The Last of the Vostyachs (7 page)

‘I'm Katia.' In an effort to stifle an incipient coughing fit the woman now emptied Ivan's glass as well. Swaying her hips, she slipped off her leotard and approached her client, who stared at her in horrified fascination. Making a smacking sound with her fleshy lips, she gave him a slight peck, allowing her breasts to brush against him, but then promptly recoiled, again overwhelmed by the stench.

‘And you? What are you called? Where are you from?' She stood with her legs apart, her heels wedged firmly into the carpet. She spoke a broken Finnish, and Ivan could not understand a word of what she said. He stared in bewilderment at the hairless white body he saw wiggling before him.

‘Katia,' he repeated in a strangled voice.

‘You too?' said the woman, laughing. She took a few steps backwards, put her hands behind her back and undid her bra, which rolled down over her stomach and landed between her feet. Ivan stared at the skimpy red garment where it lay, amazed that something so small could contain so much swollen softness. He would have liked to pick it up and have a closer look. But then his interest was caught by the sight of the woman's chest. Katia took him in her arms and let him spread himself against her, then stretched out on the bed, kicking her clogs into the air. The Vostyach had not so much as loosened a fastening of his heavy leather jacket. Trickles of sweat were making their way down his temples and neck. Now he was shuffling his boots on the moquette, clutching his sack and drum. Bothered by the smoke from the incense, he wrinkled his nose and tried to keep his distance from the brazier; but there was nowhere to retreat to.

‘Come on, give them a feel! Just see how smooth they are!' the woman said, stroking her breasts with her hands. Her legs were still apart, and she was moving her pelvis up and down. Under the red triangle of her panties Ivan could now see a black shape from which he found it impossible to look away.

‘Come on!' she said again, invitingly. She rolled around on top of the sheets and then lay still, stretched out on her stomach. The Vostyach could still see that mesmerising black shape between her thighs, below those big white buttocks. He felt like touching them. He put his things down and knelt on the bed. First he brushed the white surface with his fingertips, then he felt the soft skin with the flat of his hand. It was warm and tender, he liked pressing it between his fingers, then letting it go and pressing it again, like soft dough which kept the mark of the outline of his hands. She was no ordinary woman, he could see that. She must be a city creature, who had grown up indoors, under electric light, amidst noisy crowds, without ever breathing the cold air of the woods, which flays your skin, makes your eyes stream and hardens your limbs. Such a creature could live only in the stifling heat of this room, she must feed off soap and the white juice in that bottle, and breathe the bitter smoke from the little metal mask on the bedside table. Perhaps she had been born of one of the coloured fish in the fish tank. A gleaming little cartilaginous fish, she would have swum in its water and grown up concealed in cold fish scales – yellow and blue and red – which gradually flaked off, revealing her beauty, her seaweed skin. Ivan imagined all the coloured fish in the tank as so many Katias-to-be. Soon they would all be utterly transformed, would emerge from the water in their glorious new incarnation and enfold him in their velvety caresses, in their cool, dripping embrace.

