Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

Ivan stopped in front of the reindeer pen. He selected two young birch trunks and felled them with his axe. Measuring out two identical lengths of wood, he made them into runners, laid them on the ground and fixed them to the watchman’s skis. Then he cut six shorter crosspieces and tied them to the runners, to form a sledge. He fashioned a curved branch into an approximation of a yoke and attached it to the two ends of the runners. Then he opened the gate, selected the two strongest reindeer and yoked them to the sledge. He loaded his possessions on to it, picked up a long thin branch, made it into a whip and cracked it expertly over the backs of his reindeer-team. Slithering over the virgin snow, which parted with a hiss beneath his skis, the Vostyach drove out of the zoo towards the open sea, the better to see the stars.

Aurtova and the Laplander left at the same time: Aurtova from Vantaa airport, with a live woman seated in the back, the Laplander from a dismal street in Kallio, with a dead one, her body held in place by a rear-seat safety belt. Their paths crossed, though they did not know it, on the bridge at Kulosaari. How could they have recognised each other, amidst the frenzied traffic plunging into that dark sea?

‘It’s very good of you to meet me,’ said Olga, leaning her elbows on the seat in front of her, trying to catch Aurtova’s eye in the rear-view mirror. The front seat was still partly occupied by the sleeping bag in the plastic sheeting, so he had asked her to sit in the back. The professor leaned his head back a little to avoid her gaze, wrinkling his nose in ill-disguised disgust. That woman had always irritated him: by her ugliness, first and foremost. Aurtova found ugliness alarming, particularly in women. He was afraid it might be catching, like bad luck. Secondly, he loathed her total honesty in matters scientific, the implacable conscientiousness with which she went about her work and her modest way of proving herself right, made even more unbearable by the fact that she never wallowed in her triumphs. He thought back to the Russian student he’d known at the university when he himself was still a student in his final year. Kalle Holmberg, the Professor of Uralic Philology, had introduced her to him with much pomp and circumstance, asking him to take her under his wing during the academic year she was to spend in Helsinki. That shy, tubby girl had stuck to him like a shadow, failing to realise that his interest in her was in no way personal, but merely a result of his self-serving desire to do as Holmberg had asked. Her maddening self-effacement, combined with her very considerable grounding in every branch of linguistics, only compounded his dislike. For months on end Aurtova had had to endure the company of this pedantic swot, feign interest in her writing and endlessly discuss dry-as-dust matters of philology. It was only to please Holmberg that Aurtova in his turn had agreed to spend a term at the University of Leningrad, working on a thesis on homo-organic fricatives in the Permic languages. If there was to be any hope of obtaining that longed-for post as a research assistant, the old luminary would have to be soft-soaped. So in Leningrad too he had had to put up with the company of a woman who was as devoted to science as a nun to her vocation. Aurtova was certain that his high-principled Russian colleague would milk her finding of the Vostyach for all it was worth, demolishing the theory of the evolution of the Finno-Ugric languages he’d built up so laboriously over years of study as she did so. She had to be stopped before it was too late. Aurtova had already devised a possible trap but, in order for it to work, he had to remain on good terms with his guest: he had to amuse her, distract her, gaze into her eyes as he talked to her; act in such a way that she felt completely at her ease, suspecting nothing; if absolutely necessary, even seduce her. He braced himself and glanced furtively at his watch: it was a quarter to eight. The Vostyach would be far away by now, somewhere in the Baltic Sea, on his way to Stockholm.

‘Duty, dear Olga. We are in Finland, are we not? So it’s me who plays the host, just as I did twenty years ago,’ he answered affably.

‘Well, you haven’t always been so welcoming,’ she observed sharply, immediately regretting what she’d said. She wiped the car window and stared vaguely out at the lights of the snow-covered city.

‘Where have you left Ivan? In the hotel?’ she asked after a brief silence, her voice betraying a certain apprehension. Aurtova had read the question in her eyes when she had come up to him in the airport lounge. Her expression had darkened visibly when she saw that the Vostyach was not there. She had offered her cheek to her colleague for a welcoming peck, but her eyes were seeking out the stocky little figure of her prize discovery.

