The Brothers (7 page)

‘But what if they’re there?’ I asked. ‘Not too many trees on the slope.’

‘Let’s go carefully. If you head straight to the top and I go round to that spot over there with the three big pines, we might see them from two directions.’

‘And we’re supposed to count up the heads?’

‘They can’t really be counted, but we can make some sort of estimate.’

‘Let’s go, then. Got to help the King, I suppose.’

He looked at me coolly. ‘Don’t hurry, though. It’s hardly going to help the King if we start rushing round. And he’s not here himself, crawling along.’

‘He may have other business to attend to,’ I suggested. ‘A ball or suchlike. Or some noble lady.’

He stuffed the telescope into his knapsack and some chewing tobacco into his mouth. ‘Bet he’s good at it, dancing. He’ll know a bit about the ladies, too.’

‘How do I know when you’ve got there?’

‘I’ll come to you. We’ll meet at the top.’

And we did. But I had to crawl first, and I was not actually used to crawling. I was exhausted halfway up the slope, my knees and elbows were stinging, my face was all scratched by the brush. On reaching the hilltop, I came to a halt, panting. I closed my eyes and thought I might just as well stay there, rot away on the spot, end up as bones, forgotten. I did not stay there. I lifted my head cautiously and looked around. I did not see anybody.

Then I did. There was a surreptitious movement between two intertwined junipers. At the same time Erik appeared further away, bent down and carrying his musket across his breast. A man wearing the green coat of the Russian army raised himself and moved from the cover of the bushes to a massive pine, all the while staring at Erik’s back. He lowered himself and then, resting on one knee, took aim. He was so close to Erik, it would be hard to miss.

I lifted my gun. I focused on the enemy. Then I saw who it was. For a moment, my heart stopped beating.

I often return to the scene in my mind. I could so easily have killed Henrik. He had never been a great shot and now, too, he took unnecessarily long to aim. Or perhaps he wanted to be absolutely certain that his bullet would pierce Erik’s heart. Who knows? I do not even know how my own reaction came about. When I pulled the trigger, the decision seemed to have been made somewhere outside myself, independently of me. My actions were not dictated by my own will, but determined by a power bigger than I, unknown to me. Then everything happened fast, faster, all at once. The bullet dispatched by me hit the tree trunk. Henrik shrank back as splinters hit his eyes, Erik threw himself on his stomach and Henrik was instantly on the move, twisting sideways and diving deep into the junipers. I could see from the swaying of the shrubbery that he was storming towards the southern slope of the hill. I fell first to my knees, then into a sitting position. My eyes became blurry, I felt like my limbs were falling off my body. I squeezed my eyes shut again.

‘Who fired that shot?’ Erik asked. ‘Was it you?’

I opened my eyes. ‘I had to shoot when I saw the green coat tail.’

‘How did he fare? You hit him?’

‘It was all so quick I don’t think I did. He ran off, in any case.’

‘He may have been wounded, at least.’

‘Let’s hope so.’

And nothing more was said about the incident. So much else happened that there were plenty of other things to talk about. For me, the fighting ceased on that hill, in a way. We landed up in many more knotty situations afterwards, and finally in Tornio, in such wretched winter quarters that the misery is indescribable. But lying amidst dying soldiers seemed to me neither here nor there. Nothing can move a man once he has seen someone trying to kill his own brother.

I hear footsteps coming closer from outside, along with the wind. I sit still, my elbows resting on the table, and wait. The Old Mistress treads decisively but unhurriedly, as is her wont, setting her town shoes carefully in the snow, one after the other. She stops on the steps, hesitates a moment, knocks on the door. I clear my throat and shout out, ‘Couldn’t afford a latch!’

A flurry of cold air comes in. The wind is shut out by the door, disappointed. The floor creaks and the Old Mistress says, ‘You’re just sitting here.’

‘Don’t I usually sit here?’

‘Where else? I suppose each of us has his place.’

She sits down on the bench. My nose twitches with the familiar waft of powder. I stand up and feed the fire with a couple of logs. I get the spirits jug out of the cupboard and two cups. I pour. She watches my actions benignly, her face tired. Even in dim light she looks careworn, her former bearing gone. The years have not been merciful to either of us, but there is no point in lamentations.

