by Diego Marani
‘Hotel,’ said the Vostyach.
‘Yes, hotel,’ the professor agreed. Then he paused for thought. He had been surprised by the Vostyach’s tone of voice: when asking a question, after initially rising, it then seemed to fall. Then he remembered the interrogative prefix. Unlike in Finnic languages of the Baltic group, in Proto-Uralic the interrogative particle was thought not to exist. Obviously there must be a tone of voice for expressing a question, but no one had ever been able to distinguish it, and it was impossible to reconstruct it. Perhaps that was what the Vostyach was using. Aurtova was intrigued. For all his current criminal intent, for a moment his mind was once more that of a scientist. Right now – albeit not for very long – he was in the presence of the last Vostyach. He wanted to hear the famous velar affricatives and retroflex palatals with his own ears.
‘You speak language of men?’ he asked his guest, bringing out Nganasan words at random.
Ivan frowned uncomprehendingly.
‘Ivan Vostyach, Vostyach,’ he exclaimed in alarm.
‘Yes, me understand, Vostyach! Speak Vostyach!’ Aurtova urged him, somewhat curtly.
‘Speak Vostyach!’ Ivan repeated, scarcely more politely.
‘Vostyach, puhukää, sana, wada, may, rääkidi!’ Now Aurtova came out with a volley of Finno-Ugric words.
‘Vostyach!’ repeated Ivan in exasperation.
Then Aurtova lost patience and turned to Russian:
‘In a word, my friend, where are you from? Let’s hear a bit about you! Are you really a Vostyach? Or just a dolgan shepherd who wandered into the Tajmyr Peninsula and told Olga a pack of lies? Come on, tell me the truth!’
When he heard his host abandon the friendly sounds of Finnish and move on to the spongy palatalisation typical of Russian, Ivan stiffened. Olga Pavlovna had promised him that there were no Russians in Finland. He put the drum on his knee, braced himself with his feet and thrust his back against the door with all his strength, until the window shattered and he was able to wriggle out.
‘No, wait, me friend! Jarmo friend of Vostyach! Jarmo little Vostyach!’ Aurtova began to plead in Finnish, trying to put on an Estonian accent, which sounded more uncouth. Ivan had run to the corner of a block of buildings and was watching Aurtova’s movements with suspicion. The professor had picked up the sack from the back seat and was waving it around slowly, as though it were a bait, as he tried to approach the Vostyach.
‘Pardon! I Finnish, no ruski, Suomi, Helsinki! This hotel!’ he said quietly, trying not to attract attention. ‘Olga this evening arrive here hotel. Olga Vostyach!’
Hearing Olga’s name, Ivan calmed down. He turned back towards the car and snatched his sack out of Aurtova’s hands.
‘Hotel?’ the professor suggested in a friendly tone.
‘Hotel,’ repeated Ivan.
‘Good,’ answered Aurtova with relief.
They went up the dark staircase of a council house. On the second-floor landing, Aurtova knocked three times and gestured to Ivan to stand back. The door was opened grudgingly and a threatening face became visible in the semi-darkness.
‘The rest of the money!’ said the face’s owner, putting out a rough, red hand.
Aurtova felt in his pockets. He handed the man a wad of notes held together with an elastic band, and the envelope with the Silja Line ticket.
‘The agreement is as follows. You keep him here until this evening, then put him on the 18.15 boat. And remember, make sure he’s good and drunk,’ hissed the professor through the crack in the door, receiving a grunt by way of answer. The door then closed again, to reopen a few seconds later to reveal a large, thickset man with a flat face peppered with reddish freckles. His nose looked as if the nostrils had been brutally dug out of it with the use of a drill, his eyes were two narrow clefts in the leathery skin. He was wearing a leather jacket which was too small for him, from which his huge hands protruded like lifeless lumps. He looked Ivan over sharply, casting a sneering grimace in the professor’s direction. Aurtova took a step backwards, giving the man’s gnarled hands a nervous look as they clenched and unclenched.
