“Cold,” he whispers.
He flops onto his back in the weeds and mud.
The dogs’ racket grows, members of the pack stoking each other’s fury. They dash back and forth on the other side of the wall, leaping against the stones in frustration.
Ella covers her ears and leans over. Sweat is running down Winter’s broad forehead, which is now as white as marble. He’s having difficulty breathing. His pupils are steadily widening—not a good sign.
Ella first pats, then slaps him on the cheeks.
He takes a breath, gestures with a limp hand towards something behind the trees, and gasps, “It’s over there. Can you see it? It touched me. Cold as the devil.”
Ella turns to look.
Among the trees and spring plants is a blur of something. She can’t see it clearly, but she feels a coldness radiating from it. It’s a piece of dark winter night, a gaping hole in the fabric of the day.
The phantom.
Its shadow stretches as far as Winter’s feet. His massive body is shaken with the power of some internal earthquake. Foam trickles from between his pale lips.
Ella pants in quick breaths.
She stretches out her hand.
She must be trying to touch him. Or maybe she just wants to know what a phantom’s shadow feels like.
She stretches out her hand, and the shadow hits her skin.
Her teeth knock together as her body stiffens to a steely tenseness that reaches to every muscle. She makes a feeble sound, and falls.
No names, no memories, no future. Just an empty vessel with the cold of a winter night coiled inside it. Ella collects herself. She gathers her thoughts and feelings like seashells on a deserted beach, searching out her nerve pathways, wiring commands to her muscles.
She is able to rise, but then the earth wrenches her back and her chin slams against the ground.
The tears begin to freeze in her eyes.
She can’t seem to direct her own gaze anymore—her eyes stare straight at the phantom. It’s moving across the grass, headed towards Winter.
This is what tore up the bird last winter.
Now it’s here.
Ingrid Katz bicycles to Martti Winter’s house with the Christmas package strapped to the rear rack.
Luckily, there are no dogs in the front garden. They’re gathered next to the wall surrounding the back garden, making a racket like it was the last day on earth, their last shred of sense vanished. They must have flushed out a rabbit or a cat, or perhaps Martti’s grilling sausages in the back garden and the dogs are complaining of empty stomachs.
Ingrid hurries up the steps, takes out the spare key and opens the door.
She doesn’t go directly inside. She holds the door open with her foot long enough to put the key back in her purse. If Martti sees it in her hand he might demand that she give it back.
Something heavy knocks against her side. She falls and tumbles down the stairs. Her tailbone hurts. Her ribs tingle. She screams. Something is pressing down on her chest.
She thinks she’s been knocked down by Winter’s door, but when she opens her eyes she sees a black snout above her belonging to a large German Shepherd. The dog’s front paws are holding her against the ground.
The dog looks off to the side as if unaware that it’s holding her down. Its breath stinks. Ingrid feels like throwing up.
When she tries to wriggle free there’s a rumble of thunder within the dog and she loses her desire to resist its authority.
She forces herself to breathe. There’s no hurry. She can wait for the dog to tire of her and go and do something else. She has a patient nature. The dog clearly doesn’t intend to bite her face off, provided she doesn’t do anything to make it angry.
Ingrid manages to calm herself. She’s a little nervous about what’s happening at this moment behind the German Shepherd. At the moment, it’s a bit difficult to see anything very well—the dog won’t let her—but Ingrid’s dreams unfortunately seem to be coming true.
The front door is open.
A parade of dogs is scrambling into Martti Winter’s house.
Ella wakes up to the sound of dogs barking.
She’s lying on her side on the ground. She sees a beetle wriggling over her hand. The grass tickles her lips. Her head seems to have changed into an enormously large, heavy iceberg with her teeth chattering inside, but she gathers all her strength and manages to look in the direction the noise is coming from.
Dogs are streaming out of the terrace door into the garden.
She sees large dogs and small dogs, retrievers, collies and pugs, terriers, Great Danes, German Shepherds and spaniels, Belgian Shepherds, greyhounds and mutts.
The garden is full of dogs, and more keep coming. They bound through the trees, statues, and garden lights, an invasion covered in fur. They’re not barking now. A fierce war cry rises from their throats, a mixture of growls and howls and various small sounds as they rush with their mouths open towards Ella and Winter.
Ella closes her eyes and lets the cold lull her into oblivion.
