To Cook a Bear

by Mikael Niemi

  “In due course, naturally. But I have an eye for enterprise, and a person’s inner character makes a greater impression on me than titles and uniforms. And I always convey such opinions to the influential people I meet.”

  In surprise, I cast a furtive glance toward the pastor. Never had I heard him flatter anyone in that way, and I could see how proud and self-conscious the compliment made Michelsson.

  “Let us hear your thoughts on Nils Gustaf’s tragic passing,” the pastor said.

  “Um . . . the building was locked, so Sheriff Brahe thought—”

  “I didn’t mean what the sheriff thought; I have no trouble figuring that out. Let’s hear instead what Constable Michelsson himself observed.”

  “Well . . . the fellow was lying on the bed fully clothed. Death must have been sudden.”

  “Anything else?”

  “There were some canvases on a dryer. There was the beginning of a sketch on the easel. There was a brandy bottle and glass on the table.”

  “How many glasses?”

  “One, I think.”

  “One?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “There were two glasses,” the pastor said. “Weren’t there, Jussi?”

  I picked up my notes.

  “That’s correct, two glasses.”

  “Doesn’t Michelsson write things down during police investigations?”

  “Yes, afterward,” Michelsson stuttered. “At my desk afterward I try to remember the most important points.”

  “Memory can be deceptive,” the pastor said. “I suggest that henceforth the constable write down all observations on the spot. All possible details. Even what seems irrelevant at first glance can later prove to be highly significant. Carry on reading, Jussi.”

  “On the table there was a receipt book and a memorandum book,” I said. “On the painting support there was a cursory portrait sketch.”

  “I just said that,” Michelsson pointed out.

  “Now that the constable knows there were two glasses, what are his thoughts?”

  “That there . . . there may have been a visitor.”

  “A visitor who gets the artist to make a sketch and take out his receipt book. Maybe the visitor came to order a painting.”

  “Who could that be?” the constable asked with a look of puzzlement.

  The pastor scratched his chin.

  “Let me change track for a moment. Was it not the case that Sheriff Brahe traveled to the mountains at the beginning of summer?”

  “To Kvikkjokk,” Michelsson confirmed.

  “A most beautiful place,” the pastor said. “Petrus and I lived there for some years at the home of our elder brother Carl-Erik. May one ask what Brahe was doing in Kvikkjokk?”

  “He was investigating reindeer-stealing.”

  “Thus the work entailed walking across heathland?”

  “Of course.”

  The pastor brought out a dried stalk and held it up.

  “Does the constable by any chance know what this is? Please don’t touch it.”

  Michelsson bent forward to have a better look.

  “Grass,” he said.

  The pastor grinned.

  “Grass it certainly is not. No, this is Arctic heather, Cassiope tetragona. An extremely common mountain plant, often found on treeless heaths.”

  “I am not as well versed as the pastor in botany.”

  “No, I’m not asking you to be. But the salient point is, this plant does not occur in our region.”

  “Oh, doesn’t it?”

  “So explain to me, therefore, how I could retrieve it from the hay in the barn where Hilda Fredriksdotter Alatalo was attacked.”

  “She was slain by a killer bear.”

  “No, Jussi and I don’t think so. We found blood in the hay and ripped-out hairs. The poor girl must have been lured in there, attacked, and fought for her life before she was strangled.”

  “The sheriff shared the reward out among the bear hunters, didn’t he?”

  “May I ask the constable to look at this?” the pastor said, showing him an envelope. “These are the parings from a pencil sharpened with a knife. We found them near the place where Jolina Eliasdotter was murdered.”

  “What do you mean, murdered? She hanged herself,” Michelsson said, glaring at the pastor and half rising.

  The pastor didn’t take his eyes off him.

  “Compare these with the ones I just cut from Michelsson’s pencil.”

  Michelsson leaned closer and with trembling fingers picked up some of the wood shavings and stared at them.

  “From the pencil I got from the sheriff?”

  The room was completely still, the air so thick it was hardly possible to move.

  “So the pastor is implying . . .” the constable murmured.