‘I was just thinking about the war,’ I say.

She lets out a melancholy laugh. ‘Is it worth thinking about?’

‘No, probably not. But I was thinking how you count one as your own and another as your enemy. Your allegiance is arbitrary. You happen to be in a certain place and so you’re in the army of that place.’

‘Henrik didn’t have to enlist.’

‘You can never know what makes people do what they do. And I don’t know whether we came out of it well or badly. I mean, whether we lost out when we became part of the Russian Empire instead of the Kingdom of Sweden. For it may be that we would have lost anyway.’

‘I hear there are some, in towns in particular, who dream of an independent Finland,’ she says. She coughs after a sip of liquor. ‘I receive letters from Turku. But I don’t expect anyone dares say it aloud.’

Turku. She has never stopped yearning for it. It is where she came from, in a new carriage purchased by the master. She was young, voluptuous, proud, shy. Her dress was dusty from the journey. I recall her fine wrists. Next to the big-boned master she barely looked like a grown woman, but you only had to glimpse her eyes to understand that she had brought with her an unbending will. She had the patience to wait, with that will, until the man she wedded soon proved sickly and, as a consequence, unwilling or unable to manage the affairs of the house. So the town miss became mistress of a farm. At a cost. She has paid with her loneliness and with the broken veins on her cheeks. She pawned her youth such a long time ago that there is nothing left now to redeem.

‘Hmm, so we could be a sovereign state,’ I say. ‘I’ve thought of sovereignty myself at times, when I’ve got fed up with carving sticks out of wood.’ I try to catch her eyes but her eyelids droop heavily. ‘Is that what makes people blessed? Haven’t we been sovereign for hundreds of years, part of the sovereign Swedish realm? And now we are sovereign subjects of the Russian Emperor.’

‘It’s hardly the same thing,’ she mutters.

‘Who knows. Some of this talk is beyond me. I suppose I’m stupid, not understanding.’

She lifts her face. Her eyes let out light. ‘Don’t worry your head about it, it’s a waste of time. You should worry about those two instead.’

‘Not much I can do about them.’

A palm, still soft, descends on the back of my hand. ‘What if you were to talk to them?’

‘I’m the last person they’ll listen to. Especially Henrik.’

‘But I’m scared. I feel that anything could happen.’

‘Yes. Damned horse!’

‘You can’t blame everything on the horse.’

‘It started the whole thing. Had I but known, I’d have gone and stolen it myself. Or perhaps killed it, if I’d been able to.’

I detect a melancholy smile in her voice. ‘It’s still not too late.’

‘Maybe not, but killing alone wouldn’t do any good now. I should…’

‘Kill them both?’

‘Yes. But Anna doesn’t deserve it.’

‘Of course not. And you’d never do it.’

We sit as we often do, in silence. Perhaps we are even breathing in unison. People are welcome to their lewd fantasies about what we get up to in my cabin. In reality, we are content with the taciturnity of two people who have experienced three decades together. There is no one else round here either of us would seek out to talk to, or fail to talk to. The others all belong to a younger generation and are consequently still unaware of their sins and those of others, or else unwilling to think about them. They have not yet disrobed and said, ‘Well, if You really are hanging around up there, feel free to gawp, for this is what You made me.’ It will take them time to learn that a man does not choose his lies; rather, the lies choose him, and in him they collide with the lies of others, like shadows meeting in the yard that approach one another and all of a sudden melt together to form for a moment – or worse, for a long time – a single shadow, misshapen and fearsome. I get up, grab the Old Mistress’s cup and pour out more liquor from the jug. The shadow of my body, cast by the fire, embraces her. She smiles.

I have barely lowered my buttocks back onto the bench when swift feet hurry to the door. It bursts open. Mauri breathes out, his voice taut with excitement, ‘We’ve got visitors.’

The Bailiff arrives on horseback, accompanied by three soldiers. I watch them alighting from their horses in the middle of the yard. At once I get a sense of them controlling this place, owning it. The Bailiff is short and stout, ridiculous in that fur coat that reaches down to his ankles. It hangs open, probably so that you can glimpse the uniform of the new realm. I am not near enough to see his face but I remember it: arrogant eyes, low forehead, lips that always look greasy with steak. The soldiers carry rifles which they dangle from their snowy shoulders in a pose of preparedness. They look indifferent, in the manner of men used to obeying orders.

