by Olivier Truc
The rest of the journey was spent in silence. They encountered only three big trucks, looming like monsters from the abyss. Their brightly lit cabins and powerful headlights swept the tundra, revealing strange shadows that disappeared as soon as they had passed. Behind them, they threw up clouds of swirling snow, the tiny flakes dancing in fury at their disturbance.
Nina had fallen asleep. Klemet thought over everything that had happened since the beginning of the affair. What had Mattis got himself into? Everything suggested he had been cruelly manipulated to get at the drum. His good faith had been abused. His naïveté, too. Was he really the heir to a long line of Sami shamans, their people’s secret keepers? Klemet couldn’t picture Mattis—an ordinary, small-time herder—in that role. If Mattis had been aware of his ancestral duty and his failure to live up to it, he had good reason to sink into despair.
I’d have done the same, thought Klemet. What would I have done in my grandfather’s position, when he took the decision to give up reindeer breeding? I might have hung on. And I would have gone under in the end, like Mattis. Perhaps. He wasn’t sure, though. His father hadn’t gone under. He had stuck with his peripatetic life, a succession of odd jobs at the farm in the vidda and the mine in Kiruna.
In midevening, on the approach to Kautokeino, Klemet decided to stop at Suohpatjavri. He hesitated to wake Nina, then left the engine running, turned up the heating, took the drum, and walked into his uncle’s house without knocking. Closing the door behind him, he heard Nils Ante’s melodious voice coming from upstairs.
Chang with her eyes so black, in Suohpatjavri
The treasures of all the world at once
She is young, she is rich, she is beautiful
She has two thousand reindeer who worship her
And the green pastures dance at her sight.
Klemet waited in silence in the doorway. The joïk lasted for several long minutes, the same words repeated over and over, to subtly different, guttural melodies. Nils Ante was singing in the middle of the room, under the enchanted, adoring gaze of Miss Chang, seated next to the computer. The screen was turned to face his uncle. Klemet could see Miss Chang’s elderly grandmother watching on Skype. He wondered what on earth time of day it was in China. The old lady clapped her hands and spoke at the same time. Miss Chang started and sprang to her feet, ducking around Nils Ante to take Klemet by the hand.
“My grandmother spotted you first, again, and she even recognized you!” she declared delightedly.
“Better than an alarm system,” said Klemet, grinning and waving to Miss Chang’s elderly relative, who waved back, her movements made jerky by the Internet connection. “I see the joïk’s taking shape,” he said to his uncle.
“As I told you before, I’m getting to the nub of the matter. It will make a pretty piece. We’ll try it out on YouTube, and I shall perform it at the Easter Festival. Let’s have some coffee.”
The two men waved in the direction of China and headed downstairs.
“And where is your charming colleague?”
“Sleeping in the warm, in the car. We’ve just come back from Karesuando. Hurri Manker was there.”
“And so?” Nils Ante was impatient. He reached for the coffeepot, still warming on the stove, and filled two cups.
Klemet told his uncle all about Hurri Manker’s scholarly conclusions: Madderakka, the evil mother figure with the dots over her head; Uksakka, notable by her absence; the king, the soldier, and the pastor; the hallucination; the deserted village; the transport of the mineral ores; the Lights. He told him about their own theories, too: the miners, perhaps, and a deserter, or a miner trying to run way. Nils Ante sipped his coffee, listening to every word of his nephew’s explanation, serving himself two more cups of coffee before Klemet had finished. He made a fresh pot, then examined the drum on its blanket in the middle of the kitchen table, without saying a word. He was clearly moved and thoughtful. Like Hurri, just a few hours earlier.
“Mmm. Do you know what story I think the drum is telling? The story of the colonization of our land.”
“Go on, then, explain.”
“The Scandinavian kingdoms began to take an interest in Sápmi because of the fur trade, then, little by little, for its natural resources. Wood, water, minerals.”
“Sure. The Spaniard’s bored us rigid with all that, time and again. The Sami are victims, their birthright has been looted. Like the Native American tribes.”
