by Mikael Niemi
When I prepared to leave, the boy wanted to come with me. I indicated that he needed to stay with his mother, but he took hold of my coat and refused to let go. He shuffled after me, barefoot, and I was obliged to return to the farm. I could see he was hungry, but the woman assured me they had just eaten, though there was no sign of plate or spoons. I gave him a drink of water from the ladle and tried to slip out, but he was instantly at my heels.
“You’ll have to tie him up,” the old woman said wearily.
She pointed to a rope by the door. I had taken it to be a dog leash, but it turned out it was intended for him. The woman advised me to secure one end to the settle she was lying on and then to wind the other end round his chest. If I tied the knot at the back, I would have time to get out of sight before he managed to free himself.
I was forced to do as she said. The boy resisted—this was not the first time it had happened to him—but with my adult strength I was able to fasten the rope. Then I wished them both God’s peace and set off hotfoot.
When I got home Brita Kajsa came out to meet me in the yard. She was so upset she could barely speak.
“They . . . they searched through everything. Your papers, your things.”
“Who did?”
“I wanted to stop them but they said they had the law behind them.”
“But who was it, Brita Kajsa?”
“The sheriff, of course. And that pale, ginger fellow he always has in tow.”
“Constable Michelsson.”
“They took your personal notes. They wanted me to sign for them, but I refused.”
Her voice trembled with rage and I nodded pensively.
“That’s what I expected.”
“What are you accused of?”
“They want to get at Jussi. They knew that we’d gathered evidence. Did they search the study?”
“The whole house! They rooted through the cupboards and chests, in the truckle beds, they even dug around in our bedding.”
“Have they gone now?”
Brita Kajsa nodded. I asked her to wait inside the cabin while I slipped out to the shed and groped for the leather bag behind the roof truss. It and all the evidence we had gathered were still there.
65.
The next day I visited Jussi again in the prison. He was still exhausted after his ill-treatment and was lying on the hard bench with his eyes closed. Michelsson stayed and rattled the keys. I explained that this time I was here in my capacity as priest and wished to speak to the prisoner in private.
“But the sheriff has given orders that—”
“A prisoner has the right to private confession,” I interrupted sternly.
Something in the tone of my voice made him slink away after he had locked us both in.
“Jussi, there’s going to be a trial.”
He nodded. A secretion had dried in the corner of his mouth, the wound from the tooth I had pulled out still hadn’t healed.
“I thought I should stand at your side, Jussi.”
“Why?”
His voice was hoarse and weak. His forehead was hot when I felt it, he clearly had a fever.
“Because I failed you. Because I wasn’t able to protect you.”
“But the pastor—”
“There’s one thing I need to know first, Jussi. Can you answer me honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Was it you who attacked the girls?”
He stared at me and made an attempt to sit up. I held him down on the bench.
“You were the one, Jussi, who sneaked after Maria and Nils Gustaf the night of the dance at Kenttä. I recognized your footprints, small curled-toe shoes, flat soles, behind the uprooted tree where you hid and spied on them. The person was left-handed like you, Jussi. His feet were small, and the footprints indicated a gait I recognized as yours from all our wanderings together. In addition, you’d crushed the wild rosemary, as is your habit. The sprigs were still on the ground. You crushed them and rubbed them in against the mosquitoes. I could still smell it in your hair the following day.”
“But I—”
“What were you doing, Jussi?”
“They . . . I saw them lying together.”
“Maria and Nils Gustaf?”
“Mm.”
“That must have been difficult for you, Jussi. Maria was your beloved. I have given this much thought. Maybe that was when you decided to hurt Nils Gustaf. Did you visit him and put poison in his cognac?”
Jussi shook his head feebly.
“You must have been filled with rage, Jussi. And also seized by desire. Could it be you felt as though you were a wolf, Jussi? You had to get hold of flesh. So you hid farther along next to the path. While you were waiting you took out a pencil and sharpened it and then you sat there and wrote. What were you writing, Jussi? Poems, maybe? Short rhymes about the woman you love, about her betrayal and deceit. How she’s going off with someone else. When you’ve been sitting there a while, you suddenly see a woman walking along the path. You’re inflamed with anger and sorrow and you’ve been drinking brandy. She’s alone and she’s approaching the place where you’re hiding, without suspecting the slightest danger. You take a handkerchief and tie it over your face.”
I stopped speaking and let Jussi suffer. His eyes were bright with fever, the shackles clanked when he tried to sit up.
“Jussi, I know you were prowling around out there all summer. Despite my warnings. You still went there and waited for Maria. In the middle of the night. It looks bad.”
“I—I only thought . . .”
“You took your knapsack with you, Jussi. Why? You’d packed some food as well, some of Brita Kajsa’s porridge you’d saved from the morning. You took a blanket, a fire striker, and other things people usually take on their wanderings. I think you were intending to leave.”
He closed his eyes and nodded.
“Did you want to bid her farewell, Jussi? Feel her body one last time before you departed? Put your hands round her neck and squeeze harder and harder, even though she fought against you? Soon she’d be lying there, motionless. And you’d be done with it all. With Maria, with Kengis, with your stupid old priest. You’d disappear along the paths, never to return.”
