by Karin Fossum
They passed each other. At that instant Errki heard the brittle sound of tinkling glass. The girl tightened her grip on the handle of the pram. For a brief moment she looked up. To her horror she saw the strange light in his eyes and inside his open jacket she read the words on his T-shirt:
KILL THE OTHERS
It was something she wouldn't forget. And so she became one of many who would later report to the police that she had seen the man they were looking for on that day at that particular spot.
The others were always after him. Not just his ravaged body with its organs all jumbled together, or his hard-as-stone heart that trembled behind the grating of bones. They wanted to get inside him. Into the secret space with the dazzling lamps. They wrapped their evil intentions in fine words, nagged him about the blessing of reality and the exciting challenge of community. He couldn't bear it.
What if he didn't want to?
He shook his head in confusion. His thoughts had wandered out of control, disturbing his sense of time. He tottered back into the room and sank down on the filthy mattress. He was glad that he had run away from the suffocating asylum, glad that he had found the abandoned cabin. He curled up on his side with his knees bent, his hands between his legs, his cheek pressed against the mouldy mattress. He was staring deep inside himself, down into the dark, dusty cellar where a narrow hole in the ceiling opened, letting in a ray of pale light. It formed a circular patch on the stone floor. There sat Nestor. Beside him a ragged coat. The coat looked quite innocent, like something discarded, but Errki knew better. He lay still for a long time, waiting, and then fell asleep again. The wound needed time to grow together. While it grew he dreamed. After the punishment he was always given comfort, and he accepted it. It was part of the agreement. It was 6.03 a.m. on July 4th, and a fierce heat was already seeping in.
*
The cabin had come as a surprise, hidden in a dense grove of trees. It was an old place where no-one had lived for decades, yet it was in good repair, although most of the furnishings had been ruined long ago by drifters. Over the years quite a few such people had made themselves at home for a brief period, setting their mark on the worn rooms, leaving empty bottles behind.
He had stood in the grove for a while and stared. It was a wooden house, and in front was a little yard with a lush lawn. He put his hand tentatively on the door and pushed it open, then stood for a moment, sniffing the air. Inside he found a kitchen, living room and two bedrooms. On one of the beds lay an old striped mattress. He tiptoed from room to room, looking around, breathing in the smell of old timber. In this house Errki was closer to his ancestors than he knew. It was an old summer cabin, constructed on the ancient site of one of the many Finnish dwellings built in the 1600s. As he walked around he listened to the mute walls. It looked as if something had happened. A rage had settled in the walls. Many of the thick beams had splinters sticking out of deep gashes, as if someone had attacked them with an axe. Not a single window pane was intact; only a few shards of glass remained in the shattered frames. He thought of three or four things at once. It was impossible to get here by car, and as far as he knew no-one had seen him when he had turned off the road and began clambering through the undergrowth. He didn't have a watch, but he knew he had walked for about 30 minutes after leaving the roadway. The fact that he had no food or extra clothes didn't bother him, but he was thirsty. He ground his jaws together to create some saliva and began chewing on his tongue.
He went into the room that had been the kitchen and started opening the drawers. The knobs were gone, so he had to prise them open with his long fingernails. He found a fork with missing prongs and a box of candles. Crumbs and cobwebs. Bottle caps. An empty matchbox. Under the broken kitchen window lay the remnants of a net curtain, but when he picked it up, the fabric dissolved in his fingers. He went back to the living room. The room had one window facing out the front and one on the opposite wall, looking out at a pond. Against one wall stood an old sofa with rough green upholstery. Across from it stood a large wardrobe. He opened it and peered inside. It was empty. The wooden floor was stained and rough under his feet. He let himself sink onto the sofa. The springs screeched and a cloud of dust rose up from the threadbare fabric. He changed his mind and went into the bedroom with the bed and mattress. He pulled off his jacket and T-shirt and lay down. He was gone for an eternity. When he woke up he had forgotten where he was, and besides, he had been dreaming. That was why he made the big mistake, stepping straight out into the sunshine without stopping to think. It was humiliating to scrape up his own guts from the step, listening to Nestor's spiteful laughter, as his intestines slid through his fingers like baby snakes.
