by Joonas Huhta
Ruut spat her gum into the trash bin. She had been right with the antimony; the cross did expand and solidify. But it also crumpled like a King’s wax seal, revealing a Latin carving.
“Coitus more ferarum?” Ruut said.
“I’m no Weird Sex Buddha,” Konrad said, scratching his head, “but I guess Newton dreamed of thoughtless and careless sex without consequences just before a major disaster.”
“Apocalypse sex? Is that what it means?”
Konrad was pulling at his ear. “For the ancient Romans, it meant sex in the manner of wild beasts.”
“Doggy style,” Ruut said with loaded puzzlement as if to gain more insight. “What does that have to do with the end times?”
“Everything and nothing,” Konrad replied. “All pronouncements of doom are tragicomic. Every generation has believed it was near the end. See the symbols underlining the text?”
“Seven symbols. Trumpets? As in the Revelations, in the visions of the Apostle John?”
“The seven Trumpet Judgments,” Konrad concurred. “The first six are wake-up calls to the sinners, each subsequent trumpet’s blast bringing more death and destruction. The seventh trumpet’s blast, however, marks the end of human government and the establishment of the Kingdom of God.”
Ruut examined the trumpets closer. “The seventh is broken.”
“Maybe you broke it.”
“Or it could mean that the final warning can’t be heard. Do you like porn by the way?” she suddenly asked. “I happen to know that in the army men don’t only have itchy trigger fingers…”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“According to Oona, porn works as a substitute for the deeper need of intimacy. You said Newton lacked a close relationship. Even you can’t look nor appreciate a woman’s beauty anymore without making it erotic. That corrupts the chance for the real intimacy. And that damages the fruit of sexuality—the children.”
“We can argue the effects of porn later,” Konrad said. “Do you still honestly think this has anything to do with Newton? That he somehow kept his sexuality in control through this book?”
“Yes.”
“So, for Newton even wet dreams were forbidden? No nocturnal adventures?”
“Actually, God provides men the release of extra sexual power during the night…”
Ruut’s phone rang.
“You have to take the next leap of faith on your own,” Ruut started for the door. “Jake is expecting me.”
“What about our crusade?”
“Your crusade,” Ruut said with a blink of an eye and seductive swing of her hips at the closing door.
How to seduce an army.
Konrad went to pack the medical bag with The Wicked Bible. There was something strange in the trumpet symbols and font that just now met his eyes. Runic writing. Scratched letters that bore no curving forms but direct, sharp lines that were easier to carve into a tree or hit in stone. He guessed it was typical to Nordic shamanism.
There was one expert specialized in Nordic mythology at the university.
Out of the cauldron into the fire…
12
A CANON DIGITAL REBEL EOS 300D bobbed against Gideon’s chest as he made his way deeper into woods of Ounasvaara. Past the burn of strained tendons in his back, he coughed and grimaced, considering quitting snowboarding after all his torturing accidents. He didn’t even remember where he had hurt his back.
He had always been good with snow. His snowboarding videos on YouTube with a hundred thousand subscribers proved it. But success in social media was filling a void. He wanted to focus on photography, to turn a new leaf. Either it was the deathly dull lull in front of a computer—like most of his friends—or interacting with the real world.
The trees stood naked barely without any snow covering their limbs, which made him rethink the month and the days left till the Christmas holidays. Only a fortnight until freedom when he could do this all day and with better equipment. Pictures told not only a thousand words; they were much safer than other people anyway.
Photography keeps me rooted; it’s my family.
The winter woods fed and kept its secrets in a tight fist, but here the animals that usually survived by fighting the cold for food seemed to end up being the skeletons of its closet. He planned to immortalize a bit of that mystery. That despairing silence. He wanted to become a freelance photographer just like Kaspar, his father.
I’ll make you proud.
A raw instinct told him to stop. He checked the ISO setting, and raised the camera on the bony hollow of his cheek. Eye pressed against the rubber eyepiece cup, he looked through the viewfinder, steadying his breath.
