Diego Marani - The Last of the Vostyachs

Gripping the receiver so hard that it hurt, Margareeta felt herself positively salivating. She had so much more to say. Instead, she put the phone down and threw herself on to the bed, weeping, until at last she fell asleep in front of the blaring television.

Hurmo had taken refuge behind the armchair; as he well knew, when his mistress was in this kind of state he might well be in for a kicking. He hadn’t even dared to go and stand beside his bowl, to let her know that he was hungry. At last, he too had fallen asleep, and was now snoring, a bit of carpet having fallen over his nose, hampering his breathing. But when the shut-down signal appeared on the screen, Margareeta had suddenly woken up, as though someone had called to her, or a hand shaken her. She had looked out of the window. The street was empty. The yellow lamplight made everything look weirdly two-dimensional, casting vague shadows over the windows of the parked cars. The ice which had again formed on the pavements gave off a gauzy light. In the distance, in the centre of town, a red shop sign was flickering on the top of a building, and from time to time the odd flash of red could be seen darting along the otherwise invisible threads of ice which meandered over the zinc roofs where the snow had melted. Margareeta looked at her watch: it was three o’clock, the eleventh of January was dawning. Now she was in the grip of a strange compulsion. She still had time to make that date somehow memorable. She poured herself a glass of vodka and put the bottle into the pocket of her windcheater. Dutch courage was what was needed. Then she went to dislodge Hurmo from behind his chair. Coming in, she hadn’t even bothered to take off his lead. Now she gave it a firm tug, and the old dog whimpered as he slithered across the parquet. Dragging himself effortfully to his feet, he shook himself despondently and put out his tongue, rewarding his impatient mistress with a trusting look.

Four elk were galloping between the tramlines that ran along the Aleksanterinkatu, nimbly avoiding the lacerated bodies of several gazelles, over which a single vulture was doggedly hovering. A blue fox was sidling along in front of the windows of the Stockmann Supermarket, anxiously sniffing the air, then disappeared into the trees on the Esplanadi. Two pandas were loitering on the pavement opposite, uncertain where to go and scratching at the asphalt with their claws, hoping to find some earth. There was too much light around those parts, so they couldn’t tell whether it was day or night. Three alpine goats were goading a lynx, which was following them at a distance, jaws agape, then disappeared behind the Swedish Theatre. Other dark shadows were snaking between the flashing traffic lights.

The Siberian tiger took the cathedral steps in four great bounds and felled one of the guanacos with a blow from its paw; it had followed them all the way from the Opera House. The other three lolloped off, quite unconcerned. The wounded animal did not make a sound; it turned away, then crumpled, belly up. The tiger sank its nose into the creature’s stomach and dug its teeth into the soft flesh, shaking its prey as it did so; the guanaco was staring resolutely skywards, as though to distract attention from its entrails, which were spilling out on to the snow. Down in the square the wolves had pinioned two zebras and a mountain goat up against the colonnade and were preparing their attack, snarling the while; but the terrorised zebras were huddling together, kicking out at the main door, while the mountain goat was lowering its horns and leaping to and fro, fending off the assailants. The owl had come to rest on the statue of Czar Alexander II in the middle of the square, and was peering around in alarm, looking vainly for some quiet place to roost. Erect in the middle of the Unioninkatu, an old stag was casting a dispassionate glance at the scenes of mayhem going on around it, white breath issuing from its nostrils as it shook its thick complement of antlers. Seeing Ivan arriving at the far end of the street, it trotted away wearily. But the Vostyach carried on towards the Esplanadi, in search of some dark place where he could see the stars and get his bearings. He took his whip to his team of reindeer and disappeared into the trees. In the little wood at the foot of the Observatory the snow lay deep and undefiled, and the harbour lights were concealed behind a thick clump of pines. The benches looked like sleeping animals, and the swing in the middle of the rotunda resembled a sacred altar, its frame pointing towards the sky. Ivan tested the solidity of its posts, then looked upwards. There, at last, were the stars. The Vostyach stretched out on the ground and turned his head from side to side, inspecting the whole expanse of sky. He caught sight of Urgel, which seemed to be calling to him, waiting for him before going down. But Ivan knew he would have trouble negotiating that immense tangle of over-lit city streets. He took up the reins and got back on to the sledge. The little road through the park ran steeply down towards the sea, to the quay at Laivasillankatu.

Ivan had never seen a ship that size. Not even in the port of Dudinka, where the soldiers had taken him one summer to load up the barges with coal for the foundry. Eight decks, a thousand blazing portholes, two huge smokestacks belching out black smoke. And loud, insistent noise, the smell of fuel, a line of lorries driving up on deck, clanging the while. Kneeling in the snow, the Vostyach gazed in enchantment at the Amorella , all lights ablaze, reflected in the channel of black water it had carved out for itself among the ice. He was exhausted. He hadn’t eaten or slept for a whole day and night, he had spent the entire time wandering vainly around the gulf, trying to reach the forests. On his own he would never be able to find the tracks leading northwards, to get back to his people, to drag them out of their wild beasts’ lairs and back into the sunlight. Moss would gather on his yurt, and finally it would collapse, to join all the other abandoned yurts that lay strewn throughout the woods. No Vostyach would ever again hear him singing in the tundra, in the Byrranga Mountains. Now that even Olga had abandoned him, what could he do on his own in the face of this hostile world? Where was that great and ancient tribe which understood his language and should have been there to welcome him in that alien land? Suddenly, Ivan felt that his life had really come to an end that night, so long ago, when his father had died in his arms. All those years spent in silence, breaking stones in the mine, were nothing but a poisonous excrescence which had bloomed forth from a body already dead. Like the nails on the hands of the convicts who had been crushed by falling rock, where the coal seam was at its deepest: over the long days it took for the skip from the barracks at Talnakh to reach the Byrranga Mountains to free those bodies, twisted white nails would continue to grow out of black hands. Escaping from the mine had served no purpose. Ivan should have died long ago, on that same night, he should have fallen down in the snow and heard and felt no more. But what about the bullet that was intended for him, where had that ended up? Why had none of the soldiers tried to aim at that little body running beside his father? Ivan was crying now, the tear drops freezing on his lashes. At that same moment, the child reappeared. At last he recognised himself: it was he who was the spirit that death had spurned, and which was now following him so doggedly. The Vostyach knew that spirits don’t understand human speech; such was his dread that he nonetheless addressed a question to the shade standing before him:

‘What is it you want?’

‘To come with you.’

‘Come with me where? I no longer have anywhere to go.’

‘You told me you’d take me fishing on the lake, you said you’d teach me how to hunt coot in the marshes with my new bow,’ the child protested mournfully.