The river, now they were up on the plateau, seemed to have taken the form of a chain of lakes. Cabins in the trees around them would be fishermen’s summer places, he guessed. Everything was deeply overlaid with snow, the lakes iced over and carpeted. He called back, ‘Sophie, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask about. Your mountain Sami migrate with their herds to the coast in spring, spend summer there and return to the vidda when the snow comes — right? Well, it seems crazy, wrong way round. Would you explain it?’
‘I’ll tell him.’ Stenberg twisted around on the seat to face him. ‘All winter, up where we’re going and around Karasjok and some other places too, the deer live on lichens and a special moss. And they migrate because they have to eat. Up on the highlands they dig down through a metre or more of snow to get at the moss, but in summer it dries, has no nourishment for them. But another reason for them not to stay on the vidda in summer months is the mosquitoes get so bad they’d be driven nuts.’
Ollie thought Stenberg could have some intelligence connection. He’d thought of it when Gus had been telling him about the lack of security at the Alta airport. He’d taken the trouble to go along and study the baggage check-in routine for himself, and surely you wouldn’t have that close an interest unless you were going to make some kind of report on it. The thought had been triggered again when he’d made that comment about the Murmansk bomb, that mutter of ‘So we were told…’
There was a lot of water on the right now. Frozen lake, more than river, and several miles of it. Then it became a mere ribbon of ice again. The road ahead rose and fell gently, snaking over ridge after ridge, low undulations of this basically flat plateau they called the vidda. Sophie told him, continuing his education, ‘Little while ago there was darkness for all twenty-four hours up here, the sun never above the horizon, but once it starts to lift up again the daylight hours grow quickly because it is all so open and there are no mountains or valleys.’
‘I thought someone said Kautokeino and Karasjok were both in valleys?’
‘Not real valleys. Only lower land because there are rivers in it.
‘Nothing like the rest of Norway, is it.’
‘Not at all. Or Finland either. There is no place like the Finnmarksvidda anywhere in the world, I think.’
The huge distances rolled away, sheeted in snow… Might be about halfway, Ollie thought. Stenberg, following their progress on a road-map, said there was an agricultural settlement down on the river — the river Altaelva, which was now converging with the road on that side. He added, ‘Making good time, Ollie. Be in Kauto nicely for lunch. You OK, not dozing off yet?’
‘Should I be?’
‘Well, I wondered. Up dancing the night away…’
‘You’d have been welcome to stay with us.’
‘Yeah, the hell I would.’
Sophie leant forward: ‘Yes, Gus, you would.’
‘I’ll believe you, Sophie.’
‘I should hope so… Ollie, there’s a reindeer fence, see?’
That side of the road was mostly stunted birch, no higher than bushes, but there were open areas in it. No deer in sight at the moment. The low fence was of wire supported on rickety-looking stakes, and in places where they’d run out of wire they’d used string, a single strand of it with strips of coloured plastic dangling. It wasn’t pretty. And still no deer; in fact they were nearly an hour closer to Kautokeino before he saw some.
‘Hey, there, at last!’
Then, after a double-take: ‘All males, are they?‘
‘Uh-huh.’ Stenberg told him, ‘Both sexes have antlers.’ He glanced sideways at Ollie. ‘Their toes click when they walk, did you know that?’
‘Well, naturally.’
‘For real. Little bone in the toe goes clickety-click. It’s how they stay together in a white-out, by hearing each others’ clicks.’
‘How did I get to be thirty-two years old without knowing that?’
‘OK, if you’re not interested—’
‘But I am.’ He’d been looking up to the right, at a radar early-warning station, twin spheres and a mast perched up on the highest snow-covered summit for many miles around. Sitting back again, eyes on the road… ‘Another thing I wanted to ask — Sophie said when they stab reindeer they leave the knife in to reduce blood-flow, save the blood for some other use. What kind of use?’
