The Dog

THE DOG

by

KERSTIN EKMAN

Translated from Swedish by Linda Schenck and Rochelle Wright

sphere

First published as Ihtuden in Sweden in 1986 by Bonmers

First published in Great Britain in 201)9 by Sphere

Copyright Kerstin Ekman 1986

Published by arrangement with Bonnier Group Agency, Stockholm, Sweden.

The right of Kerstin Ekman to be identified as Proprietor of this Work has been

asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those

clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

('. Illustrations Henrik Krogh 1986

All rights reserved.

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retrieval system, or transmitted, in ,inv torm or by any means, without

the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

and without a similar condition including this condition being

imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-84744-171-3

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www. hachettelivre.co.uDDINBYCH

Bertrams

When does something begin?

It doesn't begin. There's always something else before it.

It begins the way a stream starts as a rivulet and a rivulet

starts as a trickle of water in the marsh. It's the rain that

makes the marsh water rise.

In winter the spruces have full skirts. The snow is so deep

that it catches in the bottom ring of branches. When storms

pack it down, hollows and dens form under the trees. A fox

can find a hideout there, out of the wind and foul weather.

Grouse hens take cover under the skirts of the spruces too,

but never under the same root as the fox. He huddles there

waiting for night to fall. He waits for the moonlight and for

a crust to form on the snow.

Where does a tale begin?

Under the root of a spruce, perhaps.

Yes, under the root of a spruce tree. A little grey fellow

was lying there, all curled up, his muzzle tucked under his

tail. A dog. But he didn't know that. He was so small he was

able to squeeze in under a root. The root encircled him like

a rough brown arm but it didn't keep him warm.

The only warmth he got was from his own body. Inside

him was emptiness. He couldn't think: warmth, belly, teats,

milk. He didn't remember his mother's belly with its thin,

white coat, or her yellow eyes gleaming when they all suckled.

He

couldn't remember. There was nothing but a great big

hole inside, a gnawing, a hunger for warmth and for the

mild, pungent sweetness that filled his mouth, and for his

mother when she had come in from outside with strange

scents in her fur, nipping at the scruff of his neck and licking

the corner of his mouth.

How had he ended up under that spruce?

He didn't remember and he couldn't have told the tale.

The man headed out on to the frozen lake on his snowmobile.

He was going fishing. The mother dog had seen him

take his green jacket from the hook and figured he was going

hunting. It was the wrong time of year, though; the scent of

the March air told her that. She sat on the front steps, quiet

and attentive. When the snowmobile swung out behind the

woodshed she thought she saw the butt of a rifle, but her

sight wasn't very good. It was the ice drill he had strapped

onto his backpack. He hadn't called her to him. He hadn't

signalled his plans. But the green jacket, the rifle butt. She sat

rigid, ears cocked, until the snowmobile vanished in among

the pine trees by the marsh. Then she bounded off after him

anyway. The hunt!

And behind her, the pup.

It was a wide path, rough from snowmobile tracks. He

could smell petrol and oil and his mother. He ran, barrelling

along on his short legs. Soon she was out of sight, though he

could still hear the engine. Then there was silence and he

was alone on the long, white ribbon leading out on to the

lake.

The man drove across the lake to the boat landing by the

summer pasture, and looped up to the cabin to check that

things were all right. Then back down to the lake. He didn't

see the dog following him until he stopped. By the time she

caught up she was worn out. Her belly sagged under her. You

silly girl, he said. I'll bet you thought I was going hunting!

He started drilling through the new ice over the fishing

holes, and set the lines in place. The air was piercing cold,

the mist so thick he couldn't see the mountain tops. The dog

sat beside him, her yellow eyes squinting. Her sensitive nose caught the scent of her pup, and every now and then she

took a turn round the fishing holes, expecting him to come.

The fish weren't biting and the cold, black water froze in

layers of ice on the fishing lines.

A flurry of snow, a grey swirl, passed over the lake. She

snorted. Her master said, We'd best be heading home. He

took it slowly enough for her to keep up. But he drove back

in a wide arc, not the same way he had come.

When the man returned his wife was on the front steps,

her hands up the sleeves of her sweater. By then there was

driving snow and a hard westerly wind off the mountains in

Norway. She told him one of the pups was missing. The

dark grey one.

They searched all day in the powdery, whirling snow. They tried to get the mother dog to follow his scent but she

couldn't. The snow didn't let up. By evening it had become

a storm. His wife wept, saying they'd never find the pup.

He'll have frozen to death by now, she said.

A storm from the west is like a broom, a grey blast sweeping

across lake and forest. Afterwards there's no trace of ski or

snowmobile tracks, of animal or bird, no wads of snuff

around the fishing holes, no bait, no blood. Everything is

fresh, white and smooth.

