by Mikael Niemi
“No, she shouldn’t.”
“Even if things are hard. You have to try to hold on.”
It sounded as though he were aiming the words at himself. The pastor turned to the man’s wife and shyly put his hand on her shoulder. She gave a start, unused as she was to being touched.
“Tell me what happened when you found her.”
“I . . . I was calling for Jolina. I looked in the barn and the woodshed. And then I saw something hanging at the edge of the forest. I knew at once it was her.”
“Yes?”
“I ran inside and shouted for Elias and the boys.”
Jolina’s brothers nodded silently.
“What happened then?”
“Father cut her down,” the elder son muttered.
“We laid her on the rug here,” Elias continued. “I thought . . . that maybe you can’t take them into the house.”
“You can.”
“People who’ve taken their own life, I mean.”
“You can lay her in the sauna for the time being. So the sheriff can look at her.”
“We haven’t sent for him.”
“It’s probably better if you do. Let’s carry the body in now. I can see flies are starting to gather.”
Elias bent over the body and waved away the insects. He covered it awkwardly with the blanket and then he and his sons lifted the lifeless corpse. I could see that her limbs had begun to stiffen; her arm was protruding, fingers splayed, as they carried her into the sauna. In a dignified manner, the men laid Jolina on the bench, whereupon the pastor sank to his knees by her head and prayed. With his eyes half closed and his back more bent than usual, he was lost in deepest devotion. I turned to Elias and his sons and whispered:
“I think we should leave the pastor in peace. Arrange for the sheriff to come while I stay and keep the pastor company. And please bring a tallow candle.”
Kristina immediately came with the candle for the dark sauna, we lit it, and then, with bows and curtsies, they left. I carefully shut the door after them. The pastor swiftly stood up, took off his coat, and rolled up his sleeves. I took out pencil and paper and made myself ready.
“We have to hurry,” he whispered. “Poor girl.”
With great care he pulled back the blanket covering her and moved the candle closer.
“The neck,” he began. “The neck has been damaged by the rope. But notice the marks too.”
“Yes.”
He held his hands out and measured with his fingertips. They matched the bruises in an uncanny way.
“Just like Hilda Fredriksdotter. The monster strangled her with his bare hands. She was presumably already dead when he hoisted her up into the tree.”
“So . . . she hasn’t committed suicide?”
“These are injuries we recognize, Jussi. Crescent-shaped indentations in the skin of the neck.”
“From the culprit’s nails.”
He cautiously lifted off the coins and gently pulled back her eyelids. Jolina’s empty pupils were hideous to behold. He studied the bloodshot whites of her eyes in the light from the tallow candle.
“The small blood vessels have burst. That, too, indicates strangulation. Make a note, Jussi.”
“But how can the pastor know?”
“It’s ordinary science. I had a friend at Uppsala who was a medical student. Write this down, Jussi. She has bruises on her arms, typical assault injuries.”
“The perpetrator held on to her?”
“Jolina was strong, she tried to defend herself. But this time, unfortunately, she was not wearing a hairpin. Can you help me?”
I placed my hands under her thighs and lifted her the way he showed me. For a moment he appeared to hesitate. Then he took hold of the nightgown and slowly pulled it up.
“Look at the legs. What can we say about them?”
“They look fairly unharmed.”
“Exactly. No scratches or marks. And what does Jussi make of that?”
“What do you mean, Pastor?”
“This too runs counter to suicide. Her skin would show signs, if she had slithered up a massive pine tree wearing only a nightgown and then clung to a branch.”
He raised her foot. The leg was rigid, so he had to crouch down to study the sole.
“Her heels, on the other hand, are scraped on the back. Both of them. Do you see?”
“The body was dragged.”