“Well, the Spaniard is quite right. But you are apparently unaware of a number of truly tragic episodes in that colonization process. When it began, in the seventeenth century, there were no roads in Sápmi. It was uncharted territory. Trade followed the rivers, in summer. When the Swedish monarchy began looking for ores to pay for its wars and weapons, it mounted expeditions to explore the region, sent mapmakers. There were small mining operations, whose working conditions you can well imagine, here at the edge of the world, far from everything. It must have been appalling. I shudder at the very thought of it.
“The Swedes recruited the Sami by force,” Nils Ante went on, “to work in the mines. And they used reindeer to transport the ores to the rivers. There’s your story. Any Sami who refused was beaten and imprisoned. Behold the foundations of the wealth of your splendid Nordic kingdoms. It didn’t last, of course. The small mines all closed, one after the other. Many Sami lost their lives. The Scandinavian countries seized the land for next to nothing, with the blessings of the Crown, delighted to have tamed our country. But all this was still on a small scale. It was another two hundred years before the Swedes returned in force, with the railway this time.”
“And the same on the Finnish and Norwegian sides?”
“It was all the same back then. The frontiers only came to Sápmi much later. Everyone tried to fill their pockets on the backs of Sami labor. The drum tells the story of one of those mines. But not just any one. This business of the dead, and the village emptied of its people, the curse, reminds me of a song that tells a similar story. You know, for centuries joïks were our way of passing on our history. Those coffins are quite dreadful. And the crows. And the dead. And this village. Klemet, the drum tells of a Sami village that was exterminated. I had always hoped the legend was not true. But it all makes sense when you look at this drum. The soldiers are not the only cause. This symbolic hallucination is no accident, right here at the entrance to the mine. That’s the killer. They were annihilated by a mysterious sickness. You have to find it, Klemet, before it kills again, if the seam is uncovered once more.”
47
Wednesday, January 26
Sunrise: 9:13 a.m.; sunset: 1:50 p.m.
4 hours 37 minutes of sunlight
8:45 a.m., Kautokeino
Kautokeino felt almost springlike. The temperature had softened abruptly, as it often did. The cloud cover maintained a clement 1°F, the air could be breathed in comfort, and the cold was quite bearable. In front of the police station, the group of protesters had swelled. A dozen Sami had gathered around the brazier. The placards had multiplied, too. The demands were essentially the same, but the tone was harsher now: “Justice = shame,” “End the witch hunt NOW.” Renson and Johann Henrik had spent their first night in the cell.
Acting on Klemet’s advice, Nina did not stop at the station but drove straight past, stopped to buy copies of the Finnmark Dagblad and the other local paper, Altaposten, then headed straight for the tent. Her partner had already made the coffee.
No news had reached them on the whereabouts of the French geologist. They would have to set out in search of him. Nina thought about Nils Ante’s words of warning, as reported by Klemet when he had accompanied her home the previous evening. They must act fast, before the mysterious seam began killing again. First, though, they had to pay a discreet call on Karl Olsen. See if the old farmer could tell them anything about his father.
The Sheriff’s car pulled up in front of Klemet’s house at almost exactly the same time as Nina. Tor Jensen was still clad fro
m head to foot in his old fatigues, and even more fired up than before. The cloud cover created a bright, even glare, and Jensen was wearing sunglasses, accentuating his martial getup. He removed them as he bent under the tent flap, tossing two folders onto the reindeer skins.
“More on Racagnal and his outfit. The second folder contains some information about the firm he was working for on his first visit around here.”
Klemet poured him some coffee and opened the first folder. The Frenchman had been working for the SFM for twelve years. He had visited every corner of the globe. Over the course of his career, he had served just three companies in total, starting with another French outfit that had eventually folded in the 1990s, according to the dossier. Well before that, Racagnal had moved on to a Chilean firm, Mino Solo, for whom he had carried out missions in Latin America and Europe—the only new piece of information to come to light since the dossier was first compiled. He had been working for Mino Solo on his first extended stay in Lapland, from 1977 to 1983, dividing his time between mining and dam projects.
