The Blood Spilt

6

Rebecka Martinsson was sitting in the rented Saab on the way down to Jukkasj?rvi. Torsten Karlsson was in the passenger seat with his head tilted back, eyes closed, relaxing before the meeting with the parish priests. From time to time he glanced out through the window.
“Tell me if we pass something worth looking at,” he said to Rebecka.
Rebecka smiled wryly.
Everything, she thought. Everything’s worth looking at. The evening sun between the pine trees. The damned flies buzzing over the fireweed at the side of the road. The places where the asphalt’s split because of the frost. Dead things, squashed on the road.
The meeting with the church leaders in Kiruna wasn’t due to take place until the following morning. But the parish priest in Kiruna had phoned Torsten.
“If you arrive on Tuesday evening, let me know,” he’d said. “I can show you two of Sweden’s most beautiful churches. Kiruna and Jukkasj?rvi.”
“We’ll go on Tuesday, then!” Torsten had decided. “It’s really important that he’s on our side before Wednesday. Wear something nice.”
“Wear something nice yourself!” Rebecka had replied.
On the plane they’d ended up next to a woman who immediately got into conversation with Torsten. She was tall, wearing a loose fitting linen jacket and a huge pendant from the Kalevala around her neck. When Torsten told her it was his first visit to Kiruna, she’d clapped her hands with delight. Then she’d given him tips on everything he just had to see.
“I’ve got my own guide with me,” Torsten had said, nodding toward Rebecka.
The woman had smiled at Rebecka.
“Oh, so you’ve been here before?”
“I was born here.”
The woman had looked her quickly up and down. A hint of disbelief in her eyes.
Rebecka had turned away to look out of the window, leaving the conversation to Torsten. It had upset her that she looked like a stranger. Neatly done up in her gray suit and Bruno Magli shoes.
This is my town, she’d thought, feeling defiant.
Just then the plane had turned. And the town lay below her. That clump of buildings that had attached itself to the mountain full of iron, and clung on tight. All around nothing but mountains and bogs, low growing forests and streams. She took a deep breath.
At the airport she’d felt like a stranger too. On the way out to the hire car she and Torsten had met a flock of tourists on their way home. They’d smelled of mosquito repellent and sweat. The mountain winds and the September sun had nipped at their skin. Brown faces with white crow’s feet from screwing their eyes up.
Rebecka knew how they’d felt. Sore feet and aching muscles after a week in the mountains, contented and just a bit flat. They were wearing brightly colored anoraks and practical khaki colored trousers. She was wearing a coat and scarf.
Torsten straightened up and looked curiously at some people fly-fishing as they crossed the river.
“We’ll just have to hope we can carry this off,” he said.
“Of course you will,” said Rebecka. “They’re going to love you.”
“Do you think so? It’s not good that I’ve never been here before. I’ve never been further north than bloody G?vle.”
“No, no, but you’re incredibly pleased to be here. You’ve always wanted to come up here to see the magnificent mountains and visit the mine. Next time you come up on business you’re thinking of taking some holiday to see the sights.”
“Okay”
“And none of this ‘how the hell do you cope with the long dark winter when the sun doesn’t even rise’ crap.”
“Of course not.”
“Even if they joke about it themselves.”
“Yeah yeah.”
Rebecka parked the car beside the bell tower. No priest. They strolled along the path toward the vicarage. Red wooden panels and white eaves. The river flowed along below the vicarage. The water was September-low. Torsten was doing the blackfly dance. No one opened when they rang the bell. They rang again and waited. In the end they turned to go.
A man was walking up toward the vicarage through the opening in the fence. He waved to them and shouted. When he got closer they could see he was wearing a clerical shirt.
“Hi there,” he said when he got to them. “You must be from Meijer & Ditzinger.”
He held his hand out to Torsten Karlsson first. Rebecka took up the secretary’s position, half a pace behind Torsten.
“Stefan Wikstr?m,” said the clergyman.
Rebecka introduced herself without mentioning her job. He could believe whatever made him comfortable. She looked at the priest. He was in his forties. Jeans, tennis shoes, clerical shirt and white dog collar. He hadn’t been conducting his official duties, then. Still had the shirt on, though.
One of those 24/7 priests, thought Rebecka.
“You’d arranged to meet Bertil Stensson, our parish priest,” the clergyman continued. “Unfortunately he’s been held up this evening, so he asked me to meet you and show you the church.”
