Until Thy Wrath Be Past

by Asa Larsson

  “Wow,” Anni says. “Fancy that, I’d almost forgotten. You were very good at maths when you were at school. Maybe you could help Wilma? Her maths is driving her up the wall.”

  But Hjalmar has to leave. He zips up his jacket, grunts a thank you for the coffee and grabs the 50-krona note in order to avoid arguing.

  That evening Wilma turns up at Hjalmar Krekula’s house. She has her maths book in her hand.

  “You’re good at this stuff!” she says without preamble, marches into his kitchen and sits down at the table. “You’re a genius, after all.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” Hjalmar says, but is interrupted.

  “You must teach me. I can’t understand a damned thing.”

  “No, I can’t,” he says, and starts struggling for breath, but Wilma has already wriggled out of her jacket.

  “Oh yes!” she says. “Yes you can!”

  “Alright,” he says. “But I’m no schoolmistress.”

  She looks at him entreatingly. She positively pleads with him. So he feels obliged to sit down beside her.

  They slog away together for more than two hours. She shouts and moans as she usually does when things are not going well for her. To her surprise, he shouts as well. He slams his fist down on the table and says that for God’s sake she must stop gaping out of the window and concentrate on her maths book. Is she meditating? What the hell is she doing? And when she starts crying, worn out by second-order polynomials, he taps her awkwardly on the head and asks if she would like a soda. And so they drink Coca-Cola together.

  In the end she understands how to solve “those bloody quadratic equations”.

  They are both utterly exhausted. Washed out. Hjalmar warms up some Russian pasty, which they eat with ice cream.

  “My God, but you’re a clever bastard,” she says. “Why are you driving lorries? You ought to be a professor.”

  He laughs.

  “Professor of class-nine maths!”

  How could she possibly understand? Ever since he finished reading the maths books he stole from Herr Fernström’s car, he has been doing his sums. He has ordered books from university book-shops and antiquarian booksellers. In algebra he is busy with Lagrange’s theorem and groups of permutations. He has been taking correspondence courses for years, and not just in maths. Driven down to Stockholm in order to take the exams at Hermod’s Correspondence College. Pretended that he was going to Finland to do some shopping. Or to Luleå to collect an engine. When he was twenty-five he took the high-school leaving examination at Hermod’s. He drove out to his summer cottage the following weekend. He had bought a bottle of wine. Not that he was much of a drinker, and especially not of wine. But he sat there with a Duralex glass of red. It tasted foul. Hjalmar smiles at the memory.

  They work for a bit longer, but eventually it is time for Wilma to go home. She puts on her jacket.

  “Don’t tell anybody about this,” he says before she leaves. “You know. Not Tore . . . Not anybody. Don’t tell them I’m good at maths and all that.”

  “Of course not,” she says with a smile.

  She is already elsewhere in her thoughts. Presumably with Simon Kyrö. She thanks Hjalmar for his help, and leaves.

  Rebecka Martinsson and Hjalmar Krekula are standing in the cemetery. Martinsson has the feeling that she is sitting in a boat and Hjalmar has fallen into the water. He’s clinging on to the rail, but she doesn’t have the strength to pull him into the boat. He will soon be dangerously close to hypothermia. He will lose his grip on the rail. He will sink. There’s nothing she can do.

  “How are you?” she says.

  She regrets it the moment she’s said it. She doesn’t want to know how he is. He’s not her responsibility.

  “I’ve got heartburn or something,” he says, thumping his chest with his fist.

  “Really?”

  “I have to go,” he says. But he shows no sign of moving.

  “I see.”

  She has the dog in her car. She ought to go too.

  “I can’t stop wondering what I should do,” he says. His face is twitching.

  She looks away in the direction of the trees. Avoids looking him in the eye.

  “When I felt at rock bottom, I used to go out for a walk in the country. Sometimes that helps.”

  He trudges off.

  Impotence weighs her down.

