by Mikael Niemi
“Why did you send for us?” he shouted with an accusing stare, before sinking into a spindle chair. “The poor chap has died in his sleep.”
Heino cast a sideways glance at the pastor. The pastor appeared to hesitate, before leaning forward and calmly saying:
“I don’t think Nils Gustaf’s death was natural.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are signs that—”
“Isn’t it the case that the room was locked from the inside and all the windows were hasped? Or have I misheard?”
“No, that’s correct.”
“The chap fell ill in his sleep. Shall we assume a stroke?”
Brahe cast a challenging look at Michelsson, who nodded in agreement.
“Into the grave double-quick with the unfortunate fellow, his body might be infectious,” Brahe went on.
“But what if the man has been killed?”
“The cottage was empty when you entered?”
“Indeed. But Nils Gustaf appears to have had a visitor yesterday.”
The sheriff eased his collar, looking for a second as though he felt nauseous, until with evident repugnance he began to unbutton the artist’s clothing.
“There are no injuries as far as I can see. No blood or signs of struggle. How could he have been murdered? By a creature that can walk through walls into a locked house and kill a man without it showing. Is that what the pastor believes?”
Sheriff Brahe looked around scornfully.
“Tee-hee,” Michelsson giggled, to demonstrate his support for the sheriff.
Over by the door, Heino looked inquiringly at the pastor, expecting a sharp riposte. Meanwhile, Brahe was riffling through the as-yet-unframed canvases on the drying stand. He held one of them up.
“Look what a master he was!”
The ferocious she-bear was up on her hind legs, roaring. In front of the beast stood a fellow in a sheriff’s uniform bravely raising his saber. The body of the bear seemed about to leap out of the picture, blood and saliva dripping from her gaping jaws. The sheriff’s saber glinted like a flash of lightning.
“Such a skilled artist!”
Michelsson agreed. The sheriff suddenly noticed the brandy bottle on the table, reached out for it, and took a good swig. The pastor looked outraged and for a second seemed to be on the verge of wresting the bottle out of his hands. But Brahe just gave a smug smile.
“We’ll hang this painting in our office. Won’t we, Michelsson?”
“Yes, Sheriff.”
“And now we want everyone to leave the cottage at once. The pastor as well! Michelsson and I will begin a methodical investigation of the circumstances pertaining to this death, and we don’t want to be disturbed.”
“May I take the glasses?” the pastor asked.
“The glasses?”
“Or would the sheriff like to examine them first?”
Brahe gave a dismissive wave of the hand and the pastor picked up the two glasses with the utmost care, using a handkerchief to protect them from his fingers, and then gently placed them in his bag so they wouldn’t topple over. It was clear to us all that Brahe wanted to be left alone to empty the bottle of brandy in peace and quiet.
“What’s the Lapp boy writing over there?” he suddenly said.
I tried to hide the paper, glancing desperately at the pastor, but it was too late. Brahe snatched it off me and started reading, his forehead creasing into a deep frown.
“This is just bosh! What’s the good of that?”
“Jussi is practicing his writing,” the pastor said calmly.
“But the words don’t mean anything. This is just twaddle!”
He crumpled up the piece of paper and tossed it into a corner. Putting on a submissive, almost sheepish expression, I picked it up, while the sheriff waved us away with irritation, as if we were flies.
I straightened out the ball of paper and stored it in my pocket. Sheriff Brahe couldn’t read Sami.
43.
Back at the parsonage, the pastor invited me into his study, shut the door behind us, and motioned for me to come up to his desk. I had to sit on a stool, which was low, and as a result the top of the desk was at the height of my chest. He took out a little folded piece of paper and opened it gingerly. On it lay some tiny flakes of wood, so light they could have been scattered by my breath.
“What’s this?” he asked.
When I leaned closer, I recognized it.
“From a pencil that’s been sharpened with a knife. Is it the shavings we found from Jolina’s attacker?”
“Precisely, Jussi. These are the flakes we found lying among the aspens where we think the perpetrator was standing. And look at this.”
He took a pencil out of his pocket and sharpened it with his pocketknife over another sheet of paper.
“They look the same.”
“Look carefully.”
He handed me a magnifying glass and I held my breath as I tried to focus.
“They could have come from the same pencil.”
“I agree, Jussi. The shavings must come from the same sort of pencil and, as you recall, we found no pencil of this type in Henriksson’s shop.”
“No.”
“I took this one out of the artist’s penholder on one of the occasions I was sitting for him.”
“The pastor stole it?”
“Let us say I borrowed it for investigative purposes.”
“But that means . . . it was Nils Gustaf who attacked the women?”
“I suspected him for a long time. His boots were oiled with the same kind of shoe grease we found on Jolina’s kirtle. He possessed poisons that could have been used on Jolina’s dog. But nonetheless I had my doubts.”
“Why?”