Rebecka and Torsten made polite noises and went up to the little red wooden church with him. There was a smell of tar from the wooden roof. Rebecka followed in the wake of the two men. The clergyman addressed himself almost exclusively to Torsten when he spoke. Torsten slipped smoothly into the game and didn’t pay any attention to Rebecka either.
Of course it could be that the priest has actually been held up, thought Rebecka. But it could also mean that he’s decided to oppose the firm’s proposal.
It was gloomy inside the church. The air was still. Torsten was scratching twenty fresh blackfly bites.
Stefan Wikstr?m told them about the eighteenth-century church. Rebecka allowed her thoughts to wander. She knew the story of the beautiful altarpiece and the dead resting beneath the floor. Then she realized they’d embarked on a new topic of conversation, and pricked up her ears.
“There. In front of the organ,” said Stefan Wikstr?m, pointing.
Torsten looked up at the shiny organ pipes and the Sami sun symbol in the center of the organ.
“It must have been a terrible shock for all of you.”
“What must?” asked Rebecka.
The clergyman looked at her.
“This is where she was hanging,” he said. “My colleague who was murdered in the summer.”
Rebecka looked blankly at him.
“Murdered in the summer?” she repeated.
There was a confused pause.
“Yes, in the summer,” ventured Stefan Wikstr?m.
Torsten Karlsson was staring at Rebecka.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
Rebecka looked at him and shook her head almost imperceptibly.
“A woman priest was murdered in Kiruna in the summer. In here. Didn’t you know about it?”
“No.”
He looked at her anxiously.
“You must be the only person in the whole of Sweden who… I assumed you knew. It was all over the papers. On every news broadcast…”
Stefan Wikstr?m was following their conversation like a table tennis match.
“I haven’t ready any papers all summer,” said Rebecka. “And I haven’t watched any television.”
Torsten raised his hands, palms upward, in a helpless gesture.
“I really thought…” he began. “But obviously, nobody bloody…”
He broke off, glanced sheepishly at the clergyman, received a smile as an indication that his sin was forgiven, and went on:
“… nobody had the nerve to speak to you about it. Maybe you’d like to wait outside? Or would you like a glass of water?”
Rebecka was on the verge of smiling. Then she changed her mind, couldn’t decide which expression to adopt.
“It’s fine. But I would like to wait outside.”
She left the men inside the church and went out. Stopped on the steps.
I ought to feel something, of course, she thought. Maybe I ought to faint.
The afternoon sun was warming the walls of the bell tower. She had the urge to lean against it, but didn’t because of her clothes. The smell of warm asphalt mingled with the smell of the newly tarred roof.
She wondered if Torsten was telling Stefan Wikstr?m that she was the one who’d shot Viktor Strandg?rd’s murderer. Maybe he was making something up. No doubt he’d do whatever he thought was best for business. At the moment she was in the social goody bag. Among the salted anecdotes and the sweet gossip. If Stefan Wikstr?m had been a lawyer, Torsten would have told him how things were. Taken out the bag and offered him a Rebecka Martinsson. But maybe the clergy weren’t quite so keen on gossip as the legal profession.
They came out to join her after ten minutes. The clergyman shook hands with them both. It felt as if he didn’t really want to let go of their hands.
“It was unfortunate that Bertil had to go out. It was a car accident, and you can’t say no. Hang on a minute and I’ll try his cell phone.”
While Stefan Wikstr?m tried to ring the parish priest, Rebecka and Torsten exchanged a look. So he was genuinely busy. Rebecka wondered why Stefan Wikstr?m was so keen for them to meet him before the meeting the following day.
He wants something, she thought. But what?
Stefan Wikstr?m pushed the phone into his back pocket with an apologetic smile.
“No luck,” he said. “Just voicemail. But we’ll meet tomorrow.”
Brief, casual farewells since it was only one night until they were due to meet again. Torsten asked Rebecka for a pen and made a note of the title of a book the clergyman had recommended. Showed genuine interest.
* * *

Rebecka and Torsten drove back into town. Rebecka talked about Jukkasj?rvi. What the village had been like before the big tourist boom. Dozing by the river. The population trickling silently away like the sand in an hourglass. The Konsum shop looking like some sort of antiquated emporium. The odd tourist at the folk museum, burnt coffee and a chocolate eclair with the white bloom that suggests it’s been around for a long time. It had been impossible to sell houses. They had stood there, silent and hollow-eyed, with leaking roofs and moss growing on the walls. The meadows overgrown with weeds.