While the Vostyach was exploring her flesh, Katia carried on with her wiggling, emitting false little giggles as she did so. She had lifted her head and was nervously observing Ivan's hands as they explored her body, then finally parted her thighs. She was beginning to lose patience. It was bad enough having to put up with the man's stench. She certainly wasn't going to put on an erotic performance in order to excite him. He'd better undress and get on with it. She tried to slip two fingers into his underpants to get them down, but Ivan pulled them out of her grasp with a blow from one paw-like hand. He then became extremely agitated. His heart was beating violently under the heavy, laced up skins. Hot beads of sweat were falling from his eyebrows into his eyes, his ears were burning, his legs were trembling, the veins in his temples, taut as bowstrings, throbbed to the rhythm of his breath. He leant forward over the black shape, which had now become one with the shadow of the sheet, and pressed his whole hand down on it. It felt warm, damp and sticky, like the torn belly of a hare when you put in a hand to pull out the innards. He touched flesh as tender and smooth as entrails. He was expecting to smell their bitter stench, the sweetish aroma of blood. But his nostrils met with a different smell entirely, one which took his breath away and caused his eyes to mist over, leaving him unable to move. The woman turned over on her back and pulled him up on to the pillow beside her. She began to touch his lips and caress his forehead, sinking her fingers into his hair. Ivan half-closed his eyes. No one had ever caressed him before, no hand had ever been placed so gently on his forehead. Katia slipped her fingers slowly into the neck of his jacket. She was breathing through her mouth, trying to undo the leather knots so that she could ease him out of those foul skins. But Ivan was on his guard, and when he felt her pulling on the knots he pushed her hand away. The scent of that skin, which smelt of sugar, the sight of that spotless body beneath his own, made his head swim, as it did when he had spent a sleepless night drumming for his wolves to come to him. A melting feeling stole over him, a swooning sense of sweet abandonment. Still dressed from head to foot in his putrid skins, his feet still in his sodden boots, he threw himself upon the woman, clasping her to him, clutching her as though he wanted to claw the flesh from her every limb, tear her to shreds and stuff the pieces into his mouth. Katia tried to calm him, to regain the initiative, but Ivan was now seized with a fury there was no assuaging. He unlaced what had to be unlaced and thrust himself brutally between her thighs with a hoarse moan. A scream sent the fish scurrying off to a corner of the tank. Ivan tensed his muscles and slammed her down on to the bed, tightening his grip, rejoicing in his exploration of every last nook and cranny of that white body, digging his nails into the yielding flesh, watching her veins swell and her breasts quake. His body was burning, drops of his sweat were falling on to Katia's chest in greasy globules. But he could not stop himself: he clung to her grimly, crushing her beneath him, breathing in her sweetish smell, mingled with the stench of animal fat and mud from his own rough skins. Suddenly the bed collapsed on to the bedside table, knocking off the lamp, which did not shatter, but rolled off in the direction of the fish-tank. There on the ground, in the tangle of sheets, he felt a spasm shoot through his whole body, biting as a whiplash; his stomach contracted with a stab of pain. Then his limbs seemed to melt, the blood to flow more smoothly in his veins. He loosened his grip. He lifted his sweat-drenched head and opened his mouth, gasping for air in that incense-laden room. Beneath him, Katia was no longer laughing, or swaying her hips. She was staring fixedly at the metal light fittings hanging from the ceiling. Across her neck ran a red trickle, though in the dim lighting it looked black. It started from behind her ear, then spread over the now matted hair on the nape of her neck. Horrified, Ivan looked at his hands. Muffled sounds were now coming from somewhere beyond the wall, becoming more distinct, moving in his direction. Someone was rattling at the door, causing it to bang against the bedstead. An angry voice was shouting threatening words in Russian. Ivan clenched his fists, and braced himself. In his mind's eye, he saw the chinks of light between the boards of the hut, smelt the smell of burnt urine, heard the steps of the soldiers on the snow, the sound of gunshots in the darkness. The door burst open with a splintering sound and the Laplander hurtled into the room, causing the bed-head to knock into the fish-tank. A spurt of red water gushed from the fragments of glass and the coloured fish slithered away, over the grubby carpet, over Katia's breasts and legs. They darted around, then settled on the black shape that had caused Ivan such consternation. In contact with the water, the lamp sputtered, gave out blue sparks and exploded, plunging the room into total darkness.

‘Now look what you've done, you animal!' shrieked the Laplander, beside himself as he lunged around the room, trying to locate the Vostyach in the pitch-darkness and pushing pointlessly against the bed, which was now jammed between the wall and the bedside table. Fumbling around on the floor in the sodden chaos, Ivan picked up his sack and his drum. He sat there, squatting in the shadows, muscles tensed, then flung himself upon the figure he could dimly see coming towards him, knocking it to the ground so that he could make his getaway. He slipped into the corridor, crossed the empty barroom, heaved the street door open and ran off into the snow.

II

‘The Ice Age is back: the Gulf of Finland freezes over for the first time in fifty years,' shrieked the headlines. Margareeta leafed through the first few pages of the paper, her mind elsewhere. Reading was the last thing she felt like doing. She pushed aside her coffee cup and asked the waiter for a sheet of paper.

