Best European Fiction 2017

by Eileen Battersby

  The dogs up north are different.

  They live outside in the yard year-round. For one thing, a proper dog is big. It wasn’t bred to fit in your pocket. The most popular dog breed in Finland, the German shepherd, is of a magnitude that if it decides to jump up in an easy chair the damn thing collapses at the very thought of it. A dog kept out of doors stays alert and barks only when there’s something to bark at. Such as: my nose says Aikio is on his way over here to collect his debt, and he’s drunk off his ass, so get your damn shotgun out, owner, and step out here onto the porch to greet him.

  A dog is a predator. It is genetically guided to grasp the big picture in hunting-related matters. Outside of Helsinki, a dog’s primary task is to help humans fill their freezers with meat that used to run free through the forest. No dog, no meat. A well-trained dog will point at a bear. That’s why they call a KBD a bear dog. But what is a Griffon Bruxellois? Something semi-dry, fruity, sparkling? Wikipedia says they “bark easily”; the Kennel Club defines it as “self-important” and “nearly square.” What the fuck is that? A snarky bathroom tile?

  Many a breed kept down south, with their sparrow frames and thick pelts, would be perfectly suited for use as a bottle brush. You can’t spot the shine on their anuses from a block away, but at least after they’ve squirted our their evening pee they walk home with a bag of string candy hanging off the backs of their thick furry leggings.

  Every last dog denominator has been distilled out of these dogs down south. You don’t believe me? Just look at a wolf, which is from the same family of animal as these pets that were domesticated from it. That’ll do it. Stand your wolf there, and line up a Griffon Bruxellois and say an ordinary Spitz next to it. Which is closer to the original? And which one looks like a cross between a rat and a sheep? If people were bred like dogs, they’d be selling us in pink miniature versions for use as cake decorations. The dogs down south are dogs in the same degree as Finnish presidents after Kekkonen are statesmen. The travesty is tarted up with trinkets modeled on accoutrements from the wife’s accessory drawer: a cute little Burberry jacket, a peepee hoodie, a five-hundred-euro hair dryer, a furry choker collar, and a latex toy for those lonely moments. The end product? A doll, for the doll house.

  In the north a dog’s anus gets fracked in the frost without forced walks to the park. The ass-eye is cleansed naturally in outdoor activities, in amongst the heather, on the crust of the snow. Most northern dogs run free. They shit in the wild around the house, like the moose, reindeer, hares, and every other damn animal. In the northerly reaches of Lapland you’ve got about as much chance of stepping in dog shit as you do getting served in Sami at Stockmann’s. And dog shit serves a purpose. It’s fertilizer. When a KBD drops its load on the melting snow, the sapling that springs up there will be a mighty pine by the time your grandkids are old folks rocking in their rocking chairs.

  Humanity. There’s two kinds.

  There’s the kind where you let animals revel in their genes and defecate up and down all the rustling ridges.

  Then there’s the kind where you squat on Finland’s busiest thoroughfares scrabbling up the crap your Griffon Bruxellois has just squirted out of its quivering haunches. And not just scrabbling: you stand there next to the poor little cute thing, coaxing the shit out. Out there in view of anybody who walks by, so it won’t spritz out in the easy chair. The strawberry in the stool: while you scoop up the squirt, you’re also atoning for the shame the public pooping has caused the dog. But of course this is all you projecting your own feelings onto a senseless critter, turning it into a kind of honorary human. The dog isn’t ashamed. It’s a dog. You’re ashamed. You imagine the dog feels the same thing you feel so you can go on living your life as a human who humbly, day after day, picks up poop off the streets of the capital city of Finland.

  “Rower”

  There went Satan’s supper. He sat by his campfire on the Saimaa lakeshore trying to fry himself up a seal steak. No grease in the pan. Fact was, he plumb didn’t have any, and you couldn’t fucking eat a ringed seal without it. And that damn bear snuck up and stole the seal carcass before Satan could cut himself off some blubber.

  He had to go to work hungry. Royally browned off.

  It was Midsummer’s Eve, the busiest time of the year. Satan’s camp was on a tiny island. He’d felled a giant pine and made his fire out of the root system. But now Satan set his frying pan to one side and extinguished his campfire with a thick yellow stream. He filled his nostrils with the cloud of sizzling smoke.

  His boat sat perched on the rocks along the shore. Satan banged the boat out onto the water and jumped on the bow thwart. Hooves on the ribs, hands on the oars, goddammit, go! A three-pronged fireplace poker lay ready in the bilge.