Something small moved in his direction from behind the spruces.
Gideon knew the noise of the shutter would scare off any animal.
He had only one shot.
A white bird came into his view, walking toward him.
A willow grouse.
Gideon took the picture and closed his eyes after the horrible mechanical sound of the old camera.
The bird disappeared. But as he let the camera hang freely on his chest, he felt the bird leaning on his leg. Was it sick? He thought of taking a picture at arm’s length, but his mind started racing, and a slight chill rippled through his neck.
Are you seeking safety?
He knelt. The bird leaned its head against him, and he gave it a gentle pat on the head. “Don’t worry; I’ll be your guard.”
Gideon scanned the woods. Was there a chance that the bird was choosing the presence of lesser evil between two beasts?
He pressed the handle grip of the camera tighter in his palm.
Fuck it.
He walked deeper into the woods, mustering courage with the idea that an epic picture always involved high risks. As the grip of the trees grew tighter and tighter around his body, he made his best effort to fend off fear. The deeper he delved, the more snow there was on the top branches of the trees. Unflinching, he received a dozen snow showers on his neck.
He arrived at a glade he had never seen before, although he knew the forest inside out. The ground was obscured entirely by fog, which gave a great contrast to an old tree standing in the middle of the glade.
It still bore leaves, silver in color.
The snow-bewigged spruces surrounding the glade shot skywards, and from their divine heights they seemed to study this small anomaly like grand masters of the British high court. For several seconds Gideon sensed the trees in a new way as if he could feel sap moving inside them, becoming packed closer to the tree. And as a result, snow melted down from their branches.
Suddenly blood in his system packed to his front as well; a stronger-than-magnet pull unbalanced him onto his toes until he needed to take a step forward.
Impossible.
Watching the tree through the mingling vapor of his breath, he sensed a strange pulse beating inside the tree, resonating with his heartbeat. As if the tree were a living being.
An involuntary shiver ran down his spine.
For years the photography of stop-motion animations was the closest thing to magic. And magic made life worth living for.
Gideon closed his left eye and took the tree into the viewfinder, amusing himself with the thought of making a career as a Greenpeace activist, saving trees hug by hug.
He relaxed his shoulders, slowed his breathing. As he zoomed and manually focused the objective, a phosphorescent source of light came into view on the bark of the tree.
A hand mark.
Fear snaked into his gut.
The mark wasn’t there a few seconds ago.
13
KONRAD STAMPED THE wet slushy snow from his boots on the banks of a pond adjacent to the university. Passing by a snowmobile, he stepped on the dark ice that seemed not to be ice at all. There were footprints gathered with water. They belonged to a man who was ice fishing.
Professor Lennart Klemetti was a Sámi specialist and notorious ‘lifest
yle cynic.’ Probably much like the rest of the Sámi people Konrad knew, always complaining about their downtrodden rights. Geographically, Konrad knew that the Sámi, or Lapps, were an indigenous population who occupied the northern fringes of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Lennart had been his colleague just behind the wall next to his office for twenty years, although they never spoke to each other. But rumor had it that Lennart’s doctor had given him a death sentence. A few months to live just when he was about to retire.
Konrad needed to show him what Ruut and he had discovered.
Troubling symbols.
Konrad cupped his hands and blew them warm, then took steps, fearing his foot going through the ice. The cold water didn’t make him shiver. Getting out of the ice was easy with the ice claws hanging on his chest. Only the suddenness of the fall cast shivers down to his spine.
Lennart’s gray fur hat was pulled low but not against the cold, more for the sake of privacy. He peered over his round silver-rimmed glasses at Konrad. Droopy-eyed basset hound, bloodshot eyes. A double chin, long white nose hair, and a matching unibrow. The man was weak like a thirsty-looking houseplant.
“Now, isn’t it the sexual predator of the year?” Lennart shifted to stare at his ice fishing rod. “Why don’t you go swing your dick someplace else?”