‘Uses, plural. They make a gruel out of it, also — believe it or not — a kind of pancake. And sausages. They make use of every bit of that animal — or they used to, the way they did live. Maybe not so many of them do such things now, but for instance they’d use the leg sinews to make thread — stranded sinew, that is — and hides of course for clothing and boots, tents, ground-sheets… Even the stomach — they clean it and use it as a bag to store food in.’
‘I’m glad they clean it.’
‘They’re not squeamish, that’s for sure. Example — when their old folk were too infirm to migrate with the rest, they had a form of euthanasia they called the Blessed Journey. They’d put the old guy in a sled — called a pulka — and point it downhill at a high cliff above some fjord, and let go.’
Ollie changed gear, to overtake a slow-moving truck. ‘You provide first class in-car entertainment, Gus. Let’s hear more.’
‘Well, let me think…’
They were into gruesome medical detail — such as drinking reindeer urine as a cure for alcoholism — when they were coming into the outskirts of the settlement. Stenberg was asking him, ‘Wouldn’t that keep you off the hard stuff?’
‘I think it might. But so would Norwegian prices… Lapps tend to go crazy on liquor, am I right?’
‘That’s their reputation. And yoiking was always associated with boozing, as a matter of fact.’
Sophie leant forward. ‘Two garages down there — see them, Ollie?’ He nodded, braking gently, downhill. Checking the time, seeing the trip had taken just over three hours. The ground sloped down to the left too, to a sprawl of snow-covered buildings dotted erratically over low-lying land bordering the frozen river. It didn’t look like any ordinary town or village, just a random scattering of dwellings. Sophie told him, ‘After the second garage, turn right up the hill and you’ll see the hotel on the left.’
*
She was in ski gear, and a red woollen hat with a bobble on it. Sutherland and Stenberg were out interviewing Lapps to whom the professor had written from Alta. She agreed, as he followed her down a cleared path to the road, ‘No, it doesn’t look like much of a township, but it’s an important centre. Kautokeino district is the whole western half of Finnmark — and ninety per cent of the people are Lappish speaking.’
He’d heard some of that, during lunch. He could well believe it wouldn’t be an easy language to pick up.
‘Were those hundred-per-cent Lapps, in the dining-room?’
‘Samis. Yes, most were. They don’t go around in Sami costume all the time, you know. Some never dress that way now. Others just for Sundays and special occasions, weddings and so forth.’
She went on to say that while Sami women tended to average about five feet in height and the men five-three or five-four, recent years of better diet, medical care and generally improved living standards had resulted in younger ones growing taller.
‘It’s one of the silly complaints that that yoik person makes. The man in Karasjok, Isak, Carl’s friend? Because the younger Sami are more healthy, not so poor, have houses instead of tents full of smoke that used to make them go blind in middle age — Isak sees these benefits as his folks’ right — which certainly they are — but still objects to the changes in lifestyle that make such improvement possible… It’s annoying, you know?’ She pointed: ‘That’s the school.’
A big, stylishly designed building… ‘Lapp pupils?’
She nodded. ‘Mostly. And this is all new, you see. As in Alta, the Germans destroyed everything when they had to leave in nineteen forty-four.’
‘That church doesn’t look new.’
‘Oh, they left some churches. Do you want to see it?’
She told him as they walked that the Lapp religion was called Lestardianism, so named after a sixteenth-century missionary-priest who preached hellfire and damnation. ‘His teachings were very extreme, so fanatical they resulted in violence and bloodshed. Only about a hundred years ago there was such an outbreak here, Samis stabbing Norwegians to death… Before the missionaries came they were animists, worshipping rocks, trees, rivers and so forth — and there are still remains of the old beliefs, under their skins.’
‘Like making human sacrifices?’
‘Then, sure.’ She shook her head. ‘Not now. That was not a Sami doing.’
‘And we aren’t supposed to think about it — right?’
