Elisabeth Rynell - To Mervas

While she stood there on the slope and let the silence and the vistas fill her up, the wind casually moved closer from the mountains on the other side of the valley. It traveled down into the woods below and kept moving from one forest to the next, from tree to tree, up toward the place where she stood. A sound grew slowly through the silence, slowly sort of snuck up on it, as if tiptoeing. The sound was at first slight and scattered but then grew denser and gathered in a herd of whispers and sighs. Suddenly, it was as if she were standing in the middle of an enormous chorus. All the forests in the landscape took several deep breaths and then they sang. Upper and lower voices washed over her, high and low notes like big boulders rolled through the silence, but the gale itself, the wind, still hadn’t touched her, she could see it tearing through the crowns of the trees below her for a long time before it suddenly reached her, grabbing hold of her hair.

She ran to the car and sat inside it, gasping for breath. She had absorbed the performance outside feeling a mixture of pleasure and terror, she had stood as if petrified listening and watching and now she wanted to scream out loud, now she felt that the immensity of everything threatened to suffocate her. It would make her explode if she wasn’t allowed to use her own voice to resist and scream that she was here too, she existed and wasn’t going to let herself be obliterated by something huge, she was here and had the right to be.

But Marta didn’t scream. She sat for a while, letting her breathing slow down. Then she started the car and kept driving. She’d stopped looking at the map on the seat next to her; it wasn’t right. No map could capture or describe a place like this, she thought. She drove without direction, and it was already evening. She was so worked up that when she saw a small, beat-up, pale yellow sign with the words Deep Tarn, 4 km, she immediately turned onto the road simply because it had a name, because there were letters.

It was a very bad road, narrow and full of potholes. In some places, large, sharp rocks poked through the gravel like sharks’ teeth, and in other places, it was so wet and muddy that she had to press the gas hard and swerve forward. Here and there, thin saplings grew out of big holes in the road, as out of the holes of a lake covered in ice. She regretted that she’d taken this road, but it was too late now, there was no place to turn around. Fear kept her going, a compact wall of anxiety that had pressed out of her the sheer will to survive. She had to keep moving along this road, there was no other option.

When she spotted a small barn, propped up among big stones in a spacious and tall gathering of pines, she felt an almost overwhelming gratitude. The small, simple barn appeared to her a symbol of gentleness and goodness. Some of her tension subsided, something softer revealed itself among everything that was harsh and rigid. Then the woods opened up a little more and there was a clearing with lots of open sky above, a house and a couple of barns, little lodges and sheds and lavvus. Some buildings were on the edge of the sparse forest, others among the trees. Some were right on the boundary between the woods and the meadow opening up behind it all. The meadow, with its yellowed last-year’s grass and two small barns in the middle, seemed so friendly, surrounding the entire area with its light.

Marta turned off the engine some distance away from the hamlet. This too might be a ghost town, inhabited only by its own memories. She wasn’t sure if she preferred a farm where someone lived or one that was empty; both alternatives seemed equally frightening. But there was something about the way the houses were so beautifully placed around her. She felt a touch of longing for a home, and this was almost like coming home. She felt that she could be here, maybe she could rest here overnight and then, the next day, she’d look at the maps with a little more focus, and find the right road up to Mervas.

It was at that moment the dog appeared. A ragged, gray, wildly barking projectile came running along the road as if it were a missile someone had aimed at Marta’s car. When it reached her, it proceeded to run around the car in circles, all the while barking loudly and ceaselessly. Marta grabbed the steering wheel; she wanted to leave, didn’t want to sit here confined by a barking dog. But the dog moved so quickly around the car, in an instant it seemed to be everywhere, and she sat there squeezing the wheel until her knuckles turned white, helplessly watching the animal dutifully jumping around the car, barking all her thoughts to pieces. Her feeling of unease soon turned to panic. No one may pass here, no one, she thought the dog was barking. Soon my master will come, my master, she heard. And he’ll shoot you with his gun, his gun.

“Shut up!” she screamed in falsetto to the dog. “Get away from here!”

But the dog only seemed to get excited by her voice. With a growl, it curled its upper lip and bared its teeth and Marta didn’t want to see any more. She leaned forward over the steering wheel and pounded her head against it, pounded and pounded. The thoughts were screaming in her head. I’m too old, they screamed, I can’t do this, can’t handle things like this, I’m a fool, they screamed, a fool, I want to go home, I don’t want to do this anymore, don’t want to, I’m a fool and I want to go home.

She was pounding her head against the wheel so frenetically that she didn’t notice that the dog gradually grew quiet and that someone was insistently knocking on the window. No, she didn’t even notice that someone was standing out there looking at her. It took a while before she became aware of the sound of knocking over her own pounding. At last, she calmed down and looked up, taken aback.

A man was leaning forward, peering through the glass with surprise. Beside him sat the dog looking obedient and good. The man gestured to her to do something, open the door, roll down the window, speak to him, anything. She rolled down the window a bit. But she couldn’t find anything to say. She just looked at him through her confusion, and he looked back. He had an old hat on his head, which he pushed back a little. His eyes were shining; they were blue and gleaming strongly like lamps, like lighthouses.

“Did you get scared?” he asked at last. “I mean, did the dog scare you?”

He placed a hand on the dog’s head while he studied Marta carefully.

“Not at all,” she said foolishly.

“Okay,” he said. “You didn’t get scared. Well,” he continued, drawing out the words and clearing his throat, “I thought my dog here scared you and that’s why you. .”

He nodded at the steering wheel, but didn’t say anything.

“I was on my way to Mervas,” Marta said. “I got lost. Or rather, I couldn’t find it.”

He stared at her for a moment.

“I see,” he said, emphasizing each word. “I see. You’re going to Mervas, you say.” He pushed the hat farther back on his head. Then he smiled.

“Well, you were lucky to come to Deep Tarn instead!” he said with gusto, straightening himself. “You know, in Mervas,” he continued, “there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. And what might happen to be there, no one wants to know about.”

He was silent for a while and looked away, past her. “Are you from there?” he asked.

Marta shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “But there are those who were. And they want to go there and see the place.” He laughed. “The only problem is: there’s nothing to see in Mervas! Nothing! There’s nothing in Mervas but blueberries, we always say. And bears. There are bears in Mervas.”