“Good, Jussi. The man strangled her after knocking her to the ground. Then he grabbed her under the arms and dragged the body over to the tree. That was when her heels were damaged. He had prepared the rope in advance. He threw the rope over a branch in the pine tree and placed the noose around her neck. Then he hauled her up by the other end until the body was hanging clear. I found some fresh slivers of bark on the ground that must have been loosened by the friction while he was hoisting her up.”
The pastor told me to write this down while he drove away the buzzing flies. He gently closed Jolina’s eyes and replaced the coins, before covering the body with the blanket.
“Let’s study the surroundings.”
We went out and I followed him to the far end of the cowshed. The privy had been erected there, a simple gray building.
“I think Jolina must have been on her way here to relieve herself. It was nighttime and no one noticed her slip out. The evildoer was hidden and prepared. Perhaps he had kept watch for several nights, patiently waiting for the right opportunity.”
The pastor looked around and noticed an aspen grove at the edge of the forest. He walked over to it and nodded.
“This was where he was standing.”
The pastor leaned forward and put his nose to the ground. Something in the moss caught his attention.
“Now, what’s this?”
Between his thumb and forefinger, he picked up something very small and slender. I bent down.
“Pencil shavings?”
“No, not this time. This is something different.”
I raised my eyes and identified it at once. Some newly made knife scorings were visible in the aspen’s bark. They formed a well-known shape.
“A cross,” the pastor murmured. “The fellow stood here and carved a cross in the bark while he was waiting.”
“Why a cross?” I asked.
“Maybe it was intended for me.”
“What do you mean, Pastor?”
“I issued a warning to the wrongdoer when we visited the shop. What if he was there in the crowd listening to my words?”
“So the cross . . . ?”
“Might be a threat. He wanted to retaliate.”
“But who would be so cold-blooded?”
“The snake, Jussi. The snake’s venom is dripping upon Pajala.”
34.
We hastily rinsed our hands and entered the cabin. Kristina had prepared some breakfast, which we gratefully accepted, having had no time to eat anything at all before we left the parsonage. I spooned up a little fish gruel while the pastor posed his questions.
“I was thinking about your dog. Did you hear her bark in the night?”
“No, the dog’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“She’s always loose. So sometimes she runs off.”
“I see. When did you last see her?”
“It must have been the day before yesterday,” Elias said in a low voice. “She’s been so unsettled since Jolina’s troubles. She’s been barking and making a noise at night.”
“I think she’s been guarding us,” Kristina said. “I thought I saw someone creeping about outside myself.”
“She’s been growling at the door for several nights,” Elias agreed. “We usually let her out to guard the place. We thought it might have been the fox.”
“But this last time she stayed
away?”
“She’ll come back soon,” Kristina said. “She always appears after a while.”
“Perhaps we ought to look for her anyway,” the pastor said. “Her name is Siiri, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“A fine name for a dog. Siiri.”
* * *
—
While we were eating breakfast we heard the rumble of a horse and carriage approaching on the marsh path. Shortly after, a wagon rolled into the yard and some men climbed out. Into the cabin stumped Sheriff Brahe, followed by Constable Michelsson and the country doctor Sederin, who happened to be in the area. The little group smelled of punsch, despite the early hour, and the sheriff immediately took control, with Kristina rushing around to give him assistance. The doctor Sederin was a bulky gentleman who appeared to be bothered by his back and supported himself with a walking stick. His round spectacles were continually slipping down to the end of his swollen red nose and every so often he pushed them up with a clumsy shove. The doctor greeted the pastor stonily, doing little to disguise his dislike. Old soak that he was, he hated the pastor’s sobriety campaigns, which threatened to render Lapland dry and deprive him of the only remedy for Arctic ennui.
Once informed of the situation, the three men pushed into the sauna to inspect the corpse. It was so cramped that the pastor remained in the doorway. Sheriff Brahe showed his distaste when he saw the body and wiped his hands on a handkerchief.
“Damnation! They go so blue when they hang themselves,” he muttered. “Ugly and swollen. A pity, on such a sweet girl.”