And now: tourists came from all over the world to sleep between reindeer skins in the ice hotel, drive a snowmobile at minus thirty degrees, drive a dog team and get married in the ice church. And when it wasn’t winter they came for saunas on board a boat or rode the rapids.
“Stop!” yelled Torsten all of a sudden. “We can eat there!”
He pointed to a sign by the side of the road. It consisted of two hand-painted planks of wood nailed together. They were sawn into the shape of arrows, and were pointing to the left. Green letters on a white background proclaimed “ROOMS” and “Food till 11 p.m.”
“No, we can’t,” said Rebecka. “That’s the road down to Poikkij?rvi. There’s nothing there.”
“Oh, come on, Martinsson,” said Torsten, looking expectantly along the road. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
Rebecka sighed like somebody’s mother and turned on to the road to Poikkij?rvi.
“There’s nothing here,” she said. “A churchyard and a chapel and a few houses. I promise you that whoever put that sign up a hundred years ago went bust a week later.”
“When we know for certain we’ll turn round and go into town to eat,” said Torsten cheerfully.
The road became a gravel track. The river was on their left, and you could see Jukkasj?rvi on the far side. The gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the car. Wooden houses stood on either side of the track, most of them painted red. Some gardens were adorned with miniature windmills and fading flowers in containers made out of tractor tires, others with swings and sand pits. Dogs galloped as far as they could in their runs, barking hoarsely after the passing car. Rebecka could feel the eyes from inside the houses. A car they didn’t recognize. Who could it be? Torsten gazed around him like a happy child, commenting on the ugly extensions and waving to an old man who stopped raking up leaves to stare after them. They passed some small boys on bikes and a tall lad on a moped.
“There,” Torsten pointed.
The restaurant was right on the edge of the village. It was an old car workshop that had been converted. The building looked like a whitish rectangular cardboard box; the dirty white plaster had come off in several places. Two big garage doors on the longer side of the box looked out over the road. The doors had been fitted with oblong windows to let the light in. On one end there was a normal sized door and a window with bars. On each side of the door stood a plastic urn filled with fiery yellow marigolds. The door and window frames were painted with flaking brown plastic paint. At the other end, the back of the restaurant, some pale red snowplows stood in the tall dry autumn grass.
Three chickens flapped their wings and disappeared around the corner when Rebecka drove into the gravel yard. A dusty neon sign that said “LAST STOP DINER” was leaning against the longer side of the building facing the river. A collapsible wooden sign next to the door proclaimed “BAR open.” Three other cars were parked in the yard.
On the other side of the road stood five chalets. Rebecka presumed they were the rooms available for renting.
She switched off the engine. At that moment the moped they’d passed earlier arrived and parked by the wall of the building. A very big lad was sitting on the saddle. He stayed there for a while, looking as if he couldn’t decide whether to get off or not. He peered at Rebecka and Torsten in the strange car from under his helmet and swayed backwards and forward toward the handlebars a few times. His powerful jaw was moving from side to side. Finally he got off the moped and went over to the door. He leaned forward slightly as he walked. Eyes down, arms bent at a ninety degree angle.
“The master chef has arrived for work,” joked Torsten.
Rebecka forced out a “hm,” the sound junior associates make when they don’t want to laugh at rude jokes, but don’t want to remain totally silent and risk offending a partner or a client.
The big lad was standing at the door.
Not unlike a great big bear in a green jacket, thought Rebecka.
He turned around and went back to the moped. He unbuttoned his green jacket, placed it carefully on the moped and folded it up. Then he undid his helmet and placed it in the middle of the folded jacket, as carefully as if it were made of delicate glass. He even took a step backwards to check, went forward again and moved the helmet a millimeter. Head still bent, held slightly on one side. He glanced toward Rebecka and Torsten and rubbed his big chin. Rebecka guessed he was just under twenty. But with the mind of a boy, obviously.
“What’s he doing?” whispered Torsten.
Rebecka shook her head.
“I’ll go in and ask if they’ve started serving dinner,” she said.
She climbed out of the car. From the open window, covered with a green mosquito net, came the sound of some sports program on TV, low voices and the clatter of dishes. From the river she could hear the sound of an outboard motor. There was a smell of frying food. It had got cooler. The afternoon chill was passing like a hand over the moss and the blueberry bushes.
It’s like home, thought Rebecka, looking into the forest on the other side of the track. A pillared hall, the slender pine trees rising from the poor sandy soil, the rays of the sun reaching far into the forest between the copper colored trunks above the low growing shrubs and moss covered stones.