  Martinsson arrived back at the police station at 2.15 in the afternoon. In the entrance she bumped into Anna-Maria Mella. Vera, overcome with joy, jumped up to greet Mella. Left wet paw marks on her jeans.

  Mella’s eyes were shining and full of life. Her cheeks were red. Her hair seemed to be longing to be free; strands were working their way loose from her plait and looked as if they wanted to fly away.

  “Have you heard?” she said. “We’ve had a report from the lab. There was blood from Hjörleifur Arnarson on Tore Krekula’s jacket.”

  “Wow,” Martinsson said, feeling as if she had been jerked violently out of a dream. Her thoughts had been totally immersed in the meeting with Hjalmar Krekula at the cemetery. “What are you . . .”

  “We’re going to arrest Tore Krekula, of course. We’re about to set off for his house right now.”

  Mella paused. She looked guilty.

  “I ought to have rung you. But you’ve been busy with proceedings all morning, haven’t you? Do you want to come with us and help nail him?”

  Martinsson shook her head.

  “Before you go,” she said, placing a hand on Mella’s arm to hold her back, “I was at the cemetery.”

  Mella made a heroic effort to hide her impatience.

  “And?” she said, pretending to be interested.

  “Hjalmar Krekula was there as well. To visit Wilma’s grave. I think he was on the brink of . . . well, I don’t know what. He’s not well. I had the feeling he wanted to tell me something.”

  Mella became a little more attentive.

  “What did he say?”

  “I don’t know. It was mainly a feeling I had.”

  “Don’t be angry,” Mella said, “but don’t you think your imagination might be running away with you? All this business might have triggered memories of your own experience. How you felt bad when you . . . you know.”

  Martinsson could feel her emotions tying themselves in knots.

  “That’s a possibility, of course,” she said stiffly.

  “We can talk more about it when I get back,” Mella said. “But keep away from Hjalmar Krekula, O.K.? He’s a dangerous swine, remember that.”

  Martinsson shook her head thoughtfully.

  “He would never hurt me,” she said.

  “Famous last words,” Mella said with a wry smile. “I’m serious, Rebecka. Suicide and homicide have a lot in common. We had a bloke last year who ran amok in his cottage out at Laxforsen, releasing first his wife and then his children aged seven and eleven from the sufferings of this world. Then he succeeded in taking his own life with an overdose of ordinary iron tablets. His kidneys and liver gave up the ghost. Mind you, it took more than two months for him to die. He was in hospital in Umeå with tubes wherever you looked, under arrest for murder.”

  Neither of them spoke. Mella wanted to bite her tongue off. She thought about when Martinsson had shot those men at Jiekajärvi. The circumstances had been quite different, of course. And how she had lost the plot and wanted to kill herself. But those circumstances had also been quite different. Why was everything always so complicated? The ground around Martinsson was a minefield. Why the hell did she have to bump into her in the doorway?

  Rantakyrö and Olsson came charging down the corridor. Greeting Martinsson hurriedly, they looked questioningly at Mella.

  “Right, we’re off to pick up Tore Krekula,” Mella said. “I expect you’ll want to be present at the interrogation?”

  Martinsson nodded and the pack raced out of the door, baying and howling, sniffing the ground.

  She remained where she was, feeling left out.r />
  Oh dear, she said to herself, how little and insignificant you are.

  Vera suddenly started barking. Krister Eriksson had just parked his car and let out Tintin and Roy. His face lit up when he caught sight of Martinsson. He went over to her.

  “I was looking for you,” he said with a smile so big that his pink skin seemed tightly stretched. “Do you think you could look after Tintin for a while? I’m going to put Roy through his paces, and Tintin is always so miserable when she’s left behind in the car.”

  Vera stood submissively still, wagging her tail in a friendly greeting, as Tintin and Roy sniffed at her, under her stomach and around her rump.

  “I’d love to,” Martinsson said.

  “How are things?” he said. Martinsson had the feeling he could see right through her.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  She told him about Tore Krekula’s jacket, about how he was about to be arrested.

