The Last of the Vostyachs (10 page)

‘In Moscow too he used to get up at dawn and go to bed at dusk,' murmured Olga, lost in thought.

‘It's a shame! I'd reserved a table for the three of us at the Rivoli for tonight,' lied Aurtova, adding:

‘But your Vostyach has a hard day ahead of him tomorrow! He'll have a huge audience. It's no bad thing he's taking it easy.' The professor glanced in the rear-view mirror to gauge the effect his winning words were having.

‘Poor fellow! Let's hope he doesn't take fright – he's not used to crowds,' said Olga, clearly preoccupied.

Aurtova did not answer, then, as the car turned into the Pohjoisesplanadi, he said encouragingly:

‘Come on now, don't worry. Someone who's survived the gulag and is used to life in the arctic tundra will surely manage to put up with a bunch of fusty philologists. Anyway, tonight I have a little surprise for you.'

‘A surprise?' she queried doubtfully.

‘Tonight, Olga Pavlovna, on the occasion of the XXIst Congress of Finno-Ugric Scholars and by way of tribute to our longstanding friendship, I have the pleasure of inviting you to dinner at my cottage on the island of Vasikkasaari. The menu will be strictly Finnish!'

‘Really, Jarmo, today it's one surprise after another. The last time you invited me to dinner was on your graduation day. Together with fifty others!' Olga was as startled as she was flattered.

‘So at last I shall be able to meet your wife. Is she there already?'

‘No, Margareeta is abroad, in Sweden. Visiting a sick relative, you know how it is,' replied Aurtova coldly.

‘Oh, I hope it's nothing serious!'

Aurtova said nothing. He didn't intend to go into further explanations.

‘But I've been so looking forward to meeting the saintly woman who has put up with you for fifteen years!' sighed Olga, in tones of false regret. After a brief pause, she added:

‘Well, there will be other opportunities.'

‘Oh, absolutely!' Aurtova reassured her vaguely.

They had now arrived outside the Torni. Aurtova parked the car and left the engine running.

‘I'll take your case up to your room and see how Ivan's getting on. If he's awake, I'll ask him to come with us. He was so looking forward to seeing you,' he said, turning to face her.

A sudden look of tenderness stealing over her face, Olga nodded, and kept her eyes on the professor as he took her case out of the boot and proceeded cautiously to cross the icy road. At reception, Aurtova introduced himself as a taxi-driver working for the Yellow Line, and asked whether he could leave a case belonging to a certain Professor Boris Juknov, who would be arriving soon. Seeing the receptionist nod his head, an eager bell-boy in a red tunic picked up Olga's bag and put it behind the desk. While the professor lingered in the lobby, pretending to look for a number in the phone book, Olga, still seated in the car, was thinking. She was excited and unsettled by the prospect of spending an evening alone with Jarmo. She had always found him attractive, even if she had never been under any illusions that the feeling was reciprocated. Over the many years they'd known each other, he had never shown any romantic interest in her, not even when he got drunk at student parties; he'd never laid a hand on her, and the few times they'd danced together she'd been aware of a distinct wave of repulsion emanating from a handsome and overbearing man. Jarmo had always been a charmer, pursued and yearned after by many a beautiful woman. Olga was quite aware that she was plain. But, out of pride and spite, instead of making any attempt to remedy it, she cultivated her ugliness. She brazenly wore dresses that emphasised her ungainly figure. The fact that she had legs like a piglet was not going to come between her and fishnet stockings, nor did she have any qualms about tight trousers revealing her heavy buttocks. But, strangely, she felt that on that night something might be going to happen between her and her old fellow student, though she could not have explained why. Perhaps, because of some perverse fixation due to age, her body might at last have become attractive to an ageing womaniser. He'd had his way with so many lovelies, maybe the time had now come to sink his hands into the slack flesh of a faded spinster. Olga had no experience of such matters, but Jarmo's peek at her cleavage had not escaped her notice.

‘No dice, he's sleeping like a top. I left the number of the Koirasaari Coastguard Station with the receptionist. If need be, they can come to the cottage and let me know.' Back in the car, Aurtova was rubbing his numb hands.

‘Let's hope he doesn't wake up in the middle of the night and start playing his drum. He did do that once in Moscow, and I had trouble explaining to him that it's just not done,' said Olga nervously.

