To Cook a Bear

by Mikael Niemi

  The prosecutor wanted to interrupt me, but Ragnarsson let me continue.

  “As you can see, there is a pattern. It may be compared to a whorl of tiny ridges. Emmanuel Sundberg has called these papillary lines. Each time we touch a smooth surface we leave an impression of these papillary lines. They might seem invisible, but if you coat them with very fine powder—ash, for example—a clear pattern emerges.”

  I brought out a small etui and opened it. From it I carefully lifted out a glass by spreading my fingers inside it. In this awkward way I held the glass up for all to see, without touching the outside.

  “Dr. Emmanuel Sundberg’s research hitherto has demonstrated that each fingerprint is unique for every individual. By comparing the prints from this glass, for example, with a suspect’s fingerprints, the culprit could be tied to the scene of the crime. This glass bears such fingerprints. The glass comes from the artist Nils Gustaf’s kitchen table the morning he was found dead. The last person to visit the artist drank out of this glass. And with the help of the papillary patterns I have managed to obtain the visitor’s identity.”

  “What does this have to do with it?” Petrini exclaimed.

  “The defendant is alleged to have stolen money from the artist. So the court needs to know that these fingerprints do not belong to Jussi Sieppinen. Let me show you one more object. . . .”

  Once again I ducked down into my leather bag and brought out a cardboard portfolio. I gingerly opened it and held up a small shiny glass plate.

  “I would like to show you this as well. This is what is called a daguerreotype. Nils Gustaf had an apparatus that could reproduce the image of a person through the direct action of light. A lens to refract the rays, working with particular chemical substances, can produce a light-portrait. I am holding just such a portrait in my hand now. It was mounted in the deceased artist’s daguerreotype apparatus and must have been taken the evening he died. The image was therefore never developed. But earlier Nils Gustaf had demonstrated to me how the process worked. By exposing the plates to mercury vapor I have been able to produce a glass slide of the man who visited the artist the same evening he died.”

  With more than a touch of triumph, I held up the glass plate.

  “Well, who is it, then?” A buzz went through the room as people stood up to see better. “Who is it a picture of?”

  “The image is very much like a portrait, but so small that a magnifying glass is needed to discern the detail. If the judge would like a closer look, I have brought—”

  “Papillaries and light-pictures!” Petrini exclaimed. “Whatever next! Heavenly revelations?”

  Several opponents of the revival burst into jeers on the benches, while others merely looked puzzled. Sheriff Brahe tried to grab the glass plate out of my hand, but I managed to put it back in my pocket. The drinking glass, however, I wasn’t able to shield, and it was snatched from me and passed around the benches so that the papillary patterns were very soon completely obliterated. The court adjourned for deliberations, and when it reassembled Ragnarsson called for silence. The murmuring abated and the gathered company once again had to squeeze themselves onto the crowded benches.

  In a firm voice Ragnarsson declared that he had considered the defense’s submission. And scientific methods could of course be adopted in the investigation of criminal cases. But the scientific methods must be in general practice. And never before to his knowledge had a trial involved either papillary patterns or light-pictures. The court must therefore disregard these and the evidence must not be included in the transcript or be allowed to influence the verdict.

  The plaintiff Jussi Sieppinen crumpled and the tendons in his neck tensed as he bowed his head. Those closest to him thought they heard him mumbling eerie Sami rhymes. I stood up angrily, pulled out the glass plate, and held it up so that everyone could see a dark figure in the middle. I pointed to the human shape in silence, then folded it back into the handkerchief and looked around. My eyes were so bitter that a shudder went through the crowd. At the same time a commotion could be heard at the front door and everyone turned to look. An old woman dressed in black pushed into the room, elbowing her way through the throng.

  “A blessed miracle!” came her shrill cry. “He healed me! Hallelujah! He took me in his arms and gave me back my life, brought me back from the valley of the shadow of death. . . .”

