To Cook a Bear

by Mikael Niemi

  The fishes’ flesh was badly damaged and covered with cuts and gashes. At this time of the year, as autumn approached and evenings began to draw in, the salmon were caught with gigs. An iron stand was mounted at the front of the boat, on which kindling was lit, so that the flames shone out over the waves. The fish were drawn to the light, forming a shoal so dense the water looked as though it were boiling, and the men stabbed at the glistening backs with large spears.

  As I was rinsing the fish Tjalmo leaped to his feet and started barking. It was Nils Gustaf arriving on foot.

  “Is the pastor available?”

  I washed the slime off my hands and went into the parsonage. The pastor interrupted his writing and followed me out into the yard. Nils Gustaf grinned and flung his arms wide.

  “Pastor, do you have anything to say about the light?”

  “The light?”

  “Yes! What does a man of the church say about the light?”

  “That it’s God’s creation.”

  Nils Gustaf’s smile widened even further. It was obvious there was something brewing.

  “Can anyone hold on to light? Touch it, catch it?”

  “I don’t really understand. Do you mean the painting, is it ready?”

  “No, I mean the light of the world. Come and see!”

  Nils Gustaf set off along the village path without delay, the pastor and me hurrying behind. With a wide sweep of his arm the artist traced the heavens’ curve.

  “Look up there. All the clouds sailing past across the sky. Do the clouds exist? We can’t touch them, can’t get close to them. And yet we say they exist.”

  “They consist of water vapor,” the pastor said.

  “And think of the rainbow. Does that exist? Or the full moon? Do you believe they exist, Jussi?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t touch them. And you say they exist even so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why can we see them, then?”

  I couldn’t think of a reply. Nils Gustaf clicked his tongue delightedly.

  “Because we have light! If the moon were dark, we humans would never have spotted it. It’s because of the light that we can see it.”

  We had reached Kengis Church and Nils Gustaf pointed to the façade.

  “Take the church, for example. Does the pastor think it exists, here and now?”

  The familiar profile of the church’s parvis rose up.

  “Yes,” the pastor. “It’s all here.”

  “We believe it because our eyes can see it. The church enters the eye with the aid of light, isn’t that the pastor’s thinking?”

  “You could put it like that.”

  “I could take out my sketch pad and draw a likeness of it. I’d draw for a while and we’d soon see the church on the paper. It wouldn’t be exactly the same, but we’d see what it represents. Now, Pastor, have the goodness to behold your church.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s standing there. Do you see it?”

  “I see it.”

  Nils Gustaf waited, a cunning expression on his face. For a second I wondered if he was drunk. He slowly put his hand inside his coat and pulled out a cardboard portfolio. He opened it with care. Inside lay a small, square piece of glass, which he held up in front of us. The pastor looked quizzical, put on his spectacles, and leaned toward it.

  “It’s the church!” he exclaimed.

  Nils Gustaf nodded eagerly.

  “It’s beautifully drawn,” the pastor said, impressed.

  The artist raised his hand.

  “Not drawn.”

  “Painted, I mean. You’ve painted it.”

  I leaned forward, too, to get a better look. The picture was smaller than the palm of the artist’s hand. And yet all the details were depicted with remarkable precision. The church could be seen with all the details reproduced exactly, the position of the windows, the pitch of the gable timbers, the wooden cross adorning the roof. Nils Gustaf lowered his voice as if about to reveal a secret.

  “I didn’t make the picture.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, the fact is no person made this picture. Can the pastor explain how that is possible?”

  The pastor turned the piece of glass over. There was no lettering, nothing to give any clue.

  “The light,” Nils Gustaf said.

  “The light?”

  “What the pastor is holding right now,” he said solemnly, “is frozen light.”

  The pastor cautiously extended his finger and brushed over the glass plate. The surface was shiny and hard.

  “So it’s supposed to be some kind of wizardry?” he asked.

  “You could say that. You could indeed say that. Now, if you please, come with me.”

  The artist climbed the steps to the church. The door was unlocked and he showed us onto the porch. By the wall he had rigged up a tent of dark blankets. He disappeared inside for a while; we heard the clink of glass receptacles and detected the sharp smell of chemical fumes. Then he crawled out of the tent and showed me a wooden apparatus with turned legs and attachments.

  “Could Jussi help me with the tripod?”

  I lifted it while he undid a brown leather trunk with brass fittings. Inside lay a square black box, which he carefully picked up.

  “Perhaps the pastor could bring out a chair for us? Preferably one with a high back.”

  The artist went out onto the parvis and I followed him. When we had walked about fifty paces he stopped. I handed over the thing he called a tripod; he folded the legs out and secured them with screws and braces until it was stable. Then he unfastened the strange black box, opened it up, and attached the contraption into the screw holes on the top of the tripod.