‘He won't make any more noise than the discotheque over the road,' said Aurtova, pointing to a neon sign.

Olga was worried. She was about to ask if she could go up and take a peek at Ivan. She wanted to be sure he was all right. Even if she just caught a glimpse of him in the darkness of the room, she would be reassured by the sight of his small silhouette safely asleep on the bed. From the silence behind him, Aurtova sensed danger.

‘Did he give you the pipe? Did you play it? He so much wanted you to!' she said after a pause.

Aurtova took the bone out of his pocket and put it between his teeth like a kazoo, turning towards her with a jaunty air. Olga smiled, albeit unwillingly. She had an odd feeling that her host, too, was ill at ease. She felt gratified by the idea that Jarmo had set this whole thing up, prepared the supper, perhaps even ensured that Ivan would be asleep so that he could be alone with her. She forced herself to forget her worries and raised her shining eyes to meet Aurtova's gaze in the rear-view mirror. The professor, who knew a thing or two about women, lowered his chin and gave a sigh of relief. He went back on the attack with a new cheerfulness in his voice, adding:

‘Well now, dear Olga! A groaning board awaits us across the frozen sea!'

The car skidded briefly and set off towards the port. This time, wanting to avoid going through Suomenlinna for a second time, he took the longer route, continuing to the sea at Tahvonlahti. There too a snowplough had opened up a track towards the islands, but there were no poles to indicate where it lay, only the traces of snow chains, sometimes obscured by heaps of wind-borne snow. When they had left the shore lights behind, Aurtova noticed that there were stars overhead. This did not help matters; he would have preferred the blizzard of a few hours earlier. Luckily, there was no moon.

Seated in the darkness, Olga listened to the thrum of the engine and the beating of her own heart. She stared out of the window at the snowy expanse as it loomed up before them in the glow of the headlights.

‘At last we'll be able to talk a bit, just the two of us. Our meetings have always been so brief, at congresses and conferences. Then we don't see each other again for years. And to think that we once spent whole days together in the university library! These days I really know nothing about you,' she said, leaning forward over the seat so as to see Aurtova's face lit up by the green light of the dashboard.

‘That's true. We lose touch and years go by in a flash,' he said with a false sigh.

‘You must admit, it's amusing that it should be the Samoyeds who always bring us together. Like in that special course we did. Let's see if you remember the name of the seminar where we first met.' Olga had placed her elbows on the back of the front seat and Aurtova could feel her breath on his neck.

‘Aha! Now how could I forget that! “Cacuminal fricatives in Proto-Uralic”, by Jove! A theory developed by that madman Collinder!' came the rejoinder, as Aurtova leant forwards towards the windscreen to put some distance between himself and her unwelcome breath.

‘Well, that's always been your view. But a lot of us agree with him.'

‘Oh, come on, Olga! That's all been done to death. Early Proto-Uralic could not originally have had predorsal-gingivals, apico-cacuminals and palatalised liquids all at the same time. What would a pack of hunters have done with three different types of el?'

‘Not that old story again? Then how do you explain the postalveolar liquid found in Nenets, which is a synthesis of all three?'

‘My dear, you know quite well that that's what's known as the principle of least effort. The sounds of a language tend to dwindle over time, perhaps because in every area of life men want to do as little as they possibly can. In their heart of hearts, they tend towards immobility, towards silence. Who knows, perhaps one day we'll all stop talking, and that will truly be the end of the world. Even you know that the older a language is, the more pared down its sounds will have become. The Quechuan languages have only three vowels. Chinese can express extremely elaborate concepts with the sound of just two notes. Take ideograms: originally they were orthographic signs, each brushstroke was pronounced separately. Now they have become petrified. One single ideogram is the equivalent of a whole speech.'

‘What rubbish! The principle of least effort was called into question by Zipf as early as 1935. A sound which you find difficult to pronounce might be quite unproblematical for a Korean. Take nasals: the French wallow in them, but a Finn can't pronounce them even when he's got a cold.'

The shoreline of Vasikkasaari now came into view, with the outline of the cottage visible behind the snowy dunes.

‘What an eerie place! Do you come here a lot?' asked Olga, peering towards the shadowy shore.

