by Mikael Niemi
“Oh, is Michelsson in pain? Maybe your arm’s been hurt?”
He stood up and made as if to hit me again. I let go and he pulled his arm back.
“I don’t know what the pastor’s talking about!”
“Maybe about our . . . shall we call it a discussion about a glass plate? In Kengis Church, if my memory serves me.”
“The pastor is mistaken.”
His tone was proper and polite. And furthermore, he was the constable. In a courthouse he would appear very convincing.
“My wife Brita Kajsa obviously knows about your attack. She is prepared to testify against you.”
“I really don’t understand what the pastor is talking about. The perpetrator of the summer’s brutal attacks has already been arrested and sentenced. Soon he’ll lose his head as well. And if the pastor slanders me he can expect to be reported for false allegations.”
Was there a little smile? A sardonic little smirk?
“You want to kill again,” I said. “You’ve had the taste of it.”
“I request that the pastor leave me and my future wife in peace.”
“Wife? Do you mean Maria?”
Michelsson nodded stiffly.
“We don’t consider the pastor an appropriate wedding officiant, so we mean to settle in a different place very soon.”
“With the money you stole from Nils Gustaf.”
“Would the pastor please leave now? I have a great deal of work to do.”
He gestured awkwardly toward the door.
“You’re bleeding,” I said.
I must have opened up the knife wound on his arm. A dark patch had appeared on his shirt and a blood-red drip landed on the desk.
“Not at all,” he said.
In a practiced movement he reached for the blotting paper and pressed it onto the desk. The drop of blood was soaked up and disappeared. With a flick he tossed the blotting paper into the stove and watched the flames consume it, while I slowly buttoned up my coat. In silence I went out into the teeming autumn rain.
* * *
—
Frozen and soaked, I returned to the parsonage and entered the warmth. Brita Kajsa met me at the door and said in a low voice:
“The pastor has a visitor.”
Something in her voice made me chary. I went inside to give my usual God’s peace greeting. On a stool sat a very young, thin Sami woman. She didn’t answer, but she raised her eyes toward me and I stopped abruptly. Milla, was my only thought. Milla Clementsdotter . . .
But then I saw that it wasn’t her. I had only just met this woman, somewhere considerably closer than Åsele.
“I found her out in the cowshed,” Brita Kajsa whispered in my ear. “She was hiding in the straw, but I noticed the animals were disturbed.”
“In the cowshed?”
“I think she’s been milking the cows, to drink. She seems to have been there for several days. I’ve asked her, but she refuses to answer. I haven’t got a word out of her.”
I approached the woman cautiously. Her tunic was very worn and seemed to be sewn together from old rags. When I took her hand it was icy cold.
“God’s peace,” I said again, this time in Sami.
She didn’t seem to have heard. But then she squeezed my hand with unexpected strength, her fingers pressing so hard that the cartilage clicked. I wanted to pull away, but it felt as though she had hooked herself on. The fixed expression on her face was frightening, the small nose like a little snout, the arch of the eyebrows, there was so much in her that reminded me of an animal.
“I thought at first you were Milla from Åsele,” I said, as kindly as I could.
She quickly shook her head.
“But now I recognize you. You were the one who defended me in the church, you saved my life.”
I gently held her, like a block of ice, in my arms, warmed her in my embrace. With a mouse-like whimper she relaxed and I felt her body come to life and breathe more deeply.
“Mun lea . . . lea . . . I am . . . I am . . .” she stuttered in Sami.
Her voice was surprisingly harsh, as if it had suffered injury, broken by screaming.
“I know who you are,” I whispered. “Your name is Anne Maaret. You’re Jussi’s sister.”
The woman smelled strongly of marshland and sweat, after presumably walking for mile after mile.
“She didn’t want any food,” Brita Kajsa said, almost reprovingly.
“But now she does. Don’t you, Anne Maaret? Now you’d like something to eat, wouldn’t you?”
I led her to the kitchen table and Brita Kajsa brought a bowl of porridge and a spoon. I sat down on a chair next to her and watched the woman lean forward and sniff at it like a fox would. Unaccustomed to a metal spoon, she held it up between her thumb and forefinger and studied her distorted reflection on its shiny surface. With slow, inexpert movements, she divided up the porridge with the edge of the spoon and shoveled the pieces into her mouth from the rim of the bowl. It was like watching a toddler try to eat. Maybe her hands were too cold.
I turned to my wife, who seemed uneasy. She could see me rubbing my painful knuckles after the woman’s strong grip.
“It’s Jussi’s sister,” I said. “Her name is Anne Maaret.”
Brita Kajsa saw the porridge being ravenously devoured.
“Would you like more?” she asked. “More to eat?”
Anne Maaret did want more. While I filled up the bowl from the pot, Brita Kajsa began to make a bed for her on the floor. She would have the same place Jussi had had.