“No . . .” Jussi moaned.
“It wasn’t like that?”
“No,” he said again. “It was both of us who . . . Maria and me . . .”
“Who what?”
“We were going to go together . . . to the north . . .”
Jussi made as if to grab my arm but the chains were in the way.
“You must believe me, Pastor. . . . I didn’t attack the women!”
“But why didn’t you tell me you were planning to leave, Jussi? Why did you want to go without a word? Didn’t you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“I could have married you both, Jussi. I could have entered you into the book as husband and wife. You’re like a son to me, there’s nothing I would rather have done for you.”
I saw the tears in Jussi’s eyes as he turned his head away.
“Jussi, my dear Jussi.”
“I hoped that we . . . I was going to tell everyone that the child was mine.”
“And where did you think you would go?”
“To Norway.”
“But Maria tricked you, Jussi.”
“No . . .”
“She never intended that you should be hers. The sheriff found out about it all. He was the one who set the trap, and Maria was the bait. She had Satan inside her, Jussi, she knew what awaited you.”
“No, no!”
Jussi’s body convulsed in a silent spasm. I could hear noises outside and I reached for my etui and lifted out the chalice.
“Hurry up, Jussi. There’s some bread here, baked by Brita Kajsa. The body of Christ given
for you. . . . Eat it quickly before they come!”
I broke the soft bread into tiny pieces and fed him. Then I loudly recited the “Our Father,” in case Michelsson was standing outside listening. I opened the wine cruet, today filled to the brim with creamy milk, which I let Jussi empty.
“The blood of Christ shed for you. . . .”
“Aah . . .”
“Have trust in our Savior, Jussi. He can set you free.”
“The Savior doesn’t exist,” he whispered.
“Yes, he does.”
“I’ve never been able to believe in that.”
“But we’ve prayed together, Jussi. I’ve seen your tears during the services, I’ve seen your heart open.”
“I’ve tried, Pastor. But there’s nothing there.”
“Jesus exists!”
“He died. He’s dead.”
“If God is dead, then man is nothing more than a wild animal. You’re heading into the abyss, Jussi! Give up this bravado!”
“It’s not bravado, Pastor.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s just me.”
“What do you mean?”
“The bit of me that’s left. That’s still here even though they nearly killed me.”
“But for God’s sake, Jussi! Is this the way we should face life’s difficulties? By being us?”
“Forgive me, Pastor. I really tried. I wanted nothing more than to be your son.”
66.
The Pajala district court sat in one of the major manor houses in the parish. The judge, Ragnarsson, was a thin, eagle-like man, with a long nose not dissimilar to a door handle. He sat hunched over as if his neck ached, chewing on a pastille. We greeted one another and he explained that he had recently given up smoking and was using lozenges as a substitute for the pipe stem. Overzealous smoking had led to heartburn and dizziness, and after much agony he had, with his wife’s support, taken this difficult step.
“Personally, I find tobacco beneficial to the health in many respects,” I said. “American Indians are said to use it as a medicinal plant.”
I saw him instantly seized by a craving for his pipe and realized I really should have resisted the repartee. I turned to greet Malmsten the secretary instead, who could barely get up from his desk. He was overweight and had a dreadful cold, sniffling and continuously wiping his nose on a dirty handkerchief. The grunting coughs emitted from his throat throughout the entire trial would invite comparison with the eating sounds of a pig. Malmsten was bilingual, in contrast to Ragnarsson, who came from a coastal community, and I reminded them both that witnesses and plaintiffs in this region expressed themselves primarily in Finnish. It was agreed that the secretary Malmsten would be enlisted to interpret when required.
The prosecutor Anders Petrini was a swarthy gentleman in a redingote and expensive pigskin gloves. Despite that, his handshake was cold. It was obvious he was suffering, after the exertions of the journey and the privations of the north. He complained that the food in the inn was dull, with little flavor, and asked if people hereabouts hadn’t started to use pepper yet. I invited him to the parsonage, but he declined when it was made clear to him that I would be the one assuming responsibility for the meal.
“Well, this will soon be over,” he said hopefully, eager to leave the place as quickly as possible.
A large number of people had been allowed into the public seats, and extra benches had been supplied, on account of the enormous interest. There was a damp whiff of mothballs—several of the burghers were wearing suit jackets and pressed trousers in the hope they might make the acquaintance of the distinguished guests. I was wearing my cassock but had removed my collar to indicate that on this day I was not representing the church. Sheriff Brahe arrived in his usual ebullient way, hailing people to left and right, keen to emphasize his importance. After all, it was he who, thanks to his wealth of experience, had managed to catch the miscreant. The public packed into the benches, awkwardly shuffling their boots on the floorboards as if they were in church. The iron stove in the corner was replenished and soon the emanating heat made people ease their collars and loosen their ties. The wife of one of the merchants brought out a fan in the Spanish style, and started fanning herself ostentatiously. She wanted to show the assembled gathering that she was the first woman in Tornedalen to have visited Santiago de Compostela in the footsteps of Saint Brigid.
