Wolf Winter (16 page)

At first there are only single flakes falling from a solid sky onto Blackåsen
—
one, then a couple more. The mountain parries them. As if considering not allowing things to proceed. With spruce and pine, it blocks the snowflakes from reaching the ground. By the river it swallows them with water. Over the lake they are so moist, they seem like sheer mist.

Beyond the hill, in town, God’s soldier has gone to see his verger.

“I am going to have to travel to Blackåsen,” he says.

The verger is sitting down. He’s sewing on an altar cloth, head tilted, legs and scrotum hidden underneath sacred fabric. “That won’t happen now,” he says. “We call this period the time of decay. The first snowfalls. The frost needs to go into the deep of the ground before the snow becomes hard enough to carry the weight of a man. Until then the mountains are unreachable. We’ll have to stay here.”

God’s soldier looks out. All he can see is his own reflection in the window.

North: a settler stands by his window. He watches the snow fall. Behind him the woman he used to find so beautiful; a gift to him from the gods, asleep in their bed. Her breathing grates.

“Half a meter,” he says to himself. “Before tomorrow morning, at least half.”

The woman coughs and he stiffens.
So die then,
he thinks.
Die.

He waits without turning around. No. Sleeping. Still sleeping.

By late afternoon the snowflakes that float in the air above the mountain are as big as Lapp mittens, as soft as the wool closest to the sheep’s heart. Snow settles
on the trees’ branches. It covers the rocks by the river. By the lake you can no longer see across to the other side.

A few perennials shed their last leaves. Life twines itself downward along roots and bulbs. The annual plants prepare to die, knowing their seeds are buried in the earth, thinking thus they shall return. The animals are still. All is quiet.

By the lake a man stands on a porch, hands flat by his thighs. He stares at the sky falling down around him. He leans his head against the cold of the house, lifts his hands and places them on the timber, and breathes. Then he whacks his forehead against the wall as hard as he can. He grabs new snow off the railing and presses it against his forehead. Feels pain turn to water in his hand.

Day after day the snow falls
—
to reach a meter on day three. The snow floats and drifts with the wind. Restless, but not light. The branches have to give under its weight. One after another, they squeal, fold, snap, and let the snow fall to the mountain’s surface with a dull, achy sound. On the river crystal sticks to crystal, making floating islands. The ice by the lakeshore creeps further out on the open water. The marsh is white.

On the roofs of the few houses snow lies in thick bulges. In the windows there are lit candles. Lit, for the light has mellowed. A small change, but darkness is on its way. Inside there is already dimness in the corners of each room.

Here someone is telling tales. His wife is baking
knäckebröd—
crispbread. She’s learned this and more since they came. With the help of her sons she has hung a pole in the roof on which the bread will dry.

“To turn wild reindeer into a herd, the Lapps first need to castrate one reindeer.”

He speaks as if he knows this by experience. Let him, his wife thinks. Whatever keeps him occupied.

“They put a cloth around its testicles and bite them off with their teeth.”

Their children are too old for this kind of story, yet they moan.

“That reindeer becomes forever calm. He can be led by a rope. But the most important one is that which follows the first. He is still wild, a leader, and he brings with him a large following.”

“Why does the second one follow?” one son asks.

“That depends on its character,” he invents. “Perhaps it is out of loyalty to the castrated one. Perhaps it feels forced.”

His wife is making porridge. Her steps are heavy. It’s the child inside slowing her down. He remembers his mother saying that porridge calmed the nerves. He’s not certain it calmed hers, his father a drinker and with sons like the two of them.

His woman hangs the iron pot on its hook. She stirs in it. She lifts the vessel off the fire. While the meal cools, she sits down to wait. There is the whine of the spinning wheel. Never resting. She’s a good woman, this one, stoic. At once his whole chest stitches up and makes it impossible for him to breathe.

It is like that, missing. It comes in waves.

Warmer, colder, warmer again. The snow thaws and refreezes and mellows and turns grainy. The floating islands on the river catch each other. Across the lake there is a thin sheet of ice, clear as glass. The marsh is asleep now under meters of snow. The trees have doubled in size. At dawn the crystals on the branches catch the remaining light and shine like a million tiny stars.