  His first job was close by. Gathered at a summer cottage was a group of thirty-something buddies who’d been drinking round the clock. Satan rowed up near the shore, enjoying the scene. These geniuses. One young gentleman ran about naked, a spruce branch up his asshole. You couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. Another had climbed a birch, sat up there bellowing out some drunken song. The limb broke and the singer toppled down on branch-boy’s head. The singer broke his neck and died. Oh dear, the screaming then, the commotion. The women cried, the men howled. They scrabbled about for a phone, dropped it, called directory assistance instead of the emergency center. Satan slid the boat up on shore, grabbed his poker, hooked his hooves up over the gunwales onto dry land, walked over to the base of the birch, to the body. Well, well. Fat disgusting pig. The dead man’s head twisted to one side. Satan smiled. So, yeah, let’s do this.

  Satan poked the poker up through the corpse, heaved it up onto his shoulder, and headed back down to the water. Heavy son of a bitch. Satan dumped the body in the boat and sprang nimbly onto a thwart. The poker poked out of the carcass like a spear out of a deer.

  A loon laughed, the sun shone, Satan rowed. His next address was a farmhouse. The extended family had gathered for their usual midsummer celebration. The old man was dying, and the sons disagreed on how the place should be divvied up. Both wanted the main house. A bonfire was burning on the shore, the argument in full swing around it. The big brother looked to be the drunker one. Satan watched the devilment from his boat. Well, get on with it. Belly’s rumbling. Big brother blew his top, pushed little brother into the fire. He fell on his back, hard, the burning branches giving way beneath him. For a few seconds he tried to climb up out of there, but sank back down, engulfed in flames. Satan’s eyes lit up. At last, something new! It was always knifings, knifings, more knifings. Stabbings with sharp instruments are so boring. Don’t people have more imagination than that? And now again the pandemonium, the wailing and the gnashing of teeth! He’s dead, save your fucking breath. Satan rowed ashore and walked up to the burning body, sucking up deep drafts of the meaty fumes. The scent of home sweet home! Yeah, so okay, let’s get going. Satan jammed the poker into the meat and slung the load up onto his shoulder, oops-a-daisy. The dearly departed plopped into the boat next to the dead tub of lard. The oarlocks creaked as Satan cranked hard on the oars.

  Around midnight Satan glided up to a dock where a splash had just splished. A drunken woman was just sinking into the mud at the bottom of the lake. She’d gone for a swim from the sauna, fap as a five-fingered frog. Satan waited a moment before diving down for the lifeless lush. The great thing about drowning victims is that the chilled body feels pleasant against the skin. Satan came up with the blue woman in his arms and flung his fodder on top of the pile, squelch!

  Over the next few hours Satan collected six more bodies from Midsummer celebrations on the eastern Saimaa shore; three knifed, two beaten, one shot to death. The corpses lay long-wise at the bottom, cross-wise at the top, to secure the load. The untouched seal steak back on the island nagged at him. Satan rowed the boat toward his camp. All in all a pretty ordinary Midsummer, busy busy. At least the guy with the branch up his ass and the bonfire guy had added a little spice.
The sun climbed up over the horizon. Next to Satan on the thwart lay a dead loon. The rower had snatched it out of the lake and strangled it to take home to the little demons. Get the taste of game on their tongues. Satan reached the island. The bow bumped up over the stones at water level. Satan bounced out onto the stones and was about to head for the campfire site when he heard a muffled moaning from the boat. Huh.

  Yyynh.

  Not possible. Not out here.

  More moans. Yyynh, yy-yyynhh …

  It had to be coming from the pile of meat. Satan started grabbing limbs right and left, tossing bodies in the water. There went the shot guy, splish! There went the beaten guy, splash! There went one knifed guy, ker-splish! There went the other, ker-splash!

  Finally he dug down to the moaner. The drowned woman.

  She was still alive. Hacking up water from her lungs, her face blue. You’re over the hill, old man. Last time that happened it was what, the fourth Crusade? It was the workload. He had so much to do he didn’t have time to pore over every side of beef he tossed in the boat. The woman opened her eyes and raised herself into a sitting position on top of the bottom layer of bodies. His client seemed to be coming to her senses.

  “What the devil, hack-hack …”

  “At your service.”

  “Some fucking fiend musta drug me …”

  “Well, yes.”

  The woman goggled around, noticed the strange scenery and stranger company.

  “The hell am I doing here?”

  “Close enough.”