Now a clatter could be heard from the front door and the defendant was brought in. His hands and feet were in chains and he was pushed up to the defendant’s place rather than making his way under his own steam. The constable walked on one side of him and a burly prison guard on the other. The chains were removed and I could see ugly abrasions on his wrists. Jussi was supposed to stand up during the trial, but I begged that in his weakened condition he be allowed to be seated. A scratched old wooden stool was found for Jussi to sit on, his legs trembling. The ill-treatment had clearly taken its toll and if anything he had lost even more weight. His eyes had sunk into their sockets, giving him the look of a timid animal. Unfortunately, the agonies he was suffering gave him the appearance of the monster in human form the public expected to see. A wolf that had had its teeth pulled out. Ragged and cowed.
Ragnarsson stroked his prominent nose several times, as though he were sharpening it, and then opened the proceedings. The farmhand Johan “Jussi” Sieppinen was accused of the murder of the maids Hilda Fredriksdotter and Jolina Eliasdotter. In addition, he was accused of the attempted assault on another girl, and of the theft of money from the deceased artist Nils Gustaf at his dwelling at the Kengis foundry. Thereupon Ragnarsson handed over to the prosecutor Petrini, who stood up and gripped his lapels. For a moment of dramatic silence, he looked at Jussi, who avoided his eye. He solemnly cleared his throat, picked up a sheet of paper, and read out more or less word for word the description of the offenses.
Jussi was presented as a cunning and violent criminal. He had lived a life apart from others and avoided mixing with his peers, all in order to hide his true personality. Under the shy and timid exterior lurked a villain who couldn’t hold back his murderous tendencies. Strong sexual desire combined with unbridled savagery within drove him onto the road to seek out women walking on their own. Under cover of the forest trees he unleashed his depravity and forced himself upon the cow-girl Hilda, after which he strangled her and concealed the body. Following the summer dance at Kenttä, he attacked the unaccompanied maid Jolina Eliasdotter, who managed to escape. He later strangled her to prevent her from identifying him. Finally, he attacked a person he believed to be the farm maid Maria, but who in fact was Constable Michelsson in disguise. Thanks to the intervention of Michelsson and Sheriff Brahe, another act of violence was averted and the felon was arrested.
I watched Jussi while the allegations were read out. He showed no reaction, stared at his knees, and appeared to be in a different world. Only when Petrini had finished and sat back down did Jussi shake his head, almost imperceptibly. Ragnarsson turned to me and asked for our response to the accusations. I declared that the defendant pleaded not guilty. I pointed out that in Sheriff Brahe’s earlier opinion the first girl had been slain by a killer bear and the second had taken her own life. My statement was placed on record, whereupon the real battle could begin.
It was a pitiful affair. The prosecutor called various witnesses, all of whom confirmed Jussi’s odd behavior, how he stared at women during my services in church and how he had forced himself on Maria during the dance at Kenttä. The foundry worker Roope was called to testify that Jussi Sieppinen had previously accosted Maria.
“She met Jussi on the marsh path once. I saw him try to take her bucket of fish.”
“Where were you then?”
“Farther along the same road. I saw Jussi start to tug at Maria. He was wild and crazy. She dropped the bucket and just screamed. I took my belt off and threatened him and he back
ed off then. If I hadn’t arrived, who knows what he would have done?”
I refuted all of this with facts that should cast doubt on the allegations. No witness had seen Jussi commit the murders. Nothing found at the scenes of the two crimes pointed to Jussi, and Sheriff Brahe himself had initially assumed it was the work of a killer bear. Instead, a number of things suggested a different perpetrator. There was a risk that the true culprit was still at large.
I lifted up the leather bag I had stowed away in the shed, and continued:
“At the time of the attack on the maid Jolina Eliasdotter I examined the ground where the offender had hidden behind a tree. There I discovered minute wood shavings and drew the conclusion that they had come from a pencil sharpened with a knife.”
I took a folded piece of paper out of the leather bag and held it up.
“It transpired that the shavings came from a type of pencil that cannot be purchased in any of the shops here in the Pajala region. However, I did manage to ascertain that such pencils are sold in Haparanda. Sheriff Brahe is one of the few people here to possess such a pencil.”
Brahe hastily looked around. With an expression of sneering disbelief, he tried to throw me off balance, but I would not be checked.
“On Jolina Eliasdotter’s clothes there was a mark that appeared to come from shoe grease. There is a very characteristic smell, and the wax is for sale in certain shops only. The price means that only the well-to-do are in the habit of purchasing it. And Jolina Eliasdotter told me that the man who attacked her was a herrasmies, a gentleman.”
I unfolded another handkerchief and invited those nearest to me to smell the shoe wax from the scene of the crime.
“And I would like to refer to an old student friend of mine from Uppsala, Dr. Emmanuel Sundberg. He has made an unparalleled discovery that will probably be of immense assistance in future police work. May I ask that all those present observe their fingertips?”
