Wolf Winter

by Cecilia Ekbäck

  Entering the church hall, the men removed their hats. The women touched their kerchiefs. Their footsteps echoed against the stone walls. It smelled of prayers, perhaps of mildew. There were dark brown benches in two rows from back to front. There were scraping noises as people sat down, mumbling as they greeted others they hadn’t seen for many months and turning to see if anyone was absent. On the arched roof high above them were painted scenes in frames that made them look like medallions. Maija recognized Jesus teaching his disciples, Jesus waking Lazarus from the dead. One of the pictures seemed to be from a torture chamber. Naked people in flames speared by brown devils; the eternal threat of hell. She scoffed to herself. Hanging at the front, in the air high above them, its body clad in gold and its roof and curtains of red velvet, surrounded by lit candles in massive candlesticks, was an enormous pulpit. Like a chariot already halfway to heaven.

  Then Maija felt cold.

  A young woman knelt on a stool in the middle of the aisle, her hands clasped to her chest, her head with the white linen bonnet, lowered. People parted around her. A man spat on her dress.

  Dorotea pulled her sleeve: “What’s going on?”

  “That, Dorotea, is called a whore stool,” Maija said aloud.

  “Shhh,” Paavo hissed.

  “The priest puts people there to punish them and to scare us others.”

  “But what has she done?”

  “Something the priest considers a sin. Notice, Dorotea, that she is alone. There is no man being punished together with her.”

  Paavo pulled her with him into one of the aisles and down on a bench.

  “Stop it. Stop it right now.”

  “This.” Maija pointed at the woman. “This is insane.”

  “Do you want to join her?”

  In her lap, her hands, their chapped skin and square nails. Ugly hands. Honest hands. Working hands. She opened them. Shut them again. Paavo still stared at her. She ignored him. Her cheeks burned. She remembered a Paavo shouting at the village priest over the practices of the Church. He’d only been a boy. Four days in the stocks, he had got. She had walked past him again and again, full of admiration. She had thought about it so often, used him as her beacon. And instead, now, his fear maimed her.

  She thought of Henrik and Lisbet and recognized herself and her husband. Only there it was the woman who was frightened and the man who was trying to soothe. It was like what Nils had said, about the little lake on the mountain that had turned into marsh and the large one that had remained a lake. A being was either strong enough to hold their ground or they became small and bottomless and started feeding on themselves. They turned into something they never saw coming. Something they never intended.

  She must not begin to hate, she told herself.

  “What your mother isn’t telling you,” Paavo said to Dorotea, his voice pointy, “is that the priest could have given a much harsher punishment to this woman. She could have paid with her life.”

  Toward the front Nils stood with Kristina. Daniel entered with Anna a step behind him, and Nils smiled and greeted them as if welcoming them to his church. Henrik and Lisbet were already sitting in the sea of balding heads and kerchiefs. Maija didn’t know how Lisbet had managed the journey. Then Elin walked by with her children.

  Nils was looking at Elin. There was no greeting. Not for her. Elin sat down in the same bench as Henrik and Lisbet. Lisbet pushed on her husband and they stood up and walked to some benches further back. Elin’s children stirred, hovered around her, jostled to sit close to their mother. One of the children put a thin hand on her shoulder, but Elin didn’t react.

  The door at the front opened and the priest strode in. He held a Bible in his hand. He mounted the golden stairway up to the pulpit and bent his head. There was a cool draught from behind her, and Maija turned around to see Gustav enter. The great hall fell quiet and then the priest looked out over them without seeing any one of them.

  “Repent,” he whispered. “Repent,” he whispered again.

  “Eve in the Garden of Eden, oh, you despondent, can you see her? God’s creation, perfect in every way. Everything has been given to her—the animals and the plants bow to her, she is never cold, never hungry. She is allowed all things in a universe of pleasure, all things apart from one, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

  “‘And why can’t you eat from this tree?’ the snake asks her, amazed.

  “She looks at the tree. She thinks it’s beautiful.

  “‘Dazzling, isn’t it?’ the snake whispers. ‘None of the others looks like this.’

  “Eve finds she likes to keep the tree in her line of sight wherever she is. Soon she sits in its shadow—for a short while. Then she lies beneath it, looks up through its foliage to the sky and it is fine. Its fruits are red and plump. If one falls beside her, she touches it.

  “‘What harm could it do?’ the snake whispers.

  “And it isn’t long before the woman lifts one of the fruits up, looks at it, smells it, and she and her stock are doomed.”

  At this moment there was an interference in the sermon. It was the flame of one of the large candles beneath the pulpit. First it shivered, as if to attract attention. Then its yellow flame swelled to a height that threatened the fringes of the velvet of the pulpit itself. And so it died. There was a sound in the church hall—a wind sweeping through shrubs and whipping up dry leaves.

  The priest lifted his chin and pulled his shoulders back, seeming content with the effect of his words.

  “And the punishment: condemnation for all of us. And eternal condemnation it shall be if we do not hear the voice of God.”