He thought back with disgust to the previous night’s humiliation, when he had had to go into that bar to pick up a prostitute in order to be able to speak with the Laplander. Tatiana disgusted him, but she was the only one available. Aurtova had followed her into a room at the back of the bar, though he felt not the slightest desire to lay a finger on that obese reindeer. All he wanted was for her to take him to the Laplander. Aurtova did not know him, indeed he had never even seen him. All he knew about the owner of the ‘Unusi Teatteri’ was that he was a Laplander and that he had some girls working for him in rooms behind the bar. But Tatiana misread the situation. Thinking that Aurtova was nervous, she pulled out her breasts, pouring champagne over them and laughing. It was only after they had gone into the room, which smelt of unwashed socks, and Aurtova refused to take his clothes off, that the Laplander arrived. Tatiana had pressed a button on the telephone, then put her clothes on again, cursing. Seated on the edge of the bed, she was waiting, chain-smoking, swearing furiously. The Laplander too was furious, because Tatiana had wasted a whole hour. Then he had punched Aurtova and paid Tatiana as though she were Miss Finland herself. Only afterwards had he heard him out.
Now Ivan and the two men went down the stairs in silence, then into the street and along to the bar. Day had now broken, but the street-lamps were still alight. A strong wind was raising eddies of snow. The Laplander turned the key and pushed open the bar door.
‘Hotel,’ said Ivan.
‘Yes, hotel,’ agreed Aurtova, pushing the Vostyach through the door with a reassuring smile. The place smelt of smoke and stale liquor, and the animal stench that came from Ivan mingled with them, forming a heady brew. In the bruised half-light the wood of the counter and the grimy glass of the windows and mirrors winked back at one another half-heartedly. The soles of their shoes squeaked on the tiles of the beer-drenched floor. Ivan was hanging back, moving forward cautiously into that unknown cave. Aurtova pulled him firmly into the room, as though hoping to cut off his last line of escape. ‘Vostyach now rest, this evening Olga! Hyvää? Hästi?’ he said to him, uttering each syllable with particular care and putting his face threateningly near to Ivan’s. The Laplander had opened a door concealed in the wall at the end of the room and was showing Ivan into a lit corridor. Walking backwards between the tables, still covered with dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays, Aurtova waved goodbye to the Vostyach and went out into the street, then set off hastily towards the car, relieved to be free of his charge but a little disappointed still not to have heard the lateral affricative with labiovelar overlay.
Margareeta didn’t even wait for Hurmo to stop urinating. She dragged him brutally through the snow, where he left a yellow trail. This was the third time she had walked round the block and rung her husband’s doorbell, to no avail. Yet his car was parked in front of the house, and Jarmo never went anywhere without his car, not even to the university which was two steps away. Perhaps he had spent the night with one of his cheap prostitutes or was sleeping it off on a friend’s sofa. Was it or was it not Saturday morning? Or perhaps he had seen Margareeta from the window and, guessing her intentions, was pretending not to be at home so that he would not have to take the dog. Before the evening was out, either that dog would be reunited with its master, or it would be found the next morning outside the main door, rock-solid as the statue of Haavis Amanda. The weather forecast had proved correct. By the time dawn broke, a bank of cloud was already darkening the sky towards the east. The wind was sending increasingly dense swirls of snow rustling against the window panes. Margareeta decided that it would be wiser to take refuge in some café and eat a nice slice of cake, waiting for the blizzard to die down. She would go back later, hoping to catch Jarmo by surprise; she wouldn’t ring the bell, but have herself let in by a neighbour. The Kluuvi Shopping Centre was still empty at that hour. The first shops were rolling up their shutters a
nd the salesgirls were putting on their uniforms. A newspaper vendor was hanging up advertisements for the dailies outside his kiosk. Inside the bar, the television was on, but without the sound. Margareeta bought a newspaper and sat down at a table amidst waiters who were still mopping the floor. Hurmo huddled miserably under her chair, his snow-covered fur leaving a little puddle beside him.
The Laplander stopped half-way down the corridor. He opened a door and, after a short delay when Ivan stood obstinately on the threshold, trampling the thick moquette, hustled him in. The room was windowless; a lamp, swathed in scarves, gave out a ruddy light, revealing dark-papered walls, a chest of drawers of varnished wood and a bed with the covers pulled neatly back. The Laplander thrust the Silja Line ticket into the Vostyach’s pocket, took a plastic bottle and two glasses out of the fridge, put them on the bedside table and left the room. Ivan looked around him. Two tubular metal light fittings hung from the ceiling, connected to a wire which ran all round it, giving out a dull, unsteady light; they jingled slightly when the Laplander closed the door. The wall at the foot of the bed was entirely covered by a poster depicting a tropical beach. A fish tank containing little coloured fish was gurgling on a console table. Ivan stared at them in delight, and they stared back. A small stick of incense, in a brass brazier shaped like a dragon, gave out a slight thread of smoke. Ivan heard a rustling noise and a sound of running water, coming from behind a curtain. From the other side of the wall came the low cackle of a radio. Somewhere else, a heating pipe was clicking away, giving out a smell of dry paint. Suddenly the curtain twitched, then opened, and a sturdy middle-aged woman appeared, with extremely black hair and a heavily made-up face. She was wearing a black lace leotard, open at the front, revealing red underwear, dangling suspenders and a deep-set belly button in a fleshy fold of skin.
