Until Thy Wrath Be Past (31 page)

“Yes, it’s interesting that he has to die before he can change. And even then he’s not a good, enlightened man, not a man changed for the rest of time, you could say. It’s just a journey he’s barely set out on. What do you read?”

She opens the Bible to the place marked by the lilac-coloured ribbon.

“Job,” she says, and checks the underlined extract. “‘O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past’.”

“Yes.”

Hjalmar nods like a Laestadian in a church pew.

A troubled man reading about a troubled man, Martinsson thinks.

“God seems to be just like my father – as angry as they bloody well come,” Hjalmar says, tickling Vera’s stomach.

He smiles to indicate that he is joking. Martinsson does not smile back.

Vera sighs with contentment. Tintin responds with a sigh from in front of the fire. This is how a dog’s life ought to be.

Martinsson continues reading to herself. “And surely the mountain falling cometh to nought, and the rock is moved out of his place. The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man.”

She looks around the room. Hanging somewhat haphazardly on the walls, framed in yellowed pine boards, are all kinds of decorations. An unsigned oil painting of a windmill in an inlet at sunset; a Lappish knife and a badly carved wooden spoon; a faded stuffed squirrel on a tree branch; a clock made out of a copper frying pan, with the hands attached to the bottom. A vase on a window ledge contains a bunch of artificial flowers. And there are a few photographs pinned up as well.

“Let me show you my secret,” Hjalmar says without warning, and stands up. Vera jumps reluctantly onto the floor.

Pulling the rag mat to one side, Hjalmar removes a rectangular piece of linoleum. There is a loose floorboard underneath: lifting it up, he produces a packet. Three maths books are wrapped in a piece of red-and-white-striped oilcloth. There is also a plastic folder. Opening the packet, he places everything on the countertop in front of Martinsson.

She reads the titles out loud:
Multi-dimensional Analysis
,
Discrete Mathematics
,
Mathematics Handbook
.

“The same books as they read at the university,” Hjalmar says, not without pride.

Then he adds angrily, “I’m not an idiot, if that’s what you thought. Look in the folder; the proof’s all there.”

“I didn’t think anything in particular. Why have you hidden all this away under the floorboards?”

She leafs through the books.

“My father and my brother,” he says, with sorrow in his voice. “And Mother as well, come to that. There’d just be a bust-up.”

Martinsson opens the folder. It contains an Advanced Level Certificate of Education, from Hermod’s Correspondence College.

“I spent all my free time sitting here. At this very table. I struggled and studied. With the other subjects – I’ve always found maths very easy. I don’t have a problem with maths. The mark I got would have been good enough to get me into university, but . . .”

He remembers the summer of 1972. He was twenty-five years old. He spent the entire summer thinking seriously about telling his father and brother that he was going to stop working for the haulage business. He would apply for a study grant, go to university. He lay awake at night, rehearsing what he was going to say. Sometimes he would tell them that it was just a temporary thing, that he would return to the firm once he had got his degree. But sometimes he would tell them they could go to hell, that he would rather sleep rough than go back into the family firm. But in the end he said nothing at all.

“Ah well, it just didn’t come off,” he says to Martinsson.

She looks at him again. He is in pain. Something is breaking inside him. He has to sit down. The chair by the kitchen table is nearest.

The dogs are there like a shot. Both of them. They lick his hands.

“Bloody hell,” he says. “My life. Bloody hell. I’ve grown fat and I’ve worked. That has been my only . . .”

He nods in the direction of the maths books.

He presses his hand over his mouth, but he cannot prevent it – he starts sobbing loudly.

“Have you brought a tape recorder?” he says. “Is that why you’re here?”

“No,” she says.

And she looks, looks, looks. A witness to his sorrow. As it comes cascading out of him. She does not touch him. Vera places a paw on his knee. Tintin lies down at his feet.

Then she looks away. Hjalmar stands up and puts the books back under the floorboard. Martinsson notices a black-and-white photograph of a man and woman sitting outside a front door, at the top of some steps. Two boys are sitting on the bottom step. It must be Hjalmar and Tore Krekula and their parents. Isak and – what’s their mother’s name? Kerttu. There is something familiar about her, Martinsson thinks. She tries to remember if she had seen the same photograph when she had visited Anni Autio. Or when she was at Johannes Svarvare’s. No.

Then she remembers. It was in the album in Karl-Åke Pantzare’s room. She is the girl who was standing between Pantzare and his friend Viebke. Yes, it must be her.

Kerttu, she thinks.

And then it strikes her that Hjalmar and Tore Krekula are white-haired in the way that red-headed people become. Now she thinks about it, it is clear that they must have been red-haired, and they have very light-coloured skin.

The fox, Martinsson thinks. Didn’t Pantzare say that the British called the Germans’ informer the Fox? The Finnish for “fox” is
kettu
.
Kettu
. Kerttu.

I hover above Anni’s head as she makes her way to her sister’s with the aid of her kick-sledge. There’s a delay of at least five minutes before Kerttu opens the door. About two centimetres.

“What do you want?” she says in annoyance when she sees it’s Anni standing there.

“Was it you?” Anni says.

“What do you mean?”

“Come off it,” Anni says, her voice trembling with rage. “Hjalmar came to see me. He was on his way to his cottage. He told me that he . . . You put them up to it, didn’t you?”