  His voice sounded normal now. A man speaking with fellow men. Maija’s arm hurt. Dorotea’s hand with the dirty nails that dug into Maija’s skin looked older than her years. But the comfort sought was still that of a child.

  “There have been events in our midst,” the priest said. “A settler died on Blackåsen Mountain, a tragic mishap. And then, here in town, people sinned and risked bringing God’s wrath upon all of us. The Church is dealing with both matters. Your duty is to conduct your chores and your service to the kingdom eagerly, diligently, and to the best of your abilities.”

  He paused.

  “Repent.” With his voice, he lashed at the people in the benches below him. “Remove the filthiness of the flesh from your heart. Cast temptation far away from you. If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away, for it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

  “But if you do not give yourself to Him, if you hold back from Him, if you put anything before Him, if you are rebellious to Him, if there is sin in your heart, then He will tear you in pieces and all that awaits you is an eternity away from Him.

  “Kyrie eleison, have mercy on us, O God.”

  It was over. Maija detached Dorotea’s fingers from her arm, gave her hand a squeeze, and rose. “I need to speak with him,” she said.

  “No.” Paavo stretched for her, but she moved away.

  She made her way forward, side-stepping people walking in the opposite direction. She didn’t look at the girl on the stool in the aisle. Above the crowd the priest’s eyes met hers. He turned from those around him to meet her alone.

  “A mishap?” she asked.

  They eyed each other in silence.

  Careful, Maija thought. You don’t know what he’s capable of. “I wanted to ask you to look at this.” The piece of glass resembled a pool of blue water in her hand. The priest came closer. He bent to look, then straightened his back.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Stained glass.” He shrugged.

  “I found it where Eriksson died. I wondered if you knew where it cam
e from.”

  “One of the merchants, perhaps.”

  A woman with blonde hair scarcely tucked under a bonnet swept past them, eyes lowered as if she didn’t notice them, yet so close she brushed against the priest’s arm. It distracted him. He followed her with his gaze. Maija put the glass back in her pocket and nodded to leave.

  “The sermon will calm things down,” the priest said.

  Maija snorted. “Then you didn’t see the candle? One of the candles went out during the sermon.”

  He still didn’t react. The imbecile.

  “A candle goes out and somebody close to it will die,” she said. “That’s one of the most obvious signs there is—at least where we come from. I think the settlers now believe someone else will die.”

  There was some pleasure in seeing his chin fall down.

  Maija walked with long strides, stretching her legs out at each one.

  “What did you think about the sermon?” Paavo asked as they started up the hillside. He had the round black eyes of a robin redbreast.

  She slowed to look at the tracks of an animal in the mud. “Maybe lynx,” she said, and pointed. Then shrugged. “He’s the Church’s man, but preaches like a pietist,” she said.

  She could have laughed at herself: as if she knew. She had met one pietist, at a marketplace. She’d seen him later too being led away, still shouting that the Kingdom of God was near.

  Yet there was something to what she had said. The priest was conceited, but when he preached, there was more than arrogance and contempt: fervor? Hunger.

  “It’s not how I imagine God,” she said.

  Paavo nodded. “Did you see the candle?” he asked.

  Above them a flight of black migrant birds flew south in a ‘V.’ People didn’t think it, but gray could be the most violent color of all. Things bred too well in gray.

  Spatter against her face. It began to rain.

  Heaven opened. A wall of water poured out and down. The world dissolved into bleary blocks of color. The rain drummed against the roof of the house. On the green, someone ran for cover.

  “Anything more?” the verger asked.

  The priest waved him away. He stood for a while by the window and watched the rain dig in the soil, making hopeless rivers and lakes. The winter he’d spent with the army in Sachsen, for months it had rained every day. Even the King who, it was rumored in enemies’ camps, had magical protection had fallen ill—their own, of course, foreseeing the end of the world and the coming of Christos.

  The Finn woman had said a candle had gone out during the sermon.

  He had asked the widow about it.

  “I didn’t see it,” she said.

  “Are you certain?” Not that he worried.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “You don’t know if people think it’s a sign? A candle going out?”

  The widow laughed. Her blue eyes glimmered. “No, I don’t. I can ask my maid, if you like?”

  “No, no, no.” He’d smiled.

  He ought to take the Finn woman in hand. But something about her made him uncomfortable—he couldn’t tell what. Here, he was closing the matter out, and yet she had pressed on—showed him the piece of glass she’d found. At the place where Eriksson’s body had lain, she’d said? Well, he had recognized it, but the matter was closed.

  Despite the fire, the room felt dark. Sometimes this house croaked and moaned as if it were alive. The rain was still thundering on the roof. It was time to go to bed.

  The priest woke with a start. He had dreamed of earth. Of trying to find something to hold onto, feeling the ground turn to phlegm between his fingers. The room smelled of dead fire. His nose was cold, and he touched its tip with his hand. Freezing. He pulled at the blankets, pushed his hands deep down inside the cover and closed his eyes. But then his mind started to wander. It reverted to the candle in the church.

  He wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. He was wide awake.