  The women held her head and trembled. Satan sighed: Soo-o. His hooves hove in the shallows. Fresh water softened them, made them ache. He’d had about enough of tonight’s work.

  “Who are you?” the woman asked, her voice quavery.

  Satan reviewed the rules. Should he cart the client back to the death site and see that the whole loss-of-life thing was handled properly this time? Or could he just snuff her here and now? Professionalism above all else. Doesn’t matter how low the job is, there’s a right way and a wrong way for everything. Back to the basics. Using the poker isn’t just a ritual, right. Dammit, get the book. Satan stomped over to the campfire site and rummaged around in his things till he found the red book with the title: Collecting. The many-layered fingernails paged through the thick sheets. The paper smelled of smoke. Eye the headings.

  1.3 Choice of work methods. No.

  2.0 Tarring the boat. Huh.

  2.9 Spearing the body. All over that one!

  3.5 Hoof and mouth disease. Ick.

  4.0 Modern vehicles. Have to think about that one.

  5.6 Rudiments of seal-hunting. Famished!

  Don’t they have anything in here about the living dead? Oh, uh huh, yup, in the section titled “Fatal Disposition” it said this:

  If the spearing fails or for whatever reason is left undone, it is possible, though highly unlikely, that the client’s vital functions will be restored. If that happens, it is essential to determine the body’s spiritual destination or fatal disposition immediately. This measure is crucial, because there is reason to suspect that the revitalization event might have been caused by some virtuous act performed by the decedent during his or her lifetime that the stupidity, malice, evil, or other desirable trait prevailing at the time of death was not puissant enough to push aside.

  God, say it so a person can make heads or tails of it! His scalp steamed.

  The easiest way to verify the client’s fatal disposition is the tunnel question.

  Right, right, that was it. Satan slammed the book shut and walked back down to the shore, where he found the woman had climbed out of the boat and was standing ankle deep in the water. She leaned against the boat, swaying.

  “Listen, hag, when you were in the lake, did you see any kind of tunnel? After it got warm, I mean.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Try.”

  The woman grimaced and shook her head.

  “Uhhhhh … maybe there was a tube-like thing flashing or something.”

  “Was there light at the end of it, maybe?”

  “Um, sure.”

  “What could you see in the light?”

  “What? Oh, uh … dicks.”

  Hmm. It was possible she was headed for heaven after all. Whose bailiwick is this in the end? Things are getting complicated. We need solutions. The woman cleared her throat.

  “You got any booze?”

  That did it. Satan popped her prettily on the chin. She toppled into the water, out cold.

  Satan got his root fire started again and rummaged around for his frying pan. The seal steak had dried onto the cast iron. He grabbed the pan and went down to the fat cadaver, the one that fell out of the tree. It was stretched out on its side at the edge of the water. With a grunt Satan fished around inside the holes his poker had made, in the folds of the fat man’s belly, and damn if he didn’t manage to squeeze out some fat for his pan. Yum-mm!

  Satan ate his breakfast with a happy smirk, spitting into the campfire. Every time some gob of fat splatted into the flames, they flared up fetchingly. Satan let out a mighty belch and then pissed off back down to hell. He assigned each of the newcomers the appropriate locations and job descriptions. The one who’d been singing in the tree got the lowest spot. It became his job to translate Finnish municipal law into German.

  Only one left on the beach: the naked blue woman.

  She woke up toward evening on Midsummer’s Day. She had no clue where she was, and of course had no memory of her tribulations. Different spots on her head hurt like a son of a bitch. She yelled for help for a while, but then decided that no one ever went by the deserted island she was on. It so happened, however, that she was the granddaughter of a fisherman, and had actually listened to her granddad’s stories. Her diet that summer consisted mostly of raw fish and water. It turned out to be a sunny summer, too, and after the blue woman turned white, she began to tan. In the first week of September she spotted a tugboat chugging along with a log raft in tow. She jumped up and down, screamed, waved her arms, and pretty soon along came a rowboat. She felt a bit embarrassed to climb up out of the rowboat onto the tug with all eyes on her naked body, fried to a honey-brown crisp and red with horsefly bites.