‘Hello!’ she said, sidling towards Ivan in her little silver clogs in a manner suggestive of some tried and trusted ritual; but then a whiff of rankness, sudden as a slap, brought her up short and forced her to retreat, to collapse abruptly on to the edge of the bed, seized with a fit of coughing, until she could recover herself. Regaining her composure, she adjusted her hair, and leotard. Then she picked up the bottle and filled the two glasses on the bedside table, downing one in a single gulp and reaching out to hand the other to the Vostyach, keeping him prudently at arm’s length. Ivan shook his head and backed up against the door. He had never seen a woman dressed like that. He did not know that they wore such items beneath their outer garments. In the turnip-growers’ village the innkeeper’s wife wore felt boots and voluminous coarse cloth breeches beneath her heavy overcoat. Ivan had seen them once when he was spying on her in the back of the shop. And the eyes of the fair-haired woman who collected his words were nothing like the lying, threatening eyes of the woman he had before him now. He stayed where he was, shaking.
‘I’m Katia.’ In an effort to stifle an incipient coughing fit the woman now emptied Ivan’s glass as well. Swaying her hips, she slipped off her leotard and approached her client, who stared at her in horrified fascination. Making a smacking sound with her fleshy lips, she gave him a slight peck, allowing her breasts to brush against him, but then promptly recoiled, again overwhelmed by the stench.
‘And you? What are you called? Where are you from?’ She stood with her legs apart, her heels wedged firmly into the carpet. She spoke a broken Finnish, and Ivan could not understand a word of what she said. He stared in bewilderment at the hairless white body he saw wiggling before him.
‘Katia,’ he repeated in a strangled voice.
‘You too?’ said the woman, laughing. She took a few steps backwards, put her hands behind her back and undid her bra, which rolled down over her stomach and landed between her feet. Ivan stared at the skimpy red garment where it lay, amazed that something so small could contain so much swollen softness. He would have liked to pick it up and have a closer look. But then his interest was caught by the sight of the woman’s chest. Katia took him in her arms and let him spread himself against her, then stretched out on the bed, kicking her clogs into the air. The Vostyach had not so much as loosened a fastening of his heavy leather jacket. Trickles of sweat were making their way down his temples and neck. Now he was shuffling his boots on the moquette, clutching his sack and drum. Bothered by the smoke from the incense, he wrinkled his nose and tried to keep his distance from the brazier; but there was nowhere to retreat to.
‘Come on, give them a feel! Just see how smooth they are!’ the woman said, stroking her breasts with her hands. Her legs were still apart, and she was moving her pelvis up and down. Under the red triangle of her panties Ivan could now see a black shape from which he found it impossible to look away.
‘Come on!’ she said again, invitingly. She rolled around on top of the sheets and then lay still, stretched out on her stomach. The Vostyach could still see that mesmerising black shape between her thighs, below those big white buttocks. He felt like touching them. He put his things down and knelt on the bed. First he brushed the white surface with his fingertips, then he felt the soft skin with the flat of his hand. It was warm and tender, he liked pressing it between his fingers, then letting it go and pressing it again, like soft dough which kept the mark of the outline of his hands. She was no ordinary woman, he could see that. She must be a city creature, who had grown up indoors, under electric light, amidst noisy crowds, without ever breathing the cold air of the woods, which flays your skin, makes your eyes stream and hardens your limbs. Such a creature could live only in the stifling heat of this room, she must feed off soap and the white juice in that bottle, and breathe the bitter smoke from the little metal mask on the bedside table. Perhaps she had been born of one of the coloured fish in the fish tank. A gleaming little cartilaginous fish, she would have swum in its water and grown up concealed in cold fish scales – yellow and blue and red – which gradually flaked off, revealing her beauty, her seaweed skin. Ivan imagined all the coloured fish in the tank as so many Katias-to-be. Soon they would all be utterly transformed, would emerge from the water in their glorious new incarnation and enfold him in their velvety caresses, in their cool, dripping embrace.