“Nils Gustaf’s psychology. He liked talking about women during our sittings. He both adored and despised them and was hardly one to respect a refusal. But would he really lurk in a hiding place and assault them?”
“Who else would sit outdoors drawing? Perhaps he was harboring a man of violence deep down?”
“Yes, perhaps, Jussi. Perhaps we all carry such fiends within us. But I took the opportunity to examine Nils Gustaf’s torso when we were in there. And there was no sign of a puncture wound. The man who injured Jolina must have been someone else. Find your notes and read out what was on his table.”
I hastily started reading.
“Two empty glasses with traces of brandy. Next to a brandy bottle, one-third full. Memorandum book, receipt book—”
“What about the memorandum book?”
“There were orders for paintings in it. Who’d ordered them, the sums agreed—”
“Skip the obvious,” the pastor interrupted. “I only want to know whether Jussi noticed that the page with the most recent order had been torn out?”
“Was it?”
“You recall the sketch on the easel, don’t you? It’s conceivable that someone visited Nils Gustaf and said he wanted to order a portrait. The order was written down in the memorandum book and signed. A commission fee was paid and placed in the secret compartment, whereupon a bottle of brandy was produced to celebrate the agreement.”
“So the page that was ripped out . . . ?”
“On it Nils Gustaf had written the customer’s name, and the visitor must have torn the page out before he left.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you understand, Jussi? The visitor already knew the murder would take place.”
“But why did the pastor say nothing to the sheriff?”
“I tried, Jussi, didn’t you see I tried? And I would very much like to examine the memorandum book and the receipt book more closely.”
“What does the pastor mean?”
“The impression made by a pencil is usually left on the piece of paper un
derneath. Let me show you.”
The pastor brought out two pieces of paper and laid one on top of the other. Without me seeing what, he wrote something on the top one. Then he gave the sheet underneath it to me.
“Shade it with the pencil lead, Jussi. Shade the surface carefully.”
I did as he said. Little by little, almost like magic, the hitherto invisible text began to appear.
“I think the perpetrator’s name can be deciphered from the memorandum book,” he said.
“But the door was locked, wasn’t it?”
“Where’s the piece of paper, Jussi? What have I written?”
The pastor’s large nose was quivering, the moisture in his nostrils glistened. He reminded me of an aging dog when it was time for food. His eyes were cloudy, the bristly eyebrows drawn together, individual hairs sticking out as they often do in old men. I got the impression the pastor found himself in a shadow, in a forest full of dangers, and I had a sense of foreboding, an instinct that I had to save him before it was too late. My hand wanted to grab his old coat, hold on to it, drag him back into the daylight of the study. Something bad was going to happen. There were forces we should leave alone. All this went through my mind as I read his words:
Now we’ll get the bear.
The pastor turned his face to me and it was transformed, so mild and friendly that I was embarrassed. He touched my head, stroked it as if I were his child.
44.
There is one book I often borrow from the pastor, which I have read many times. It is about Carl, a man who lives in sin, a drunkard and a thief, a thoroughly detestable human being. His mother weeps and tries to talk some sense into him; his brother lends him money but he never pays it back, devoting himself instead to buying brandy and playing cards. Carl stands at the abyss, already one step over the edge, until finally the inevitable happens. One evening he is grievously assaulted when he isn’t able to pay his gambling debts; his assailants take his clothes and he is left in the gutter naked and bleeding, as the last of his life ebbs from his wounds.
Suddenly a beggar girl appears and offers him the only thing she owns, a gunnysack that she has filled with straw. With gentle hands she wraps the sack around Carl against the cold and then kneels down and prays softly for him, appealing to God to heal his wounds. And the bleeding stops. Soon a policeman comes past to offer assistance, and Carl is taken to a home for the poor, where he is given a bed and provided with care.
When, much later, he has recovered, he starts to inquire about the girl who saved him. But no one knows anything about her, no one has seen her, so he goes out into the city to search for her. He asks everyone he meets, he describes her, but she is nowhere to be found. And at that moment, when he realizes he will never be able to thank the person who saved his life, he is crushed. This is how Carl achieves salvation, and henceforth he dedicates himself to helping the poor.
At the end the book talks about Carl’s good deeds, how he opens a home for abandoned children, delivers speeches so that listeners in their thousands are saved, proudly shakes hands with the president. The book ends with an assurance that this is all true and actually happened in the American city of Philadelphia.
I love this book and I know several passages by heart. I can see the events inside my head as clearly as if I had been there when they took place. I open it at a page near the end and see Carl receive forgiveness from his brother on his deathbed, the light filtering through the window, the last thing Carl experiences in life being the scent of spruce twigs and milk. Then I open the book at the beginning, where young Carl attacks the farmhand Bob Holley with a spade when Bob tries to prevent him from stealing from the storehouse.
And even though Carl at no time gives up the search, he never finds out who the poor girl was. The girl who saved his life. He can never, ever forget her.