“Take a closer look at her neck,” the pastor suggested. “And you, Michelsson, can help the doctor to examine her feet.”
“I see the pastor’s still here, then. Perhaps we might attend to our duties in peace, if the pastor will excuse us.”
Dr. Sederin needed something to sit on and was offered the sauna stool. It could hardly have been the sight of the dead woman that made him light-headed, for he must have seen far worse in his day. But after the previous day’s revelry with Brahe, he would very much have liked to lie down on a settle.
“The tongue is blue. The face swollen. And the neck disfigured by the noose. The girl has clearly hanged herself,” the sheriff said.
Nothing pleased Sederin more than to agree. With a great effort he pulled out a small writing pad and recorded a suicide in his medical Latin.
“The marks on the neck don’t match the noose,” the pastor objected.
“And how do you know that?”
“The bruises have been caused by fingers. They can’t have come from the rope.”
“They might be a result of the earlier attack.”
“No, these are fresh. The skin also has new injuries that appear to come from fingernails, several small indentations.”
The sheriff took a step toward the pastor, grabbed the collar of his coat, and very nearly lifted him off his feet.
“Bloody pastor,” he hissed, “Satan’s black coat. You’re humiliating me in front of the parishioners!”
He shook the pastor, who was short in stature. The sheriff’s wheezing breath reeked of the morning’s drams.
“The sheriff doesn’t scare me,” he mumbled.
Then everything exploded in a haze of red. The pastor was flung backward against the sauna wall, the back of his head slamming against the sooty logs. Even the doctor fell headlong, landing on the floor as the stool overturned. The sheriff had aimed for the pastor’s teeth, but the pastor had managed to turn away, so that the fist hit his cheekbone. Dazed, he sank down on his backside and held his arms up in defense. I tried to stand between them, but the sheriff shouldered me to one side and then stood astride the pastor, as if he were going to kick him. At the same moment the constable noticed the corpse had begun to slide off the bench and he reached forward to stop it, just in time.
“Now shut up, bloody pastor! Shut up!”
Brahe pulled off his cap and rubbed his trembling mustache. Then he shook himself like a huge dog.
I bent down and helped the pastor to his feet. His gaze was unsteady and he was spitting something that might have been blood. Both reeling, we staggered out into the yard, where the family and neighbors were waiting with looks of astonishment.
“It’s nothing,” the pastor muttered. “Nothing.”
I cautiously led him over to the doorstep where he could sit down and get his strength back. He was visibly shaken and sat for a long time with his face in his hands. I felt so distraught I could hardly stand still. In the end I took out his travel Bible and stuck my thumb in at random. The page opened on Luke 15. The parable of the lost son. The one who had journeyed in a far country but returned to his father. But the father said to his servants, bring forth the best robe . . . and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.
At this point, a man came running out of the forest. When he approached I realized that it was the younger of the sons.
“Kirkkoherra . . . Kirkkoherra . . . ”
The pastor didn’t seem to have heard. I tentatively nudged his elbow and he looked up in confusion.
“Reverend?”
“Yes?”
“We’ve found the dog.”
* * *
—
The poor mutt lay curled up, with her paws extended. A trickle of blood had come from her nose. Her lips were drawn back revealing her eyeteeth, covered in blood-streaked saliva. The dog lay concealed under a dense fir tree, almost invisible. It was the swarms of flies that had led the son to lift the branches. I stayed in the background while the pastor gently stroked the coarse fur, running his fingers over her ribs. The body was stiff and had already started to smell; it must have lying been there for some time.
“Siiri,” the boy moaned, trying to hold back his grief.
The pastor rose and turned back to Elias and Kristina.
“Do you hunt foxes?”
Elias cast a glance at his wife.
“Yes, now and then.”
“How?”
“We have an iron trap.”
“Do you ever use poison?”
“No, but the neighbors might. Does the pastor think that Siiri swallowed some?”