“I need to ask you something.”
No response.
Konrad eyed him with concern. He took a step closer. “How well do you know the ancient Sámi symbols?”
“How many years, Konrad, did we study and plan our stuff in our offices? A stranger to a stranger, aren’t we? Little did I know that I was neighboring a freak of nature.”
Konrad rubbed the back of his head.
“But you’re a brave man,” Lennart’s tone changed rapidly. “You make and try out new things. Push yourself, challenge yourself, receive setbacks. What would our society be without beloved crooks like you? Would we die of boredom?”
Konrad shrugged. Lennart moved an unlit smoke under his hairy nose, slowly, back and forth. The old wristwatch in his right hand looked valuable.
“Here, I brought you a bottle of wine,” Konrad took a bottle from his backpack. “A gift.”
Lennart stopped fidgeting. He put the cigar in the package and pocketed it.
“Insatiable cellular tumors are ravaging my body. Even my cancer has cancer. How do you suppose I’m going to enjoy that if I’m not allowed to enjoy a single bloody smoke?”
Dry, persistent coughing followed.
Konrad looked down, feeling like a harlequin clown from the Commedia Dell’Arte. “Is there anything I can do?”
Lennart’s eyes narrowed, and his double chin trembled like Jell-O. “Dying is certainly a good thing. It’s the only private thing in life. I appreciate kind comments, gifts, and advice, but for fuck’s sake! I don’t need doctors and charlatans advising me how to live my life. Like everybody’s eager to tell their father how to fuck!”
Finding no place to sit, Konrad went into a Slavic crouch and drew out The Wicked Bible. He had ripped off the skin following a gut feeling. On the other side of the skin was a cosmos and mystery of its own.
“What book is this?” Lennart asked.
Konrad told him.
An open stare followed rapid blinking.
Lennart spent a full minute contemplating the images that together formed an old mental map or landscape. He smelled the cover and inspected the symbols with the tips of his fingers, ran them trembling on the separated skin. An old drum membrane, Konrad had concluded.
“And you suppose Isaac Newton made this?” Lennart said.
“Hardly possible. He never left the mainland of England. But he was long periods away from publicity…”
“The membrane is made in Finland.”
“How can you tell?”
“A shamanic drum is always a precious source of insights into the Sámi cosmos. The Swedish and Norwegian drums were heliocentric, there was the sun pictured in the center of the membrane. This one has a threefold or three-layered picture of the cosmos; taken from a typical Finnish Lapland drum. The Upper World is the world of gods and spirits. The Middle World is the spiritual realm of the material world, the everyday world in which we live. Below is the world of the ancestors and animal spirits and the gods of the Underworld. A third Finnish drum type, fusion, combines these two: in addition to the threefold worldview, there was the sun in the middle or a world tree. Yours is a fusion.”
“The thing in the middle, it’s the world tree?” Konrad asked.
“There are some artistic liberties taken. Instead of an ordinary world tree, it’s like a gigantic Nil; a Sámi food storage hut built above the ground and out of reach of predators. I have never seen this symbol without stairs leading up to the hut. And what is even more unconventional is who is portrayed living up there: Akka, the fertility Goddess, and wife to Ukko, the supreme Thunder God. Sexuality was never described so openly. Like there was a betrayal, Akka having sexual intercourse with a witch noaidi who has antlers.”
Konrad crossed his arms. “Is the human reindeer strange?”
“The reindeer was the most important animal to the Sámi. Reindeer symbolizes prosperity. Many folktales involve marriages between a human and a reindeer. It’s strange that the structure of the hut starts from below, crosses the central world and continues to the sky above.”
“What about the surrounding trees?”
Lennart made a knowing grin. “We live with trees in an elemental embrace, both in a biological and symbolic sense. Trees provide a connection to the heaven; they are the symbolic links to the truth. We have always turned to them for shelter and food, medicine and fire, weaponry and tools. I trust you know to what extent trees are celebrated in every religion and pagan worldview out there.”