  The pastor came out of the church, dragging a heavy seat from the sacristy. I hurried over to help him. The artist indicated we should place it a short distance in front of the church.

  “Now I want the pastor to sit on it. Lean your head against the back. It’s essential to sit completely still. There mustn’t be the slightest movement.

  “Shall I just sit?”

  “Wait for me to prepare everything first.”

  Nils Gustaf unfolded a piece of black cloth and pulled it over both himself and the tripod. All that protruded was a little tube with a glass-covered eye. The artist raised his right arm.

  “Is the pastor sitting quite still?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t move for as long as my hand is in the air. Make sure that you look straight at me the whole time!”

  I heard metallic sounds from some kind of mechanical apparatus underneath the blanket. His right hand signaled that the work was in progress. The warm sun shone down on us. A cow was lowing on one of the farms. I saw a bird pass swiftly overhead, its shadow flitting across the pastor’s face, but he sat like a stone. Finally, the metallic sound was heard again and we saw the arm lowering.

  Nils Gustaf emerged panting from beneath the piece of cloth, as if he had been holding his breath for a long time. Without further explanation he hurriedly dismantled the box, still wrapped in the black cloth, before carrying the bundle back to the porch.

  “Shall I bring the tripod?”

  He had no time for a reply. I lifted the wooden frame off the ground and saw the three marks left by the legs. I carried it to the church steps supported on my shoulder, then helped the pastor haul the heavy chair back. We were both equally confounded by what had just happened. Vigorous activity could be heard inside the tent 0n the porch. We saw the blanket billowing out as the artist crept around in there. There was more clinking of glass and metal and I could hear lids being unscrewed and liquids being poured. Clearly a complicated process was being performed and soon there was the smell of smoke as he heated something up. Eventually his heavy boots appeared as he clum
sily backed out of the tent. Inside I glimpsed dishes, bottles, and long tweezers. He was holding something close to his body, as if sheltering a fragile nest. With obvious excitement he stood up and held out his hand. There lay a glass plate, still shiny with moisture. At first I saw only the gleam: a glistening drop was forming on the underside and swelling, before it fell like silver. But when I changed the angle of my view, I could see that there was something there, a pattern, a picture.

  The artist walked out onto the church steps and held the glass plate up to the light. And now we could see. There was Kengis Church, just as on the first glass plate. But this time, outlined against the church, was a figure in dark clothes, a human shape dressed in a long coat, with unkempt hair that had been pushed back. The lips were large and pronounced, the nose curved. And above them two dark holes that must be eyes. I looked at these eyes and they stared back without blinking.

  “You’re sitting beside your church, Pastor. Now you are preserved forever.”

  The pastor was trembling with delight. He could barely stand still.

  “I read about this when I was in Uppsala!” he exclaimed. “This must be a camera obscura.”

  “Even better, Pastor. This is something totally new. A friend of mine ordered the apparatus from France. The technique is called ‘daguerreotype.’”

  “A machine that catches light. . . .”

  “Here, Pastor. Have the glass plates as souvenirs, the first to be taken in Pajala. Remember the day when the pastor was the first person in the north to be depicted in this way. Take care of the picture. Keep it for all time.”

  “That I shall,” the pastor mumbled, carefully holding the glass between his fingers as if it were a tiny sheet of ice. “Thank you, I certainly shall.”

  He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to protect it.

  “And the image won’t disappear over time?”

  “It is said to be permanent.”

  “Longer than a human life?”

  “Yes, perhaps. Wouldn’t that be remarkable? One day, when we’re both long gone, in an unknown future, people will be able to look at the pastor, see him as if he were alive. Like being preserved in an herbarium, you could say.”

  The pastor could not drag his eyes away from the picture.

  “If the art of the daguerreotype becomes widespread,” he asked, “if it can be performed by anyone at all, how will that affect you?”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Will the world need portrait painters then?”

  Nils Gustaf didn’t look entirely comfortable with the thought.

  “It will take some time before that age comes.”

  “But one day it might happen. When all have their own equipment, when all can produce their own pictures and show them to each other. Will that be the end of the art of painting?”

  “Do you know what, Pastor? I think you might be right. That age might be approaching.”

  “And what sort of age will it be?”

  “One of light,” he said. “The age of light.”

  The pastor nodded, still clearly in a daze.

  “Could you show me the process?” he asked. “Before you pack it all away. . . . I thought I could detect the smell of lead?”

  “Mercury vapors,” Nils Gustaf corrected him. “Come in and I’ll demonstrate.”

  I left the men on the porch, in earnest conversation. Disquiet was mounting inside me, a sense of danger.

  The age of light. Lucifer.

  Was this what was awaiting mankind?

