by Philip Teir
‘I’ve never thought about it that way,’ said Marika. ‘But I think people can be equal even if you’re not anthropocentric. I think that’s how Chris looks at it too. He’s given a lot of thought to how society could be better organised.’
‘I’m sure he has,’ said Julia, hearing at once the sarcasm in her voice.
But Marika didn’t seem to react.
‘So what are you writing now?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it’s nothing … or rather, it’s a historical novel that takes place in Jakobstad.’
And the second she said that, she had an idea. In her mind she pictured her characters – as she sometimes did in the most unexpected situations – and she knew exactly what she was going to write the next day. She knew how it related to the way she felt about Marika, an insight into the way small towns were marked by class hierarchies. For her, this book project was important; it was anchored in her family history, in her own background, in what had gone on before her parents’ generation. But it was difficult, considerably more difficult than she had imagined, to write about a historical era that she’d seen only in photographs. What did she know about how her maternal grandmother regarded her job, or life in general?
‘It sounds exciting. And challenging,’ said Marika.
‘It is. I don’t know what I’m thinking until I actually write down the words. But maybe I’ve always been like that. I need to write down a thought before I know what I think.’
‘Chris says that one problem with human civilisation is that we’ve learned to break down things rationally and put everything into complicated systems, when we should be listening much more to our inner instincts. People in a hunter-gatherer society were in many ways happier than we are,’ said Marika.
Julia wondered if that could be true. But she didn’t say anything, merely looking at the sauna heating unit and the steam rising from the stones after she tossed water onto them. She could feel the steam burning her back.
‘Shall we go down to the beach?’ asked Marika.
2
ALICE SAT ACROSS FROM Anton drinking beer. She had opened one of their father’s beer cans after their parents left and filled a couple of coffee cups, which she’d taken from the kitchen cupboard.
The pale yellow beer foamed in the cups. Anton had taken a small sip, but it was bitter and lukewarm and impossible to drink. Instead, he was eating crisps that they’d bought at the supermarket earlier in the day.
‘What shall we do?’ he asked. He hoped Alice was in a good mood. He knew that he didn’t deserve any attention from her because he teased her so often. He would pinch and hit her, but somehow she always seemed to forgive him.
He could often tell in advance when he was about to lose control. It actually made him feel good, so that’s why he usually let it happen. There was a sense of liberation and joy at finding out what might occur when he allowed his rage to bubble to the surface and set off a chain of events. Yet afterwards he always felt ashamed, and sometimes he wondered whether there was something wrong with him because he couldn’t control his moods. He didn’t know of anyone else in his class who behaved the way he did.
Right now he didn’t want Alice to get angry, so he kept quiet and fixed his eyes on her. She was drinking steadily, focusing all her attention on the beer without answering his question.
‘Do you want to play cards?’ he asked cautiously.
She looked at him. Her black fringe hung in her face, making her eyes look like stones in a well.
‘Could we go back to the woods?’ she asked.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Do you want the rest of my beer?’
She took his cup and drank almost all of it.
‘Come on,’ she said and then stood up.
They walked down to the glade where they’d found the tadpoles. Anton had brought along the bag of crisps, which he ate as he walked beside Alice. When they reached the pool of water, she leaned down and scooped away the leaves.
‘I’ll give you ten euros if you swallow a tadpole,’ she said.
‘Not in a million years,’ said Anton.
He set the bag of crisps on the ground. It was hot out here in the glade. The slender trunks of the pines seemed redder than before. The rocky ground felt smooth underfoot, though it was wet in the small crevices. When he stuck his hand into bigger grooves, he noticed that the water was lukewarm because it had been sitting in the sun all day.
Anton pushed some leaves aside with his hand and saw a tadpole swiftly swim for a cleft in the rock wall, but it got stuck, its little tail flailing. It was a dark-brown-green colour, almost black. Anton reached down and scooped it up.
‘Look at this!’
‘Great!’ said Alice. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to eat one of them?’
‘Yuck,’ said Anton, imagining how slimy it would feel in his mouth.
They caught five tadpoles in half an hour and took several pictures with Alice’s mobile phone as the tiny creatures lay wriggling on the ground.
When they finished taking pictures, they heard laughter echoing from the shore.
‘Want to go and spy on them?’ asked Alice.
Anton nodded because he felt such a longing to see his mother.
The sounds from the party swept through the woods like gentle notes above the rushing of the sea.
‘Okay,’ said Alice. ‘Let’s go.’
The alcohol had pleasantly erased all contours in the world, so it took a while before Alice noticed the dead moose.
The head was sticking out between two tree trunks, leaning slightly to one side. The eye sockets were empty and black, as if the eyes had sunk back inside the skull. Alice could see bits of the skeleton exposed in the forehead and close to the muzzle.
Anton stopped next to her and took her hand.
‘Wait here,’ she said.
She moved closer. The rest of the enormous body was slumped behind the tree, hollowed out and red.
‘It must have got its head stuck between the trees,’ she said. ‘And then it died.’
‘It stinks,’ said Anton.