Suddenly she could see herself. A little girl in a knitted synthetic sweater that made her hair crackle with static when she pulled it over her head. Corduroy jeans that had been made longer by adding an edging around the bottom of the legs. She’s coming out of the forest. In her hand she has a china mug full of the blueberries she’s picked. She’s on her way to the summer barn. Her grandmother is sitting inside. A smoky little fire is burning on the cement floor to keep the mosquitoes away. It’s just right, if you put too much grass on it the cows start to cough. Grandmother is milking Mansikka, the cow’s tail clamped to Mansikka’s flank with her forehead. The milk spurts into the pail. The chains clank as the cows stoop down for more hay.
“So, Pikku-piika,” says Grandmother as her hands squeeze the udders rhythmically. “Where have you been all day?”
“In the forest,” answers little Rebecka.
She pushes a few blueberries into her grandmother’s mouth. It’s only now she realizes how hungry she is.
Torsten knocked on the car window.
I want to stay here, thought Rebecka, and was surprised by how strongly she felt.
The tussocks in the forest looked like cushions. Covered with shiny dark green lingon with its thick leaves, and the fresh green of the blueberry leaves just starting to turn red.
Come and lie down, whispered the forest. Lay down your head and watch the wind swaying the tops of the trees to and fro.
There was another knock on the car window. She nodded a greeting to the big lad. He stayed out on the steps when she went in.
The two garages that made up the old workshop had been converted into an eating area and a bar. There were six pine tables, stained with a dark color and varnished, arranged along the walls, each with room for seven people if somebody sat at the corner. The plastic flooring of coral red imitation marble was matched by the pink fabric wall covering; a painted design ran right around the room and even continued straight across the swing doors leading into the kitchen. Someone had wound plastic greenery around the water pipes, also painted pink, in an attempt to cheer the place up. Behind the dark-stained bar on the left of the room stood a man in a blue apron, drying glasses and putting them on a shelf where they jostled for space with the drinks on offer. He said hello to Rebecka as she came in. He had a dark brown, neatly clipped beard and an earring in his right ear. The sleeves of his black T-shirt were pushed up his muscular arms. Three men were sitting at one of the tables with a basket of bread in front of them, waiting for their meal. The cutlery wrapped in wine-red paper serviettes. Their eyes firmly fixed on the football on TV. Fists in the bread basket. Work caps in a pile on one of the empty chairs. They were dressed in soft, faded flannel shirts worn over T-shirts with adverts printed on them, the necks well worn. One of them was wearing blue overalls with braces and some kind of company logo. The other two had unfastened their overalls so that the upper half trailed on the floor behind them.
A middle-aged woman on her own was dunking her bread in a bowl of soup. She gave Rebecka a quick smile then stuffed the piece of bread into her mouth quickly, before it fell apart. A black Labrador with the white stripes of age on his muzzle was sleeping at her feet. Over the chair beside her was an indescribably scruffy Barbie-pink padded coat. Her hair was cut very short in a style which could most charitably be described as practical.
“Anything I can help you with?” asked the earring behind the counter.
Rebecka turned toward him and had just about managed to say yes when the swing door from the kitchen flew open and a woman in her twenties hurtled out with three plates. Her long hair was dyed in stripes—blond, an unnatural pink and black. She had an eyebrow piercing and two sparkling stones in her nose.
What a pretty girl, thought Rebecka.
“Yes?” said the girl to Rebecka, a challenge in her voice.
She didn’t wait for an answer, but put the plates down in front of the three men. Rebecka had been about to ask if they served food, but she could see that they did.
“It says ‘rooms’ on the sign,” she heard herself asking instead, “how much are they?”
The earring looked at her in confusion.
“Mimmi,” he said, “she’s asking about rooms.”
The woman with the striped hair turned to Rebecka, wiped her hands on her apron and pushed a strand of sweat-soaked hair off her face.
“We’ve got cottages,” she said. “Sort of chalets. Two hundred and seventy kronor a night.”
What am I doing? thought Rebecka.
And the next minute she thought:
I want to stay here. Just me.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll be in shortly having a meal with a man. If he asks about rooms, tell him you’ve only got space for me.”
Mimmi frowned.
“Why should I do that?” she asked. “It’s bloody awful business for us.”
“Not at all. If you say you’ve got room for him as well, I’ll change my mind and we’ll both go and stay at the Winter Palace in town. So one overnight guest or none.”
“Having trouble fighting him off, are you?” grinned the earring.
Rebecka shrugged. They could think what they liked. And what could she say?
Mimmi shrugged back.