* * *
—
When I rose the next morning, Anne Maaret was not in her bed. Wondering where she could be, I went into my study, and there she was, sitting on the floor in front of the bookcase. She had opened a book and her lips were moving silently. None of the household would have dared to enter my study like this. No one except Jussi.
She looked up when I sat down in my chair, almost as if it were her room I had strayed into. The book she had picked was one I knew very well, it was Bishop Sundell’s autobiography—no great literary masterpiece, in my opinion.
“So Anne Maaret can read?”
She nodded.
“Was it Juhani Raattamaa who taught you? Or one of my catechists?”
“My brother taught me.”
I was caught by surprise.
“Jussi? When did he have time for that?”
“When he came on his visits.”
It made me think of the long periods when Jussi had simply disappeared. He had been away for several weeks, sometimes a few months, only to return just as unexpectedly.
“How did he teach you?” I asked.
“He drew it in the earth.”
“Did he write the letters? And did he then make the sounds?”
She gave a quick nod. I could see it all before me, a boy and a girl going down to the mountain brook and there, by the rippling water, is a spot with a narrow clay bank. Jussi takes a stick and draws some zigzag-shaped letters.
“A,” he says. “Aaaaaa . . .”
“Aaa,” she echoes.
“Aannnnee . . .” He sounds the letters, pointing with his stick to the strange curlicues.
“Aaannne . . . Anne!”
“Jussi would have made a good catechist,” I said, half to myself.
“Mm.”
“What did Anne Maaret do up there?”
“Looked after our mother and father.”
“But Jussi never talked about them. I thought he was an orphan.”
“Mother and Father are dead now. They died in the summer.”
“My condolences.”
“They were drunkards.”
She said it in a thin voice, almost airless. I felt such tenderness for her and wanted to take
her my arms.
Even though I had written about it in The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness, I found it difficult to speak about. Father’s drunken yells when some domestic trifle aroused his anger. Mother, who had to manage for months on her own while he was away on business down by the coast. Petrus and me, who heard the blows when he returned; that was the worst of all, when he hit Mother and we couldn’t help her, when we took cover under the kitchen table like frightened puppies.
“Has Anne Maaret maybe come to tell him of their death?”
“He already knows.” She shut her eyes for a moment. “I came to fetch him.”
“But Jussi is . . . Maybe you haven’t heard? Jussi has been convicted of having used force against women.”
“He’s innocent.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I was Jussi’s advocate during the trial, but regrettably the court didn’t listen to me.”
“Where’s my brother now?”
“He was . . . Jussi has been taken to Umeå in a prison convoy. We’ve appealed against the judgment. There’s a chance he might be pardoned.”
“Pardoned?”
“Didn’t Anne Maaret know? Jussi was sentenced to death by beheading. I am sorry.”
The girl looked at me, her eyes empty.
“He didn’t do it,” she repeated. “It must have been someone else.”
“Yes,” I agreed weakly.
“The man who hit you in the church. It’s him.”
Her pupils were like black buttons. Something distended crawled out of her neck band, a fat cattle louse.
“But how can we touch him? How do we catch a constable?”
“He’s the one who should be beheaded, not my brother.”
“Perhaps Anne Maaret would like to wash up?” I interrupted, glancing at Brita Kajsa. “I’ll ask the farm maid to heat the sauna.”
The girl’s odor was sharp and very noticeable and it filled the study. Wet bogs, rancid animal fat. A smell preferably not experienced indoors.
“There are clean clothes as well. We’ll have your own clothes washed and get rid of the lice on the hot sauna stones.”
She groped for my hand and tried to squeeze my hand again. But this time I squeezed hers first.
“Lice are like sins,” I explained. “We’re all afflicted by them from time to time.”
* * *
—
That night I dreamed about Milla Clementsdotter in Åsele. She was standing outside the church, it was winter, and a large crowd of people were there waiting, parishioners who wanted to attend the service. I stepped up to the church door with a bunch of keys and put one of them in the lock. But it was too small. I tried another. It was too big. Increasingly nervous, I put one key after another into the lock. I tried every one in my large bunch, but none of them fit. Now the people were beginning to show their irritation, accusing me of being a fraud, of tricking them into coming. They showed me that the building was in poor condition, and now I could see they were right. The walls were starting to rot, the roof was threatening to fall in, several of the windows were broken. Terrified, I backed away and asked the congregation to move to safety. But no one listened to me, they pushed forward and grabbed weapons to intimidate me, logs, stones, someone drew a knife. When I feared it was all over for me, I suddenly heard a clear and penetrating voice. It drowned out the mob, and I noticed everyone turn round. It was Milla. She had climbed onto a pew that someone had put there, and now she was speaking to them all. I stood next to her on the pew and discovered that she was taller than me, and while she spoke she grew even taller and turned into a giant woman. She gave a sermon, she cried out until the building shook, she displayed a holy wrath I had never encountered before. And the congregation before her were spellbound by her words. I saw men and women clench their fists and howl like wolves, but instead of attacking her, they showed that they all stood by her side. Ordinary, poor people, who started to grow in stature like her, changed into giants. Only I stayed my normal size, and soon the pastor was the smallest person in the congregation. Then I heard a crash like a roll of thunder, and when I turned I saw the whole building sway in its foundations and with a protracted rumble come crashing to the ground.