  The old woman shoved forward to the podium, but the pastor was not her goal. Instead she fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face, in front of the defendant, Jussi Sieppinen. She managed to press her wet face against his thighs before the guards arrived to stop her. She struggled fiercely and kept up her howling as they dragged her away.

  “Jussi gave me back my life, Jussi came with the miracle of healing, hallelujah. . . .”

  People on the benches were glancing furtively at one another. Everyone could remember the old woman coughing up blood after a service and Jussi carrying her out onto the church steps. There was no doubt, she had been dying. “Noaidi arts,” people were whispering, their horrified gaze on the gaunt youth sitting with half-closed eyes.

  Sheriff Brahe tried to laugh off the tension in the room, getting Michelsson to join him in a strained titter.

  “Tee-hee, tee-hee . . .”

  “God help us,” I mumbled in Finnish to Jussi, slumped on his stool.

  The secretary Malmsten did not bother to translate.

  67.

  I left the court bitterly angry. A number of the spectators grabbed me, stood in my way, and wanted to delay me to discuss their thoughts on the trial. I broke free and shouldered my way through the crowd. Jussi had been unshackled for the duration of the hearing but was clapped back in irons before he was taken away by the guards. I managed to give him an encouraging smile, but my face must have looked more like a gaping skull.

  The verdict would be announced later, and I knew the outcome was uncertain. Jussi had sat there shaking uncontrollably at times, a sign, I knew, of starvation and ill-treatment, but to the onlookers it appeared like fear and guilt. He had denied all the charges but refused to look anyone in the eye. The badly healed scars, the bruises, and the nearly-toothless mouth he covered when he spoke made him appear an untrustworthy tramp. An orphan Lapp boy who couldn’t control his actions and had given in to greed and sexual appetite. My feeble attempts at logical reasoning had fallen on deaf ears.

  At first I intended to go home, but my feet seemed to think differently. In the end, I took out the stiff priest’s collar, fastened it round my neck, and set off briskly in the opposite direction. I had an uncomfortable feeling someone was following me, but when I turned around, the path was deserted. I soon saw the farm and entered the yard. The cabin door opened and the mistress looked out.

  “They . . . they’re all at the trial,” she blurted out.

  “I know.”

  “Both the master and his sons. They’ve been called as witnesses.”

  “I wanted Maria to be a witness,” I said, “but she didn’t appear.”

  “I’m afraid Maria is ill.”

  The woman nodded toward the bedroom. The door was ajar, to let in the warmth from the kitchen, and I could see that it was almost dark inside.

  “She can’t tolerate the light, so I’ve covered the window.”

  I went quietly up to the doorway and listened. There was no sound, not even of her breathing.

  “It’s the pastor,” I said softly.

  There was a movement; she must at least be awake. The air was stale and musty, a sour smell that put me in mind of a tannery, meaty hides soaking for a long time in acids and animal fat. I quietly closed the door behind me so the mistress wouldn’t hear our conversation. I let my eyes adjust to the dark. The faint gray daylight filtered through the gaps around the blanket hanging over the window.

  “It’s the pastor,” I said again. “I’ve come straight from the trial.�
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  She didn’t answer. In a couple of strides I was at the window and pulled down the blanket to let the daylight stream in. Her large pupils were directed toward me and then instantly shrank to the size of pinheads. Something seemed to have happened to her skin, it was lackluster. Her face was gray and swollen, dark bags had appeared beneath her eyes. I had the impression she had been waiting for someone.

  “I have such a headache,” she whimpered, and turned away from the light.

  Her work clothes were lying on a stool. I lifted them off and sat down beside her. She needed the dark, just like the bedbugs do when you lift the sheet. There was no doubt that she felt ill.

  “Jussi is going to be condemned,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Jussi, the man you betrayed.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  Her voice was indistinct, almost slurred, and for a moment I thought she was drunk. But it was the headache, and her breathing was so shallow that scarcely any air passed her vocal cords.