The strange thing about the book is that you can read it backward, so that Carl starts off good but turns out bad. You can also jump back and forth, and then he is good—bad—good—bad, in a constant state of flux. Between these covers is the long lifetime of one person, and I am conscious of holding time itself in my hands. Time that can start, jump to the end, begin again, go back. In real life time always goes in the same direction, but in a book something else can happen. And it feels quite creepy. On the pastor’s shelves I see the books’ spines, standing side by side, and all of them are filled with different sorts of time. The time it has taken to write the book, the time evoked in it, and then the time it takes to read it. And with a dizzy feeling I realize that in a given mass on the bookshelf, the books must contain more time than a human life encompasses. The books’ experiences are greater than an individual person can ever embody. There are more ideas than you can ever think up in a lifetime. Even if your entire life is spent in a reading spree, one book after another without stopping, there is a limit to how many you can fit in. The thought of large buildings filled with more books than anyone will ever have time to read is breathtaking.
“Such buildings exist,” the pastor said. “They’re called libraries.”
“No!” I said.
“I’ve been in them.”
“No.”
“In Härnösand. In Uppsala. There are libraries in lots of places.”
“That must be dreadful.”
The pastor looked at me quizzically, not understanding what I meant.
“So much time,” I stammered. “No one could ever read them all.”
“No, hardly.”
“Only . . . God.”
“Yes, God, obviously. Maybe that’s the purpose of libraries, that we should witness God’s greatness in them.”
“But if libraries exist, do we need churches?”
The pastor fell silent and I was afraid that he was angry. But when he turned to me there was something else in his eyes, something wandering, vague. Something like fear.
45.
The day after the body of Nils Gustaf was found, the pastor invited Constable Michelsson to the parsonage, telling him to come alone, unaccompanied by Sheriff Brahe. The pastor requested my presence and showed us both into his study. Michelsson courteously doffed his cap as soon as he entered and energetically ran his hand over his balding head, as if to comb the hair that wasn’t there.
“Sit down, sit down,” the pastor said.
We each took a chair, while he sat down at the desk.
“It’s a good thing the weather’s improved,” the pastor said conversationally, in a bid to lift the atmosphere. “How has the haymaking been?”
“Oh yes! Mother and Father have got the barns full.”
“Your parents live some distance away, don’t they?”
“Yes, in Pello. My older brothers are still at the farm.”
“So Michelsson is the youngest?”
“Youngest of eight.”
“And you are still unmarried?”
“I . . . I am betrothed to someone in Pello. My mother has chosen for me—a girl from a good family.”
“How appropriate.”
“The girl and I were both pupils of Juhani Raattamaa. He was the one who taught us to read and write.”
“Well, well, well.”
“A very kind and clever man.”
“I am so pleased to hear that.” The pastor smiled. “And now Michelsson is the parish constable. That must involve a lot of writing?”
“I assist the parish in taking the minutes for various official functions.”
“I’ve heard that Michelsson is highly regarded for his beautiful handwriting.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, so everyone hereabouts says.”
The pastor swiftly produced a blank sheet of paper.
“Would Michelsson like to show us a sample? Write a few lines for my enjoyment.”
The constable flinched and suddenly looked worried.
“But I can’t . . .”
“I have quite illegible script,” the pastor lamented. “Sometimes Jussi has great difficulty deciphering my scrawl, don’t you? Look, just a couple of words!”
Michelsson squirmed but finally stepped forward to the desk, rummaging through his coat pockets. He pulled out a pencil and leaned over the sheet of paper.
“One second,” the pastor said. “I’ll sharpen it for you.”
He quickly took hold of the pencil and shaped it into a point with his pocketknife. The shavings fell onto the desk and he brushed them into a little heap. When Michelsson got his pencil back and wrote down a few words, his hand moving in elegant curves, it was clear what an accomplished writer he was. I knew the pastor wished to put the constable to the test, but we could both see he was using his right hand. The pastor held up the piece of paper and read.
“‘Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.’ Yes, I really do have to concur, I have seldom seen a script so easy to read and at the same time so graceful. But the pencil is of the highest quality, I can see. Where does the constable obtain pencils like this?”
Michelsson put the pencil back in his pocket and seemed rather embarrassed by the praise.
“It’s the sheriff who purchases them.”
“Aha, Sheriff Brahe!”
“He’s got a whole box of them. I think he buys them in Haparanda.”
Giving me a quick look, the pastor folded the pencil shavings into a piece of paper. I noticed his excitement, although he was trying to hide it.
“And what’s he like to work with, our sheriff?”
“A very experienced man,” Michelsson replied warily.
“But he avails himself of the bottle fairly often.”
“I know the pastor disapproves of drinking.”
“The poison of alcohol clouds both vision and thought. But I am pleased Michelsson himself is abstinent. I can see you as a very able future sheriff.”
“Oh . . . thank you, Pastor.”
