Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

Seated on the pink sheets, legs a-straddle, completely dressed apart from her shoes, Katia looked like a wax doll. It was a shame that her head, beneath the jauntily-positioned fake fur cap, persisted in drooping in a way that was undoubtedly somewhat sinister. Clad in their fishnet tights, her legs, too, had lost their beauty; they were now so much inert flesh, and the effect was monstrous. The Laplander had put the red room carefully to rights. He had picked up the dead fish, the broken lamp, the bottle of koskenkorva , the torn-off lock and the bits of glass and put the lot into a rubbish bag, together with Katia’s wet underwear and the bed linen. He’d straightened out the bedside table, remade the bed with fresh linen and done what he could to mend the door. The water, and Katia’s blood, had left a dark stain on the carpet. Luckily, at that hour the bar was closed. At least he had had the idea of sending the other three to ply their trade in a hotel room for that one night. He’d make less out of it himself, of course, but he calculated that the business with the wild man would amply compensate for that. Who could ever have dreamt that he’d end up killing her? And of course it would have to be Katia, the best of the lot, the one who could bring in as much as fifty marks a night! It was the first time anyone had died on him, though he’d heard that this could happen. The best thing would be to dump her body in a stolen car with a syringe stuck in her arm. But the others would take fright when they heard what had happened. They might even run away, and the Laplander couldn’t afford to lose the lot of them in one fell swoop. Another solution was called for. Seated on the bed beside the dead woman, the erstwhile lumberjack from Airisselka put on his thinking cap. It was only ten in the morning, but some bright idea had to hit him pretty fast.

Aurtova hung up and eased his neck backwards with a sigh. Another thing achieved: now he had managed to book a double room in the Torni under the name of Boris Juknov. He put his gloves on again and wiped a hand over the misty glass of the phone box to check that no policeman had removed his car from the no-parking area where he’d left it. He looked at the clock on the television tower. He had plenty of time, but he would have to proceed with care. Now the second half of his plan would come into play. The first thing to do was to call in at his flat. Here he collected two bathrobes, two silver candlesticks, a box of scented candles, an elegant suit (but not the one he would wear at the conference), a pair of silk pyjamas, sheets and blankets; perhaps more importantly, he also remembered the little bottle of green tablets he kept in the medicine cupboard. He had to stifle a shudder as he picked up a packet of contraceptives. Then he went into the garage to patch up the car window as best he could, stuffing a plastic-covered sleeping bag into the gap. Into the boot he put a jerrycan of petrol, some anti-freeze spray for locks, a shovel, three bottles of champagne, a compass, a gas cylinder, matches, a torch, some jute sacks, an axe and the snow chains. He took a rope and a clasp knife out of the box of fishing-tackle. Just to be on the safe side, he did his shopping out of town, in the shopping centre at Itäkeskus. There he purchased smoked salmon, some ready-made piirakka , reindeer pâté, a packet of savoury biscuits, a frozen wood grouse, some butter, a jar of gherkins, a bag of ready-cooked potatoes, a tub of lemon sorbet, four bottles of Bulgarian cabernet and one of Polish vodka. By midday he was ready to leave. He went down to the tourist harbour and stopped on the Merisatama Quay to fit the snow chains. Other cars were venturing along the track that linked Helsinki to the islands of the archipelago by way of a sea that had frozen over for the first time in half a century. Voices and shadows passed nearby, then were engulfed once more by the soft, clean-smelling silence. There had been a heavy snowfall, and now a chill wind was blowing down from the woods, locking the world under a hard glassy breast-plate. The red pickets were scarcely visible above the sweep of sea, but the bed of the track was sound, made level by the passing of a recent snowplough. Along the shore Aurtova could still see the lights of the occasional vehicle headed for Suomenlinna, briefly glimpsed the lights of Harakka, then nothing. Now the white wall was opening up a metre at a time before the yellow beam of the headlights. It was a good half-hour before the island of Vasikkasaari came into view. Approaching the quay, he turned the lights off, left the main track and reached the waterline. He wanted to get to his cottage avoiding the main road. In all probability, the weather being what it was, there was no one on the island, and both the Kuusinen and the Lehtinen were tucked safely away in their cosy flats in Helsinki. But you could never be too careful. On the north shoreline the wind had swept the snow away. The sea was a bare crust; the odd mound of hardened snow lay under the trees along the shore.