“I’ve seen foxes killed with strychnine. But they show more signs of convulsions. What a pity for such a fine dog.”
“Yes,” the younger son sobbed, hiding his mouth behind his closed fists.
“We’ll have to burn the mutt,” Elias said. “So other animals aren’t tempted to eat it.”
“Have you had any visitors in the last few days? Who’s been here to see you?”
“What does the reverend mean?”
“I think the perpetrator has been trying to get to Jolina ever since the attack. He poisoned the dog so she wouldn’t bark.”
“But who . . . who can have . . . ?”
“It could be someone you know well. Someone you see every day.”
Elias’s lips trembled, his fingers clenching and straightening in frustration, again and again.
“We should pray for the dog,” the pastor said quietly.
“Pray for a dog?”
“A prayer of thanksgiving. For all the joy she has brought in her blameless life. Give thanks to God for creating her.”
At this the son crumpled and burst into a fit of uncontrolled weeping. He couldn’t get any air, it sounded as though he were suffocating. Elias raised his right arm, clearly intending to give the boy a clout, his fingers tightening into a blunt instrument.
“We’ll put our hands together,” the pastor said hastily. “Clasp thine hands and lift up thine heart to God. Lord, we thank thee. . . .”
Everyone reverently calmed down. The pastor and I, Elias and Kristina, and both their sons. N
o one touched anyone. This was what grief looked like, here in the north.
But in the midst of all the thanksgiving and prayers for forgiveness, I noticed how the pastor’s voice was shaking. We both perceived the dreadful truth. The pastor had made it known that Jolina could identify the perpetrator. That was why she had been silenced. If the pastor had kept quiet, then Jolina might still be alive.
35.
The funeral of the ill-fated Jolina Eliasdotter was a grim event. Most of the people in the region were of the same opinion as Sheriff Brahe, that the girl had hanged herself. The brutal attack on the night of the dance had meant she couldn’t bear to go on living. And rumor had it that she did not die alone. No, the miscreant had left her with child. And thus it was—the poor girl hadn’t only killed herself, but an unborn child as well. She had ended up a child murderer. Thus the road down to the torturous fires of hell was, on this occasion, dead straight. Stories such as this were gratifying to spread at kitchen tables and useful for the youth to hear, not least for all the girls who showed an interest in going dancing, where one thing could all too easily lead to another.
The more often the incident was recounted, the more numerous the macabre details. The girl was said to have taken poison before she hanged herself. She wanted to be quite sure the child would die too. And she gave birth to the dead fetus while hanging in the noose. The poisoned mite had oozed out of her and the dog had obviously caught the scent. It had arrived and polished off the child, thereby ingesting the poison. Yes, the dog had been found dead too. They had to burn the animal afterward, for clearly it couldn’t be dumped in the forest with what was in its stomach. And the child, it had become a dweller of the underworld. A lost soul who prowled along the footpaths at night, screaming, who would never be at peace. Unbaptized, unchristened. So it was for the offspring of whores. Eternal unblessedness. May God have mercy on the wretched pair.
I observed how the pastor called for peace for Jolina Eliasdotter. Both he and I knew the truth, that she was the victim of a cold-blooded man of violence. The pastor’s preaching offered consolation to the family, he spoke of the dark forces surrounding us, that we must have the Lord’s help to stand firm. From the church pews rose the stench of mistrust. For the congregation, there was a child murderer lying in the coffin, a sinner who had done away with herself. Sheriff Brahe and Constable Michelsson could be seen whispering, their heads together. Elias and Kristina could barely move, like black-clad tree stumps, exposed to everyone’s eyes. Not once were they seen to weep. In their hearts they must have felt a mounting pressure, an inner scream that sooner or later would cleave its way out, like a beak. Questions kept going round and round in their heads; if only they had brought her up a different way, been able to bend her in another direction while there was still time. If only she hadn’t gone to the dance that evening. Then she would still be alive.