  Eriksson said nothing, just stood there and waited. Looked sympathetically at her.

  You’re a right one for standing there and waiting, Martinsson thought. Wait on.

  She had no intention of telling him about Hjalmar Krekula and their meeting in the cemetery.

  Then he smiled suddenly. Tapped her gently on the arm. As if he simply could not keep his hands off her.

  “So long, then. I’ll collect her this evening.”

  He instructed Tintin to stay with Martinsson, went back out to his car and drove off with Roy.

  Laura Krekula took her time before opening the door. She eyed the police officers standing outside. Mella could not resist flashing her I.D.

  She could see the fear in Laura Krekula’s eyes. Rantakyrö and Olsson were wearing their serious faces.

  I don’t feel sorry for her, Mella thought. How on earth could she marry such an idiot?

  “Here you are again,” Laura said in a weak voice.

  “We’re looking for Tore,” Mella said.

  “He’s at work,” his wife said. “You won’t find him at home in the middle of the day.”

  “Is that his car parked over there?” Mella said.

  “Yes, but he’s making a delivery to Luleå today and won’t be back home until late tonight,” his wife said.

  “Is it O.K. if we take a look round the house? One of the drivers at the garage said Tore was at home.”

  Laura Krekula stepped to one side and let them in.

  They opened wardrobes. Checked the garage and laundry room. Laura remained in the hall. After five minutes, the police thanked her and left.

  When they had driven off, Laura went upstairs. She collected the big, long, hexagonal spanner that fitted the hatch to the cold loft. Turning the spanner, she let the hatch fall open and unfolded the ladder.

  Tore Krekula climbed down.

  Walking past his wife, he bounded down the stairs to the ground floor.

  Laura followed him. Said nothing. Watched him pull on his boots and jacket. He went into the kitchen wearing his outdoor clothes. Spread some butter on the side of the crispbread with the deepest holes and cut some slices of sausage which he laid on top.

  “Don’t say a thing,” he said with his mouth full. “Not a word to your mother or your sister. Is that clear?”

  Hjalmar is skiing through the forest. The afternoon sun is warming everything. There are big balls of new snow in the trees, but it has started to melt and drip. I’m sitting in the birch trees among all the watery pearls, watching him. Moving from tree to tree. Being weightless, I can perch on the thinnest of twigs. In winter they are black and the frost makes them straggly. Now they’ve assumed a violet tinge. The colour of spring. I run like a lynx up a pine trunk smelling of resin. The bark is golden brown, just like Anni’s ginger biscuits. The branches are dressed in her green cable-knit cardigan. I hide inside the cardigan. Lying in wait for Hjalmar.

  It must be at least twenty years since he last went skiing. His boots and skis are much older than that. Old-fashioned, untarred, unwaxed skis with ancient mousetrap bindings. He can’t make them slide. He has to keep stopping in order to scrape away the snow clinging onto the bottoms. He sinks down into the snow even though he is trying to follow the scooter tracks. His ungreased, cracked leather boots are soon soaked through. His trousers as well.

  His poles sink into the snow. Deep down, and it’s hard work pulling them out again. The discs get stuck. When he manages to pull them up again they look like cylinders, with 30 centimetres of snow clinging to the poles above the discs.

  He thinks he’s making wretchedly slow progress, but he wouldn’t have been able to progress at all without skis. And if skis like these were good enough for his father and his friends, why shouldn’t they be good enough for him? Don’t forget that in the old days the Lapps used to roam far and wide through the forests with much worse equipment and only one pole.

  Occasionally he looks up. Sees drops of water trembling hesitantly on the branches.

  Sweat runs down his forehead and makes his eyes smart.

  At last he comes to the shelter he and Tore built twenty years ago just south of Ripukkavaara.

  Hjalmar sits down in the shelter and takes the thermos of coffee and box of sandwiches from his rucksack. The sun warms his face.

  Taking the sandwiches out of the plastic box, he is overcome by exhaustion. He puts them down beside him.