  “In June, Sheriff Brahe visited the mountains where the Arctic heather grows, as you have told us yourself. He has in his possession pencils of the same sort of which there were traces at the scene of the crime. He also shows, as I’m sure Constable Michelsson has noticed, great interest in young women.”

  “I could never believe that Brahe—”

  “Jolina’s kirtle was marked with a wax the sheriff uses on his boots. And she reported she had been assaulted by a herrasmies, a gentleman.”

  “But didn’t she refuse to speak after the attack?”

  “Only while Brahe was there. Presumably she recognized him, in spite of the fact that he was masked when he assaulted her. Perhaps that was why he felt compelled to strangle her later and try to make it look like suicide.”

  “No, that’s impossible!”

  “Did Michelsson notice whether Brahe appeared nervous and on edge around this time? Did he purchase a rope, perhaps, of the same type Jolina was hanged with? Jolina also reported that she had managed to injure the perpetrator in the left shoulder with her hairpin. If Michelsson has the opportunity, he might take a look. Maybe during a sauna—see if Brahe’s shoulder has the mark of that type of puncture wound.”

  Looking queasy, Michelsson stood up and supported himself on the top of the desk, breathing heavily.

  “The pastor should serve as a sheriff himself,” he said.

  “Searching for clues at the scene of a crime is not unlike looking for plants. You have to have an eye for the deviant. And besides, I’ve had a great deal of help from Jussi.”

  The constable gave me a sideways look as the pastor rose to his feet and took his hand. Michelsson muttered a hurried farewell and departed.

  The pastor meticulously folded an envelope and placed it in a drawer.

  “Well, what do you think, Jussi?”

  “Why did the pastor do that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “The pastor revealed . . . everything!”

  “If the fox is hiding in his lair, maybe he needs smoking out.”

  “And when he comes out?”

  “Then we’ll get him.”

  “A sheriff?” I said doubtfully. “How do you arrest a sheriff?”

  The pastor lit his pipe and drew on it vigorously, sucking in his cheeks.

  His nostrils widened with pleasure. Presently two thick puffs of smoke were emitted and transformed into spirals that twisted together in a sweet-smelling cloud. It was clear he was in a very good mood. He asked for herbal tea and I went out into the kitchen and prepared a steaming infusion of Epilobium. When I took it in to him he had put on a strange brimmed hat and pulled up his coat collar as if he were cold. His sharp profile had a look of deep concentration, so I put the cup down and silently withdrew.

  46.

  My beloved. Where could she be? In the evening, when I lay down on my straw sack, I could see her in my thoughts, wearing her red dress, floating. My disquiet was mounting. Had something h
appened to her? As the parsonage prepared for the night’s rest, I crept over to her farm, where I sheltered at the edge of the forest. The late summer twilight descended very slowly, as if the evening light were running out through a tiny hole on the horizon. I thought of the hourglass standing on the pulpit, filled with white sand, the little stream trickling down into the deep and the glass bulb above becoming empty darkness.

  In the high brushwood by the meadow I settled down like a cat, with my pointed ears and my pink button nose. The gnats plagued me; I pulled up my collar when they stung my neck and I crushed the tansy’s yellow flower heads and rubbed them into my wrists and neck. The spiced aroma was as good a protection as wild rosemary, but some of the little brutes still crawled into my ears or got stuck in the mucus in my eyes. End-of-day stillness fell over the village, the dogs broke off their endless barking, and the cows stopped lowing now that their udders had been milked dry. I heard a mouse running across the grass below in short, rustling spurts, before it came to a stop, its whiskers trembling, in fear of the constant threat of the fox’s teeth and the owl’s claws. All the time the perpetual roar of the waterfall could be heard in the background, like the blood pounding inside your ear when you lay your cheek against a reindeer skin. A thousand tiny trembling bristles of fur, that was how water can sound. There is no sound more beautiful.

