Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

Margareeta didn’t even wait for Hurmo to stop urinating. She dragged him brutally through the snow, where he left a yellow trail. This was the third time she had walked round the block and rung her husband’s doorbell, to no avail. Yet his car was parked in front of the house, and Jarmo never went anywhere without his car, not even to the university which was two steps away. Perhaps he had spent the night with one of his cheap prostitutes or was sleeping it off on a friend’s sofa. Was it or was it not Saturday morning? Or perhaps he had seen Margareeta from the window and, guessing her intentions, was pretending not to be at home so that he would not have to take the dog. Before the evening was out, either that dog would be reunited with its master, or it would be found the next morning outside the main door, rock-solid as the statue of Haavis Amanda. The weather forecast had proved correct. By the time dawn broke, a bank of cloud was already darkening the sky towards the east. The wind was sending increasingly dense swirls of snow rustling against the window panes. Margareeta decided that it would be wiser to take refuge in some café and eat a nice slice of cake, waiting for the blizzard to die down. She would go back later, hoping to catch Jarmo by surprise; she wouldn’t ring the bell, but have herself let in by a neighbour. The Kluuvi Shopping Centre was still empty at that hour. The first shops were rolling up their shutters and the salesgirls were putting on their uniforms. A newspaper vendor was hanging up advertisements for the dailies outside his kiosk. Inside the bar, the television was on, but without the sound. Margareeta bought a newspaper and sat down at a table amidst waiters who were still mopping the floor. Hurmo huddled miserably under her chair, his snow-covered fur leaving a little puddle beside him.

The Laplander stopped half-way down the corridor. He opened a door and, after a short delay when Ivan stood obstinately on the threshold, trampling the thick moquette, hustled him in. The room was windowless; a lamp, swathed in scarves, gave out a ruddy light, revealing dark-papered walls, a chest of drawers of varnished wood and a bed with the covers pulled neatly back. The Laplander thrust the Silja Line ticket into the Vostyach’s pocket, took a plastic bottle and two glasses out of the fridge, put them on the bedside table and left the room. Ivan looked around him. Two tubular metal light fittings hung from the ceiling, connected to a wire which ran all round it, giving out a dull, unsteady light; they jingled slightly when the Laplander closed the door. The wall at the foot of the bed was entirely covered by a poster depicting a tropical beach. A fish tank containing little coloured fish was gurgling on a console table. Ivan stared at them in delight, and they stared back. A small stick of incense, in a brass brazier shaped like a dragon, gave out a slight thread of smoke. Ivan heard a rustling noise and a sound of running water, coming from behind a curtain. From the other side of the wall came the low cackle of a radio. Somewhere else, a heating pipe was clicking away, giving out a smell of dry paint. Suddenly the curtain twitched, then opened, and a sturdy middle-aged woman appeared, with extremely black hair and a heavily made-up face. She was wearing a black lace leotard, open at the front, revealing red underwear, dangling suspenders and a deep-set belly button in a fleshy fold of skin.

‘Hello!’ she said, sidling towards Ivan in her little silver clogs in a manner suggestive of some tried and trusted ritual; but then a whiff of rankness, sudden as a slap, brought her up short and forced her to retreat, to collapse abruptly on to the edge of the bed, seized with a fit of coughing, until she could recover herself. Regaining her composure, she adjusted her hair, and leotard. Then she picked up the bottle and filled the two glasses on the bedside table, downing one in a single gulp and reaching out to hand the other to the Vostyach, keeping him prudently at arm’s length. Ivan shook his head and backed up against the door. He had never seen a woman dressed like that. He did not know that they wore such items beneath their outer garments. In the turnip-growers’ village the innkeeper’s wife wore felt boots and voluminous coarse cloth breeches beneath her heavy overcoat. Ivan had seen them once when he was spying on her in the back of the shop. And the eyes of the fair-haired woman who collected his words were nothing like the lying, threatening eyes of the woman he had before him now. He stayed where he was, shaking.

‘I’m Katia.’ In an effort to stifle an incipient coughing fit the woman now emptied Ivan’s glass as well. Swaying her hips, she slipped off her leotard and approached her client, who stared at her in horrified fascination. Making a smacking sound with her fleshy lips, she gave him a slight peck, allowing her breasts to brush against him, but then promptly recoiled, again overwhelmed by the stench.

‘And you? What are you called? Where are you from?’ She stood with her legs apart, her heels wedged firmly into the carpet. She spoke a broken Finnish, and Ivan could not understand a word of what she said. He stared in bewilderment at the hairless white body he saw wiggling before him.

‘Katia,’ he repeated in a strangled voice.

‘You too?’ said the woman, laughing. She took a few steps backwards, put her hands behind her back and undid her bra, which rolled down over her stomach and landed between her feet. Ivan stared at the skimpy red garment where it lay, amazed that something so small could contain so much swollen softness. He would have liked to pick it up and have a closer look. But then his interest was caught by the sight of the woman’s chest. Katia took him in her arms and let him spread himself against her, then stretched out on the bed, kicking her clogs into the air. The Vostyach had not so much as loosened a fastening of his heavy leather jacket. Trickles of sweat were making their way down his temples and neck. Now he was shuffling his boots on the moquette, clutching his sack and drum. Bothered by the smoke from the incense, he wrinkled his nose and tried to keep his distance from the brazier; but there was nowhere to retreat to.

‘Come on, give them a feel! Just see how smooth they are!’ the woman said, stroking her breasts with her hands. Her legs were still apart, and she was moving her pelvis up and down. Under the red triangle of her panties Ivan could now see a black shape from which he found it impossible to look away.

‘Come on!’ she said again, invitingly. She rolled around on top of the sheets and then lay still, stretched out on her stomach. The Vostyach could still see that mesmerising black shape between her thighs, below those big white buttocks. He felt like touching them. He put his things down and knelt on the bed. First he brushed the white surface with his fingertips, then he felt the soft skin with the flat of his hand. It was warm and tender, he liked pressing it between his fingers, then letting it go and pressing it again, like soft dough which kept the mark of the outline of his hands. She was no ordinary woman, he could see that. She must be a city creature, who had grown up indoors, under electric light, amidst noisy crowds, without ever breathing the cold air of the woods, which flays your skin, makes your eyes stream and hardens your limbs. Such a creature could live only in the stifling heat of this room, she must feed off soap and the white juice in that bottle, and breathe the bitter smoke from the little metal mask on the bedside table. Perhaps she had been born of one of the coloured fish in the fish tank. A gleaming little cartilaginous fish, she would have swum in its water and grown up concealed in cold fish scales — yellow and blue and red — which gradually flaked off, revealing her beauty, her seaweed skin. Ivan imagined all the coloured fish in the tank as so many Katias-to-be. Soon they would all be utterly transformed, would emerge from the water in their glorious new incarnation and enfold him in their velvety caresses, in their cool, dripping embrace.