Only now did Alice notice the smell coming from the animal’s body, an intense, sweet smell. The remaining patches of dark pelt looked dry and shiny. On parts of the body the fur had been eaten away. The front part of the moose looked as if it were wedged tight, as if it had jumped up in the tree and got caught.
Alice pushed back a wave of nausea. Yet there was something fascinating, almost majestic, about this animal, the fact that it was so hideous and so raw.
‘Are you scared?’ she asked Anton.
He shook his head.
Alice could hear her own breathing as she got out her mobile and snapped a picture. On Instagram she chose the filter Lark and wrote: ‘#corpse #scary #woods #moose #shithappens’.
Anton’s heart beat faster as they walked the last part of the way. He wasn’t scared, that was the wrong word, but he was eager to talk about what they’d just seen.
They followed the sound of the sea down to the road. They walked past the car park, which looked abandoned. It was covered with pine needles and piles of leaves. The asphalt had cracked in places, and weeds had sprouted up.
When they reached the neighbours’ property, they found all the grown-ups sitting on a blanket. They were talking loudly and laughing. Several grown-ups were unfamiliar, and Anton immediately regretted coming here. He wasn’t keen on interrupting their festivities.
His mother looked like a different person as she talked to the others. She looked so alert, and now he’d be forced to yank her away from the situation, almost like waking someone who’s been asleep.
Alice made the first move.
‘Pappa, we found something in the woods,’ she said.
Their parents now caught sight of them. At first they looked surprised, then their father smiled, a gentle and easy smile, as if suddenly remembering who they were.
‘We found a moose!’ said Anton, going over to his mother and sitting down next to her.
>
All the others stopped talking, and Anton wished he hadn’t said anything. Now they expected him to say more.
There was a boy with the group. He was sitting on one corner of the blanket, giving Anton an enquiring look. He seemed to be about the same age as Alice. Suddenly Anton felt ridiculous about his eager announcement.
‘A moose? Did it run away?’ asked Julia.
‘No, it’s hanging in a tree. It’s dead,’ said Alice.
‘Ugh. Where was it?’ asked one of the women.
‘In the woods, not far from our house. It looks like it’s been there a long time. It smells,’ said Alice, glancing at the boy sitting on the blanket.
‘Should we go and have a look?’ asked their father.
‘I’m sure it will still be there tomorrow. If it’s dead, there’s not much we can do, anyway,’ said Julia.
Anton looked at her, surprised to hear how unaffected she seemed. As if she’d rather stay here with all these strangers.
‘I’ll go with you tomorrow. Then we’ll see what we can do,’ said one of the men in English. Anton recognised him. He was the man who had turned up at the tennis court a few days ago.
Alice was now staring at the boy with interest. When he glanced at her, she lowered her eyes. He had blond hair and was wearing a blue T-shirt and a pair of Converse trainers, just like Alice. He looks a little stuck-up, thought Anton, as if he’s the sort of person who might say something mean in the school-yard. Anton was used to hearing those kinds of remarks. Once he’d been wearing a T-shirt with a Disney image on the front, and he heard an older boy say it was a girl’s T-shirt. When he got home, Anton took off the shirt, crumpled it into a ball, and hid it at the back of the wardrobe. One day his mother found the shirt, washed it, and then put it back with the rest of his clothes. So he threw the shirt into the big rubbish bin in the yard.
‘Maybe you kids could find something to do together,’ suggested his mother now.
That was exactly what Anton had feared. That he and Alice would be forced to hang out with this boy they didn’t know.
Alice glanced down at her phone.
‘This is Alice,’ their mother was saying. ‘Go and shake hands with Leo,’ she told Alice.
Alice stuck her phone in her pocket and went over where the boy was sitting.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Say your name when you greet people,’ said the English-speaking man, whom Anton assumed must be the boy’s father.
‘Leo,’ said the boy, and they shook hands.
They got some ice cream, and Anton ate it sitting next to his mother on the blanket.
‘When are we going home?’ he asked her. The moose in the woods made him uneasy and he was cold. He knew Alice would tell the new boy that they should go back to have a look at the dead moose. He didn’t want to do that.
‘We’ve only been here a little while. I think we’ll be taking another sauna later. Maybe you kids would like to go swimming afterwards?’ said his mother.
‘But the water is so cold,’ Anton replied.
‘Not after the sauna,’ said his father.
‘I think it’s too cold,’ said Anton. He looked at the grown-ups seated around him and thought how peculiar they were. Much more peculiar than the people his parents usually spent time with.
After finishing their ice cream, Alice asked Leo – just as Anton had predicted – whether he wanted to go to the woods with them to see the moose. Anton hesitated. He didn’t want to stay here with these peculiar grown-ups, but he didn’t want to see the moose again. He didn’t want to smell its rotting body and imagine all the maggots crawling around inside. He didn’t want to revisit that place without his parents.
But when Alice and Leo headed off, Erik told Anton to go with them.
‘Just think what a luxury it is for you kids to run around freely out here with no one hovering over you. Isn’t that exciting? To be out here in nature? Run along and play, Anton. And you can stay up as late as you like tonight. I promise. There are no rules here,’ he said.
Erik looked around. He seemed pleased with what he’d said, as if he’d been speaking just as much to the others as to his son.
