Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

‘I’ve got to be getting back to the station,’ he announced brusquely, lifting up the sliding door to the garage. Hurmo rushed into it, tail wagging furiously. Margareeta cast a sad look at the rolled-up blue tent, the canoe, the racing bikes, the old wooden skis: all familiar old friends which had made regular appearances in her life over the last fifteen years. She stepped on something which made a crunching sound, then shattered into bits of coloured plastic. She bent down to pick them up. The object in question was bait, the kind used for trout fishing. What was bait doing on the floor of the garage in mid-winter? Margareeta cast an eye over the assorted clutter in search of the box of fishing-tackle and saw it open on the table. She rejoined Hyttynen who was waiting for her at the door, fuming and stamping his feet.

‘Officer! We must go straight to Vasikkasaari!’ she urged him.

The Laplander started nervously when he met a police car going down Koirasaarentie. What would have happened if the engine had died on him there in the middle of the traffic? What if they’d stopped him for a police check? He’d brought along his pistol; he put his hand in his pocket to assure himself that it was there. If anything had gone wrong, he would have had no option but to fire. Over the last few miles before Tahvonlahti he had dreamed up the most catastrophic scenarios. He had imagined himself running across the frozen sea pursued by police dogs, a helicopter hovering above him, beaming a light down on to him, a loudspeaker ordering him to give himself up, both events being in fact thoroughly unlikely to occur on the shores of the Miekojärvi, rimmed by white birches and placid beaches. It was a relief to see the tourist harbour of Koirasaari coming into view. He went along the coast road in search of a steep slope, well away from the houses, then stopped and turned the engine off. He went over every detail yet again in his mind to be sure that he had not forgotten anything. He had taken care to remove all items of Katia’s clothing that might lead to her identification. Beneath her long fur-lined coat he had dressed her as a prostitute, with fishnet stockings and a red bra, but without her rings, necklaces and watch. All her pockets were empty, except for the one where he had put the koskenkorva ; he’d even poured as much as possible of it down her throat. All he had to do now was to throw her body into the sea. The police would assume that she was one of those drunks who lose their way after a hard night’s drinking, fall down unconscious in the snow and freeze to death. Finland’s graveyards were full of people who had met just such a death. Dragging Katia’s body over the snow, the Laplander could not resist the temptation of looking into her eyes. She in her turn seemed to be looking back at him, reproachfully, as though he were to blame for her grim fate. The tree trunks he would fish out of the mud along the Miekojärvi had never looked at him in that baleful way; they never complained when he sank his hook into their bark. They were extremely biddable, gliding over the water to rejoin the others in the prevailing current. Panting with fear and exhaustion, the Laplander laid the dead body on the quay. He listened carefully, looked round him yet again and eased her towards the water with his foot, then heard a dull thud, followed by the sound of shattering ice. Then silence. He got back into the car and drove off, with no headlights, among the darkened houses of Varisluodonakar.

The very thought of Olga naked caused his stomach to go into knots. But his country was calling him to come to its aid, and the professor’s thoughts turned with a flood of gratitude to the portrait of Mannerheim hanging in his study. The great marshal had done much more to save Finland than seduce an ugly Russian! Proceeding furtively into the kitchen, Aurtova crumbled three green pills into a glass of vodka and placed it on a tray beside a glass of water. He added two slices of lemon, hoping they would mask the cloudy appearance of the mixture. Back in the changing room, he looked for Olga through the sauna porthole, praying he would find her unconscious, only to hear the sound of laughter, and the sight of her feet moving through the smoky air. Sighing with disappointment, he put the tray down on the small wooden table next to the deckchair and began reluctantly to undress, gritting his teeth with rage. He took the glass of vodka in his left hand, and the glass of water in his right. He breathed deeply and went into the sauna as though it were a gas chamber. Olga had drunk as much as he could have hoped for, but there was just no way of getting her drunk. Three bottles of champagne, four of cabernet, even half a bottle of vodka, and still she was holding out. Perhaps because she was biding her time, sensing that Jarmo was expecting something from her, and soon. Now she was stretched out on the bench, her eyes shining, giggling inanely and humming some song that she was clearly having difficulty remembering. The fantasy of carnal bliss was keeping her on the qui vive , ensuring that her every muscle remained alert and taut. Naked and sweating, she was twisting and turning like an animal on heat. She felt her body secreting previously unknown juices, her skin creeping beneath drops of sweat as they trickled over it like so many caresses. Clearly aroused, she was looking at her breasts and stomach, already imagining Aurtova’s smooth white hands as he fondled them. She was trying to imagine how he would take her, whether on her knees on the hard bench or stretched out on the silk sheets of the bed she had glimpsed in the next-door room. Now she had settled down more comfortably on the cabin floor, as though in readiness for what must come. But even then she was babbling of Proto-Uralic phonetics, as though repeating some speech which had been endlessly interrupted.

The professor put the glass of vodka with the sleeping pills on a nearby shelf and went to sit on the other bench. In all the time he’d known her, Aurtova had never looked at Olga in the way a man looks at a woman. It was as though he was afraid of getting caught up in her ugliness, having it imprinted on his memory, unable ever to shake it off. Now on the other hand he would have to look at her fairly and squarely, fix his gaze firmly on that flabby, shapeless body, touch it, smell it. Olga was certain that this was indeed what the old Casanova wanted, and she did not want to disappoint him. She would not lose consciousness before yielding to his embrace. Only the sleeping pills could save Aurtova from his awful fate.

‘Your national fixation with nudity turns out to be rather enjoyable!’ she giggled, breaking into a gale of silvery laughter.

Seeing Jarmo come into the room, she had turned over on to her stomach and was waving the firwood branch that Jarmo had broken off for her from a tree.

‘So, what are you waiting for? Surely you’re not expecting me to whip myself?’ She was pulling the green branch over her own back, and her voice sounded slurred. The shape of the bench had imprinted itself on her big buttocks, and she was peering at him from over her shoulder. Aurtova said nothing. He sat down as far away from her as he could, then put his elbows on his knees and scratched his chest.

‘It’s true, people take themselves less seriously when they see each other naked. Now I can see the white hairs on your groin, and that spare tyre, I’m much less in awe of you,’ she added, coughing rather than laughing. She reached up, took the glass from the shelf and drank from it, eyeing her host’s stomach with swollen, wine-befuddled eyes.

Suddenly embarrassed by his nakedness, Aurtova lowered his gaze. Olga was ready, impatient even; but she did not know how far Jarmo intended to push that particular game. The supper, the wine and then the sauna were all a build-up to something which was by now inevitable, but which Jarmo was postponing. Perhaps he was performing some propitiatory rite of seduction of his own making, some rigmarole which had to be rigorously respected in order for everything down there to proceed as it should. Presumably, for the experienced seducer, pleasure was to be approached by twists and turns. Perhaps the sauna was somehow a sacred place, and Olga would be able to enjoy her host’s favours only when stretched out on the bed. Or perhaps, seeing her naked, Jarmo had quite simply had second thoughts, his curiosity about the wizened spinster doused by the sight of her sagging flesh. Olga did not know which of these possibilities was the more likely, but she was sated with pleasure as it was. She turned towards her old colleague, forcing him to look at her. That was her way of possessing him. One day, she liked to think, embracing one of the lovely women with whom he habitually surrounded himself, Jarmo would remember her own drooping breasts, her yielding flesh. Then the perfect body he was enclasping would slowly decay before his very eyes, would become shapeless and swollen until it became her own, that of the ill-favoured Olga Pavlovna.