  The wind sighs soothingly in the crowns of the trees. Like Anni’s wooden spoon in a pot. The branches sway from side to side, offering no resistance. Allow themselves to be rocked to sleep. Not long ago Hjalmar thought the birdsong was hurting his ears. It sounded like knives being sharpened by rubbing against each other. But now it sounds quite different. A chirping and chirruping. A woodpecker is hammering at a tree trunk in the distance.

  Hjalmar lies down on his side. Water drips from the roof of the shelter.

  A sentence comes into his mind: “Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.” Where does it come from? Is it something he’s read in the Bible in his cottage at Saarisuanto?

  Why should one have to worry about things that happened in the past? When his father held his head under the icy water. That was fifty years ago. He never thinks about it; why would he start now?

  His eyes close. The snow sighs in the forest, made weary by the coming of spring. The sun is roasting hot. Hjalmar dozes off in the warmth of the shelter.

  He is woken up by a presence. Opens his eyes and at first sees only a shadow blocking out the sun. Shaggy and black.

  Like a shot he is wide awake. A bear.

  It stands up on its hind legs in front of him. Hjalmar can make out more than the mere outline. Its snout, its fur. Its paws and claws. For three long seconds it stands still, staring him in the eye.

  It’s curtains, Hjalmar thinks.

  Three more seconds. During those three seconds, everything in Hjalmar comes to a standstill.

  Well, this is it, he thinks about his own death.

  God is looking at Hjalmar through the eye of the bear.

  Then the bear turns round, flops down on all fours and ambles away.

  Hjalmar’s heart starts pounding. It is the beating heart of life. It is the fingertips of the shaman on the skin of a drum. It is the rain on the tin roof of his cottage at Saarisuanto, an autumn evening when he’s lying in bed and the fire is crackling in the hearth.

  His blood flows through his veins. It is the spring water starting to flow beneath the ice, forming rivulets under the snow, finding its way up into the trees, cascading over cliffs.

  His breath floats in and out of his lungs. It is the wind that lifts up the rollicking raven, that whips the snow into whirling, sharp-edged spirals on the mountainside, that caresses the lake tenderly in the evening, and then lies down to rest and enables everything to become still and mirror-like.

  My God, says Hjalmar in the absence of anybody else, anything else to turn to while he wallows in the feeling of deliverance that has overwhelmed him. Stay
, stay with me.

  But he knows this is a sensation that will not last. He sits still until it dies away.

  Now he notices that his sandwiches are no longer there. They were what lured the bear to the shelter.

  He skis home, feeling exhilarated.

  Anything at all can happen now, he thinks. I’m free. The bear could have killed me. It could have been curtains.

  He will search through the Bible in his cottage and see if he can find that line. “My heart within me is desolate.”

  Anni looks completely transparent now. She’s been asleep on the kitchen sofa. I’m sitting next to her, looking at her chest. The muscles inside are so tired, there’s no strength left in them. Her breathing is shallow and fast. The spring sunshine pours in through the window and warms her legs. Then suddenly she opens her eyes.

  “Shall we put the coffee on?” she says.

  I realize that she’s talking to me, even though she can’t see me. Although she is far from certain that I’m there.

  She sits up slowly: her left hand finds support behind her back while she holds onto the white-painted wooden back of the sofa with her right one. Then she needs to use both hands to move her legs closer to the edge of the sofa until they overlap it and she can lower them to the floor. Feet into her slippers, hand on the table to get some leverage. A little gasp reflecting effort and pain, and a there-we-go slides over her lips as she stands up.

  She pours water into the pan, opens the coffee tin and transfers some spoonfuls into the pan.

  “I thought we could fill up the thermos and drink our coffee on the steps outside. Now that the sun’s so warm.”

  Then it takes half a year for her to get out the thermos flask, fill it with coffee, put on her jacket and shuffle out of the front door. Not to mention the difficulty she has in sitting down on the steps. Anni laughs.

  “I have my mobile in my pocket. So I can ring for help if I can’t stand up again. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to help me.”