  * * *

  —

  I knew it was time. I had heard the voice singing within me for a while. It was matkamies, the wanderer, and I must set forth northward. At the side of the roads the fireweed, Epilobium angustifolium, released its swirling puffs of seeds, which stuck to clothes and, in a certain light, looked like snow. Gathering in flocks, the birds prepared to take their leave. The wasps, infuriated at their impending death, wanted to gnaw on flesh. At night the skies opened a shining channel to the cosmos, to let the chill of outer space descend over the meadows. At the start, autumn was just a gentle incline, but then it gradually became a steep downhill slope, until a precipice just ahead would plummet into white obscurity. There was a sense of haste in everything that lived, an urge to get away. I found my birch-bark knapsack and in it saved some bits of bread; I had mentioned to no one what I was going to do. On the last evening, the pastor laid his arm around my shoulder, wanting to give me advice, it seemed, searching for the right words, his eyes averted. He could discern my state of mind, understand that the time had come once again. But this was something we had never been able to speak about. That night, when everyone had fallen asleep, I crept out as though I were simply going to empty my bladder. And they didn’t see me again.

  41.

  The pastor sat on the porch step busying himself with his morning pipe. As soon as the smoke rose, the gnats, the plague of August, dispersed. He heard the door open and Brita Kajsa sat down next to him. Like the pastor, she had grown stiffer with age, and the weasel-like nimbleness she had when they were sweethearts had disappeared over the years. But her mind was as quick as ever. Now that her morning chores inside were finished, she could at last allow herself a short rest.

  “Jussi left last night,” Brita Kajsa said.

  “Mm.”

  “Didn’t he say anything to you?”

  “I knew it was time. I noticed his unease.”

  “What’s pulling at him so terribly?”

  “He’ll come back.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “He usually comes back.”

  The pastor surveyed the cloudy August sky.

  “The years are passing.”

  “How’s your stomach?”

  “Better.”

  “Doesn’t hurt?”

  “No, it doesn’t hurt. And you?”

  She shrugged her shoulders slightly.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “Though the years are affecting my joints.”

  “Mm.”

  “Why did the Lord create such bad joints for people? The pastor could preach a sermon about it sometime.”

  “There’s not much in the scriptures on the subject of joint pain.”

  “Lots about leprosy and blindness and the lame and the crippled and locusts and floods, but nothing about aching old women. Didn’t the Lord miss a chapter there?”

  “Perhaps Brita Kajsa should preach about it herself?”

  “Aren’t we women supposed to be silent members of the congregation?”

  “It wasn’t I who gave that order.”

  “The pastor’s preachers are all men. Pekka and Juhani, Erkki Antti and Antin Pieti and all the others. If you don’t make a woman a preacher soon, the revival movement will be run by men far into the future.”

  The pastor considered her words.

  “One problem . . .” he said, and hesitated before continuing, “is that women often lack the requisite education.”

  “Well, give it to them, then. Allow women into the seminaries and seats of learning and let’s see whether they learn to think.”

  “Then there’s the acoustic question. A woman’s voice is by nature weaker and can’t be heard as well in a church.”

  “We’ll have to raise our voices, then,” she said, “to be heard.”

  “It’ll probably be a while before that time comes.”

  “Wasn’t it a woman’s words that inspired the revival?” she said. “Your young woman in Åsele, who displayed a deeper understanding of the order of grace than all the reverends and Bible professors you’ve listened to over the years? It was a simple, uneducated Lapp girl who kindled your spiritual fire.”

  “Yes, I’ll never forget Maria. . . .”

  “Milla was her name. Milla Clementsdott
er.”

  “Yes, she was baptized Milla.”

  “Milla Clementsdotter would be an excellent preacher.”

  “She would, certainly,” the pastor agreed. “Indeed she would.”

  “Or why not one of our own daughters? Nora or Sophia?”

  “Allow them into the pulpit?”

  “You could teach them to speak. Like you train the men around you. Like you trained Jussi.”

  “But Jussi is different.”

  “Because you found him by the side of the road.”

  “Because . . . because he reminds me of Levi.”

  The pastor remembered Levi’s curly hair, how he shook with laughter when you rubbed your nose into his stomach. Of all the children they had lost, Levi was the one he missed the most.

  Brita Kajsa began to knead her thumb into the tightening tendons in her neck.

  “And how have things been going in Kautokeino?” she asked. “I heard that the Sami who held a service were sent to prison.”

  “Yes, but most of them have been released now. I would like to think everything will soon calm down.”

  “But the pastor sounds doubtful.”

  “The sheriff still hasn’t got hold of Ellen Skum. She’s absconded and her relatives up in the mountains are sheltering her. In addition, the Sami incurred heavy legal expenses. They might be forced to sell all their reindeer in order to pay.”

  “But what will they live on, then?”

  “Unrest and bitterness are rife up there. They thought they were fighting for good.”