  TRANSLATED FROM FINNISH BY DOUGLAS ROBINSON

  [FRANCE]

  GAUZ

  FROM Stand-by-the-Hour

  NEW RECRUITS. The long line of black men climbing the narrow stairway looks like an unprecedented roped party taking on K2, the daunting summit in the Himalayas. The rhythm of the ascent is measured out by the lone sound of footsteps. Knees angle sharply up the steep stairs: nine, followed by a platform, then another nine, for every floor. The sound of the men’s steps is muffled by a thick red carpet that runs right down the middle of a cage that’s too cramped to accommodate two people shoulder to shoulder. With the mounting fatigue and flights of stairs, the group thins out. Every so often, there’s the sound of someone gasping for breath. After six flights, the first one up presses the large button of a Cyclopean interphone that looks out through the black lens of a surveillance camera. Sweaty, they all wind up in a large, open-space office. There are no dividers to obscure the glass cage that has two letters marking the territory of the dominant male here—DG—and there’s a picture window offering a generous view over the rooftops of Paris. Forms are distributed by the dozen. Security guard recruitment. Protect-75 just landed some major contracts for various businesses in the Parisian area and its workforce needs are as urgent as they are immense. Word spread very quickly throughout the African “community”—Congolese, Ivorians, Malians, Guineans, Beninese, Senegalese, etc. The trained eye can easily identify nationalities by clothing style alone: the Ivorians uniformed in Polos and 501s; the Malians with their oversized black leather jackets; the Beninese and Togolese wearing striped shirts jammed in tight at the stomach; the Cameroonians in magnificent, invariably shined moccasins; the improbable colors of the Congolese from Brazza and the outrageous styles
of the Congolese from Stanley … When the visual cues don’t do the trick, all you have to do is listen: the accents that come out of Africans’ mouths when they speak French are markers of origin, just as reliable as an extra 21 chromosome is for identifying Down syndrome, or a malignant tumor is for diagnosing cancer. The humming of the Congolese, the chanting of the Senegalese, the staccato of the Ivorians, the back-and-forth of the Beninese and the Togolese, the pidgin of the Malians …

  Everyone takes out the documents requested for the job interview: ID cards along with the classic CV and the CQP, a kind of administrative authorization to work in security. Here, it assumes the pompous title of a diploma. There’s also the infamous cover letter: “be a member of a dynamic team,” “participate in an ambitious career plan,” “find the right fit for my training and skills,” plus the conventions for a formal French letter, the “veuillez agréer monsieur,” “sentiments distingués,” “l’expression de ma plus haute considération,” etc. The medieval circumlocutions and the ass-licking language of cover letters are ridiculous in such a place, under such circumstances. Everyone’s got a strong motivation here, even though it differs depending on what side of the office you’re on. For the dominant male in the cage at the back, it’s to have the highest sales figures possible. By any means. Hiring the most people possible is one of these means. For the group of black climbers emerging from the stairwell, it’s to find a stable job. By any means. Working as a security guard is one of these means. Relatively accessible. The training is minimal and no experience in particular is required. There’s a ready understanding of administrative situations, the physical profile ostensibly being enough. Physical profile … black men are sturdy, black men are tall, black men are strong, black men are obedient, black men are scary. It’s impossible not to consider this laundry list of noble-savage clichés lurking simultaneously in the limbic systems of all the whites in charge of recruitment and all the blacks who have come to exploit these stereotypes to their own advantage. But this morning that’s not the case. Nobody cares. Plus, the recruitment teams have black members. The atmosphere is relaxed. Somebody even ventures a few bawdy comments about the perky tits of one of the two secretaries distributing forms. Everybody fills out their job applications with varying degrees of concentration. Last name, first name, gender, place and date of birth, marital status, social security number, etc. This will be the most demanding intellectual exercise of the day. Nonetheless, some look over their neighbors’ shoulders. Prolonged unemployment results in a lack of confidence. The papers circulate in all possible manners between the black men and the secretary with the big rack. After the initialing and the signing of some pieces of white paper inked with esoteric phrases designed to regulate the working relationship between an employee-to-be and a big-boss-to-be, each member of the group receives a bag containing black pants, a black jacket, a black tie, a black or white shirt, and a monthly schedule indicating the time and place of work. The contracts are for an indefinite period. Having entered unemployed, they all walk out as security guards. Those who already have experience in the profession know what to expect from the days ahead: standing all day in a store, repeating this dreary feat of tedium, every day, and getting paid at the end of the month. Stand-by-the-hour. And it’s not as easy as it looks. In order to cope with this job, to maintain perspective, to not succumb to lazy compliancy or, conversely, to block-headed zealotry and embittered aggression, it’s necessary to know either how to empty the mind of all considerations that transcend instinct and the spinal reflex or how to have a particularly intense internal life. The incorrigible moron option also works. To each his own method, his own objectives. Everyone goes back down the six flights of stairs in their own way.