Now, the morning after the storm, no one could see the

tracks from the man on the snowmobile. The weather had

cleared. The sun hadn't yet risen and the sky shifted towards

green as the day grew light. The sliver of moon above the

hill faded. It looked tenuous and tattered.

A black grouse flew up. The snow whirled around his

wings when he burst out from his hollow under the spruce.

He settled high up in a birch and soon there came another

and yet another. They clung there like dark fruit in the

crown of the birch, so heavy the branches sagged under

them. They began eating leaf buds.

The pup had slept under his spruce. He was stiff and

thirsty when he crawled out and lifted his nose above the

newly fallen snow. The light, what little there was, blinded

him. He saw the grouse in the birch tree but didn't know

what they were or whether they were dangerous. They

were alive. In the whiteness their black heads were the only

thing moving. He crept backwards into the hole and ate

snow. It triggered his hunger, and his stomach began to

ache. He whined but no one came. He whimpered, listening.

No paws crossing the linoleum, no boot steps, no

voice.

He slept a little but the bellyache was still there and made

him whine. The next time he awakened he thought he

picked up a smell that wasn't like snow or cold or air, and he

started digging. He kicked up pine needles and soil and then

finally found what he'd smelled. He kept at it for a long time

and when the sun came up and gleamed in the icy windows

of the pasture cabin he had eaten two fox turds and a few

lingonberries.

When he next woke up the grouse were gone. Sunlight

glared off the snow and he squinted with pain. He shut his

eyes and ate some snow; it melted quickly in his mouth.

Water from the thawing snow ran into the hole. Now he was

really freezing because his fur, still a puppy coat, was soaked

through.

A magpie flashed across Ins field of vision and settled not

far away; he could hear her chatter and peck.

He recognised the sound. Magpie chatter was followed by

the mother dog's growling when the bright bird grew bold

and came too close to their food. Insistent, penetrating

sounds were also what he longed for: his mother and the

food bowl. He wanted to get back. But when he started off

through the damp snow he sank, floundering. Soon everything

was just wet and grey and he was exhausted. He lay

deep in the snow for a long time, without hearing the

magpie. Then the memory faded. When he really started to

freeze, with his bare belly against the wet snow, he managed,

even though his legs hurt, to turn around and make his way

back to the hole under the spruce.

He slept, and even when the sun was at its highest in the

sky it never penetrated the root of the spruce where he was

lying. This was on a northern slope, on a wooded rise

behind the summer pasture. Faint with hunger, he lay with

his muzzle tucked under his own backside to draw warmth

from his body, from his own wet, matted coat and the cavity

in which his heart fluttered like the wing of a bird in the

cold and damp. It beat eagerly and wildly, throbbing, hungry

for life, for warmth and kind voices, for milk, sunshine,

tongues, fur, paws, belly and legs.

He wasn't alone in the pasture. A squirrel scurried,

hooked claws clattering on the bark of the spruce tree. The

black grouse settled in the treetop again when the snow

turned blue. They sat in the dusk, filling their gullets with

birch buds to ward off hunger and the night and the cold

that crept up from the shadows. He had heard the cheeping

and twittering of a great tit all afternoon in the sunlight, and

the drip of the melting snow. Now that it was colder, the

bird was silent and had crept in under the eaves of the cabin.

A little flock of them spent the night there, keeping each

other warm.

It was a cold night. They slept under the eaves with pattering

hearts, their blood coursing and throbbing. In crevices

and nests, in dens and under roots they slept. The pup sank

more deeply into the lethargy of cold.

THE DOG

The magpie's sharp, piercing laughter. Time after time her

impudent chatter from the top of a birch. The woods near

the pasture are full of other magpies and they need to know

she's here, that she's claimed this treetop and everything visible

from it. The others hear her but do not reply. And all

the way down under the branches of the spruce tree, heavy

with the weight of the frozen, wet snow, the pup hears the

magpie. Eventually he comes completely awake, surfacing

from a sleep that has long been dangerously deep, thanks to

the cheeky, insistent jabbering.

He moves around because he's thirsty and manages to eat

a bit of snow. But it isn't the same. It's hard. The magpie goes

on chattering; from his hole the pup can see the flash of her

white breast and the way her blue and black tail feathers

shimmer with every outburst. She woke him up. The snow

he ate has triggered the hunger inside him. Now he crawls

out. The magpie's finished and she flies off, disappearing into

the woods in a gleaming black arc.

This is a different kind of morning. Very cold, very few

scents in the air. The birch branches have long, stiff icicles

from snow that melted the previous day. A light breeze from

the lake sets them in motion and they ring like chimes. The

sharp crust of the snow cuts the pads of his paws when he

pulls himself up into his old tracks. Finally he's standing on

top of the snow, a frozen floor. He walks clumsily on big