‘I went to meet him, as I said I would, so he could come with me to the airport. But he was exhausted, not to mention thoroughly bewildered. He asked for something to eat, then lay down on his bed, fully dressed, and immediately fell asleep. The journey and all those new places must have worn him out. Then today, so as not to have him cooped up in the hotel all day, I took him out of town. Before the blizzard started we went to look at the sea at Kesäranta, and then to Töölonlahti to watch the skaters.’

‘In Moscow too he used to get up at dawn and go to bed at dusk,’ murmured Olga, lost in thought.

‘It’s a shame! I’d reserved a table for the three of us at the Rivoli for tonight,’ lied Aurtova, adding:

‘But your Vostyach has a hard day ahead of him tomorrow! He’ll have a huge audience. It’s no bad thing he’s taking it easy.’ The professor glanced in the rear-view mirror to gauge the effect his winning words were having.

‘Poor fellow! Let’s hope he doesn’t take fright — he’s not used to crowds,’ said Olga, clearly preoccupied.

Aurtova did not answer, then, as the car turned into the Pohjoisesplanadi, he said encouragingly:

‘Come on now, don’t worry. Someone who’s survived the gulag and is used to life in the arctic tundra will surely manage to put up with a bunch of fusty philologists. Anyway, tonight I have a little surprise for you.’

‘A surprise?’ she queried doubtfully.

‘Tonight, Olga Pavlovna, on the occasion of the XXIst Congress of Finno-Ugric Scholars and by way of tribute to our longstanding friendship, I have the pleasure of inviting you to dinner at my cottage on the island of Vasikkasaari. The menu will be strictly Finnish!’

‘Really, Jarmo, today it’s one surprise after another. The last time you invited me to dinner was on your graduation day. Together with fifty others!’ Olga was as startled as she was flattered.

‘So at last I shall be able to meet your wife. Is she there already?’

‘No, Margareeta is abroad, in Sweden. Visiting a sick relative, you know how it is,’ replied Aurtova coldly.

‘Oh, I hope it’s nothing serious!’

Aurtova said nothing. He didn’t intend to go into further explanations.

‘But I’ve been so looking forward to meeting the saintly woman who has put up with you for fifteen years!’ sighed Olga, in tones of false regret. After a brief pause, she added:

‘Well, there will be other opportunities.’

‘Oh, absolutely!’ Aurtova reassured her vaguely.

They had now arrived outside the Torni. Aurtova parked the car and left the engine running.

‘I’ll take your case up to your room and see how Ivan’s getting on. If he’s awake, I’ll ask him to come with us. He was so looking forward to seeing you,’ he said, turning to face her.

A sudden look of tenderness stealing over her face, Olga nodded, and kept her eyes on the professor as he took her case out of the boot and proceeded cautiously to cross the icy road. At reception, Aurtova introduced himself as a taxi-driver working for the Yellow Line, and asked whether he could leave a case belonging to a certain Professor Boris Juknov, who would be arriving soon. Seeing the receptionist nod his head, an eager bell-boy in a red tunic picked up Olga’s bag and put it behind the desk. While the professor lingered in the lobby, pretending to look for a number in the phone book, Olga, still seated in the car, was thinking. She was excited and unsettled by the prospect of spending an evening alone with Jarmo. She had always found him attractive, even if she had never been under any illusions that the feeling was reciprocated. Over the many years they’d known each other, he had never shown any romantic interest in her, not even when he got drunk at student parties; he’d never laid a hand on her, and the few times they’d danced together she’d been aware of a distinct wave of repulsion emanating from a handsome and overbearing man. Jarmo had always been a charmer, pursued and yearned after by many a beautiful woman. Olga was quite aware that she was plain. But, out of pride and spite, instead of making any attempt to remedy it, she cultivated her ugliness. She brazenly wore dresses that emphasised her ungainly figure. The fact that she had legs like a piglet was not going to come between her and fishnet stockings, nor did she have any qualms about tight trousers revealing her heavy buttocks. But, strangely, she felt that on that night something might be going to happen between her and her old fellow student, though she could not have explained why. Perhaps, because of some perverse fixation due to age, her body might at last have become attractive to an ageing womaniser. He’d had his way with so many lovelies, maybe the time had now come to sink his hands into the slack flesh of a faded spinster. Olga had no experience of such matters, but Jarmo’s peek at her cleavage had not escaped her notice.