Erik appears on the steps, stares at the newcomers for a moment and descends into the yard. Anna follows him. Mauri is standing by the wall and, at that moment, everyone else comes into view as if by mutual, fateful agreement. Henrik emerges from the barn, the housemaid’s face looms at the kitchen window, the milkmaid’s bloated shape appears by the cowshed door. Both labourers step out of the stable, where they must have just left the mare they used in log transport. The Farmhand stops behind the soldiers and glances at me over his shoulder, as if surprised by my failure to follow him.

The wind drops and the snowflakes, sparser now, begin to float slowly downwards.

The Bailiff speaks. I cannot hear his voice, but I know from memory that his words sound like they are being squeezed out through a tangle of worms. Even from this distance I see Erik flinch. His head turns to one side, his jaw slackens. Something must be even more wrong than I had thought. I should have swallowed my pride and moved closer. Now my dignity will not let me.

Henrik, who is standing further away, suddenly lets out a thunderous roar and rushes towards Mauri. The soldiers seem to have expected it; two of them grip Henrik’s arms from behind and the third walks round to face him, pointing with his bayonet. Curses and swear words pour out of Henrik’s mouth and over Mauri. Mauri stands by the wall, frail and immobile, but, to all appearances, fearless. Anna has raised her hands to her throat and is staring at Mauri. The Farmhand is staring at him, too, and Erik has turned in his direction. Mauri detaches himself from the wall and heads for the stable, barely lifting his feet off the ground.

The Bailiff resumes his speech to Erik, having been briefly silenced by these events. The soldiers let go of Henrik, who tramps crossly to the steps and sits down. Anna’s hands move from her throat to her face and the Farmhand has found something on the ground to kick around.

Mauri comes out of the stable carrying a musket. He says something to the labourers, who begin following him as, in that creeping way of his, he goes over to the group standing in the yard. The Bailiff turns his back on Erik, hands a sheaf of papers to Mauri and waits for one of the soldiers to hurry over and help him onto his saddle. The legal affairs of the realm are being managed by a man who cannot even mount a horse without help. He does at least succeed in getting his nag moving. I assume he will ride past me without even a glance, but at the last moment he bows his head in my direction. I am surprised by the sad expression on his swollen face. The soldiers following him on their own mounts stare ahead, uncaring, emotionless.

The labourers and Mauri, a tight, armed group, stand in front of Henrik, still seated on the steps. Only now do I notice that one of the workers is dangling an axe against his thigh and the other has grabbed a knife sticking out from his belt. Mauri looks like an armed little boy, sheltered between them. At a distance, Erik is tramping restlessly back and forth, back and forth. Anna is staring at the field with her face in her hands and the Farmhand has started towards me, trudging slowly, his head and shoulders bowed.

When he reaches me, he raises his head. I know the old scoundrel well enough to see he is about to explode with laughter.

Just my luck, getting mixed up in this mess. I would have had to get involved sooner or later, of course, in my official capacity. But I would have dealt with the matter in the usual fashion and summoned the parties to my office. I would not have made this long journey simply to ruin a few people’s lives. Not that these peasants and their plots are any concern of mine. I do feel rather sorry for the Old Mistress, though.

Cursed be the day when that Mauri person turned up to talk to me. It seemed like a perfectly ordinary day to begin with. I had enjoyed my breakfast at leisure and wished my lady wife God’s grace for the day. As usual I had gone the short distance to my office by foot. Upon arriving, I noticed a lowly creature crouching on the bench. I did not think much of it. I let him wait a good while before I saw him. Experience has taught me that haste is not advisable when one is carrying out official duties. When I finally ordered that he be admitted, I did not at first look up from my papers. Instead I let him stand there in front of my desk, another trick experience has taught me. It gives all those whiners who flock to see me the chance to put their message into words. When I did look up, I saw a runt of a man eyeing me feverishly. He had an unnaturally large head. His beard was so scanty that no self-respecting burgher would think it fit for his maid’s yard-broom.