The Blood Spilt

20

The autumn meeting of Magdalena, the women’s group. Micke Kiviniemi had set up a little drinks table outdoors, just outside the door by the steps that led into the bar. It was dark now, almost black outside. And unusually warm for the time of year. He’d created a little pathway from the road across the graveled yard up to the steps, edged it with tea lights in glass jars. Several handmade candlesticks stood on the steps and on the drinks table.
He got his reward. Heard their ohs and ahs from as far away as the road. Here they came. Tripping along, walking, tiptoeing across the gravel. Thirty or so women. The youngest just under thirty, the oldest just turned seventy-five.
“This is lovely,” they said to him. “It feels just like being abroad.”
He smiled back. But didn’t reply. Sought sanctuary behind the drinks table. Felt like somebody in a hide, watching the wildlife. They wouldn’t take any notice of him. They’d just behave naturally, as if he weren’t there. He felt excited, as if he were a boy lying on the fallen leaves among the trees, spying on them.
The yard outside the bar, like a big room in the darkness, full of sounds. Their feet on the gravel, giggling, chattering, cackling, nattering. The sounds traveled. Soared recklessly upward toward the black star-spangled sky. Rushed shamelessly across the river, reaching the houses on the other side. Were absorbed by the forest, the black fir trees, the thirsty moss. Ran along the road and reminded the village: we exist.
They smelled good and had dressed up for the occasion. Although it was obvious they weren’t well off. Their dresses were out of fashion. Long cotton cardigans buttoned over flowery bell-shaped skirts. Home permed hair. Shoes from the OBS store.
They got through the business of the meeting in about half an hour. The duty rosters were quickly filled with the names of volunteers, more hands in the air than were needed.
Then they had dinner. Most of them weren’t used to drinking, and quickly got tipsy, to their slightly dismayed delight. Mimmi giggled at them as she moved between the tables. Micke stayed in the kitchen.
“Heavens,” exclaimed one of the women as Mimmi carried in the dessert, “I haven’t had this much fun since…”
She broke off and waved her skinny arm around, searching for the answer.
It stuck out from the sleeve of her dress like a matchstick.
“… since Mildred’s funeral,” somebody shouted.
There was silence for less than a second. Then they all burst out into hysterical laughter, telling each other it was true, Mildred’s funeral had been… well, to die for, and they shouted and laughed as much as the feeble joke was worth.
The funeral. They’d stood there in their black clothes as the coffin was lowered. The bright early summer sun had stabbed at their eyes. The bumblebees banging about among the funeral flowers. The birch leaves young and shiny, as if they’d been waxed. The tops of the trees like green churches, chock full of male birds keen to mate, and the females answering them. Nature’s way of saying: I don’t care, I never stop, earth to earth.
The whole of that incredibly beautiful early summer’s day as the background to that terrible hole in the ground, the polished coffin.
The images in their heads of how she looked. Her skull like a broken plant pot inside the skin.
Majvor Kangas, one of the women in the group, had invited them back to her house afterward.
“Come with me!” she’d said. “My old man’s gone to the cottage, I don’t want to be on my own.”
So they’d gone along. Sat there subdued in the lounge on the black, squashy leather sofa. Hadn’t had much to say, not even about the weather.
But Majvor was feeling rebellious.
“Right, you lot!” she’d said. “Give me a hand!”
She’d fetched a tall stool with two steps from the kitchen, clambered up and opened the little cupboard above the hall stand. She’d passed down a dozen or so bottles: whisky, Cognac, liqueurs, Calvados. Some of the others took them off her.
“These are good,” one of them had said, reading the labels. “Twelve-year-old single malt.”
“Our daughter-in-law always brings them for us when she goes abroad,” explained Majvor. “But Tord never opens them, it’s just his home brewed hooch and grog if he offers somebody a drink. And I’m not much of a one for this sort of stuff, but…”
She’d allowed a meaningful pause to finish the sentence. Was helped down from the stool like a queen from her throne. A woman on each side of her, holding her hands.
“What’s Tord going to say?”
“What can he say?” Majvor had said. “He didn’t even open any of them when it was his sixtieth birthday last year.”
“Let him drink his own fox poison!”
And so they’d got a bit tipsy. Sung hymns. Expressed their devotion to each other. Given speeches.
“Here’s to Mildred,” Majvor had shouted. “She was the most indomitable woman I’ve ever met!”
“She was mad!”
“Now we’ll have to be mad on our own!”
They’d laughed. Cried a bit. But mostly laughed.
That was the funeral.
Lisa St?ckel looked at them. They were eating mascarpone ice cream and praising Mimmi as she swept past.
They’ll be all right, she thought. They’ll manage.
It made her happy. Or maybe not happy, but relieved.
And at the same time: loneliness had her on its hook, a barb through her heart, reeling her in.
* * *