He woke for a second time, sat up very slowly and stared around the room, running his hand over his chest to make sure it was whole. Only a jagged red scar remained. It ran from between his nipples all the way down to his navel. He got up from the bed. The sun was higher now. The room was empty except for a rough bedside table that was really no more than a crate. Slowly he straightened his back and walked over to the table and pulled out the drawer. While he stood there staring down at the drawer, he rubbed absentmindedly at a tender spot on his hip. He had been lying on something hard. He went back to the bed and looked down at the mattress, and felt around with his fingers. Something narrow and hard was there. He lifted the mattress with difficulty and rolled it back. Under-neath was a big hole in the striped cover where some of the foam had been removed. He stuck his hand inside and dug around, until he felt something cold. He pulled it out and stared in amazement, not believing his eyes. Of all the things to find in this dilapidated place, inside a mouldy old mattress: a pistol. He held it gingerly in both hands and looked down the barrel. In Errki's hands it was a foreign object, but when he gripped it in his right hand with a finger on the trigger, it felt good. What power it had. All the power of heaven and earth. Breeze, gale and storm. Out of curiosity he turned a lever and opened it. There was one bullet in the chamber. Eagerly he pulled it out and examined it. It was long and shiny and surprisingly round at the tip. He pressed the round back into the chamber, pleased at how well it fitted. The discovery made him look around. Someone had spent the night here and left the pistol behind. That was odd. Maybe the person had been caught by surprise and didn't have time to take it with him. Maybe he was waiting somewhere until he could come back and get it. It was a fine gun. Errki didn't know much about firearms, but he thought it was a large-calibre revolver of an expensive kind. He read the tiny letters on the stock: Colt.
"What do you think, Nestor?" he murmured softly as he turned the weapon this way and that. Then he stopped abruptly and tossed it away. The pistol crashed onto the floor. He ran out to the kitchen and stood there for a moment, clinging to the bench. He should have thought of that. Nestor would come up with some disgusting suggestion. He could hear them down there in the dark cellar, laughing so the dust flew. He went back and stood looking at the gun for a long time. After a time he put it back inside the mattress. He didn't need it; he had other weapons. He wandered around the house, from the kitchen to the living room and back again, keeping his eyes on the stained floorboards. They creaked and carried on, the pitch varying. Soon he had created a whole melody from his route from room to room. His black hair and his jacket and trousers shook frenetically. His arms stuck out woodenly from his body, and he moved his fingers in rhythm, in time with the creaking boards. He was sucked into the rhythm; he walked and walked, unable to stop, not wanting to. In the repetition he found peace. He had no other aim than to walk, back and forth, taking even steps, his fingers splayed. Creak, creak, Errki goes, to and fro, over and over, from room to room, bumpety-bump.
He didn't know how long he had been walking, but eventually he gathered his courage and went to stand in the doorway. He hesitated and then opened the door. Bright sunlight flooded the clearing. He lowered his eyes and took a cautious step out onto the stone steps, then made his way through the deep grass. He stopped and sniffed up at the
pine cones and down at the thicket of ferns and bracken. Root, stem and leaf. At last he was in motion again, though he didn't know where he was going or what he would do. Nestor was guiding his steps through the undergrowth towards civilisation.
It was still early morning. Only the early-risers had got out of bed. They had opened their curtains and looked out at the radiant day. Hot. Bright. Shimmering green. They made optimistic plans for the day, wanting to take advantage of the beautiful weather of the ail-too brief summer. One of them was Halldis Horn. She lived alone on a little farm not far from the old Finnish cabin. As Errki took his first steps through the grass, she was pulling her nightgown over her head.
