Åsa Larsson - Until Thy Wrath Be Past

“I know.”

A brief silence follows. There is a lot waiting to be expressed, but in the end he simply says, “Bye for now,” and hangs up.

Hjalmar Krekula’s cottage at Saarisuanto is built of brown-stained logs. The window frames and door are painted blue, and the two lots of steps leading up to the door have been fused together crudely. The roof is corrugated iron, but the chimneys are properly built in. Beautiful pine trees grow on the slope down to the riverbank. An old red-painted boathouse leans provocatively under the snow. It might survive one more summer, but that is far from certain. Not far from the cottage, at the very edge of the water, is the sauna. A circular iron chimney sticks up into the air. A wooden jetty has been beached: the half of it that has thawed peers out from the snow.

The barrier is up and the road has been ploughed, but not all the way to the cottage. Hjalmar’s car is parked where the road comes to an end. Martinsson has to walk along the snow-scooter tracks for the last bit. Someone has walked there before her. It must be him. Far from easy going – his feet have sunk into the snow after every third or fourth step.

Vera and Tintin are racing around like crazy, noses to the ground. There are spoors made by reindeer that have followed the scooter tracks to conserve energy. Ptarmigans have scuttled back and forth among the birches. At one point there are traces of an elk. It takes more than fifteen minutes to get to the cottage.

Martinsson knocks on the door. When she gets no response, she opens it.

The cottage consists of one large room. The kitchen area is just inside the door. On the wall to the left are old kitchen cabinets with sliding doors above a hotplate and countertop. Turned upside down on the countertop is an orange washing-up bowl, with a brush lying neatly by its side.

In front of the cabinets and countertop are a small dining table and three unmatched Windsor chairs, painted with several layers of thick paint, most recently cornflower-blue. A bit further into the room is a sofa. The knobbly ivory-coloured cushions, striped nougat, green and dark brown down the middle, are on the floor, leaning against the armrests, so that they will not become too damp and mouldy underneath.

A fire is burning in the hearth, but it has not yet dispersed the raw smell of damp.

Hjalmar is on the sofa. Instead of using one of the cushions, he is sitting directly on the hard wooden frame. He is still wearing his jacket and his fake fur peaked cap.

“What are you doing here?” he says.

“I don’t know,” Martinsson says, and remains standing. “I have two dogs outside who are scratching your front door to bits. Is it O.K. if I let them in? They’re absolutely filthy.”

“Yes, let ’em in.”

She opens the door. Vera almost overturns the table in her eagerness to greet Hjalmar. Tintin ignores him, tours the room sniffing every nook and cranny, and eventually lies down on her side in front of the open fire.

Hjalmar cannot resist stroking Vera, who takes this as a sign that she is welcome to jump up onto the sofa.

Martinsson says, “Vera!” in a stern voice, but Hjalmar gestures that it’s O.K. Vera, feeling that they are now ready to take their relationship a step further, clambers onto his lap. It is not easy to find enough room as his stomach is so big, but she eventually settles down and licks him heartily on the mouth.

“Steady on!” Hjalmar says, trying to sound stern.

But he immediately starts picking clumps of snow out of her fur. She likes that. She leans on him with all her weight and licks his mouth again.

“She’s just eaten a field mouse,” Martinsson says. “I thought you might like to know.”

“Oh, what the hell…” he says, and there is laughter in his voice.

“Not guilty,” Martinsson says. “I’m not the one who brought her up.”

“Is that so,” Hjalmar says. “Now then, old girl, that’s enough. Who did bring you up, then?”

Martinsson says nothing.

But then she thinks: no lies.

“She’s Hjörleifur Arnarson’s dog,” she says.

Hjalmar nods thoughtfully and strokes Vera’s ears.

“I never noticed that he had a dog,” he says. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

“Maybe you could make it? I’m a bit busy here. There’s a packet in the cupboard.”

Martinsson starts to make coffee. Hjalmar has a percolator. She fills it with water and coffee. Next to the cooker is an open Bible. She reads the sentence that has been underlined.

“‘Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.’ Are you fond of the Psalms?”

“Not really, but I read them sometimes. The Bible’s the only book I have out here.”

Martinsson picks it up and thumbs through it. It is small and black, its delicate pages gilded along the edges. The print is so small that it is almost illegible.

“I know,” he says, as if he has read her thoughts. “I use a magnifying glass.”

The Bible feels pleasant and used in her hand. She admires the quality of the paper. Printed in 1928, and it has not even begun to turn yellow. She sniffs it. It smells good. Church, Farmor , another age.

“Do you read it?” he says.

“Sometimes,” she says. “I have nothing against the Bible. It’s the church that…”

“What do you read?”

“Oh, it depends. I like the Prophets. They are so sharp. I like the language they use. And they are so human. Jonah, for instance. He’s such a whinger. And unreliable. God says, ‘Go to Nineveh and preach the word.’ And Jonah prances off in the opposite direction. And in the end, when he’s been in the whale’s belly for three days, he prophesies the destruction of Nineveh. But then, when the people of Nineveh do penance, God changes his mind and decides not to destroy them after all. Huh, then Jonah is miserable as sin because he’d prophesied death and destruction, and thinks he has lost face when his prophesy turns out to be wrong.”

“The belly of a whale.”

“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.