  “This is serious now, Maria. You could have saved him. You could have told the truth, and then he would have walked free.”

  “I don’t understand. . . .”

  I wanted to grab hold of her and give her a hefty shake, like a money box from which you shake coin after coin.

  “You and Jussi had arranged to meet that night. You tricked him into thinking you would go away together. Why don’t you want to admit the truth?”

  Her body began to rock from the waist up, as if she were about to break in two, and I held her firmly, pressing my simple wooden crucifix against her brow.

  “In the name of Jesus Christ, admit what happened. You disclosed to Sheriff Brahe that Jussi was going to pay you a visit!”

  She tried to push the crucifix away, and retched as nausea overwhelmed her. I knew that Christ was torturing her demons and I brusquely held her flailing arms.

  “You must drive Satan out, Maria. You are Jussi’s last hope. He wants to take care of the child, Maria. He wants to do it all for you!”

  With surprising force, she knocked my hands away, and the crucifix slipped out of my grasp and onto the bed. She snatched it and flung it violently onto the floor. I picked it up, wiped off the dust from the floor on my cassock, and discovered to my annoyance that it had an ugly new crack across the crown of thorns. I put it back in my breast pocket, swiftly fell to my knees, and clasped my hands.

  “Get thee hence, Satan! In the name of the Holy Trinity, flee this woman’s body—”

  As the nausea rolled over her, she closed her blue eyes, her face twisted in a grimace, and she shook her head.

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late for Jesus Christ,” I insisted in my earnest priest’s voice, so often adopted in the course of my duties. “The Lord’s arms are always open, ready to embrace you too. But you have to take the last step yourself, Maria. Try to overcome it, Maria, try to force it out.”

  Maria’s body contorted, she raised her upper body and her thighs, and then came the hideous scream, a knife piercing the eardrums, by all that is holy, and Jesus Christ burning in my breast pocket, the smell of excrement and blood escaping from under the quilt, and I saw something black slithering away, a rat’s tail, a lizard-like hind end, a movement under the bed, quick as lightning. All the time I prayed and drowned out the guttural grating of the devil, pursued it with divine oaths until it fell silent, until the girl was finally filled with calm.

  The expression on her face had changed. For a moment I thought she was well, that now she could save Jussi from his pain and suffering, that the miracle had happened by the power of the Holy Ghost.

  “Thank you,” I murmured. “Thank you, Almighty God. . . .”

  When I offered her the wafer, she thrust my hands away so hard that it was crushed and fell in crumbs onto the sheet.

  “Go,” she said hoarsely.

  Then she turned to the wall and pulled the stained sheet over her head.

  68.

  Lucifer. The fallen angel expelled from heaven’s all-embracing light. From the whiteness of the heavenly kingdom that is so difficult to picture. Like the glare of the sun on frosted snow at the end of March, the strongest light in the land of the north a person can ever see. A sparkling brilliance from all sides, lifting the traveler a yard up from the earth’s surface, on the frozen crust itself, so white and pure not even skis leave marks behind them, black ski tips against sun-snow writing paper across the glittering infinity, and the only sound the crunch of crystals.

  And now he wanders here among us on the shadowy autumn paths. Lucifer, the spurned, who wants to extinguish the light of the revival. He follows my steps and I feel his presence behind my back. When I turn, he instantly takes cover, and the only movement is the wind playing in the branches.

  “Dear Jesus . . . Lamb of God . . .”

  * * *

  —

  Darkness gathered in the treetops, the outlines blurred in the drizzling mist. In my hand I carried the leather bag with my evidence, my assembled thoughts. Worth nothing. I couldn’t save Jussi, that much was painfully clear to me. While the real killer would walk free.