*
It was dark when they got back to the hotel. They’d visited a silversmith’s place about three kilometres out of town. Passing the timber-built tower of Kautokeino’s ski-jump, she’d referred to it as a boppbakke and he’d suggested ‘Let’s hop up it, then.’ Wooden stairs led to the top, from which a jumper’s view down the slope and to the river was breathtaking. He’d said, ‘I’d want a parachute,’ and she’d commented that parachuting was something she’d thought of taking up. ‘So why don’t you?’
‘The first time, it must be terrifying.’
‘Or thrilling, you might find.’
It only got to be terrifying, in his own experience, when your chute didn’t open. He’d asked her, back on the road and yomping towards the silversmithery, ‘Do you have a lot of boyfriends, Sophie?‘
‘Some… How about you?’
‘Nothing worth mentioning.’
‘Aren’t you being rude to them, when you say that?’
‘No. If you want the truth — well, until very recently there was one in particular, but it’s over.’
‘Does she know it’s over?’
He nodded. ‘She knew it before I did.’
Back in the hotel, collecting their keys at the reception desk — Sophie had a single room, of course, and so did Sutherland, but Ollie had found he was sharing with Gus Stenberg — the clerk told Sophie that the Alta police had pulled in another suspect in connection with the bomb on the Tromsø flight. There’d been a news item about it on radio or TV a few minutes earlier, apparently. Sophie told Ollie what the gabble of Norwegian had been about, on their way down to the bedrooms.
‘Another Sami. They had some in custody before, and let them go. Now this one.’
‘Carl won’t be happy, will he?’
Sutherland came back about an hour later, he and Stenberg coming into the room where Ollie was lying on his bed, reading a paperback. He didn’t have to look twice to see that the professor was far from happy.
‘You look as if you heard the news from Alta.‘
Stenberg grunted confirmation as he dumped the recorder on his own bed. Sutherland growled, ‘We heard it, all right. Everyone’s heard it. And they’re as sore as hell. What they’re saying, basically, is the politi don’t just want whoever did it, they want a Sami to have done it, they’re not looking for evidence, only for a Sami they can pin it on. And I tell you, before the news broke I wasn’t getting such a hell of a lot of cooperation, but now nobody’s saying a damn word to me!’
‘Except some very rude ones.’ Stenberg gestured towards the tape-recorder. ‘Effectively, nothing.’
Ollie got off the bed. ‘Maybe they’ll have cooled off by tomorrow.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it. Plainly this development has only triggered frustrations that were already building up.’ Sutherland won a battle with the zip on his coat, finally, and stuggled out of it. ‘I’m going to take a shower now, and I’ll see you in the bar in thirty minutes, Gus. But listen — Ollie — we’re supposed to be having guests tonight. One’s Sami and the other is not, but he’s close to them, he married this Sami guy’s sister. If it was two Samis I wouldn’t expect they’d show up, the way things are now, but I’m hoping they may… Sophie in her room?’
‘I’d think so. She was going to use the sauna, but that was some time ago.’
‘Well, look — if they show, Gus and I’ll look after them. Sophie being from the government — well, shit, if they got to know it they’d walk out on us. So you two stay clear, OK?’
He nodded, liking this prospect. To make up for that, he said, ‘Sorry, Carl.’
‘Yeah.’ Sutherland turned away. ‘We may not grace Kautokeino with our presence much longer, as things look right now. Unless I get a breakthrough tonight, maybe.’ The door shut behind him. Stenberg said, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t join her in the sauna.’
*
Sutherland’s guests did come. At dinner Ollie and Sophie were given a table at the far end of the room while the professor’s party was in a corner at the door end. The Lapp guest was easy to identify — short-legged, barrel-chested, with a pear-shaped face and small, nondescript features. The other one could also have been a Lapp, except that he was taller when he was on his feet. At this early stage Sutherland was doing most of the talking and it didn’t look as if he was getting much response from them, despite beer and wine bottles piling up. In fact the atmosphere in the whole place was depressing: only about a third of the tables were occupied, nobody looked happy and the waitresses were noticeably on edge.
