“I’ve been thinking about this business with the wolf,” she begins.
Bertil’s leg crosses over the other leg. His arms fold themselves across his chest. Stefan leans back in his chair. Away from her. They feel criticized and told off before she’s even managed to say what’s on her mind.
“The church leases its land to Poikkijarvi hunting club for a thousand kronor a year,” she goes on. “The lease runs for seven years, and is automatically renewed if it isn’t cancelled. This has been the case since 1957. The parish priest at the time lived in the priest’s house in Poikkijarvi. And he liked to hunt.”
“But what has that got to do with…” Bertil begins.
“Let me finish! True, anybody can join the club, but it’s the board and the elite hunting team who actually make use of the leased land. And since the number in the elite team is set in the statutes at twenty, no new members are allowed in. In practice it’s only when somebody dies that the board elects a new member. And every single person on the board is a member of the team. So it’s the same bunch of old men there as well. In the last thirteen years, not one new member has joined.”
She breaks off and looks Stefan straight in the eye.
“Except for you, of course. When Elis Wiss left the team voluntarily, you were elected-that must have been six years ago?”
Stefan doesn’t reply, it’s the way she says “voluntarily.” On the inside he’s white with rage. Mildred goes on:
“According to the statutes, only the hunting team is allowed to hunt with shotguns, so therefore the team has commandeered all elk hunting. As far as other hunting is concerned, suitable members can buy a one day license, but the kill must be divided up between active members of the club, and surprise surprise, it’s the board members who make the decision as to how that division takes place. But this is what I’m thinking. Both the mining company, LKAB, and Yngve Bergqvist are interested in the lease, LKAB for its employees and Yngve for tourists. That would mean we could increase the fee significantly. And I’m talking about big money here; it would allow us to look at a sensible approach to forestry. I mean, seriously, what does Torbjorn Ylitalo actually do? Runs errands for the team! We’re even providing that bunch of old farts with a free employee.”
Torbjorn Ylitalo is the forestry officer in the church. He’s one of the twenty members of the elite team, and the chairman of the hunting club. Stefan is conscious of the fact that much of Torbjorn’s working day is spent planning hunts with Lars-Gunnar who is the team leader, maintaining the church’s hunting lodges and watchtowers and clearing tracks.
“So,” Mildred concludes. “We’ll have money to manage the forest properly, but above all money to protect the wolf. The church can donate the lease to the foundation. The Nature Conservancy Foundation has tagged her, but we need more money to monitor her.”
“I can’t see why you’re taking this up with me and Stefan,” Bertil breaks in, his voice very calm; “Surely any changes to the lease are a matter for the church council?”
“You know what,” says Mildred, “I think this is a matter for the whole church community.”
The room falls silent. Bertil nods once. Stefan becomes aware of an ache in his left shoulder, pain working its way up the back of his neck.
They understand precisely what she means. They can see exactly how this discussion will look if it’s carried out within the whole community and, of course, in the press. The bunch of old men hunting for free on church land, and on top of that claiming the animals they haven’t even killed themselves.
Stefan is a member of the hunting team, he won’t escape.
But the parish priest has his own reasons for keeping well in with the hunting team. They keep his freezer well filled. Bertil can always show off, offering his guests elk steak and game birds. And there’s no doubt the team members have done other things to compensate the priest for his silent approval of their empire. Bertil’s log cabin, for example. The team built it and they maintain it.
Stefan thinks about his place on the team. No, he feels it. As if it were a warm, smooth pebble in his pocket. That’s what it is, his secret mascot. He can still remember when he got the place. Bertil’s arm around his shoulders as he was introduced to Torbjorn Ylitalo. “Stefan hunts,” the priest had said, “he’d be really pleased if he got a place on the team.” And Torbjorn, the feudal lord in the church’s forest kingdom, nodded, not allowing even a hint of displeasure to cross his face. Two months later Elis Wiss had given up his place on the team. After forty-three years. Stefan was elected as one of the twenty.
“It isn’t fair,” says Mildred.
The priest gets up from Stefan’s armchair.
“I’m prepared to discuss this when you’re somewhat calmer,” he says to Mildred.
And he leaves. Leaves Stefan with her.
“How’s that supposed to work?” Mildred says to Stefan. “As soon as I start thinking about this I’m anything but calm.”
Then she gives him a big smile.
Stefan looks at her in surprise. What’s she grinning at? Doesn’t she understand that she’s just made her position completely and totally impossible? That she’s just delivered an unequivocal declaration of war? It’s as if inside this extremely intelligent woman (and he has to admit that she is), there lives a retarded babbling idiot. What’s he supposed to do now? He can’t rush out of the room, it’s his room. He stays in his seat, irresolute.
Then suddenly she looks at him with a serious expression, opens her handbag and takes out three envelopes, which she holds out to him. It’s his wife’s handwriting.
He stands up and takes the letters. He has stomach cramps. Kristin. Kristin! He knows what kind of letters they are without reading them. He slumps back onto his chair.
“The tone of two of them is quite unpleasant,” says Mildred.
Yes, he can imagine. It isn’t the first time. This is what Kristin usually does. With slight variations, it’s always the same. He’s been through this twice already. They move to somewhere new. Kristin runs the children’s choir and Sunday school, a sweet little songbird singing the praises of the new place to the skies. But when the first flush of love, that’s the only thing he can call it, has passed, her discontent begins to show. Real and imagined injustices which she collects like bookmarks in an album. A period of headaches, visits to the doctor and accusations hurled at Stefan, who doesn’t take her concerns seriously. Then something goes seriously wrong between her and some employee or member of the church community. And soon she’s off on a crusade all over the district. In the last place it turned into a real circus in the end, with the union dragged in and an employee in the parish offices who wanted their nervous breakdown classified as a work-related injury. And Kristin, who just felt that she’d been unjustly accused. And finally the unavoidable move. The first time it was with one child, the second time with three. The eldest boy is at high school now, it’s a critical time.
“I’ve got two more in the same vein,” says Mildred.
When she’s gone, Stefan sits there with the letters in his right hand.
She’s snared him like a ptarmigan, he thinks, and he doesn’t even know whether he means Mildred or his wife.
Rebecka Martinsson’s boss Mans Wenngren was sitting on his office chair, creaking. He hadn’t noticed it before, but it made a really irritating grating noise when you raised or lowered it. He thought about Rebecka Martinsson. Then he stopped thinking about her.
He actually had loads to do. Calls to make, e-mails to answer. Customers and clients to entertain. His junior associates had begun placing papers and yellow Post-it notes on his chair so that he’d see them. But it was only an hour until lunch, so he might as well put everything off for a bit longer.
He always said he was a restless soul. He could almost hear his ex-wife Madelene saying: “Well, it sounds better than moody, unfaithful and running away from yourself.” But restless was true as well. A sense of unease had already got its claws into him in the cradle. His mother used to tell people how he’d screamed all night for the first year. “He calmed down a bit when he learned to walk. For a while.”
His brother, three years older than Mans, never tired of telling the story of how they’d sold Christmas trees one year. One of the family’s tenants had offered Mans and his brother a part-time job selling the trees. They were only kids, Mans had only just started school. But he could already count and add up, his brother said. Especially when it came to money.
And so they’d sold trees. Two little lads, seven and ten. “And Mans earned loads more money than the rest of us,” his brother would say. “We just couldn’t understand it, he was only getting four kronor per tree in commission, the same as everybody else. But while the rest of us were just standing around shivering and waiting for five o’clock