  Instead of returning home to the parsonage, I continued to the lofty building of Kengis Church. Drips falling from the shingle roof made it look as though the church were weeping. I followed the wall toward the sun and breathed in the faint aroma of the roof tar the crofters had applied that summer. The wall paneling was sawed by hand, the nails forged at the foundry, the timbers dragged here by horses from the wide expanse of forests. The church had been built with the wood and iron of this region. Hardy workers’ hands had chiseled and hammered it into shape. And now it stood here like a mother’s open embrace. A rib cage protecting the heart of the parish. I walked all the way around it, placing my hand against the wooden wall at intervals, and I thought I could feel a gentle warmth coming through my palm. At the entrance I drew out the huge key and unlocked the door. The hand-forged hinge creaked as I stepped into the shadows of the porch. I carried on into the semidarkness of the church itself, the late afternoon light filtering through the windows and making the pews look like the timbers of a ship. In the mighty silence I walked reverently up to the altar. No parishioners sat shuffling the soles of their shoes, no one coughed or sneezed, no one whispered or admonished little children. No clocks rang. And yet I thought I heard a voice speaking. There were no words, just a sense of solace. I touched the altar cloth with my forehead, felt the handwoven pattern against my skin, smelled the lingering scent of sweetgrass, Hierochloe hirta, from the linen cupboard. I quietly sank to my knees, my head bowed, and clasped my hands. The prayer was slow to come, but I allowed myself to remain in the emptiness. Eyes closed, I faced my darkness, my despair. I was here, in the valley of the shadow of death. Powerless and abandoned, like a child. Not even tears came. I had done my utmost, but it was too little. I could only feel the autumn, this dark towering immensity surrounding me.

  Then the darkness vanished too.

  Time stopped.

  But for a mouse.

  A mouse in the church vault, a tiny, intruding whisper.

  I looked up.

  I turned my head slightly, to where the scratching was coming from.

  And at that moment, the world around me exploded in a flash of yellow light.

  * * *

  —

  Yellow, golden, golden yellow. Vivid golden light, yellow, yellow, yellow. I could hear a noise inside me too. Within my body. A sound as though submerged, an underwater bang. Glittering gold and pattering water. And now the pain flooded in, the hideous pain, and I sank to the floor, the whole church on top of me.

  The next blow struck my back. Hard across my shoulder blade, which split apart and fused together, all at once. And now the pain made me want to throw up, now that it had closed in. I rolled onto my back, de
fenseless, my limbs twitching like a beetle’s legs trying to find a foothold, but there was only air. Over me loomed a specter, pushing his knee against my chest, tearing at my coat and searching through my pockets.

  “I knew . . . it was you, you devil,” I gasped.

  A fist pounded mercilessly against my mouth, my lips were beaten bloody on my teeth, and a dull saltiness filled my mouth. Strong hands snatched something out of my inside pocket, unfolded a piece of cardboard, and triumphantly held up the glass plate.

  “You left too many clues,” I continued.

  The specter leaned forward, his eyes black holes.

  “Shut up, bloody priest!”

  Constable Michelsson’s voice was full of hate. His knee forced me down as I lifted my head and tried to fill the air with talk.

  “Who would suspect you? I can address you informally, can’t I, now we know one another? A blameless officer, with strikingly fine handwriting, so correct and polite. But we humans all have a weakness, a flaw. And this has led to your undoing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His voice was sharp, but I had piqued his interest. He wouldn’t kill me. Not yet. I nodded and slid my fingers into my coat pocket.

  “Love, Michelsson. Consuming, despairing love. What is it about women that scares you so?”

  “Be quiet!”

  “You wanted to get close to them, but something prevented you. You came home from the mountains in the summer, after investigating the reindeer-stealing with the sheriff, and then lust led you into the abyss. You went out into the forest and violated Hilda Fredriksdotter and murdered her. The urge had been aroused and now it only intensified. Soon after, you assaulted the maid Jolina Eliasdotter, but she managed to wound you and escape. You were afraid she had recognized you, despite your mask, and later you strangled her. But the whole time your eye was on Maria, the prettiest of them all.”