Dear Jarmo,

I'm sitting in a dismal bar, drinking a cup of coffee before bringing Hurmo back to you, and I don't know why I'm writing you this letter. Perhaps because my desire to insult you is so strong that I can't contain myself, I can't wait until I see you face to face. Or perhaps because, by writing, I cherish the fond hope that I shall find the perfect words to rid my mind of you for ever. It's incredible how something new always comes up, even though I think I've said all that's to be said, and everything has been done to death by repetition. It's true, words between the two of us are meaningless. You've killed them stone-dead with your falsehoods, with fifteen years of indifference, silence, betrayal. You've saved whole languages from extinction, but caused the one we spoke between ourselves to die. Now all I want to do is harm you, and my only regret is that I shall never manage to do as much hurt to you as you've done to me. It's too late, you got away before I could land my punches. What's left of you for me is Hurmo. I could take it out on him. I'm not ashamed to tell you that sometimes I've thought of lashing out at him, with you in mind. Perhaps I would have felt a certain satisfaction from hearing him squeal, seeing your face in his panic-stricken snout. I found myself wondering what sort of look would come on to your face if I suddenly started kicking you. Amazement? Outrage? Fear? I'd be willing to pay someone good money to find out. Those are the depths to which I've sunk! No court could ever compensate me for such humiliation. But today I'm bringing Hurmo back to you, returning the last hostage of our life together. I realised too late that you only married me because you needed someone to link arms with at faculty cocktail parties, because only couples would be invited to attend the burgomaster's ball. Unwittingly, like everyone else around you, I too served your ambitions; the only people you've ever wanted to have around you are those who can be of use to you in some way. The same goes for your masters. If you began to be unfaithful, it was because that too served your purposes. Your heart wasn't really in your philandering: new entanglements just meant one more birthday, one more phone number, one more make of perfume and a bunch of flowers to be remembered. When I first discovered that you had a lover, I was surprised: you'd chosen a woman who greatly resembled me. Leena Isotalo might have been my double – an uglier version, if you don't mind my saying so. Idiot that I was, perhaps that was why I forgave you. Unconsciously, I tried to tell myself that you just couldn't get enough of me, that you had to surround yourself with women who were like me. They were just poor copies, idols serving to glorify me without diminishing your adoration. I was the Virgin, they were the statues. Such are the contortions the mind is capable of when it wishes to blind itself to the truth! I now see that you chose lovers who looked like me purely for practical reasons: because black underwear suits all blondes, and one more fair hair on your jacket would escape my notice. I never had the guts to check on it, but I bet they didn't live far from us. That way you could pay them a quick visit of an evening with the excuse of taking Hurmo for a walk. You were never one to do more than the strictly necessary, you weren't one to put yourself out. There's not a moment of your time that isn't put to good purpose. By the time you die, you'll have squeezed every drop out of life. It will spit you out in disgust, it will be sick of you, will shuffle you off like some revolting worm. I, on the other hand, devoted fifteen years of my life to you. My only regret is that there is nothing to show for it. My women friends say we should have had a child. Perhaps it's true. Perhaps a son would have made you less self-centred. Or would he just have been one more person to compete against? At least I wouldn't be alone, I wouldn't be getting up at dawn like a lost soul, wondering how to spend my empty day. Whereas the only living thing to have come out of those fifteen years is this wretched dog, a gift from your friend Pekka, architect and faggot. That must be why he passed it off as male, when in fact it was a bitch. But in your mind even Hurmo was to serve a purpose. He was to add to the picture of the modern young couple with a four-wheel drive and a bouncy, tail-wagging dog. Perhaps it was he who brought us bad luck. Today I'm returning him to you. He is our marriage: ugly, besmirched and past his prime.

Margareeta.

Margareeta left the letter inside the newspaper, counted out the change for the coffee and marched off, dragging Hurmo unceremoniously by the lead. The waiter picked up the cup and wiped under the chair, removing the puddle the dog had made. Before throwing the paper into the waste-paper bin, he cast an inattentive eye over the headlines.

Outside, the city was coming to life. Despite the snow, in the town centre the avenues were full of cars, making their way slowly forwards with their headlights on. Nothing was going to come between them and their Saturday shopping spree, and the shopping centres were filling up, windows ablaze, the whole snow-covered city was abuzz. Christmas had come and gone, but the apartment blocks in the centre were once more glittering with festive lights. Today was a special day. Nature had firmly reasserted herself, and for once could not be kept at bay by central heating systems, neon signs, the smoke from factory chimneys and the mighty icebreakers moored alongside the quays, awaiting orders to rid the sea-lanes of ice. In the port, sirens were breaking a fifty-year silence, and the weather centre was giving hourly reports on the advance of the ice floes in the gulf. Murmansk, Saint Petersburg, Petrozavodsk and Vaalimo were registering polar temperatures. Radio messages were continually arriving from Tallinn. On the other side of the gulf you could walk on the sea and reach the island of Prangli by car. On such a day, a thousand years ago, hordes of wild men had arrived by sea to sack the Finnish villages, burn down the houses, ravish the women and carry off the children. In defiance of that distant memory, the whole city was now on the alert. It was making as much noise as it possibly could, putting on all its lights, turning the heating systems up to maximum, making a show of all its wealth and strength, as though in a bid to fend off the wild hordes of yesteryear. Let them try attacking Finland now!