CHAPTER 2
Both the first and the second bloom of youth had long since passed, and she was much too heavy, but for a few unprejudiced souls she was definitely still a looker. Tall and plump and full-breasted, with a grey braid that hung like a thick iron rope down her back. She had a round face with good colouring, cheeks like red roses, and her eyes had retained their flashing brightness even though she was old.
She went through her living room and kitchen and opened the door to the courtyard. She lifted her face to the sun, squinting, and stood on the steps for a moment, in her checked apron and wooden clogs. She wore brown, knee-high stockings, not because it was cold but because she thought women of her age shouldn't show too much flesh, and even though no-one ever came to her house except for the grocer once a week, there was always Our Lord and His eternally present gaze. For better or worse, to put it bluntly, because although she was a believer, she did send Him angry thoughts sometimes, and she never asked for His forgiveness. It was the invasion of dandelions that she was looking at now. The whole yard was full of them. They seemed to spread like a rash, polluting the entire garden, which she tended so carefully. Twice each summer she would root out the weeds with a hoe, hacking at one plant after the other with furious blows. She liked to work, but once in a while she would complain, just to remind her blessed husband what kind of mess he had left her in by falling dead at the wheel of his tractor, the result of a clot the size of a grain of rice in an artery. That her tough and solid husband, a mountain of muscles, could be felled in such a way was beyond her understanding, even though the doctor had tried to explain it. She found it as impossible to believe as the fact that a plane could fly, or that she could ring her sister Helga in Hammerfest way up north and hear her plaintive voice so clearly.
She had better start before it got too hot. She found the hoe and carried it out to the yard. Shaded her eyes with her hand and scanned the area to plan her route. Decided to start near the steps and work her way in a fan formation past the well and over to the shed. In the hall she found a bucket and rake. She established a swift rhythm, hacking steadily at the weeds until she was tired, giving each plant two or three chops, then slowing the tempo, filling the bucket and emptying it on the compost heap behind the house. Ashes to ashes, she thought, giving the bottom of the bucket a hard thump. Then she went back to hacking. Her wide behind pointed towards the sky and swayed in time with the rhythm of her hoe. The red and green checks of her apron fluttered gently in the sun. Her brow was damp with sweat, and her braid kept swinging forward over her shoulder. She usually wore it pinned up, coiled around like a shiny snake, but not until after morning chores.
She liked the sound she made, hacking through the grass. The hoe was as sharp as an axe; she had sharpened it herself. Now and then she hit a stone, and winced at the thought of the shiny blade with its razor-thin edge. The weeds lay like fallen soldiers on a battlefield as she worked her way forward. She didn't sing or hum. She had enough to do just carrying out her task, and besides, the Creator might end up thinking that life was going too well, and for Halldis that would be an exaggeration. In her mind she set the table. Home-baked bread and her own brown whey cheese made from goat's milk.
She straightened up. Several birds shrieked high above the trees, and she thought she heard a swishing sound and then something falling through the leaves. Then silence. She paused for a while and stared, stealing a few moments of rest and letting her eyes glide over the woods, where she knew every single tree. In the familiar pattern of black trunks she thought she saw something dark. Something that had not been there before. An irregularity.
She narrowed her eyes and stared intently, but since it didn't move, she dismissed it as illusion. Her eyes stopped on the well. The grass around the pump was tall and untidy; maybe she should cut it later. She bent to the work again, this time with her back to her front door. The sun was getting hot, even though it was early. Her wide backside was baking in the sun, and the sweat tickled as it ran down the inside of her thighs. This was Halldis Horn's life. Solving one problem, then another, as they appeared, without grumbling. She was the type of person who never questioned the Creation or the meaning of life. That wasn't proper. And besides, she was afraid of what the answer might be. She kept on hacking, making her bottom shake. Up the slope, hiding behind a tree, watching, stood Errki.