‘I like to come here for the odd weekend. In the summer we use it as a holiday home. Margareeta likes picking berries in the woods, and I like fishing. In the evening we have a barbecue and sit talking in front of the fire. Whereas in winter Margareeta likes to stay in the warm in Helsinki and I come here to work. Solitude and silence, that's what a scholar needs!' came Aurtova's rather too glib reply.

‘I didn't realise you were so fond of solitude and speculation. There was a time when all your fishing was done in the student hostel,' said Olga sarcastically.

‘Those days are over,' said the professor, opening the car door for her with a smile.

‘Those days are over,' Olga agreed, pulling the collar of her fur coat up around her ears.

Aurtova offered his guest his arm and escorted her to the door. Before leaving, he had taken the precaution of switching out all the lights in the cottage and turning the generator down to the minimum so as to save fuel. But he had left the fire alight, to ensure that the place would be reasonably warm.

‘Goodness, it's nice and warm in here,' said Olga as she went in. At the back of the stove, some embers were still glowing. Aurtova poked the fire and added more wood. He lit the candles on the table and refilled the stove in the sauna. Then he went into the kitchen, put the wood grouse into the oven to cook and took the aperitifs and champagne out of the larder.

The candlelight etched deep shadows into Olga's face. She smiled brightly, her eyes following her host expectantly as he busied himself with his various tasks. Aurtova had noticed at the airport that Olga was dressed up to the nines. She was wearing large ear-rings, and a showy amber necklace hung in the décolletage of her silk blouse. She was also heavily made up: her mouth, smeared with too much lipstick, glistened greasily. Seated on the edge of the sofa, her hands in her lap, the Head of the Institute of Finno-Ugric Languages at the University of Saint Petersburg looked like a wistful housewife dressed up for a Saturday night out. Aurtova sniffed distastefully at the scent which was now beginning to waft through the warming air. He realized that he would have to give the room a thorough airing after she left.

‘Tonight, as an hors d'oeuvre, the house is offering smoked salmon, followed by roast wood grouse and potatoes, with lemon sorbet as dessert. First, though, the aperitif: reindeer pâté,
piirakka
with rice, and champagne,' said Aurtova, putting the tray and bottle on the table.

Olga peered eagerly at the plate and turned her shining eyes upon her host.

‘
Embarras de richesses!
'

‘There's also a bottle of vodka outside the door. For reasons of neutrality, it is neither Russian nor Finnish, but Polish,' Aurtova added jokingly.

‘An excellent compromise.'

‘And, after dinner, a good soaking in the sauna.' He pointed towards the porthole at the end of the corridor.

‘Oh, goodness! Naked, Finnish style? Will we be whipping each other's back with fir branches?' asked Olga, blushing with excitement.

Aurtova nodded with a grunt. For him, that would be the hardest part of the evening. He was dreading it. But he hoped that the drink would work its magic: that the sauna would be the
coup de grâce
and that she would pass out, delivering him from the supposed climax. He poured them some champagne and raised his glass.

‘To the Finno-Ugric languages!' he exclaimed.

‘To the Finno-Ugric languages,' repeated Olga. They drank in silence.

‘By the way, Jarmo, you haven't yet told me what you think of my Vostyach.'

Aurtova sat himself down in front of her as they sipped their champagne.

‘Well, you were right, I must admit: I was deeply moved by the lateral fricative with labiovelar overlay. It's a sound that comes from the very depths of our history!' he said with feigned emotion. ‘I imagine…I imagine you've brought the tapes with you? They will be invaluable material for the congress minutes,' he added meaningfully.

‘Of course. I take them with me wherever I go, just to be on the safe side,' said Olga, patting the black leather bag hanging from her arm. ‘In fact, I'd like to make a copy to take back with me to Saint Petersburg, for the faculty library. Can you see to that?'

‘No problem, I'll have it done tomorrow,' Aurtova promised obligingly, staring at the bag as though it were a mirage, likely to recede before him at any moment. A sweet smell of resin was wafting through the room, and the heat was causing the furniture to creak as the grain breathed and expanded in the warmth. The fire was crackling cheerfully, lighting their faces up with its spurts of red. But their eyes remained hidden, sunk in the black cavities of their sockets. Each was seeking out the other's gaze in an attempt to read their thoughts. From behind his glass, Aurtova was observing Olga, who was nervously fiddling with her rings.