catch small animals, but on this hunt they are allowed to come along only as observers. They know something big is happening, and are quivering with suppressed excitement. The older wolves are saving their strength. It is only their noses, raised in the air from time to time, that reveal the fact that this is not just a normal relocation, but the beginning of a demanding hunt. It is more likely that it will fail than succeed, but there is a determination in the way Yellow Legs moves. She’s hungry. And these days she works hard for the pack, all the time. Daren’t leave to go off on her own as she used to do. She senses that she is on the way to being driven out. One fine day, she may not be allowed to return. Her half-sister, the alpha female, keeps her on a tight rein. Yellow Legs always approaches the alpha pair with her hind legs bent and her back low in order to show them her submissiveness. Her backside drags along the ground. She crawls and licks the corners of their mouths. She is the most skillful hunter in the pack, but that no longer helps. They can manage without her, and somehow they all know that her days are numbered.
Physically, it is Yellow Legs who is superior. She is fast and long-legged. The biggest female in the pack. But she doesn’t have the mind of a leader. Likes to take little trips on her own, away from the pack. Doesn’t like trouble, prefers to turn aside a quarrel or a fight by fawning and starting a game instead. Her half-sister, on the other hand, gets up after a rest and stretches, looking around at the same time with a rock hard question in her eyes: “Well? Anyone thinking of taking me on today?” She is uncompromising and unafraid. You fit in with her or you leave, soon her cubs will learn that lesson. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill them if there were a fight. With her as one of the leading pair, rival packs have to be wary of encroaching on their territory. Her restlessness gets the whole pack on its feet in the hunt for prey, or moving on to extend their territory.
The elk has got the scent of the pack. It’s a young bull. They hear the crack of breaking branches as they gather speed through the forest. Yellow Legs moves up to a gallop. The fresh snow isn’t deep, there is a considerable risk that the elk will get away from them. Yellow Legs breaks away from the rest and runs in a semicircle to overtake it.
After two kilometers the pack catches up with the elk. Yellow Legs has made it stop, launching small attacks but keeping well away from its antlers and hooves. The others gather around the massive animal. The bull tramps around in a circle, ready to defend itself against the first one who dares to attack. It’s one of the males. He sinks his teeth into the elk’s haunch. The elk pulls itself free. There’s a deep wound, muscles and sinews torn away. But the wolf doesn’t move away quickly enough; the elk kicks him over and he rolls backwards. When he gets up on his feet he’s limping slightly. Two ribs are broken. The other wolves retreat a few paces and the elk breaks away. Bleeding from its haunch, it disappears into the brush.
It has too much strength left. Best to let it run for a while, bleeding, let it tire itself out. The wolves set off in pursuit of their prey. The pack is spaced out this time, trotting along. There’s no hurry. They’ll soon catch him again. The wolf that was kicked limps along after them. For the immediate future he’ll be totally dependent on the others’ success in hunting in order to survive. If the prey is too small, there won’t be anything but bones left for him when he’s permitted to eat. If they have to travel too far to hunt, he won’t be strong enough to go with them. When the snow gets deep, it will be painful to get along.
After five kilometers the pack attacks again. This time it’s Yellow Legs who moves in first. She closes on the elk at a gallop. The distance between the pack and the elk diminishes rapidly. The others are so close behind her that she can feel their heads with her hind legs. There is only the big elk, nothing else. His blood in her nose. She’s caught up. She seizes the elk’s haunch. This is the most dangerous moment, she doesn’t let go, and the next second a wolf is clinging to its other haunch. Another instantly takes over from Yellow Legs when she lets go. She dashes ahead and fastens her jaws around the elk’s throat. The elk falls to its knees in the snow. Yellow Legs tugs at its throat. The huge animal tries to summon its strength to get to its feet. Stretches its head up to the sky. The alpha male sinks its teeth into the elk’s muzzle and drags its head down to the ground. Yellow Legs gets a fresh grip on the throat and rips it open.
Life runs quickly out of the elk. The snow is stained red. The cubs are given a signal. Help yourselves. They come racing along and hurl themselves at the dying animal. They are allowed to share in the triumph of the hunt, shaking its legs and muzzle. The older wolves slit the bull open with their powerful jaws. Steam rises from the body in the chilly morning air.
In the trees up above, black birds gather.
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9
Anna-Maria Mella looked out through the kitchen window. The woman next door was wiping the windowsills outside her house. Again! She did it once a week. Anna-Maria had never been in their house, but she could imagine it-formidably tidy, not a speck of dust in sight, and nicely decorated.
The neighbors worked hard on their house and garden. Constantly crawling around uprooting dandelions. Carefully clearing away the snow and building perfect banks at the side of the path. Cleaning windows. Changing curtains. Sometimes Anna-Maria was filled with a completely unreasonable irritation. Sometimes with sympathy. And at the moment with a kind of envy. To have the entire house clean and tidy at some point, that would really be something.
“She’s wiping down the windowsills again,” she said to Robert.
Robert grunted from somewhere around the bottom of the sports pages and his coffee cup. Gustav was sitting in front of the cupboard where the pots and pans were kept, taking everything out.
Anna-Maria was overcome by a slow wave of revulsion. They were supposed to be making a start on the Saturday housework. But she was the one who had to take the initiative. Roll up her sleeves and get the others started. Marcus had stayed the night at Hanna’s. Dodging out of his duties! She should be pleased, of course. That he had a girlfriend and mates. The worst nightmare was for your children to be different, to be outsiders. But his room!
“Can you tell Marcus today that he needs to clean his room?” she said to Robert. “I can’t keep going on at him.”
“Hello!” she said after a while. “Am I talking to myself?”
Robert looked up from the paper.
“Well, you could answer me! So I know whether you’ve actually heard or not!”
“Fine, I’ll tell him,” said Robert. “What’s the matter?”
Anna-Maria pulled herself together.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just… Marcus’ bloody room. It frightens me. I really think it’s dangerous to go in there. I’ve been in junkies’ squats that have looked like something out of
Robert nodded seriously.
“Talking hairy apple cores…” he said.
“They frighten me!”
“… dancing in a drug-induced trance brought on by the fumes of a fermenting banana skin. We’ll have to buy some hamster cages for our new friends.”
Best strike while the iron’s..
“If you do the kitchen I’ll make a start upstairs,” suggested Anna-Maria.
It was best that way. Upstairs was total chaos. Their bedroom floor was covered in dirty washing and half-full plastic bags and cases from their driving holiday that still hadn’t been unpacked. The windowsills were speckled with dead flies and leaves. The toilet was disgusting. And the children’s room…
Anna-Maria sighed. All that sorting and putting away wasn’t Robert’s strong point. It would take him forever. It would be better if he could clean the oven, get the dishwasher going and vacuum downstairs.
It was so damned depressing, she thought. They’d said a thousand times that they’d do the cleaning on a Thursday evening instead. Then everything would be clean and tidy for Friday afternoon, when the weekend started. They could have a really nice meal on Friday, the weekend would be longer, Saturday could be spent doing something more enjoyable and everybody would be together and ecstatically happy in their nice clean house.
But it always turned out like this. On Thursday everybody was completely shattered, cleaning didn’t even come into the equation. On Friday they shut their eyes to the mess, rented a film that always sent her to sleep, then Saturday had to be spent cleaning, half the weekend ruined. Sometimes they didn’t get around to it until Sunday,