While the Vostyach was exploring her flesh, Katia carried on with her wiggling, emitting false little giggles as she did so. She had lifted her head and was nervously observing Ivan’s hands as they explored her body, then finally parted her thighs. She was beginning to lose patience. It was bad enough having to put up with the man’s stench. She certainly wasn’t going to put on an erotic performance in order to excite him. He’d better undress and get on with it. She tried to slip two fingers into his underpants to get them down, but Ivan pulled them out of her grasp with a blow from one paw-like hand. He then became extremely agitated. His heart was beating violently under the heavy, laced up skins. Hot beads of sweat were falling from his eyebrows into his eyes, his ears were burning, his legs were trembling, the veins in his temples, taut as bowstrings, throbbed to the rhythm of his breath. He leant forward over the black shape, which had now become one with the shadow of the sheet, and pressed his whole hand down on it. It felt warm, damp and sticky, like the torn belly of a hare when you put in a hand to pull out the innards. He touched flesh as tender and smooth as entrails. He was expecting to smell their bitter stench, the sweetish aroma of blood. But his nostrils met with a different smell entirely, one which took his breath away and caused his eyes to mist over, leaving him unable to move. The woman turned over on her back and pulled him up on to the pillow beside her. She began to touch his lips and caress his forehead, sinking her fingers into his hair. Ivan half-closed his eyes. No one had ever caressed him before, no hand had ever been placed so gently on his forehead. Katia slipped her fingers slowly into the neck of his jacket. She was breathing through her mouth, trying to undo the leather knots so that she could ease him out of those foul skins. But Ivan was on his guard, and when he felt her pulling on the knots he pushed her hand away. The scent of that skin, which smelt of sugar, the sight
of that spotless body beneath his own, made his head swim, as it did when he had spent a sleepless night drumming for his wolves to come to him. A melting feeling stole over him, a swooning sense of sweet abandonment. Still dressed from head to foot in his putrid skins, his feet still in his sodden boots, he threw himself upon the woman, clasping her to him, clutching her as though he wanted to claw the flesh from her every limb, tear her to shreds and stuff the pieces into his mouth. Katia tried to calm him, to regain the initiative, but Ivan was now seized with a fury there was no assuaging. He unlaced what had to be unlaced and thrust himself brutally between her thighs with a hoarse moan. A scream sent the fish scurrying off to a corner of the tank. Ivan tensed his muscles and slammed her down on to the bed, tightening his grip, rejoicing in his exploration of every last nook and cranny of that white body, digging his nails into the yielding flesh, watching her veins swell and her breasts quake. His body was burning, drops of his sweat were falling on to Katia’s chest in greasy globules. But he could not stop himself: he clung to her grimly, crushing her beneath him, breathing in her sweetish smell, mingled with the stench of animal fat and mud from his own rough skins. Suddenly the bed collapsed on to the bedside table, knocking off the lamp, which did not shatter, but rolled off in the direction of the fish-tank. There on the ground, in the tangle of sheets, he felt a spasm shoot through his whole body, biting as a whiplash; his stomach contracted with a stab of pain. Then his limbs seemed to melt, the blood to flow more smoothly in his veins. He loosened his grip. He lifted his sweat-drenched head and opened his mouth, gasping for air in that incense-laden room. Beneath him, Katia was no longer laughing, or swaying her hips. She was staring fixedly at the metal light fittings hanging from the ceiling. Across her neck ran a red trickle, though in the dim lighting it looked black. It started from behind her ear, then spread over the now matted hair on the nape of her neck. Horrified, Ivan looked at his hands. Muffled sounds were now coming from somewhere beyond the wall, becoming more distinct, moving in his direction. Someone was rattling at the door, causing it to bang against the bedstead. An angry voice was shouting threatening words in Russian. Ivan clenched his fists, and braced himself. In his mind’s eye, he saw the chinks of light between the boards of the hut, smelt the smell of burnt urine, heard the steps of the soldiers on the snow, the sound of gunshots in the darkness. The door burst open with a splintering sound and the Laplander hurtled into the room, causing the bed-head to knock into the fish-tank. A spurt of red water gushed from the fragments of glass and the coloured fish slithered away, over the grubby carpet, over Katia’s breasts and legs. They darted around, then settled on the black shape that had caused Ivan such consternation. In contact with the water, the lamp sputtered, gave out blue sparks and exploded, plunging the room into total darkness.