Konrad drew a mental list: Buddha gained enlightenment while sitting under a Sacred Fig tree; Jews celebrated the holy day Tu B’Shvat, a new year for trees; in Islam Allah’s name written in Arabic resembles the branches of a tree. In Norse cosmology, the tree of life was an eternal green Ash tree, Yggdrasil. Jesus’s iconic death, redeemed sins on a wooden cross. In cathedrals and churches around the world stone columns towered and curved into arches the way branches extend. Arched passageways in the garden are silent spiritual transformation, rebirth. And what would Christmas be without the China-machined decorations of spruces?
“Does the phrase ‘A thief in the night’ mean anything to you?” Lennart suddenly asked.
“No. Why?”
“It reads here.”
Konrad looked where Lennart pointed. He didn’t see.
“Forest for the trees, Konrad. Forest for the trees.”
After a while, the letters found their way into Konrad’s consciousness, the words masterfully hidden in the surrounding forms of trees. They were Jesus’s words, a promise of His second coming at the end of the tribulation.
“It means nothing to me.”
“Then we’ve run out of business,” Lennart said, grabbed the bottle and took a swig. “Maybe you should ask your wife’s help.” He pointed at the ring finger in Konrad’s hand and offered the bottle with his right hand.
Konrad reached for the bottle, but it slipped from his fingers. Lennart reached for it, but Konrad was faster and put his left hand on his wrist.
“I got this.” Konrad tasted the wine. “Thanks. I’m not married, by the way.”
“Yeah, me neither.” Lennart showed his ring in his finger. “My wife died a year ago. I can’t let her go because by holding her I feel I can still keep her close. Grief uses elbow tactics, but it becomes more translucent when you get used to it. By the way, your ring could tell your future if we gave it a spin on the drum.”
“Bone hopscotchery? Are you a shaman?”
“I’m not going to yoik if that’s what you’re afraid of.”
Unasked, Lennart stretched the skin to a metal fishing bucket, but he had nothing to tie it down.
“I th
ink I’ll pass,” Konrad said.
“Noaidis ate seven dotted fly agaric to get into a trance before drumming. Wait, there’s another way around to achieve the state of trance.” Lennart raised fish from the bucket. “Drinking fish entrails.”
Konrad pressed hands against his stomach and shook his head.
“Suit yourself. But be careful if you decide to try it out yourself. The drum was a means to connect with the dead. The Sámis believed that noaidis, the spiritual leaders, could heal a person gravely ill by bringing the soul back or finding out what had to be offered to make the person well again. Inexperienced as you are, you can’t be sure what spirits you’ll unleash. The realm of the dead is no playground. Beyond is upside down, the dead walk against our feet—and they can drive you crazy.”
“I think I’ll manage.”
“Sure you do,” Lennart said, reeling a fish up from the hole. “You’re doing so well.”
Konrad forced a smile. Time for a smooth exit.
“Take care, Lennart. I owe you one. I’m glad we finally spoke. I wish we hadn’t started from the wrong end.”
“Yes, weird knowing you. I’m going to take back as much time I have been neglecting myself as possible.” Lennart grumbled, mostly to himself. “What an idiot have I been when I tried to deny my old man’s pleasures when he was dying...”
Lennart lit a matchstick. Konrad walked away, dialed Ruut, and put his leather gloves on. It was getting cold.
A woman waited on the shore.
KASPAR NYMAN STARED from inside a parked car on the eastern shore, as Konrad walked on the ice. He dumped his cigarette and prepared for action. A cheaply dressed and messed-up woman moved toward Konrad’s position on the bank. The meeting was going to be the final proof against the professor. Soon the man would be bombarded with an inferno of questions.
Time to make money.
He considered his options and the risks involved.
A long second sought its end.
Stealing and anonymously selling the Bible would only make himself the target, so he shoved his fake gun and fake patch deep into the glove compartment.