  He sat up on the edge of the bed. The room was cold. The maid needed to put more wood on the fire at night. He patted with his feet on the floor to find his shoes and grabbed his cloak from the wooden chair and pulled it over his head on top of the nightshirt. He walked to the window. Put his hands on his back and leaned backward. Shivered and then yawned. The window had fogged up; he wiped it with his hand.

  The sky was low and closed. The black earth and the yellow grass glittered. He leaned back and stretched again.

  Then he realized what he was seeing.

  Oh no.

  The priest ran down the stairs. He flew through the hallway, flung the door open, and jumped off the porch.

  At the other side of the field the verger came running, coat flapping.

  The priest slipped on the grass, caught himself before falling, continued running. At the white-rimmed field he plummeted to his knees. With shaky fingers, he pulled the thin seeds off a straw. They were frozen into small stones. Many of the heads were already empty.

  The sky was a white lid above them, and he was gripped by a senseless urge to laugh. There would be no harvest.

  “What do we have?” the priest asked.

  A fire boomed in the fireplace. The verger sat with the books before him.

  “The woodshed is full.” The verger followed the accounts line by line with his finger. “Three barrels of grain remain since last year. The barn is full of hay for the animals. There will be milk.”

  “More?”

  “There is salted fish, meat. The turnips ought to survive the frost. You have four cows and five sheep. Worst case, you can slaughter. You’ll manage well,” he said.

  The priest remembered the local people—in Rawicz?—attacking the King’s army one winter when the famine grew unbearable. He saw before his inner eye flocks welling down the hills. “Do not kill,” the King had shouted. The soldiers had used the flat sides of their swords. But the aggressors came ready to kill with stones and sticks or their bare hands. They were mostly women and children. The images of their distorted faces—the face of hunger—would remain with the priest forever. “We are God’s envoys,” the King had said to the subdued company that evening. “If we don’t have food, we cannot do our duty. And these people need us to succeed. It’s hard, but we mustn’t forget this. From now on, we put guards around the supplies.”

  “Are there locks on the barns?” the priest asked.

  “No.”

  “Arrange it. On the house too.” He walked to the end of the room again. “What about the vicarage? How is their position?”

  “You’ll have to ask the widow about that.”

  He would go over and see her. They might need to request backing from the peasants this year for both households to manage through winter.

  From outside came the neighing of a horse and the rustling of carriages. The priest turned to the window. The verger walked close and peered from over his shoulder. “But the bishop was just here,” he said.

  The bishop stared out over the frozen field.

  “I wanted to see you again before winter, and now this.” He put his hand to the back of his head and held it there. “Third year in a row,” he said. “How will things be?”

  “I’ll manage,” the priest said.

  The bishop stared at him. He opened his mouth, then shut it.

  “I was thinking about your congregation, Olaus Arosander,” he said. “The settlers, the peasants. Do you think they will be fine too? Your herd? All those who already have bled from the wars, the scarcity, the diseases?”

  The priest wanted to tell the bishop about Rawicz. He wanted to tell him what the King had said, but even in his head, the words now sounded peculiar.

  “Have you found out what happened to Eriksson?” the bishop demanded.

  “We had a sermon yesterday where I addressed it.”

  “You had a sermon.” The bishop’s voice was full of scorn. “I must not have made myself clear. I want to know what happened. I want a name, and you shall give that to me.”<
br />
  The bishop grabbed the priest’s collar and stepped so close, the priest smelled the dung of his breath. “When I come back the next time, you shall tell me or, so help me God, you shall rot here and never leave.”

  His hand on the priest’s chest was trembling.

  The priest hit the bishop’s hand away. “You never liked me. You and the other bishops. From the beginning you were against me.”

  The bishop sneered. “Why would we have been?”

  “Because I was close to the King. You couldn’t wait to ruin it. I don’t know how you did it, but you did.”

  The bishop shook his head.

  “You made me fall out of favor. You had me removed,” the priest said.

  The bishop was still shaking his head. “We didn’t remove you from the King,” he said, coolly now. “The King asked for it to be so. I said we’d take you, offer you a new position here.”

  The words struck the priest harder than if he’d been slapped.

  “That’s not true,” he said.

  “Olaus, you knew him,” the bishop said, and now there was something different in his voice. Pity? “Why wouldn’t it be true?”

  Late autumn this year had violence in her hair, angry crimson, orange, and yellow. The trees wrestled to free themselves of their cloaks, crumpled up their old leaves and threw them straight out into the strong wind rather than just let them fall to the ground. Dry leaves ran across the yard with the crackle of fire.

  Frederika’s mother held some frozen grains in her palm. Her hand seemed blue.

  “I’ll have to go to the coast,” Frederika’s father said, “and find paid work. Come spring, I’ll bring back food and seeds for next summer.”

  Her mother tipped her hand, and the grains fell to the ground.

  “We have no money left to pay for lodging this time.” She was looking at the icy field.

  “You’re right,” she said after a while. “The girls and I can manage with what we have gathered and with Mirkka’s milk.”