A second passes, then perhaps a small eternity. Ella’s eyes blink open for a moment—a flash of yellow fangs, red mouths and slobber splashing through the air.
She wraps herself in darkness and breathes in the thick dog smell. The canine army streams over her in a heavy mass of fur. She crouches on her knees and covers her face with her hands as dozens of paws scratch and thud over her.
Somewhere very near the dogs sink their teeth into something and start ripping it to pieces. Ella’s consciousness and all the world is pierced by an inhuman cry.
Ella realizes that she’s relatively unscathed.
Her feet and hands are cold, stiff as wood and hurting, but when she examines herself she can see that she’s not bleeding. The dogs didn’t bite her. They just streamed over her and fell upon their enemy.
She crawls farther away from the ripping, snarling pack.
She sighs.
She wipes snot from her face, vomits and pisses her pants. She’s alive.
Then she freezes. She’s all right, but what about Martti? She turns her trembling head towards the pack of dogs, looking for him. All she can see are hairy paws, leaping rumps and tails.
And a spatter of red.
A cheery dog food commercial starts to churn mockingly through her mind—a woman with a small dog opens a can of “new, more nutritious, and best of all, tastier” dog food. Then she notices dogs running at her from all directions.
“Our best friends certainly know what they want for dinner!” she says.
39
THE RAGING, snarling commotion doesn’t stay put.
The victim at its centre tries to get away. The pack of dogs shows no mercy, moving with its prey, not letting the biting circle break for even a second.
Ella can’t see anything through her tears. It’s all covered by flowing salt water. She sinks to her knees, her hands behind her neck, and sways back and forth.
“Dash it,” someone says, quite nearby.
Ella wipes her eyes and blinks.
The mêlée continues in a new place now, the dogs growling and howling. In the spot where they were a moment ago lies Martti Winter’s stout, unmoving body, looking like a beached whale. He sits up, takes out a white handkerchief, puts it over his face and expels the contents of his nose into it.
“I thought they’d never leave,” he mutters. He plucks hairs from his clothing and sneezes.
“I think you’re allergic to dogs,” Ella whispers.
She stares at him and then turns to look at the dogs, who continue as raucously as before, battling the thing the mapper called the phantom. They sniffed it out long ago, but it wasn’t until today, after a year of anticipation, that they finally got the opportunity to do what their instincts demanded.
The furry battlefield moves around the garden like a whirlwind, bounding and barking.
A grey spaniel is left lying on the ground, its side ripped open. Then a sm
all German Shepherd puppy breaks off from the pack, turns around once and slumps limply onto the ground.
Over the next minute the dog army loses more blood into the garden soil. Ella sees eight dogs die in all. Others are left lying wounded, yelping quietly.
They cast dark glances at Ella and Winter.
The dogs refuse to surrender. When one is wounded or killed, the others fight that much more doggedly.
Then, just as the battle is at its most ferocious, the noise ceases totally unexpectedly and the garden is filled with a bewildered silence.
The dogs back away from the circle and start to disperse, glancing around them.
Ingrid Katz appears on the terrace.
“There you are,” she shouts. “I’ve been looking all over the house for you. Or rather, looking for your mournful remains. I was already planning a pretty funeral for you, and you’re out here smelling the flowers. You have a lot of nerve.”
Then she looks regretful and says, “Martti, I made a bit of a mistake. The dogs that were in the front garden got in the house. One of them came and… I don’t know where they are, but I think…”
She suddenly stops speaking. The German Shepherd lopes past her unconcerned and goes into the house, followed by two small mixed-breed dogs. Then the Shepherd stops, turns around and looks at her expectantly.
Martti Winter wipes his nose and shouts to Ingrid to call a veterinarian. “Tell them there are injured dogs here. And could you let those dogs out? They want to go home.”
Ingrid looks flabbergasted. Martti Winter impatiently waves her back into the house. He’ll explain everything later. For now she should just do as he asks.
Ella and Winter walk deeper into the garden.
The day is still beautiful. Dead and wounded dogs are lying here and there. The vet can help the living, they can bury the dead in the garden in a formal ceremony (Winter is moved at this idea and his voice breaks), but first they should finish what they’ve started.
When they get to the hole, they take out the oilcloth bundle and lay it on the grass, kneel beside it and carefully unwrap the notebook.
