. She is standing on the edge of the forest on the opposite side, watching them. Not far away at all. Slant-eyed and long-legged. Her coat is curly, thick for the winter. Long coarse silver strands sticking up among the curls. It feels as if their eyes meet. His brother sees nothing. He has his back to her. Her legs are really extremely long. And yellow. She looks like a queen. And Volodja is on his knees on the ice before her like the village boy he is, with wet gloves and his fur cap with the earflaps sitting askew on top of his sweat drenched hair.

  Zjoltye nogi, he says. Yellow legs.

  But only inside his head. His lips don’t move.

  He says nothing to his brother. Alexander might grab the rifle resting against his rucksack and fire off a shot.

  So he is forced to release her from his gaze and take the net line off the pole. And when he looks up again she is gone.

  By the time Yellow Legs has gone three hundred meters into the forest she has already forgotten the two men on the ice. She will never think of them again. After two kilometers she stops and howls. The other members of the pack answer her, they are just a few miles away and she sets off at a steady trot. That’s the way she is. Frequently goes off on her own.

  Volodja remembers her for the rest of his life. Every time he returns to the place where he saw her, he peers at the edge of the forest. Three years later he meets the woman who becomes his wife.

  The first time she rests in his arms he tells her about the wolf with the long yellow legs.

  WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 6

  The meeting about involvement in a legal and economic umbrella organization was held in the home of Bertil Stensson, the parish priest. Present were Torsten Karlsson, partner in the legal firm of Meijer & Ditzinger, Stockholm; Rebecka Martinsson, a lawyer with the same firm; the parish priests from Jukkasjärvi, Vittangi and Karesuando; the leaders of the church councils; the chairman of the joint church council and the dean, Stefan Wikström. Rebecka Martinsson was the only woman present. The meeting had begun at eight o’clock. It was now quarter to ten. At ten o’clock coffee was to be served to finish off the meeting.

  The priest’s dining room served as a temporary conference room. The September sun was shining in through the hand-blown, uneven panes of the big barred windows. Wooden shelves full of books reached right up to the ceiling. There were no ornaments or flowers anywhere to be seen. Instead the windowsills were full of stones, some softly rounded and smooth, others rough and black with sparkling red garnet eyes. Strangely contorted branches lay on top of the stones. On the lawns and the g
ravel path outside lay drifts of rustling yellow leaves and fallen rowanberries.

  Rebecka was sitting next to Bertil Stensson. She glanced at him. He was a youthful man in his sixties. Like a kindly uncle with a bad boy’s haircut, pale silver. Sunburn and a warm smile.

  A professional smile, she thought. It had been almost comical, watching him and Torsten standing and smiling at each other. You could easily have believed they were brothers, or old childhood friends. The priest had shaken Torsten by the hand and at the same time grabbed hold of Torsten’s upper arm with his left hand. Torsten had seemed charmed. Smiled and run his hand through his hair.

  She wondered if it was the priest who had brought home the stones and branches. It was usually women who did that sort of thing. Who went for walks by the sea and picked up smooth pebbles until their cardigans were dragging on the ground.

  Torsten had made good use of his two hours. He’d quickly shrugged off his jacket and made sure his conversation was just personal enough. Entertaining without becoming flippant or slapdash. He’d served up the whole thing like a three-course meal. As an aperitif he’d poured a little flattery into them, things they already knew. That they had one of the wealthiest associations in the country. And one of the most beautiful. The starter consisted of small examples of areas where the church was in need of legal expertise, which was more or less every area, civil law, the law governing societies and associations, employment law, tax law…For the main course he had served hard facts, figures and calculations. Shown that it would be cheaper and more advantageous to sign an agreement with Meijer & Ditzinger, giving them access to the company’s combined expertise in legal and economic matters. At the same time he had been quite open about the disadvantages, which were not significant, but even so…, and thus gave an impression of honesty and trustworthiness. They weren’t dealing with a vacuum cleaner salesman here. Now he was busy spooning the dessert down their throats. He was giving a final example of how they had helped another community.