‘Well, maybe not as late as you want. And you need to be careful about going into the water. I don’t want you venturing out onto any dangerous rocks,’ said Julia.
‘Okay. No dangerous rocks. And don’t go so far away that you can’t hear us if we call. I don’t think we’ll be staying real late,’ said Erik.
This time Anton was the first to see the moose. It didn’t seem as scary as when they’d discovered it.
‘Check this out,’ he said, speaking suddenly with a slight accent, as if subconsciously trying to mimic Leo’s way of talking. He wondered whether Alice noticed.
‘Fuck,’ said Leo, going over to the animal. It looked different now that Anton was seeing it for the second time. It was even more disgusting than he remembered, now that he inspected it more closely. There was also something unsettling about this place: the quiet and stillness of the woods surrounding them, the fact that all these animals lived here, yet they never saw any of them.
Leo poked at the body.
‘Do you think I could have the head, once they pull it loose? It would be cool to take it home. Once, in Scotland, I saw somebody hang a dead cat from the ceiling, like a lamp.’
‘I can ask Pappa to save it for you,’ said Alice.
‘But why is it hanging there like that?’ asked Leo. ‘The body has to be at least a metre off the ground. Do you think someone lifted it up there?’
Anton suddenly had a bad feeling. He pictured somebody first killing the moose and then hanging it up in the tree.
‘Maybe it jumped up to catch something and got caught,’ suggested Alice.
For thirty seconds none of them spoke. Anton was thinking of asking the others what they wanted to do – maybe they could play cards? – but he didn’t dare.
‘Do you want a beer?’ Alice said at last.
‘A beer?’ Leo repeated.
‘Pappa has lots of cases of beer. We can go up to the house and share one. Or you can have a whole can for yourself, if you want.’
‘Sure, that sounds good.’
Anton broke off a long tree branch and walked down to the tarn. He stuck the branch in the water to see how deep it was. Alice and Leo had each fetched a beer and were sitting in the yard. The branch turned out to be too short. It didn’t touch the bottom even when Anton leaned so far forward that he almost fell off the rock he was standing on.
When he got tired of trying, he walked back up to the house. Leo and Alice had started piling up branches near the open fire pit.
‘We’re thinking of lighting a fire. Want to help?’ said Alice.
Anton went with them to look for branches and kindling. They soon had a big pile. The woods behind the house were overgrown and filled with dead evergreens with branches that were easy to break off. Leo lit the fire. Then he and Alice sat down with their beers and stared at the flames while Anton sat across from them. The fire crackled and smelled of charred wood.
‘I love being here,’ Alice said suddenly. ‘Right this minute, at least. It’s great. And I love this beer.’
‘How long are you staying? All summer?’ asked Leo. It made Anton feel as if somehow he already knew Leo, as if they’d always spent their summers here together.
‘Until school starts,’ she said.
‘My parents think I should quit school so they can home-school me here. Actually, they’d like me to attend a Steiner school, but there aren’t any around here.’
A few of Anton’s former pre-school classmates went to a Steiner school. He’d heard that there were no textbooks, except for ones the students made themselves. They played the kantele in music class, and they made artwork from things they found in the woods.
‘I want another one. How about you?’ asked Leo, looking at his beer can.
The shadows cast by the fire made his face seem in constant m
otion, even though his eyes weren’t moving at all. His eyes made Anton think of a fox or a cat.
‘I don’t think you should take any more of Pappa’s beer,’ said Anton. ‘He’ll notice.’
‘Oh, Anton, don’t be a baby,’ said Alice.
‘Do you think he keeps track of how many cans he has?’ asked Leo.
‘Well, if half the cans in the case are gone …’ said Anton.
Alice rolled her eyes. She seemed different now, not as quiet and withdrawn as she normally was around other people. Not shy or timid. She tucked her hair behind her ear, exposing her neck, so that Leo would notice. They were both staring into the fire as if wondering what their next move would be. The mood made Anton nervous. He wished Leo wasn’t their neighbour, because now the balance had been upset.
‘Do you have a lot of friends back in Helsinki?’ Leo asked Alice.
Anton could have answered that question. He could have said that Alice didn’t have a boyfriend, that she’d never been interested in having one, that she mostly stayed in her room and checked her phone and listened to boring music. But Leo would probably find out all that for himself.
‘Why don’t you go see if there’s any booze in the house?’ Leo said to Anton. ‘Whisky or gin or anything like that.’
‘Please?’ said Alice. She looked at her brother and motioned towards the house. Anton was more than happy to leave. The fire was burning his face, and he was tired of Alice and Leo and the way they spoke to each other.
But there wasn’t much to do back at the house, so he started thinking of his mother again. He glanced at the clock and saw it was only nine thirty. They might be staying late over at the neighbours’ place, maybe until midnight. He wasn’t proud of the way he was feeling. He had a lump in his throat, and he tried to swallow to make it go away, but that didn’t help. He stood in the kitchen for several seconds, trying to make the lump disappear. He was almost panic-stricken. He couldn’t open his mouth, but finally he inhaled through his nose and then went over to the worktop to fetch a glass of water. He quickly drank the whole glass.