“So?” asked Nina.
“Nothing red hot,” said Klemet, “apart from the details on Mino Solo, the outfit he worked for here before. Still, I can’t believe it’s a coincidence. This guy, a specialist on the region, turns up out of nowhere, the drum disappears just afterward, and Mattis is found stabbed.”
“Take a look at the second folder,” advised the Sheriff.
Klemet pulled out a few sheets of paper: a police report and some newspaper cuttings. This was all new to them. The documents described Mino Solo and its activities in Lapland between 1975 and 1984, before the company was forced to leave. Two corruption cases. Abuse of power and influence. A series of botched environmental inquiries. Threats. Complaints from the locals. Anonymous damage to property. The police report was harsh, but in most cases there was no conclusive proof. The press articles suggested tensions had been running high; a number of protests had been held. Klemet recognized a very young-looking Olaf Renson in one photograph, brandishing a placard reading: “Let our river live, Mino Solo OUT.”
Mino Solo was presented as the embodiment of all the ills of industrialization afflicting the region, responsible for a wave of trouble and unrest. Hundreds of engineers and laborers, both Norwegian and foreign, had poured into small Sami villages, bringing a host of problems. Everyone had heaved a sigh of relief when the sites were closed down.
Klemet replaced the file and stared into space. “A river!”
Nina and Sheriff eyed him, uncomprehending.
“A river. The snake on the drum, it’s a river! Why the hell didn’t I see that before?”
The Sheriff still looked lost but Nina understood. Klemet had to be right. She fetched the drum and all three bent over the drawings.
“Of course, the seam lies near a major river leading to the sea. Logical. The ore had to be transported. Even with reindeer, it couldn’t be taken very far overland.”
Klemet turned to one of the chests around the edge of the tent and pulled out a set of 1:50,000 maps of the region. He spread them out on the reindeer skins covering the floor, then lit more lamps, adding to the light from the flames.
“Racagnal applied to explore two areas around Kautokeino,” said Klemet. “One application was lodged last autumn, covering the northwest, but a second one was rushed through last Wednesday, covering three zones in a large area extending east and southeast as far as the Finnish border. Eva Nilsdotter, the director of the Nordic Geological Institute, spotted that the zones selected had characteristics in common. Which means he must be acting on precise descriptions. He must be out there now, on the trail of a specific seam described in a specific document. We think it’s the same seam that the German geologist was looking for in 1939.”
“On what grounds?” asked the Sheriff.
“Just a bunch of coincidences for the moment—nothing concrete, I admit. We’re basing our assumptions on a set of photographs from 1939. Eva Nilsdotter eliminated one of the three areas by estimating the distance Flüger had covered on foot back in 1939. All three areas, including the one discounted by Eva, feature a river following roughly the same course—flowing from the northwest, heading south, then turning back east and then down again, to the southeast. And now, look—take the drum, turn it so that north as indicated by the aurora is aligned with north on the map. It’s a near-perfect fit. The snake follows the river’s path exactly. Now, that’s more than a bunch of coincidences, wouldn’t you say?”
“Fascinating,” breathed the Sheriff.
“It means,” said Klemet, “that the French geologist is looking for the seam indicated on this drum—”
“—without ever having seen it,” Nina finished.
“So the old geological map that Eva was talking about must really exist somewhere. Perhaps Racagnal knew something about it. Eva identified a high plateau with a lake to the southeast, and areas marked by fault lines to the northeast. And if we look at the symbols on the drum, with the mountains, a lake, it more or less fits. Look at this map. Turn it around like this—” Klemet rotated the map “—and you’ve got the river flowing in the right direction, a lake here, and higher mountainous areas to either side. It’s clearly the best fit of the two remaining possibilities. And there,” Klemet declared, pointing at the sheet, “the seam, marked by a cross on the drum, is within this area. That’s where we’ll find Racagnal.”