71.
By the next morning Anne Maaret was gone. I was informed that she had been seen leaving the sauna in her freshly washed clothes, and after that she disappeared.
“She doesn’t seem to have spent the night in here,” Brita Kajsa said. Her bed was untouched.
I felt anxiety mounting, but was unsure what to do. Brita Kajsa handed me a piece of boiled fish from the previous day. The flesh was white and flaked away as I pinched it off the bones with my fingers.
“What was the pastor dreaming about?”
“Dreaming?”
“You made the whole bed rock with your twisting and turning. And you were talking as well.”
“Talking?”
“‘Milla,’ you said several times. ‘Milla, Milla.’”
“I was dreaming about the revival. I felt the force in the crowd of people. How it built up, how the anger of these poor people sought an outlet.”
“And what happened?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do.”
As so often, she seemed to see right through me. I tried to laugh but it sounded more like a cough.
“The church collapsed,” I muttered.
“Was it destroyed?”
“It was already rotten. And then it fell.”
I licked the fish grease from my fingers and took a deep breath.
“Do you think, dear wife, that the revival touches women more deeply than men?”
“It often seems that way to me.”
“But why? Is it maybe that women are closer to God?”
“Men have more to lose.”
“And why is the spread of the revival stronger among the poor than among the rich?”
“The rich have more to lose.”
“Men and the rich have just as much to gain as anyone else,” I protested. “Do we not all seek eternal life?”
“Is this another day of doubt?” she said, feigning sternness.
“I was just thinking—what if the oppressed start to stand up and raise their voice, will the world really be a better place?”
“Do you mean that women in the congregation no longer have to be silent? Maybe the pastor should train a female preacher.”
“Would men listen to a woman?”
“The pastor listened to Milla in Åsele. It was her speech that inspired the revival, as we’ve said before!”
“Yes.”
“A woman’s words.”
“I only mean . . . that mankind appears to be facing perilous times. That lurking there, deep down in its cave, is a wakened monster.”
“Surely the pastor doesn’t believe in dragons?”
“Brandy dragons, thieving dragons, vain dragons. What times will the coming generations face, our poor grandchildren and great-grandchildren?”
“A time called the 1900s.”
“Nineteen is a strange number. Made up of a one and a nine. The lowest and the highest.”
“Like life.”
“And war.”
She didn’t reply, and I could see from her face I had unsettled her. She had already finished eating and I had barely started. I wanted to qualify what I had just said, explain I had slept badly, but she had already risen from the table and was by the cupboard, getting on with her morning tasks. I could feel my unsteady hand and taste the bitter acid rising in my throat.
72.
The wet walls of the Umeå town prison rose in the autumn gloom. Inside, Thorstensson the prison warden sat in his office going through the correspondence, which concerned among other things the winter requisitions. Grain, footwear, prison gar
b lined against the winter cold. And a letter from a lecturer who had heard that a young Sami man was going to be beheaded and who was very eager to keep the skull. He enclosed an addressed transport box filled with salt for this purpose.
One of the prison guards came in with his nose dripping. He was called Holmlund, a country boy from Sävar who was always scared of making a mistake. He stood shuffling his boots, unwilling to speak before he was addressed, whipped off his cap, and pressed it to his chest.
“Well?” Thorstensson muttered.
“She’s here again. The sister of the condemned man.”
“The Lapp girl?”
“She’s brought food for the prisoner.”
“What sort of food?”
“Bread and butter.”
Thorstensson looked out of a window equipped with iron bars, just like the prison cells.
“How has the prisoner behaved?”
“Without reproach,” Holmlund answered.
“And you’ve made sure he’s been kept separate from the other prisoners?”
“As Thorstensson wished.”
“Well, let them see each other. Go through the food in case there’s something hidden in it.”
“Of course, Warden.”
“Does she come every day?”
“Every day. But she . . . alas, I fear she steals the food in the town.”
“Is Holmlund certain?”
“She’s so poorly dressed. How could a Lapp beggar afford to buy butter?”
“Good. It’s good that Holmlund is vigilant. Go!”
Holmlund saluted and returned to the guardhouse by the interior wall. The Lapp girl was there with her bundle, wearing her ragged tunic. Her face was dirty and from her clothes came the sour smell of smoke. With a stern expression, Holmlund turned the bread out onto the inspection table and systematically broke it into crumbs. He hesitated at the lump of butter, but then seized it in his hand and pressed so hard that the golden fat squashed between his fingers. No unauthorized objects to be found in there. He quickly scraped together the sorry mess into her dirty cloth and licked his own fingers.