After Magdalena’s autumn meeting Lisa strolled home through the darkness. It was just after midnight. She passed the churchyard and wandered up onto the ridge that ran upstream alongside the river. She went past Lars-Gunnar’s house, could just make it out in the moonlight. The windows were dark.
She thought about Lars-Gunnar.
The village chief, she thought. The strong man of the village. The man who got the firm with the contract to clear the snow and plow the road down to Poikkij?rvi first, before he plowed down to Jukkasj?rvi. The one who helped Micke when there was a problem with the bar license.
Not that Lars-Gunnar himself drank in the bar much. These days he hardly ever drank. It had been different in the past. In the old days the men used to drink all the time. Friday, Saturday and at least one day in the middle of the week as well. And at that time they really drank. Then it was a beer or two most days. That’s the way it was. But there comes a time when you had to ease up, otherwise the only way was downhill.
No, Lars-Gunnar didn’t bother much with spirits. The last time Lisa had seen him really drunk was six years ago. The year before Mildred moved to the village.
He actually came to her house that time. She could still see him sitting there in her kitchen. The chair disappears beneath his bulk. His elbow is resting on his knee, his forehead on his palm. Breathing heavily. It’s just after eleven o’clock at night.
It’s not just that he’s been drinking. The bottle is on the table in front of him. He had it in his hand when he arrived. Like a flag: I’ve been drinking, and I’m going to bloody well carry on drinking for a good while yet.
She’d already gone to bed when he knocked on the door. Not that she heard him knock, the dogs told her he was there as soon as he set foot on her veranda.
Of course it shows a kind of trust, coming to her when he’s like this. Weakened by alcohol and his feelings. She just doesn’t know what to do with it. She isn’t used to it. People confiding in her. She’s not the kind of person who invites that kind of behavior.
But she and Lars-Gunnar are related, after all. And she can keep her mouth shut, he knows that.
She stands there in her dressing gown, listening to his song. The song about his unhappy life. His unhappy and disappointing love. And Nalle.
“Sorry,” Lars-Gunnar mumbles into his fist. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
“It’s okay,” she says hesitantly. “You keep talking while I…”
She can’t think what to do, but she’s got to do something to stop herself running straight out of the house.
“… while I get the food ready for tomorrow.”
And so he keeps talking while she chops meat and vegetables for soup. In the middle of the night. Celeriac and carrots and leeks and swede and potatoes and everything but the kitchen sink. But Lars-Gunnar doesn’t seem to think there’s anything strange about it. He’s too taken up with his own affairs.
“I had to get away from the house,” he confesses. “Before I left… I’m not sober, I admit that. Before I left I was sitting by the side of Nalle’s bed holding a shotgun to his head.”
Lisa doesn’t say anything. Slices a carrot as if she hadn’t heard.
“I thought about how things are going to be,” he sighs. “Who’s going to look after him when I’m gone? He’s got nobody.”
* * *

And that’s true, thought Lisa.
She’d arrived at her gingerbread house up on the ridge. The moon cast a silvery sheen over the extravagant carving on the veranda and window frames.
She went up the steps. The dogs were barking and charging about like mad things inside, recognizing her footsteps. When she opened the door they hurtled out for their evening pee on the grass.
She went into the living room. All that was left in there was the empty, gaping bookcase and the sofa.
Nalle’s got nobody, she thought.