“Have you lost your mind? Go home and lie down.”

“And Tore! He should have been given a good hiding ages ago.”

Kerttu tries to close the door, but Anni is furious.

“You . . .” she says, forcing her spindly arms in through the crack and grabbing hold of Kerttu’s dress. She pulls her sister out onto the top step.

“Come on, out with it,” she says, giving Kerttu a good shaking.

I’m sitting on the rail, laughing. This isn’t at all funny, in fact, but my God! It’s like watching two scraggy old hens fighting. Kerttu howls, “Let go of me!” But they don’t have enough strength to fight and talk at the same time. They pant and struggle for all they’re worth.

“Go on, Anni!” I shout. “Let her have it!”

But only the ravens can hear me. They are making a racket on the roof of the barn.

Anni holds on to Kerttu’s dress as hard as she can, shoving her against the iron rail, over and over again. Kerttu slaps Anni in the face. Anni starts crying. Not because of the pain in her cheek, but because she is hurting deep down inside. She hates Kerttu, and that hurts.

“Traitor,” she snarls. “You bloody . . .”

That’s as far as she gets because Kerttu gives her a head-butt. Anni loses her grip on her sister and falls down the steps.

With considerable difficulty she gets up on all fours. She’s sobbing loudly, out of frustration and sorrow.

“Go away,” Kerttu says, gasping for breath. “Go away before I set the dog on you.”

Anni crawls to her kick-sledge and struggles to her feet. Pushes the sledge ahead of her and hobbles along behind it. Crosses the parking area with difficulty, and comes out onto the road.

When she is out of sight, Kerttu goes back indoors. Tore is standing in the kitchen.

“Did you hear that?” she says.

He nods.

“Hjalmar has lost the plot. And Anni! I think everyone’s gone mad. He can ruin us. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t think about you and your family. About your life.”

She pauses and massages her sore back where it has been banged against the iron rail.

“He’s never been bothered about your life. We know that, of course.”

“Is he at his cottage?”

Kerttu nods.

“I’ll take your snow scooter and go out there,” Tore says.

“Your father won’t survive this,” Kerttu says, sitting down with difficulty at the kitchen table. She rests her head in the crook of her arm. It’s August 1943. In the clearing is a silver-coloured haymakers’ hut. She’s lying on her stomach in the trees. Viebke and the three Danish prisoners of war have disappeared into the hut.
Sicherheitschef
Schörner whispers into her ear.

“Go over to the hut and shout for them,” he says.

She shakes her head.

“Just go,” he says, “and everything will be O.K.”

So she does. Stands outside the hut and shouts for Viebke. She needs to shout his name twice.

He emerges onto the steps. He is surprised, and his face lights up in a smile. The three Danes come out as well.

Then Schörner and the other two soldiers step out of the trees. They are not in uniform, but the pistol in Schörner’s hand and the rifles the other two are carrying say all that needs to be said. In broken Swedish Schörner instructs Viebke and the Danes to place their hands behind their heads and kneel.

Kerttu looks down at the moss. She wants Viebke to think that she has somehow been forced to do this. She does not want him to think ill of her. But Schörner catches on to what she is thinking and will not allow that kind of deceit. He walks over to her, his pistol still aimed at Viebke, and caresses her cheek.

Kerttu cannot see the disgust in Viebke’s eyes, but she can feel it.

Schörner points his pistol at Viebke’s head and demands information about other members of his resistance group.

Viebke says he has no idea what Schörner is talking about, that he . . .

He gets no further before Schörner points the pistol away from Viebke’s head and pulls the trigger.

Two seconds pass, then one of the Danes falls over. Blood pours out of Viebke’s ear; the gun went off so close to it. The other two Germans exchange glances.

Kerttu has screamed. But now the forest is silent. Her legs are shaking. She looks down at her trembling knees. White parnassia and eyebright are blooming in the grass at her feet. After a short pause she hears the birds twittering in the trees once more, and the woodpigeons cooing.

She stares at the hair moss and stair-step moss and reindeer moss as Schörner kicks Viebke in the stomach and drags him towards the hut.

She stares fixedly at the spent flowers of the wild rosemary and juniper bushes while one of the German soldiers lifts Viebke up so that he is standing with his back to the hut. Schörner takes his captive’s sheath knife and stabs it through his hand so that Viebke is nailed to the silvery-white wall.

“Out with it!” Schörner shouts.

But Viebke does not say a word.

Kerttu can see his white face, so very white. She watches as he loses consciousness. Then she sees the lingon sprigs and blueberry sprigs and crowberry sprigs and bog bilberry.

And then . . . then Schörner curses in frustration, tries to bring Viebke round by removing the knife and punching him in the face. But Viebke remains unconscious.

Then Kerttu hears three shots, and thinks, This isn’t happening, this can’t be true. One of the German soldiers walks over to the car and comes back with a petrol can. When they drive off, the hut is burning like a parched fir tree.

Schörner hands Kerttu over to Isak Krekula and tells him that his fiancée has turned up trumps. Then he strokes Kerttu under her chin and says he knows he can trust her, and that she will get a handsome reward. She will have to be patient for a while, but Schörner will personally ensure that she is paid.

Krekula notices the spots of blood on Schörner’s face, and he has to tell Kerttu over and over again to get into his lorry. In the end one of the Germans lifts her in.