  And suddenly she came out into the yard. The quick steps of a woman, a skirt she lifted so that the evening dew shouldn’t wet the hem, the briefest glimpse of her ankles. And I knew I had to speak to her. I ran across the meadow, waving, and she stopped, her eyes wide, black with fear, a scream rising up. And still she was more beautiful than all the angels in heaven. I saw the smoothness of her cheeks, her arched eyebrows, her lips drawn back, the tip of her pink tongue. Then she recognized me and the fear receded. I sensed that something had changed, her color seemed stronger, or maybe it was the way she moved, as though her feet had grown bigger.

  “Maria . . .” I whispered.

  “Go,” she said curtly.

  I reached out, I had to touch her. But she backed away and I felt the merest hint of rough cloth.

  “Maria, you remember when we danced, don’t you? We could walk into the forest, lie down in the moss. No one need see us.”

  Although she was unwilling, I took hold of her wrist. It was so unutterably soft and smooth, the skin on the inside of her arm so delicate and shiny. She looked away, her lips tightening.

  “He died,” she whispered, barely audible.

  “Yes.”

  The soles of my feet were so hot, I had to stamp up and down on the spot and I was holding her harder than I really meant to.

  “Maria, you are more perfect than all the angels in heaven—”

  “You don’t understand, Jussi!” She stopped me.

  I tried to embrace her but she pulled free, the jolt so unexpected I staggered. She hurried toward the privy, but before she could reach it I saw her bend double like an old Lapp biddy, take a few faltering steps, and hold her plaits back. Then it came pouring out of her, in more than one gush, warm yellow slime pouring onto the grass with a bitter stench. She coughed and spat and cleared her throat in an effort to cleanse her mouth, wiped her hand over her lips. Then she gathered herself and realized I was still there.

  “Go!”

  I stayed.

  “Go home, Jussi. This is how it is now.”

  I didn’t move. She opened the well cover, hoisted up an ice-cold bucket from the world below, and rinsed her face. I saw her hands, pure white in the gathering darkness, like fishes’ bellies. Soft, smooth pike.

  47.

  My heart was pounding so hard it was difficult to breathe, my thoughts rampaging as I followed the uneven village path through the twilight. Get away, just away. Leave everything, set out on the roads of the big wide world, disappear far to the north, beyond the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

  You don’t understand, Jussi.

  The clatter and trampling of a horse’s hooves could be heard approaching and a wagon came careering along, accompanied by the drunken shouts of the two men driving it. I took cover in the brushwood to let them pass without seeing me. The wheel axle creaked, the horse snorted and gave off the smell of stable as they rolled past me, and the men argued about money, about card games and debts, so drunk they nearly fell off their seat. I stood still under the half-moon. I didn’t want to speak to anyone.

  A dog barked. It had been lying in the cart and now it flew up with a howl, a huge lupine creature. It leaped down onto the ground, long-legged as a wolf, and rushed after my scent. I fled as fast as I could, but I stumbled in the undergrowth and, terrified, tried to heave myself into a tree. But it was too late. The dog’s jaws ripped my trouser leg, I could feel its teeth tear at my shinbone; I tried to kick it off, but the dog hung on like a snarling shackle.

  “Mikä saatana!” I heard the men yell.

  “Olen ihminen,” I shouted as loud as I could. “I’m not Satan, I’m a person!”

  They reined in the horse, which was nervously stamping the ground, and I heard rustling as they forced their way through the thicket.

  “Stand still or I’ll kill you!” the driver shouted. “Damn it, I’ll kill you!”

  “Call the dog off!” I screamed.

  The animal opened its jaws to get a better hold and I managed to free myself. Something warm was running down my shin. The driver swung his knife to and fro while the dog bounced up and down between the trees.

  “Off! Call it off!”

  I felt a hand grab my belt, the driver hauled me from the tree trunk, and I fell onto the moss. The dog went for my face, and as I shielded it with my arm I felt its fangs sink into my forearm muscle.

  “Drop, Seppo! Drop!”

  And then I saw that it was Roope. The dog refused to let go, even though he was dragging it off by its hind leg, and not until it was dangling in the air did it finally loosen its jaws. Roope flung the dog to one side, where it pitched head over heels onto the grass with a yelp. I lay where I was, whimpering.