* * *
Central Sápmi
André Racagnal dismissed the second area more quickly. But he had taken some samples nonetheless. He was known as the best tracker of boulders in the profession—rocks torn out of a seam by a passing glacier and carried along as the ice advanced. Tracking interesting boulders back upstream along the path of an ancient glacier could lead you to their mother seams. In the early stages of an expedition, when he was setting out to explore an unknown area, trusting to luck, Racagnal’s patient observation was his great strength. His older colleagues—the ones who had watched him at work out in the field—called him the Buddha of the Boulders. But they had watched his serene calm disappear, too, when he identified a boulder that might lead to a promising seam. Then, the Buddha became the Bulldog. Hilarious. It kept them entertained, at least. But they were right. Once he fastened onto the trail of a decent boulder, he forgot everything else around him. The second zone he had explored here had demonstrated his Buddha-like qualities to the full. There had been a hint of frustration, too. But he consoled himself that he had time in hand for the third zone, which he was now approaching.
Without the old geological map, he would never have made such rapid progress. He had covered a fair distance since this morning. No need to comply with the scooter regulations now. And if he ran into trouble on that score, the old farmer and his pal, that stupid bastard of a cop, would sort it out. The sky was cloudy, but the light was bright and glaring. Racagnal glanced at the map, then looked at the surrounding landscape. He had entered a twisting valley, bare of vegetation except for a few gnarled bushes huddled low on the ground. The snow cover was thin, and he could see numerous rocky outcrops, like brown stains peppering the rolling swell of white. He observed a good twenty or so rocks. Took quantities of quartz samples, as in the other two areas—some interesting micas, feldspar colored an evocative, appetizing shade of pink. He was in a markedly granitic zone, and that was exactly what he was after. From experience, he could tell that there were large quantities of quartz here, too.
He had been wielding his Swedish hammer all morning, shattering rock after rock. The shards were highly revealing. He got out his magnifying glass from time to time, but even with the naked eye he could identify the quartz slivers, like tiny splinters of glass, gleaming dully in the rock.
At 11:12 a.m., he felt he was making real progress at last, and for the first time. He liked precision, and he noted the exact time in his field book. From the outset, Racagnal had been alert to the indications of yellow metal on the map, and old Olsen’s gold-mine obsession. In its na
tural state, it was highly unusual to find significant quantities of gold. Its presence was revealed in tiny splinters and slivers. But at 11:12 a.m., he had found a new boulder, not that large, partly buried in the snow, whose intriguing, blackish color caught his eye. Its rounded shape indicated that it had been carried in the glacier over a long period. Impervious to the cold now, Racagnal brandished his hammer and shattered the boulder into pieces, revealing brilliant yellow-colored fragments in the rough surface. Steady now, he told himself, feeling the adrenaline rush, the bulldog straining at the leash. He called the Sami guide, told him to set up the shelter and spread reindeer skins on the ground inside. He breathed deeply, containing his excitement, a feat he managed often enough, and watched the Sami set out the equipment. Racagnal got out the camping stove and set about making coffee. He enjoyed the ritual, just as when he’d cornered one of his little minxes. When you figured you were getting somewhere, that was when you had to slow down. Take your time. Savor the moment. Enjoy the adrenaline flooding your being. Too bad if it was a false alarm. Rocks could disappoint. A little minx could slip from his grasp. So it was important to relish the preliminaries. At last, he took out his magnifying glass, eyeing the intense yellow in the black rock. He even felt like letting the Sami in on the moment.
“Look,” he said simply.
The Sami came over and looked, his expression a complete blank. The geologist shrugged his shoulders and peered at the intense yellow in the rock. He walked the few paces over to the snowmobile trailer and took out a measuring instrument, an SPP2 scintillometer—a pistol-shaped device, battery-powered, weighing about two pounds. He buckled the leather strap and changed the batteries. In this cold, he went through three times as many batteries as he had in Africa. The SPP2 began to emit noise, about a hundred shocks a second. But the granite rocks all around pushed it up to three hundred. Natural radiation. Deceptive. Gold was possible in faults like these, running through igneous rock. You had to push on, ignoring the whining from the SPP2.