They’d reached the coffee stage when a Lapp stood up and began to make a speech, haranguing the other customers, looking and sounding angry. The wine waiter went to remonstrate with him, but others were joining in, shouting and applauding — and in anger, not for fun. A waitress hurried away, returning with a man who was obviously the manager; meanwhile an elderly Norwegian couple stalked out, the man carrying his bottle of wine. Sophie leant over: ‘First they make him wait and wait, he says; although his money is as good as theirs he has to wait for the “settlers” to stuff themselves with food before he is allowed any. Then he is given a very small portion and the worst piece of meat he ever saw, a piece such as he would give to his dog if he wanted the dog to bite him. That was when some of them laughed.’
A chair and its occupant crashed over. It was a Lapp who’d been clapping, with his short legs braced against the table; he’d tilted himself back too far. Other Norwegians were leaving the room, leaving their meal uneaten. The man who’d started it all was now seated, a plate in front of him heaped with enough meat to feed the whole of that table.
Ollie put a hand on Sophie’s. ‘Shall we beat it?’
‘Not much to stay for, is there?’
Sutherland glanced towards them as they passed, quickly looked away again. That party wasn’t going any better either, by the looks of it.
‘It’s happening, isn’t it?’ Ollie followed Sophie down the stairs to the bar. He’d suggested they might have a quiet drink of aquavit, if the bar too wasn’t full of belligerent Lapps. ‘Your vicious circle shaping up exactly as you described it?’
There were no other customers down here yet. He bought the drinks and took them over to her. She said, ‘I would never have believed it could change so quickly. Nobody ever saw anything of this kind before. I am ashamed you should see it. There will have to be something done, but what…?’
‘If the Alta police were to go public with whatever evidence they have against this guy?’
‘I don’t know.’ She sipped her drink, and he swallowed some of his. He was paying for it himself, not freeloading on Uncle Sam. Sophie said again, obviously deeply worried, ‘What was happening up there, Ollie, I am ashamed…’
They had a second glass, but then the place began to fill up, and in any case it was more or less time for bed. Beds, plural, unfortunately. He suggested on the way to their rooms, ‘If our colleagues are working tomorrow, like to put skis on and explore those trails?’
‘Why, yes, why don’t we…’
There was a notice in the foyer about the trails, called Iysløype, which started on the other side of the river and were marked with lights so tourists couldn’t easily get
lost. He’d forgotten about it until now, and Sophie looked much more cheerful at the prospect of a day in the open. She was very much an open-air girl, he was beginning to realise. They were outside her bedroom door by this time: he’d glanced back down the passage, seen that they were absolutely alone, but as he turned back to her she moved quickly, forestalling him with a quick peck at the jawline and a murmur of ‘Good night’.
He held her lightly. ‘Couldn’t we do better than that?’
She allowed him to touch her lips. Just a brush, then she’d pulled away.
‘Good night, Ollie.’
He was surprised to find his own door unlocked, the lights on and Gus in there getting ready for bed. He asked him, ‘What happened to the dinner party?’
‘Wash out. And that’s it, there’s nothing to be gained by hanging around here any longer.’
‘So we’re leaving? Calling it off?’
A jerk of the head… ‘No. Karasjok — leaving right after breakfast. And let’s hope it’s different there, or we will have to call it off.’
He sat down. ‘What I don’t get, Gus, is why they should be so uncooperative with Carl Sutherland when he’s proved he’s on their side. I mean, he is on their side, isn’t he?’
‘Very much so. And until tonight I’d have asked the same question. But the answer’s a simple one. These guys don’t read. If you live in a tent and spend your life on the move you don’t have bookshelves and you don’t want a lot of weight to haul around. OK, so mostly they have houses now, but there’s no reading habit, so what is or is not written cuts no fucking ice with the great majority of them. They tell stories, that’s their tradition, they don’t read ’em, the stories go from mouth to mouth and generation to generation.’ He flopped down on his bed. ‘We leave in the morning, Ollie. Carl asked them to call the hotel in Karasjok.’
Special Dynamic Page 7