  “Who the hell is it?”

  Roope, so drunk he was drooling, grabbed my collar.

  “What the devil! It’s the little noaidi. What are you doing out in the middle of the night?”

  “You’ll pay for this,” I gasped. “My clothes are ruined.”

  “Pay,” he crowed. “Oh yes, I’ll pay. Think yourself lucky you didn’t get your stomach ripped open.”

  “Who is it?” the other man shouted.

  “It’s the bloody noaidi. The bastard was hiding here.”

  “Why was he hiding?”

  Roope turned back to me.

  “Yes, why were you hiding, you rat? Why were you skulking in there?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s him!” said the other man.

  “Who?”

  “The one who attacked Jolina. It must be him!”

  “The swine!”

  “Christ’s sake! He was lying low waiting for women. Now we’ll get him!”

  Roope looked at me, his eyes narrowing.

  “Do you know what we do to the likes of you? Do you?”

  Then came his fist. The blow hit my mouth, my face exploded, I heard the crunch in the roots of my teeth and could taste blood filling my palate. I raised my curled-toe boot and kicked back as hard as I could, making contact with Roope’s groin. He grunted like an ox and then he hit me again, even harder this time so I fell headlong. Roope picked something up, a heavy stone, lifted it, and aimed: he was going to dash my— I just managed to twist my head to the side, the stone smashed above my ear, almost forcing my eyes out of their sockets, and now the dog was back again, on top of me, trying to tear me to shreds. With the second crack a blaze of colors erupted, and now I could no longer move.

  “Bloody hell! We’ll castrate the swine. We’ll beat his prick to a pulp.”

>   They glanced back at the marsh path, where a figure was approaching. He must have been sitting in the cart with them. His face hidden behind a scarf, he pulled out something sharp and with a powerful blow he sank the point into my left shoulder and twisted. The heavens crashed over me.

  After that I remember nothing.

  48.

  The first time I wake, a surging torrent sweeps me forward. A humming, screaming pain. I realize my face is full of flies, a buzzing swarm. They are crawling all over me, and when I lift my head they fly up like a shiny blanket. It is difficult to breathe. Clots, membranes. I spit, but my spit gets stuck. I roll onto my side, retching. There is no strength in my arms, and for a moment I think they are broken. Then I see my blackened muscles, crushed, and the teeth marks of the dog.

  They have pulled my trousers down to the knees. And between them—no, I don’t want to know. I roll onto my back again and gasp for air, while the flies return to land on the clots of blood. For a long time, I can’t move. I know this is wrong. This is very wrong. Something has been torn apart and has trickled away between my thighs. There is an oozing gouge. But it is there, it is still there. I struggle up and try to see. They have done something down there. It is hollow there. They have crushed me, staved me in. Did the dog eat it? I pull my trousers up but the cloth sags and I feel bolts of lightning filling the world with white-flashing darkness.

  * * *

  —

  The second time I wake, I need to pee. I lie motionless for a long time, holding it back, trying to stop what must come. In the end I have to let go. A stream of venom eats through skin and flesh and I scream as my thighs come away from my body and lie like rotten steaks that will soon be carried off by the beasts of prey.

  * * *

  —

  The third time, I am woken by thirst. A burning thirst now that everything has turned to a crust. The sun has passed its zenith and the day is sitting back in its chair. I dream that it is raining, a teeming rain filling my mouth like a constantly flowing stream. Swallow the stream, swallow, but nothing has the power to assuage. Thirst is the worst torment, the last sensation before darkness descends, and I can hear the roar in the distance again. There the waterfall thunders, water crashes over rocks, huge volumes of water foaming in my face, I can feel it. Just once more in this life, I must see water. I push up onto all fours, snorting like a calf. Grab hold of a sapling pine, brace myself with my knees, and stand up, swaying to and fro. I don’t see the marsh path, don’t know where I am. But I hear the roar. With one hand I support myself against the tree. With the other I hold my trousers up and propel myself slowly forward.