They exchange a look. Winter nods, and Ella begins to examine the book. She turns it over in her hands. It smells like old potatoes. The cover is faded almost to grey. All in all it seems to be in one piece.
“Just as I remember it,” Winter says, bending over to touch the cover. “My dream book… Well, go ahead and open it. You’ll see his name on the first page, in a beautiful, intelligent hand.”
Ella opens the notebook.
On the first page there is indeed written, in ornate lettering:
Oskar Södergran
“And on the next page,” Winter says, “his notes begin. Turn the page and you’ll find all the incredible, marvellous ideas that Oskar thought of and the Rabbit Back Literature Society stole. For thirty years I’ve dreamed up my own books from the contents of this one.”
Ella turns the page. They look at it for a long time without speaking.
“Turn to the next page,” Winter says at last.
Ella obeys.
“The next one.”
After a few pages, Winter tears the book from her hands and starts flipping through it. They turn page after page, tense, not daring even to look at each other, until they reach the end of the book.
“Dash it,” Winter whispers.
Aside from Oskar Södergran’s name, not a single word is written in the notebook.
The pages are, however, filled with writing.
At first, the eye can almost make out ancient runes, or magical diagrams of some kind. But when you look more closely, you see that they’re just abstract patterns drawn in intricate detail.
It makes Ella think of an address book that you doodle in during long phone conversations—all of the marks obviously took a lot of time and effort, but with no hint of an idea or a purpose.
Martti Winter presses his fingertips against his face and says, “This notebook contained a thousand story ideas. A thousand ideas, just as we suspected. That’s how I remember it.”
Ella gets up and fetches the letter from the picnic blanket. “It’s time we looked at what Oskar’s mother has to say,” she says, and starts to read the letter aloud.
Dear Miss Milana,
Thank you for your letter! It was wonderful to hear that our poor Oskar made such a big impression on his comrades before his untimely death. He was very proud to receive that notebook, and was always making his own strange little marks in it. He threw quite a fit when he noticed he’d forgotten it at Laura White’s house on his final visit there. If his book ended up in the hands of the young writers of the Rabbit Back Literature Society and was some sort of inspiration to them, I can only say that I’m happy to know that there was some small good in his tragic accident. If you do happen to find the notebook, could you possibly send it to me? I wrote Oskar’s name on the first page, and the book would have great sentimental value for me.
I understand, of course, if the members of the Society have something else planned for the notebook, but perhaps I could at least see it if I happen to visit Rabbit Back, or if one of you is in our area?
I was saddened to read in the paper about the events at Ms White’s house. She had a heart of gold, always looking after Oskar when he was staying with his grandma in Rabbit Back. It was sweet of you to refer to him as the “tenth member” of the Literature Society, and I believe with all my heart that it meant a great deal to him to be with children his own age, although he couldn’t communicate with them in the normal manner.
My husband and I always admired Ms White and thought of her very warmly. Although she was a famous author, when I met her on the street with Oskar and my mother, she took time to chat with a humble old woman, and when she heard about Oskar’s condition (which nowadays would be called autism), she invited our beautiful but otherwise very challenged child to spend time at her house with the other children who came there regularly.
Of course, we didn’t know at the time that those children would become the most important names in Finnish literature. If we had, we would hardly have dared to send our Oskar, who couldn’t read or write, among such illustrious company.
Both I and my husband, who has passed away, were avid readers, and because of my husband’s visual impairment, I read the classics aloud to him whenever I could. There is a funny anecdote that my mother once told me she’d heard from Laura White: apparently our normally quiet son would often quote long passages from books I’d read aloud by writers such as Melville, Waltari and Proust when he was at her house, which greatly impressed Ms White.
Oskar may have been disabled in many ways, and of course he didn’t understand the things he was quoting, but he was granted special gifts like these. If they brought joy to others, that’s one more thing for me to be grateful for.
Sincerely,
Mirja Södergran, mother of Oskar
APPENDIX
RABBIT BACK MYTHOLOGICAL HERITAGE SOCIETY
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Copyright
Pushkin Press
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Original text © 2006 Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
English translati
on © 2013 Lola M. Rogers
The Rabbit Back Literature Society was first published in Finland as Lumikko ja yhdeksän muuta by Atena Kustannus
Published by agreement with the Kontext Agency
This edition first published by Pushkin Press in 2013
ISBN 978 1 782270 77 5
We thank FILI for their generous support of this translation.
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