*
The woman fascinated him. Like heavy spruce trees, she grew out of the earth. Behind her he could hear her sound, a lonely, majestic trombone. For a long time he stood and devoured her with his eyes: her round shoulders, the fluttering dress. He had seen her before. This was someone who lived alone, he knew that. Someone who seldom spoke and listened only to the wind, or the screeching of the magpies. He took a couple of steps, making a few twigs crack. The sound of the hoe grew sharper. He fixed his eyes on her hands, thick fingers and wrists. The force of the blade as it sliced through the grass was fearsome and had nothing feminine about it. As he moved, without a sound now, he could tell that the woman gradually became aware of something alive approaching her. People who live alone develop an acute awareness of their surroundings. Her rhythm changed, becoming first slower, then faster, as if to deny that something was about to happen. She stopped and straightened up. Suddenly she caught sight of him. Her body stiffened. She stood as taut as a bow, her chest heaving. A cord of fear trembled between them. Her hands wrapped tighter around the hoe. Her eyes immediately widened, then turned narrow and hard. There was not much she was afraid of in the world, but just at that instant she felt uneasy.
He came to an abrupt halt, wanting her to keep on working. The only thing he wanted was to watch her as she carried out the simple task, to observe her rhythm and her wriggling backside. But Halldis was alarmed. Errki recognised all the sharp signals she was sending out and stopped short, his fists clenched, incapable of moving. Her gaze struck him like a rain of arrows.
*
The sun continued to climb, relentlessly blazing down on man and beast and the crackling dry forest. Community police officer Robert Gurvin sat alone, lost in thought. He opened a button on his shirt and blew at his chest. Sweat trickled down his neck. He tried to push back a lock of hair from his forehead, but it refused to stay put. He gave up and tried instead to slow his heart rate by focusing his thoughts. He had heard that old Indians could do this, but all the concentrating just made him sweat more.
Someone was shuffling outside. The door opened and a fat boy of about twelve entered hesitantly in. He stopped in the middle of the room, panting hard. In one hand he held a grey container that resembled a suitcase, though it had rather an odd shape. Maybe it contained a musical instrument, like a lyre. Although the boy didn't look much like a lyre player, Gurvin thought. He studied him closely. The boy was astonishingly fat. His arms and legs stuck out from his body as if someone had pumped him full of helium and he was about to take off. His hair was brown, thin and greasy, plastered to his skull in thin strips. He was barefoot and dressed in pale cut-off jeans and a dirty T-shirt. His mouth was agape with excitement.
"Yes?"
Officer Gurvin shoved his papers aside. He didn't have much to do that day, and he enjoyed having visitors. Right now he couldn't get enough of the incredible sight standing before him.
"Can I help you, son?"
The boy
took a step forward. He was still panting; it was clear that he had something he needed to get off his chest in a hurry. It was presumably something along the lines of a stolen bicycle. His eyes were glittering, and he was shaking so much that Gurvin couldn't help but think of a warm soufflé in the oven, just before it caves in.
"Halldis Horn is dead!"
His voice teetered somewhere between the bright sounds of a child and the darker tones of the man he would become. He started low but when he came to the word "dead" his voice rose to a falsetto.
Gurvin was no longer smiling. He looked at the creature in front of him in amazement, not sure that he had heard him correctly. He blinked and pressed a hand to the back of his neck.
"What did you say?"
"Halldis is dead. She's lying on her front steps!"
He looked like a brave soldier who had come back to camp alone to report on the terrible loss of his whole platoon. Shaken to his soul, but with a sort of acquired dignity all the same. Standing before his commander, he had completed his mission.
"Sit down, young man!" said Gurvin with authority, nodding towards a chair. The boy stayed where he was.
"You mean the woman who has the small farm up in Finnemarka?"
"Yes."
"Have you come straight from there?"
"I was walking past. She's lying on the steps."
"Are you sure that she's dead?"