“Okay then,” she said. “But you’re both eating, are you? Or shall we say there’s only enough food for you?”
* * *

Torsten was reading the menu. Rebecka was sitting opposite, looking at him. His rounded cheeks, pink with pleasure. His reading glasses balanced as far down his nose as possible without actually stopping him from breathing. Hair tousled, standing on end. Mimmi was leaning over his shoulder and pointing as she read it out. Like a teacher and pupil.
He loves this, thought Rebecka.
The men with their powerful arms, their sheath knives hanging from their belts. Who had mumbled a reply when Torsten swept in wearing his gray suit and greeted them cheerfully. Pretty Mimmi with her big boobs and her loud voice. About as far as you can get from the accommodating girls at the Sturecompagniet nightclub. Little anecdotes were already taking shape in his head.
“You can either have the dish of the day,” said Mimmi, pointing to a blackboard on the wall where it said “Marinated elk steak with mushroom and vegetable risotto. Or you can have something out of the freezer. You can have anything that’s listed there with potatoes or rice or pasta, whichever you want.”
She pointed to the menu where a number of dishes were listed under the heading “From the freezer”: lasagne, meatballs, blood pudding, Pite? potato cakes filled with mince, smoked reindeer fillet in a cream sauce and stew.
“Maybe I should try the blood pudding,” he said excitedly to Rebecka.
The door opened and the tall lad who’d arrived on the moped came in. He stopped just inside the door. His massive body was encased in a beautifully ironed striped cotton shirt buttoned right up to the neck. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at the other customers. He kept his head twisted to one side so that his big chin was pointing out through the long narrow window. As if it were signposting an escape route.
“Nalle!” exclaimed Mimmi, abandoning Torsten to his deliberations. “Don’t you look smart!”
The big lad gave her a shy smile and a quick glance.
“Come over here and let me have a proper look at you!” called the woman with the dog, pushing her soup bowl to one side.
Rebecka suddenly noticed how alike Mimmi and the woman with the dog were. They must be mother and daughter.
The dog at the woman’s feet raised its head and gave two tired wags with its tail. Then it put its head down and went back to sleep.
The boy went over to the woman with the dog. She clapped her hands.
“Don’t you look wonderful!” she said. “Happy birthday! What a smart shirt!”
Nalle smiled at her flattery and raised his chin toward the ceiling in an almost comical pose that made Rebecka think of Rudolph Valentino.
“New,” he said.
“Well yes, we can see it’s new,” said Mimmi.
“Going dancing, Nalle?” called one of the men. “Mimmi, can you do us five takeaways from the freezer? Whatever you like.”
Nalle pointed at his trousers.
“Too,” he said.
He lifted up his arms and held them straight out from his body so that everybody could see his trousers properly. They were a pair of gray chinos held up with a military belt.
“Are they new as well? Very smart!” the two admiring women assured him.
“Here,” said Mimmi, pulling out the chair opposite the woman with the dog. “Your dad hasn’t arrived yet, but you can sit here with Lisa and wait.”
“Cake,” said Nalle, and sat down.
“Of course you can have some cake. Did you think I’d forgotten? But after your meal.”
Mimmi’s hand shot out and gave his hair a quick caress. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.
Rebecka leaned across the table to Torsten.
“I was thinking of staying the night here,” said Rebecka. “You know I grew up by this river, just a few miles upstream, and it’s made me feel a bit nostalgic. But I’ll drive you into town and pick you up in the morning.”
“No problem,” said Torsten, the roses of adventure on his cheeks in full bloom. “I can stay here as well.”
“The beds won’t exactly be the height of luxury, I shouldn’t think,” said Rebecka.
Mimmi came out with five aluminum packages under her arm.
“We were thinking of staying here tonight,” Torsten said to her. “Do you have any rooms free?”
“Sorry,” replied Mimmi. “One cottage left. Ninety centimeter bed.”
“That’s okay,” Rebecka said to Torsten. “I’ll give you a lift.”
He smiled at her. Beneath the smile and the well-paid successful partner was a fat little boy she didn’t want to play with, trying to look as if he didn’t mind. It gave her a pang.
* * *

When Rebecka got back from town it was almost completely dark. The forest was silhouetted against the blue black sky. She parked the car in front of the bar and locked it. There were several other cars parked there. The voices of burly men could be heard from inside, the sound of forks being pushed forcefully through meat and clattering on the plate underneath, the television providing a constant background noise, familiar advertising jingles. Nalle’s moped was still standing there. She hoped he’d had a good birthday.