YELLOW LEGS

Spring is coming. The odd patch of snow beneath the blue gray pines and the tall firs. A warm breeze from the south. The sun filtering through the branches. Small animals rustling about all over the place in last year’s grass. Hundreds of scents floating about in the air, like in a stew. Pine resin and the smell of new birch leaves. Warm earth. Open water. Sweet hare. Bitter fox.
The alpha female has dug a new lair this year. It’s an old fox’s den on a south-facing slope, two hundred meters above a mountain lake. The ground is sandy and easy to dig out, but the alpha female has worked hard, widening the entrance so that she can get in, clearing out all the old rubbish left by the foxes, and digging out a chamber to live in three meters beneath the slope. Yellow Legs and one of the other females have been allowed to help sometimes, but she’s done most of the work herself. Now she spends her days close to the lair. Lies in front of the entrance in the spring sunshine, dozing. The other wolves bring food. When the alpha male approaches her with something to eat, she gets up and comes to meet him. Licks and whimpers affectionately before gulping down his gifts.
* * *

One morning the alpha female goes into the lair and doesn’t come out again that day. Late in the evening she squeezes out the cubs. Licks them clean. Eats up the membranes, umbilical cords and the placenta. Nudges them into the right place beneath her stomach. No stillborn cub to carry out. The fox and the crow will have to manage without that meal.
The rest of the pack live their lives outside the lair. Catching mostly small prey, staying close by. Sometimes they can hear a faint squeaking when one of the cubs has wriggled in the wrong direction. Or been pushed out by one of its siblings. Only the alpha male has permission to crawl in and regurgitate food for the alpha female.
After three weeks and a day, she carries them out of the lair for the first time. Five of them. The other wolves are beside themselves with joy. Greet them carefully. Sniffing and nudging. Licking the little ones’ rotund tummies, and under their tails. After just a short while the alpha female carries them back into the lair. The cubs are completely worn out by all the new impressions. The two one-year-olds hurtle joyfully through the forest, chasing one another.
It’s the beginning of a wonderful time for the pack. They all want to help with the little ones. They play tirelessly. And the rest are infected by their playfulness. Even the alpha female joins in a tug-of-war over an old branch. The cubs are growing, they’re always hungry. Their muzzles grow longer and their ears more pointed. It happens quickly. The one-year-olds take turns to lie on guard outside the lair when the others go off hunting. When the adults return, the youngsters come forward, tails wagging. Begging and whimpering and licking the corners of the older wolves’ mouths. In reply the adult wolves bring up red mounds of the meat they’ve swallowed. If there’s anything left over, the babysitters can have it.
Yellow Legs doesn’t go off on her own. During this period she stays with the pack and the new cubs. She lies on her back playing the helpless prey beneath two of them. They hurl themselves at her, one sinks his needle-sharp teeth into her lips and the other attacks her tail like a mad thing. She pushes the one who was dangling from her lip aside and places her enormous paw on top of it. It’s all the cub can do to free itself. Wriggling and struggling. Finally it escapes. Gallops around her on its fluffy paws, comes back and throws itself at her head, growling recklessly. Bites her ear aggressively. Then all of a sudden they fall into a deep, peaceful sleep. One lying between her front legs, the other with its head on its sibling’s stomach. Yellow Legs takes the opportunity to have a little doze as well. She snaps half-heartedly at a wasp that comes too close, misses, the sleepy hum of insects above the flowers. The morning sun rises above the tops of the pine trees. The birds swoop through the air, hunting for food to regurgitate into the gaping mouths of their babies.
Playing with cubs makes you tired. Happiness flows through her like spring water.