Villa Suvetar soon came into view. He left the car behind the hedge which served as a windbreak and carried his load into the lumber room. The first thing he did was to remove the protective covering from the generator and link it up with the mains. In winter there was no one in the cottage, and the electricity was turned off, so a petrol generator had to be used to produce electricity. He cleaned the spark-plugs, filled the tank to the brim and cranked up the starting handle. The filaments of the bulb on the wall began to glow, then the light came on in the lumber room. Aurtova picked up the shovel and freed the cottage entrance of ice, just enough so as to be able to open the door. He sprayed the padlocks with the antifreeze and went into the house. There was plenty of dry wood already on the veranda, but Aurtova went to get some more from the lumber room anyway: the sauna stove was going to have a long night of it. He lit the fire, took the provisions into the larder, fitted the gas cylinder to the stove, spread the biscuits with the reindeer pâté, uncorked the cabernet, laid the table for two and put the candlesticks in place. He made up the bed in the spare room, but also the double bed, laying his silk pyjamas on the left-hand pillow. Then he went to hang up the bathrobes near the sauna door, hung one of his suits in the cupboard in the entrance and put on the other, the smarter of the two. Then he took off his shoes and threw himself down on the divan, to catch a few hours sleep. But he was awoken by dreams of ferocious Pecheneg horsemen, encamped some distance away, around huge bonfires. They were massacring the prisoners they had taken in Finnish villages, tearing limbs from still living bodies and roasting them on the flames, their shrieks audible amidst drum rolls and cruel laughter. Their horses were grazing peacefully some way off, unmoved by all that horror, dragging their hooves insistently over the ground in search of edible roots.

At last, beyond the deafening pit across which yellow and red lights darted in merciless succession, he could see darkness. He had been wandering around the city for hours, trying to find some way out. He had crossed the railway and fetched up in an unending stream of stationary cars, surrounded by great lit-up signs which came and went, one colour vanishing to be replaced by a dozen others. He had been pursued by threatening men who had shrieked at him and lobbed bottles and debris in his direction. But the worst thing was that light, all around him, those dazzling, intrusive headlights. Ivan grasped the wire fencing and sniffed the air. Between the whiffs of diesel he could smell seaweed, and mud. He threw the sack over the fencing, but not the drum. He bound it tightly to his waist. Then he climbed up and jumped down the other side. Dozens of lorries, like those at the mine, were roaring over the asphalt, sending the snow skittering off towards the roadside, where it piled up and immediately hardened under the lashing wind. Ivan shook himself down, tensed his muscles and sprinted off. Lorries hooted their horns, wet tyres skidded over the slippery asphalt, cars came to a gentle halt beside the piles of snow. Then the traffic would set off again in a more orderly fashion, the horns would fall silent and the roar of the engines start up again as before. Ivan had thrown himself down, stomach first, into the blue snow. Now he made off towards the open spaces, turning round every so often to look nervously in the direction of the ruddy embers of the lights as they frizzled in the driving snow. Before long, he found himself facing the silent, open sea, a violet light throbbing overhead. A sudden breath of wind would send the snow whirling up into the air, then settling down again like glass on the petrified surface of the waves. Just as it had done on the waters of the frozen lake where his father had taken him fishing as a child. When they went home, the darkness would follow them as far as the first birches on the beach. It would roll silently among the trees, white totem poles against a pitch-dark sky, while in the distance the ice would close up again with an alarming snapping sound. The string of fish they’d caught would glitter as they made their way along the path, silvery scales catching the dying light. Then all that was left was the dull reflection of the snow. Once they were over the hill, though, they would see the glare of the fire. Inside the yurt, all faces would glow red, so many carvings gashed with long black furrows, like the masks hanging from the ceiling. Ivan remembered how he would test the temperature by collecting a ball of saliva in his mouth, spitting it up into the air and hearing a slight thud as it fell to earth. That meant the coots would not be flying; the fire no longer had the air it needed to burn, and animal droppings would give out no smell.