The cottage she was sleeping in was on the opposite side of the road on the edge of the forest. A small lamp above the door lit up the number five.
I’m at peace, she thought.
She went up to the cottage door, but suddenly turned and walked a few meters into the forest. The fir trees stood in silence, gazing up toward the stars which were just beginning to appear. Their long blue green velvet coats moved tentatively over the moss.
Rebecka lay down on the ground. The pine trees put their heads together and whispered reassuringly. The last mosquitoes and black-flies of the summer sang a deafening chorus, seeking out whatever parts of her they could reach. She could cope with that.
She didn’t notice Mimmi, bringing out some rubbish.
Mimmi went into the kitchen.
“Okay,” she said, “it’s definitely wacko-warning time.”
She told him that their overnight guest had gone to bed, not in her bed in the cottage, but on the ground outside.
“It does make you wonder,” said Micke.
Mimmi rolled her eyes.
“Any minute now she’ll decide she’s a shaman or a witch, move out into the forest, start brewing up herbs over an open fire and dancing around an ancient Sami monolith.”


YELLOW LEGS

It is Easter time. The she-wolf is three years old when a human being sees her for the first time. It’s in northern Karelia by the river Vodla. She herself has seen people many times. She recognizes their suffocating smell. And she understands what these men are doing. They’re fishing. When she was a gangly one-year-old she often crept down to the river at dusk and devoured whatever the two-legged creatures had left behind, fish guts, dace and ide.
Volodja is laying ice nets with his brother. His brother has made four holes in the ice and they are going to lay three nets. Volodja is kneeling by the second hole ready to catch the cane his brother sends beneath the ice. His hands are wet, aching with the cold. And he doesn’t trust the ice. All the time he makes sure his skis are close by. If the ice gives way he can lie on his stomach on the skis and pull himself ashore. Alexander wants to lay nets here because it’s such a good spot. This is where the fish are. The water is fast flowing and Alexander has struck with his ice pick exactly where the bottom plunges down into the deep river channel.
But it’s a dangerous place. If the water rises, the river eats up the ice from below. Volodja knows. The ice can be the thickness of three hand breadths one day and two fingers the next.
He has no choice. He’s visiting his brother’s family over Easter. Alexander, his wife and two daughters are crammed together on the ground floor. Alexander and Volodja’s mother lives on the upper floor. Alexander is stuck with the responsibility for the women. Volodja himself travels all the time working for Transneft, the oil company. Last winter he was in Siberia. In the autumn in the gulf of Viborg. In recent months he’s been stuck out in the forest on the Karelian isthmus. When his brother suggested they should go out and lay nets, he couldn’t say no. If he’d refused Alexander would have gone out alone. And tomorrow evening Volodja would have been sitting at the dinner table eating fish he hadn’t bothered to help catch.
Such is Alexander’s rage, it makes him force himself and his younger brother out onto the perilous ice. Now they’re here, the weight pressing down on Alexander’s heart seems to have eased slightly. He is almost smiling as he kneels there with his hands in the water, blue with cold. Maybe that buttoned-up fury would lessen if he had a son, thinks Volodja.
And at that very moment, with a fleeting prayer to the Virgin that the child in the belly of his brother’s wife shall be a son, he catches sight of the wolf. She is standing on the edge of the forest on the opposite side, watching them. Not far away at all. Slant-eyed and long-legged. Her coat is curly, thick for the winter. Long coarse silver strands sticking up among the curls. It feels as if their eyes meet. His brother sees nothing. He has his back to her. Her legs are really extremely long. And yellow. She looks like a queen. And Volodja is on his knees on the ice before her like the village boy he is, with wet gloves and his fur cap with the earflaps sitting askew on top of his sweat drenched hair.
Zjoltye nogi, he says. Yellow legs.
But only inside his head. His lips don’t move.
He says nothing to his brother. Alexander might grab the rifle resting against his rucksack and fire off a shot.
So he is forced to release her from his gaze and take the net line off the pole. And when he looks up again she is gone.
By the time Yellow Legs has gone three hundred meters into the forest she has already forgotten the two men on the ice. She will never think of them again. After two kilometers she stops and howls. The other members of the pack answer her, they are just a few miles away and she sets off at a steady trot. That’s the way she is. Frequently goes off on her own.
Volodja remembers her for the rest of his life. Every time he returns to the place where he saw her, he peers at the edge of the forest. Three years later he meets the woman who becomes his wife.
The first time she rests in his arms he tells her about the wolf with the long yellow legs.